The Singal problem

You might want to read this Twitter thread by Siobhan points out how Jesse Singal delicately carves up his sources to only allow views that align with his own perspective through.

Short version: Singal reported that the controversial “conversion therapy” lab of Kenneth Zucker was shut down for purely political reasons by omitting the words of scientists who pointed out that he was far out of the mainstream of clinical practice.

That kind of slanted reporting is why transgender individuals, you know, the people most endangered by his biases, consider him to be shady and untrustworthy.

The miracle of selling razors

This is a really good commercial.

Without saying a single outrageous thing, by presenting a purely optimistic message, it has generated a huge amount of controversy and has everyone talking about it (gosh, I just put it on my blog). It’s selling razor blades, and it doesn’t show any razors — none of the male models in the ad are lathered up, or even in need of a shave or a trim. Nobody is shaving. I’m impressed with how neatly capitalism can exploit both good and bad sentiments to serve the cause of selling stuff.

From another perspective, it’s also cool how it has maneuvered a lot of men into whipping out their manly six-shooters and blasting away at their feet. The message is that bullying, sexual harassment, and condoning bad behavior with silent assent are bad, but that good men can and will oppose such behavior, which has provoked the peculiar, guilt-ridden response of “how dare Gillette accuse me of bullying and harassment!”, completely missing the opportunity to identify with the good-looking, well-groomed men who are stopping bullying and harassment. You’ve got a chance to see yourself mirrored in commendable behavior, or oppressive behavior, and thousands of men are screaming, “How dare you criticize my choice to catcall, or mansplain, or punch people!”

And now everyone is selling razors for Gillette. It’s a marvel.

Trying to figure out why this spider appeals to me

I think it’s the idea of living in your home for 16 years and never leaving it except for brief forays to leap out, kill, and eat passers-by.

I still have questions, though. What about sewage? How do they clean up the spider poop that accumulates? Also, they show a spiderling … are males more prone to wandering from home? How do they avoid getting eaten when they tap on the turret door?

Bad people should be called bad people

There exists something called The National Institute for Civil Discourse. They want to argue that the real problem with America is that we aren’t fucking polite enough to one another.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse is urging Americans to be respectful of one another again. The institute and its new executive director, Keith Allred, are behind an attempt to move elected officials and citizens toward civility at a time when discourse is degrading, with the hope that people will remember how to disagree with one another in good faith.

“It’s not the difference of opinion on policy that makes us bitter,” Allred said. “But thinking they’re a bad person.”

Keith Allred, you are a bad person who promotes bad policy.

Our problem isn’t an excess of civility, it’s that people are permitted to constantly break the bounds of civil humane behavior and never face so much as a ‘tut-tut’ from their colleagues, out of an undue respect for politeness and deference. Steve King has been a vocal and unrepentant racist since the beginning of his political career. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it; the Republican party has known it, and has supported him for at least 16 years. After all the crap he routinely spews, only now has the party taken the mildest of steps, stripping him of his committee assignments. Steve King is a bad person. Say it out loud. Everyone should have said it years ago.

Similarly, Jim Watson has been a font of racist nonsense for many decades. He’s been dining out on one great scientific discovery all this time, and people have been showering him with honors rather than stopping cold and saying, “Jim Watson, you are a bad person. DNA is great, but you’re an asshole, and no, we’re not going to appoint you to this prestigious directorship.”

Why is America a racist, sexist shithole, and fast becoming worse? Because the Keith Allreds of this country put manners above all, and refuse to condemn the bad people who contribute to the poisonous atmosphere.

And the award for Slimiest Cult goes to…Scientology!

I’d forgotten who Danny Masterson was, so I had to look him up. He played Steven on That 70’s Show, a character I disliked, and he went on to play in some movies I’ve never seen and a Netflix Original that I never watched. So kind of a C-level semi-celebrity.

But now I’ve learned that he’s accused of being a rather nasty rapist, one that the LA police department has been dragging its heels over bringing to justice. Oh. And one other thing: he’s a Scientologist, and Leah Remini is going to expose him next month (warning: that link contains explicit descriptions of multiple cases of rape), possibly to shame the LAPD into getting off their collective butts. It seems the police are afraid of the Church of Scientology.

Leah’s second season began airing in August 2017, but in November 2017 we revealed that the DA’s office had asked her not to broadcast the Masterson episode while they were still considering whether to charge the actor. Now, more than a year since then, A&E has decided that DA Jackie Lacey has had enough time to make up her mind about charges, and will air the episode.

And what is taking Lacey so long to decide? One of Masterson’s accusers tells us that a member of the DA’s office admitted to her several months ago that Scientology’s involvement in the matter was the reason for the delay. “When I asked him what was taking so long, he said, ‘Scientology. Without going into it, that’s the only way to summarize it.’”

Scientology, for example, discouraged at least two of the women from reporting their allegations to the police. It put one of them through bizarre therapy costing about $15,000 so she could discover what nefarious acts she had committed in past lives to deserve being victimized in this one. And it coordinated an effort to sabotage the case of the one woman who did report her rape to the police initially, in 2004, a case that the LAPD mysteriously later misplaced.

Yuck. That’s a cult with no redeeming qualities at all.

Worst advertisement for McDonald’s ever

Donald Trump honored some college football players with a dinner at the White House, and this is what he served them. He looks so proud of his tackiness.

