You have got to be kidding me, George Takei

He wants Democrats to take a pledge.

No fucking way. Do we want a good, strong candidate who will represent our values and who has been thoroughly vetted for skeletons in their closet? Then rip and rend and tear now, winnow the field, and get the nominee who has the greatest chance of surviving the ripping and rending and tearing that the Republicans will do. Takei’s idea is the stupidest way to dribble our way to defeat. In the absence of criticism, we’ll just get a boring party apparatchik who represents a passionless status quo.

We’ll get this asshole.

Right now the insufferable conservative media is calling Biden the “grown-up” in the sprawling chaos of the Democratic candidates, unaware of the insult they’re dealing to all the others, some of whom actually have substantive experience and policy plans. He’s not the grown-up — he’s the corporate politician who’d continue the Democrat party’s slide into irrelevant centrism. The Democrats would be dead right now if the Republicans hadn’t made an incompetent malignant orange pustule their flag carrier for their party, making the most miserably awful human being their candidate. You don’t respond to a weak opponent by fielding a doddering glad-hander who is barely better than a Republican, you put up your best. Biden ain’t it.

This is our time to rage and let the Democratic party know who will motivate us to go to the polls. Stick the knife into bad candidates before they get the official nomination rather than waiting for the Republicans to do it for us. And jeez, but Biden is on a par with Howard Schulz. Move on, please.

That said, if the party fools were to give us something as lackluster as a Biden/Schulz ticket, I’ll still drag myself reluctantly to the polls in 2020 and mark the ballot for them. The question is, will the more apathetic, Democrat-leaning electorate do likewise? I don’t think so.

The Avengers: Endgame is Peak Genre (no spoilers, relax)

That’s not a bad thing. I saw it last night, and overall, it was fun, but there was so much to criticize.

First, a few of my problems with the movie.

It’s a time-travel movie. Hollywood cannot make those — they screw them up everytime. It’s a plot device that they can’t use consistently, where they have to first point out the dangers and consequences of time travel and impose limitations on it, but you know at the first opportunity all of that will be thrown out. Endgame is no exception. It doesn’t have to be that way: Tim Powers’ novel, The Anubis Gates (the best time travel story ever) revels in the consequences and causality and the story is actually driven by the implications of time travel.

It’s too much to digest. This movie is the culmination of 22 other movies, and every character has to have a cameo. The first half it focuses on a manageable subset of the characters, but near the end, it has to pack them in. There are a couple of scenes where the action comes to a halt, and the camera wanders through the good guy army taking care to give everyone a moment. For example, Shuri gets a static shot standing there — she doesn’t do anything in this movie, but she gets a few seconds to be applauded. Sometimes it was too painfully obvious.

Every problem is solved with a fight. My wife got confused about who was who, but it wasn’t a concern, because every character’s main attribute was their ability to thump bad guys. And speaking of bad guys, Thanos is a terrible villain. He’s big, purple, and muscular, and his superpower is hand-to-hand combat. That’s it. He’s physically stronger than everyone, which somehow leads to him having an alien fleet and hordes of four-armed monsters fighting for him. It is not a spoiler to tell you that the culmination of the movie is a gigantic super-brawl.

Disposable ethics. Just as an example, Hawkeye (the bow and arrow guy) is so wrecked by grief by the conclusion of the previous movie that at the beginning of this movie, he’s rampaging through the criminal underworld, leaving warehouses full of dead bodies, that sort of thing. This horrifying behavior will never be addressed. He has demonstrated super bad-guy-thumping ability, so he’s embraced as a hero. It’s a conflict that would require an entire solo movie to explore and resolve, but this movie is so sprawling and over-full that it’s treated as an ignorable bump in the road.

Death is weightless. Several well-known superheroes die in this movie. Their deaths have relatively little impact, because, well, the whole movie is about reversing the deaths of trillions of intelligent beings with a time-travel plot contrivance, so why couldn’t there be another magic trick in a later movie to resurrect them? Nothing is final if we can just make a continuity adjustment in a sequel.

OK, those were my major complaints, but there’s something that unifies them all: they’re entirely genre complaints. This is what comic-book super-hero movies do. To see them as flaws is like complaining that cowboy movies will have a gunfight, or that a rom-com will have a moment where the protagonists love each other, or that a Christian cult movie will revolve around a really stupid argument that somehow brings people to Jesus. It’s like being pissed off at the hamburger you ordered at a restaurant because it contains ground beef. It is the nature of the medium.

