One of the few reasons to read Xitter: Lee Cronin’s whines

Crank meltdown in progress. Leroy Cronin, who published that ridiculous “assembly theory” article in Nature has been struggling for the last few ways to cope with the ridicule coming his way.


Make a theory at the intersection of evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, complexity theory, & prebiotic chemistry = x 4 the ‘normal’ trolling fun. I love the virtue signalling & the fact they clearly have not even read the paper which is no excuse as it is open access.😂

‘Everyone who disagrees with me is a troll!’ is not the triumphant comeback you think it is. Yes, it’s a theory that combines a lot of disciplines, I agree. But has he considered that maybe the reason he’s getting so much pushback is that people who actually know something about each of those disciplines is saying that the authors don’t understand how the discipline works? I can say that his paper didn’t get evolutionary biology at all right, so now I’m wondering if he also got theoretical physics, complexity theory, and prebiotic chemistry just as wrong.


Gosh first the complexity theorists, then prebiotic chemists followed by the theoretical physicists, & evolutionary biologists. Is that all? Now the creationists are trolling me also. 🤷

I haven’t seen the creationists responding to assembly theory, but now I want to. Not hard enough to actually go digging, unfortunately.


Paradigm shifts involve 1) confusion & anger followed by 2) pronouncements on how obvious it is with the final 3) it has already been done or they thought of it before & it was trivial.

Yikes. The kooks always claim to be leading a ‘paradigm shift’ and start quoting Kuhn.

Here’s another famous quote, this time from Carl Sagan.

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

The fact that your ideas are laughed at is not evidence that you are correct.


I love critical feedback because it helps improve stuff & I also get excited when people get ‘triggered’ scientifically as it means something REALLY interesting is shifting. It ain’t pretty but it might accelerate science. #AssemblyTheory

Also, the fact that experts are triggered and reject your theory is not interesting, and doesn’t mean you’ve made a productive change in the world. Creationists trigger me too, that doesn’t validate creationism.


I’m happy to be wrong as I learn more. I like to be almost right occasionally so I can dig deeper. I also want to be bold & honest about it. Science is about taking risks, not beating people up that offend your world view.

No one is offended. No one is beating people up. Cronin is being told that his ideas are wrong, which is what we’re supposed to do.

He’s feeling resentful about being corrected, nothing more. Well, also there should be some shame at publishing such a crappy article in a prestigious journal.

Finally, he reposts something from a supporter:


Absolutely wild to open Twitter and learn that evolutionary biologists think the origin of life is either solved or a non-problem.

No one has said that. The origin of life is not solved and is most definitely a problem of interest. The catch is that assembly theory does not solve any of the problems anyone is wrestling with, and doesn’t seem to solve much of anything.

This is all reminding me of how Dr Wolfe-Simon reacted defensively to criticisms of her claim that life can substitute arsenic for phosphorus. Things got loud back in 2010, and she was insistent that she made a great discovery, but when was the last time you heard about arsenic life? The idea was dead within a year.

Let’s check back in Fall of 2024 and see how Cronin’s theory is holding up.

Fanaticism in the name of resistance is a vice (non-fiction)

After Hamas’ raids into Israel, I’ve read some writers defend it because it resistance against the Israelis government’s treatment of the Palestinian people . Like this example from  Somdeep Sen, an associate professor of at International Development Studies at Denmark’s Roskilde University:

In fact, what appears to be the largest military response by Palestinians in decades was an inevitable development, an act of resistance and a reaction to the suffering of the people of Gaza under a brutal blockade and occupation. It is part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and it solidifies Gaza’s place at the heart of it.

The implication of these arguments is if oppose the attacks, then you’re against the Palestinians. I strongly disagree. Hamas does represent the Palestinian people. They won one election in Gaza, then consolidated power by killing the opposition. This is their war with Israel and they seem to regard the two million residents of Gaza as human shields.

You can oppose both Hamas’ recent massacres and Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians. You can denounce war crimes committed by both sides. You can mourn the deaths on both sides.

Hamas’s “operation “ didn’t advance the Palestinian cause or weaken Israel. Dropping bombs on ambulances or shooting into a rave isn’t resistance. Turning Gaza into an open air prison isn’t protecting Israeli.

I don’t know what the long term solution is. I know there are people on both sides who want a just and lasting peace. I also know there will more bloodshed in the coming days.

I think the Jewish-Arab group Standing Together is on the right track with this statement:

We must not buy into the illusion that security can be achieved through military action. There is no future here—for any of us—without ending the occupation guaranteeing independence, freedom, and security for both nations.

