I have come home to a new state flag!

A commission has been busy redesigning our ugly state flag, and they’ve settled on a design that they will submit to state congress. They may diddle with it a bit, but generally, this is what it will look like:

Initially, I had favored a flag that featured an Ominous Loon, but I guess this one will do. It’s clean and simple, the colors reflect our name (Minnesota is from a Native phrase that means “where the water meets the sky,”) and I think it’s just plain pretty.

It doesn’t have a loon, unfortunately, but then our newly redesigned state seal has one.

I look forward to all the Minnesota school children being able to draw their flag this spring. Alas, my poor granddaughter lives in Wisconsin, and will be tortured with the effort to draw the cluttered abomination of the Wisconsin state flag.

Why is my bedroom so crowded?

I was on the Oregon Trail in reverse for the last couple of days, it took so long to get home. I had to change planes once with the most awkwardly timed layover, and then I had to take a long shuttle ride with a couple of transfers, and then one of the oxen died and I was laid up with dysentery. Finally, though, a kindly lady picked me up and took me home to my home and my bed.

Except, then…

OK, not really (I also didn’t really get dysentery — was being dramatic). The “Modern Crusaders” are not getting anywhere near my house, but instead, are thriving on Twitter. They don’t seem to be trying to be ironic at all. Looking at their Twitter feed, which I am not linking to, their latest post announces that “There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church,” they include a link to a Telegram channel that declares their goal of “Elimination of the demonic forces dominating our people politically and spiritually. Promoting the establishment of a Catholic monarchy,” and what follows is a welter of posts declaring that “Abortion is Jewish,” linking to Nick Fuentes, and engaging in Holocaust denial and Hitler apologetics.

So…just ordinary Twitter, then.

I’m happy to have left that shithole, and I don’t understand how anyone can be a fan of that hateful twerp, Nick Fuentes.

Travel day, yuck

I’m ready to fly away from the damp foggy Pacific Northwest to return to the cold snowy upper Midwest. It’ll be good to get home, but at least I can say that I got to watch my mother get visibly stronger in the week I’ve been here. She is off the oxygen during the day, and is able to get up and walk to the kitchen to get a cup of tea all by herself. If she keeps up with her therapy, I expect her to be roller-skating and dancing and changing flat tires next time I’m back this way.

The only downside is that she’ll be complaining even more vigorously about her offspring taking her cigarettes away. It’s for her own good!

Found! Treasured knife, a bit of history

When I was a young boy, my grandfather had a special knife hung above the fireplace, one that he said he inherited from his father, and that he would pass down to me when I was grown-up. Things happened. My great-grandfather died, my grandfather died, I moved around chasing an education, my grandparents’ house was sold, the contents scattered, and heck, I was more concerned about my family and family values and all that then in some lump of metal.

The knife, as it turned out, had gone to my mother, and my sister found it, and she says I can have it now. I guess this is my inheritance, a simple, practical knife that brings back happy memories. Here it is:

I think those are silver fittings. The handle has my great-grandfather’s initials (PV, for Peter Westad) picked out with small nails, and an engraving “WESTAD 1908” on the sheath.

Here’s the blade.

It’s still sharp, but I think you can see the edge is a bit rough — it’s going to need some tender loving care. My grandfather always told me that it was good Norwegian steel and would last a lifetime. He was wrong. It’s lasted a couple of lifetimes.

The photo is my great-grandfather and his brothers, taken in Fertile, Minnesota.

My sister is going to ship it to me later (I don’t think it would be wise to bring it on a plane), so it’ll be returning to Minnesota at long last. I’m going to have to consult some experts about maintaining it — it’s in pretty good shape after a century of neglect, so it doesn’t need a lot of work, but I would like to buff it up a bit. After all, I’m going to have to leave it to my descendants now!

True, the charlatans have not gone away

William Brinkman received a fund-raising letter from an unusual source: some people have access to the James Randi Educational Foundation mailing list, and they’re using it to beg for money. This is already a dodgy thing to do — the people who willingly joined that list weren’t signing up for spam from anyone who found the mailing list, they were supporting the JREF. The list should have been erased when the JREF dissolved, but mailing lists are valuable things, so someone is taking advantage of it.

The fundraising pitch aims at an appropriate target for James Randi supporters, but it’s pretty damned ironic. We’re supposed to oppose charlatans, you know.

Meanwhile, the charlatans of the world have not gone away. Indeed, we see more pseudo-psychic nonsense than ever, with alleged psychics being only a phone call away, ready and eager to take money from grieving or worried people.

Unfortunately, the fund-raising is to benefit a convicted charlatan, Brian Dunning. Dunning ran a cookie stuffing scheme that pocketed millions of dollars from users of eBay, and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, back in 2014. Dunning is a smart guy who saw the money-making potential of the internet in the early 2000s, and jumped into the ‘scientific skepticism’ niche despite having no credentials in science or philosophy or anything at all relevant–he’s a salesman. I guess he’s continuing in that vein now that he’s out.

I would trust him to pick my pocket, but not anything else.

Isn’t it odd how the people who should have imposter syndrome don’t?

America’s Mayor fall down, go boom

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Best pratfall ever.

Rudy Giuliani, who has spent the last several years hitting rock bottom and somehow keeps hitting rock bottom again and again and again, has been ordered to pay an astonishing $148 million in damages to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, the election workers he defamed in an effort to keep Donald Trump in power. The figure is more than three times the high-end amount that the women had been seeking, which the former mayor’s lawyer had warned earlier in the week would constitute a civil “death penalty” and “be the end of Mr. Giuliani.”

The jury came to the $148 million by awarding Freeman $16,171,000 for the damage Giuliani had caused to her reputation, awarding Moss $16,998,000 for the damage to her reputation, giving each woman $20 million for emotional distress, and adding $75 million in punitive damages.

He’s been disintegrating for years. Freeman & Moss shouldn’t count on getting the money they’re owed, because I bet Giuliani crumbles into dust and slime before he pays up.

Crow city!

At my mother’s house — there are American Crows everywhere. Big black birds that complain if humans step outside. Odin watches.

Unfortunately, I left the good camera at home and am reduced to iPhone photography.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine

A man has torn down the Satanic Temple’s display in the Iowa state capitol.

A former congressional candidate from Mississippi has been charged with allegedly vandalizing the Satanic Temple of Iowa’s statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet at the Iowa State Capitol.

Michael Cassidy, 35, of Lauderdale, Mississippi, was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief on Thursday, according to the Iowa Department of Public Safety. The charge could carry one year in prison and a $2,560 fine.

Good.

The whole point of the display in the first place was to highlight the intolerance and hypocrisy of conservative Christianity, and it served that purpose well. It got national attention. It was great PR. When the Baptists put up a manger in a public place, no one cares. A Satanist display provokes outrage, and everyone who is not a conservative Christian is made aware that there are haters out there who want to demand that you follow their religion.

Then some sanctimonious wackaloon tears it down, and there’s a second surge of PR that paints certain Christians as assholes and non-Christians as victims. Ha. Keep making our point for us, arrogant xian thugs, especially when it’s as ineffectual as knocking down cheap statues.

Nobody worshipped that display, and it doesn’t even need to come back as a Force Ghost. The bully has been exposed, that’s all anyone wanted.