I’m noticing a troubling but interesting phenomenon: the sanctification of Saint Luigi.

I don’t care for this at all — it’s more than just my anti-religious attitude, but that given Luigi Mangione’s privileged background I doubt that he’s the class hero anyone expects. The over-reaction by the establishment is what’s driving this, though. I don’t think they’re going to calm their freakout, this trial is going to be a media spectacle and it’s going to get worse. You would think villains would realize that creating a public martyr and exhibiting fear is the last thing you want to do. I do wonder if Mangione is going to get an opportunity to orate on the stand, and if he’s going to be any good at it.

On the other hand, I can understand the response. Assassination is a common thing in America. Think about it: my earliest memory of a news event is the JFK assassination. Then there was the RFK assassination. Martin Luther King jr, Malcolm X. Harvey Milk. Everything the CIA did — they tried hard to assassinate Fidel Castro, and failed…but succeeded all over the place in Latin America. It’s hypocritical for Americans to be outraged at any one particular assassination, but maybe this time it’s because the target lacked any taint of leftiness, since those are the only acceptable political murder victims. Uh-oh. What do you mean, rich conservatives might get killed? That’s not the game.

And maybe it’s starting to sink in that also, in America, we have handed everyone a gun. Maybe a few dim capitalists are waking up to the danger they have created for themselves.

I don’t want anyone to get murdered, but…if someone Luigi’d Elon Musk I’d run out and buy cake and ice cream and have a party at home. There’s a whole class of overpaid morons that could be gunned down in a mass uprising that wouldn’t trigger a single tear drop from me, and I might even think we’d improve society by removing them.

They’re quite right to charge Luigi Mangione with terrorism. He’s one little molecule getting heated up in a pot that’s close to boiling, and he could inspire a lot of other people to undergo a phase shift. The powers that be should be terrified.

After the humiliating and ridiculous loss in November, you’d think the Democrats would decide to shake things up and change a few of the top brass. You’d think wrong.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lost the bid to be the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, following reports that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was actively plotting behind the scenes on behalf of her challenger, Rep. Gerry Connolly.

The 74-year-old Virginia Democrat ended up winning by a margin of 131 to 84 in a secret ballot vote taken by the entirety of the Democratic caucus.

In a report published by Punchbowl News last week, the outlet wrote that Pelosi was “actively working to tank” AOC’s bid and was “making calls” on behalf of Connolly.

Not only is Connolly old, but he was recently diagnosed with cancer. Pelosi just had hip replacement surgery.

Fresh off hip replacement surgery, Nancy Pelosi, 84, secured another victory. House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon decided that 74-year-old Gerry Connolly—who announced his throat cancer diagnosis in November—will serve as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, besting 35-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a closed-door caucus vote. “Gerry’s a young 74, cancer notwithstanding,” said Virginia Democrat Don Beyer, a Connolly ally. Pelosi had opposed the 35-year-old’s run for the role, “approaching colleagues urging them to back Connolly over Ocasio-Cortez,” Axios reported last week.

Connolly will join fellow septuagenarians in top committee spots next year. Richard Neal, 75, will lead Democrats on Ways and Means while Frank Pallone, 73, will be the party’s top representative on Energy and Commerce. Eighty-six-year-old Maxine Waters will be the ranking member on the Financial Services Committee, and Rose DeLauro, 81, will helm the Democrats’ presence in Appropriations.

Jesus christ, this is insane. I can say that, because at 67 years old, I can recognize that my age is a limitation, and that I should be stepping back to let younger colleagues place their stamp on my institution. When I’m in my 70s and 80s, I should definitely not be the one shaping policy in my department — I’m already too remote from modern science in my field.

But the Democrats are wed to money and power, and they’re not going to shake it off.

In other democracies, the leadership of parties that have endured humiliating defeats like the one Democrats saw in November—or even just regular defeats—resign. That kicks off a process by which members determine a new, ideally more successful direction, represented by different people. But the Democratic Party isn’t really a “party” of the sort that exists in other democracies, with memberships and official constituencies, like unions, who have some say over how it’s governed. Members mostly make decisions based on their own interests rather than to drive some shared, democratically decided agenda forward.

That’s part of what’s so depressing about the Oversight Committee ordeal for the couple dozen journalists and political junkies who pay attention to that sort of thing. Pelosi and the old guard’s continued opposition to younger talent seems breathtakingly counterproductive in the face of the Democratic Party’s numerous challenges right now. Simultaneously, the House’s “resistance” to Trump and the GOP in the House will be led by people of all ages who don’t seem particularly interested in that project, despite having spent the entire election cycle warning that Trump’s Republican Party represents a second coming of fascism. If incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries really believes that, then why is he advertising his willingness to work with the GOP? Why are so many other Democrats, for that matter, trying to make nice with Trump acolyte Elon Musk?

Capitalism and a gerontocracy — we are cursed. They’re going to lose the next election, and the next after that, aren’t they?

No scientist has ever looked at the state of science funding and thought it was great. The pressure is tremendous and the success rate for grants is dismal. But hey, it could get so much worse and probably will. The incoming administration is flagrantly anti-science.

Trump has been getting cozy with the Argentinan president, Javier Milei, and the two have been up to no good.

Last month, Milei pulled Argentina’s delegates out of negotiations at the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where world leaders were discussing how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and pay for such efforts around the globe. The move came hours after he spoke with US president-elect Donald Trump, who has signalled that he will remove the United States from such negotiations when he takes office next month. Trump and Milei have expressed mutual admiration.

But guess what?

It has been one year since libertarian President Javier Milei took office in Argentina, and the nation’s science is facing collapse, researchers say. Milei’s agenda to reduce the country’s deficit and lower inflation — which had topped 211% last year — has meant that, as his administration’s slogan says, “there is no money” for science or anything else.

