The line goes down?

I know absolutely nothing about stocks. My eyes glaze over if you try to explain the stock market to me. I could be wrong, but isn’t it bad when the line goes down?

I also suspect that it is bad when prices at the grocery store go up, as they’ve been doing lately.

I’ll try not to fall asleep if you explain to me what I’m getting wrong.

I did try to puzzle it out for myself, so I went to some site called Marketwatch to read some articles. This is what it looked like this morning.

I tried, but I got bored. Maybe I’m misunderstanding this, but it doesn’t look like good news for the stock market.

Oh no! Our school is failing!

We got another memo from the president of the University of Minnesota, Rebecca Cunningham. We’re failing!

I am writing to you today, as our Twin Cities campus is now the subject of two federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism: a U.S. Department of Education investigation and a pending U.S. Department of Justice task force campus visit. We also received a failing score on the Anti-Defamation League’s latest campus antisemitism report card.

This is a response to Trump’s search for reasons to punish every university. He doesn’t care about human rights, and neither does the ADL. This is not about antisemitism; it’s a right-wing policy to silence anyone opposing the genocide committed by Israel or promoting the rights of the Palestinian people. I’m sure there is antisemitism to be found on campus, because this is America and it’s simmering everywhere, but the university administration does not endorse it and it is not the majority view here. I support this part of the memo.

There is absolutely no place for antisemitism at the University of Minnesota. In accordance with our institutional values, we firmly and aggressively reject any and all forms of hatred directed toward members of our Jewish community.

Good. That’s official. But what we’re witnessing is a conflation of opposing the actions of the state of Israel with antisemitism, and we have to also defend the right or our students and faculty to oppose and protest the criminal actions of Israel.

The disappointing part of this memo is that it nowhere even mentions Palestinians or the policies of Israel — it just buries them under the label of “antisemitism”. I hope this isn’t their approach when the federal Trumpian investigators descend on campus. Be forthright: we defend the rights of both Jews and Palestinians to exist.

You know what’s interesting? A Holocaust scholar summarizes the antisemitism he witnessed in the White House.

A science rally!

I was in St. Paul, or transiting to and from St. Paul, all day yesterday for the grand #StandUpForScience rally. As you might expect for an event organized by science nerds, it was flawlessly executed: it started exactly at 3pm, had about 10 speakers, and finished precisely at 5pm. The speakers were all brief and to the point. We had several state legislators talk about the importance of science education and the contributions of science to our state’s economy, and several people with direct experience of the impact of Trump’s chaos — one young woman had just finished a post-doc and got a job with a state agency (the forest service, I think) the week after the election, and walked into a demoralized office where no one knew what was going to happen to them. She found out: she was fired 3 weeks after starting, with 2 hours notice.

Some people talked about social and economic justice, in particular, the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC), which I knew nothing about until yesterday. It’s a big incinerator which converts trash to energy, which is nice, but somehow it got located to the center of a district filled with low-income and minority residents. Funny how that happens.

Science and DEI are intertwined — so many first generation scientists were reliant on DEI initiatives to get their careers started. One speaker suggested a good question to ask critics of DEI: What, specifically, are they opposed to? Is it diversity, do they dislike people of color working in science and engineering? Is it equity, the idea of equal pay for equal work, do they think brown people should get less support? Or is it inclusion, the idea that minorities should be able to work shoulder to shoulder with existing, dominant groups? There’s no good answer to those kinds of questions, and they’re all just hiding behind an acronym, afraid to spell out what they actually want.

Another theme of speakers and participants was the raging inequality in this country. Mention the word “corporations” and you heard a chorus of “boos”. A lot of the signs people were waving targeted the wealthy and unfair tax laws, that the Trump regime was robbing science to make the rich richer. Everyone in this crowd hated billionaires in general and Elon Musk in particular. That guy is so desperate for attention and respect and popularity, and he has made himself the #1 enemy and object of contempt by scientists & engineers & teachers & health experts. Chalk that up to yet another tremendous failure by Musk the Incompetent.

It seems the greed of the wealthy in this country has inspired a lot of people to look favorably on communism and wealth redistribution and the social safety net and mutual aid. That’s going to backfire spectacularly on the upper class. This event sounded like a communist rally at times, good for them.

