A wicked way to end the semester

Today is the last day of classes! I don’t even have a lot to do: I have one class on Fridays, which is all student presentations, and then I’m free. Sort of. I have a bunch of grading to do, which I plan to wrap up this weekend, and I have to assemble a final exam that will be posted online on Monday. A lot of the pressure is off.

I chose to celebrate prematurely last night by walking to the theater to see Wicked. It was good, I enjoyed it, but of course I have a few complaints.

  • It was long at 2½ hours, this is just the first half of the story, yet it stripped out almost all of the complexity of the Wicked novel. It’s fine to greatly change the story when adapting to a different medium, but as long as you’re doing that, why instead bloat it up rather than streamlining it? The first half of the movie took it’s time building up the character, but mostly omitted all the chaos and unrest of the book.

  • Movies always do this one annoying thing: they take a character who is supposed to be unsettling and scary, and make her gorgeous. It’s the old trope of putting glasses on a beautiful women to signal that she’s ugly (she isn’t, not in the slightest) and whip them off to indicate that she’s now transformed into glorious beauty. I’m sorry, but Cynthia Erivo was stunning in the role of the Wicked Witch. She might have given me a green skin fetish now.

  • I do miss Margaret Hamilton. Maybe Erivo will stop singing and start screeching in the next half.

  • There are a lot of characters who are there to fill the stage, doing nothing. I hope they are given something to do in part 2.

  • I will say that the flying monkeys are far more terrifying in this movie than they were in the 1939 movie, which is saying a lot, since many children were traumatized by the original monkeys.

Now it’s time to do the responsible adult thing and trudge through the ice and snow to get some work done. The semester isn’t really over until the grades have been submitted.

Musk and Ramaswamy are not qualified or disinterested in their plans

The rich gomers who are in charge of the “department of government efficiency” have floated some of their plans to save money, which mainly seem to involve the wholesale destruction of various government agencies, throwing thousands of people out of work and also gutting important government funded programs, like science. They want to just shut down NIH? Jesus.

Who wants to tell all the veterans who sacrificed so much for their country that we’re going to simply end Veteran’s Administration health care? I imagine they think we can just privatize all the prisons, and that will somehow save money.

There’s more. Let’s dismantle the department of education, starve Planned Parenthood and the IRS, and let’s stop the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission from meddling in rich people’s money. They also want to make massive cuts in NASA funding, specifically to end all those “bureaucrats and contractors unearned bonuses”. Yeah, too many outside contractors are leeching off NASA’s budget…like SpaceX, maybe?

You know, killing established programs within the federal government does not reduce expenses or improve services — it just opens the door to private parasites moving in and taking over to increase their profits.

Sproing-oing-oing!

This spider has a neat trick. It builds a typical orb web, but then it gets behind it and draws it back, like a slingshot…and when it hears a bug buzzing by, it releases it to spring forward and entangle it’s prey.

A) Untensed web shown from front view. (B) Tensed web shown from side view.

It can hear mosquitos and are triggered when on buzzes within range.

As for the web kinematics, Han and Blackledge determined that they can accelerate up to 504 m/s2, reaching speeds as high as 1 m/s, and hence can catch mosquitos in 38 milliseconds or less. Even the speediest mosquitoes might struggle to outrun that.

I haven’t seen any, but their range is basically holarctic — I would like to encourage them to move in around my house.

Are you still denying that Israel is genocidal?

Let’s ask Amnesty International.

Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Amnesty International said for the first time on Wednesday, calling on countries, especially those with influence over Israel, such as the US and Germany, to take action to bring the violence to an end.

Let’s ask the people living under oppression.

“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse,” Mohammed, a 42-year-old father of three, was quoted by Amnesty as saying. “There is no room for you to pitch a tent; you have to set it up near the coast… You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.”

Of course, if you ask the Israeli government, you’re going to get nothing but denial.

The Israeli government has repeatedly balked at charges of genocide, claiming it takes great efforts to protect civilians while Hamas deliberately puts Palestinians in danger. The US has made similar defenses, and, when pressed, often defaults to its line that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Amnesty found such claims are “not credible,” saying that the presence of Hamas does not absolve Israel from its obligation to avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.

From “the clear pattern of causing intergenerational harm by dropping bombs on residential areas at night where children, infants, parents and grandparents are sleeping,” to “the constant forced movements of populations that are already traumatized by having been displaced and then attacking them once they have been moved,” O’Brien said it is “absolutely not the case” that Israel’s violence can be “understood exclusively as an attempt to defeat Hamas.”

But the Times of Israel says Lebensraum Needed for Israel’s Exploding Population, as an excuse. They actually said “lebensraum,” as if we’ve never heard that before, and as if it is a legitimate excuse for exterminating the people living on the land you want.

Or we could just look at the numbers.

The Israeli military has killed at least 44,532 Palestinians, injured at least 105,538, and displaced an estimated 90% of people in Gaza since the war began. The death and injury toll is feared to be a drastic undercount due to decimated health and tracking capabilities, and thousands missing in the rubble.

With its conclusion, Amnesty International now joins an ever-burgeoning list of people and organizations who have found Israel to be committing acts of genocide against Palestinians.

How about looking at the pictures?

Now that the question of whether Israel is a genocidal regime is settled, let’s ask another question: why are we still propping them up with arms?

Who needs AI?

