Young Republicans, same as the Old Republicans

You’d think they’d learn. The Young Republicans had a signal chat where they thought everything was confidential among themselves, so they indulged themselves in profanity, misogyny, and racism while they were discussing their strategy for taking over the YR organization. Ha ha, it was leaked, and these unpleasant young men have been exposed. They were revealed to be repulsive people who hoped to be the future of the Republican party.

The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.

Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.

Read the linked article if you really want to know what they had to say. I can say that at least the organizer has “apologized” for the disgusting conversation.

“I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language found within the more than 28,000 messages of a private group chat that I created during my campaign to lead the Young Republicans,” he said. “While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored.”

Classic. He’s apologizing that people were offended, and further is suggesting that the logs were faked. He was just ridiculously bigoted, he’s been caught, and now he wants to conjure up some plausible denial.

Giunta was the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages — often encouraged or “liked” by other members.

When Luke Mosiman, the chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, asked if the New Yorkers in the chat were watching an NBA playoff game, Giunta responded, “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball.” Giunta elsewhere refers to Black people as “the watermelon people.”

Hendrix made a similar remark in July: “Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and kool aid with that?”

Hendrix was a communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach until Thursday. He also said in the chat that, despite political differences, he’s drawn to Missouri’s Young Republican organization because “Missouri doesn’t like f–s.”

They’ve all got the same old tired racist “jokes”. Cancel ’em all. Hendrix has already lost his position in Missouri, despite, hypothetically, Missourians not liking homosexuals.

Flush all their careers away for being racist, and the one thing that might condemn them in the eyes of their fellow Republicans, being tech-stupid. Future Republicans are expected to be racist and savvy about communications — fortunately, they all seem to be ignorant idiots.

The latest medical nonsense

Well. Now we have another cause of autism. Thanks, RFK jr!

There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they are given Tylenol, Kennedy stated during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

That man is just incredibly stupid. He doesn’t understand cause and effect, he doesn’t understand correlation, and he doesn’t understand that you shouldn’t make off-the-cuff remarks drawing unfounded conclusions.

One of the papers he claims support his conclusion is direct that it is a correlational study, and it doesn’t even look at tylenol use.

The 2013 study looked at circumcision rates in boys versus autism rates. The authors admitted that national and state averages may show correlation, not causation, and said their study may have mistakes, bias and confounding. “Circumcision practices are also tied to culture and religion, which also affect autism diagnoses and health care use,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News.

Another expert brings up a rather salient point.

“There is absolutely no studies establishing any causality,” Dr. Steven Abelowitz, founder and medical director of Ocean Pediatrics, told CBS News. “While some observational studies suggest possibly an association, there’s no studies (showing causality) — and the conclusion by any credible medical resource is agreeing that there’s no causal relationship between Tylenol, circumcisions or vaccines to autism.”
…
“We almost never, ever use Tylenol after circumcision,” Abelowitz said, adding he’s performed about 10,000 circumcisions across his 30 years of practice.

Fire that guy.

By the way, circumcision is a pointless cosmetic procedure that you shouldn’t do anyway, but not because it causes autism.

Not the prettiest jumping spider I’ve seen

I’m used to seeing spectacularly pretty Australasian jumping spiders, and this one, the genus Simaetha, isn’t exactly dazzling.

Australian representatives of the two extant Simaethina genera: A, C, E, Simaetha sp. (female); B, D, F, Simaethula sp. (female). Specimens are shown in dorsal view (A, B), lateral view (C, D) and frontal view (E, F). Scale bars: 0.5 mm (B, D, F), 1 mm (A, C, E).

This one, though, has the excuse that it’s between 11 and 16 million years old. It isn’t that old — I’d expect that the planet had lot of jumping spiders during the miocene — but it’s nice to seen an example from that period.

Simaetha sp. indet. (AM F.161027). Only known specimen: A, light microphotograph. B, scanning electron micrograph. C, morphological interpretation of light and electron micrographs. Abbreviations: LL, left leg; RR, right leg; AME, anterior median eye; PME, posterior median eye. Scale bars: 0.5 mm.

It’s also impressive that they could sort out what was what in the squashed bits of that fossil.

