Dear god I hate this

This is terrible. All that graphics arts skill gone to waste as someone tries to illustrated something they don’t understand.

Evolution as a linear path towards a particular, narcissistic goal (of course, it’s all about us!) The implications of a teleological purpose. The self-centeredness. The trimming of diversity. Notice how everyone under genus Homo is stereotypically male — all the prior stages may have been masculine in the artist’s mind, too, but it’s hard to tell. This is going to fuel so many continued misconceptions.

At least the conclusion mentions that “Humans are still evolving,” but they should have shut up with that, rather than making predictions. Why should we all converge on a “‘Great Averaging’ where continuous, international mixing will create an average of all current physical differences”? Will drift and mutation stop? Will all population structures break down? Do chance and varied environmental pressures disappear, to favor one pattern of humans being “taller, more lightly built, and less aggressive with smaller brains”? Well, maybe the “smaller brains” is a reasonable extrapolation from our current experience.

I see the creator has “two Master of Science degrees (one in Geochemistry/Astrobiology, another in Biomedical Communications).” I can tell evolutionary biology wasn’t one of them.

I guess Dr Who was a documentary

No wonder Tucker Carlson fell for it — UFOs are like the Tardis.

The attorney told DailyMail.com that one alleged recovery, recounted to him by a supposed crash retrieval program insider, involved a 30ft saucer partially embedded in the earth, with some fantastical properties.

‘They tried to hook a bulldozer to it to pull it out. And it pulled out a shape like a pie slice, almost like it was part of the way it was constructed,’ Sheehan said.

‘When it came loose a couple feet, they stopped immediately. They didn’t want to destroy the integrity of the machine.

‘They had a guy go into it. He got in there, and it was as big as a football stadium. It was freaking him out and started making him feel nauseous, he was so disoriented because it was so gigantic inside.

‘It was the size of a football stadium, while the outside was only about 30 feet in diameter.’

Sheehan said that space was not the only warped dimension around the craft.

‘He staggered back out after being in there a couple of minutes, and outside it was four hours later,’ he said. ‘There was all kinds of time distortion and space distortion.’

Oh yeah. I’m convinced. It was in the Daily Mail!

The aliens took over Tucker Carlson’s brain!

Tucker Carlson started a new show on Twitter, of all places. It was ten minutes of Tucker in a barn spouting off conspiracy theories. He has already received a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News, saying he’s under a non-compete agreement.

It’s not going great, in other words.

Here’s his mission. He’s treading on Alex Jones’ toes!

What exactly happened on 9/11? Well, it’s still classified. How did Jeffrey Epstein make all that money. How did he die? How about JFK and so endlessly on.

Also, he’s more like an Art Bell wanna-be. His big story was this one:

Yesterday, for example, a former Air Force officer who worked for years in military intelligence came forward as a whistleblower to reveal that the U.S. government has physical evidence of crashed, non-human-made aircraft, as well as the bodies of the pilots who flew those aircraft.
…
It was clear he was telling the truth. In other words, UFOs are actually real and apparently so is extraterrestrial life. Now we know. In a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell, the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn’t.

He never did have a good handle on the truth.

Goodbye, Tucker. Even if you become popular again, it will be as a crackpot, a joke, a goofball on the fringe that everyone laughs at.

James Watt has been extremely deregulated

Most of you probably don’t remember James Watt. No, not that James Watt, famous 18th century Scottish engineer — you all know about him. I’m talking about James Watt, interior secretary under Reagan in the 1980s, notorious poltroon and anti-environmentalist. Those of us who lived through that era despised him.

Well, he’s dead now, so you don’t need to bother to look him up.

The dumbest way to secede

Minnesota Republicans must be desperately bored. They’ve been steamrolled this year, so they’re itching for something to do. Something…destructive and stupid. So one of them has come up with an idea he calls “The Rocks and Cows Act“.

Representative Matt Grossell (R – Clearbrook) along with fellow Greater Minnesota Representatives have introduced the Rocks and Cows Act. Members with districts along the affected borders have been especially supportive of this bill. This Legislation would create a State Boundary Adjustment Planning Commission to study and make recommendations on a pathway for North and South Dakota to annex desiring counties into their respective borders.

It’s a novel strategy for secession — we’ll let the border counties nibble at the idea, defecting one at a time to North and South Dakota. It would certainly generate an interesting western border for the state! Those are counties full of rural hicks and MAGAts, so they might even go for it. I notice they aren’t proposing that northern counties have the option to secede and join Canada, though.

Economic relief and hearing the voices of rural communities are important goals of this legislation. As taxes continue to raise and decision-making gets centralized around the metro many are looking for some independence. “We are standing up for the future of our families as Minnesota trends towards such extremes on tax and social policy.” Said Rep. Grossell on the motivation for leading the charge on the Rocks and Cows Act.

The economic argument is total nonsense. These are all lightly populated farm counties, and are basically revenue sinks for the state. They pay fewer taxes than the benefits they get from being associated with the rich counties on the east side.

The real game here is resentment of social policies — Minnesota respects gay and trans rights, and is protecting the right to abortion. That’s what the Republicans really hate. The Dakotas are nasty, conservative states with some of the most regressive policies in the country, so only a slimy troll would want to be part of that.

I notice that Grossell represents Clearwater county, which is not on the border (neither is Stevens county, where I live). He’s not going to disappear his constituents out from under his feet, and he’d probably rather not have to commute to work in Bismarck. Hey, you want to be a North Dakotan? Pack up and move there.

By the way, the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum (who?) has announced his candidacy for the presidency of the USA. He doesn’t stand a chance. He’s another negligible and over-confident nitwit rushing to join the early stampede of wacky nobodies trying to get some attention. He’s also a horrible person.

As governor of the state’s fourth-least populous state, he signed measures this year advancing conservative policies on culture war issues. They include prohibiting schools and government from requiring teachers and employees from referring to transgender people by their preferred pronouns, barring transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports, and banning abortion with few exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation, before most women know they are pregnant.

That’s what Grossell admires.

Lock him up!

Tuesday, at 3pm, Donald Trump will drag his sorry butt to a courtroom in Miami.

A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed. The charges include willful retention of national defense secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, which carry the potential of years in prison if Trump is found guilty.

Don’t get too excited. The cartoon above is from 2019. He’s been here before.