Signs of hope

About 15 years ago, Minnesota was dealing with a bunch of ignorant radicals who were packing school boards, and had even captured the position of educational commissioner in the form of Cheri Yecke. It was ugly. I was attending school board meetings that featured train of young earth creationists standing up to parrot nonsense…but, fortunately, we also had genuine grass roots people standing up to oppose them. We’ve still got wretched right wingers filling school boards, but at least I think we totally crushed the creationist insurgence here, and Yecke is long gone.

Now, though, the US (not so much Minnesota) is dealing with another group of astro-turfing assholes, Moms for Liberty. There are signs that they are getting desperate. Would you believe Moms for Liberty was trying to build a claque to attend a school board meeting? They were recruiting “talented clappers” to pack the audience.

It’s not working.

What’s happening instead is that the general public is getting fired up. They hate those arrogant Karens. They’ve recently won school board elections, but like the creationists, as word gets around, the public rises up and notices and starts firing back.

Most of the attendees saw that appeal as a minor victory, or at least as evidence that they were gaining ground in the battle for control over the school district — one of hundreds of similar battles unfolding all over the country. Yes, the Pennridge school board was dominated by far-right members, one of whom had been present in Washington for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally-turned-riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Yes, at least five of the nine board members were linked to Moms for Liberty, a right-wing “astroturf” organization that has orchestrated a national campaign to remake public education along arch-conservative and anti-intellectual lines. But Pennridge board meetings for months had been dominated by outraged parents speaking out against the Moms for Liberty incursion and the board majority’s apparent agenda. Conservative forces were sufficiently worried about the optics, it appeared, that they were eager to pull in “talented clappers” from outside the community.

A tightly packed group of Moms for Liberty supporters did indeed show up, huddled together in a few rows of seats. Their mood could best be described as “glowering.” These were not exactly the “joyful warriors” that Moms for Liberty proudly proclaims fights on their behalf. That term would better fit the majority of attendees at Pennridge High that night, who needed no coaxing to whoop and applaud as one speaker after another took the mic, defending the basic freedom to read whatever books one wants, and denouncing the ahistorical and misleading curriculum that conservative board members wanted to force upon the district’s teachers.

This is news that gives me a little optimism. I think the public at large wants to do what is right, even as a minority of hateful, motivated scumbags exploit the system to secure some degree of power. Temporarily.

Now the spiders are leaving

Oh no. I was laughing at this very silly woman who claims the emergency phone alert system test the other day made everyone’s menstrual flow start. She has an n of 1, herself, and she admits that she doesn’t track her periods, so I don’t see the point. She doesn’t have any evidence at all for this claim, and I don’t see how a cell phone signal could trigger menstruation, so she lacks even a hypothetical mechanism.

And then we get to her chilling last line…

I checked the lab. No, they’re all there and are fine.

I’m also not menstruating.

McCarthy has only himself to blame for his woes

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Kevin McCarthy loyalists are seething with anger over his ouster from the position of speaker. It would be understandable that they would be angry with Matt Gaetz and the seven other Republican congresspeople who voted for him to go. But they seem to be even more angry with Democrats for not voting to keep him in his position, acting as if it were an unprecedented betrayal, even though it has always been the case that it was up to the majority party to vote in and keep the speaker and that the minority party always voted against.

At his press conference, McCarthy blamed the Democrats for what happened but Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was having none of it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) railed against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calf.) for blaming Democrats for being ousted from his leadership role in a historic vote. 

“Does anyone believe for one minute that McCarthy would help elect a Dem speaker ‘for the institution’?” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “McCarthy’s hubris is a theme. He loudly stated he wouldn’t negotiate [with] Dems, called virtually none, trashed those who helped w/ [a continuing resolution], and then expected Dem votes for free?”

[Read more…]

Is Eric Hovind trying to provoke me?

He’s succeeding. He has this new series of videos titled “Beyond Darwin,” in which he tries to claim that fossils disprove evolution. It’s warmed-over Harun Yahya bullshit. You know, show a picture of a fossil, then show a picture of a modern animal, and declare, A-ha! There’s no difference between them!

It’s all perfectly ignorable nonsense, except he roused me from my slumber with this: SPIDERS DISPROVE EVOLUTION!

What a pitiful effort. Let’s scrutinize his example of failed evolution, shall we?

On the right, that’s a familiar beast: that’s a modern Araneus diadematus, or European garden spider, a big ol’ common orb weaver. It is most definitely a true spider.

