Hypocrisy in Silicon Valley, again

I’m not one of the people who follows Donald Trump on Twitter — I get more than enough second hand Trump without mainlining him. I’m kind of appalled that he’s still allowed on Twitter, frankly, since he’s abusive and bullying and vile, but of course, that’s never been a reason to close a Twitter account. And now we have it straight from Twitter itself that they’re never going to ban him.

The actual statement is about Trump’s tweets being “newsworthy,” with Twitter claiming that letting him stay on the platform helps keep people “informed about what’s happening in the world.” This justification helps absolve Twitter of any responsibility for what Trump does, and it saves the company from having to take any specific stand against anything he might do or say. Also, the thread says that Twitter holds all accounts “to the same rules,” which is funny because it’s definitely not true.

That’s such a pile of bullshit. You could say exactly the same thing about Andrew Anglin, the racist who runs the Daily Stormer. Rising racism is “newsworthy”, and we should be “informed about what’s happening”. Your more mundane stalker/harasser, likewise…if he’s significant enough that you’re complaining, then he’s “newsworthy”, and hey, don’t you want to keep informed about what he’s doing?

Twitter has banned some people, at least temporarily. They slapped down Anglin, for instance. But it’s only when their behavior becomes embarrassing to the company. Apparently, two petty maniacal tyrants taunting each other into nuclear war, or the white nationalist leader of a country fomenting racial hatred in the populace, are not at all embarrassing. That’s good business. It won’t be their fault if a few million people get killed because they enabled a tantrum.

Here’s a reason to ban him anyway, though. You’ve heard of all the football fans burning their team jerseys and season tickets to protest football players who don’t exhibit sufficient worshipfulness to a flag? Imagine if Twitter banned Trump: millions of outraged Trumpkins would delete their accounts in protest; all those people with frog avatars and swastikas would vanish. It would become almost paradisial. The majority of users would be overjoyed, and be gushing over the improved quality of the communication. It would be the one simplest, easiest thing they could do to diminish their asshole problem. So it won’t happen.

Born in the wrong century

Why don’t we have elevenses anymore?

You’ve had an excruciating work day. Your boss moved your deadline up, an irate customer yelled at you over an expired coupon, or maybe your desk mate smacked through an egg salad sandwich with his mouth open. Happy hour couldn’t come soon enough.

In the 19th century, you wouldn’t have had to wait. Start drinking before lunch, why don’t you? The tradition of “elevenses” meant it was customary for workers to take a break at, you guessed it, 11 a.m. In most cases, the respite was synonymous with a tug from the ol’ bottle.

This semester, most of my lecture classes are scheduled for mid-day, and I’ve got labs in the morning from 9-11. Eleven o’clock is the perfect time for a break, I’m realizing. I know how a hobbit would celebrate elevenses, but the American tradition is different.

Boozing wasn’t very taboo at first. In our new “alcoholic republic,” people (mostly men) passed the bottle at all waking hours. Employers were actually expected to provide hooch throughout the workday. It made sense that the mid-morning break now common in modern work environments naturally paired with whiskey. Thus, the American definition of elevenses was born.

Hmm. I should float this suggestion by the division chair, or even the chancellor. Except…this is a very bad idea in a commuter culture. Daily alcohol consumption before the drive home sounds like a catastrophe in the making, and it’s a good thing this custom faded away.

But wait! I don’t have a commute! I live across the street from my workplace. Surely nothing could interfere with a daily tipple for me, so maybe we can make an exception for people who live within walking distance of work.

Except then I’d become that “fun” professor who is oddly discursive and talks funny and occasionally falls down in class. So maybe that’s a bad idea.

I guess I’ll stick to 11:00 tea.

I hope the university marketing department is paying attention

The first issue of our student paper, the Morris University Register, has come out, and it includes a full page guide for first year LGBTQIA2S+ students. I have a favorite part.

Don’t hide. Morris is a super gay school, so no one will treat you differently.

Hear that, everyone? UMM is super gay. That’s an excellent reason to come here.

Second favorite comment is “The College Republicans have a history of being purposely inflammatory, especially towards our community. Just ignore them.” That tells you how relevant conservatives are here.

We also have a Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future club on campus.

