Ray Troll has come out with a line of fabrics.
Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t know how to sew, because you know I would not exercise restraint and would emerge in a fabulously garish wardrobe.
No. Not at all.
Here’s a video that looks at him from the perspective of his professional duties. You won’t be surprised either at how bad he was at his job, both teaching and clinical work.
One of the excuses I’m seeing from defenders of Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow is the claim that Crow was being generous and kind and you don’t want to discourage people from being kind, do you? Dahlia Lithwick is having nothing to do with that.
There’s also something specifically infuriating about the way defenders of the deep spiritual kinship between Harlan Crow and Clarence and Ginni Thomas root their argument in the fact that paying for an at-risk youth’s private school tuition is a noble act—“charity” even. The problem with that is, this is a conservative legal movement that is racing to subvert voting, public education, the administrative state, and (at present) the possibility of student loan forgiveness. So Harlan Crow’s replacement of an entire New Deal safety net with an ad hoc charitable benefits system administered by himself and directed only at the offspring of personal friends is specifically infuriating. Because the kids who receive the generosity of the Crow’s private charity are not yours, and the kids who receive the protections of EPA regulation are not yours, and the kids who receive the benefits of going to schools where nobody will shoot them are not yours. The beauty of Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow is that they always get to determine who benefits—and guess what? Unless and until you are related to a sitting Supreme Court justice: It will be not you.
The lesson we are learning from the new scandals at the high court go way beyond “ethics” reform. This is no longer an ethics problem. This is a democracy reform problem, and it signals first and foremost an effort to deform democracy to serve the Harlan Crows and the Leonard Leos of the world. It also signals a view of democracy in which they will determine whose private life is private and who are the “gossips.” (You may still know them as “journalists.”)
Right, let’s replace the social safety net with crony capitalism. That’s not generosity, that’s selfishness.
Trump was found guilty of sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll, but keep in mind that this was a civil trial, not a criminal case, so he can’t be punished with jail time, only a fine. A $5 million fine. It will do nothing.
His audience of gullible authoritarian morons won’t care.
He’s going to continue his run for the presidency.
The media will continue to treat him as a serious politician, and court his approval.
It’s a moral victory, but Republicans don’t care about morality.
Welcome!
(WARNING! Ghastly scenes of carnivores butchering animals ahead!)
Thanks to Akira MacKenzie for dropping this horror into a vegetarian’s comment section (it’s OK, I’m a biologist, I’ve done and seen worse.)
I should show this video to all the new students next year and let them know where the college president’s expertise lies.
I have realized that the way I raise spiders, in a plastic container with a 2-dimensional wooden frame assembled from coffee stirrers and hot glue, means that the spiders build cobwebs constrained to only 2 dimensions. Now I’m thinking it would be easier to study the rules they use to make these networks. Hmm…another student project?
This photo was shot with my iPhone. I think I could get something better with my Canon R and a lens opened wide, to f/1.4 or thereabouts, and a dark background set way back and out of focus. I may have to do some photography experiments.
See that guy draped with ammo for his gun? That’s Bryan Slaton, a Republican slimeball from Texas, who committed an act that finally got him ousted from the legislature.
A Republican Texas state lawmaker who once proposed to ban children from attending drag shows to supposedly shield them from being groomed for abuse has resigned after he was found to have engaged in inappopriate sexual conduct with a 19-year-old intern.
Bryan Slaton, 45, resigned Monday while facing mounting calls from the state’s Republican party and conservative groups to step down. A state House investigation last week determined that he supplied alcohol to the intern and another young staffer, had sex with the intern after she had become intoxicated, and later showed her a threatening email while saying everything would be fine if she kept quiet about the encounter.
He is not a nice man.
Slaton, who has called for abortion to be a capital offense, had unprotected sex with the young woman and procured Plan B pregnancy-prevention medication the next morning, according to a friend of hers.
By capital offense, of course, he means the woman ought to be executed, not the man who gave her Plan B to protect himself. In fact, he would probably find it useful to have his victims terminated the morning after.
Wait until you get a load of Slaton’s defense…
Proud East Texan Slaton, whose website credits him as having “values and principles that resemble(represent) the great people of East Texas,” (a designation with which the people of East Texas may choose to decline), has not expressed contrition for his acts. His lawyer instead said that “the complaints should be dismissed because the behavior occurred in Slaton’s Austin residence, not the workplace.”
Right. Rape is perfectly fine if you do it in the home you share with your wife and young child. And would you believe he is a devout Christian who has been fulsomely praised for his faith?
