Long day of non-stop lab and class and grading and about to go to a student seminar, despite being despite being tired. One thought helps me get through days like this.
In six months, I’ll be retired.
I might drop dead a few days after that, but I’m going to get at least one day of no stress, no worries about classes in the next semester, and a half-century worth of anxieties will fade away. Probably to be replaced by a new flavor of anxieties.
There is a lot of stuff in the Epstein files that has been redacted out of the public eye, I guess. We’d been suspicious of Leon Botstein, the long-running (but now former) president of Bard College, and Jamie Raskin kept digging and unearthed some incriminating rot.
Documents in the Department of Justice’s Epstein files show that in May 2014, Epstein sent an aspiring young vocalist he’d been trafficking, called Jane Doe, to meet with Botstein, “ostensibly for him to assess her musical talents and provide her with educational guidance,” Raskin wrote. In a May 15, 2014, email to Epstein, Botstein asked, “Is [Jane Doe] for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.” The Department of Justice redacted Botstein’s official presidential email address in the publicly available file, but members of Congress were allowed to view the unredacted file at the DOJ, according to Raskin’s office.
That’s a dense paragraph. We learn that:
I’m wondering what aspirations a young vocalist might have had that were met by being sent by a rich sex trafficker to meet with a bald old man in a bow tie. We’ve also learned what advice she was getting.
But instead of helping her pursue her career, the lawmakers said in their letter, Epstein pressured her to take sex education and massage courses, and “employed” her while he was sexually abusing her.
This was an effective revelation.
The latest development appears to have triggered the immediate resignation of Botstein from all Bard-affiliated positions, including his professorship and roles in Bard’s music programs. Botstein had led the college for 50 years and only recently stepped down as president.
Fifty years too late. Botstein had made at least one trip to Epstein’s island and multiple trips to his New York townhouse, and we all know there’s only one reason to visit those places.
Every year, there’s a little freak-out from Seattle communities about spider season.
Seattle’s annual spider season has arrived, driven primarily by mature male giant house spiders actively searching for mates indoors during August and September.
We never noticed anything in particular about spiders in the fall when we lived there. I suspect it’s nothing but a media-fed frenzy that has little connection to reality.
It’s also not a Seattle thing. We get a surge in spider visibility in the fall, too, and it’s simply because some common spider species that live near humans are in frantic mating mode as the warm weather starts to go away. Relax.
I will say, though, that one spider-fact that’s special about Seattle is the swarms of cross spiders, these spectacular orb-weavers, that are everywhere. I remember them from when I was a kid. Or rather, maybe what’s special is that where I live now is totally lacking in Araneus diadematus. We’re in a weird hole in its range.
Sam Alito really hates gay and trans people, and logic. He has some twisted arguments.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the devout Catholic conservative who has long warned of animus against religion in America, says in a new book that he believes the court’s landmark decision extending marriage rights to same-sex couples was
perhaps the decisive point in our nation’s turn against religious liberty.
I don’t think “religious liberty” means what I think it means. For instance, I think we should allow Catholics to be Supreme Court justices, despite not being Catholic myself, and having the opinion that Catholicism has long defended odious practices. You see, I actually think that denying rights to citizens because I disagree with them is a bad thing, although I confess, Sam Alito is making me rethink that commitment to principle.
But do go on, Sam. Explain how other people’s secular principles does harm to your beliefs about religion.
In dissent from that ruling,he said in the 2018 address,I expressed my worry that equating the expression of certain views with bigotry — or, if you like, with dignitary harm — would drive believers out of public life.
But certain views
are bigotry — not all views, obviously, but when someone expresses a harmful bias, we should be able to recognize that it is bigotry. Holding bigoted opinions should be called out and condemned. Driving people who hold racist, or sexist, or homophobic views that do harm to a large cohort of citizens should lead to their ostracization.
Doesn’t the fact that a hoary old regressive bigot like Sam Alito can be the final arbiter of the law in this country tell you that we haven’t done enough to drive those kinds of believers out of high office, let alone public life?
Man, he looks suspiciously well-tanned and groomed for someone hospitalized for a few weeks
Gabe Poirot had a serious skateboarding accident, and was in a coma for 18 days. When he recovered (which wasn’t due to the intensive medical care he received — it was thanks to a lady praying over him), he translated the experience into a book and an appearance on the ever-credulous Fox News.
What a load of horseshit.
My first reaction was to see his description of the afterlife as evidence that he was making everything up. Yeah, sure, the sand and the trees and the wind were all constantly singing the praises of Jesus, and everything was Jesus-soaked. Babble Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
to appeal to the most gullible Christians.
Second reaction: boy, that wasn’t heaven, that sounds like Hell. You’re lucky you got out after 18 days…imagine an eternity in that fever dream.
Thirdly, it’s true — we created gods in our image. His Jesus is a homoerotic Republican authoritarian fantasy. It’s Jesus of Finland.
POIROT: Yeah. Now, with every single person I meet, I tell them of the love of Christ, and that He did it all for them, and He died and rose again.
And also, I love how, you know, all these other testimonies, they didn’t meet a female Jesus. They didn’t meet a soft or a passive Jesus. Jesus is a man.
