Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
That’s a great title: Heckle Christ’s bride at your eternal peril! I knew I had to read it to find out how to heckle Christ’s bride, so it was successful clickbait (Christ’s bride, by the way, is the whole dang Christian church, so now you know…lots of target out there.) And then the article starts with such good news!
For the first time since the Gallup organization started to track the data, fewer than 50 percent of Americans now belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. Behind these numbers are, among other factors, the trendiness of not only leaving church, but announcing it on social media with a bit of shaming and blaming thrown in for good measure.
Many are not only leaving a particular house of worship but joining a growing demographic known as the “nones,” rejecting all religious affiliation. The Christian version of those who grew up in the Church but have become “nones” often go by another label: “exvangelicals.”
As you might guess, the article is all about agonizing over why people are abandoning the faith. It sets up a dichotomy: are they leaving the church because it fails to live up to their moral standards, or are they leaving because they’re already depraved sinners who don’t like a church that has high moral standards?
Go ahead, guess. Which answer do they think is the true one?
I guess there has been a wave of panic-buying of gasoline after a major pipeline was shut down; I haven’t noticed because I’ve been walking everywhere. People were concerned that they wouldn’t have fuel for their daily commute, so they were stockpiling gas in anything that would hold gas, including plastic bags. There are supposed to be safety laws that limit what you can use to store a flammable liquid, but apparently gas station owners were looking the other way. Sometimes, that led to disaster.
A Hummer in Florida burst into flames right after a driver filled four containers with gas.
Citrus County Fire Rescue said they responded to a call at a Texaco Food Mart in Homosassa, Fla. for a vehicle on fire on Wednesday.
Four 5-gallon containers filled with gasoline were in the back of the vehicle when it caught fire, officials said.
Hummers are practically a symbol of self-indulgent excess, so I would have applauded the sight. But what’s really ironic here is that a guy who was concerned about running out of gas is driving around in a Hummer, a vehicle that optimistically gets 10-14mpg. If we really want to save fuel, one way would be to torch every Hummer on the road. Go buy an electric or hybrid or at least a small economy car that gets 30-40 mpg.
I trust them on the science. When they say being vaccinated means you’re pretty safe and don’t need a mask in most circumstances, I believe them. When they say we can loosen social distancing requirements outdoors, I’ll believe them, and the studies do support that. But you have to know by now that this pandemic has a psychological, sociological, and political dimension that you also have to recognize, and they have to know that their advice has ramifications. Our idiot conservative democrat governor has to know that too, but do they care? No. Our state mask mandate has been dismissed, thanks to the short-sighted recommendations of the CDC. This is only going to encourage the worst elements in the state.
Case in point: our local grocery store, Willie’s Super-Valu of Morris, Minnesota.
When the seriousness of the pandemic began to hit us all, they dragged their heels on implementing even the most basic preventive policies. For months, they were carefree, few of the workers wore masks, and almost none of the customers did. It was so disgracefully bad that we gave up and started shopping 40 minutes away. They finally did put up signs requiring masks in the store, but it was too late — we have lost all trust in the store. I go there only reluctantly, and when absolutely necessary, like today. I’ve been car-less for almost a month while my wife was off spending all her time with our granddaughter, and the pantry was bare. She’s going back this week so I’ve just this weekend to stock up again, and I made the mistake of going to Willie’s.
The instant the governor ended the mandate, the signs all went away. None of the workers are masked anymore, and very few of the customers. The kaffeeklatsches have resumed, with people stopping in the middle of aisles to gossip with other residents. We are back to “normal”, I guess, but the pandemic isn’t over, and the CDC recommendations are about people who have been vaccinated…that is, about half the population. This is a politically conservative area, so I have no confidence that any of the people in that store have been following prior recommendations, or have been vaccinated, or at all responsible in protecting the health of the community. I sure as hell don’t trust the owners of the store.
So here we are again, with the local Trump-loving citizens of this town showing their asses and being irresponsible.
I’m going to have to continue occasionally visiting Willie’s — it’s basically the only major grocery store in walking distance — when my wife takes the car again, but as soon as she gets back home again for good, they have lost my business. It’s a shame, too, that a place that has the silly slogan “Home of the People-Lovers” should so reliably betray their community.
Would you buy a cancer cure from this man?
Social media are a cesspool — it’s not so much “social” as it is “manipulative commercial/capitalist propaganda media”. It’s a net of a thousand lies, and Facebook and Google are its eager, willing enablers. It wouldn’t take much to improve it, but they won’t, because they make too much money off frauds and lyin’ politicians.
For example, would you believe that 65% of all the vaccine lies are driven by just 12 people? You can read all the details, but I believe it — there are people who are really good at wielding the megaphone of the internet, and have no other skills or learning at all, and they have an outsized influence. Here are the Disinformation Dozen:
These are the people responsible for most of the memes and assorted garbage that’s poisoning minds all over the world. Mercola, for instance, has a huge and profitable quack empire, selling supplements and snake oil, and giving away lies for free. In the complete analysis, it goes through each of the twelve and states whether they have active accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…would you believe that Mercola, who has been a notorious quack for decades, is active on all three? He doesn’t get any pushback at all, despite peddling cancer cures that don’t work, as well as claiming that COVID-19 doesn’t exist, but if it does, you can treat it with hydrogen peroxide. He’s been getting filthy rich off this nonsense, which explains why his accounts weren’t instantly yanked.
