Every Fall, as I travel around, I’m mystified by all the freshly harvested fields, black with exposed soil, and I wonder…isn’t that a bad idea? Isn’t that nice rich dirt going to wash away when the snow melts and the spring rains arrive? But what do I know? I’m not a farmer. I never studied agriculture, so I’m just going to trust the experts whose livelihood depends on their land.

Of course, my confidence tends to be eroded by all the Trump signs on those fields.

But good news! For once, the giant food corporations are trying to do something for the environment. They’re giving farmers incentives to practice something called regenerative agriculture.

Still, the companies’ moves have the potential to expand the use of unconventional farming practices known as regenerative agriculture. The movement represents a fundamental change to the way mainstream farmers manage their fields.

Regenerative principles call for reducing or even eliminating such mainstays of farming as tilling the soil before sowing seeds. Other regenerative techniques include planting cover crops, so soil is never bare; expanding plant diversity; adding livestock to an operation; and reducing or eliminating the use of chemicals.

The system has benefits such as storing more climate-altering carbon in the soil, improving water quality by preventing runoff, and reducing the need for pesticides by increasing insect biodiversity. Research shows it can also make farms more profitable by reducing the cost of chemicals and fertilizer and spreading price risk among many crops instead of just corn and soybeans.

“It’s not just about carbon. It’s not just a water benefit,” Sirolli said. “You get all of these different benefits that you stack together that benefit the community, that benefit the planet, while at the same time making sense for the farmer.”

See? I am learning something about farming. Although to be fair, if I’d been asked, I would have made suggestions along those same lines, although having to be admittedly vague about how to implement them.

I was probably thinking selfishly, though. Fewer pesticides → more plant and insect diversity → MORE SPIDERS. Also all those agricultural pollutants are just bad for us.

Overall, the Minnesota River is unhealthy. Sediment clouds the water, phosphorus causes algae, nitrogen poses risks to humans and fish, and bacteria make the water unsafe for swimming.

You know, I’m sitting here in a pandemic unvaccinated because the need exceeds the supply, and I’m willing to defer to the priorities of the society I live in and will wait until my opportunity rolls around. I am confident, because I know how vaccines and the immune system work, that vaccination is the solution that will end the restrictions on travel and personal interactions. I also know, because I’ve read the empirical studies, that masks are a good stopgap to slow the spread of the virus. I also know and trust the authorities, like Tara C. Smith and Anthony Fauci, who have made a career of studying infectious disease.

These are reasonable, informed attitudes to take toward our situation. I suspect that the majority of readers here share my ideas. These ideas are not up for debate; the question of whether the germ theory of disease was valid was resolved long ago, there’s confirmed scientific evidence behind them, and if you want to question them, you’d better be a verified expert who has gathered an immense amount of observation and experiment to back up your challenge.

And then there are the goddamned idiots who get everything they know from circle jerks on Facebook. They translated their ignorance into a mob action at Dodger Stadium, actively preventing other people from getting vaccinated.

My rage is boundless. It’s bad enough that these assholes want to run around spewing viruses on everyone, that they defy the need to take basic precautions to limit the spread, and that they are upset because those precautions interfere with the need to get their precious Fifi to the dog-groomers, but now they’re forcing everyone else to not take the best preventive action we can do? Don’t they realize that the only effective way to end the lockdown that has limited movement and social events, and to get rid of the masks that annoy them, is for a majority of the populace to get that quick little shot?

No, they don’t. Because they get all their information from their equally ignorant friends and family on Facebook.

The anti-vaccine protest that temporarily cut off access to a mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium was organized on Facebook through a page that promotes debunked claims about the coronavirus pandemic, masks and immunization.

The Facebook page, “Shop Mask Free Los Angeles,” issued a call last week to gather Saturday at the baseball park. Health authorities have been administering shots to as many as 8,000 people a day at the site, one of the largest vaccination centers in the country. Such venues form a critical component of the effort to corral the pandemic, which has lashed Los Angeles County so brutally in recent weeks that oxygen for patients has been in short supply.

The online activity illustrates the extent to which Facebook remains a critical organizing tool of the anti-vaccine movement, despite the company’s repeated vows to curb coronavirus misinformation. It also shows how social networking services could foster more confrontational tactics by those committed to false ideas about the dangers of immunization as the mass vaccination effort ramps up.

