I’m not even a sports fan!

Yet here I am, thinking it might be fun to watch a women’s soccer match. I’m not even talking about the women’s national team — a local team. They deserve support, too, and apparently, women’s teams play a better and more exciting game than men’s.

Then, after the USWNT won the world cup this past weekend, listen to the audience. This is amazing. They’re chanting “equal pay!” in response to the victory.

The discrimination has gotten so obvious that crowds of people are screaming about it. Will anything be done?

This also has me wondering “what about the menz?” The differences are glaring: the women’s team is bringing in more money, is empirically better than the men’s team, and are playing more games than the men, yet they’re getting paid a lot less. If I were on the men’s team, the discrepancies would be making me uncomfortable. But their response so far has mostly been silence. How…odd. I guess solidarity with one’s colleagues is just too much to ask.

(Via Skepchick)

A prosecutorial dilemma!

A prosecutor involved in trafficking cases in New York writes about what to expect in the new trial of Jeffrey Epstein. Basically, he’s screwed.

But, finally, it looks like justice will be served to Epstein in the form of new sex-trafficking charges filed by the formidable U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Epstein has reportedly been arrested for trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005. And this time, Epstein shouldn’t expect the ridiculous sweetheart deal he got the first time around.

Charges of federal sex trafficking carry mandatory minimums of 10-15 years on each count. Mandatory means mandatory. In other words, short of a cooperation agreement with the government—which in the SDNY famously means full cooperation against all possible other subjects and targets—Epstein will serve at least 10-15 years in prison (possibly more depending on the number of counts) if convicted.

He ought to be sweating, but that last paragraph brings up a legal problem. If convicted, Epstein is a horrible sleaze who has committed great evil, and yeah, he should be locked up. But should we complain if he gets a reduced sentence if he provides evidence that sends a host of other sleazy pervs tumbling down? He could, conceivably, be the downfall of people like Dershowitz and Clinton and Trump and other highly connected rich goons. Would that be worth turning an Epstein loose?

Also, the writer speculates that Barr could potentially meddle in the case to protect those same highly connected rich goons. What is our recourse if that kind of blatant corruption occurs?

This could be an interesting and revealing case. I’ve been conditioned by the last few decades of bullshit to expect that what will be revealed is only greater levels unscrupulous grift than ever I imagined. I guess that still fits the definition of “interesting”. I wish I lived in a less interesting country, though.

Behold the coming of the cyber-baby!

At first, it was cute. Her parents are big ol’ nerds whose idea of fun involves sitting in front of a keyboard (I have no idea where my daughter got this habit), so they got grandbaby Iliana a keyboard of her own. She looks so happy being just like Mommy and Daddy.

But there’s been an alarming progression. Now Iliana has gone all cyberpunky, bathing in the glow of the LEDs and gazing raptly into the digital future. I guess I’m going to have to get her some mirrorshades for Christmas, and before you know it, she’s going to be demanding cybernetic augmentation, an Ono-Sendai deck, and shiny new eyes from Nikon.

She’s a lucky girl…I mean, transhuman.

Would Chris Coons want me to talk about my faith, if I were running for office?

Coons biases are showing nakedly in this essay in which he says Democrats need to talk about their faith, using the example of Sherrod Brown, who got all this attention from the electorate for openly making a big deal of his Christian beliefs. So, he argues, everyone needs to make it part of their stump speech.

What’s implied is that this is a fine strategy for Christians.

Unfortunately, choosing not to talk much—or even at all—about faith and religion has become common in today’s Democratic Party. That choice, I believe, is the wrong one for two important reasons.

First, it hides away the deep, passionate, and formative faith backgrounds of so many Democrats who are seeking or serving in office. At our weekly Senate prayer breakfasts, for example, I’m consistently inspired and moved by the words of my colleagues whose faith is fundamental to their life and their work, but who rarely talk about it publicly.

Second, choosing not to talk about our faith as Democrats ignores the clear fact that America is still an overwhelmingly religious country, and that the Democratic Party, too, remains a coalition largely made up of people of faith—including tens of millions who identify as deeply religious.

I guarantee you that if I were running for office (fortunately, I’m not) Coons would be telling me to hush about the atheism thing. If I were Muslim and running for the presidency, my religion would be a huge issue; that’s a campaign that wouldn’t even get off the ground, all because people like Coons and Brown are making their Christianity a ploy in their run for office.

Someone like Coons would not be consistently inspired and moved by the words of a godless colleague, or one who worshipped Allah, or a Satanist friend. The implication is that only the dominant beliefs in a culture are worthy, and should be expressed loudly, and anyone else should shut up.

How about if instead we recognized that your goofy, irrelevant, evidence-free beliefs should not be part of our government, directly or indirectly, and that making it a prominent part of a campaign is pandering to a biased segment of the electorate? That goes for atheists who might make it a central feature of their campaign for office. I want to know your position on the issues and your proposed solutions, not what phantasm (or absence thereof) you talk to.

Wealthy math teacher faces justice

Jeffrey Epstein with some random people

Can it be? Will Jeffery Epstein get his comeuppance?

Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for allegedly sex trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005, and will appear in court in New York on Monday, according to three law enforcement sources. Saturday’s arrest by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force comes about 12 years after the 66-year-old financier essentially got a slap on the wrist for allegedly molesting dozens of underage girls in Florida.