Kennedy is also active on Facebook and Twitter, but at least he was banned on Instagram.
The Bollingers: active on all three. They’re anti-vaxxers who claim the vaccine kills children.
Tenpenny claims masks don’t help and suffocate wearers. She was banned on Facebook, but still trumpets her noise on Twitter and Instagram.
Islam claims to have beat COVID-19 with chicken soup. Banned from Facebook, still lying on the other media.
Buttar claims that the vaccine will sterilize you. Still active on all three.
Elizabeth claims vaccines are part of a conspiracy theory to make everyone sick. Still active on all three.
Ji claims that the vaccines killed more people than the disease. He’s been kicked off Twitter and Instagram, but is still on Facebook — he runs a snake oil store.
Brogan partners with Ji, and has been booted from Facebook but still babbles on Twitter and Instagram. Nice synergy — between the two of them, they’ve got the big three covered.
Northrup is one of those hydroxychloroquine promoters. Still active on all three.
Tapper is a chiropractor, anti-vaxxer and anti-masker who says stupid things like “There is a total lack of evidence that viruses can live outside the body” — which makes no sense and is not even wrong. Still active on all three.
Jenkins seems to be riding Kennedy’s coattails. Still active on all three.
These twelve people are all using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to spread misinformation, and are doing it with very little complaint from the social media companies. Ban them. Ban them now. I know another dozen will just rise up to take their place, but if they just had real policies against medical quackery that they actually enforced, they could quickly ban those, too.
It’s kind of obvious that the idea of policies that inhibit active fraud on social media are considered a joke by Google and Facebook.
We had a great fundraiser this week, and we’re going to talk about it and thank you all on Sunday.
Of course I went spidering. Found some lovely Steatoda borealis living contentedly in peace and harmony in a crowded colony, so of course I kidnapped a few. You’ll have to sign up for Patreon or ogle them for free on my Instagram, but it’s worth it. S. borealis is a deep reddish purple, nearly black (the male is mostly black), with subtle reddish markings on the abdomen, quite nice.
In related news, that unfathomably successful smug modern medicine denier (who nonetheless was awarded a prize by Richard Dawkins), has had to cancel an episode of his horrible little show because…he tested positive for COVID-19!
Well, gosh, I guess I am forced by the evidence to admit that the pandemic does have a few positive outcomes.
I’m seeing a lot of slack in my little town: I’m vaccinated, but I still wear a mask in public and shy away from getting within 2 meters of anyone, but apparently a lot of the locals think the pandemic is over and have stopped bothering. It doesn’t help that we have idiots everywhere who claim without evidence that masks and vaccines are bad things that violate their rights.
So look at this ninny virtue-signaling to his fellow ignorati.
Just wear the mask, guy.
And then there’s the new conspiracy theory going around: getting vaccinated turns you into a plague rat.
A conspiracy ripping through the anti-vax world may finally drive some anti-maskers to do the unthinkable: wear a mask and keep their distance.
The conspiracy—which comes in several shapes and sizes—more or less says the vaccinated will “shed” certain proteins onto the unvaccinated who will then suffer adverse effects. The main worry is the “shedding” will cause irregular menstruation, infertility, and miscarriages. The entirely baseless idea is a key cog in a larger conspiracy that COVID-19 was a ploy to depopulate the world, and the vaccine is what will cull the masses.
Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work.
There has to be a limit to the absurdity, doesn’t there? First they bumble about claiming that a disease that has killed a half million people in the US doesn’t exist, and now they’re claiming that a disease that doesn’t exist and can’t exist is going to make everyone sterile. And they’re led by pseudo-intellectuals who have figured out that anything that causes fear will make them rich and famous.
There’s this guy named Jay Bhattacharya, whose claim to fame is that he is one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, that infantile libertarian whine that we ought to ignore all of epidemiology so that people will start spending money at businesses again. Back in January, he wrote this:
This is rather like Elon Musk claiming we’d have “zero new cases” by April…of 2020. Why does anyone listen to these wankers?
Do read this great debunking of Bhattacharya, but I think this is the most appropriate dismissal of his (and Musk’s) claims:
Twenty-five million cases and a quarter million dead is a pretty strong argument that you should just ignore these evil people…or arrest them.
She was a very tiny angel. As I was making coffee, she slowly descended on a silken thread to float in front of my face. She was minuscule, little more than a dust mote, almost invisible.
She whispered an important message to me, though.
“We are all of us tiny and insignificant in an immense world. Most likely I would have descended before someone who wouldn’t even notice me. If I were noticed by a person, they most likely would destroy me. By purest chance, though, I have appeared before one of the few people who would be delighted to see me.”
“Remember your place in the universe, that you are both a victim and agent of fate, and be kind.”
Then she was nice enough to let me snap a few blurry photos before I released her back into the house. She was the first Steatoda triangulosa of the spring, you know.