The things we do for our kids

I’m back! We went to Madison, Wisconsin for our granddaughter’s 7th birthday, and also for brats (vegetarian style) and cheese curds and the fall colors and Kwik-Trip and all that Wisconsin stuff, but also, unfortunately, for a 7 hour drive each way, which was not fun. It was worth it, though, we wish we could see our kids more often, but most likely we won’t be seeing any of our children for another year, since winter is about to clamp down and trap us at home for a while.

Next weekend, we have closer plans. The No Kings rally is taking place right here in Morris on Saturday. You know, that communist antifa plot? The administration has it’s own characterization of the event.

n criticizing the rallies, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government.

I guess we’ll be poor if we don’t have any kings.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated separately that the expected millions of attendees will be part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question (of) who’s funding it.

Except that we’ll be paid for protesting! Or will we? I didn’t get a check for the last one.

I don’t think it’s at all a question who’s funding it. Even far-right wackos have noticed some data.

The name, on its face, is unobjectionable, even vaguely noble: “No Kings.” Americans, after all, did declare independence from one. But the historical overtones here mask something more recent and considerably less authentic. For all its revolutionary rhetoric, the ‘No Kings’ protest movement is not a spontaneous uprising of civic-minded dissidents. It is a coordinated, well-funded, tightly stage-managed campaign, backed by nearly 200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks, many of which are directly tied to the Democratic Party’s power infrastructure. It operates not from the street, but from the spreadsheet.

200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks? Why, that sounds like a distributed grass roots network with many donors. The organization actually lists all their donors, and doesn’t pay protesters.

I didn’t use a spreadsheet to figure out that I have to oppose this president and his incompetent cronies. I’m doing it for my kids.

He wants us all to die

It’s my granddaughter’s birthday this weekend, so yesterday we spent 7 hours traveling all across Minnesota and Wisconsin, and boy are my knees sore. We’ve got a party to go to tomorrow.

He looks like death already

In more interesting news, David Gorski tears into RFK jr with his teeth — it’s transparently clear that RFK jr is rabidly anti-vax and the he’s definitely coming for all of your vaccines, since he’s now denying that they have any efficacy at all.

Let’s take a look at how RFK Jr. demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt in this video that he is, in fact, antivaccine. I will repeat what I’ve been saying for months now: RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines; he’s coming for all vaccines, in fact. It’s just that he’s strategic enough to know that he can’t do it all at once, which is why he purged the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replace the fired members with antivaxxers and the antivax-adjacent, only one of whom has any significant experience in public health or vaccine policy. Personally, I’ve been saying that the only thing that’s saved us (thus far) is the inexperience and incompetence of RFK Jr.’s ACIP. In the meantime, President Trump has embraced Andrew Wakefield’s old grift about separating the components of the MMR vaccine as somehow being “safer,” even as he talks about adding autism to the list of table injuries for the Vaccine Injury Compensation System, a move that would certainly bankrupt and destroy it.

Yes, things are grim out there.

Fortunately, my granddaughter has responsible parents who have kept her vaccination status up to date, which is why I get to go hang out with her and watch her open presents and celebrate her 7th birthday. It’s absolutely insane that we have a director of health and human services who is committed to killing young children with disease, while our Secretary of War favors more direct execution of children. This really is the death cult coming into fruition in our federal government.

Reminder: we have a podcast this afternoon!

Looks like we won’t have ol’ Jordan to kick around anymore

Jordan Peterson has been hospitalized with pneumonia and sepsis, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

The psychologist, author, and bottomless fountain of tears is currently hospitalized and suffering from pneumonia and sepsis, as well as a spate of neurological issues that have apparently left him unable to regulate his emotions.

His daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, took to X to give the world an update on her father’s health, describing his recovery as “slow and scary”, and admitting “we’re not entirely sure what’s going on”.

The stated cause of Peterson’s ongoing neurological and physical deterioration is SIRS (systemic inflammatory response syndrome) caused by mold exposure. This is apparently the result of decades of living with mold, though it was recently exacerbated by exposure to an especially moldy environment.

Mold can be sneaky and dangerous, but he’s been a godawful mess for years — when he sprang on the scene, he was already deranged, and he’s only gotten worse. The stint in Russia in an induced coma probably didn’t help either.

Here’s hoping he recovers, but that someone realizes he is mentally unhealthy and should be spending the rest of his life quietly resting at home slurping his soup and shaking his fist at the TV.

His daughter thinks demons are involved, but this is a case where an undigested bit of beef might play a bigger role.