The article also points out that it’s a mystery where he got his millions of dollars. He was a math teacher who broke bad into the lucrative world of hedge funds, but no one seems to know what he was doing, his employees were invisible, and he seems to have just one client. Something shady was going on, which makes me wonder if the reason he got such a sweetheart deal before is that he’s a key to unraveling a tangled web of nefarious activity by the rich and powerful.

Speaking of the rich and powerful, Alan Dershowitz sure seems to be sweating copiously suddenly.

How I’m spending my day at #cvg2019

Well, how I plan to spend my day. I might get carried away on a whim or stumble across something unexpected.

11:00am-12:00pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway HI Weird Biology
12:30pm-1:30pm @ Hyatt 4 Great Lakes A2 N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy
3:30pm-4:30pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway HI Books to Read Right Now
5:00pm-6:00pm Magic Schoolbus Party Room (5123) spider salon
7:00pm-8:00pm @ Hyatt 4 Great Lakes A3 AMC’s The Terror
8:30pm-9:30pm @ Hyatt 2 Greenway CDE Paranormal Minnesota
9:00pm-9:45pm @ Hyatt 1 Nicollet Ballroom Pounded in the Tingle
11:30pm-12:30am @ Hyatt 2 Greenway B ASMR

I’m presenting at the ones in bold. I’m bringing Common House Spiders to the Salon, I plan on that being more of an interactive demo.

I have the least confidence about making it to the ASMR panel. I’m curious, but it’s late and I might fall asleep. Actually, if I popped in I wonder if I’d find the entire audience asleep.

Well, this sucks

I’m at Convergence, which definitely does not suck and has been enjoyable so far, but I’m also becoming untethered from the Internet, which sucks horrendously. There are two problems so far.

One: I can’t connect to the hotel internet. Have you ever noticed how even the cheapest little hole in the wall motel will just give you free wireless that works, while every upscale hotel insists that you enroll in their special program to get the slowest possible internet connection, and then offers you faster connections at a price? All the extra layers and attempts to squeeze more money from you reduces reliability. I’m at a Hilton. Hate it.

Two: Fucking Apple. Speaking of high priced screwups, I HATE APPLE’S WEIRD CABLES. The charging cable for my iPhone/iPad, which is an official Apple cable, is disintegrating and has stopped working. Their computing devices will keep going for decades — my laptop is getting up there, and is fine and functional — but you’re going to have to get a new power brick every year, because the thin cable immovably attached to it will crack and fray. The charging cable for my iWidgets is even worse, and woe unto you if you buy a third party cable, because they have to be Apple-certified, and half the time they don’t work.

Their machines have code in them to sense some secret handshake from the cable, because I get messages when I plug them in to the effect that this is not an Apple approved “device”. This one nuisance is about to drive me out of Apple’s ecosystem, after 35 years of loyalty.

Anyway, it all means I have a laptop that won’t connect to the Internet, and a phone and tablet with batteries slowly dying because I can’t recharge them.

My god, I might have to interact with a purely physical world at the biggest SF conference in the upper Midwest. Will there be things to do? How will I survive?

Shameful Fourth of July to you all

I’m certainly not celebrating today. We’ve got more to regret than to praise.

We’re running concentration camps on our southern border. It’s not a recent aberration, either: we were enslaving people before we became a nation, we built this country on the labor of the barracoon. We slaughtered the native population and herded the survivors into reservations. My university was founded on the site of an Indian school, where children were ripped from their families and imprisoned to be taught White Man’s Ways; there’s a big sign outside the building where I work to remind me of that every day.

We’ve been at war since our founding. It’s easy to forget, since we civilians are kept fairly well insulated from the consequences, but if you’re one of the working poor drafted to fight, or worse, one of the targets of our wrath, you know it. Nowadays we do most of our killing remotely, with drones or bombers, so even the military suffers little pain.

We’ve elected a crude, ignorant boor to the presidency who is disgracing our nation before the eyes of the world. We have a state propaganda channel that funnels lies to the populace. The “newspaper of record” provides a mouthpiece to apologists for the status quo. We’re having a goddamn military parade in the capitol today. I’m torn between thinking that at least it honestly represents the spirit of the country and thinking it is deplorable and vile.

I’m expected to treat this as a holiday celebration?

I’m not going to. I’m waiting to celebrate the revolution that erases this stain.

Maybe humanity deserves extinction

I guess there’s a market for this:

One of the biggest pornography companies in the world has launched a webseries called Border Patrol Sex that features American border patrol agents catching undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrant women attempting to cross the border, arresting them, handcuffing them, raping them, and then sending them back to Mexico.

The reality of the series is too close for comfort. A recent Fusion investigation revealed that 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. from Mexico are raped during their journey.

I don’t have a problem with porn — watch it if you’re into it. I do have a problem with exploitation, misogyny, and rape, though, and this webseries is promoting all three.

Also I had no idea there was a capitalist near-monopoly on porn, but here’s who is making this poison.

Border Patrol Sex isn’t the diseased brainchild of random misogynistic nativists with video cameras. The site is operated and owned by MindGeek, a European company that owns most of the biggest porn sites on the Web, including YouPorn, Pornhub, Xtube, RedTube, SpankWire, and dozens of major porn sites.

How frustrating. I already have nothing to do with any of those sites, so I can’t boycott them.