That’s beautiful, man

I might have to become a fan of the boxer, Mike Tyson. He has an ugly history, and now he’s going to be in a match with that jumped-up YouTube influencer, Jake Paul (it’s a fake match, with shortened rounds and padded gloves, but the prize money is real, tens of millions of dollars), and none of that is worthy of respect, but he had an interview with a young kid who asked him what his legacy would be. It sure won’t be boxing with Jake Paul, but this answer was excellent.

I don’t know. I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy.’ I just think that’s another word for ego. Legacy … means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through.
…
I’m going to die, and it’s going to be over. Who cares about legacy after that? What a big ego. So I’m going to die — I want people to think that I’m this, I’m great? No, we’re nothing. We are dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.

Can you really imagine somebody saying, ‘I want my legacy to be this or that’? You’re dead. You really want them to think about you? What’s the audacity to think, ‘I want people to think about me when I’m gone’? Who the fuck cares about me when I’m gone? My kids, maybe, my grandkids. But who the fuck cares.

That is such a strong, honest reply, and I love it. It’s an anti-narcissist answer, and I wish more people would share it. I don’t know if Tyson is an atheist, but that kind of stoicism/nihilism is the kind of atheism I favor.

They just gravitate to me, I guess

I stepped out of my house and started walking to work, when I noticed a dot moving out of the corner of my eye. There was a tiny spider dangling from my eyebrow! This is a bit surprising, since it’s a bit windy and cool here, but maybe they were desperate for shelter. I walked all the way from my house to the lab with a tiny spider on a silken thread hanging from my hand — I might have looked a bit odd. But I made it all the way and snapped their picture.

Isn’t that an adorable little orb-weaver? Now I’m not sure what to do with them — the outside is a bit inhospitable. I might have to adopt them and raise them in the lab.

KITTY!

External appearance of three-week-old heads of large felid cubs, right lateral view: (A) Homotherium latidens (Owen, 1846), specimen DMF AS RS, no. Met-20-1, frozen mummy, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Indigirka River basin, Badyarikha River; Upper Pleistocene

I understand that the internet likes cats, so here’s one, a 30,000 year old mummified sabre-toothed kitten.

It has a distinctively large mouth and massive neck muscles, but the canine teeth haven’t elongated yet — they say the age is equivalent to a 3 week old lion cub. I would guess that sabre-tooth canines might interfere with nursing.

The frozen mummy of Homotherium latidens (Owen, 1846), specimen DMF AS RS, no. Met-20-1, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Indigirka River basin, Badyarikha River; Upper Pleistocene: (A) external appearance; (B) skeleton, CT-scan, dorsal view.

It has toe-beans!

Alex Jones’ legacy is in good hands

You may recall that InfoWars’ stuff was going to be auctioned off. The auction is over! Guess who won?

The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’s Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion US in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday.

That’s, ummm, interesting. But what are they going to do with it all? I mean, old videos of Alex Jones raving about gay frogs are intrinsically comedic, but how do you use it on a satire site? I’d also be concerned that a lot of it is ugly and horrifying — children died at Sandy Hook — and I don’t see how to use it for humorous effect.

OK, the Onion does have one amusing article about their purchase. They’re going to need a lot more jokes, though.

At least, some of the phenomena trying to kill us are beautiful

What a beautiful photo!

January 12, 2020, Philippines: Lightning streak over Batangas as Taal Volcano continue its eruption on Sunday evening. Phivolcs reminded the public that the volcano’s main crater was ”strictly off limits” due to sudden steam explosions and the possible release of high concentrations of lethal volcanic gases. Residents of towns near Taal Volcano are being taken to safer ground following increasing volcanic activity, a disaster-mitigation official said. (Credit Image: © Domcar C. Lagto/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire)

What a disaster! Nature is contemplating the consequences of a major volcanic eruption.

Geological evidence from volcanic deposits over the past 60,000 years suggests a 1-in-6 probability of a massive eruption occurring this century.

If that happened in the next 5 years, the costs would be colossal. In an extreme scenario, the economic impacts would cost more than US$3.6 trillion in the first year and $1.2 trillion more over subsequent years, owing to the effects of extreme weather, reduced crop yields and food instability, according to the insurance and reinsurance market Lloyd’s of London, which assessed these risks in May.

The article discusses the effect of global warming, and how climate change may worsen the effects of a major eruption. We seem to be doing exactly what would amplify the consequences.

Modelling of past eruptions can tell us a lot. But, in a hotter world, many physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere, in oceans and on land will also change. For example, global warming heats the lower atmosphere and cools the stratosphere. Alteration of atmospheric layers will affect how volcanic plumes spread and how high they reach.

