News from the hinterlands of despair

I haven’t been sleeping at all well lately — that’s an understatement. I tend to go to bed at around 10 or 10:30 when I can’t even keep my eyes open, and then wake up around 2 or 3am and try by force of will to shut them, which usually doesn’t work at all. If I’m lucky I might fall back asleep around 4 to lie in restless semi-unconsciousness until the fornicating birds shrieking outside my window wake me back up as the sun rises.

Sometimes I just give up and pull up the iPad to read in bed for a while. That’s often a bad outcome — last night, I’m just browsing in the dark and come across “We Are Living in a Failed State”. It’s about time we noticed. I knew we were doomed when Ronald Reagan started spewing that “shining city on a hill” nonsense, which meant our leaders were lying to us and to themselves, and setting up a ridiculous fdcade to conceal real problems that needed real solutions, and worse, were actually all about building an intolerant theocratic state. But at least now in 2020, with disaster all around us, a few people are awake enough to tear down the false front.

Every paragraph in the article is a laser that burns away the propaganda our government has accreted around itself.

This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.

If the pandemic really is a kind of war, it’s the first to be fought on this soil in a century and a half. Invasion and occupation expose a society’s fault lines, exaggerating what goes unnoticed or accepted in peacetime, clarifying essential truths, raising the smell of buried rot.

The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the president’s conservative allies—were somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they weren’t actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face.

It’s not a perfect summary, though, because it omits one critical target. It fails to discuss the contribution our failed media is making to the problem. Rupert Murdoch is briefly mentioned in passing, but no analysis of American failure is complete without pinning media moguls to the dissecting tray and taking a scalpel to them. Our media is sensationalist and dishonest and backed up by the ruling class and their money; stories are only as good as the number of eyeballs and clicks they gather, which translates into advertiser money, which roots the media directly in filthy loam of capitalism.

For instance, right now the hot stories that dominate the media are tales of protesters descending on state capitols in their shiny $40,000 pickup trucks, waving guns and Confederate flags, and pretending to be true Workers, needing to have stay-at-home orders lifted so they can get back to work producing food and manufactured goods for the American People. Actually, they’re shady phonies who want to force service workers to get back into the hair salons and coffee shops to provide them with the luxuries they desire.

These events are sensationalized by the media by putting reporters into the midst of the mobs, where it looks like a mass movement. Step back a few feet, and you see them for what they are…small demonstrations by a scattering of 20 to 200 middle class nuts riled up by Fox News saying ignorant things. For context, think back to the Women’s Marches in 2017 — teeny-tiny Morris, Minnesota, population 5,000, had almost 300 people peacefully protesting in our streets, while the large cities had huge demonstrations of tens of thousands of people.

I don’t trust our media to recall events as far back as three years ago, let alone put current events in perspective.

But enough of the Atlantic, that middle of the road semi-liberal magazine for the comfortably middle-class, like me. You’d expect that kind of site to be full of horrified soft people. Let’s look at the Marine Corps Times, instead, where we can expect to find tough talk and gruff can-do assertiveness, right?

There we find “I’ve reported on war for years. I’m more afraid now than I’ve ever been.”.

For years I kept one eye on the hysteria and extremism that’s been brewing in America while I covered atrocities half a world away.

Now that I spend more time in the states covering the Rust Belt and Appalachia, I must admit: I’m more afraid now than I ever was in a war zone.

Let me be clear: I’m not afraid of being killed in a gun battle or bombing on American soil, although by the looks of some of those protesters with the semi-automatic, military-style weapons, they appear to be itching for armed insurrection. They may just be waiting for some supreme conspiracy theorist, like QAnon or the president, to give them the green light.

Warzone deaths, while horrible, can at least be instantaneous and painless.

Nowadays, I’m afraid that America’s demise, (not to mention my own), will be slow, agonizing and too much to bear.

The last four-plus years of U.S. happenings have been fraught with the kind of anti-intellectualism and hatred of “outsiders” I’ve seen peddled by inept, tinpot dictators the world over and those with cruel acumen to sustain their tyrannical rules.