On the left is a grainy photo of a fossil. It took me a moment to figure out what that is — you might look at it and notice that it seems to have only 6 legs. Actually, it has 8, but the 2nd pair is thin and attenuated. It also has a segmented abdomen, unlike most modern spiders, and there’s something going on with it’s mouthparts. It’s an arachnid all right, but it’s not a spider. That’s a fossil whip scorpion, Weygoldtina. Here’s a reconstruction that will clarify the details.

So here’s dumbass Hovind showing us a photo of two animals with radically different morphology, coming from two different distinct orders, the Araneae and the Amblypygi, and trying to tell us they look completely the same. Then he says Maybe evolution didn’t work on that one, or it just evolved as high as it can go, two excuses that aren’t valid evolutionary concepts. He riffs absurdly, pointing out that spiders still die, as if that’s something that wouldn’t happen under evolution.

Hey, Eric, does the fact that you’re still ignorant mean that education doesn’t exist? Do you think The Atlas of Creation is a biology textbook, rather than a religious scam written by a convicted con man? This approach didn’t work out so well for him, or your dad, you know.

I guess the rotting apple hasn’t fallen far from the dying corrupted tree, I guess.

Wait! I just watched the full video from Eric Hovind (the clip above is just an excerpt), and would you believe…he comes right out and cites The Atlas of Creation at the 21 minute mark and credits it for his ideas!

He is literally pulling out examples and photos from that discredited and blatantly silly book and quoting them as evidence that we have to move beyond Darwin. (Here’s a hint, Eric: we have. Darwin didn’t have genetics or molecular biology as tools.)

McCarthy loyalist Republicans lash out

After the drama over Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speaker, the House has adjourned and will meet next Tuesday where the Republicans will meet for a candidate forum and begin voting for the next speaker on Wednesday. This Republican debacle is going to have ripple effects for some time. As is often the case after a humiliating experience like this, the people who come out of it looking bad try to pin the blame on others for their own mistakes and faults. In this case, the reason for the chaos is that the Republican party has ceased to be a party in the traditional sense but is now dominated by angry, unprincipled, attention-craving egomaniacs who have sworn their allegiance to an increasingly deranged cult leader.

For example, we have McCarthy blaming Democrats and former speaker Nancy Pelosi for his downfall, saying that they should have supported him “for institutional reasons”.

McCarthy blamed Democrats for his ouster as speaker — arguing that they should have supported his remaining in the top role for institutional reasons.

McCarthy said he had a discussion with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the days he was trying to wrangle enough votes to get elected speaker. McCarthy claimed that Pelosi promised to support him if he faced a challenge.

McCarthy then argued that by joining Gaetz and other Republicans, Democrats picked politics over the institution.

[Read more…]

Biden Is Tying Himself to Unions, and That’s a Good Thing

There’s a subset of left-wing people on Twitter, who seem to have fallen for the seductive trap of cynicism. Unless you’re an accelerationist, if you’re on the left and you want to see the world get better, an increase in union strength is a good thing, and actions by people in power that aid that empowerment are also good. I don’t think that Joe Biden is a reliable ally of unions, but it is, without question, a good thing that he showed up at the picket line. Even if you think it’s a cynical ploy, it should be celebrated, because the more Biden and the Democrats see their success as tied to unions, the more likely they are to support them, and maybe even get over the scare that Reagan gave them.

When I wrote about the Cemex decision this time last month, I closed by saying that it’s important to take advantage of the current pro-union climate while it exists. There is zero doubt in my mind that the federal government will turn hostile to unions once again, and the stronger they get now, the better they will be able to fight back against efforts to break them. If we want to the favorable conditions to last as long as possible – which I do – it would be good for Democrats to win in 2024.

It’s nice to be able to say that without much of a caveat. On some issues, it’s more about opposing the GOP agenda of destruction, but at the moment, the Democrats are actually enacting policy that benefits worker power. Standing still is better than going in the wrong direction, but right now, we’re actually making progress. Most of that is due to workers dedicating their limited free time, energy, and money to building a labor movement, but some of it is absolutely due to changes made by the Biden administration, and it’s pretty clear that if Trump gets back into power, he’ll be just as anti-worker as he has always been:

Trump’s appointees were far more pro-business than pro-worker. He named a string of corporate water carriers to the National Labor Relations Board who often seemed to see their role as undermining unions and making it harder for workers to unionize. Trump’s NLRB appointees said, for instance, that gig economy workers like Uber and Lyft drivers should be considered independent contractors, not employees, thus preventing them from unionizing under federal law.

