The nose knows

The latest gender critical outrage: the Women’s March logo has 3 profiles, and one of them doesn’t look feminine enough. It must be a man, baby!

There are no women on planet Earth who have a face anything like the one on that alien creature on the left! As we all know, you can reliably determine the sex of an individual from the shape of their nose. Or something. It’s biology, man.

Oh, here’s a fun game! I found a page of cameo portraits of Victorian ladies, with lots of photos of Victorian…uh, women. I’m not sure anymore. According to the GCs, the British empire must have been built by brave men who kept a trans woman at home, since there are a lot of deviations from the dainty feminine ideal there.

They’re all quite lovely — these were intended to be flattering portraits of their subjects — but I’m sure the GCs could pull out their calipers and determine that the majority were men in wigs.

Also, biology would tell you that not only is there a tremendous amount of variation in human facial features, but human perception is finely tuned to recognize those variations.

I’m supposed to thank someone for Friday?

Today is my dull working day.

First up: I gotta go walk a kilometer or two. I’m not in physical therapy now, but I do have to keep up with some exercise.

Secondly, it’s a spider feeding day, and sheesh, but I have a lot of baby spiders who want their living, crawling meat.

Thirdly, I’ve got my Skepticon talk all outlined up in Keynote, with some of the images. Now I have to flesh everything out. The goal is to have it all done this weekend. Gone are the days when I would check into a hotel the night before and hack out the whole talk!

Is this my summer break? Could be worse, I guess.

Is Cody spying on me?

OK, this is creepy. Just the other day I posted about the Morris police being disbanded, and now this video comes out.

One particularly good point he made: who is our sheriff? I didn’t know! So I looked him up. It’s Jason Dingman. I don’t know if he’s a good guy, I don’t know whether I voted for him or not, but for sure I’ll scrutinize the candidate(s) in the next election.

Now Cody: get the camera or keylogger out of my office.

Missives from Dystopia…I mean, America

I hope all the gun-fondlers have tissues at hand, because they’re probably going to need some cleanup. The rest of us are going to need puke buckets.

Recently, Sig Sauer won a huge military contract to provide the next generation of squad weapons. These will be the replacements for the existing M4 and SAW. They will be better at punching holes in people! I guess that’s what you want for the military.

The SIG-LMG lightweight belt-fed machine gun and SIG MCX-SPEAR Rifle are purpose-built to harness the energy of the SIG FURY 6.8 Common Cartridge Ammunition enabling greater range and increased lethality while reducing the soldier’s load on the battlefield. Both the SIG-LMG and MCX-SPEAR deliver significant weapon and technology advancements to the soldier and provide a solution for battlefield overmatch in comparison to the current M249 and M4/M4A1.

FOR THE FUCKING MILITARY. Sig Sauer, evil hell-sucking demon corporation that it is, is not satisfied with the billions they’ll get from the army, so they have also announced a civilian version of the weapon. Because we need it, apparently.

“This is a weapon that could defeat any body armor, any planned body armor that we know of in the future,” then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Army Times in 2019. “This is a weapon that can go out at ranges that are unknown today.”

…

“It’ll shoot through almost all of the bulletproof vests that are worn by law enforcement in the country right now,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms company executive who is now a senior policy analyst with the Giffords Law Center and author of Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.

I am no fan of the cops, but I don’t think selling a cop-killer is a good idea. I also don’t want to imagine what this thing could do to small children. I suspect it won’t be long until we find out.

The only saving grace here is that the thing costs $8,000. That will not deter any of the fanatics, unfortunately. Of anyone planning to buy one, I have to ask…what the fuck is wrong with you, sicko?

We’re not done with news from the hellscape, though.

Somebody suggest to one of the reality TV shows that moving a team of MAGA-hat-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving yahoos who have bought an MCX-SPEAR into some desolate wasteland somewhere where they have to fight Funny Dancing Robot Dogs to the death. I wouldn’t watch it, and I wouldn’t want to guess who’d win, but I’d be hoping for mutual extermination.

An important lesson

Do not make your observatory look like a giant pill bug.

That’s how you get giant spiders, you know.

I was not fooled

Yesterday, there was a brief paroxysm of optimism in the press. A law codifying same-sex marriage passed the House!

Nearly 50 House Republicans voted to write same-sex marriage into law Tuesday, joining all Democrats in a heavily bipartisan vote that would’ve been considered unthinkable a decade ago.

Democrats loudly cheered from their side of the chamber as the bill passed 267-157, with 47 Republicans backing it, including members of GOP leadership such as Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and National Republican Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.). Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) voted no.

47 Republicans in favor of marriage equality? That’s nice, but I can do math. 157 Republicans voted against it, and 157 is greater than 47 by a lot. I can also do a little psychology, and I wonder how many of the pro votes were from politicians putting on a show while trusting that the Senate would block it?

Amanda Marcotte thinks the same way I do, and she put the correct interpretation of this vote.

In response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the Democrat-controlled House has teed up twin bills, one to protect same-sex marriage and one to protect the right to contraception, out of concern that the conservative majority is coming for those rights next. It’s a totally justified fear. In his concurrence on the Roe overturn, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly called previous decisions to legalize contraception and same-sex marriage “demonstrably erroneous” and called on the court to “correct” those rights like they “corrected” the right to abortion.

These two bills are almost certainly doomed to fail, because the Republican minority in Congress has a near-absolute power to kill bills through the abusing the filibuster. That’s what happened when House Democrats tried to protect abortion rights. There’s little reason to think Republicans have any more affection for the right to prevent pregnancy or allowing LGBTQ people to marry for love.

