Farage needs to go away, apologies would be redundant

You’re not convincing me that I should get out of my American bubble, UK. What’s this I hear? You might end up making Nigel Farage your prime minister? Haven’t you noticed how the US is self-destructing after electing a flaming buffoon to the presidency? Don’t repeat our mistake.

The latest revelation is that Farage’s behavior as a schoolboy. He was a goose-stepping bully singing Hitler youth songs!

When he was 17, a teacher wrote a letter protesting the prospect of Farage being appointed prefect at his school. She was in disbelief that he was even considered for the role.

She wrote: “You will recall that at the recent and lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was a ‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.

“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set that he had to be removed from his lesson …

“Yet another colleague described how, at a [combined cadet force] camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs; and when it was suggested by a master that boys who expressed such views ‘don’t really mean them’, the college chaplain himself commented that, on the contrary, in his experience views of that kind expressed by boys of that age are deep-seated and are meant.”

The letter concluded: “You will appreciate that I regard this as a very serious matter. I have often heard you tell our senior boys that they are the nation’s future leaders. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that these leaders are enlightened and compassionate.”

He was, of course, appointed to the position anyway.

We should all learn from this: don’t let young people with fascist impulses get away with it. They don’t get better, except in the sense of getting better at concealing it for a time, but give them a little bit of power and the viciousness reemerges. Nigel Farage is the UK’s Stephen Miller wearing clown paint.

The letter expresses dismay that Farage hasn’t even apologized. I don’t give a damn whether he can put up a facade of regret — his actual identity as a racist and anti-semite was exposed, and no amount of “I’m sowwy” would make up for it.

Some UK citizens are retaining a sense of humor about it all, though.

“APPARENTLY it costs the NHS over E300,000 a year to remove foreign objects from people’s rectums. Why aren’t we removing British objects instead? was Brexit all for nothing?
– Gerry Paton, London”

Humor seems to be all we have left, unfortunately. This is the era when entire countries turn themselves into a joke.

It’s blizzard time!

We woke up this morning to the moaning of the wind, and I decided to just stay in bed a bit longer. We’ve got a long day ahead of us in which we won’t be stepping outside our door today.

A developing potent winter storm over the Central Plains this morning will become much stronger as it moves toward the Great Lakes through Monday morning. Snow will develop over western Minnesota near sunrise, with a rain/snow mix developing farther east. The rain/snow mix across eastern Minnesota and Wisconsin will quickly turn to snow later this morning as temperatures drop during the daylight hours. Steady snow will continue through early Monday morning. Accumulations of 6 to 10 inches are forecast across eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, with amounts tapering off to a few inches across far western Minnesota. In addition, strong northwest winds gusting to 45 to 55 mph are expected by this evening, leading to blizzard conditions in open areas of central and southern Minnesota through early Monday morning.

A Blizzard Warning is in effect in a corridor from Morris and Long Prairie, south to Granite Falls and the far southwestern Twin Cities metro, to the Mankato and Albert Lea areas. A Winter Storm Warning is in effect for the rest of eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Travel conditions will become dangerous later today through early Monday morning. Alternative travel plans should be considered.

I did look out the window — haze, swirling snowflakes, trees trembling in the wind — and closed the blinds again. Yesterday I saw rabbits hopping about nibbling on the food my wife left out for them; no rabbits today. Fat little fluffy birds are made of sterner stuff and are fighting over bird seed.

I thought Canada was supposed to be better than us?

I just assumed that since the US government has been such an overwhelming shitshow, it was distracting us from the better job being done in the nation to our north. The prime minister is Mark Carney, who leads the liberal party, so he must be doing good things. Maybe not.

A University of Toronto professor, Laura Tozer, teaches a grad level course in climate and climate policy. She has a few complaints for Carney to address.