And especially in America, He’s been misrepresented. And especially, even, you know, there are so many cultural things that present Him as if He is some just tolerant guy. It is not the Jesus I met. He’s a lion. But He’s not a lion angry against me. He is a lion angry for me. He is a Mustang on my behalf. He did it all for me.
MCENANY: And what did He look like when you saw Him?
POIROT: Pure fire. He was 5’11”, like 6 feet, yet as tall as eternity. Like an ocean of love. Yet His eyes were burning white and red at the same time. And, I mean, talk about testosterone, like a Mustang. I’m telling you, He’s the Lion of Judah, and there’s a roar within His voice.
Right. His Jesus is loaded with testosterone and is angry for white conservative men everywhere.
People fall for this nonsense?
A colleague found this lovely grass spider scampering about the hallways, and she brought it to me (this is a routine event every Fall). I happily took it and brought it home, in my left hand.
Then as I was leaving the science building, I spotted a lovely bold jumper on the glass door. Of course I caught it in my right hand.
I’m hurrying home with spiders in each hand, and when I got home, there was a zebra jumper waiting on the door. I thought about pulling a Darwin and popping one of them into my mouth so I could catch the third, but I didn’t want to traumatize any of the spiders, so the zebra jumper was let off, and is having a lovely time in the garden, where all of them eventually ended up.
We had some drama among the music faculty and students the other day. We had a stabbing.
According to the criminal complaint, police were called to the University of Minnesota Morris’s Humanity and Fine Arts building just after 4 p.m. on a report of a stabbing.
A witness led the officer to a room where the victim, identified as a percussion instructor at the school, was bleeding and suffering from an injury to the arm. The witness told police that the victim had come to his office with “blood everywhere” and identified Cusey as the suspect.
A student, Alexander William Cusey, had attacked one of our instructors for reasons that are unclear.
In the hospital, Cusey told the doctor that he was “trying to kill my percussion instructor” and that he “stabbed my pinky a little bit,” according to the complaint.
He also told an officer that the instructor was a “goodie two shoes” and described the stabbing as “thrilling” and “hilarious.”
Cusey allegedly added that he had had previous violent fantasies involving his parents and his high school.
I don’t recognize the student, but then he was working on the opposite side of campus. I don’t think he’s at all representative of our student body, and clearly has some issues.
At least I can say our administration responded decisively — Mr Cusey was immediately arrested, is currently in jail awaiting trial, and won’t be returning to campus.
Megyn Kelly. She’s hideous. She has a rotting, diseased brain behind that shiny façade.
MEGYN KELLY (HOST): No one will even consider the possibility that this woman made a decision to get it on with four men total, not seven, and enjoyed it because — I’m just going to be honest, she’s not the most attractive gal. She’s extremely beefy in her arms and her legs. She has a whole video online talking about her cankles. And she possibly enjoyed being admired. This is how women make these mistakes. Admired, wanted, some women even foolishly say loved by these guys at Cornell. But this is probably a first for her. She’s probably thrilled to be so admired because she clearly didn’t grow up the incredibly beautiful one.
I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m just trying to tell you the narrative that is likely to have occurred here, in my opinion. And why can’t we account for that possibility? That the girl who was never the most sought after suddenly had four guys who wanted to have sex with her. And she counted this, yeah, in her inebriated state, as a win and liked the feeling of being sexy and desired and wanted. It happens. Sorry, it does. And that’s why she kept saying yes.
Why do we have to go right to she’s a victim? Even she took weeks to get there. It wasn’t until they told her she couldn’t go to the party. We all know that. Right? This is so disempowering to all of womankind, to all of us, to our daughters. We are capable of making decisions. She made the decision to drink and then show up at a fraternity house at 11 o’clock.
Interesting. Megyn Kelly was repeatedly sexually harassed by the odious Roger Ailes and kept quiet about it for 10 years. From this we can infer that she was thrilled to be groped by this specimen.
Jim Bakker is dead. Remember him for his accomplishments.
Bakker was convicted after a six-week trial in federal court on all 24 fraud and conspiracy charges brought against him. Prosecutors said he defrauded followers of $158m by selling promises of lifetime annual vacations that he could not provide. They said he siphoned $3.7m to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included several homes, luxury cars, mink coats, diamonds, servants – and an air-conditioned dog house.
Religion really helps skim off $158 million. That’s its primary virtue.
His legacy? Buckets of freeze-dried, powdered apocalypse food to fuel the doomsday he experienced today.
Yikes. An anhydrous ammonia leak. Look at all the people fleeing!
That stuff will kill you, burning out your eyes and lungs. And it’s everywhere where agriculture is practiced. We’ve got tanks of it stored just outside of town, and whenever I’m stuck at a railroad crossing, I see the tank cars full of that stuff rolling by, and I wonder what I’d do if the train derailed right in front of me. Die, probably, painfully. I doubt that I could outrun the cloud of ammonia.
Who needs ghosts and witches and monsters when we’ve got modern industrial farming? Go ahead, read some accident reports to give yourself nightmares.
