Blood quantum is back, baby

First of all…Mike Lindell has a TV station? He’s got something called “Lindell-TV,” anyway, which seems to be nothing but a streaming channel on an off-brand service. The costs for a kook to get online and make noise just gets lower and lower.

Anyway, one of the babblers on that network wants Kamala Harris to take a DNA test.

A host on Mike Lindell’s television network called on Vice President Kamala Harris to take a DNA test to prove a demonic spirit wasn’t prompting her to say she was Black.

During his daily “Let’s Talk About It” program on Lindell TV, host Will Johnson defended former President Donald Trump’s claim that Harris had only recently “happened to turn Black.”

What does demon DNA look like? How would we tell?

But Johnson suggested Thursday that Harris was lying about her race and should take a DNA test.

“How about we get Kamala Harris to do a DNA test like him and like Elizabeth Warren?” Johnson said. “Then we’ll put it to rest. She comes back, and she’s a little bit more Black than Elizabeth Warren is Indian, then we’ll, OK, go, she can be Black half the time.”

“Why not do that?” he asked. “And then they say we are the weird ones — we’re the weird ones because we don’t want to go along with the insanity.”

Elizabeth Warren was negligibly Indian, and most importantly, did not have any cultural connection to any tribe. Harris has a father who is black, so she’s roughly half black genetically, but what matters more is that she grew up with black and Indian heritage. You don’t get to tell her what her background is. She’s black and Indian. That the Republicans are diving into this weird obsession with inventing criteria for people’s cultural and genetic heritage is creepy.

Mr Johnson is the insane weird guy who wants to quantify how “black” a person is allowed to be. It doesn’t make any sense — if 23andme comes back and says she is 43.5% black, how does one “be” black 43.5% of the time?

I’ve had 23andme analyze my DNA, and this is what it tells me.

I guess I’m 2/3 Scandinavian. What does that mean for my allowed behavior? So two of my 3 meals per day should be matpakke, herring, or kjøttkaker, and the other meal should be pasties, bangers and mash, or mushy peas? Since I’m an atheist, I’m probably fractionally demonic, so my snacks should probably be demonic.

This is what we mean by calling these bozos “weird” — they have this twisted idea that people must conform to the stereotypes rattling around in their heads.

As we all know, real women lose at sports

As usual, the conservatives have found an absurd issue at the Olympics to have a screaming fit over. First it was an opening ceremony that they thought mocked the Last Supper (it didn’t, unless you think Jesus’ last meal was a wild bacchanal), and now it’s a women’s boxing match that the transvestigators have decided was unfair because the winnner was a man.

She wasn’t.

The inaccurate statements about her identity were boosted by prominent anti-trans individuals like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, as well as politicians like US Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Their statements stirred up a storm of anger on the right despite the fact that Khelif is a cisgender woman.

As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos has explained, there aren’t any transgender athletes at the Olympics this year who are competing outside of the sex they were assigned at birth, though IOC rules don’t bar their inclusion so long as they meet certain eligibility criteria. “There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters. “The question you have to ask yourself is, are these athletes women? The answer is yes.”

Imane Khelif is not trans, and was assigned female at birth. She’s a cis woman! But somehow, because she’s strong and can punch hard, attributes any woman who becomes an Olympic boxing competitor would share, her sex and gender are called into question.

That reaction has since spawned scrutiny of Khelif, who was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman. False claims that she is a trans person or that she is a man pretending to be a woman quickly spread thanks to reports she was disqualified from a 2023 International Boxing Association event and the resurfacing of comments by the president of that organization suggesting that her elimination was because she failed a hormone test.

She probably has some unusual physiological characteristics that confused officials of the IBA, but every Olympic competitor is a genetic freak, or they wouldn’t be operating at such a high level of performance. Simone Biles is way out there on the edge of human capability; Michael Phelps has an unusual morphology that made him a strong swimmer. Shall we disqualify them because they don’t have average athletic ability? That’s the whole point of the Olympics, to single out people with exceptional physical characteristics! You don’t get to whine that it’s unfair when an athlete at that level is amazingly good at what they do…or even worse, call into question their identity or history or social role or sexual preferences because you don’t like that they win.

There’s another ugly side to this whole affair.

Beyond questions of sex, there are racial dynamics at play in the perceptions of this match. Female athletes of color — particularly those of African and African American descent — have long been accused of being men when they’ve beaten white women in competition. This happened most notably with tennis phenom Serena Williams and track star Caster Semenya, both of whom endured tropes that cast Black women as more masculine and threatening.

I guess conservatives just want to police women’s behavior. Surprise.

