How to make tea

An American has weighed in on the proper way to make tea. The great Anglo-American War will commence shortly.

…Michelle Francl, a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania with a new book on tea, has suggested techniques for making a perfect brew that are unfamiliar to many Brits.

She advised that adding a dash of salt could help the tea to taste less bitter. She went further, recommending a squeeze of lemon, which helps to remove the “scum” that can sit on the surface of the water. She is also a fan of vigorous dunking and squeezing of the tea bag.

She’s a scientist. She can’t be wrong.

Francl seems to be serious about her tea advice. In her new book, “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” she documents tea-making practices that date back more than 1,000 years. She advises using short mugs, with less surface area, to help keep the tea warm, and she says warming up the cup beforehand is important as it increases the amount of caffeine and antioxidants released.

Throwing caution to the wind, Francl bravely weighs in on the Great Milk Debate and concludes that it’s better to use warm milk and to pour milk in after the tea. This, she says, will reduce the chances of it curdling.

Of course, we recognize that that is the perspective of a radical professor at a liberal arts school. We have to consult the US Embassy for the more conservative, diplomatic method of making tea.

My wife will be relieved that she has been following the recommended American protocol in making all that tea that she drinks.

Don’t tell anyone, but in addition to being a socialist, atheist, DEI-loving liberal, I also have an electric kettle in my office. I know, my list of offenses is already long enough.

Crypto is camel grease!

You say you want to go to heaven, but you’ve got all this money. You don’t know how to squeeze your camel through the eye of a needle…but have no fear! Just slather that camel in crypto and it’ll slide right on through, and the Lord won’t even notice! Just ask Eli and Kaitlyn Regalado.

A Colorado pastor who is charged with stealing more than $1m from his Christian community in a cryptocurrency scheme has admitted to the fraud but argued that God instructed him to carry it out.

Eli Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn, are charged with creating and selling their cryptocurrency, known as “INDXcoin”, to Christians based in their home town of Denver, Colorado, allegedly telling would-be investors that the Lord had told him people would become rich if they invested, the state’s division of securities announced in a press release on Thursday.

But INDXcoin was “practically worthless” in reality, prosecutors said in the statement. Investors lost millions of dollars while the Regalados used their investments for lavish living.

They are quite brazen about it all, and Eli admits that he stole over a million dollars.

In a video statement about the charges, Eli admitted that the couple had squandered $1.3m that was raised through cryptocurrency.

“The charges are that me and Kaitlyn pocketed $1.3m,” Regalado said in the video published to INDXcoin’s website on Friday. “I just wanted to come out and say those charges are true.”

Regalado added: “A few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel the Lord told us to do.

“We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit.”

Regalado added that the couple still believes that God will “work a miracle in the financial sector”.

God told them to profit from a cryptocurrency scheme. God further specifically told them to spend the money on a home remodel, and jewelry, and an au pair, and of course, to spend lots of money on their church, which doesn’t actually exist.

The Regalados also pocketed at least $290,000 for their online-only church, Victorious Grace church, despite there being no physical location for it, BusinessDen reported.

They do send a little resentful that they “took God at his word.”

About nine months ago, Mr. Regalado said, the undertaking “started falling apart,” adding that he didn’t know what he was doing.

“One of two things have happened,” Mr. Regalado said, “One: Either I misheard God and every one of you who prayed and came in, you as well, or two: God is still not done with this project and he’s going to do a new thing.”

Also, it wasn’t his fault. God made him do it.

“I said: Lord, I don’t want to do this. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have any experience in this industry,” said Eli. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to be caught up in something.”

God and crypto sure do work in mysterious ways. It always amazes me how anyone falls for either of them.

Now we have to rely on the Democrats to save us?

Oh. There was another primary election yesterday, in New Hampshire. Given that the voters had an unappealing choice between two unpleasant people, it was predictable, I think, that the Republicans would choose the very worst.

Let’s stop for a second and appreciate the gravity of this moment. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot occurred three years ago, and the first chance the Republican Party had to rebuke this atrocity in a presidential election resulted in their endorsing it, via nominating the man responsible for inciting said riot.

The Republican party must be crushed.

A tragic day

My lovely young black widow spider died overnight. I am heartbroken. She was so full of life and deliciousness!


You can leave memorial donations on PayPal or you can join my Patreon. All donations should be given in the name of Lolth, and will be used to purchase a replacement…or a few replacements, so I can breed a mighty army in her name.

Did I work that hard when I was young?

Right now, I’m trying to herd 8 students taking an independent writing class into two regular meeting times, that is, I’ll run two review sessions per week with four students (ideally) in each one. It ought to be a trivial scheduling exercise, right? Except nothing is working so far. I had some of them send me their schedule, and the problem became obvious. They’re working too hard!

Most of them have collegiate athletics in there, with nearly daily practice times. Some are taking two lab courses. Some are double majors, or at least working on a minor on top of their biology degree. I’m looking at these solidly packed calendars and wondering how I’m going to fit my class in. Madness grows.

At the very least, I’m feeling exhausted looking at all that they’re cramming in, and feeling guilty that we charge them lots of money to work this hard.

