Look who’s smiling

Here’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders signing an Arkansas bill to make more kids eligible for child labor.

Look at those kids!

Here’s Tim Walz signing a Minnesota bill to provide free school lunches to kids.

Look at those kids.

Which one is the party of family again?

To underscore the point, here’s some news from Tex-ass.

Lawyers for the State of Texas on Monday tried to convince a U.S. appeals court that it should not be fined for failures in investigations of abuse and neglect of intellectually disabled children.

I’d show you photos of the children’s response, but it’s hard to smile with a broken jaw.

One investigation into a child called “Child C” was delayed a year. The same child was once dropped off at a hospital by staff of C3 Academy, where she lived, with a broken jaw. That was just one of several incidents that the child endured, according to court documents.

No racists down here in Texas, no sir

It’s all a lie by the Democrat party. The “True Texas Project” is a wholesome organization that just loves white Christians.

An influential grassroots group with close ties to Texas Republican lawmakers is hosting a conference next month that encourages its attendees to embrace Christian nationalism and resist a Democratic campaign “to rid the earth of the white race.”
Billed as the 15th anniversary celebration for True Texas Project, a far-right activist group that got its start as a North Texas tea party organization, the agenda claims there is a “war on white America,” and elevates theories that white Americans are being intentionally replaced through immigration — a common belief among far-right extremists, including many mass shooters.

I, for one, had no idea that one of the planks of the Democratic agenda was “to rid the earth of the white race.” The “True Texas” agenda is crystal clear, at least: they hate and fear the great replacement theory, cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, and love Zionism, the American Church, etc., etc., etc.

They have high-quality speakers, like Kyle Rittenhouse.

I know, I could stop right there. You already know how worthwhile this event will be.

They’re also bringing in Louie Gohmert…this isn’t helping, is it?

OK, they also include Paul Gottfried, who has the virtue of being someone most people have never heard of.

Few people have been more instrumental in that push than Gottfried, a former humanities professor who has written dozens of books on political history. Gottfried is credited with coining the term “Alt-Right,” which describes a movement of far-right reactionaries, white nationalists and race scientists that sought to intellectualize their fringe views. Led by Spencer, the neo-Nazi who was mentored by Gottfried, the Alt-Right was crucial in mainstreaming extreme views in right-wing circles, but flamed out after its members played key roles in 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where tiki-torch wielding neo-Nazis and fascists marched before killing one counterprotester and maiming countless others.

Gottfried is also the founder of the H.L. Mencken Club, which holds an annual conference that has included some of the world’s most prominent extremists, including Jared Taylor, a eugenicist who claims it is unnatural for white people to live alongside non-whites; and Peter Brimelow, whose group VDARE has been crucial to spreading white nationalist writings and propaganda.

Their claim that they aren’t racist is not very persuasive when they’ve got ties to Taylor and Brimelow and Spencer.

These people aren’t fooling anyone.

Proscribe Professional Political Pundits

If nothing else, the selection of Tim Walz for VP should teach us that the political pundit class sucks. They know nothing — they want to claim that they’re objective, neutral observers, but they’ve all got an agenda that they lie about. For instance, Jonathan Chait has the worst take. He wants the Democrats to move to the right.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Need to Pivot to the Center Right Now
Story by Jonathan Chait

When Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee, I expressed cautious optimism that she had learned from her disastrous 2020 campaign, which revolved around placating left-wing activists by adopting highly unpopular issue positions. The data point that seemed most compelling was her rumored slate of vice-presidential selections, which consisted of Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky — the three most moderate governors in the party. “What this leak indicates,” I wrote, “is that Harris understands the assignment.”

But … does she? Her decision to pick Tim Walz, while not completely irrational, makes me much more cautious and less optimistic that Harris does understand the assignment.

The assignment, to be clear, is to win over voters who don’t like Donald Trump but worry Harris is too liberal.

Gosh. The Democrats need to be more Republican. Democrats embracing their principles is bad.

This is possibly the most idiotic take yet. Ask a Minnesotan: Walz is not the radical socialist some of us would like to see. He was elected to congress in a rural, southern Minnesota congressional district, where he had to be a conservative public servant, and he was selected to run for governor because he could appeal to both the urban Minneapolis/St Paul electorate and to the rural shitkicker vote. As governor, he’s been both pro-business and pro-civil liberties, a combination that might once have been natural for Republicans before Reagan, when they chose instead to follow the path of hating the poor.

He could be more liberal. The alternatives Chait favors are all consistently more conservatives. Screw that. It’s long past time Democrats moved to favor unions and schools and the social safety net, and that’s what Walz does, to the chagrin of the Chaits of the country.

And then there’s the awful Nate Silver, who favors the same candidates that Chait does, but for confusingly different reasons (that’s Silver all over the place, making counter-intuitive arguments for confusingly wrong-headed reasons). He thinks Walz is the risky product of triangulation.