I already hated Stephen Miller, but…

I hadn’t listened to this report on his history yet. Yeesh. He is and always been deeply racist — we’re talking cartoonish levels of racism. Just a repulsive shithouse pit of ugly ideas. Why is it that his appointment wasn’t a deal-breaker for Trump? How is he still allowed to whisper in Trump’s ear? Why hasn’t the Mainstream Media jumped on how problematic one of the president’s most important advisors is?

Group portrait for Saturday’s podish-sortacast

We have a podcast scheduled for Saturday at 4pm Central. We’re bloggers, so maybe you’re not familiar with what we look like, so here’s a portrait.

You’ll never guess which one is me.

The topic: in preparation for Halloween, we’ll be discussing what it is about scary stuff that we like. We’re partly inspired by this Ologies podcast on “What’s Creepy”, which is better than anything we can do, but we’ll try.

The illogical logic of Avi Loeb and the 3I/ATLAS clown show

Avi Loeb is playing games with his peculiar interpretation of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. He keeps suggesting that this interesting, carbon-rich, and very old rock is an artificial construct built by a distant civilization, that it is a probe sent to examine our solar system, and that it could be a “Trojan horse” that will do something, who knows what, when it arrives.

Reading some his justifications for that claim, I am forced to conclude that he is an idiot putting on a display to get attention.

Worse, he’s a bad scientist whoring irrational claims and calculations that he has to know are invalid. I am not an astronomer, but I do understand logic a little bit, and seeing him derive extravagant conclusions from mundane observations hurts, especially since he’s using them to obscure the really interesting (and entirely natural) interpretations of the data.

For instance, he’s on the record for inferring the probability that 3I/ATLAS is an alien space probe on the basis of “anomalies” that turn out to not be anomalous at all, just unique properties of an interstellar comet.

As of now, I assign a 30–40% likelihood that 3I/ATLAS does not have a fully natural origin, based on its seven anomalies that I listed here. This low-probability scenario includes the possibility of a black swan event akin to a Trojan Horse, where a technological object masquerades as a natural comet.

Show your work, Avi. How did you calculate that 30-40% likelihood? I think he got it by fumbling about in his rectum and pulling out a squishy number that he likes because it fits his presuppositions. There is nothing in his list of seven “anomalies” to warrant that degree of estimation. They aren’t even anomalies, he’s just looking at the brute facts of its existence and declaring that the details are improbable. Of course they are! It’s a unique object in space!

I tried looking at his list. I am unimpressed.

Anomalies that could be alleviated or explained away with upcoming data:

1. Size: The diameter of 3I/ATLAS is larger than 5 kilometers, making its minimum mass of 33 billion tons, larger by a factor of a thousand to a million than the mass of the second and first interstellar objects (as derived here).

OK, it has a size. That is not anomalous. Call me when you observe an object that is massless–that would be anomalous. I don’t see how finding that it has a mass of 33 billion tons makes it more likely to be artificial than if it had a mass of 3 billion tons or 333 billion tons.

I also don’t see how more data would explain away the mass.

It’s also a fuzzy blob far away and hard to resolve. The size is subject to revision, so how do you conclude anything from a measurement with so much variability?

Initial estimates suggested 3I/ATLAS might be up 20 kilometers (12 miles) across—very big for a comet—but most astronomers now think it is much smaller. “It’s probably somewhere in the range of one or two kilometers,” says John Noonan at Auburn University in Alabama. That would be somewhat comparable in size to our first two interstellar visitors: 1I/ʻOumuamua, which was discovered in 2017 and was up to about 400 meters (0.25 mile) long, and 2I/Borisov, which was found in 2019 and was about one kilometer (0.6 mile) wide.

It doesn’t matter — any number you attach to it will be used by Loeb to claim it is probably artificial.

2. Jet: The Hubble image of 3I/ATLAS showed a forward jet of scattered sunlight — 10 times longer than it is wide, pointing towards the Sun (as discussed here). A weak tail showed up only at the end of August (as reported here).

Yes? It’s apparently a carbon-rich object, and gasses are sublimating off of it and spewing in the direction of the heat source, the Sun, that is thawing them, making an anti-tail. How does that make it more likely that it is artificial? It has a chemical composition is what that tells me.

3. Unusual chemical composition: the plume of gas around 3I/ATLAS showed much more nickel than iron (as discussed here and here), as in industrial nickel alloys. Unlike solar system comets, the plume contained mostly carbon dioxide and not water (as reported here and here).