That said, then, The Avengers: Endgame is a superbly well done genre movie. We have reached Peak Superhero. The MCU is a complex, experienced organization that is a sleek machine for pumping out movies that fulfill a social role for a huge community of nerds, and it is a master at meeting expectations professionally and with a nice shiny gloss, and it has also built up a phenomenal roster of personalities that it can slot into roles. It’s a powerhouse.

It works well.

I live in a tiny college town of 5000 people. I never have problems getting into movies — we have a limited number of screens so there are those constraints — but I’ll usually pop into the theater 5 or 10 minutes before show time, and I only show up that early so I can get the best seat. Even that’s not usually necessary because some times I’ll get there and there are only a handful of people present. This one, we got there a half hour early and there was a line half a block long. Unbelievable, for Morris.

It was a crowded theater. Half the fun of the movie were the crowd reactions. There were gasps and cheers, the audience was really into it all. That brief shot of Shuri that I saw as a pointless cameo? People applauded. Those weightless deaths of beloved characters? People moaned and wept.

The Avengers: Endgame was effective, skillful movie-making.

What it excelled at was two things that communicators of any kind ought to respect. It was all about narrative, masterful story-telling that made it easy to leap over gaps in the logic. Stupid time travel logic doesn’t matter when what you’re trying to do is sweep viewers along in a series of challenging events. The second piece of the genre is emotion. Those 22 preceding movies were all about building personal connections with characters, and this movie was about intensifying those relationships and running them through a wringer to draw out the feelings of the audience. It does that so well.

If you’re one of those horrible movie viewers who hates genre conventions and wants accurate science and rational plotting (I don’t know anyone like that, do you?), you should attend one of these showings and pay close attention to how it fosters audience engagement, as does the whole Marvel PR machine. You’ll learn things even if you are expert at maintaining objective distance.

I’ll be curious to see what happens next, though. This movie wraps up a huge multi-movie narrative arc, but Marvel is not shutting down, there are more movies in the pipeline, they’re going to make billions of dollars out of this one, and you know some executives somewhere are scheming about how to get the steamroller going again. I can’t believe this was just an accident, and I’m sure there are plans afoot to fire up another mega-blockbuster.

Michael Glance, poster boy for toxic masculinity

This is Michael Christopher Glance. I include his name and photo so you know to scorn him if ever you meet him. This cowardly sack of shit got in a heated argument with his partner, and to teach her a lesson, intentionally shot their two year old child in the face with a shotgun. (The child survived, but is going to require massive reconstructive surgery.)

With any luck, though, you’ll never meet him, because he should be going away to prison for a very long time.

Do I really want to see another comic book movie?

I have mixed feelings about these things. They kind of suck the air out of the room — how many superhero movies will be dominating the theaters this summer? I like the gigantic ensemble movies least of all, since they always feel overblown and crowded, and they replace interesting character development with simply trotting out yet another colorful costume. They’re great big telenovellas about luchadors…which could be fun, I admit, like having ice cream and cookies for dinner, but they’ll kill you eventually if that’s the only thing in your diet.

I’m still planning on seeing Avengers: Endgame tonight, with my wife. Which reminds me — another unpleasantness is that I’m going to have to explain the story to her first, since she doesn’t pay much attention to these things, and they always sound so ridiculous. “In the last movie, big purple bad guy collected a bunch of magic rocks that gave him the power to snap his fingers and make half the people in the universe disappear, because he thinks that will make life better for the survivors. In this movie, a few dozen surviving people in spandex will try to undo the purple guy’s magic.” This will not sound promising.

But Tony Thompson convinced me. People have emotional connections to these stories, to grand elaborate stories in general, and a lot of people love this series of movies. I’m willing to bask in the afterglow of the audience for a connection to that, even if my brain is going to be picking nits throughout it. I can find vicarious enjoyment of other people’s enjoyment, so even if I find a thousand annoyances in this movie, I’ll be able to take something away from it.

Also, I’m hoping Thor will find a way to resurrect Loki.

Will this be the end of Carl Benjamin?