Tuesday, this was proved when a whopping 78% of Republicans in the House failed to vote for marriage equality. While the bill passed due to a Democratic majority, it’s near-certain that Republicans in the Senate will filibuster any attempt to protect same-sex marriage. And yet, if you glanced through mainstream media headlines, you’d think that Republicans have wrapped themselves in the rainbow flag and are celebrating same-sex marriage these days.

…

“47 House Republicans vote to write same-sex marriage into law,” Politico declared, failing both to give the 100% of Democrats who voted for it credit and ignoring the 78% of Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage rights.

The CBS headline highlighted the 47 Republicans who voted for the bill over the 164 who voted no or refused to show up. Even the BBC, which is usually better than this, played along with “Republicans help pass House gay marriage bill.”

That is correct. Those 47 Republicans are merely the lice-ridden, reeking merkin covering the repulsive pubes of the degenerate puritans of the Republican party. Don’t be fooled as Politico was. (Knowing Politico, they’re probably a willing part of the wig, anyway.) Repealing legalized same-sex marriage is part of the official Republican party platform!

The usual suspects are also loudly belittling the bill while also planning to repeal same-sex marriage and outlaw contraception.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene threw a tantrum declaring that the bill was unnecessary because “no one is taking away gay marriage.” She then admitted that she was voting against it because “I believe that marriage is a union made by God between a man and a woman.” Rep. Jim Jordon of Ohio thundered that Democrats are trying to “attempt to intimidate the United States Supreme Court,” a talking point that only makes sense if the plan is to have the court overturn same-sex marriage against the will of the people. (And only if you believe the Supreme Court’s “right” to vacate all laws Republicans don’t like is absolute.) Sen. Marco Rubio, who is up for re-election in Florida this year, said he would vote against the House bill to protect same-sex marriages, calling it a “stupid waste of time.”

No doubt about it: Same-sex marriage is popular with the public. Then again, so are abortion rights. The opposition to same-sex marriage comes from the exact same minority of people — call them Christian nationalists — who oppose abortion rights. The GOP answers to this small minority and not to the larger public. That’s why they are dismantling democracy so that the more liberal majority simply doesn’t have a say in what our laws around marriage and reproductive rights are. And, just as with the attack on abortion rights, Republicans know they have to use deflection and subterfuge to advance their agenda so that they can snatch the right to same-sex marriage away without most of the public realizing that it’s happening until it’s too late.

Those same Republicans said there was no way Roe v. Wade was on the table for repeal, and then, thwip, it was suddenly gone and they were rejoicing. Look for the same magic trick to be pulled on all of our rights.

Woo-hoo! Fortune has arrived!

I got an offer this morning to host a 30 second commercial on my next video — and they’d pay me $1800 for it. Whoa, is a little spot on a video by a little-known YouTuber like myself worth that much? No, it is not, but the money would be nice, and I delude myself into thinking I at least contribute a little knowledge on those things. A niggling temptation wormed its way into my brain.

I was briefly entertaining the idea enough to look up the company making the offer.

It’s one of those crypto/NFT scammer companies.

Well, that made it easy: HELL NO.

At least I was reminded I should get off my butt and implement a couple of the video ideas I have in my head. It’s just that right now I have so many spiders and so many egg sacs that demand my attention and I have to get this developmental timing series done before summer ends and I’m suddenly teaching 3 classes again…

Skepticon…next week!

At this time next week, we’ll be piling into the car to begin the long drive to St Louis. We’re going to take our time and stop frequently to take walks and seek out spiders of Iowa and Missouri, and we’re also planning to stretch the trip over two days — our first goal is to stop for the night somewhere around Cedar Rapids. Then we arrive at Skepticon on Friday.

It’ll be fun, but it’s also a test — this is my first public meeting of any kind in a couple of years. I am reassured by the fact that this meeting has sound pandemic policies in place. You have to have a vaccination card if you want to attend (don’t forget yours at home), and you’ll have to wear a mask inside the facilities, even at the traditional Saturday night dance, Skeptiprom. It’s all free, but you do have to register.

You might also want to order a t-shirt online before it’s too late. It’s got dinosaurs on it. You can’t go wrong with dinosaurs.

It looks like my speaking slot is at 10:00 on Saturday. I’ll be talking about how racism has tainted genetics for over a century (a cheery way to start the day!) and how we ought to remediate that with better concepts about how inheritance works.

Portrait of a whiny narcissist

Alan Dershowitz is terribly hurt by his social stigma, and did a long interview in the New Yorker which is basically nothing but Dershowitz having a pity party. What makes it worth reading, though, are italic asides in which he gets fact-checked.

Yeah, of course. So I’ve been cancelled, basically, by the Chilmark Library. That has resulted in lots of people in Chilmark calling me and calling the library and saying, “We’re being deprived of Alan’s annual speech.” [Ebba Hierta, the Chilmark’s director, disputed Dershowitz’s characterization, and said, “Not one single person has contacted me to complain that they haven’t had a chance to hear Alan speak.”]

Or my favorite:

The Abraham Accords. So I played a central role—not a central role, an important role in that. I helped. So they were celebrating that at the White House. I was there anyway because it was the day after I made my speech in the Senate, so I was invited to come. They assigned seats. They sat me right in back of Mike Pompeo, who had been my former student at Harvard Law School. Trump made a very bad joke, and people laughed. I didn’t laugh. [He did.] I thought it was a bad joke. My wife laughed. I didn’t laugh. I patted him on the back, and I said, “Mike, this, too, will pass. You’ll be remembered for what you did in the Middle East.” That was it. That was the entire encounter. I don’t know Mike Pompeo—

I would never have imagined that a serious article about Dershowitz could ever be funny, but this one is hilarious.