Also, I got to meet many fellow angry supporters of science, including commenter foolishleader who does have a spectacular octopus hat.

I’m looking forward to more Stand Up for Science events!

Some conservatives might be persuadable

Good news from Montana: the legislature was flooded with anti-trans laws, but they’ve all been defeated. They failed because a few eloquent trans advocates stood up and persuaded 29 Republicans to change course. Here’s one of the speeches, this one by Zooey Zephyr, with support by a Republican representative:

“Here I am again to rise on another bill targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, exasperated. “At its very core, drag is art. It is very beautiful art. It has a deep history in this country, and it is important to my community. You know, if you are a woman in this body wearing a suit today, you are in some way challenging gender norms that existed long ago… There were three-article-of-clothing laws 50 years ago that said if you wore three articles of clothing that were indicative of the opposite gender, they could stop you, arrest you… it was those laws that led to the police raiding an LGBTQ+ bar that led to the Stonewall riots, one of the most important civil rights moments in my community’s history,” she began.

“When the sponsor closed on this bill, he said, this bill is needed… and I quote his words… ‘because transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing.’ And I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish. I was proud within a month ago to have my son up in the gallery here. Many of you on the other side met him. When I go to walk him to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family. This is what these bills are trying to come after… not obscene shows in front of children, we have the Miller test for that, we have laws for that. This is a way to target the trans community, and that is in my opinion, and in the speaker’s own words.”

Then something even more remarkable happened: A Republican, Representative Sherry Essman, rose to defend Rep. Zephyr and chastised the bill’s sponsor. “I’m speaking as a parent and a grandmother. And I’m very emotional because I know the representative in seat 20 is also a parent. No matter what you think of that, she is doing her best to raise a child. I did my best to raise my children as I saw fit, and I’m taking it for granted that my children are going to raise my grandchildren as they see fit,” she began.

“Everybody in here talks about how important parental rights are. I want to tell you, in addition to parental rights, parental responsibility is also important. And if you can’t trust a decent parent to decide where and when their kids should see what, then we have a bigger problem,” she turned to parental rights and spoke about how people who claim those rights should vote against the bill.

And then, she closed by chastising the bill’s sponsor for bringing the bill, “Trust the parents to do what’s right, and stop these crazy bills that are a waste of time. They’re a waste of energy. We should be working on property tax relief and not doing this sort of business on the floor of this house and having to even talk about this.”

There’s more at the link. I also appreciate this criticism of weak Democrats.

At a time when anti-trans bills are sailing through red-state legislatures, many are left wondering how they can be stopped. Some Democrats, like Gavin Newsom, have chosen appeasement—standing alongside anti-trans hate leaders like Charlie Kirk instead of standing up for transgender people. But Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell offer a different path. As transgender lawmakers in a Republican-dominated government, they have shown that representation, relationships, and the power of speaking truth in hostile spaces can move hearts and minds. Their success is a reminder that even in the most challenging environments, refusing to back down can make a difference.

Another chickenshit Democrat

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California who also has aspirations to the presidency, has destroyed any chance he has of achieving that higher office, by creating a podcast.

The first guest on that podcast? Charlie Kirk. The unqualified white nationalist backed by far-right millionaires.

Aww hell no. I’m never going to support a candidate who gives air to evil lunatics like that.

Even worse…what did they talk about? They found common ground in their shared hatred of transgender athletes. It’s insane. Transgender kids participating in sports is a good thing that should not be of concern, and only bigots are furious at trans boys and girls. Especially since…

Newsweek also spoke to Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who told Newsweek that Save Women’s Sports, a leading voice in the bid to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports, identified only five transgender athletes competing on girls’ teams in school sports for grades K through 12.

Yes, that’s right. Not 5000, not 500, not even 50 – just five trans student-athletes. All of this legislation, work, lobbying and anger – is aimed at preventing a tiny handful of young people from playing school sports.

It shouldn’t matter whether there are 5 or 5 million — denying rights to any group of people is wrong. Newsom is just pandering to the perception that Americans all hate trans people.