It’s over, Mike

The Mike Lindell saga in Minnesota is over. He had been throwing his familiar temper tantrum over losing the primary election, which is his right, and it was also his right to demand a recount, if he was willing to pay for it.

He was not willing to pay for it.

Lindell failed to formally request and pay for a recount by a Monday deadline. He went to the high court to seek a more-expansive recount than a state-approved plan. He objected to the structure in which only votes for him and Lisa Demuth would be counted by name and all others would be combined in a third pile.

Therefore, it is settled: Lindell lost. The election for governor in November will be between Demuth and Klobuchar. Lindell can go cry into his pillows.

Nothing is correct in this illustration

I know a little bit about development, so this abomination made me want to punch an anti-choicer.

The mother’s abdomen doesn’t change size over 9 months, the fetal proportions are all wrong up until about 6 months, the embryo is not a blastula at 1 month, I don’t know what that bean is doing in there at 2 months, then suddenly it becomes a literal newborn at 3 months, the embryo is not located somewhere in the midbody, the fetus is not co-localized with the vertebral column, and its feet do not protrude from the abdomen, and its head does not displace the heart. It’s a disgraceful mass of misinformation.

This is what happens when you combine profound ignorance with AI slop, all motivated by an irrational ideology. You can find them on YouTube (40,000 followers) and Instagram (110,000 followers), where anyone can be an expert in science and medicine.

Have you been wondering what Ken Ham thinks of Dolly Parton?

No? I don’t blame you. He’s a rather repellent character who always gets everything wrong.

In case you don’t bother to watch that video (you are very wise), he cites the fact that she was a Christian, but one who tolerates LGBT people, and even wishes them happiness. God hates gays! That’s not an interpretation, according to Ham, it’s literally a commandment.

Conversely, I found Parton’s simple Christianity to be silly, but that didn’t matter. She lived a life of joy and kindness, and if that wasn’t enough to get her into Christian heaven, then that’s just another reason Christianity is wrong.

Who would you choose to represent your beliefs, Ken or Dolly? The answer ought to be clear.

Oh no — I’m an ineffective brainwasher!

The evidence is in. We liberal professors are doing a bad job at indoctrination — it’s not our hard work that is persuading students, we’re just coasting on a general trend that education liberalizes.

We study whether Democratic college professors make their students more liberal. We link voter data to salary records from 33 state flagships and show that faculty skew Democratic, especially in the humanities and social sciences. We then use student transcripts from one flagship to estimate causal effects. Students become more liberal during college regardless of major and sort toward ideologically similar instructors. Exploiting plausibly random variation in when instructors teach courses, we find no effect of faculty partisanship on student partisanship. Text analysis shows exposure to liberal topics reflects student demand rather than instructor supply, leaving little room for indoctrination.

Damn. Are the Democrats going to cut my Professional Indoctrinator stipend now? I’ve been saying for years that I don’t teach political perspectives in my classes, but nobody believed me, and they kept passing those big checks to me.

Eat it, Republicans!

Remember this?

A video circulating widely on social media Sunday appears to show President Donald Trump announcing that the United States will buy Argentine beef while dismissing concerns about struggling American farmers.

He had a plan. Meat prices were climbing fast, so he thought he’d pander to consumers (but not beef producers) by importing 15 tons of cheap Argentine beef. And he did, and he distributed it to his most devoted followers in Florida and Texas.

How’s that going?

Nearly 30,000 pounds of raw beef have been recalled at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) highest warning level due to an import violation.

Corte Argentino USA LLC, a Florida-based beef company, recalled approximately 29,628 pounds of raw beef imported to the U.S. from Argentina without reinspection, according to an announcement from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) on Aug. 7.

The agency classified the recall as Class I, meaning that it’s a “high or medium risk” recall entailing “a health hazard situation” with “a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death,” per the FSIS.

As a vegetarian living in a state that hates Donald Trump and will never receive his toxic largesse, I can laugh. While eating my cyclospora-infested produce.

We can’t win.

I detest bad writing

I have received a long-winded, weasely, vague threat from someone demanding that I confirm receipt of his fuzzy undefined accusation. This is that confirmation.

Hi, id: 2026-08-26-02:05:21:987t
I’m reaching out directly in connection with content posted on your channel. I’ve found content that appears to originate from work I created, and I wanted to get in touch with you first before making any decision to raise the matter through the platform’s formal process.
I haven’t submitted a report at the moment. Before moving forward, I’d like to hear what you have to say and better understand your position about the use of this material.
When I hear back from you, I can give you the specific information regarding the material and explain what concerns me regarding the content I’ve noticed. If there’s additional context or an explanation from your side, I’ll take any relevant context into account.
My first preference is to address the situation directly and see if we can resolve it without using the platform’s formal process. From my perspective offers both of us enough opportunity to consider the matter before taking additional action.
If we can’t find a reasonable way forward, I may then consider raising the matter formally and including the appropriate information for consideration through the platform’s review process.
Before anything further, please confirm that you’ve seen my communication and are prepared to discuss the matter. When I hear from you, I’ll provide the information I’ve identified so we can determine how best to proceed.
Thank you for reading this. Hopefully we can work this out directly.
All the best.

I dread the moment he explains what the fuck he wants to complain about, because if this is an example of his circuitous writing style, it’s going to be painful to read. I think he thinks he’s a lawyer, a bad lawyer, who can’t be forthright.

I’ll let you know when he manages to shake the soggy cornmeal out of his head and tells me what he thinks I’ve plagiarized, since that’s what he’s actually accusing me of.

If the electorate were rational…

We wouldn’t have these problems. Everyone has to see that Trump is insane, right?

He’s picking a trade war with Canada, our ally and partner. <a href=”https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/trump-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change-trade-war-canada-escalates/6539930>Canada is retaliating. We’re going to feel it in the form of toilet paper shortages soon. If he doesn’t get his way, he’s threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center — and he’ll do it, just like he tore down the East Wing. Most petty of all, he threatens to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. Since when does the US president have authority over geography? He doesn’t.

These events are just the latest in his history of idiotic, self-defeating policy decisions by an incompetent bully. When will it become obvious to the other branches of the so-called distributed balance of federal power? Oh, wait, they know. The Senate and Supreme Court are enabling it.

But we really have to blame the American voter. Latest example: they’ve made Darline Graham* the Republican nominee to replace her dead brother. She’s not qualified. Her only ‘virtue’ is blood, and she got elected solely because she’s a member of the tribe. That tribal thinking is what’s going to get more Republicans elected in November.

We are so screwed.

*My mother’s name was Darlene, with an “e”. I’m not happy to see it dragged through the news attached to that smooth-brained Southern dingleberry.

Grisly & horrible

Sometimes my spiders make me queasy. This is the reality of nature, though.

I fed my Parasteatoda a mealworm this morning, and sadly, the spider was not particularly effective in killing its prey. It’s been gnawing on the worm for over 4 hours, while it writhes and twitches. It was frantically writhing away most of the day as the spider clung to it, nibbling.

Spiders are predators, you know.

The image quality is bad because I recorded it through the plexiglas of its container. At least it blunts the horror.

Definitely not for kids.