I’ve seen some of what’s playing out in America in countries riddled with bullet holes and craters where suicide bombers drove into a crowded market. Before they were destroyed, some of them were pretty nice, stable places.

I’m afraid this hatred of reason and logic that pervades Trump’s daily televised rallies from the White House is just the beginning of our slow painful decay into one of those nations that “once was” much more than it is now.

I should have known. What I’ve seen of the American military, as filtered through my son’s perspective, is less macho swagger and more pragmatic planning for the worst. More cautious realism, at least as long as we don’t look at the higher echelons and the defense contractors (there’s another place where capitalism has poisoned the purpose of the military).

So far, this was great bedtime reading, just what I needed to make sure I wouldn’t get any sleep at all last night.

So I tried turning to the lighter side. David Futrelle is writing about…Andrew Anglin, Rape Gangs, Sex Slavery and Breeding Farms. Yeah, the Nazis are all excited about the prospect of a post-apocalyptic future in which true Aryans get to roam freely over the wasteland, killing the mud people and rounding up the women to work in breeding farms, all for the purposes of fun and to build an army of white men to kill Mexicans. He really hates Mexicans, for some reason which I don’t understand — all the Mexicans I’ve met have been lovely people. Meanwhile, white Americans are fantasizing about Aryan Rape Gangs — that’s what Anglin openly calls them — and enslaving white women.

It makes one almost wish that we had roaming gangs of warriors who would cut down anyone who calls themselves an “Aryan”, flaunts a swastika tattoo, or waves a Confederate flag. Or at least a Republic that openly condemn people who practice such antisocial, antihuman activities.

Oh, well. It was something after learning what horrible corruption and failure that our country has collapsed into to read something that says how much worse it could be. See! A ray of sunshine! We haven’t quite hit bottom yet!

CFI has learned nothing

After the embarrassment of firing Kavin Senapathy and removing all of her previous contributions, it finally got through to the board that that was unethical and they have restored her articles. This being CFI, though, they couldn’t let it go and sent out a memo insulting Senapathy and asserting that they were not a racist organization because they knew some brown people.

Gah.

So of course Senapathy has fired back.

Speaking of caricatures, they boast that they work alongside “a vast array” of non-white people. As someone who has been committed to learning about the legacies of white supremacy, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism over the past few years, I quickly saw the dehumanization in this statement — whether or not it was intentional, this is tokenism. Do not refer to minorities as “a vast array.” And do not parade associations with non-white people as if it’s praiseworthy. Period. (Not to mention that this is a gross exaggeration; they don’t actually work with many non-white folks.)

Where has CFI used its platform to expose these fallacies? How? Evidence suggests otherwise. For instance, CFI let the African Americans for Humanism domain expire. As I observed in Undark, their magazine Skeptical Inquirer published a one-off “race issue” with articles written exclusively by white men. Contrary to their claim that they are “committed to diversity and to bring more people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds into its community of secular people and skeptics” they have refused several generous and well-referenced attempts to convince them to take the basic step of adopting a formal Diversity & Inclusion policy.

Some of the influential white men who shape the policies of CFI get serious criticism.

Dawkins does not remotely confine his criticism of Islam to sexism, homophobia, or any other injustice that might plausibly demonstrate altruistic intent. Instead, it is often frivolous, gratuitous, and designed to insult rather than reform. Dawkins’ shallow argument that he isn’t stoking Islamophobia and racism because “Islam is not a race” is a reductionist and disingenuous argument that has been thoroughly refuted time and again. As a brown American who was raised Atheist, I know firsthand the effects of people like Dawkins labeling Islam as “evil” — Islam is not a race, but I’ve been called slurs due to the assumption that my brown skin and dark hair mean I could be Muslim. I can only imagine what it’s like to be a hijabi woman in America. Based on hate crimes against Muslims alone (and racist hate crimes that wrongly target non-Muslims, like the Sikh temple shooting), it’s clear that Islamophobia stokes racism. And it’s frankly nauseating that the so-called “Center for Inquiry” continues to defend this.