I guess Ken Ham won’t be voting for Kamala Harris

I do appreciate it when people catch Ken Ham in those moments when he thinks he’s preaching to the faithful. He abandons all political caution and lets his freakish creepy views hang out. Here’s an Instagram video of Ken Ham preaching against that wicked Kamala Harris. He starts like this:

Like to see Kamala Harris’ latest embarrassment? Excuse me, it’s with a group of drag queens, and that’s why everything is in pink as well.

He then shows a brief (very brief, like a second or two) clip of Harris smiling and clapping. Where’s the embarrassment? We’re supposed to see this as a horror, I guess.

That tells you something about the state of this nation. You should judge that against scripture.

I mean, so evil.

Oooh, so evil. So embarrassing. Then we get another blip of Harris saying,

We trust women to make decisions about their own body!

Oh, she needs to learn some science, because a fertilized egg is not part of a woman’s body. It’s totally separate, and it’s a unique individual made in the image of god, and so she’s calling for the murder of many humans as she can in the mother’s womb.

My brain blacked out momentarily, hearing Ham declare that someone else needs to learn some science.

Uh, no, a zygote is genetically distinct from the woman’s cells, but it is part of a woman’s body. It divides to generate a trophectoderm, literally a feeding structure, that develops into a placenta that infiltrates and interdigitates with the woman’s uterine lining, intimately sharing her blood and nutrients for 9 months, inseparable from her tissues. I should think a woman ought to be able to make decisions about her health, her metabolism, her body, all these things that are profoundly affected by a pregnancy.

But Ken Ham is a creepy lying twerp. He then shows this bizarre image.

What is it with far-right cartoonists and their desperate need to slap labels on their metaphors? Do they lack the confidence in their art, and fear that it might be misinterpreted? This is Ben Garrison levels of a lack of faith in the intelligence of their readers.

I expect him to consider “evolution” as one of the storm of evils besetting the nice, “normal” family out rafting on their Bible, but “gender” is bad now? And “male and female restrooms”? I guess the last one sort of makes sense if you’re sufficiently regressive — after all, it was businesses providing women toilet facilities, rather than just for men, that allowed 19th century women the freedom to enter the market place. I wonder if Republicans are considering a ban on women’s restrooms?

I do think that having the presumably Christian characters in the cartoon clinging to an anchor in a storm is a good metaphor. I notice they didn’t feel the need to label that one.

He seemed surprised that the attendees at the National Association of Black Journalists were black

I have never witnessed so much deflection, evasion, and dishonesty…and I’ve debated creationists. I had to run to the bathroom twice during this video!*

I was surprised to see his line of criticism of Kamala Harris was to accuse her of not actually being black. That degree of racism was…novel? It’ll be interesting to see how that works for him in a debate.

*Admittedly, there were other circumstances.

Not going to be a great day

Oh boy. Today’s the day.

Today is colonoscopy prep day. I’m going to dope myself up with a laxative this morning, and this afternoon I start guzzling another laxative and large quantities of fluids. Also, no solid food. It’s going to be a long, long day.

Then tomorrow I’m scheduled to be rendered unconscious and wheeled into a room where I’m going to get pegged with a camera.

I don’t know whether I’m going to be furiously cranky or exasperatedly fatigued.

Reinforcing that dumb jock stereotype

Also, damaging the reputation of stupid Americans further. No one if France is going to want to contact Americans after this.

U.S. triathlon Seth Rider has decided to stop washing his hands after going to the bathroom in a bid to increase his resistance to the polluted River Seine.

The men’s individual triathlon race at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games has been postponed as the water quality in the Seine is still below regulatory standards. The race was meant to commence on Tuesday but has now been delayed until Wednesday, although the water could still be harmful to the athletes.

To gain an advantage and avoid potential illness, Rider is taking drastic action by not washing his hands and believes there is science to support his theory. “We know that there’s going to be some E. coli exposure, so I just try to increase my E. coli threshold by exposing myself to a bit of E. coli in day-to-day life,” Rider said.
“And it’s actually backed by science. Proven methods. Just little things throughout your day, like not washing your hands after you go to the bathroom.”

“Backed by science.” What science was that, Seth? Citation please. You’re not evolving resistance to E. coli, and it’s not just one kind of bacterium we’re concerned about. You know, hygiene and cleanliness are generally good ideas.

This is reminding me of those stories of men who don’t wash their asses that were going around before.

Every day, same spot

It’s near my computer desk. As soon as I sit down, she curls up next to me. If I get up to use the bathroom or get a drink, she’ll follow, and then as soon as I go back, she’s there. For an evil cat, she’s awfully dependent.

I’m about to go into the lab. I’m afraid it will boggle her mind.