It’s been raining non-stop for the last few days, just an ongoing drizzle, cool and wet.
No spiders. Spiders are not fans of the excessive water falling out of the sky. I’m missing my little friends.
The good news is that the vegetation is going mad, and I expect once it all dries out a bit and the sun warms up the place, we’re going to be swarming with insects, and the spiders will be joyous again.
I rather strongly dislike Chris Hedges, but I have to admit that sometimes he makes a good point.
The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.
Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. There’s a great comic-horror movie that made this same point: The Death of Stalin. In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, the people who profited from the tyrant’s death bumble about, scrambling to take over his role, and it’s simultaneously horrifying and hilarious, because you know that every childlike tantrum and backstabbing pratfall is concealing death and famine and riots and futility. It portrays the bureaucrats of the Soviet Union as a mob of idiots.
There’s a new movie out that has the same vibe, Mountainhead. It’s not as good as The Death of Stalin, but it’s only fair that it turns the stiletto against American idiots, the privileged CEOs and VCs of Silicon Valley. The premise is that a group of 4 fictional billionaires are getting together for a poker game (which they never get around to) at an isolated mansion in the mountains. One of them, who is kind of a blend of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, has just unleashed an AI on his social media company that makes it easy to create deepfakes and spoof other users — it turns out to be very popular and is also creating total chaos around the world, with assassinations, wars, and riots breaking out everywhere. He is publicly unconcerned, and actually suggests it’s a good thing, and suggests that we all need to push through and do more, promoting accelerationism. He’s actually experiencing visible anxiety as everyone at the meeting has their eyes locked to their phones.
What he wants to do is buy some AI-filtering technology from another of the attendees, Jeff, who doesn’t want to give it up. He just surpassed the others in net worth, and doesn’t want to surrender his baby. So they all decide that the solution is to murder Jeff so they can steal his tech. They aren’t at all competent at doing real world action, trying to shove him over a railing, clubbing him to death, etc., and their efforts all fail as Jeff flees into a sauna. They lock him in and pour gasoline on the floor, using their hands to try and push it under the door so they can set him on fire.
One of the amusing sides of the conflict is that all of them are using techbro buzzwords. The pompous elder “statesman” of the group is frequently invoking Kant and Hegel and Nietzche and Marcus Aurelius to defend his decisions, while clearly not comprehending what they actually wrote. They shout slogans like “Transhuman world harmony!” and declare themselves the smartest men in America, while struggling to figure out how to boil an egg. They have such an inflated sense of their own importance that they plan to “coup out” America and rule the world from their cell phones.
They’re idiots.
One flaw to the movie is that the jargon and references are flying so thickly that it might be a bit obscure to the general public. Fortunately, I had just read More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker, so I was au courant on the lingo. It made the movie doubly depressing because it was so accurate. That’s actually how these assholes think: they value the hypothetical lives of future trillions over the existence of peons here and now. It’s easier to digest the stupidity when it’s coming from fictional characters, rather than real people like Yudkowsky and MacAskill and Andreesen and Gates and Ray Kurzweil (unfortunately, Becker twice says that Kurzweil is neither stupid nor crazy — sorry, he’s one or both of those). Fiction might make the infamous go down a little more smoothly, but non-fiction makes it all jagged and sharp and horrible.
Tech is the new religion. Écrasez l’infâme.
Are you ready for the big No Kings protest on Saturday? Are you making signs? I have to tell you that you shouldn’t use these as ideas for posters.
Those are sarcasm. Sarcasm doesn’t work in a protest sign. Short, simple, clear messages are much more effective.
Keep in mind that conservatives do not understand sarcasm or irony or even humor. This, for example, is a real poster put out by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
“Foreign invaders”…is that what we’re calling the people who are working so hard in our farm fields right now? Are the children of immigrants also called “foreign invaders”?
You know, that looks nothing like Steven Miller — he can’t grow that kind of hair on his ratty little face.
My granddaughter has graduated from kindergarten!
She looks so eager to get out in the real world and get a job.
Mano Singham is on the anti-Pinker train.
But if you claim to be of the left and yet find yourself frequently being criticized by others on the left but not by those on the right, and if you find yourself being repeatedly invited by those whose views you strongly disagree with and being quoted approvingly by them, it may be good for you to pause and reflect on why that might be so, and not simply dismiss your critics as being dogmatic and irrational.