The basis of Carl Benjamin’s popularity on YouTube has always been his racism, sexism, outright misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and just plain nastiness to his ‘enemies’ on the left. It’s not as if he has any intellectual, artistic, or even thoughtful contribution to make — he’s nothing but a fart from the middle-class id. He has recently tried to make something more of himself (not much more, though) by running for the European Parliament under the banner of UKIP. Maybe he thought that since one crass, anti-intellectual, outspoken white nationalist had succeeded in becoming president of the US, the door was open for other dumbass thugs to rush in, too.

He’s run into an obstacle, though. The media have been exposing his YouTube career to the light. Buzzfeed ran a rather revolting review of his greatest hits which reveals why he hates “trigger warnings” so much, since any Sargon of Akkad retrospective has to be preceded by explaining that you’re going to see a lot of unpleasant racist, sexist filth.

Here’s a fine example of the Carl Benjamin style. He made a response video to another video that was protesting hate speech. This, of course, simply prompts him to vomit up hate speech all over the place.

Another male actor then says to the camera, “It’s not acceptable to call me a kike.” The video pauses and Benjamin says, “I totally agree, absolutely unacceptable, how dare you.”

Anti-Semitic images are then overlayed on the screen, showing several different versions of hook-nosed caricatures.

The video ends on Potter, who has Down syndrome, asking not to be called a “retard”. Alongside her, Lynch says the r-word is like any other minority slur.

“Well then good job trivialising minority slurs, you nigger, spic, fag, chink, kike, retard,” Benjamin said, again pausing the video. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you think you’re my mum or something?”

I’m hoping that Carl Benjamin has just hit a brick wall that will kill his political career dead, but I don’t know — Trump could say “grab ’em by the pussy” and he got elected. Abusing children with Down syndrome is just another step in conservative devolution.

By the way, the other guy UKIP recruited to represent them goes by the moniker “Count Dankula”, and his sole claim to fame is that he trained his dog to do Nazi salutes. That’s it. That is all he has accomplished. This is the intellectual heavy artillery of the party, I guess.

Certain politicians are easily confused with Nazis, I know

A Twitter executive was asked why, since they’ve been successful at eliminating Islamic State propaganda from the platform, they can’t likewise eliminate white nationalist propaganda. He delivered the answer I expected.

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said.

In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians.

I think I could accept the benefit of banning white nationalists at the expense of inconveniencing a few Republican politicians. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

“Republican” is a synonym for “petty and stupid”

I’ve driven by Fort Snelling, the park and the gigantic military cemetery, an uncounted number of times — it’s right by the airport, so if you’ve ever flown into the Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport, you’ve gone by it yourself. It’s right there at the intersection of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, so it’s been an important landmark even before the airport was built; even before Minnesota was a state; even before European settlers invaded the territory.

Guess what has our Minnesota legislature — at least, the Republican side — in an uproar now? Historians have added a word to the sign at the visitor center: “Fort Snelling at Bdote“. They haven’t changed the name of the place, they’ve only added an acknowledgement of the Dakota word for this meeting of the two rivers, which sounds like a lovely addition to me, and one that does no harm to the European side of the history, but only extends it to include the longer Indian record of residence.

Unbelievably, Republicans consider this an assault on their version of history.

“Without any public input that I am aware of, the Historical Society has changed the name of historic Fort Snelling, which is a military installation, to historic Fort Snelling at Bdote,” Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

He said he’s also heard from veterans who are upset by the signs, and consider it “revisionist” history.

“I think it’s a rewriting of our history and I’m not in favor of it,” he said.

It’s not just a myopic reading of history, the Republicans are planning to punish the historical society by cutting their budget by millions of dollars, possibly costing the loss of as many as 80 jobs (which is fine with the Rs, I guess).

I’m just surprised a little bit that anyone would object to adding a little more historical information to a sign at a historical site. There’s no reason to complain, unless you’re so deeply racist that you resent any mention of the people the European settlers displaced to take over this region. Seriously, how can anyone be upset by this word?

But I shouldn’t be surprised. This cheerful message sparked a lot of online anger.

A great many white people flooded the comments to insist pointedly that that wasn’t Lake Bde Maka Ska, but Lake Calhoun, despite the fact that the name was officially changed. Calhoun was a Southern politician and vociferous advocate of slavery at the time of the Civil War, and it was totally inappropriate to honor him by naming a beautiful lake after him, but apparently some people think that it’s better to memorialize a white traitor who isn’t from this area than to use a pretty Dakota name that actually describes the lake.