Trump’s appointees to the supreme court have shown scant sympathy toward workers and outright hostility toward unions. Remember that Neil Gorsuch once ruled that a truck driver deserved to be fired for disobeying his boss’s order and leaving his broken-down vehicle in sub-zero weather – a move that probably saved the driver’s life. It was Gorsuch who delivered the deciding vote in the 5-4 Janus v AFSCME case – the most important anti-union decision in decades. In that ruling, the court’s rightwing majority said that teachers, firefighters and other government employees couldn’t be required to pay any dues or fees to the unions that bargained for them and won raises for them.

All this makes clear that Trump’s claim that he “always” has workers’ back is laughable. Labor leaders should issue a warning: workers of the world, unite against Trump’s con.

What else would you expect from a capitalist born into a real estate empire? More than that, the conservative agenda that’s currently making waves, Project 2025, would be an unmitigated disaster for working people, and probably the world:

In truth, the program laid out by Dans and his fellow Trumpers, called Project 2025, is far more ambitious than anything Ronald Reagan dreamed up. Dans, from his seat inside The Heritage Foundation, and scores of conservative groups aligned with his program are seeking to roll back nothing less than 100 years of what they see as liberal encroachment on Washington. They want to overturn what began as Woodrow Wilson’s creation of a federal administrative elite and later grew into a vast, unaccountable and mostly liberal bureaucracy (as conservatives view it) under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, numbering about two and a quarter million federal workers today. They aim to defund the Department of Justice, dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce, to name just a few of their larger targets. They want to give the president complete power over quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump’s political existence in the last few years.

And they want to ensure that what remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative — not just for the next president but for a long time to come — and that the White House maintains total control of it. In an effort to implement this agenda — which relies on another Reagan-era idea, the controversial “unitary theory” of the Constitution under which Article II gives the president complete power over the federal bureaucracy — Dans has formed a committee to recruit what he calls “conservative warriors” through bar associations and state attorneys general offices and install them in general counsel offices throughout the federal bureaucracy.

They very much intend to end any semblance of democracy in the United States, and I can’t fault people for wanting to vote against that. Fortunately, Biden is also, currently, giving at least some real reason to vote for him. This is not an endorsement, and I don’t think the UAW should endorse him until well after they’ve won their current strike action. Biden’s still bad on a number of issues, from fossil fuel extraction, to water privatization, to debt, but I think it’s important to recognize that Biden has actually been attempting to live up to his boast of being the most pro-union president ever, and that’s turning out to be a good thing for everyone.

His appearance at the UAW picket line was an easy thing to do, but it’s something none of his predecessors have done, and it loaned the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to Shawn Fain and the workers. More than that, his NLRB is actually wielding power on behalf of workers, and his FTC is suing Amazon for building a monopoly. The Democrats will not give us revolutionary change, but it seems indisputable that they are currently making it far easier to do the work of getting it for ourselves.

If you think that I should be paid better, you can help with that at patreon.com/oceanoxia. It’s currently my only source of income, and while I am forever grateful to my patrons, the “crowd” part of my crowdfunding is looking a bit thin. Even a small monthly contribution helps!

We can skip the accreditation process and go straight to the employers

Joining the esteemed ranks of the University of Austin and Prager U, Jordan Peterson will be accepting applications for his fake college, Peterson Academy, in November. It will be teaching a high level of conscientiousness, but not so much a real curriculum, and he announces that he doesn’t need any accreditation. Instead, he angrily announces that if employers have any sense, they’ll hire his graduates, and that he’ll be teaching skills that are valuable to any employer with a clue. Hire them or else, woke moralists!

He claims to have 30 reputable people lined up to teach courses (online, I presume?), but he won’t name any of them. He also says that it will only cost you $4000 to get a degree from Peterson Academy, although the value of that unaccredited piece of paper isn’t worth that much. It sounds exactly like a diploma mill grift, so I hope no one is seriously applying.

What happens on 4 October?

This is all rather vague, but this person has put it all together — 5G towers, chemtrails, smartphones, all the modern stuff, and a few myths — to predict our doom next week.

I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen, though. How are these devices supposed to suddenly kill us? A little more clarity would help.

She has fully embraced the power of the tinfoil hat, though. We’re supposed to wrap all our dangerous devices in aluminum foil and stash them in our cars, and park the cars 200 meters away (will they explode? I don’t know). Then wrap a room in multiple layers of aluminum foil and hide in there on 4-5 October, after which you can emerge into a world cleansed of technology, I guess, and…I don’t know.

How does she come to possess this secret and specific knowledge? The only possible way is if she is one of Them. If we survive next week, we’re going to have to travel the wasteland and hunt her down.