If you want a pretty picture, just visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, meaning they can be downloaded directly from the museum’s website for non-commercial use. When you browse the Met collection and find an image that you fancy, just look at the lower left-hand side of the image. If you see an “OA” icon and the words “public domain” (as shown in the example below), you’re free to use the image, provided that you abide by the Met’s terms.

Also, the British Museum has made 1.9 million images available.

Classy, not cheesy.

Moche spider from the 6th-7th century

What a winner

Donald Trump wants Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense — why, I don’t know, he’s not qualified at all, but he is a minor Fox News celebrity and Trump seems to be selecting contestants for a reality TV show — but the nomination is running into trouble. He has a history of sexual abuse, and has even been accused of rape; he also has a history of drunken partying and skimming funds for charity. His own mother wrote to him and said, “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.” He’s the perfect Fox News host, but anything else…nuh uh. Nope.

What do you do when your own mother tells you it’s time for a come-to-jesus moment? If you’re Pete Hegseth, you enlist in the leagues of Satan, that is, Doug Wilson.

In the years since, Hegseth — now on his third marriage — has claimed that he rediscovered Christ, saying “faith became real” to him in 2018. He became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson, an untrained and self-proclaimed pastor who advocates for Christian nationalism and has become famous for his trollish promotion of his far-right political views. At the center of Wilson’s philosophy is a misogyny so overt that it’s sometimes hard to believe he’s serious.

Instead of changing his behavior, Hegseth joined a church that rationalizes and justifies it.

“Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, told Salon. “Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin.”

In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women’s fault for not being submissive enough. “[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes. “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to “dream of being rapists,” deprived of the “erotic necessity” found in women’s submission. Nancy Wilson, Doug Wilson’s wife, backs this view, comparing a wife to a “garden” cultivated for the husband’s pleasure: “But of course a husband is never trespassing in his own garden.”

Right. He joined a church that thinks slavery was a good thing, and that believes women should be slaves to men. I don’t think this is going to help Hegseth’s attitude, to think that life is lie a Gor novel.

Also, god damn Christopher Hitchens for promoting Wilson with a lecture tour, a book, and a terrible movie, and also for saying this:

I haven’t yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind… However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.

I think Hitchens may have found Wilson “polite and hospitable” because he was a fellow male with the ability to popularize his evil church.

Shocking, unbelievable news!

You are not going to believe this, and you should probably be sitting down right now. It’s going to rock your world and send you reeling away in disbelief: Catholic priests have been raping children and the Church has been protecting them.

The star witness in a clerical molestation case that has rocked one of the most Catholic cities in the US was going to tell a jury that his high school principal forced him to see a psychiatrist for “anger issues and fantasy stories” – or face expulsion – after reporting that a priest had raped him on campus.

I know — who ever heard of such a thing? The account goes into unseemly detail, which I’ll hide below the fold, but you will find it surprising that a priest could be so depraved. I thought they all were inspired by the spirit of Jesus. Is this what Jesus would do?

[Read more…]

He’s priming the MAGAts

Trump met with Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada and had the kind of friendly conversation that should make everyone nervous.

The president-elect told the prime minister if Canada cannot fix the border issues and trade deficit, he will levy a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods on day one when he returns to office.

Trudeau told Trump he cannot levy the tariff because it would kill the Canadian economy completely. Trump replied – asking, so your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?

Trump then suggested to Trudeau that Canada become the 51st state, which caused the prime minister and others to laugh nervously, sources told Fox News.

But he continued, telling Trudeau that prime minister is a better title, though he could still be governor of the 51st state.

Sources told Fox News someone at the table chimed in and advised Trump that Canada would be a very liberal state, which received even more laughter. Trump suggested that Canada could possibly become two states: a conservative and a liberal one.

He told Trudeau that if he cannot handle his list of demands without ripping the U.S. off in trade, maybe Canada should really become a state or two and Trudeau could become a governor.

Could he be joking? Maybe he’s joking. Except…this is the kind of thing Trump would dream about. I also suspect there are a lot of Fox News junkies/MAGA hat wearing assholes who have just perked up at the idea of their red wave rolling across the border and teaching those commie liberals up north a lesson.

If it came to that, I’d be on the Canadian side of the fight.

Uh-oh, South Korea has gone authoritarian

This is personally worrying — my son is in the midst of interviewing for a new position in the army (he’s a Major in the signal corps), and just this past week he was narrowing his options down to a position in South Korea. We thought this was good news, since he’s currently stationed in Kuwait, and we’d rather he were in a nice, peaceful, calm place. But look! South Korean President Yoon has declared martial law, citing vague threats from North Korean communists while actually targeting the South Korean opposition parties.

“I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order,” Yoon said.

Yoon did not immediately specify who constituted the pro-North Korean anti-state forces. But he has cited such forces in the past as hindering his agenda and undermining the country.

He did not say in the address what specific measures will be taken. Yonhap reported that the entrance to the parliament building was blocked.

“Tanks, armored personnel carriers, and soldiers with guns and knives will rule the country,” Lee Jae-myung, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, which has the majority in parliament, said in a livestream online. “The economy of the Republic of Korea will collapse irretrievably. My fellow citizens, please come to the National Assembly.”

Yeah, everyone who opposes my politics is a Communist who supports the terrorists. Sounds familiar.

The news sources are predicting immediate protests, rallies, and even riots in response — South Koreans do not abide autocracies taking over. The American military won’t respond (we hope!), but it’s probably no fun to be hunkered down in Camp Humphreys while the citizenry takes to the streets.

It’s probably too much to expect that someone in the military will always be posted to someplace calm.