Jesus, but I hate Facebook. I’m still on it myself, because it remains the one way I can maintain contact with far-flung friends and family, but let’s face reality: Facebook is a giant information-harvesting operation that sells all the information it gathers to other big corporations and political organizations. That it allows me to contact an aunt I haven’t seen in 20 years, or see pictures of my nieces and nephews new babies, isn’t their business model. They’re there to monitor my personal information to sell to the highest bidder. I’ve signed up for alternatives like MeWe or Mastodon (I did not sign up for Parler or Gab, for obvious reasons), but they don’t have the critical mass, and there’s no point unless all the others I want to follow sign up as well.

Facebook does not care about misinformation or privacy or propaganda. All of the assholes got their marching orders from a Facebook page that spread to other Facebook pages that have been continuously spreading lies throughout the pandemic.

The page itself has only about 3,000 followers, but the notice about what it termed a “PROTEST/MARCH” at the mass vaccination site was shared extensively in Facebook groups and on pages fixated on false ideas about masks, such as that they restrict breathing and that the Constitution forbids mandating their use. Names of the online forums include “Anti-Mask REVOLUTION!” and “Unmask California.”

The technology giant committed at the end of last year to enhancing its policies against coronavirus-related misinformation. That included a pledge to remove misinformation about the safety, efficacy, ingredients and side effects of coronavirus vaccines.

In a sign of gaps in the company’s enforcement, however, the “About” section of the anti-mask page promoting the Saturday protest included a link to a website devoted to the baseless “Plandemic” narrative accusing shadowy elites of enriching themselves by engineering the coronavirus and a vaccine for it.

Yeah, sure, Facebook is “committed” to ending the spread of misinformation, just like Twitter was so committed to ending political dishonesty that they waited until the last week of his presidency to cancel Trump’s account. There is no investment in truth and accuracy anywhere in the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram business model. They’re all about drawing in users by feeding them what they want, and if they want poison, so be it. Poison is profit for Facebook, so trusting them to do the right thing is folly.

If social media are things the public finds useful, then what needs to be done is to regulate the fuck out of Facebook, put in punishments with teeth in them for spreading misinformation, and make the company executives directly accountable for the harm they do.

Not that that will ever happen. We’re just going to wallow in the shit the goddamn idiots make.

When Troy Faulkner chose to charge into the capitol insurrection and smash in a window, he made an interesting choice in apparel.

Yeah, that’s his business phone number printed boldly on his back.

Bill Gates ain’t gonna need to put tracking chips in our vaccines. I’m going to paint my face like a Mondrian and wear a sack and leave my phone at home when I decide to commit treason.

This edition showed up on the day we cleaned out the litter box. How convenient!

I know, we should recycle, but hasn’t that wood pulp suffered enough ignominy?

It’s whoever buys the most commercials for his show. And right now, that’s Mike Lindell, the Minnesota pillow magnate? Wait, what? How do you get so rich shuffling pillows around?

Crap. If only I’d known that spending years in training in biology and spending decades teaching wasn’t a recipe for getting rich. I could have used my one life to buy foam, cut it into rectangles, and stuff it into fabric covers, and then society would have rewarded me with power, influence, and the ability to yell my crazy ideas at old people watching Fox News. I wasted my life, dammit.

Anyway, Tucker Carlson let Mike Lindell freely bellow lunatic conspiracy theories on his show, after the MyPillow guy had been banned from Twitter for being too dangerously wacky for even that medium.

On Tuesday night, pillow salesman Mike Lindell headed to Tucker Carlson Tonight, where his ads routinely kick in more than a third of the show’s advertising budget, to inform the world that he has been canceled. The night before, the MyPillow CEO had been permanently banned from Twitter after what a Twitter spokesperson called “repeated violations of our Civic Integrity Policy” related to misinformation pertaining to the 2020 presidential election.

I did a double-take on that one bit — so ads for pillows from one manufacturer constitute a third of the revenue stream for Tucker Carlson? I guess he would feel some pressure to avoid alienating the wild-eyed ranting buffoon.

I analyzed 3 months of Tucker Carlson's advertising. Th data shows just how few are companies willing advertise on the show.

During this period, there were a total of 745 minutes of ads.

MyPillow: 302 mins
All Others Combined: 443 mins

He's essentially a 1 advertiser show. pic.twitter.com/PEcSPt6YrN

— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) June 11, 2020

He was, of course, on national TV to complain about cancel culture and being silenced. Irony is dead, but at least the corpse has a nice comfy pillow to lie on.

Lindell is also taking advantage of huge ad purchases on OAN and Eric Metaxas’s radio show to go on those programs to whine about how he can’t make himself heard anymore.

