The eugenicists are back, and they’re having a big splendiferous conference in Austin, Texas this month. It’s called the Natalism Conference, and their theme is that women must have more babies, or we’ll go extinct. Which is not true, by the way — a population that has constant, unlimited growth is going to exceed the carrying capacity of the environment, and is going to crash hard. But OK, this is a conference about reproduction by people who don’t understand biology.
It’s a two day event, and they have 27 ‘speakers’. Actually, it’s a mob of sensationalist, narcissistic weirdos who are going to be disappointed to discover they aren’t the center of attention, and that they will be competing for the spotlight with even freakier people who will be capering and gibbering in their short slice of time on the stage. On the roster are:
Sargon of Akkad. I thought his 15 minutes were up a long time ago.
Razib Khan. Yeah, sorry, he’s got legit academic credentials, but he uses them to push race science.
Scott Yenor. If your mission is to get women to have more babies, why invite this guy who wants to deny education and voting rights to women…oh, wait, that tracks.
Robin Hanson. America’s Creepiest Economist.
Geoffrey Miller. Evolutionary Psychologist who loves the idea of selecting babies for their IQ.
Malcolm and Simone Collins. Silicon Valley neofascists.
Most of the people on the schedule are total unknowns to me, but I think it’s safe to assume that they’re all right-wing assholes. The Guardian has a more thorough breakdown, and it looks like my assumption is valid.
I must admit I’d like to see this guy perform. He adds a certain luster to the lineup.
Sadly, “babygravy9” is not his real name. He has been outed, and his actual legal name is Charles Cornish-Dale.
Cornish-Dale is a figurehead of the rightwing bodybuilding scene, and has been a keen promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. He had nevertheless lived with his mother in sleepy south Dorset during the entirety of his career as a rightwing influencer, according to Hope Not Hate.
Guy, you’ve got to get out of your mother’s basement if you hope to repopulate the world!
The idol of Musk and the orange one had a program named “Lebensborn”. It did not turn out to be a success. Varous other fuckers like Ceaucescu have also tried to boost population growth.
Anyone else look at the poster picture and wonder if she’s about to let go of the baby and send them flying through the air? Not to mention it looks like it was taken some time in the ’40s or ’50s, so it might not be the best choice for attracting young women. Which is a good thing from my perspective.
China isn’t doing so well either lately.
Their economy isn’t growing very fast and there is high unemployment among young adults.
As a result of that, their birth rate is very low at 1.20 children, below replacement of 2.1 children.
And it is likely to go even lower since the marriage rate has declined sharply, down 20% in a year.
That is likely to also happen in the USA this year and the following years.
We are now entering a Dark Era of chaos, uncertainty, likely economic decline, and a vicious dictatorship.
A lot of people are going to think long and hard before deciding to bring children into a dark and broken world.
I’m predicting that the US birth rate of 1.79, below replacement of 2.1 is going to go even lower in the next few years.
I remember them. Their 15 minutes of fame are long gone.
If anyone shouldn’t have children, it would be them.
What the Collins always neglect to say is that if you are going to have a breeder habit, it helps a lot if you have huge amounts of money.
The Collins finance their hobby with family money from his wealthy parents.
timgueguen @#2
That’s Jackie Kennedy.
That’s a photo of Jackie Kennedy with her daughter Caroline.
So is the child RFK Jr and does he land on his head?
That was the famous day at Hyannis when Jackie tried to hurl JFK Jr. into Vineyard Sound near where two Great Whites were seen eating a seal. The sharks passed him up but they did devour the first Secret Service agent who entered the water to rescue the child.
More on that story at news aggregator https://bsky.app/profile/continentaldivide.bsky.social
Which failed.
Ceausescu outlawed birth control and abortion because he decided he needed more Romanians.
The birth rate went up and then went right back down as people found ways around the laws. The main accomplishment was producing 500,00 or so orphans, most of whom had short and unhappy lives.
It did have a happy ending though.
The Romanian people eventually rose up and overthrew Ceausescu.
He and his wife were executed by a firing squad.
The christofascists are trying the same thing here in the USA.
They have already outlawed abortion in the Red states.
Project 2025 also wants to outlaw birth control.
People really hate to be forced to be breeders.
Project 2025 might want to think about what happened to Nicolae Ceausescu
That’s a pity – I was kinda attracted by a ‘baby-throwing’ competition. Seriously though, I agree with raven’s thoughts on children…
Its his recipe for cooking babies in a special type of gravy instead?
I wonder if his mother knows what Babygravy9 / Charles Cornish-Dale does and what she thinks of it?
It sounds like they want more white babies to maintain the illusion people like them are in the majority.
@13
They don’t need white babies for that, they have elections.
raven @10: See Romania Birth Rate 1950-2025. There was a blip of increased births for a few years (1964-1968, maybe 1969) and by 1970 the numbers were trending downwards again.
Sargon of Akkad, but not Prof. Landsberg the “quiet gentle rape” guy?
And is “Sargon” speaking under that name? If he’s gonna pretend to be all grown-up and sciencey, why not use his real name?
