Mitch McConnell has been MIA for a few weeks. Credible sources say he’s been in the hospital since 14 June, “recovering”.
Laura Loomer says he is “brain dead” and never coming back.
Who are you going to believe? I think we’ve caught Loomer in a lie. McConnell is a Republican, if you’re going to say he’s brain dead, I’m going to ask, “how can you tell?”
I really, really, really dislike Harry Enten, the annoyingly hyperkinetic weirdo on CNN who stands in front of an image board and waves at poll numbers and tells us how important they are. I despise all the poll nonsense on the news media — learn to talk about issues and policy rather than the horserace. Now it’s gotten even worse, because he’s not babbling about legitimate, credible polls, it’s all about numbers extracted from prediction markets, which are also paying the networks for promotion.
Since December, CNN has featured Kalshi in a segment called “The Odds” at least 115 times. In these segments, Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, frequently suggests that Kalshi predictions are more accurate than other sources. While polling relies on volunteers, Enten repeatedly reminds CNN viewers that prediction markets are driven by people who “put their money where their mouth is.”
On January 7, Enten highlighted that, in six days, the odds on Kalshi that the United States would buy part of Greenland by the end of Trump’s first term increased from 12% to 36%. Enten said this was proof that “the people putting their money where their mouth is” are “absolutely taking this seriously.”
“Whoa… way up there now to 36%,” Enten exclaimed. “A tripling in less than a week. My goodness gracious.”
Wishful thinking by gullible people is not evidence.
The good news is that some people are trying to take down these corrupt companies.
On Monday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a total ban on futures trading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Tuesday to prevent the ban from going into place on Aug. 1, with the CFTC arguing its authority supersedes the state’s ability to regulate futures trading. Notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor for Kalshi and has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm.
You can tell that Kalshi and Polymarket are not to be trusted just by looking at the scumbags who are investing in it. They’re parasites all the way through. It makes me suspicious of the Young Turks that they are also taking Polymarket money.
These are just barely legal gambling sites. Let’s make them illegal.
P.S. There is no evidence that we are imminently going to get evidence that aliens exist.
I guess I’ve made it now. I got a partnership offer.
Dropping you a line because we’ve been looking closely at a select group of creators to bring into the fold for the rest of 2026. Your page jumped out at us – especially how you capture the culture around pushing boundaries and living boldly.
Nothing about it feels corporate or safe – and that’s what we need when we’re considering brand fit.
We’re not interested in a quick send-and-forget partnership – we’re aiming for something that gives you wings to do what you do best.
Want to learn more? Reply and I’ll walk you through the details. This time of year tends to move fast, so didn’t want to wait too long to connect.
Appreciate you reading this, pzmyers.
It was from Red Bull. I’m flattered by the “pushing boundaries and living boldly” comment, but no, just no. Part of my “living boldly” ethos involves rejecting corporate influence.
Also, I’ve never had so much as a sip of Red Bull, so it would be dishonest of me to promote it.
In my years of teaching, I have occasionally had students with conservative views, and that’s fine. They’re a minority, but tolerance is one of the default principles of liberal arts education, so they get to express their position, everyone else shares their ideas, we all learn.
The problem isn’t conservatism, it’s authoritarianism. We are living in a country with a rising authoritarian minority that wants to shut everyone else down, and that is a problem. And that’s why Ohio is a problem — authoritarians want to dictate the content of a college education.
Ohio universities’ new centers to combat “liberal bias” aren’t popular with students, so a Republican leader wants to require attendance.
Bringing in America’s 250th anniversary, the Republican supermajority in Ohio’s legislature wants to expand civics education at colleges and universities. That hasn’t been getting the warmest of welcomes on campuses.
This puckered prune of a beancounter doesn’t like free speech
So this Republican, Jerry Cirino, has passed a new law.
S.B. 1 focuses on what Cirino calls “free speech,” banning public universities in Ohio from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, having “bias” in the classroom and limiting how “controversial topics” can and can’t be taught. “Controversial” under Ohio law includes “belief policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.”
I appreciate how the report mentions that Cirino is a “free speech” advocate, and the next word is “banning”. It goes on to say that he opposes “controversial” ideas, in which he gets to categorize what ideas are to be policed. “Climate policies”? Climate change is real and has serious consequences (witness the heat wave we’re experiencing now), but Cirino wants to control discussion of what to do about it.
“electoral politics, foreign policy”…do Ohio universities lack political science and history departments?
I know Republicans hate DEI, but Ohio is a diverse state, and universities tend to hire from an international pool of academic candidates.
Ohioans can’t even discuss immigration policy? Are we just supposed to accept a conservative white man’s opinions without recourse to evidence, or the consequences, or the literature?
The primary consumers of college education are 18-22 year olds. Lord forbid that marriage and abortion be a topic of interest and concern among that group.
Jerry Cirino is a retired medical device company executive. Don’t assume that he therefore has experience in medicine or engineering, though — he has a BS in business and an MBA, and has completely foregone the kind of breadth of knowledge a typical liberal arts graduate gets, and instead has been narrowly focused on making money.
Yet he thinks he has the qualifications to overhaul higher education in Ohio? Jesus. This really is the age when incompetence rules.
I also made an Instagram reel as I strolled through the building.
Transcript below the fold.
