the godfather, or grandfather, or one of the prime people that ended up actually killing the unity of the movement

A friend let me know that there was a discussion that briefly mentioned me last night, between Ember and Thomas Sheedy. Sheedy is a long time regressive conservative atheist who founded a group called Atheists for Liberty, and Ember put his views in the spotlight for a couple of hours. Sheedy was glib and articulate for a repulsive monster, but I think everyone could see right through him. He was babbling on about transgenderism, wokeism, Dave Silverman (he was framed!), Boghossian, Turning Point USA, and how he was committed to defending atheism über alles and that all this progressive ideology destroyed atheism, while his right-wing ideology was fine, and that it didn’t spill over into his atheist activism, unlike those weird Atheism+ freaks.

Somehow, he thinks promoting Trump and Desantis is compatible with his overweening support for a secular America. He’s completely blind to the fact that he is ideologically driven by forces that are inherently in opposition to atheism.

The bit where I’m mentioned is brief and not at all a big part of the conversation, and is at about the one hour mark in this video.

Sheedy says I am the godfather, or grandfather, or one of the prime people that ended up actually killing the unity of the movement. Cool. Not true and rather silly — lots of people found themselves dissatisfied with the movement, and I wasn’t a leader — but still rather flattering.

Tucker Carlson has always been ignorant & nuts

His madness was exposed on Joe Rogan’s show — and Carlson made Rogan look intelligent, which is quite a feat.

The 3-hour conversation, which racked up 5 million views on Rogan’s Youtube channel in just 3 days, left many online baffled after Carlson claimed, among other things, that scientists had given up on the idea of evolution.

“It’s visible,” Rogan replied. “Like, you can measure it in certain animals.”

In response, Carlson alleged that adaptation could be measured but that the theory of evolution as articulated by scientist Charles Darwin was not true.

I have a lot of dogs, I see adaptation in dogs through… litter to litter. But no, there’s no evidence at all, none, zero, that people evolved seamlessly from a single cell amoeba, Carlson said. No, there’s not. There’s no chain in the fossil record of that at all.

While the transition from unicellular to multicellular lifeforms is still a murky field of inquiry [No. Also irrelevant. The evidence of common descent is crystal clear], some experiments and findings have affirmed the theory. In 2010, a study published in Nature by the biochemist Douglas Thomas found that the theory that all life comes from a shared genetic heritage with single-celled microorganisms, called the theory of universal common ancestry (UCA), is “millions of times more probable than any theory of multiple independent ancestries.”

Carlson went on to state that he had his own theories, which boiled down to the belief that God created people, distinctly, and animals.

I think that’s like what every person on Earth thought until the mid-19 century, actually, Carlson said before breaking into a deranged laugh.

Yeah, that deranged laugh. Look it up. It’s pure madness. And what he said was just wrong, errors compiled from straight-up creationist lies. One of the clues is that reference to single cell amoeba — only creationists claim we think humans are descended from an amoeba, which is a rather highly derived protist (which is also a polyphyletic group, but one that doesn’t include any animal ancestors).

But Carlson’s fallacies don’t stop there. He’s lately been touting psychic prophets.

Tucker Carlson clearly thinks highly of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, telling Joe Rogan that he believes he is a psychic prophet who predicted 9/11. (Note: Alex Jones did not predict 9/11.)

He’s channeling something, Carlson said. I’ve asked him about it. ‘How did you do that?’ At length, during dinner on my barn recently. We’re talking about this. ‘How’d you do that?’ ‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’ And that’s real. That is real. The supernatural is real and I don’t know why it’s hard for for the modern mind, I guess because it’s a materialist mind to accept that.

That’s not a new phenomenon. It’s happened throughout history. There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren’t called prophets, but there are people who have information or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them and then they relay it, Carlson said.

The man’s brain is broken. It’s probably been broken since the start of his bow-tied career, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the loss of his privileged position at Fox News has sent him into an ugly tailspin.

Oh, it’s Eurovision season?

We don’t get as much of the noise about Eurovision here in the benighted Americas, but every once in a while something trickles into our media. I’m liking the Irish entry, “Doomsday Blue,” partly because it’s aggressively weird, partly because I think it’s catchy, partly because it’s satanic, and partly because it has pissed off conservatives.

Even delicate little Tommy Robinson has fallen onto his fainting couch.

Also, I partly like it for its politics.

The performance is definitely provocative, and combined with Thug’s non-binary LGBTQ+ identity, it makes them the perfect target for right-wingers.

But at no point has it seemed to occur to conservatives that their outrage might be the point of the performance—even after Thug themself called the uproar “quite iconic” and said it’s “p*ssing off all the right people.”

Thug calls themself a “rebel witch” who’s been “conjuring Ouija Pop since 1993,” and “Doomsday Blue” uses the phrase “avada kedavra,” popularized in the “Harry Potter” series by outspoken transphobe JK Rowling.

Thug called it a form of “wordplay,” a sort of reclaiming of the word from Rowling’s TERF-y hands, and has also used their performances to call for trans rights and a “ceasefire” in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Definitely satanic.

I missed the whole Eurovision thing this year, and just learned that Doomsday Blue came in 6th, while the winner was this song by Nemo, another nonbinary artist.

Nice voice, but I liked Bambie Thug better.

A cynical Mother’s Day connection

Would you believe that it was nine years ago that the internet was arguing about the color of this dress? I know. Time is fleeting. Let’s do the time warp again.

Anyway, the dress is in the news again, just in time for Mother’s Day. The dress was worn by Keir Johnston’s mother-in-law, and how do you honor your mother-in-law? Apparently, by strangling your wife. She survived, but apparently their marriage has been an 11 year long exercise in violent abuse.

