Tomorrow is a “Day of Hate”

There’s nothing anyone can do about it, I guess, but anti-semitic, that is, NAZI organizers are telling their followers to carry out acts of harassment against Jewish people on Saturday. The police are just warning you all — you’re on your own, nothing they can do.

Chicago police are urging Jewish and other religious communities to be extra vigilant this weekend when a neo-Nazi group has declared a “day of hate.”

“At this time, there is no actionable intelligence,” the Chicago Police Department said in a statement. “We continue to actively monitor the situation.”

In New York, the police will have “elevated situational awareness”, but otherwise, it’s on you to be careful.

In the warning, the NYPD advised officers to maintain “elevated situational awareness” on Saturday, particularly at locations that “might garner higher interest from these types of actors.”

What good are the police, then? Once the bodies have bled out, then they can step in? I have noticed that the police are pretty darned good at making life miserable for black people, harassing them with frequent traffic stops, hassling them on street corners, threatening them with arrest for trivial actions, even too often outright killing them — I don’t want cops murdering skinheads either, but it seems to be easier to stroll around with a swastika tattoo than the unadorned skin a black person is born with. The police have the tools, they use them when they wish, but apparently, they don’t wish to crack down on white people threatening violence to other citizens.

In addition to the uselessness of cops, do these Nazis have even an ounce of introspection? Declaring a “Day of Hate” really ought to be enough for any normal person to realize that they are the baddies. The very baddest baddies. I guess the fact that they’re wearing swastika arm bands should have been the first clue, but they ignored that and are just going to run all the way to beating up little old Jewish ladies in the street, because they generically hate them.

There be spiders under there!

Beneath that huge pile of drifted and shoveled snow beside my garage lies buried my compost bin, legendary home to many generations of spiders (especially Steatoda borealis) and maggots. I couldn’t seen any spiders before the last big storm, but now I can’t even get to it. It’s completely covered in an avalanche of snow.

This is probably just fine for the occupants. Lots of spiders overwinter by snuggling down under the layers of snow, and others just tuck away an egg sac and let the embryos rest quietly until the spring. I’ll be checking in as soon as it melts and it warms up a bit more.

We came this close to electing a bozo governor

OK, it wasn’t really that close: Scott Jensen was defeated 52% to 44% by Tim Walz in the recent Minnesota gubernatorial race. It looks worse in the maps, but that’s because rural Minnesota is relatively thinly populated, with most people living in the dark blue lake of Democrats on the eastern side of the state. You mean to tell me that real estate doesn’t vote?

Scott Jensen would not be making the news now except that he’s under investigation by the state medical licensing board.

Dr. Scott Jensen, the family medicine doctor who lost his run at Minnesota governor in the midterm elections last year, announced on social media that he was under investigation by his state’s medical board, adding “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you!”.

It can only happen to me if I were a medical doctor, and if I spent an election campaign making grossly dishonest claims about the pandemic.

This “humble midwestern family doctor” has some pretty serious ties to international Bannon politics which would explain his shocking brashness. Jensen’s attempts to convey his overdue accountability as an attack not just on him but on anyone who speaks out as he so “courageously” does (in line with his political affiliations) is Trumpian. It’s also how fascists gaslight for undeserved support. He is the problem. His actions have had consequences on others and it is high time they have consequences for him. Thanks to his November loss, he’s just a regular citizen without the power to carry out his revenge fantasies on the medical board.

Fortunately, he got beat, badly. The news isn’t so great for Wisconsin.

In any case, accountability has come far too late for these politically-aligned disinformation doctors thanks in large part to politically-aligned lobbying efforts. One state over in Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson – who had hosted Jensen’s Pandata colleague McCullough on his conspiracy panels – won his re-election. He has joined the fight against medical license accountability for his allies, despite that falling completely outside his jurisdiction as a senator.

Doctors like Jensen and politicians like Johnson claim to want to take politics out of healthcare while politicizing medicine during a global crisis. There is no sympathy to be felt for power-hungry men like these who lie so brazenly and so destructively. Covid was not a political game; it has cost real people their real lives. Disinformation has been central to the global failure that has been the Covid response.

I hope disinformation will have a political cost. It’s a thin hope, though.