The trigger here is Pinker’s flirting with the racist scum on Aporia, but it’s been a frequent issue in his career. He’s a faux leftist, and it shows.
I got a note from our university advocate at the capitol, announcing the completion of the Minnesota state budget. Is it good news? I don’t know. It’s not great news, that’s for sure.
The higher education bill maintains current funding for the University of Minnesota’s core operations in the next biennium. The capital investment (also called bonding) bill provides $60 million in bonding to repair and renew existing University of Minnesota buildings across the state. The transportation bill provides $8 million from the general fund for safety improvement to Washington Avenue Bridge. These bills have been sent to the governor, who is expected to sign them as part of the special session agreement.
Although the funding for core operations amounts to a 3.5% reduction when adjusted for inflation, we recognize it was a tough budget year at the State Capitol. UMN Advocates minimized cuts and secured a bonding bill despite narrow partisan divides by helping legislators understand the statewide value of the University.
The legislature held the line. The budget was already skin-tight and our bones were showing, so we’re going to have to cinch it up a little tighter, but it could have been so much worse. But have you ever heard of the Minnesota starvation experiment?
During World War Two, conscientious objectors in the US and the UK were asked to volunteer for medical research. In one project in the US, young men were starved for six months to help experts decide how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe.
Do we need to repeat it? Really?
onstage during the 6th Annual KLOVE Fan Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on May 27, 2018 in Nashville, Tennessee.
I’m sure there are many of you here, who listen to Christian Rock and watch cheesy apologetics movies, but you could have predicted this. Michael Tait, lead singer of the Newsboys, has…
No, he hasn’t died. It’s the other thing you could have predicted.
…has confessed to cocaine use, drinking, sexual abuse, and grooming.
After meeting Tait at a concert in 2004, a then-22-year-old worship musician said he was invited twice to visit Tait’s home in Nashville, Tennessee, despite living eight hours away, according to the report. During the second visit, the musician said, Tait exposed his genitals and touched the musician’s anal area without consent. The musician told The Roys Report he initially thought Tait’s actions were an “anomaly.”
An “anomaly”. I think maybe this unnamed worship musician was remarkably naive.
Years later, a 22-year-old touring musician with the Chris Sligh band, which opened for the Newsboys in 2010, was befriended by Tait, despite Tait being 21 years older. The Chris Sligh bandmate alleged that in January 2011, Tait assaulted him after inviting him to his home and providing him with alcohol. The musician said he woke in the early morning to Tait kissing him and touching his genitals. He told The Roys Report he saw Tait as “basically the top of the food chain” in the Christian music industry.
The pattern reportedly repeated in 2014. A 22-year-old crew member said that after a night of drinking, Tait offered him cocaine. He later woke up to Tait touching his genitals over his clothes, he said according to The Roys Report.
You know, there were five God’s Not Dead movies released between 2014 and 2024. Tait has been the lead singer since 2009. But he was so sincere in those movies.
I saved the worst revelation for last.
Tait is also known for his conservative politics. In 2016, he endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president before supporting Donald Trump. Tait signed a letter opposing Trump’s 2019 impeachment and was a performer at a January 2020 Evangelicals for Trump concert.
Unbelievable. Such a good Christian.
Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be a redemption tour.
May he die alone, wallowing in shit and the knowledge that the world despises him.
His “birthday parade” brings dishonor to the nation, and tarnishes the history of the army.
On 14 June, go to your local No Kings demonstration. Raise your fists and tell the world that the tyrant must fall, along with his whole corrupt family and administrators. Don’t let them get back up, either!
I don’t care much for the Bible, but Jeremiah 20 seems appropriated.
Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
who made him very glad, saying,
“A child is born to you—a son!”
May that man be like the towns
the Lord overthrew without pity.
May he hear wailing in the morning,
a battle cry at noon.
For he did not kill me in the womb,
with my mother as my grave,
her womb enlarged forever.
Why did I ever come out of the womb
to see trouble and sorrow
and to end my days in shame?
This is a spot-on summary of fascism, and jesus christ, but it sounds familiar to this American.
It’s a gross political pathology, always doomed to failure, so how did it take over this country?