“We are in a very, very critical situation,” says Jorge Geffner, director of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Retroviruses and AIDS (INBIRS) in Buenos Aires. He adds that the Innovation, Science and Technology Secretariat, once the country’s main science ministry but downgraded by Milei to a secretariat with less power, is working with a budget that is one-third lower than last year.

Argentinian scientists who are paid by the government have lost up to 30% of their income, Geffner says. (As of 2022, the government funded about 60% of research and development in Argentina, and the rest came from the private sector and international contributions.) As a result, the country is facing massive brain drain. At INBIRS, about half of its staff members are either considering finding jobs in other countries or already doing the paperwork, Geffner adds.

Milei does not hold scientists in high regard.

Milei has not minced words about his feelings towards scientists. Rather than having their research subsidized by the government, he said during a forum in September, “I invite them to go out into the market. Investigate, publish and see if people are interested or not, instead of hiding like scoundrels behind the coercive force of the state”.

Scientists aren’t going to be friends with Trump, the flamboyant idiot who would appoint RFK jr to run the NIH and Elon Musk to shred the economy and wants to shut down public education, so I think we can expect the situation for science in this country to get progressively worse. Other countries already have saturated populations of scientists, so if there were to be a reverse brain drain, I don’t know where we could go. Does New Zealand have room for a million expatriated American scientists? Canada? Germany? For American science to abruptly collapse would be a catastrophe for the whole world.

I just finished a flurry of contract signing — my mother’s house is thiiiis close to being sold. We have a final hurdle of getting the lender’s approval, but my agent says there’s only like a 10% chance that they might have an objection. I’ll be surprised if all the dotted lines are signed by the new year, but otherwise, everything is imminent.

Also, this is Seattle.

Someone hacked the traffic signs. Keep it up, you weird radicals!

The CEO killer may have been caught. The alleged murderer is named Luigi Mangione, and he’s not quite what I expected.

He is from a prominent Baltimore family, and attended a private, all-boys high school in Baltimore, called the Gilman School, according to school officials.

Mr Mangione was named as the valedictorian, which is usually the student with the highest academic achievements in a class.
…
A former classmate, Freddie Leatherbury, told the Associated Press news agency that Mr Mangione came from a wealthy family, even by that private school’s standards. “Quite honestly, he had everything going for him,” Mr Leatherbury said.
…
Mr Mangione went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science, according to the school, and founded a video game development club.

He comes from a wealthy family in the Baltimore area that owns country clubs and other businesses, although it sounds like he’s fallen away from that family in recent months. He’s well-off, a privileged member of the upper middle class, but he was apparently radicalized by a severe spinal injury that has sporadically left him in agony. He was rightly enraged by the criminal health policies of the United States by his personal experience.

Insurance company CEOs ought to be trembling in fear. It’s not just the poor who are stirring, it’s everyone recognizing that living in thrall to for-profit insurance companies is a bad situation. Here I am, a tenured college professor with a stable income, and I’m hesitating to retire (especially after the last election), because I’d have to depend on the predatory sharks of some random, greedy insurance company if my health failed…it’s safer to remain in the bosom of the one particular greedy insurance company that my university chose for me.

We’re all going to have to read more Marx and Engels, I think.

Dismantle the system. Shut down private insurance companies, create a single pool controlled by the government that pays out to each according to the needs of the citizens. Don’t allow managers of those funds to draw salaries of $10 million — no one needs that kind of income, especially not if we prevent people from wobbling on the edge of bankruptcy if they get sick.

Sometimes, life comes at you fast. One moment you’re moaning over the fact that wanna-be tyrant got elected in the USA, the next you’re watching a wanna-be tyrant getting slapped down in South Korea, and the next you’re watching a full-blown tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, running for a helicopter to flee Syria before the mob gets him. Putin is very disappointed. Chaos reigns! The citizens are looting the palace!

Forgive me, I’m self-centered and too America-centric, but that got me wondering what we could get by descending on Mar-A-Lago with axes and crowbars.

Now we wait and hope that this is a resurgence of democracy and that a peaceful Syria emerges from the wreckage.

He’s better than the Bible.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why Not? You do.” The golem lowered his arm.
“What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?”
“I worked it out. You have killed 2.338 people,” said the golem calmly.
“I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”
“No, you have not. But you have stolen, embezzled, defrauded and swindled without discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You have ruined businesses and destroyed jobs. When banks fail, it is seldom bankers who starve. Your actions have taken money from those who had little enough to begin with. In myriad small ways you have hastened the deaths of many. You do not know them. You did not see them bleed. But you snatched bread from their mouths and tore clothes from their backs. For sport, Mr Lipvig. For sport. For the joy of the game.”

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

The rich gomers who are in charge of the “department of government efficiency” have floated some of their plans to save money, which mainly seem to involve the wholesale destruction of various government agencies, throwing thousands of people out of work and also gutting important government funded programs, like science. They want to just shut down NIH? Jesus.

Who wants to tell all the veterans who sacrificed so much for their country that we’re going to simply end Veteran’s Administration health care? I imagine they think we can just privatize all the prisons, and that will somehow save money.

There’s more. Let’s dismantle the department of education, starve Planned Parenthood and the IRS, and let’s stop the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission from meddling in rich people’s money. They also want to make massive cuts in NASA funding, specifically to end all those “bureaucrats and contractors unearned bonuses”. Yeah, too many outside contractors are leeching off NASA’s budget…like SpaceX, maybe?

You know, killing established programs within the federal government does not reduce expenses or improve services — it just opens the door to private parasites moving in and taking over to increase their profits.