Let soldiers celebrate what they are fighting for

Behold! The superior white master race!

I’ve had conversations with my son, a Major in the army, where he has lamented the difficulty of recruiting any more. It’s tough working with under-strength units, I guess. I’ll have to ask him what he thinks of Paul Gosar’s explanation, next time we talk.

Far-right congressman Paul Gosar is losing sleep over how few white people are enlisting in the army these days.

“The number of white recruits has plummeted,” Gosar wrote in an unhinged fundraising email sent out Thursday, with the subject line, “dismantling woke marxist ideologies.” “[It’s] a casualty of this cultural skirmish that has left our Army beleaguered and besieged by ‘woke’ ideologies.”

“This is not merely a crisis of numbers,” Gosar added. “It is a crisis of spirit.”

Gosar was responding to a recent investigation by Military.com that found that the number of white armymilitary recruits has been on a downward trajectory for the last half decade.

“Spirit”? “Woke ideologies”? That’s not the impression I get. I got to listen in to a big convo the leadership had with enlisted soldiers and their families (I’m family, I count). What I heard was enthusiastic officers discussing a deployment with enthusiastic troops, answering questions about how families were going to be taken care of while they were overseas. They discussed security issues and timetables. Is that what “woke” is?

Far-right commentators quickly pounced on those findings, and claimed they were “proof” that the armed forces had become overrun by “Marxists” who are forcing “wokeness” on its ranks—and, as a result, alienating prospective white recruits.

In recent years, supposed “wokeness” in the military has been a growing point of obsession among right-wing commentators, lawmakers, and culture warriors. That’s been driven, in part, by the Pentagon adopting LGBTQ-inclusive policies over the last decade. In 2011, the Pentagon rescinded the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, meaning gay and lesbian service members could serve openly. In 2021, a ban on transgender people serving openly was officially lifted. Growing LGBTQ acceptance in the military has inspired far-right memes painting American soldiers in rainbow flags, suggesting that they are “soft” compared to their global counterparts (images of Russia’s military, particularly when they first invaded Ukraine in early 2022, are often used side-by-side as comparison).

I would have been impressed if that meeting had been a Marxist dialectic. It wasn’t. It was pretty much nothing but pragmatic answers about an assigned mission. Everyone was professional and disciplined about it, except me and my wife sitting quietly at home worrying about our little boy going off to a distant country with a side-arm and armor.

The disrespect I see is coming entirely from the far-right who want to compound enlistment problems by rejecting women and gay enlistees who are all contributing to the effectiveness of the military. If you’re concerned about racial differences in enlistment rates, don’t be a Republican who is enacting policies that increase the division between the poor and wealthy, and that selectively holds back black Americans. Fewer people sign up when the economy is good and when they have other opportunities at home, you know, because being in the military is a dangerous option.

A soldier with a rainbow badge on their backpack is still a soldier, you know. I would hope they wouldn’t be fighting for whatever Paul Gosar represents.

All hat and no cattle

Look at this man. Does the phrase “all hat and no cattle” jump into your brain? It does mine.

That’s Oklahoma state representative Justin Humphrey in a suit and hat too big for him trying to justify his bill that would require women to get permission from their father in order to get an abortion. He is promoting a new and exciting law for his state.

Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall pick the student up from the school, or animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.

He thinks this is a pressing issue because he heard second-hand that some kids were meowing at a school. That’s it. He is so quick to address rumors with legislative action that I think someone ought to tell him a few stories, true stories, about children hiding from school shooters. I’m sure he’d rush to pass gun control legislation in addition to his important furry control work.

It’s been a Monday, boys and girls

Mondays are going to suck all semester long. For every Monday, I have to put together a shiny new lecture, and I have to assemble a set of thought-provoking, sophisticated questions to accompany that lecture, which students will think about during the talk and discuss afterwards. That was my day, and then I had to prepare for tomorrow’s class, which is not ready yet, but will be by 9am. Wednesday will be easier, because I’ll have done all the prep work to get that discussion going.

At least now I’m home and tired and ready to take a shower and then read in bed before succumbing to fatigue. I’ve more or less front-loaded every week with lots of work so I can coast through to the weekend…except that my writing class is going to produce lots of stuff I’ll have to grade, and I’m not sure where I’ll wedge that in yet.

I still can’t believe I get no sabbatical next year, and that I probably have 4-7 years go on my sentence, before I can retire. Maybe I’ll drop dead sooner and surprise everyone.

DeSantis is DeSintegrated

Remember that brief moment?

The man has dropped out.

…15 months later, after botching his presidential campaign launch, throwing about $130 million dollars down the drain, and sustaining ruthless attacks from Trumpworld, it’s brutally clear that DeSantis was on the precipice of a different political fate: hubris.

On Sunday, two days before the New Hampshire primary, DeSantis ended his presidential campaign in a taped message he posted to X, the same social media platform where he started his campaign with a host of technical difficulties.

The Republicans must now embrace the reality that a corrupt serial rapist and wanna-be dictator is going to be their candidate (no one believes Nikki Haley is going to pull off an upset.) The rest of us have to focus on defeating the orange turdblossom.