Note the dishonest trick he’s pulling here, comparing it to “industrial nickel alloys.” These are estimates of the composition of the comet made from the spectroscopy of the diffuse cloud of gas surrounding it, not a determination that it’s made of metal alloys.

It actually is an interesting difference — its composition differs from more familiar comets found in our solar system. That composition also seems to be changing over time, which is somewhat odd, but explainable.

To make sense of this mystery, scientists turned to chemistry — specifically, to organometallic compounds, which are molecules containing both metal atoms and carbon-based groups.

In particular, they looked at compounds called carbonyls: nickel tetracarbonyl (Ni(CO)₄) and iron pentacarbonyl (Fe(CO)₅). Both can form under cold, low-pressure conditions, like those found in the outer reaches of a protoplanetary disk — the birthplace of comets and planets alike.

These carbonyls are highly volatile, meaning they can sublimate (turn from solid to gas) at relatively low temperatures. Nickel tetracarbonyl is more volatile than its iron counterpart, meaning it will vaporize first as the comet warms up.

This neatly explained what the VLT was seeing. When 3I/ATLAS was still far from the sun, only nickel tetracarbonyl had begun to sublimate, filling the coma with nickel. As the comet drew closer, the temperature crossed the sublimation threshold for iron pentacarbonyl — and suddenly, iron began to appear. The Ni/Fe ratio plummeted, not because the amount of nickel was decreasing, but because iron was finally joining the show.

Now, though, somebody needs to explain to me how being composed of volatile organometallic compounds is a signature of artificial manufacture.

4. Polarization: the light from 3I/ATLAS showed extreme negative polarization (as reported here).

I read the paper, and I must admit, the topic is beyond me. It does say that 3I/ATLAS has distinct, unique polarization properties and that “Its polarimetric characteristics provide novel insights into the dust properties of interstellar objects, suggesting that ISOs may encompass a broader diversity than previously recognised,” but does not even come close to implying that this is a marker of artificiality.

Anomalies that will remain puzzling forever:

5. The trajectory of 3I/ATLAS is aligned with the ecliptic plane of planets around the Sun to within 5 degrees (0.2% likelihood), as discussed here.

It has a trajectory. That is not anomalous. Every object moving through space has one. Yes, this trajectory is roughly similar to the ecliptic plane, but so what? 3I/ATLAS is very old, between 3 and 14 billion years old, is Loeb suggesting that aliens aimed their space probe at a condensing protosystem before the planets existed in order to tour potential planets?

6. The arrival time of 3I/ATLAS was optimized to pass near Mars, Venus and Jupiter (0.005% likelihood), as discussed here.

“optimized”…such misleading language, implying intent behind its trajectory. Here’s what that trajectory looks like:

Ooooh. Does that look like a pre-planned course to you? It does to Avi Loeb.

7. The arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS is aligned to within 9 degrees with the “Wow! Signal” from August 15, 1977 (0.6% likelihood), as discussed here.

The “wow” signal was a brief, unexplained, unrepeated pulse of radio signal noise. It got SETI researchers very excited for a while, but there’s no reason to think it is a message from space aliens, and Loeb is making an exceptionally tenuous connection between it and 3I/ATLAS. A 9 degree difference is an immense difference in location at the astronomical distances we’re talking about.

You know, as an atheist I read far too much nonsense from religious apologists claiming to have proof of their god’s existence — bizarre non sequiturs about physical constants and numerological coincidences, collections of anecdotes that are supposed to add up to evidence, and a tiny set of permutations on the same old arguments that even in their best interpretations don’t make up a justification for their beliefs. Reading Avi Loeb’s work gave me a strong sense of deja vu. It’s the same thing! A good analysis of a phenomenon should lead one to a minimal conclusion, but everything Loeb does ends up supporting the remarkable interpretation that God Aliens exist, and they want to talk to you, and this tiny fragment of data is how they shout at you, Occam’s Razor be damned.

I’m going to say it: Loeb has gone batty, and all this noise he makes is nothing but a dedicated (and successful!) effort to get his name in the tabloids. He’s the Percival Lowell of our generation, a scientist who did good work but whose reputation was poisoned by his irrational pursuit of astronomical phantasms, the Martian canals in one case and this alien obsession in Loeb’s.