Would you get into a van with this man?

What if he offered you candy, or had a puppy you could play with?

That’s Josh Duggar, the man who became famous for being on a reality TV show about a religious family popping out a train of babies. Then he became more famous for the fact that he had been molesting his little sisters. And now he’s hooked on the prestige and has been caught in another glamorous crime.

Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner, testifying for the prosecution, alleged Duggar downloaded computer files depicting child sex abuse on May 14, 15 and 16 of 2019.

The files were initially flagged by a police detective in Little Rock, Ark., and then allegedly traced to Duggar’s IP address on a computer at his workplace at the time, the Wholesale Motorcars dealership.

One file, according to Faulkner, depicted child sex abuse involving children ranging from 18 months to 12 years of age. Faulkner described the images as “in the top five of the worst of the worst that I’ve ever had to examine.”

According to Faulkner, when homeland security officials raided Duggar’s car dealership and asked to speak with him, without informing him they were investigating child pornography, Duggar “spontaneously” responded, “What is this about? Has someone been downloading child pornography?”

So that’s what used car salesmen do in their free time.

Anyway, now he’s begging to be released on bail with a novel excuse.

The motion further argued that because Duggar is a public figure, it is unreasonable to view him as a flight risk: “Duggar has a widely-recognizable face and has spent the majority of his life in the public spotlight—making any concern that he is a risk of flight all the more unwarranted.”

Widely recognizable? Gosh, if he’s released am I going to have to call the police on every pudgy, balding white guy I see on the street? Never underestimate the ego of a white man.

Donald Trump, reduced to the lowest of the low

The poor man. He was banned from Twitter and Facebook (he tried to appeal to Facebook, but they’ve recently denied him). Then he announced that he was going to create his very own social media platform, to make an end run around Big Tech. Now he claims to have done it. You can go to his grand social media platform right now, and I did.

I looked at it.

I puzzled over it.

It’s a web page where Donald J. Trump can type things, creating “posts”, which are displayed in chronological order, and you can go to his site and read them.

Oh my god.

Trump has created a blog, and is a blogger. That’s all it is! It’s not a very good blog, and it’s missing some important things, like allowing people to comment, or like having titles (every post is titled “Donald J. Trump”), or being able to link to individual posts, but by golly, it’s a blog! A half-assed blog, but a blog nonetheless.

Welcome, Donald! You and I…we’re peers now.

It’s adorable, dude.

Embrace it. Don’t be one of those wankers who insists their blog isn’t a blog. Also don’t try to claim you’ve built a novel social media platform — it’s just an ordinary ol’ blog, just like mine!

The evil cat’s new torment

She has decided to pursue a new career as a mouser. That wouldn’t be so bad — every time the weather fluctuates and cools, the local mouse population decides to move indoors until it warms up again — except for a few small problems.

  • The mouse hunting hour begins at 3am. It can then go on for a few hours.
  • She is not a stealthy feline making swift, silent pounces. No, she’s a klutz. Hunting involves much bouncing off of furniture and knocking things off tables or just generally over.
  • She’s a sadist. One mouse is good for hours of bumbling, brutal torture.
  • She is finally succeeding at her profession. She used to just bat her prey around like a toy, but now she eventually actually kills. This is not for me, at all — she doesn’t proudly present me with a trophy. Nope, she leaves the sad little corpse where ever it eventually succumbs, and then it is my job to find it before it rots and stinks up the house.

It’s not just the classwork that is turning me into the shambling undead. It’s also my roommate.

Last…day…of cla…AAAaaaaaaughhhhh

I might make it. I may be crawling over the finish line, but the end is in sight. One more class today, in which I give them a deadline for turning in the final lab report (Saturday), give them their take-home final exam (due on Tuesday), and go over the answer key for the previous exam, and then I … do some more grading today, wrapping up a backlog of other assignments.

Obviously, then, I’m not done done, but at least there’s the firm definition of a final boundary and I’m not stuffing any more information in their heads. I might survive this hell year after all (he says, as the flaming meteor enters the atmosphere, on target for his head).

I can haz break now?

Please? I have finished grading my nightmarish genetics essay exam (do not ever assign essay exams to bright, ambitious, literate students without setting an upper page length — I had over 400 pages to read. Will not do that ever again. Ever.) and finished the first wave of lab reports. Oh god my eyeballs are about to explode. I think I deserve to take a little walk in the sunshine, don’t I? Don’t make me sit here in my office any longer.

Really, just a short walk, maybe look for a few spiders, then I promise to get back to work.

I have two more sets of exams to finish — but they are much more sensibly designed with short calculations to read, and they either get them wrong or they don’t. And then I have to write two final exams.