All this raises big questions in my head. Are pillows that big a deal for people who tune into Conservative Old People’s Media? I can’t remember when I last bought a pillow — maybe a decade or more ago, and I’m not feeling any pressing need for a new one now. I’m curious about cause and effect. Do people who need a new pillow spontaneously turn to Carlson and Metaxas to shop? Or does watching Carlson and Metaxas suddenly make one desire something soft to lie on? As I get older, will I start seeking pillows? We’re raising lots of flies in the lab right now, and fly larvae go into a wandering phase where they crawl up unto the side of their container to pupate — is this like a hardwired behavioral transition, too?

Lindell isn’t the sole advertiser, though. Other companies pouring money into the conservative trough are weight loss plans, Caribbean vacations, personal EKGs, and restaurant delivery services, which altogether paint an interesting picture of the typical Fox News aficionado.

Sure, Trump was dumped, but the prominent Republicans, like Cruz and Rubio, are still defending him, and the majority really don’t want to impeach…and you’d think if they were really unhappy with the lyin’ demagogue, they’d want to make sure he can’t come back and run against a Republican candidate in 2024.

Worst of all, though, they are entirely complacent about have Marjorie Taylor Greene in their ranks. You know, the delusional woman who thinks mass shootings are all false flags to justify taking your guns away.

Here’s @mtgreenee talking about the Vegas mass shooting if you need some batshit crazy to start your day pic.twitter.com/0MzxFm131l

— Icculus The Brave (@FirenzeMike) January 28, 2021

Also the nutcase who thinks the California wildfires were started by lasers from space.

The fires were part of a conspiracy by Jewish bankers to clear the right of way for their rail project, don’t you know. She just likes to “read a lot.”

Of course, anti-semitism, racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and white nationalism are her brand. There isn’t a conspiracy theory she hasn’t embraced. She’s a 9-11 truther. She thinks pizzagate was a real thing. She loves the right-wing militias. She thinks Hillary Clinton had her political enemies assassinated. She’s a dangerous loon who worships at the altar of QAnon and the Trump Cult. She thinks the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings, in which children were murdered, was a staged event with “crisis actors”.

So what does the Republican leadership in the House do?

All of this has provoked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to let it be known through a spokesman that he finds her comments “deeply disturbing” and that he “plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them.”

In the meantime, McCarthy scheduled a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump. He apparently hopes to smooth over any hard feelings the former president may have about McCarthy’s mild blandishment that Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob that he fed with false claims about a stolen election and then incited to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

So it looks like a stern talking-to, followed by a make-up session, is the worst that can happen within the Republican family these days. And should anyone else try to exact a punishment, the party will protect its own, as all but five Senate Republicans proved this week, when they voted against even holding an impeachment trial of Trump.

They they appointed her to the Education Committee. I guess because she “reads a lot”.

The rot runs too deep. The Republican party must be dismantled and destroyed.

Not that the Democrats are flawless! Jonathan Chait, for example, thinks Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is the mirror image of Marjorie Taylor Greene, which is breathtakingly stupid. AOC hasn’t been preaching conspiracy theories and race hatred and the violent overthrow of the government; she’s working within the system to achieve progressive goals.

The leading Democratic mischief-maker is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who advocates some left-wing views I consider simplistic and impractical and, in some cases, poll badly. The top example of a conservative mischief-maker, presented in perfect symmetry, is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene’s views are just a bit more controversial.

“Just a bit”! Because some of AOC’s goals “poll badly”! Fuck these neo-liberal scumbags, too.

It’s good to get the Portuguese perspective on something I wrote about Portugal.

I am writing to you from Portugal. As you may imagine, this has to do
with your Pharyngula post “We could be another Portugal!”. I thought
that you might find interesting the attached cartoon. It was published
in an underground newspaper in 1934, that is, at a time in which Salazar
had been prime minister for only two years. It shows him teaching Hitler
and Mussolini how to deal with the opposition. One might think that it
happened to be a Communist newspaper, but no; it was a Republican
newspaper (in the sense of Republican values, not in the sense of the
American Republican Party).

That’s the kind of man American conservatives want to run the country. Yikes.

As was brought up in that other thread, we aren’t even talking about Salazar’s terrible colonial abuses yet.

The MyPillow guy is dithering over whether to run for governor of Minnesota — he’s distracted right now, trying to decide whether to overthrow the system by pursuing bogus claims of election fraud, or join the system and run for elected office.

You may laugh now because Mike Lindell is a delusional moron, but I wish to remind everyone that five years we were all looking at each other, saying “No way, this Trump goombah is a delusional moron, he’s going to go down in flames in the primary.” Remember that. Take these ridiculous clowns seriously and slap them down hard early.