Cancel Scott Adams

Fuck both those guys

That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? We have the power to somehow, in some way cancel people for being, for instance, racist as hell. So get to work! Chant the magic words, wave your fairy wands, summon the spirits of expulsion, whatever, and banish Scott Adams to some pit on the fringes of Sheol. He’s the face of bland, casual, rich white person racism.

I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people, the 65-year-old author exclaimed. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.

Reiterating that whites need to escape, Adams said that he had already done so by moving to an area with a very low Black population. He then cited Black CNN anchor Don Lemon to justify his assertion that there’s a correlation between a mostly Black neighborhood and a bunch of problems he didn’t see in majority-white areas.

So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore, Adams huffed. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.

He continued: The only outcome is I get called a racist. That’s the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you’re white. It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying.

This rant was prompted, he claims, by a survey that showed that the phrase “It’s OK to be white” was considered racist by almost half of black people. How considerate of Adams to immediately confirm that opinion.

If we can’t “cancel” Scott Adams, then “canceling” is a toothless, imaginary threat. The difficulty lies in the fact that Adams is rich, his comic makes lots of money for a tangle of distributors (Andrews McMeel Syndication, Universal Uclick, GoComics, etc.), and all you have to do is look at the comics page of any newspaper to see that this is an industry locked in to nearly permanent frozen rigidity. Adams knows this. He can afford to be smug and safe and bigoted.

He can be pulled by individual newspaper chains, though.

Amid the incorporation of the anti-”woke” plot lines, Dilbert was dropped last September from 77 newspapers by publisher Lee Enterprises. Adams, for his part, claimed the move “was part of a larger overhaul” of comic syndication. At the same time, however, he also said it’s “possible” the strip was pulled for other reasons.

I suspect that all we can do is recognize that Adams is a front for racism, and while we can’t do anything about him, we certainly can judge our friends and family who post Dilbert comics on their office door and send them around via Facebook. That’s all “canceling” is, anyway.

Now that’s how I’m going to think of them all the time

The perfect abbreviation doesn’t exis…

Also, sorry everyone — I’ve been swamped lately. This was supposed to be my semester with a slightly lighter teaching load, but now it’s been increased by about 50% (just for this term, fortunately), and I’m going slightly insane. Add to that that the spiders are suddenly impressively fecund, and I have to do a lot of lab maintenance. Quickies are all I can manage.

Snow day, sort of

We got word yesterday that the University will have “reduced operations” for a few days, all because of a little snow. Are we not Minnesotans? We can handle this!

Coursework should move to distance/online learning between 8 a.m. Wednesday and 12 p.m. Thursday. If your course cannot be delivered via distance, it should be canceled. Faculty and instructors should be in touch with their students as soon as possible to inform them about how to connect to distance learning or to determine how missed classes or related assignments may be made up. Students who have not heard from their instructors are encouraged to reach out for more information.
Only designated “essential on-campus” employees must report to work on campus while we are in reduced operations. Managers and supervisors have identified affected employees and should promptly notify them about scheduling. A number of employees are necessary to maintain our campus’ 24-hour operations and we greatly appreciate their service. We urge managers to work with essential on-campus employees to ensure they are taking proper safety precautions.

Yeah, I know, heavy snowstorm, blizzard conditions, yadda yadda. On the one hand, I agree: if you have to travel to get here, it’s going to be hazardous, stay home and stay safe. On the other hand, the weather news has been playing up this storm for days, talking about two feet of snow, etc. I’ve gotten used to discounting these predictions — I’m going to estimate we’ll probably get about 10 inches, because I tend to cut all the predictions in half. That’s not nothing, but it’s nothing to panic over.

This is Minnesota, and we’re equipped to handle this stuff. The snow plows were out in force overnight, we’ve got a snowblower, we’ve got a pantry with supplies to keep us well fed for a week or two (although meals will get boring by the end), our house is snug and warm, I’m not at all worried by this storm.

I’m reminded of my grandfather telling stories of growing up in northern Minnesota. They had to tie a rope from the house to the outhouse so they wouldn’t get lost and freeze to death on the way to relieving themselves. Now we have something better than a rope — it’s called indoor plumbing.