“Every single semester, a student raises their hand in my class and asks: ‘Professor, is there any hope on climate change?’ How about this year when the new semester starts in January, you get to look them in the eye and answer,” she wrote in her letter, posted on LinkedIn, which also rattles off the laundry list of climate rollbacks under Carney.
X Suspended Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta

X Weakened methane regulations

X Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap

X Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system

X Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency

X Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency

X Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program

X Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate

X Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects

X Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation

> Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts

X Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne

Whoa. I’ve been ignoring Canada (forgive me, you know we Americans kind of have our hands full), but apparently the Canadian government has been fucking up, too. It sounds like Carney has been fully captured by the oil interests and is giving up on conservation efforts.

How is he doing on health policy and vaccination? Is he planning to take over Greenland? I’m afraid to look.

I wonder if we could at least vacation in Albania?

This is Prinerigone vagans.

I’ve never seen one — that’s a European species. I have seen other Linyphiidae in my neighborhood. They’re quite small sheet web weavers.

Now this one I have seen frequently around here: Tegenaria domestica, the barn funnel weaver.

They’re one of the bigger spiders around here. They’re funnel web weavers, and they like dark corners of your garage or basement, where they build dense sheet webs with a characteristic funnel, where they live. I’ve been startled by these guys — if you poke around and disturb them they will leap out to run away. They’re very fast.

If you combine 69,000 Tegenaria and 42,000 Prinerigone, with a rich food source, this is what you get, the world’s largest known colonial spider web, found in a cave on the Albania/Greece border.

(human added to provide scale)

You can read all about it in a paper, An extraordinary colonial spider community in Sulfur Cave (Albania/Greece) sustained by chemoautotrophy, in a journal named Subterranean Biology, or in a more general article in Scientific American.

We report the discovery and detailed analysis of an extraordinary colonial spider assemblage in Sulfur Cave, a chemoautotrophic sulfidic ecosystem located on the Albania-Greece border. The colony, comprising an estimated 69,000 individuals of Tegenaria domestica (Agelenidae) and more than 42,000 of Prinerigone vagans (Linyphiidae), spans a surface area of over 100 m²—representing the first documented case of colonial web formation in these species. Stable isotope analyses (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) revealed that the trophic web sustaining this assemblage is fueled by in situ primary production from sulfur-oxidizing microbial biofilms then transferred through chironomid larvae and adults to higher trophic levels. Morphological and molecular data confirmed the identity of the two spider species and revealed that their populations in Sulfur Cave are genetically distinct from other populations. Regarding T. domestica, we found a seasonal pattern in fecundity, with significantly larger egg clutches in early summer. Microbiome analysis of this species also revealed a lower Shannon diversity in the cave population compared with a surface individual captured nearby. Our findings unveil a unique case of facultative coloniality in this cosmopolitan spider, likely driven by resource abundance in a chemoautotrophic cave, and provide new insights into the adaptation and trophic integration of surface species in sulfidic subterranean habitats.

I have a practically empty basement, it would be an interesting project to persuade the local funnel weavers to move in and build a web wall. Unfortunately, it also requires pools of putrid sulfurous water for breeding midges — in the particular cave this comes from, they’re provided by streams cutting through Vromoner Canyon (Vromoner means “Smelly water” in Greek), with bacterial biofilms living on the sulfur and providing food for the midges, which then fly into the spiders’ web. We do have a capped sewer line in the basement, I wonder…

We’re going to need millions of midges continuously spawning deep in the basement and air currents that flush them out into the rest of the house.

I think Mary is going to squelch that plan. But wouldn’t it be glorious?

Gawain is a girl?

Today was the day I planned to start breeding my spiders. I have a group of definitely female black widows — they are easily recognizable, because they’re solid black spheres of voracious spiderhood.

Then I have another group set aside that I tentatively identified as male: they were smaller, had more slender abdomens, and just generally looked male. But their small size and slower growth meant they were still juveniles, and assigning sex was a bit more problematic. But they were growing fast, and I anticipated when I went into the lab today that at least some of them would be ready for mating.