Tim Walz is a Minnesota Nice choice
It’s fine. But Shapiro was the higher-upside option that was probably worth the risk.

If you surveyed Democratic members of Congress, he’d probably be who they’d choose. But I believe he’s probably the wrong choice, a step back toward the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far.

You’re just making it overly complex and twisting everything around. Walz is an advocate for politically popular choices, like childcare and free school lunches and abortion, and he’s an avuncular, friendly voice. That sounds like a good choice — true, making a smart decision is way off brand for the Democrats. Silver would rather see a radical, alienating weirdo in the position, a Democratic complement to JD Vance.

Nate Silver will always favor seeing the party don a handicap to keep the horserace close, because that’s where he makes his money and notoriety.

You know, these are the kinds of political pundits who get favored by the conservative media. Don’t trust them.

Enough adulting!

OK, I’ve had enough. Yesterday, I got a fresh package of legal documents from our probate lawyer. I have to go through them all and verify stuff and set up a bank account and just generally do accounting. Also, paying money.

Today I’m getting a realtor’s estimate on a house, and have to get the wheels rolling on selling my mother’s estate.

Then, a surprise: we have some asbestos treated floor tiles in our basement (the 1940s were a carefree time), and the remediation company got an open slot in their busy schedule, and are showing up this afternoon.

I’m going to be trapped in my house all day while construction people hammer and scrape, and I have to read all these declarations from the courts of the County of King.

These are all boring things. I’d rather be in the lab feeding a hungry hungry horde of spider babies.

When Brains Betray Us

The brain trust at Freethoughtblogs will be teaming up to check each others’ assumptions, calibrate our thoughts, consider personal experiences, and do a little data averaging and correction on Saturday, 10 August, at 4pm Central time, in a little podcast we’re calling “When Brains Betray Us”. We have a fine collection of damaged, abnormal, and weird brains to share our history with the ways brains can go bad, and how we can compensate.

We hope you’ll all share your perspectives in the comments and let us know that we’re not the only screwed up ones.

It’s Walz!

The next vice president of the USA will be Tim Walz, currently the governor of Minnesota.

It’s a good choice, in part because I had reservations about him, which is OK because I’m not representative and I want this ticket to win. He was perfect for Minnesota because he was the pro hunting and fishing candidate (not my thing), but was also a former liberal school teacher (that’s my thing). I think he’ll be a solid complement to Harris and will get her a few more votes. He has accomplished a lot with narrow margins in the Minnesota congress.

After my initial misgivings, I’ve been happy with him as governor. I think you’ll all be happy with him as VP.

Good god, I pray that my children like me a little bit

These hateful conservative weirdos are all concerned about their legacy (at least, they pretend they are), but they never stop to think that maybe their many children will reject their narrow-minded, painfully short-sighted ways. After all, their kids have seen what the parental dogma does to families first hand.

Case in point: Elon Musk’s disowned daughter, Vivian Wilson, is spilling all the tea about her horrible, absent father.

I understand your new angle is this “western values/ christian family man” thing but it’s such a weird choice. You are not a family man, you are a serial adulterer who won’t stop fucking lying about your own children. You are not a christian, as far as I’m aware you’ve never stepped foot in a church. You are not some “bastion for equality/progress”. You called arabic the “language of the enemy” when | was 6, have been sued for discrimation multiple times, and are from Apartheid South Africa.
You are not “saving the planet”, you do not give a fuck about climate change and you’re lying about multi-planetary civilization as both an excuse, and because you want to seem like the CEO from Ready Player One. I would mention the birth rate stuff, but I am not touching that weird 14-words breeder shit with a ten foot pole. You single-handedly disillusioned me with how gullible we are as a species because somehow people keep believing you for reasons that continue to evade me.

Every parent ought to live to earn the honor and respect of their children. If they can’t do that, they don’t deserve to have kids. It’s that simple.

Making Google, Apple, and Microsoft sweat

Google has been ruled to be a monopoly. Now the other big tech companies await judgement.

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google broke the law with its monopoly over online searches and related ads, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in the first victory for U.S. antitrust authorities who have filed a string of lawsuits to battle market domination by a handful of Big Tech companies.
The decision is a significant win for the Justice Department, which had sued the search engine giant over its control of about 90% of the online search market, and 95% on smartphones. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta noted that Google had paid $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to ensure that its search engine is the default on smartphones and browsers, and to keep its dominant market share.
“The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote.
Mehta’s ruling against Alphabet’s major revenue driver paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, such as requiring the company to stop paying smartphone makers billions of dollars annually to set Google as the default search engine on new phone.

When I say “sweat”, I mean “glisten lightly”. Actions to correct their abuse of the market might cost them billions, but that’ll only be a small fraction of their total revenue.

But I do approve the decision.

