The price of eggs is too damn high!

Time to fire the president.

A dozen large, Grade A eggs cost an average of $4.15 in the U.S. last month – a nearly 37% increase from the year before – according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a much larger jump than the 2.5% increase of overall food prices.

The last time that average price was above $4 was two years ago, when the cost for a dozen eggs spiked to a record $4.82.

I mean, Trump’s the guy who goes from store to store and sets prices, right? Or are we now ready to dismiss that simplistic, direct connection out of hand?

In this case, there may be an indirect connection — the price is partly the result of the bird flu.

The egg industry has been impacted by a surge of bird flu cases in recent weeks. More than 13 million egg-laying hens died in December due to the virus – the most of any month last year – according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And another 3.3 million died in early January.

The losses are a big factor in higher egg prices, said Jada Thompson, a poultry economist at the University of Arkansas who researches how diseases impact markets.

“One of the hard parts is there’s this regional concentration of production,” Thompson said. “And so when a disease is going through and hitting farms in that area, it’s gonna affect multiple farms, and that’s gonna affect the supply of eggs – and that supply then will affect our prices.”

Everything is connected. Do you think censoring the NIH and putting science deniers in charge of our health might have consequences?

Just you wait until the next lockdown. They have a model plan to stop the virus in its tracks.

The virus has an extremely high fatality rate in birds, Sato said. Many birds die within a day or two — so when bird flu is confirmed on a farm, it affects the entire flock.

“Essentially, all of the birds that’s on that site will be depopulated, meaning they’ll all be put down, in order to control the virus and to make sure it’s contained in one area to not spread to other premises,” Sato said.

Oh no, not Thunderf00t!

It’s been over a decade since I even thought about Thunderf00t AKA Phil Mason. He had a blog here on FtB for about 3 days before he flamed out spectacularly — he decided to use his opportunity here to screech about feminism, and rant about all us cucks and how contemptible the site was. He was an embarrassing disaster, and we kicked him out (although, unfortunately, he kept his password to the backchannel and copied all the private discussions we’d had about this mess, and dumped them to the denizens of the slymepit.) He was a truly awful, obsessive, immoral person, we discovered.

Now Rebecca Watson picks at the scab and tells us what Thunderf00t is obsessed with now. It’s Elon Musk. I can’t fault him for that, but I can fault him for being so bad in his arguments. He is objectively bad at making arguments about anything.

Would you believe Thunderf00t still has one million subscribers on YouTube? Getting booted off freethoughtblogs didn’t do him any harm at all.

What fathers are supposed to share with their sons

Bryan Johnson, that weirdo millionaire who wants turn aging backwards, taking megadoses of supplements and transfusing himself with blood from his son, has another game he plays with his kids: plethysmography! Every night they strap a measuring device on to their penises, and then the next morning they compare the frequency and duration of their erections.

So far, the kid is winning.

How many of you would make this effort for your kids? And still aren’t in prison?

Stuffing a gag in the mouth of science

Yet another consequence of the election: scientific meetings are being shut down.

Several meetings of National Institutes of Health study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT. A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29.

The scope of the cancellations was unclear. It was also unclear whether they were related to the Trump administration’s freeze on external communications until Feb. 1.

Let’s stop all progress on research into vaccines and antibiotics. It’s not as if we’ll ever have another pandemic.

You know, this is going to get depressing fast. Every morning I’ll be getting up first thing in the morning to the latest horrible, evil act executed by this administration. I’m going to have to think of something to break this spiral of doom whirling away in my brain.

Here’s an appropriate comic.

Just change that last word from “January” to “United States of America.”

A Christian acting like they tell us a Christian is supposed to act

I’m bewildered. I’m an anti-theist, so it makes me uncomfortable when I see a priest acting charitably and kindly and proposing that people should follow a higher moral calling. I am forced to admit that there are good people in the priesthood. Like Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde.

Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their spouses were in attendance for the church service at the progressive institution, and had to listen as the Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop at the cathedral, delivered a direct appeal to the president to conclude her sermon.

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families—some who fear for their lives,” Budde said, but didn’t stop at LGBTQ rights, going on to address Trump’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” Budde continued.

The bishop then called on Trump “to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

I did have some of my biases confirmed, because Trump and Vance squirmed and scowled and generally acted like demons listening to the Lord’s Prayer. The words burned! You can tell they’re already dreaming of their vengeance, because how dare an Episcopalian bishop suggest that citizens should not fear for their lives? Their little gang of followers sitting behind them look stupefied.

Of course, Trump went home and banged out a rant, demanding an apology. He’s not used to people criticizing him.

The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!

Lies from beginning to end. “So-called Bishop”? How dare she bring politics into a prayer for the presidential inauguration? There has not been a giant crime wave caused by immigrants. The service couldn’t have been that boring, since she stirred up a few members of the crowd.

She is pretty good at her job, since she made this hard-core atheist feel some charity towards her faith.

Now, please, if only our media would stop pandering to the madman and publish sincere criticisms of him every time he plays the petty tyrant, that is, every day. Make him squirm all the time.

