A dismal season for movies

As usual, I’ve been running the projector for the local theater

Last night was the dull horror of Verity, a movie based on a potboiler by Colleen Hoover. It’s had a low level of attendance for the past week, but it does tap into an unusual audience: women’s book clubs. It’s fair that that audience should be served, and Hoover is apparently an extremely successful author, but it’s unfortunate that they are so poorly represented. The movie has a dark and twisty plot that bored me far too quickly, but it’s greatest flaw that its star is…Dakota Johnson. The woman cannot act. She spends the entire movie looking vaguely stunned, just as she does in every movie I’ve ever seen featuring her. Anne Hathaway is also in it, but she spends the first half imitating Johnson by playing a brain-damaged paralyzed accident victim.

We had two ticket-paying attendees last night.

The other movie playing last night was Heart of the Beast. It’s a dog movie. It also features Brad Pitt and an unbelievable plot. Brad is flying a private plane over the Alaskan wilderness with his loyal and brave military dog, when he has a massive heart attack and crashes his plane into a lake, 60 miles from civilization.

He has to dive deep into the frigid lake to salvage his camping supplies. He and the dog then have to hike through rugged terrain, fighting of the occasional grizzly bear and wolf pack, falling into a whitewater stream, breaking his arm, getting gnawed on by wolves, and, like Dakota Johnson, never changing his expression. Did I mention that the inciting incident was a massive heart attack? Rather than going into intensive care, he instead must stoically battle against a savage wilderness with his dog pal. It was a long slog for both Brad Pitt and the audience.

Attendance: 0.

I blame the movie studios. These are dull, formulaic movies that are also poorly marketed. I knew nothing about either before pushing the button to put them on the screen: Verity was dependent on the popularity of a book in a niche market, and Heart of the Beast was a movie about a dog, and that’s all you need to know (not that there was much deeper in it than that).

I think the one bright spot this time of year is the free Saturday matinees, when we show old, familiar spooky movies and make all our profit on popcorn and candy sales — and we also get an audience of appreciative families. Digging up old hits is a more productive use of the theater than showing the poor fare the studios are dumping on us.

And look! Today you can get firetruck rides!

Oppression works!

The Washington Post announces that the Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’.

Young teenagers are less likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual than they were a few years ago, according to a new analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The decline is particularly striking among ninth-grade girls, according to Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who published her analysis of the 2025 data on her Substack “Generation Tech.” In 2021, 30 percent of ninth-grade girls identified as lesbian or bisexual. Last year, 17 percent did.

“It really does look like a free fall,” Twenge said. “But what’s causing it is unclear.”

OK. I don’t have a prior commitment to how many ninth-grade girls would be lesbian or bisexual; I would hope that 100% of them are happy being whoever they want to be. It’s weird, though, that conservatives are pumping their fists at the news.

Online, conservative activists celebrated the news as a win brought on by the Donald Trump administration.

Amazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID, Terry Schilling, the head of the American Principles Project, wrote on X.

Wow, Terry, are you happy that more 15 year old girls are declaring themselves heterosexual? That’s kind of creepy. Also are you really cheering on cuts to education and USAID?

My first reaction was doubt: it’s in the Washington Post, Jeff Bezo’s bought and paid for propaganda outlet. I begin with some mistrust of that newspaper.

My second reaction was, the CDC? Really? The institution that has been savagely cut and politicized? I think the Republican hacks who have taken over would only allow information that favors conservative biases to be released. Last year the former head of vaccines there resigned over funding cuts and criticisms of the science by political apparatchiks. It’s not a happy place right now.

But at least the WaPo includes some more sober assessment.

Jody Herman, senior scholar at the Williams Institute, a research center at UCLA on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, questioned whether the data revealed a meaningful shift in behavior.

“The study doesn’t provide confidence intervals to determine whether the differences are actually significant,” she wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “The narrative around a decline in LGBT identity among youth has been around for a while now. We’ll continue to look at trends over time in our work, but the evidence provided so far for a decline leaves more questions than answers.”

But let’s assume the observation is accurate, that fewer ninth-grade girls identify as lesbian. The real question is why.

Are teenagers actually becoming straight again? That makes no sense. These are individuals who are in the process of discovering their sexuality; it’s not as if ten year olds were biased towards gayness and then ‘straightened up’ when they were 15. This is a shift in the proportion of a cohort. It’s more that a cohort that has always been shifting and changing are showing a gradual firming up of their commitment to heterosexuality, which has always been the case. I personally went from a general indifference to sex in early adolescence to a solid preference by the time I was in high school. This observation of percentages is not significant.

A better explanation is that we’re currently living in a state of intolerance and bigotry.

“They probably are just keeping it to themselves bc Republicans are fucking crazy,” was one theory posted to X.

“The chances are more likely that, rather than ‘becoming straight,’ people don’t feel as safe identifying themselves again,” came another.

I favor the “Republicans are fucking crazy” theory myself. This is not a good time to honestly express yourself, because the fucking crazy Republicans are running roughshod over schools, education, and science. Be safe. Keep your feelings close to your chest until you get a chance to shut these fools down. But don’t be afraid to be who you are in private.

Does he lie about everything?

The President is shit-talking Minnesota again. He really hates us.

The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.
Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Somali immigrants are a tiny minority here, the ones I’ve met have all been good citizens, and no, I can look out the window and read the local newspapers and see a generally small amount of Violence, Murder, and Mayhem. As for our governor, that’s just projection — we all know which executive is raking in billions from corruption, and who has handed out billions to his own children. I think the only person viewing Minnesotans as “weak and stupid” is the guy whose brownshirts were run out of town by our resistance.

Do MAGAs actually believe what’s coming out of Trump’s colon? I’m sure some of them do, but a lot are beginning to resist. Did you know that Ben Shapiro’s hack propaganda company, the Daily Wire, is trying to make a tasteless pro-ICE movie in Montana?

The film blends a fictionalized depiction of the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis in January with a narrative centered on armed shopkeepers defending a store from Antifa rioters, including dialogue in the script referencing “rooftop Koreans” firing from a grocery store roof.

The cinematic tension on set was quickly mirrored by real-world friction in downtown Livingston, where residents began staging demonstrations against the production over its controversial themes, unannounced gun-toting stunts and street closures disrupting local businesses and organizations.

There is no way they could make such a movie in Minnesota, so they’re filming in Montana…and Montanans are having none of it. I am aware that Montana citizens have a strong independent streak, but they also tend to be conservative, and they’re protesting ICE propaganda.

I will be interested to see how the Daily Wire can turn a scene involving black-clad masked men with guns against unarmed citizens into a heroic representation of ICE. Probably by lying a lot, like any Republican.

Counting down

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.

The Epstein mine isn’t tapped out yet

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:

  • Members of congress have access to the unredacted Epstein files. Wouldn’t this be better managed by journalists?
  • Botstein was actively involved in sex trafficking.
  • Botstein regarded students as potentially “for him”. The attitude is horrifying.
  • In 2014, Epstein was a convicted sex offender, and Botstein should not have had the power to recruit students, so what was the nature of the “guidance” he was offering?

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.

Sorry, Seattle, you’re not special

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.

Discriminating against bigots is bigotry!

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?

A man “died” and saw the afterlife…and it was Fox News

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?