Then let’s get into the consequences of CFI’s long-term neglect of social justice issues. We’re in a crisis situation right now, where American racism has made the problems worse, and you would have thought a leading organization dedicated to scientific skepticism would appreciate the importance of the issues…but all they provide is a few token statements while firing one of the few writers they had who had taken race seriously.

We agree on one thing — scientific thinking is crucial during this pandemic. It’s too bad that CFI’s efforts to help address this pandemic will be hindered by its dire lack of understanding of how Black communities and other non-white communities in the U.S. were already been dealing with epidemic levels of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of other conditions, beginning at birth. They don’t try to understand the sociopolitical factors that will influence the development and deployment of treatment and prevention strategies, including vaccines. They haven’t begun to understand the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery, and the history of racist pseudoscience that’s alive and well today — a history that runs a direct line to how the pandemic has run its course. Gestures like Skeptical Inquirer deputy editor Ben Radford writing that “it’s important to recognize that the measures taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus in America and around the world — while necessary and effective — have taken a disproportionate toll on minorities” hardly make a dent.

CFI has simply lost all credibility.

If you thought eugenics was only an abstract notion…

You might want to look up Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist and general bigot, who wrote a piece for John Brockman’s Edge site on Chinese eugenics in which he’s practically drooling at the prospect of manipulating the human germ plasm. No, really, the West is doomed if we allow the Chinese to race ahead of us in practical eugenics!

Chinese eugenics will quickly become even more effective, given its massive investment in genomic research on human mental and physical traits. BGI-Shenzhen employs more than 4,000 researchers. It has far more “next-generation” DNA sequencers that anywhere else in the world, and is sequencing more than 50,000 genomes per year. It recently acquired the California firm Complete Genomics to become a major rival to Illumina.

The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of “preimplantation embryo selection” might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.

There is unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia, medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian Han ethno-state. Given what I understand of evolutionary behavior genetics, I expect—and hope—that they will succeed. The welfare and happiness of the world’s most populous country depends upon it.

Oh god. The high-decoupling.

First, sequencing DNA is not eugenics. Telling me how many genomes they sequence per year is not the same as telling me they have a eugenics program in operation. The Chinese government’s crackdown on He Jiankui suggests that they are a bit more hesitant than Miller imagines.

Second, the whole idea that they can get a 5-15 IQ point per generation increase is ludicrous. He’s postulating that a) the observed variation is entirely genetic, and b) that a ruthless pattern of selection is desirable and would have no unforeseen consequences. You can get equal, more equitable, and less disruptive effects by investing in better education. Note that IQ scores have been going upwards for the last century without the state choosing to cull the undesirables.

Third, the idea that IQ scores are a proxy for “competitiveness”, rather than the ability to do well on IQ tests, is a fallacious leap.

Fourth, why would you think eugenics would increase welfare and happiness? It would do the opposite for the majority of the population that lacks the arbitrary genetic markers they use for selection.

Fifth, he is an evolutionary psychologist, which means his understanding of “evolutionary behavior genetics” is feeble at best.

But he does imagine a country that tightly regulates its families on the basis of poorly understood DNA sequences is a “utopian ethno-state” that will increase the welfare and happiness of its citizens, which makes him a kind of third-rate villain in a dystopian SF novel.

If DNA data were as powerful as he imagines it is, though, don’t worry about the Chinese supermen overwhelming us. Comrade Geoffrey has done his part to sabotage the program by donating his DNA, corrupting the database with his genome rich mainly in ignorance and arrogance.

I would not last a day in prison

If you want to see what the capitalist ideal for America is, just look at our for-profit prisons. They exploit prisoners ruthlessly.

Last year, West Virginia contracted with a company, Global Tel Link (GTL), to provide free tablets to prisoners. These kinds of initiatives are rapidly becoming more popular, as states grapple with the legacy of four decades of tough-on-crime policies and renewed public calls for more rehabilitative prisons.