Maybe the best Mother’s Day gift is a divorce and seeing your abusive husband arrested and jailed, and the nasty little man going viral.

The new state flag is official

Today is the official changeover day for the Minnesota state flag. I like it!

I especially like it because I just learned what the meaning of the original design — that cluttered, ugly illustration of farmers and Indians — was intended to be an illustration of Manifest Destiny.

Minnesota Legislature adopted that flag and seal in 1893.

A poem written by the wife of one of the artists who painted the seal said it was a representation of Manifest Destiny. intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of native people from the landscape.

“For the artists who created the seal, this is intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of Native people from the landscape,” said Minnesota Historical Society Director of Research William Convery.

If I’d known that, I would have been much more irate about it. This changeover has a similar significance to the destruction of confederate flags and monuments to rebel generals.

Commencing

I went to the UMM Commencement ceremony today, sorta. I’m afraid I had to bail out before I died — it was being held outdoors, for the first time in a half dozen years, and the sun was blazing down, and I was expected to line up with other faculty an hour ahead of time for the processional, in the sun…and then we were going to march out to some shadeless folding chairs to sit for an hour and a half. Keep in mind we’re all wearing black robes. I decided I didn’t want to watch whole families collapsing with sunstroke, nor did I want to collapse myself.

I came home instead, and watched the colorful weeds commencing in my yard.

I think I’ll also take a nap this afternoon. Apparently the northern lights are going to be flaring some more tonight, and I want to get some better photos.

Aurora time!

I stayed up late to try and see the northern lights. They were nice, but a bit dim here — they did stretch out further than I’ve seen previously, streaking practically all across the sky. I tried taking some photos (f/1.8, 15s exposures, with a tripod, of course), but I wasn’t entirely satisfied. Too blurry, mainly what I captured were fuzzy swirls of red and green.

I should practice more, but it’s late and way past my bedtime.

The future is battery powered

I remember the Olden Times when Rush Limbaugh (may he Rot in Peace) would rail against solar power — what will we do when the sun goes down? — and wind power — what about calm days? — and tell us to keep burning coal and gas.

Technology marches forward, and now we have these things called batteries that can smooth out the highs and lows of electricity production. Now when we hear about solar farms going up, they’re usually accompanied by energy storage farms. Here’s what energy production in California looks like:

Solar power production is swelling during the day, and is extended into the peak demand period with batteries. Maybe they could also expand wind power, and possibly be better at conserving energy? I think if I plotted energy usage at my house, it would be much more uniform: we don’t have air conditioning, and I’ve done more cooking with an eye towards preparing meals that can produce leftovers that last a few days.

As it is, California is sometimes producing more solar energy than it can use. They have to throttle solar power output back, or even pay neighboring states to take it.

Good things are happening here in Minnesota, too. We’ve got a gigantic energy storage facility going up in Becker, a town between Morris and the Twin Cities.

One of the largest solar projects in the country is moving closer to completion, and it’s not in a famously sunny state like California, Texas, or even Florida. It’s in Minnesota, on former potato farms near the site of a retiring coal plant.

The Sherco solar and energy-storage facility will be the largest solar project in the Upper Midwest, and the fifth-largest in the U.S. by the time it’s fully completed in 2026. The first phase of the project should begin sending emissions-free electricity to the grid this fall, heralding the start of a new era in a state whose largest solar project until now has been just 100 megawatts. This new project will have a capacity of 710 megawatts. It’s being built by utility Xcel Energy, which will also operate the facility once it’s online.

The project is poised to deliver on the many promises of renewable energy: It will partially replace the nearby coal plant set to retire over the coming years, address the variability of solar power by pairing it with long-duration storage, and provide good-paying union jobs in a community that’s losing a key employer in the coal facility.

They’re using iron-air batteries, which are cheaper and less toxic and less flammable than the now-familiar lithium batteries. It’s also positive that this facility is going up explicitly to replace a coal plant, one we often saw as we drove along I-94. It hasn’t been so prominent in recent years, I guess they’ve been gradually shutting it down and we don’t see the giant exhaust plumes so much any more.

Goodbye.

Even closer to home, my university has begun a major energy storage project.

For many years now, UMN Morris and UMN WCROC [West Central Research and Outreach Center], have explored the potential of energy storage in rural Minnesota.

Now, UMN Morris and UMN WCROC are partnering to launch the Center for Renewable Energy Storage Technology, or CREST. In order to reach high levels of renewable power generation, efficient and economic energy storage systems are critically needed. This field is poised for significant growth and attention in the coming years. The new UMN intercollegiate Center will provide leadership in research, demonstration, education, and outreach in this vital field by organizing teams and partnerships and incubating energy storage research and demonstration-scale projects.

A hallmark and unique characteristic of renewable energy efforts at the Morris campuses has been the ability to test systems at commercial or near-commercial scales. This scale is especially crucial in moving new technologies from labs into the commercial market. CREST will also expand opportunities for Minnesotans to learn more about energy storage technologies and potential applications. Recently, UMN WCROC announced it will host the $18.6 million US DOE ARPA-E REFUEL Technology Integration 1 metric ton per day ammonia pilot plant. In addition, WCROC received $10 million from the State of Minnesota in the 2021 legislative session through the Xcel Energy RDA account to develop ammonia-fueled power generation and self-contained ammonia storage technologies. UMN Morris announced a new project to develop a large-scale battery-storage demonstration project. These projects are done in collaboration with partners from across the University of Minnesota and with many partners in the public and private sectors.

It’s too bad we can’t rub Limbaugh’s face in the progress that’s being made.