Morris does have some short uplifting slogan on billboards advertising the school, but I have to say…I can never remember what it is. It’s so airy and inoffensive and positive that it’s also utterly forgettable. Now ads that cheerily declared that “Morris is a super gay school!” — those would stand out, and draw in applications from the kind of student we want to encourage, and scare away those we’d rather not see.

Graham-Cassidy is dead

I caught a bit of the Graham-Cassidy-Sanders-Klobuchar town hall meeting last night. The Republicans were smarmy liars.

But it doesn’t matter. The latest attempt to kill Obamacare is dead again, not that that will prevent the Republicans from taking more swipes at it.

It’s kind of like a movie, where Obamacare is John Wick, and endless streams of enemies are rushing at him and he manages to avoid getting fatally shot but still pumps a few bullets into one assassin after another.

Sheesh. That analogy for a health care plan kinda went wildly astray, I think.

She had me at “rivers of maggots”

Christie Wilcox writes about the ecological experiment asking what happens to the environment of a mass die-off, done by dumping 6 tons of dead pigs in a heap in a forest. It’s impressive. The scavengers swoop in and proliferate, and you literally do get heaving, writhing rivers of maggots pouring off the rotting mass.

There is video at the link. I decided not to imbed it since I didn’t know if all of my readers would have finished lunch yet.

When creationism kills people

Or rather, when creationism is a symptom of profound ignorance that is also manifested in health care woo. It seems that Eric Hovind has been peddling “Vitamin B17” — a bit of quackery he inherited from his con artist father, Kent Hovind. He was recently warned by the FDA that he needs to stop selling it.

The name “Vitamin B17” is an example of lying with labels. It’s not a vitamin. It’s better known as amygdalin, or even more infamously, laetrile. It’s a fake cancer cure that does not work and has never worked. Here’s the summary of this compound from NIH:

  • Laetrile is another name for the natural product amygdalin, which is a chemical constituent found in the pits of many fruits and in numerous plants.

  • Hydrogen cyanide is thought to be the main anticancer compound formed from laetrile via in situ release.

  • Laetrile was first used as a cancer treatment in Russia in 1845, and in the United States in the 1920s.

  • Laetrile has shown little anticancer activity in animal studies and no anticancer activity in human clinical trials.

  • The side effects associated with laetrile toxicity mirror the symptoms of cyanide poisoning, including liver damage, difficulty walking (caused by damaged nerves), fever, coma, and death.

  • Laetrile is not approved for use in the United States.

  • Inappropriate advertisement of laetrile as a cancer treatment has resulted in a U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation that culminated in charges and conviction of one distributor.

Hovind has been criticized for selling snake oil before. All that’s happened is that he’s now a little more circumspect about making false claims about curing cancer with apricot pits, but he is still selling these useless products. In fact, that’s about all he sells in the “health” category on his site, with one addition…he’s selling an anti-vaccination book.

In this book you will read the findings of medical doctors and researchers who tell us that vaccinations are not only unsafe, but they actually work against our God given immune system.

It just goes to show that nothing a creationist says can be trusted, and that you shouldn’t be taking advice from any of the Hovinds on either science or health.

Roald Dahl actually was an awful human being

What did we do to our kids? Dahl was a favorite author around our house, and only now am I learning what an unpleasant person he was.

His early writing in the short story form was impacted by the political situation on the world stage. He believed in a world government and he was extremely sympathetic to Hitler, Mussolini, and the entire Nazi cause. His stories were filled with caricatures of greedy Jews. One suggests ” a little pawnbroker in Housditch called Meatbein who, when the wailing started, would rush downstairs to the large safe in which he kept his money, open it and wriggle inside on to the lowest shelf where he lay like a hibernating hedgehog until the all-clear had gone.” In 1951 he visited Germany with Charles Marsh and luxured in Hitler’s former retreat at Berchtesgaden. His dislike of Jews and especially of Zionists was egged on by Marsh’s Israel hatred, later encapsulated in a revolting letter to Marsh where he mocked the head of East London’s B’Nai B’rith Club.

Suddenly, the Oompa Loompas have context, and it’s not good. When you read how he regarded women, you’ll read The Witches with different eyes, too.