And it sounds great. Until inmates realize the company charges users every time they use the tablets, including 25 cents a page for emails and 3 cents a minute to read e-books. By that calculation, most inmates would end up paying about $15 for each novel or autobiography they attempt to read. To people who have little to no money, that’s not a benefit. That’s exploitation. The only beneficiary, aside from Global Tel Link, is West Virginia, which receives 5% of the profits.

I imagine some team of piggy middle-managers in a corporation that realizes they’ve got the capitalist ideal: captive customers who have to buy what you’re selling, in an environment where competition is not allowed, and they get to charge whatever they want for whatever service they offer. They go hog wild. Let’s charge them for reading! After a trivial investment to pay the ridiculous demands of authors and publishers for royalties, the greedy bastards, we can demand a reasonable recompense for allowing them to view a book.

What else can we charge them for? How about taking the Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness and cranking it up to 11?

Many prisons now ban in-person visits, then allow companies to charge $12.99 or more for video calls. Prison phone calls can cost up to $3.99 a minute. Prison shoes fall apart within weeks, and replacements are only available from a special catalog. Only sweatshirts are provided for the winter. Meals are nutritionally insufficient and, over time, must be supplemented to maintain good health.

All these necessities — shoes, jackets, phone calls, canned tuna from the commissary — rack up fees well above the market rate on the outside. But they often aren’t paid for by prisoners, who have little or no means to earn income. They are paid primarily by families who are often among our poorest. This hidden tax drives already vulnerable communities deeper into poverty and hopelessness.

Oh, yeah, let’s punish people by depriving them of their liberty and gouging every penny we can out of their families, and disincentivize that absurd idea of “rehabilitation”. Prison serves the leeches.

This company, Global Tel Link, calls itself the “Corrections Innovations Leader”. Their only innovations, though, involve coming up with new ways to suck profits out of the pockets of those on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. They see a poor person, they see someone they’ll have power over to steal their last dollar. This is their lying mission statement.

At GTL, our mission is to create impactful connections and provide industry-leading service. We give incarcerated individuals the ability to stay engaged with their support networks by making meaningful connections through our products and services.

If you work for GTL, I hope you are deeply ashamed. If you work for GTL, you’re probably not…because you have to lack a conscience to work for that soul-sucking evil company.

They really, really, really want to use racist slurs

Dennis Prager is upset that he “isn’t allowed” to use the n-word.

He’s wrong, though. There is no n-word police, anyone can use the term any time they want, there isn’t a gang of leftists waiting to kneecap you for saying those two syllables. Go ahead, say it, Dennis!

The only consequence is that it confirms you’re a racist. But then, wanting to say it is sufficient to affirm that, so mission accomplished, Dennis Prager.

Anyway, it’s just the strangest thing to desire.

Look what I’ve got…

Adam Rutherford, lovely gentleman that he is, sent me a review copy ahead of its release date in the US, so I’ve got a head start. It’s looking good so far, although I’m so overwhelmed with work this week I might be a little slow getting through it — I’m the biology coordinator this year, and we’re managing a faculty search this week — but once I’m done, I’ll post a more thorough review.

If you’d like to pre-order it and send a message to publishers that you value this kind of quality science content in contrast to the deluge of racist dreck we usually get, click on the book cover below.

Quite possibly the worst insult ever delivered

That poor woman. Heidi Klum was savagely abused.

Klum told us, “A lot of people got mad at me. I was called, for example, ‘a white woman.’”

I am reeling in shock. How dare anyone slander her by accusing her of have a light-skinned ancestry and certain female attributes. It’s cruel and vicious, possibly the worst thing you can ever say about anyone.

Except…she was at least spared the ignominy of being called a “white man”. Those guys are the worst. I may be one, but it would be mean to remind me of it.

Did this cruel, elaborate prank go too far?

Amazing. A couple of young men set up Katie Hopkins, going to extreme lengths to get her to accept a bogus award — flying her to Prague, booking a fancy hotel, hiring actors to play members of a committee — an award called the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, and she fell for it. I might fall for such a prank if someone were to pay me to travel, of course, but she was totally thrilled with the award. I was starting to feel sorry for her.

Then she gave her acceptance speech.

Ohmygod.

She deserves every scrap of mockery she gets.