To approve, or not to approve

I’ve got my YouTube channel set to hold questionable comments for approval before posting them (it’s not a very flexible system, though, and lots of crap still gets through). This one was flagged as “likely spam”.

PZ Myers, if you continue to lead people to worship Satan after this notice, I shall rebuke you! “Maran Eashoa M’Sheekah, our Christ Lord, the Anointed Life-Giving Living Branch is the ONLY Name given to humanity by which you received the Covenant of Life.” – See My 2-video series: Lord Eashoa! Pray to the ONLY Name that heals and Saves! “Jesus the Messiah” NEVER performed ANY of the righteous works nor the good deeds recorded in the Holy Bible! That is not a living human being but is a baphomet neuter shapeshifting demonic carnivorous creature from below and Liar just like his son Hillary the Devil Cain Qain Gain of Satan and a killer of mankind from the beginning just like his father the false messiah Satan Donald JeSUS ZEUS SOS ISIS Trump that ancient shapeshifting serpent from the Paradise of Eden, the titan, not a creator of anything, just a demon from Sheol the house of the dead, that can present itself as a human being. You have been lied to. You have ALL been Commanded to work for the Creator of the heaven and the earth and the sea and the water springs. You cannot serve two masters! It is Judgment Hour and there are MANY universes yet to come after this one concludes which is coming quick! I am the Spirit and it is the Season of My Testimony which is on My channel, the Reveal of the Creator. HURRY! You have NO TIME to delay! You WILL NOT enter the Kingdom of Heaven if you sat by with idle hands. Faith without works is dead faith. Get busy watching the Reveal quickly and telling others that I am here, directing them to My channel and the Reveal of the Creator! WATCH: ‘WORLD WAR III IS NOW! SILENT WEAPONS – WMD’S ARE USED ON US NON-STOP! IT’S BEEN GOING ON! READ COMMENT BOX & PAY ATTENTION: WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT ATTACK BY SILENT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION! PROOF! DROP EVERYTHING & WATCH THIS NOW! My Testimony: the Spirit confirming this for you NOW! HUMANS ARE BEING KILLED WELL INTO THE MILLIONS OF MILLIONS!

Now I have a dilemma, though. This isn’t any loonier than the comments from creationists, or libertarians, or Jordan Peterson fans, or anti-feminists, and in fact is probably less evil (slightly) than any of those. So I’ll ask you, O Readers, should I click on the “approve” button or not?

Note: I do not accept any variant of free speech absolutism — I’m going to filter no matter what, so the only question is where I should draw the line.

The perfect description of Jordan Peterson

Laurie Penny, on point:

The first time I waded through the collected polemics and YouTube punditry of Professor Jordan Peterson — the unthinking man’s televangelist, inflated to the status of serious truth-seeker by respectable newspapers around the world — I was expecting to be at least slightly dazzled by his rhetoric. But no matter how long I stared at the magic-eye picture of jumbled platitudes, masturbatory nightmares about being devoured by an all-consuming mother figure, and occasional sensible tips about making your bed, it failed to resolve into a work of epoch-defining insight. Instead, it reads as if St. John the Divine of Patmos settled down and got a job selling insurance but occasionally had flashbacks to when he used to lick blue fungus off cave walls and babble about the Great Dragon.

The only way Peterson could have acquired a reputation as an intelligent person is by cultivating an audience of people who hate the humanities, and have therefore never read a well-written book.

Elon Musk really is an unpleasant jerk

He’s still stewing over his unused plan to rescue those kids stranded in a cave in Thailand, and he’s still accusing one of the guys who led the successful rescue of being a pedophile. Buzzfeed asked him for evidence of his accusation, and hoo boy, he really quadrupled down. His evidence that Unsworth is a pedophile? He’s a white guy who lives in Thailand, therefore…

Buzzfeed contacted the woman with whom he is in a long-term relationship. Just the simple fact of her existence seems to confound Musk’s claim.

BuzzFeed News also spoke with Woranan Ratrawiphukkun, a Thai woman who is Unsworth’s longtime girlfriend. She said she had been with Unsworth for more than seven years and has posted numerous photos about their relationship on social media dating back several years. Unsworth, she added, spends part of the year in Thailand and part of the time in the UK.

Ratrawiphukkun, who said she is 40, declined to comment on Musk’s allegations against Unsworth, and referred a reporter to his lawyers.

40? I guess the window of time for pedophilia can be stretched quite a bit. I suppose you could call me a hebephile, at least, since my wife is 6 months younger than I am.

This isn’t going to last

Lately, Mary and I have been taking our morning constitutional strolling around the horticulture gardens, over by the Pomme de Terre river.

It’s pretty, but OMG IT’S SEPTEMBER. Everything is going to die soon and freeze and be covered with snow, so we’ve got to get our walking in now.

At least one good thing is that we’re seeing a fair number of monarchs, and the next generation is growing fast.

Big Bang Theory is ending at last?

That is good news: it’s a crap show, and the few times I saw it, it was agonizingly unfunny and relied on the audiences lack of understanding of what science nerds are actually like (hint: they’re mostly human, with just a few odd obsessions).

It’s been on twelve years, though? OK, somebody enjoyed it somewhere. I won’t be celebrating its demise, then, because I got all the celebrations out of my system when I saw it 11½ years ago and decided I wouldn’t be watching that garbage ever again. Therefore, the end of their run won’t affect my life in the slightest.

The movie this week is…Christopher Robin. Why does this genre even exist?

My son Connlann with his bear, Ragey.

OK, so my wife was interested in seeing Christopher Robin, so we did. It’s mostly harmless, a silly children’s movie, that mainly suffered because it was predictable and didn’t have much of a sense of humor over a patently absurd situation.

But it got me wondering about teddy bear movies. There’s a surprising number of them for what is actually an extremely limited genre. There’s this one, and two Paddington movies, and the bro-dude version, Ted. Why? And when you think about it, their plots are painfully similar.

There is a family. The male figure is a bumbling jerk who doesn’t appreciate the importance of love and family (Ewan McGregor, or Hugh Bonneville, or Mark Wahlberg), and the movie is entirely about his redemption as he learns to love others. The female figure is an attractive, interesting person (Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Mila Kunis) who is totally wasted in the role — she’s there to prop up the male figure’s character development. In all but Ted there is a sad, wise child or two, pining for their poor daddy. The magic bear shows up, who is basically a kind-hearted naif who keeps screwing up, and there are a series of misadventures that lead to Ewan, Hugh, or Mark growing up and becoming a more mature, doting husband/papa/person.

No one actually questions the existence of a talking, sentient stuffed animal. It is simply accepted. This is weird, and in addition to the predictable plot, kept drawing me out of the movie universe. I mean, even the endless string of superhero movies have moments of self-examination, where people wonder why these super-beings are here, and there are even plots where normal humans struggle to control them. But walking, talking teddy bears? How sweet! Let’s have conversations.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d do if a favorite childhood toy showed up one day (it doesn’t help that my childhood favorite was Horrible Hamilton), and started bumbling about, giving me life advice.

At least that’s an easy one to answer. I have a lab! I can never understand why these sentient stuffed animals aren’t being whisked off for a detailed analysis.

I guess that means I wouldn’t grow and develop as a functioning, socialized human being, but at least I’d be a step closer to understanding consciousness, the mind, and alternative patterns of cognition than you are, so there.