AiG ❤️ Dawkins & Coyne

Answers in Genesis is thrilled at everything Trump promises to do. You know what else makes them happy? That Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne have embraced a Biblical worldview, finally realizing that sex is binary and simple, just like the Bible says. Skip ahead to about 7:30 if you don’t want to hear them fawning over Trump, don’t bother listening at all if you don’t want to hear their appreciation of Dawkins and Coyne (also some guy named Pinky or Pink…they knew there was “pink” in the name).

It doesn’t mean much. These are creationists, they always pick and choose which words they’ll hear. But isn’t it interesting that some New Atheists are converging on a dogmatic religious view?

Putting biology in perspective

This is some nice art illustrating the relative number of species in each clade in a particular environment. Insects, illustrated by a ginormous beetle, are the most diverse group, but spiders and other arthropods make a good showing, with that colorful mite on the left. Tetrapods are relatively insignificant — I suspect part of the reason for that is that we have exterminated so many of our fellow terrestrial vertebrates. Molluscs are surprisingly successful, but I’m not at all surprised at the size of those fungi.

I do not begrudge the insects their dominance, because after all, that’s spider food.

Our government has officially gone full TERF

Never go full TERF. Here’s another Trumpian declaration:

(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity
(b) *Women” or “woman” and *girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
(d) ‘Female’ means a person belonging) at conception;to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception; to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

I disagree, though. He’s not declaring all Americans female; he’s instead declaring that we’re all trans, because we changed from an undifferentiated state to whatever sex we’re assigned at birth. Unfortunately, his argument is built on a falsehood, because obviously sex is not immutable, it changes during fetal development, and we get another major shift at puberty (why do all the TERFs ignore puberty? It’s right there in our faces, everyone goes through it, and we definitely change at the cellular and gross morphological level). We can also trigger profound changes with hormones, and more subtly, brains can have properties of either, both, or no sex. You cannot reduce complex human identities to a single cell type produced by a single organ, although these regressive dimwits will try desperately.

Do I need to mention that you are not producing any reproductive cell, small or large, at conception?

Tearing stuff down is easier than building them up

Man, it sure is easy to walk into the office and shred all past agreements, burn down policies that have been in place for a generation, and not bother to replace them with anything. Trump is firing people left and right and sweeping away useful programs.

U.S. President Donald Trump ‘s administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.

The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring.

The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by U.S. president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients.

Sure, let’s tear down all the progress made since the 1960s. Dismantle the Great Society programs, since we’re now a small, mean, nasty society. Also, don’t you dare try to preserve them by renaming them.

Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face “adverse consequences.”

I’m at a state university, so this doesn’t affect us yet, but I know people involved in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at the University of Minnesota; I’ve taken DEI training on several occasions. They’re good people and it’s useful information. How can you have “merit-based” hiring if you don’t recognize the existence of policies and attitudes and social pressures that work against merit? I think that’s the problem — they don’t recognize the existence of bigotry and bias while they practice them to the maximum degree.

While they’re taking a wrecking ball to our institutions, here’s another one: the US is pulling out of the World Health Organization.

The World Health Organization regrets the announcement that the United States of America intends to withdraw from the Organization. WHO plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans, by addressing the root causes of disease, building stronger health systems, and detecting, preventing and responding to health emergencies, including disease outbreaks, often in dangerous places where others cannot go. The United States was a founding member of WHO in 1948 and has participated in shaping and governing WHO’s work ever since, alongside 193 other Member States, including through its active participation in the World Health Assembly and Executive Board. For over seven decades, WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats. Together, we ended smallpox, and together we have brought polio to the brink of eradication. American institutions have contributed to and benefited from membership in WHO. With the participation of the United States and other Member States, WHO has over the past 7 years implemented the largest set of reforms in its history, to transform our accountability, cost- effectiveness, and impact in countries. This work continues. We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well- being of millions of people around the globe.

The Trump administration is listening to RFK jr, a notorious crank and quack. We’re slowly emerging from a pandemic (one could argue that it’s not at all over), one that first emerged in Asia, and here we are, tearing down connections to the rest of the world and blinding ourselves to diseases outside of our little country. It’s stupid and short-sighted.

What happens in four years (we hope)? Do we just go crawling back to these international societies, hat in hand, and beg to be let back in? These betrayals are going to permanently damage our relationship with the rest of the world; they know we can’t be trusted, so every international relationship is going to be organized with the understanding that the USA is an unreliable partner.

Busy day of making the younguns happy

Think about how you can make young people happy: give them a puppy. I can’t afford to hand out puppies, but today is the day the students will come into my lab and I hand out fruit flies. Swarms of Drosophila! and I’ll tell them they have to feed them and take care of them and love them for the next three months. It will be a joyful afternoon for the student body.

I also have to explain sex to them, which I’m sure is going to be a total surprise to this group of 19-20 year olds.

It’s going to be an enlightening day, especially when all the men in the class look at their own elbows and realize they must be trans because they lack sex combs.

I just got back from setting up the lab in preparation for this big day. It’s like an icebox in there! Temperature regulation must be very complex in this building, because I can go from my office to the hallway to my research lab to the student lab, and the temperature can vary by 5°C in each transition. The student labs are just plain frigid — I’m going to have to send an email announcement to everyone in my class that they need to dress warm, wear a sweater, maybe bring those heating flasks you use when deer hunting or ice fishing, because jesus, at least the flies won’t try to escape their incubator.