Republicans’ weird library policies

Idaho Republicans have taken a different tack in their approach to limit access to books they don’t like. They now require the ‘bad’ books in library to be sequestered into a special section that requires special permission to access, and that requires children to be accompanied by an adult. They have to sign in every time they enter the Forbidden Room, so they’ve got a record of who wants to access the naughty books. One woman named Carly took her 11 year old child into the Den of Sin to get a specific book.

Carly explains, “The sign says that if you are under 18, you’re not allowed up there unless you have an unrestricted library card or your parent that is over 18 signs an affidavit for you.” So Carly shows her ID and her daughter’s library card, thinking she’s in the clear. But the librarians still don’t allow her to enter the adult section.

“But no, why don’t they let me? Because I’m holding a baby, my 1-year-old.” Yep, you read that right. Even a literal baby now needs the proper documents to be in Carly’s library. “They said that because I had a baby there (who can’t read), I’m not allowed in the library with her unless she has a library card or I signed an affidavit. So me and Daphne just watched from the edge while Scarlett goes in to find her book. The librarian ended up helping her.” Carly’s clear in her video that she doesn’t blame the librarians, saying, “They were being so nice and patient… I felt like the librarians are sick of it. They feel so bad turning kids away from going into the library.”

The wicked book? The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien.

This is a lovely example of how Republicans are weird — this is a silly law against a non-existent problem promoted by lawmakers who are completely out of touch with their constituency.

Most Idahoans — 69% — trust library staff with book selection, while 23% of Idahoans do not, according to this year’s Idaho Public Policy Survey. More than half of Idaho librarians are considering leaving library work as a result of library-related legislation, according to an informal survey conducted by the Idaho Library Association.

This is not new. When I was a young kid, my local library put all the science books in an adult section and would shoo kids away if they tried to enter — I had to call my parents to get permission to read books about dinosaurs. By the time I was in high school, they’d so thoroughly loosened that stupid policy to the point that they openly displayed copies of Playboy on the periodicals rack. I wasn’t interested in Playboy, but much appreciated free access to all the other books in the library.

I coulda told you so

Destin Sandlin is an enthusiastic and cheerful engineering YouTuber, who spoke at Skepticon seven years ago. I was there. And I remember it, because I really disliked his talk. He’s got this “Aw shucks, I’m just a redneck engineer from Alabama” style that started to grate minutes into his presentation, and also he’s a Christian. That wouldn’t have been bad, except that that was his whole schtick — he’s a Christian speaking at an atheist conference! He must spend much of his time defending his faith and telling the audience to be tolerant of different perspectives, because obviously the Skepticon organizers must be intolerant despite the fact that they invited him to speak. It’s not as if they were unaware of his religious views, after all he mentions it and includes a Bible verse in every video.

I was really annoyed with the last 20 minutes, in which he showed off a bicycle that he’d modified to reverse the steering — it goes right when you turn left, etc. — and spent a year practicing riding it. His point was that different people have different backgrounds and expectations, so yeah, once again, you atheists who invited me here need to learn to respect other points of view.

Hated it.

Anyway, my response was to simply ignore him ever after, and had no interest in seeing any of his videos, until now. He has been written up by the Discovery Institute! He recently put up a video that was “golly gee, the flagellum sure is complex and awe-inspiring.”

A popular YouTube science channel called SmarterEveryDay has 11.5 million subscribers. The channel recently posted a fantastic video about the bacterial flagellum titled, “Nature’s Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!).” It has been up for less than a week and already has over 1.9 million views. In the video, engineer Destin Sandlin explains how he became captivated after watching an online animation of the bacterial flagellum. He notes that the flagellum “is a really big topic, not only in biomechanics” but also in “philosophy.” That’s because “the complexity of the flagellum implies many things about the origin of life” and “raises questions that people are debating and they’re talking about how can this be?” Sandlin says that he’s “not going to answer” those deeper questions in this video and he doesn’t explicitly endorse intelligent design — but he clearly appreciates the importance of this tiny molecular machine.

Sandlin is very careful about walking a thin line. He clearly believes that complex molecular machines were designed, but he doesn’t have even basic knowledge about protein chemistry or how organisms work (at one point, he says that sperm flagella have rotary machinery like the bacterial flagellum — they don’t), so he’s conscious that he’s not at all qualified to discuss this stuff and that all he brings to the table on this topic is his religious bias, so he doesn’t come right out and say it. He’ll let the viewer fill in the blanks for him.

In the end, Sandlin expounds upon his emotional reaction to seeing the complexity of the flagellum. He says its complexity gives him “joy” and makes him feel “awe and reverence,” and even brings him to give thanks to God. What a beautiful reaction to such a little thing!

Gee whillikers, he’s just a good ol’ country boy letting you know how he feels…and providing fodder for creationists.

I’ll continue to ignore him, but now with additional vehemence.