There is another lab report and the answers to the final exams to read, but they don’t come in until Friday and next week. Please don’t punish me if I go outside for a little bit. Maybe I can just go feed the spiders? I’ll be right back to buckle down again.

<whimper>

Why are you afraid of critical race theory?

I don’t get it. As a white man, I love critical race theory — it explains so much, helps me understand my failings, and yet also provides a framework for comprehending my role in American racism that doesn’t condemn me (I know, it’s a selfish way to think about it, but that’s what’s great — it should appeal to people who only think of themselves). Yet, somehow, it gives Republicans the heebie-jeebies.

Schools across the country are working to address systemic racism and inject an anti-racist mind-set into campus life. But where advocates see racial progress, opponents see an effort to shame White teachers and sometimes students for being part of an oppressive system.

In particular, conservatives have seized on the idea that schools are promoting critical race theory, a decades-old academic framework that examines how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism. It holds in part that racism is woven into the fabric of the nation’s history and life — a product of the system and not just individual bad actors.

Critics say this approach injects race into what should be, in their view, a colorblind system. Proponents counter that U.S. schools have never been colorblind and insist they aren’t pushing critical race theory anyway. The equity work is critical, they say, to address systemic barriers holding back students of color and to create schools that are truly inclusive.

Look at the peculiar twist in there. Conservatives see it as a tool to “shame white teachers”, but CRT teaches that racism is “a product of the system and not just individual bad actors”. I have benefited from historical biases in education and employment, but that doesn’t mean I have to be ashamed of who I am — it means I have a responsibility to work to change the system, so that everyone has the same opportunities I did.

What’s so terrible about that? Other than the generations of people denied those opportunities, of course.

That conservatives oppose CRT tells me something: that they oppose any change to a pattern of systemic oppression, because they benefit from the system. Breaking that pattern might liberate millions of people, but it hurts the profits of an extraordinarily wealthy minority. So the rich are hurling money and propaganda at the idea because they don’t want you to know you are living under an oppressive system. It’s their system, you know.

And that’s why Tucker Carlson exists. He is an openly racist white supremacist who peddles flagrant misinformation, and he’s not going to be fired. He feeds fear to build a base, and has the money from rich media owners to thrive.

“He’s a good example of how much you can get away with at Fox if your ratings are high,” one current network staffer told The Daily Beast. “Aside from that, he just perpetuates the right’s catastrophe platform. They cannot win with their supposed limited government, fiscal conservatism, because not even they really believe in it. So all they do is fear monger.”

To this point, Carlson has seemingly delighted in his ability to see just how far he can push the envelope, bouncing from one controversy to the next only to see his status and influence grow at Fox News and among the right-wing mediaverse at large.

That’s systemic racism at work. You also won’t fix it by firing Carlson, because he’s a cheap, low-talent goon who would just be replaced by a different cheap, low-talent goon…Jesse Watters, for instance, or some Republican congress-slime, like Kelly Loeffler. They’re fungible. CRT is telling you to stop looking at the tips of the tentacles and instead target the whole dang supra-esophageal mass up there in the head, and that makes the perpetrators of the system afraid.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call out the tentacles, though, especially when they’re so ripe for ridicule. Watch Joy Reid (you know, “the race lady” in Carlson’s parlance) tear into his schtick.

Next, though, we have to tear into Rupert Murdoch and the other wealthy assholes who continue to enable Carlson, no matter how stupid he is.

Isn’t this a fairly typical TED talk?

Vic Berger is calling this the cringiest TED talk of all time. He should have just said “this is a TED talk by Benny Johnson of Turning Points USA” to lower my expectations.

I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of students are really shy — even terrified — of in-class presentations. Especially now, when it’s so easy to hide behind a black screen on zoom. Maybe I should preface any presentation assignment with this video, and tell them that all they have to do is do better than this guy. That should boost their confidence.

By the way, one of my courses is all about writing and presenting scientific information, and our strategy there is to give them a highly structured format to start with — we do a 5-slide PowerPoint with strict time limits and tell them what kind of information has to go on each one: Title-Background-Method-Data-Conclusion. It’s basically an exercise in old-timey rhetoric with technology.

Mr Johnson would not pass my course. But then, he’d probably brag about not learning anything in a liberal university, anyway.

Do you need another reason to despise the cops?

They are happy to give you one.

Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies.

The reluctance of police to get the shots threatens not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say.

At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have gotten at least one dose, officials said, compared to more than 50 percent of eligible adults nationwide. In Atlanta, 36 percent of sworn officers have been vaccinated. And a mere 28 percent of those employed by the Columbus Division of Police — Ohio’s largest police department — report having received a shot.