Changes in circulation patterns will also affect how aerosols spread and grow. For example, faster air flows from the tropics to higher latitudes, which are already observed as a consequence of warming, hamper the coagulation of aerosols from eruptions in the tropics. Smaller aerosols scatter sunlight more efficiently and cool Earth’s surface more.

The oceans will also be affected. Global warming increases ocean stratification that then acts as a barrier to mixing of deep and shallow waters. Volcanic eruptions might thus disproportionately cool the upper layers of water and the air masses above the ocean.

Are we prepared for the consequences? No, we are not prepared. I welcome the appearance of volcano-deniers joining the climate-change-deniers to make everything a little bit worse.

As well as happening in a warmer climate, the next Tambora-like eruption will occur in a more interconnected world that supports eight times the population of 1815. Agricultural systems would suddenly face lower levels of sunlight, cooler weather and altered moisture patterns — all in close succession. Outsized societal impacts might follow.

For example, the 1991 Pinatubo eruption resulted in a 9% reduction in global maize (corn) yields and a 5% reduction in wheat, rice and soya-bean production. Crop failures from a more massive eruption would hit global breadbasket regions simultaneously — China, the United States, India, Russia and Brazil, which together produce most of the world’s wheat, maize, rice and soya beans. Loss of harvests would disrupt global food security and supply chains, potentially triggering unrest, conflict and migration.

One bit of optimistic news: I immediately thought of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

Currently, the annual probability of a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone is estimated to be around 0.001 percent, which Stelten said is “probably an overestimate for the short term.”

There are no signs of an impending eruption, as the magmatic system beneath Yellowstone is mostly solid.

Whew. Nice to know one catastrophe is unlikely, we’ve had enough of them lately.

Government by spite

I see a tiny bit of hope for the future. Donald Trump is making all kinds of wild appointments right now, giving us a peek at the United States government for the next four years.

  • Tulsi Gabbard, director of intelligence
  • Matt Gaetz, attorney general
  • Pete Hegseth, defense secretary
  • No one, Department of Education (it will be dissolved)
  • RFK Jr, health secretary
  • Ramaswamy & Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”, ha ha, Musk’s adolescence never ended)

It’s an odd thing in which to find solace, but it’s obvious that Trump is packing the highest levels of government with the worst, most incompetent, most inappropriate people he can find. There is a method to this madness. His purposes are 1) to spite the people who opposed him with appointments that will enrage his critics, 2) to reward the loons who supported him, and 3) to support the long-held Republican dream of dissolving government altogether. It’s a policy of chaos and destruction.

The saving grace is that Trump is not Lawful Evil. He isn’t making a well-planned, disciplined assault on our government with a cunning long-term goal. He’s Chaotic Evil. He’s in this for vengeance, wanton destruction, and self-aggrandizement, and he’s not subtle about it. And he’s not building a legacy that will last.

He’s following his hero’s, Hitler’s, pattern. Hitler was also a wild card who lashed out with the resources of a strong nation to achieve striking initial successes, which were then undermined by his own ego and incompetence (invading Russia? That’s insane). In the final analysis he left Germany a smoking ruin, shattered and divided, with about 80 million dead. That’s what the USA has to look forward to, I fear.

You may wonder what’s hopeful about that. Consider the alternative: what if Hitler had been a careful, disciplined genius, who succeeded in establishing the Thousand Year Reich? That would have been far worse. No one is going to regard Trump as a genius.

OK, here’s an even more optimistic take. The USA is about to embark on a 4 year long bender, we’re going to leave a swathe of destruction behind us, and eventually end up broke, stinking, and puking in a ditch, and we’re not going to be funny-drunk, we’re going to be bitter-angry-drunk. Sorry, world.

If you’re not convinced yet, he wants to put Herschel Walker in charge of an imaginary missile defense shield. Madness.

Waiting for my eyes to adapt to the darkness

I have changed my routine lately. I no longer read the news. There were a few blogs I read regularly, a couple of political YouTube channels I frequented, a podcast or two I’d listen to on walks. No more. I just can’t bear current events. I’m looking for distraction, and oh, what’s this? A movie review?

You see, I’m sick. I’m afraid it’s mortal but I don’t know–I mean, every second is a second I will never see again, so isn’t everything mortal? I have, for over a year now, watched Israel gleefully, defiantly wage genocide on the Palestinian people and consumed images of the human body in various states of dismemberment, violation, and humiliation that before this I had only glimpsed with horror in grainy photographs smuggled out of Nanking during WWII–that I had only imagined while reading war stories written by men destroyed largely by just the act of bearing witness. This is the shape of my astonishing privilege. If I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t have to. Something changed.