If you’re wondering how it’s pronounced, it’s like it’s spelled. And that’s really what the lake is named on the maps.

OK, here’s Joe Bendickson demonstrating how to say it. Bendickson, by the way, has something in common with me: we’re both on Turning Point USA’s list of Dangerous Professors, which is entirely my honor.

Occasional reminder

We’re still paying off our lawyer in that ridiculous SLAPP suit by Richard Carrier — his case went down in flames, it’s over as far as we’re concerned, but man, legal fees certainly do stack up fast. Our GoFundMe page is still open. And before you tell us we should have counter-sued, we’re not interested in sinking more time and money into that futile pursuit, and unlike the people who just wave the flag of Free Speech, we have no interest in silencing anyone.

I will also remind you that if you had any doubt that Richard Carrier was a serial harasser, all you need to see is that he’s been harassing me, Stephanie Zvan, Amy Frank-Skiba, Lauren Lane, and the organizations of FtB, Skepticon, and the Orbit to the tune of many tens of thousands of dollars in a pointless, punitive lawsuit; he’s also failed all of his friends from whom he sucked away an equivalent or greater sum of money. And yet he’s still getting booked for appearances around the country. It’s amazing how being a petty scumbag only enhances your reputation in the atheist community.

Who benefits from increasing healthcare costs?

Maureen Walsh, the Washington state Republican who thinks nurses are lazy and don’t deserve humane working conditions, got another royal smackdown from a nurse. Maybe there’s a reason nurses are overworked.

Hospital administrators pull down enormous bonuses- and most are not required to be disclosed to the public. Nonclinical healthcare wages- as in hospital administrators- increased 30% over the last decade to $865 billion (Bryant, 2018). Furthermore, salaries for nonprofit CEOs far eclipsed those for nurses. Over the past decade, salaries for hospital CEOs jumped a whopping 93% (Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research 2018). Average salaries for hospital CEOs skyrocketed from $1.6 million in 2005 to $3.1 million in 2015. In fact, salaries for nonclinical workers are a major factor in skyrocketing national healthcare spending. In 2017, 84 of the largest nonprofit hospital systems boasted total annual profits of $14.4 billion — resulting in a 2.7% operating profit margin (Bryant, 2018). Are you telling me that hospitals can’t afford to hire enough staff to allow nurses to get legally mandated breaks? Please, Senator Walsh, show me that math. Sounds like you’re being played by the lobbyists and that you’ve been too lazy to do your own research. Shame on you.

I do have to wonder what those CEOs are doing to earn $3 million salaries. Do they actually work 50 times harder than I, or one of their nurses, do?

I suspect the CEOs are in turn only a small part of the problem. I wonder how much of the money flowing into hospitals is sucked away by insurance companies?

We can just post the same article over and over again!

Like this one, from The Nation a bit more than a year ago.

Judging by the headlines, pseudo-scientific racism is making a comeback. Nineties-relic Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) is popping up on campuses and in conservative media outlets, much to the delight of those who think his graphs confer legitimacy to their prejudices. Atheist philosopher and podcaster Sam Harris is extolling Murray’s highfalutin version of racist graffiti as “forbidden knowledge.” New York Times’ increasingly off-the-rails op-ed page gave genetics professor David Reich the opportunity to write that “it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among ‘races.’” And Andrew Sullivan, as ever, is fervently repackaging Gilded Age eugenics for a 21st-century audience.

Wow. Nothing has changed. Those same people are still pontificating away over the same tired bigotries.

You might be saying, “It’s only been a year, change takes time,” and I’d agree with you…except if you read the rest of the article, it’s all about the long history of racist pseudoscience. If a year isn’t enough, is a century?

Names like Alexis Carrel, Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, and Ernst Rüdin mean little today. But a century ago, they were in the top tier of public intellectuals—the Neil deGrasse Tysons and Carl Sagans of their age. They stood at the confluence of three popular trends at the turn of the century. One was scientific racism—the attempt to leverage reason and the scientific method to “prove” the inherent superiority of the white, northern European race (a conclusion that conveniently doubled as the premise). The second was eugenics, which represented the misappropriation of Darwinian evolution to human social outcomes. Third was rising apprehension at the immigration feeding the transition of the United States from an agrarian backwater to an industrial colossus.

Apparently not. All three of those trends are still going strong.

I guess I’m going to have to cling to life for at least another century to see the headlines change.