Born in Mineola, Texas, Bryan Slaton is a proud East Texan with values and principles that resemble(represent) the great people of East Texas. These values were formed as he grew up regularly participating in church and family gatherings. Bryan attended Ouachita Baptist University, where he earned a double major in Youth Ministry / Speech Communication. He then attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and earned a Masters of Divinity with Biblical Languages. He served in the ministry as a Youth and Family Minister for 13 years.
Man, I look at that guy’s history, his record in office, his consistent sanctimony, and I think…that man’s a monster, I wouldn’t let my children anywhere near him. I bet the Texas lege is packed full of creatures exactly like him.
That’s a question nobody bothered to ask, until now. Oz lost hard to Fetterman in his senate campaign, and turned himself into a standing joke with his bizarrely out-of-touch efforts to find common ground with Pennsylvanians, despite being from New Jersey. So what is he up to now? He seems to have abandoned Pennsylvania and any political aspirations, and is trying to resume his medical grift.
In running a polarizing political campaign, Oz risked all of that. Now, it appears he’s trying to get it back.
Indeed, after the election, reports emerged that Oz attempted to restart his daytime show, which ended in January 2022, before he kicked off his Senate bid. But his jaunt into politics soiled his marketability with a mainstream audience.
Perhaps more importantly, his Senate run entailed months of scrutiny from the press, and Oz’s opponents, dissecting his more dubious medical claims and business practices, tarnishing his reputation further.
All 13 seasons of his show were also produced by Winfrey’s Harpo Productions. Winfrey endorsed Fetterman in November.
He’s still a big joke, and his social media presence is permanently stained.
But even as Oz attempts to pivot back into the medical personality that built his fortune, onlookers aren’t always so receptive. While he still boasts fans in the comment sections who’ve lauded his semi-return to public life, many are still trolling the once-candidate with the same jokes that hung over his Senate run.
None of that will hurt his money-making con, though. He’s spending a lot of time in Florida nowadays, where he can fleece the MAGA sheep. One of the goals of the pseudoscience scam is to identify a ripe crop of gullible rubes, and his campaign did successfully accomplish that.
The president of the University of Minnesota, Joan Gabel, has decided to leave her $700,000/year position to get paid even more somewhere else. And no one wept.
However, now we begin the dance to hire a new overpaid administrator, and the first step is to hire an interim president for a year or so while we spend a lot of money wooing someone new. The Board of Regents presented us with a list of candidates, and I looked over that list with a cynical eye for the worst possible candidate, and predicted which one the regents would pick. Of course I was dead on.
The University of Minnesota Board of Regents on Monday picked former Hormel Foods CEO Jeff Ettinger to serve as interim president.
Ettinger is expected lead the U on a temporary basis while the Board of Regents searches for a new permanent president. The board looked for candidates for an interim who would not seek the position permanently.
Ten of the 12 board members voted for Ettinger, including Regent Mary Davenport.
“Ettinger is somebody from the outside, from a different point of view, a different walk in life who comes into higher education with some base knowledge, but brings something bigger,” Davenport said.
How could I know this was coming? Because I know our regents, and I just scanned the list for the businessman with no personal knowledge of academia.
Ettinger, who has a law degree, had the least amount of academic experience of the four finalists.
He told the board that his experience leading Hormel will translate well to the university.
Right. Hormel. The company that churns out processed meat, like Spam. Just like the university churns out meat for capitalism?
We’ll be rid of him soon enough, but we’re going to continue to be saddled with this inappropriate Board of Regents forever, and they’re going to pick the next president.
Maybe I’m being unfair. We just got a letter from the president of the board of regents, further explaining his background and experience.
Previously, he was the chief executive officer of the Hormel Foods Corporation in Austin, MN from 2005 to 2016. He ascended to CEO after 16 years with the company in roles including corporate attorney, treasurer and president of Jennie-O Turkey Store, Inc. in Willmar, MN.
Oh. President of the Jennie-O Turkey Store, you say? Eminently qualified to run an academic institution then.
Last night, Mary and I went for a bit of a hike at the Wetlands Management Office — they have a trail through a big chunk of very soggy land, full of ducks.
(Yes, that’s what the untilled prairie grasslands look like this time of year.)
It does look a bit brown, but spring just started. Give it time. We did find some prairie pasqueflowers, the first flowers of the season.
We also found spiders, of course, but maybe I’ll throw a few of those photos in a separate article on Patreon, so this one can be spider-free.