And I have noticed, from the first day to the 370th, that I can look at decapitated children now, held in the arms of parents maddened by grief and the tacit complicity of the United States and most of Europe, without looking away. I am a shell. I don’t sleep well anymore. I am hollowed-out and empty. I understand T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, his warning about the apocalypse, for the very first time. “Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind in dry grass/Or rats’ feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar” and “Paralysed force, gesture without motion,” and “Remember us–if at all–not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men.” I understand who the “eyes I dare not meet in dreams” belong to now; I know where the “twilight kingdom” is, where the dead land “[u]nder the twinkle of a fading star” is, because I live there now. We live there together. The noise of us together sounds like the noise you make when you try not to make a noise. The dry rustle you hear is all our voices mouthing prayers to broken stones.

I understand Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp character, with his too-small hat and too-large shoes, the immigrant and eternal outsider who good-naturedly demonstrated the inhumanity of others through his interest in the weak and championing of the powerless. I understand why The Tramp appeared in the space between the mechanized mass slaughter and dismemberment of WWI and the rise of fascism and murder camps of WWII and fast became the most famous personality on the planet. Chaplin would play little tricks on despots and middle-managers, sly kicks and sleights-of-hand, and smile and wave if caught in the act. “You got me,” his grin says, which maybe has a dash of Bugs Bunny’s “Ain’t I a stinker?” as well. And I know why, at the end of his film The Great Dictator, Chaplin breaks character and the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly to plead with them to care again about the suffering of others. He spoke of a world rapidly tilting into totalitarianism: the best filled with despair and the worst locating that seam in the sheer rockface of our sense of righteous morality that allows them to find purchase, take root, spore. He begged us to remember who we were when we could still weep, when we had to look away.

How long has it been for you? How far has it progressed? I know. I’m sorry.

That’s from a review of Terrifier 3. I’d seen a bit of the first Terrifier movie, didn’t like at all, and didn’t even know they were already making sequels of the thing, but of course they are. Maybe if I gazed into the abyss a little harder, I’d be desensitized enough to witness more of the fascist state of America, but I’m not. If anything, I’ve become hypersensitized. I find refuge in science and work and my day-to-day routine, I’m afraid to look up and see the catastrophe coming.

That article gives me hope — more than hope, a sense that it is inevitable that someday my privilege will be bled away, that I will stop caring and can look on the horror without feeling battered and eviscerated, because my heart will have been burned out and meaning will have been murdered. Join me in the twilight kingdom, where the darkness waits for us all.

Isn’t that a happy thought? Don’t you want to chitter and murmur and rustle in the decaying attic of our dreams, together?

Coincidentally…

In that treasure trove of old documents from my mother, I found this little surprise: she’d also saved one of my extra figures from my research at the University of Oregon, the stuff that led to me working with Judith Eisen.

Photograph of horseradish peroxidase labeled spinal motoneurons

That’s another oldie — Mom must have asked what the heck I was doing in the lab, and I gave her an old print and tried to explain it to her. And she salted it away for 40 years!

“a VEWY fwightened widdew man”

A liberal feminist, Marla Rose, knocked on Nick Fuentes’ door. He reacted by immediately pepper-spraying her, knocking her down, and and stealing her phone. All she did was knock!

In a Facebook post, Rose elaborated on her motivations, citing Fuentes’ controversial reputation. “What would you do if a neo-Naz*, white supremacist who called on a holy war against J*ws and is a loud, proud misogynist lives in your town?” she wrote. Encouraged by a friend, Rose explained, “So I rang the doorbell, he immediately swung the door open like he was at damn Waco, sprayed me with a burning liquid…and pushed me down the stairs onto his sidewalk.”

Rose noted that a passerby called the police, after which EMTs checked her for injuries. “The nice EMTs took my vitals in the ambulance,” she added, sharing, “I am a little sore on my right side, where I fell, but I’m fine.” She also described the police response as dismissive, allegedly asking, “‘For what?’ I said, dumbfounded, ‘For ASSAULT.’ And he was like, ‘Well, you went to his door.’”

Public reactions have been polarized. While some supporters see Rose’s actions as justified given Fuentes’ past incitements on social media, critics argue that her approach and alleged doxxing crossed legal and ethical boundaries. Some have called for legal repercussions against Rose.

That’s exactly what I’d expect of the police.

I’m interested in these “legal repercussions.” Would they apply if a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness knocked on my door, too? The next little kid going door-to-door selling girl scout cookies better watch out, I’ve got the Nick Fuentes precedent saying I can beat her up and steal a box, and if she complains, I’ll have her arrested.

You can tell, though, that Nick Fuentes is terrified. All the fascists must know that the actions they take while in power will have…repercussions.