It makes no sense. I was anxiously waiting for my turn to be vaccinated, and when the opportunity came, I was out the door like a shot and standing in line. I want to reduce my risk. But the police, who are presumably dealing with the general public every day, don’t?

The numbers paint a troubling picture of policing and public health. Because officers have high rates of diabetes, heart disease and other conditions, their hesitancy puts them at greater risk of serious illness from the coronavirus while also undermining force readiness, experts said. Police officers were more likely to die of covid-19 last year than of all other causes combined, according to data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Right. The police are quick to inflate the dangers of their profession to justify more money and more guns, but here’s a demonstrable, active risk, and they do nothing.

If they’re not going to pay any attention to rational priorities, defund the police. Fire the people who are supposed to reduce risk, but instead inflame conflict at every opportunity. That they won’t even get vaccinated is just one more example of systemic irresponsibility.

Citizens keep calling for reform, especially in the big cities, but nothing happens. If you wonder why, here’s a dismaying article about why Democratic mayors don’t take action against the police. It’s the money.

Let’s play SimCity. You won the race; you’re mayor. You’re an ambitious type who probably does want to help. But you’ve been in the big chair for a minute. You’ve burned hours and hours meeting with the rich, cutting ribbons for the rich, taking calls from the rich. You figured out by week 2 why your predecessors didn’t do the nice things they promised. You don’t answer to anyone whose first fear is the cops.

Yes, you could sub in a grab bag of psych professionals, social workers, EMTs, transit workers, firefighters, unarmed investigators, whatever. But that won’t cut it for the key funders of your town’s police foundation: Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Chevron, Coke. The rich don’t just oppose defunding. Like NCAA boosters, they fund their team directly. Police unions are vocal; this gang is not. But these are the constituents who keep police budgets safe—and who top them up.

…

So you don’t feel pressure to make a real offer on cop budgets. The people demanding it pose no electoral threat. What are they going to do—vote Republican? You do not take them seriously. You are genuinely scared of urban revolt, but only from the folks who scare you. The ones at Goldman, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Chevron, Coke. (Google any of those names next to “mayor.”)

These are your friends—if you deliver. You know them well from their threats to leave town, nailing you to the wall for yet more tax breaks. And from your attempts at paying them to come over. And if they make your constituents a little, well, broke, or if their services cost more than you can afford, they’ve still got your loyalty (and pensions). When they get regulated, you’re right there to rail against it. If you’re lucky, they might hire you later.

Capitalism sucks, and it sure does undermine democracy.

Please stop showing off how stupid atheists can be

Once upon a time, the growing atheist community was shattered by the emergence of a disruptive faction who thought there is more to this business than just disbelieving in gods. They were tyrants who wanted to force atheists to do more than yell slogans about how religion is a cancer, and maybe build constructive communities. These were the wicked Social Justice Warriors, or SJWs. They committed the abominable crime of bringing feminism into atheism, of being anti-war and anti-racism, of supporting equality with even LGBT people, and tainted the idyllic purity of true Reason and Rationality with…with values <hack, spit> and ideology (atheism was free of ideology before, existing in a realm of pure thought). These SJWs dared to dismiss the great good Old Guard of Atheism when all they did was exhibit a little light misogyny or xenophobia or corruption. They dared to criticize other atheists! They must be punished!

Well, I confess: I am one of those SJWs. Some people think I’m one of the ringleaders of this diverse group of terrible egalitarians and idealists, and therefore, they are entirely justified in coming to my blog and…actively demonstrating that I was right all along, and there’s a deplorable subset of atheists who aren’t very rational at all? I don’t get it, but regular readers of Pharyngula have noticed a series of abusive, nasty, misogynistic & homophobic & transphobic & anti-semitic & just plain vile comments showing up lately. Like these:

Just so you know, these are all from one lone vigilante, out to prove that he is a smart, reasonable, logical representative of modern atheism by going on an obsessive crusade against SJWs, using obscene slurs against everyone who is not a white Anglo-Saxon cis het man. He’s gone through dozens of hotmail accounts and made hundreds of these short, thoughtless posts to make his point, whatever it is, and I’ve just been blacklisting his accounts and deleting his obscenities almost as fast as he makes them. I don’t understand why, but he seems bound and determined to prove that some atheists can be deplorable, hateful, and illogical by making an example of himself.

So, I’m sorry to say, I’ve switched on the commenting feature that holds a new commenter’s first post in a queue awaiting my approval. This shouldn’t affect regular commenters, but if you’re new here, there might be a delay in your comments appearing. All because one atheist is an asshole.