These gomers make it so hard to celebrate Independence Day
It’s Independence Day, which means most Americans are thinking about hot dogs and fireworks, neither of which interest me, and the Christian Nationalists are all reading that one line in the Declaration of Independence that represents the totality of their perspective: “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Forget the Constitution and forget that the bulk of the Declaration was an enumeration of the offenses of the British king, which the current American president is trying to repeat. The Discovery Institute is going all out on that line, with John West writing a whole book, Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul on their obsession. Wait…the Bible? I thought the Discovery Institute was scientific and secular!
Anyway Charles Thaxton and Stephen Meyer have written an op-ed plugging that theme. It’s terrible, muddled and sloppy, exactly what I expect for the DI.
It’s trying to argue that there are two perspectives, one God-centered that enables human dignity, and the other is scientific, which…they avoid specifying. It’s just not giving God credit, and therefore it’s implied that respect for human dignity will be somehow diminished. It’s an argument based on potential consequences which they don’t support with evidence.
Yet we in the U.S. and other Western countries, with our own familiar materialist scientific view of man, have created a curious situation. The orthodoxies of Judaism and Christianity contend that man has dignity because he has been created in the image and glory of God. If the orthodox view is false, as is widely assumed in the academic and legal professions, then one must wonder how long it will be until we in the West reason correctly from a strictly scientific perception of human nature.
The religious perspective has done a poor job of supporting the value of human lives — Christian orthodoxies are all about an afterlife, and has been used to justify slavery. That half of their argument is unsupported, and they don’t bother to support it — just assume that religious beliefs are good. The other half, that science is going to diminish us, is even weaker: they don’t have evidence, we are expected to wonder how long it will be until a strictly scientific perception of human nature
leads to some inevitable outcome, which we should assume will be dire.
I’m amazed at how frothy and vague their argument is. It’s the Discovery Institute, though, so they think handwaving at Darwin and Marx is sufficient to prove their thesis.
We might well remember that neither the edifice of Western technical sophistication nor the “science” of Marx, or of Darwin, can provide any firm ground for asserting these rights. Instead, productive proclamations of human rights depend upon a shared conviction that man’s dignity is inherent — safe from any political expedient — as our Western religious heritage once asserted, and as the Declaration of Independence still does
The Declaration of Independence is a 250 year old document that tried, successfully, to justify a separation from a colonial power. I don’t care if it “asserts” an 18th century view on the relationship between humanity and an imaginary god. I have a belief in man’s dignity
based on an evolving humanism, not the words of a slave-holder.
Public, and especially political, references to this heritage doubtless offend the sensibilities of a secular age. Nevertheless, if the traditional understanding of man is correct, if it is not only doctrinal but factual, then governments can derive human rights from a dignity that actually exists. But if the traditional view is false and the modern scientific view prevails, then there is no dignity and human rights are a delusion, around the world and in the West as well.
Weird. So if you derive human rights from your fantasies about an invisible superman, then that actually exists. But if don’t believe in this god (and don’t forget, it has to be their specific Christian god), then human rights are a delusion. You know, humanists aren’t the ones arguing for the violation of human rights, that seems to be the domain of sectarian and racist ideologies. Thaxton and Meyer can try to wrap themselves in the thin thread of a single line in an old document, but it still leaves them naked.
They always look so affectionate.
The Guardian is asking for nominations for the Invertebrate of the Year, and you can submit your choice!
I made a safe and conventional pick.
Parasteatoda tepidariorum
This is not the most glamorous spider — it’s extremely common, found in pretty much every home (although you may not know about them!), and represents a diverse group of invertebrate predators. In the last few decades it has become a useful standard model system in developmental biology. This spider is a workhorse for science!
They’re also pretty. I’ve got one on my computer desk, in a vial, and I occasionally give her a mealworm. She’s a quiet and pleasant pet.
Imagine that Donald Trump offered me a prestigious and profitable position in his administration (that’s not going to happen). I’m on the edge of retirement, and would love to have a nice comfortable position for my twilight years, so maybe you think I’d be tempted. I would not. I am not going to trash my own integrity to get some advantage. That would be the last thing I’d ever consider, and would feel a deep shame if I were to accept it, because everything Trump touches turns to crap.
In other words, I’m not Avi Loeb.
A polarizing Harvard astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the Trump administration to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs.
Avi Loeb, a cosmologist who studied black holes and served as head of Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020, was recently appointed to helm a new scientific advisory council tasked with investigating the origins of mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years.
Loeb has made a career of pushing patently nonsensical bullshit. That’s not just my opinion, the scientific community in general thinks he’s a con artist.
His theories have won praise in UFO circles but often put him in conflict with academic peers. Other astronomers accuse him of making exotic claims with little evidence. Some chafe at his habit of skipping the peer review process and bringing claims directly to the public.
Steve Desch, an Arizona State University astrophysicist who has challenged some of Loeb’s theories, said Loeb uses flawed methods to reach wild conclusions about alien life — all while shunning a more established branch of science searching for life beyond Earth.
Loeb’s role on the administration’s new panel casts doubt on the entire endeavor, Desch said.
“I don’t know what’s going to come of this, but we’re not going to get any closer to answering these questions with him in charge,” Desch said.
Loeb has been artificially propped up by the grifter administration. Let’s hope he comes crashing down hard in a few years, and learns regret.
Confirming the terrible quality of this panel, Michael Shermer has also been appointed to it.
This is a quick response to a naive pair of questions.
Why is it that all questions about atheism and evolution by the True Believers rest on false premises? Answer that one for me, ma’am.