I got a terrible surprise. Many of those males had died, unexpectedly. I suspect an epidemic of blue pedipalps, or that I’d waited too long and they died of unrequited love. I still have some vials with smaller presumptive males that I was afraid to offer to the females, because cannibalism, you know.

I had one large surviving male, I thought. Gawain. Gawain will come through for me and inseminate my females. Yes, Gawain would be the hero of the day! Except…

Gawain had become a girl.

Curse that campus-wide epidemic of infectious transgenderism!

She was actually almost certainly female all along, but had just matured enough that her sexual characteristics were inescapable. There go all my plans. She is quite pretty, though.

So now I have to be brave and maybe introduce some of the remaining diminutive males to the ladies, or I’m going to have to order some more black widows.

Sorry, the Christmas eve spider orgy has been cancelled.

It’s Christmas Eve, and you know what that means…

It’s time for my traditional holiday activities. I have to cycle the fruit fly stocks. I need to feed the spiders. As a special treat, I’m setting up a pair of black widows for breeding, I hope. And then…the washing of the lab ware. There are many vials and containers that must be scrubbed.

I will get all that done today so I can slack off on Christmas Day, which will not be celebrated. We did not put up a Christmas tree, or any decorations. There will be no children in our house and no presents. The Christmas feast will be a simple casserole. Hell no, I’m not going to church.

I hope you all get to celebrate a mid-winter vacation in the manner of your choosing!

Benny Johnson wants to kill people

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this right-wing freak, Benny Johnson, speak before, but he spoke at a TPUSA conference recently, and it was chillingly hateful. This is scary stuff; it’s straight up fascist ranting, advocating for a terror campaign against our own citizens. I heard this on the Majority Report, but if you don’t want to hear any of the commentary but just want the straight filth from the mouth of Benny Johnson, start this video at the 2:00 minute mark and stop when you can’t take it any more. Or you can just read the transcript I’m posting.

Charlie Kirk taken from us, well, God is the author of life and death, obviously, it was God’s will, there’s nothing outside of God’s will, God didn’t make a mistake. Charlie is now a martyr. But who pulled the trigger? Well, let me tell you. As somebody who knows a lot of people who have been briefed on all of this and who have seen all the evidence and all the available evidence is empirical and demonstrable the person who pulled the trigger is part of the demonic transgender ideology that warps the minds of our young children, that poisons them, that is antithetical to creation itself.…[garbled by overtalking] I make of you man and woman, God doesn’t make mistakes, transgenderism is a lie from the pit of hell, and I’m sick of seeing transgender violence and murders in my country.

[cheers from the audience, standing ovation]

And what has made me so angry about this moment is that it should have been a unifying moment for us all to say what a horrid and wretched ideology. Now it’s time to kick in doors, right, come on FBI, do some door kicking, round ’em up. The violent antifa members, the transtifa members, it’s time, use this as a moment, that should have been a moment, but we didn’t have that moment, sadly, because there was too much tearing at the seams. It’s time to focus, ladies and gentlemen, on what’s truly ripping, the demonic evil that is ripping this country apart. Yes, this is the ideology that took Charlie Kirk from us, and what was, what was the last words that Charlie said on Earth? He was actually answering a question about transgender violence…

So much vile ideology on display in that short speech. It starts with a bizarre religious dogma that a god “wills” all actions, but then has to change gears to blame someone who pulled the trigger…and accuses a “demonic transgender ideology.” But we do know who pulled the trigger: Tyler Robinson, a young Mormon man from a conservative family. If there’s any ideology there besides radical far right conservatism and a weird religious cult, it’s gun culture.

Then he works himself into a frothing rant urging the FBI to kick down doors and round up antifa and trans people, to the roaring approval of the crowd.

This was a speech that wouldn’t have been out of place in Germany, 1933.

By the way, Kirk’s last words were in reply to questions from his audience. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” He didn’t know: Too many, he said. There was a follow up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” He didn’t have an answer for that, so he dodged: Counting or not counting gang violence? Then boom, he was shot by a non-transgender non-gang member.

It’s clear that these fanatics are obsessed with trans people, and even when it’s not a factor, they will use them as an excuse to foment hatred and violence.

I never have to listen to Benny Johnson ever again. On the basis of that speech alone, I condemn him.

Hey, I’ve been to huge atheist conferences, and never heard a speaker rage against religious people the way these people howl against trans people, with even less justification. Such behavior wouldn’t have got a standing ovation, that’s for sure. One exception: a few people, like Sam Harris, preached hatred against Islam, but he always did so in his usual cautious mealy-mouthed voice, and it was one of the reasons I gave up on organized atheism, and Harris in particular.

A conspiracy of absolute morons

I’m instantly suspicious of conspiracy theories, typically because believing in them requires some degree of confidence in the competence of a mob of people who somehow avoid spilling the beans. I am now faced with the possibility that if everyone involved is sufficiently below a threshold of stupidity, they can make it work, for a while at least. Now a new batch of Epstein files have been released, and they are the product of gross incompetence.

Some of the files have emerged because all you have to do is guess at likely file names, and you can access otherwise unlisted files. Some of the redactions can be circumvented by copying the text and pasting it into a separate document. This is what happens when you put Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino in charge of the coverup.

Voidzilla discusses many, but not all, of the recent revelations.

There were TEN CO-CONSPIRATORS with Epstein whose names were redacted from the files? It’s true: there’s a cabal of wealthy pedophiles raping young girls, and the Trump administration is neck-deep in a cover-up to protect them.

Trump is also mentioned in some of the files.

It reads: “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump travelled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.

“In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having travelled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.

“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old REDACTED.

“On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.”

Trump is also accused of unsavory behavior directly.

Among the files released on Tuesday is a letter that appears to have been sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, the US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of young gymnasts, while he was in jail.

The letter, postmarked 13 August 2019 and sent from “J Epstein” at “Manhattan Correctional” to “Larry Nassar”, reads: “Dear L.N. as you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good Luck! We share one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”

Ugh. Our president, ladies and gentlemen.

These revelations ought to topple the government — this is far worse than anything Woodward and Bernstein dug up that led to the resignation of Nixon. Why isn’t it? Is it because the Republican party has become a rat’s nest of corrupt crooks and apologists for criminal behavior?

On a note that seems unrelated, but is entirely relevant to the abuse of the government by a senile narcissist, Trump has now announced the construction of a huge, expensive line of battleships.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new class of battleships bearing his name puts a fresh spotlight on a US naval shipbuilding program that has fallen short on delivering the new warships on time and on budget in recent years, something Trump himself pointed out in his speech from Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

This is insane. Battleships haven’t been part of any modern naval doctrine since what, the Korean war? Aircraft carriers are the heart of a modern navy, but maybe not forever — I’m not an expert in military strategy, but then, neither is Donald Trump! Yet here he is, unilaterally deciding to build this gigantic, absurdly expensive, probably unnecessary, archaic battleship, and you know the appeal to him is that he’ll name it after himself.

We can later just scrape his name off the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and we can just ignore the Trump Institute for Peace, but these ships are estimated to cost $15 billion apiece, and may prove to be utterly useless to the Navy. We should not trust these ego projects from a corrupt billionaire pedophile. He’s going to ruin the country, and Republicans, once regarded as the sensible, conservative party, are not stepping up to put the brakes on this wreck of an administration.

Correction: The last US battleship, the USS Missouri, was launched in 1941. We’re done with that paradigm.

Oklahoma’s disgrace continues

The University of Oklahoma has made an announcement about the Samantha Fulnecky affair. It’s the wrong one.

A student’s claim of religious discrimination on an individual assignment in an online Psychology Course taught by a graduate teaching assistant has come to resolution. As stated previously, the student followed two available processes at the University: the grade appeals process in the college and she made a formal claim of illegal religious discrimination. As already announced, the grade appeal was decided in favor of the student, removing the assignment completely from the student’s total point value of the class, resulting in no academic harm to the student.
The claim for discrimination has been investigated and concluded. The University does not release findings from such investigations.
At the same time of the investigation, the Provost—the University’s highest ranking academic officer— and the academic Dean reviewed the full facts of the matter. Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.
Because this matter involves both student and faculty rights, the University has engaged in repeated and detailed conversations with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to ensure there is an understanding of the facts, the process, and the actions being taken.
The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards. We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think. The University will continue to review best practices to ensure that its instructors have the comprehensive training necessary to objectively assess their students’ work without limiting their ability to teach, inspire, and elevate our next generation.

So the university “investigated” and concluded that the respectful, entirely correct evaluation of the essay by the TA, Mel Curth, was out of line, and has fired her from all of her teaching obligations. I think that means they have lost all of their income, unless they also have a research fellowship. And for what? Because they applied solid academic standards to a student paper and deservedly failed her work.

They haven’t thought through the consequences of this action. Every OU student now has a cheat code: mention Jesus in your crappy essay, and you’ve got an excuse to protest if you don’t get a passing grade. That immediately devalues a diploma from OU. I know I’m going to be sneering at modern OU degrees from now on.

Another consequence is that it’s only going to get worse — Christian fundamentalists will flood into OU, while secular students will look for just about any other university to attend.

Put Bari Weiss and Kristi Noem in CECOT

That’s just the start, everyone in this rotten administration should follow.

Wait, no, I can’t recommend following any of the evil policies that the United States is using right now, not even for Nazis. It’s a struggle, but we have to be better than them, even though this story is so enraging.

Bari Weiss, the unqualified bigot who has never practiced journalism, was appointed to be in charge of the news division at CBS — the rich vermin who run the major media companies wanted to do more mergers that benefit no one but themselves used appointments of puppets as a tool to get regulatory permission to construct monopolies. Weiss has used her power to censor the news, axing a segment of the news show 60 Minutes that put the government in a bad light. The excuse given was that the Trump administration refused to comment on it, which implies that the government has de facto control of what journalism can be presented on CBS. Bari Weiss has sold out.

The segment that was killed was all about our policy of deporting people to CECOT, the inhumane torture dungeon in El Salvador. It’s a brazenly evil place; the administrators have openly encouraged ‘influencers’ to tour it and record what is going on, because they are proud of what they do. 60 Minutes was going to show what the El Salvadoran and United States government was doing to the inmates.

The deported migrants were sent to CECOT, short for the Terrorism Confinement Center, a massive high-security prison built by El Salvador’s government as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. Designed to hold tens of thousands of inmates, CECOT is known for extreme isolation, strict control, and conditions that human rights organizations have repeatedly described as inhumane.

Former detainees interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi describe being held in overcrowded cells with little access to sunlight, medical care, or basic hygiene. Several recount routine physical abuse, prolonged confinement, and psychological trauma. Their accounts paint a picture of a system built for punishment rather than due process, with detainees often unsure why they were there or how long they would remain.

Bari Weiss could not allow that, because, Jesus Christ, it makes Trump and his lackeys look bad. Kristi Noem is shown touring the prison, strutting past prisoners held in excruciating positions, standing in front of packed cells while speechifying about how these are the worst of the worst. She looks like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

So it got cancelled.

Except…it was briefly shown on Canadian networks before it was pulled. And someone recorded it — it looks like they just aimed a camera at a hotel room TV — and has made it available to the world.

Go watch it. Quick, before it is pulled down.

These motherfuckers, Kristi Noem, Bari Weiss, Donald Trump, the guards at the prison, the warden, are all evil monsters. They are committing war crimes, except that we aren’t at war, making it even worse. We are all complicit. We don’t get to claim that we didn’t know about the torture prisons — we know. You have no excuse. Are we going to tolerate this corrupt regime any longer?

After watching that video, I needed a cleanse. Maybe you do too — here’s Rage Against the Machine.