I am confident that many of his guests like McDonald’s food — it’s carbs and protein and fat, with salt — but fast food from any of the chains is supposed to be served fast. It does not hold up at all well if you let it sit, cooling, for a long time, and that’s implicit in the assembly line production of a McDonald’s burger, which is made on the spot as it’s ordered (OK, with maybe a little slack, and heat lamps). That is old, cold fast food.

Serving it with a golden candelabra does not compensate for congealed fat and shriveled french fries. Not even eating it with Lincoln looking down on you improves it. Having Donald Trump looking down on you makes it worse.


oh god.

Spider update

First, the bad news. I now have no adult males, because Xena ate her consort, as I feared she would. I am beginning to suspect that she’s one of those radical feminist lesbian spiders who is going to kill every male she encounters. I don’t know if they successfully mated before the murder, and she hasn’t yet produced an egg case.

Also, one of my second generation spiders, a young female, abruptly died. Before she curled up and expired, though, she did produce an egg case, so maybe her line will live on.

The good news is that right now I am keeping an eye on three egg cases. The next few weeks will tell if can keep any spiderlings alive any more.

You’d think everyone would be over the UFO nonsense by now

Like Bigfoot sightings, UFO sightings have been in decline…coincidentally, just as video cameras in our phones become ubiquitous. Unfortunately, that just means that the people who still believe have become even more obstinate and resistant to evidence, and the bizarre conspiracy theories and unlikely excuses get even weirder. All that means, though, is that the market has become even more hardcore, and has been distilled down to the most gullible. And that means money. The History Channel is there to rake in the loot.

Jason Colavito reviews the History Channel’s latest descent into ahistorical garbage, Project Bluebook. It stars Aiden Gillen as J. Allen Hynek — Gillen is better known as Littlefinger on Game of Thrones, which ought to be your first warning that no one is to be trusted in this ‘documentary’. You’ll also wonder where Arya Stark is when you need her.

I watched part of the first episode, The Fuller Dogfight. This is better known in UFO lore as the Gorman ‘dogfight’, after the pilot who took part in it, and I have no idea why they changed the name, unless it’s just to make it difficult to look up the facts.

Here’s a reasonably objective account of the event.

One of the early “classics” of UFO history involved Lieutenant George F. Gorman of the North Dakota Air National Guard, who said he had a twenty-seven minute “dogfight” with a UFO in the skies over Fargo.

He was on a routine cross-country flight in 1948, when he spotted an odd light in the sky at night.

Gorman informed the tower that he was going to investigate the other aircraft and pulled his F-51 up and out toward the moving light. He closed to within about l,000 yards and took a good look at the object.

“It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white, and completely round without fuzz at the edges [i.e., sharp and clear],” he said. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.

“I dived after it and brought my manifold pressure up to sixty inches but I couldn’t catch up with the thing. It started gaining altitude and again made a left bank,” Gorman said. “I put my F-51 into a sharp turn and tried to cut the light off in its turn. By then we were at about 7,000 feet. Suddenly it made a sharp right turn and we headed straight at each other. Just when we were about to collide, I guess I got scared. I went into a dive and the light passed over my canopy at about 500 feet. Then, it made a left circle about l,000 feet above, and I gave chase again.”

Gorman said he cut sharply toward the light, which was once more coming at him. When collision again seemed imminent, the object shot straight up into the air in a steep climb-out, disappearing overhead. Gorman again attempted to pursue it but his plane went into a power stall at about 14,000 feet, and the object was not seen again. It was then 9:27 P.M.

Gorman was so shaken by the encounter that he had difficulty handing his plane, although he was a veteran pilot and a flying instructor during World War II. He had noticed no sound, odor, or exhaust trail from the object during the “dogfight,” and no deviation on his instruments. At times during the chase, he had pushed the F-51 to full power, sometimes reaching 400 mph. He described the object as round and somewhat flattened.

So…a small light in the distance, he couldn’t close with it despite chasing it, and then it disappeared. That sounds like an optical illusion to me, where he was somewhat disoriented and a poor judge of distances and size. The Air Force says it was a weather balloon, which would be significantly larger than 6-8 inches in diameter (which is also a bit on the small side for an alien spacecraft).

If you watch the History Channel BS, though, it’s remarkably dramatized. It’s a largish ball of light zooming around, and…Gorman opens fire on it. And the UFO fires back. That’s when I gave up. Nothing in any of the prior accounts claims that they exchanged gun fire — it’s a bit of excitement that the History Channel added. It doesn’t even make sense that an Air National Guard plane on a simple cross-country training flight would be carrying ammunition in peace time, firing guns over a city like Fargo would get him disciplined severely, and and getting shot at and hit by a UFO would leave physical evidence that no one has described before.

It’s not much of a story in the first place, but the History Channel just had to polish that turd.

In case you’re still wondering how absurd nonsense like this persists, it’s because there are cheap exploitive television networks that still promote it to credulous viewers. Colavito points out that it is bad television, wooden and boring, but even that doesn’t seem to matter. The gullible will steal eat it up.

Next mystery: was Aiden Gillen’s career also murdered when Arya Stark slit his character’s throat? Why is he stooping to such low quality trash as History Channel fakeumentaries now?