The number one thing that raises birth rates is hope. When people are optimistic about their would-be children’s future they are less hesitant about having a few more of them. So what are they doing to increase hope and optimism?
I’d completely forgotten that I’d written a little fanfic for them at the end of that comment thread. LOL@past me.
I assume he’ll be taking over the body of Captain Kirk and speaking through him.
Ironically, “Sargon” would not have fared well if he had lived in upper Mesopotamia during the middle bronze age. Despite high nativity the population would have been static due to the high mortality common to pre-modern urban centers. Especially as “medical care” consisted of magical talismans.
People back then were short due to poor nutrition, if they even lived to maturity. No bodybuilders to see.
These dudes make me think of the creepy, smiling aliens in the anime Dandadan who abduct humans to harvest their reproductive organs.
If they just churned out aryan-looking replicants like Rutger Hauer they would at least be cool in a 1982s way.
Why isn’t that guy wearing a bra with those boobs? They must hurt!
That picture isn’t Charles Cornish-Dale, aka Raw Egg Naturalist (REN). Per Wikipedia his online avatar features pictures of bodybuilder Vince Gironda who died in 1997. The actual Chuck seems more nebbish and geeky. There are some pictures of Chuck here if you care to bother.
Why is
babygravyjerkwad stealing a photo of Jack LaLanne?Right-wing body builders are generally known as gym-bros. They also usually have shriveled testes due to steroids, so…
No gravy at all.
#23: He looks like a standard issue scrawny incel!
#24 — Yes, like he spent way too many nights playing video games, smoking pot, drinking soda pop and eating junk food. (I had one of those in my life a few years ago. Fortunately he’s gotten over that.)
Just gonna drop this here; seems Coyne and Dawkins are more than happy to shit all over their “legacy” and Krauss? I’m just utterly embarrassed I bought his Star Trek book.
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/prominent-atheists-are-weaponizing
I’d lean more toward antinatalism over natalism to a certain extent, but that Schopenhauer was an antinatalist gives me pause. He was a bit of a dudebro before there was an internet. I haven’t kept up on Benatar. I think he once debated Jordan Peterson.
I expect anyone who is enthusiastic about consuming raw eggs would believe the recycled nonsense of carnivore diets that Vince Gironda was pushing decades ago.
Those physiques are not due to healthy eating habits. It is standard practice in training for bodybuilding competitions to restrict their diet to mostly protein to become ketonic, which is how they achieve such a low body fat.
Most people simply aren’t genetically predisposed to build that much muscle.
I am struck by the resemblance between Vince and Jack LaLanne on their respective book covers, right down to the white briefs. However, Jack was a huge proponent of healthy eating, juicing fruits and vegetables, and balanced nutrition. The right wing gym bros would shriek at the mere idea of consuming soymilk.
I hope for some natural selection to occur via salmonella or bird flu.
“#28 – I think he once debated Jordan Peterson.”
I remember 5 or 6 years ago when one of the former atheist darlings, Stephen Fry, debated alongside Jordan Fucking Peterson. On Peterson’s side.
I think the subject was political correctness run amok, the perennial gripe of the far right. Fry’s on board with that crap.
[StevoR, pretty sure babygravy refers to spooge]
PZ typified the speakers at this group grope as ‘competing for the spotlight with even freakier people who will be capering and gibbering’
It seemed to me that he also just described the sociopath felonious muskrat. That ‘creator’ of the swasticar is a twisted freak of a unique kind all by himself. I read ‘he’ just had a 14th kid. Of course he doesn’t want to defile himself by showing any love, passion or compassion: they are all products of IVF so he doesn’t have to deal with women!
This article is just one of hundreds that prove we are caught in a country that is being run as a freak show.
Most of our organization liked the idea of ZPG (zero population growth). You can have a couple of kids, just don’t breed like morons. We also like the idea of focusing on quality instead of quantity.
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/natal-conference-austin-texas-eugenics
On the one hand, a constantly growing population has obvious resource issues.
On the other hand, it would provide a ready pool of desperate people so I do see why our capitalist overlords would like the idea.
But on the gripping hand, there’s absolutely no reason why any of the rest of us would go along with it and forcing the issue seems unlikely to get them anywhere.
For a sci-fi account of why no one wants a constantly increasing population, I recommend the half-century old novel The Mote in God’s Eye (wikipedia.org). Although please keep in mind that even that story is a simplification of the sorts of problems constant population growth would entail. The problems are iterative because they build on each other and feed into each other. As a quick example, too much population feeds into disease feeds into deaths of needed workers feeds into extra shortages and malfunctions feeds into more deaths feeds into… you get the idea.
Ah yes, “The Mote in God’s Eye,” dealing with a species for whom birth-control was physiologically impossible.
For one dealing with humans,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuf_Voyaging#%22Loaves_and_Fishes%22
&
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuf_Voyaging#%22Manna_from_Heaven%22
(One of my favourite books, not like the turgid stuff he wrote thereafter)
Dude’s got a psionically-enhanced cat! What could possibly go wrong?
[OT]
You evidently are learned in the lore, RB.
Mind you, Tuf held all cats have a touch of psi.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TufVoyaging)