It feels like we need a diagnosis of Rapid Onset Fascism here, but I also know it’s been festering for a long time in a dunghill of racism and religious dogma and American exceptionalism and the myth of rugged individualism.
Meanwhile, Christopher Rufo has a plan.
Third, the president should direct federal agencies to create a hard-soft, or visible-invisible, approach to riot control. In public, the National Guard should mobilize with enough manpower to smother the protests and avoid protracted conflict or hand-to-hand combat, which carries with it the highest level of risk. At the same time, as we saw demonstrated in Portland, Oregon, during the George Floyd riots, the agencies should dispatch unmarked vans to follow key agitators and snatch them from the streets while the media are not looking. The most effective riot controlis to take movement leaders off the field, infiltrate their networks, disrupt the flow of funding, and roll them up in federal investigations. Denying the Left trained protest leaders now will create a strong precedent for the rest of the president’s term.
Does anyone have any objections to unmarked vans full of men wearing masks snatching people off the street? Anyone?
It got published on the WSJ opinion page, so you know it’s garbage. It turns out he’s a real chickenhawk…but we all knew that already.
The article begins,
Violent insurrectionists turned areas of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes over the weekend, with anarchists setting fire to vehicles, throwing scooters and debris at police, and looting businesses—all while waving foreign flags.
We can stop right there. I’ve heard this before, about Minneapolis, another lawless hellscape
. There are people who still claim that Minneapolis was burned to the ground by rioters, but I can drive into the city and see it thriving. This is a common game played by the far right: take any protest against authoritarian rule, no matter how peaceful, and inflate it into apocalyptic chaos. It’s a contrived casus belli, where the the war is targeted against the poor, the working class, and non-white people. Don’t listen to Tom Cotton, the WSJ, or Fox News, and instead read what actual residents say.
The crowd in Grand Park, and at a handful of downtown hotspots on Monday, mixed intense anger at Huerta’s detention, the immigration raids he was protesting when he was injured and arrested, and the presence of National Guard troops at the Roybal Federal Building, with determination, pride and even joy. You could see mini-reunions break out in the crowd, people reconnecting to join in common purpose. (I had a couple of these moments myself.) Los Angeles has thus far emerged from four days of protest with a clear set of goals: driving ICE, the National Guard, and apparently now the Marines from the city and county. And there’s a sense of this as a beginning, a cross between an organizing kickoff and a backyard barbeque, complete with the ubiquitous bacon-wrapped hot dog carts, manned by migrants as well.
The spasms of defiance, impressive though they may be, are scattered. Practically the entirety of the city is going about its business, blissfully unaware of what’s mainly taking place within a five-block radius. Even from block to block you could encounter nothing, followed by a combination of cries of “¡Chinga la migra!” (“Fuck the border patrol!”) and Tejano music. And while lingering images of burnt-out self-driving Waymo cars continue to play out on television and social media, the mood and spirit on Monday was overwhelmingly peaceful. The tensest standoff was led by clergy.
I didn’t know hellscapes featured bacon-wrapped hot dog carts! I don’t eat either bacon or hot dogs, so maybe that’s the horror Tom Cotton is whining about. Fortunately, alternatives are available.
A crowd of a few hundred protesters had marched along the bridge over the 101 Freeway and toward the historic El Pueblo de Los Angeles, a public park featuring a gazebo and a statue of King Carlos III of Spain. Just as the protesters had taken root on the gazebo and begun chanting, a massive semi-trailer rolled up, with a five-piece Tejano band in the bed of the truck. The band, Los Jornaleros del Norte, is made up of day laborers; the lead singer had a “Fuck ICE” shirt on, while a man holding another hybrid U.S./Mexico flag hung off the back. And the entire crowd shifted its attention to cheer raucously along to the music.
Suddenly, the protest had transformed into a celebration of the culture of Los Angeles and the roots from which it came. People waved their signs in time with the music and beamed as they danced and sang their free expression. Representatives of Homeboy Bakery, a local business that employs former gang members and at-risk youth (“Nothing stops a bullet like a job” is their motto), started giving out scones and pastries. Others handed out water.
Tejano bands and free scones? That’s more like it. Tom Cotton wants to end that.
The solution now is the same as I said then: an overwhelming show of force to end the riots.
Here’s a slogan in response, painted on the Edward Roybal Federal Building:
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty
