The country is being run by snot-nosed, immature teen-aged man-children

I didn’t know this until now — universities don’t make these, I guess — but there is a class of memorabilia called challenge coins. Usually, these are given out by military organizations to commemorate specific events, ranging from a visit to a major victory, but there are many other organizations that hand them out for all kinds of reasons. I’ve never received one, or given one out, and I felt briefly left out when I discovered that the FBI is also handing them out, especially this one that Kash Patel is proudly giving people.

The challenge coins being handed out by @FBIDirectorKash. Seems someone put a lot of thought into this.

A skull with guns for teeth, and oh my god, it has spiders in it’s eye sockets, based on the Punisher logo? It’s just cartoonishly evil.

“Looks like a nerd stuck forever in puberty designed a challenge coin while being on 15 cans of Monster,” one user commented on the design.

Others quickly pointed out that the Punisher symbol might not be the best choice for an FBI director.

“The Punisher is a symbol of “law and order” failing. It has very little business in the office of the FBI Director,” one user posted.

The use of the Punisher logo by law enforcement and the military has drawn criticism from the character’s creator, Gerry Conway, who told Forbes: “It always struck me as stupid and ironic that members of the police are embracing what is fundamentally an outlaw symbol.”

The Battle of Chicago has begun

It is not bringing glory to the fascists.

In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building near 75th Street and South Shore Drive, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The DHS said that 37 individuals were arrested and that the operation involved the U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF.

The agency claimed the building and surrounding area were tied to activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and that those arrested included people allegedly involved in drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations.

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the building, told WBEZ Chicago that she saw federal agents dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. She said the children were separated from their mothers.

Assaults on apartment buildings to tear naked children from their mothers is not very photogenic, especially when the assailants are armored up and masked. Were the children members of Tren de Aragua? Were they armed and selling drugs? I could believe that there were a few individuals in that building who were suspected of “drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations,” but that doesn’t warrant harassing and harming and terrifying the innocent people who lived there.

Follow the rule of law or GTFO, ICE.

So proud of my alma mater

A Nazi barged into a class, Psych 210 (The Diversity of Human Sexuality), threw Nazi salutes, and called everyone there “degenerates.” He got more than he expected — practically the entire class rises up and chases him out, and pursues him across campus. It’s hilarious. There’s a moment in the video, which is focused on the Nazi running away, in which the camera briefly turns back and you see this huge boiling mob of students marching forward.

The students look like they’re having a good time.

They don’t beat up the Nazi, though. They surround him, and eventually the campus police show up to handcuff him and escort him away. That’s how you do it. It’s how I’d hope our students would respond if a similar incident occurred.

I hope Trump doesn’t use this as a pretext to invade the University of Washington with his stormtroopers.

I could have predicted this would flop

Dan Stern Cardinale offered an opportunity to creationists: come to his channel and present their affirmative evidence for their theory of origins. It was an open invitation to anyone to show up and explain their perspective. I could have guessed that no one would show up, because participation would require 1) a theory, and 2) evidence, and they don’t have either.

I was right. No creationists even tried.

Dan expected this to happen, too. He prepared a brief discussion of a creationist paper: Donny Budinsky of Standing For Truth, a used car salesman and a creationist propaganda site, titled “From Kanto to Cambrian,” which uses Pokemon to explain the ordering of fossils by the great flood.

You can’t make this stuff up. Budinsky says,

This idea is not presented as a final word, but as the beginning of an ongoing research project. Just as Pokémon captivates younger generations, this analogy may provide a creative, accessible, and scientifically robust way to engage new audiences in the creation-evolution debate.

I have never before heard Pokemon described as scientifically robust.

Go ahead, read the ‘paper’ for yourself, but Dr Dan has already torn it apart.

Israel demonstrates their criminality again

Since September first, a flotilla of 40 ships from various nations have been slowly sailing across the Mediterranean to deliver a token amount of aid to Gaza. This is a PR move — the reason they are taking so long is because they’re not bringing huge amounts of relief, but are instead trying to bring attention to Israel’s oppression.

Because it specifically has the goal of bringing the world’s attention to the crimes of Israel, you know it would not undermine its message by, for instance, secretly hauling crates of AK-47s. It’s just food and medical aid, and people who are talking on their cell phones to spread the message. That’s why the flotilla has been harassed by electronic countermeasures along the way, and getting buzzed by drones to deprive the passengers of sleep.

And then, yesterday, the Israeli navy boarded the ships and detained people, ending the flotilla’s mission. They have excuses!

Israel has argued its actions constitute a lawful naval blockade needed to prevent Hamas from importing arms, while critics consider it collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.

Whether the blockade is militarily justified is a point of contention. But the flotilla argues they are a civilian, unarmed group and that the passage of humanitarian aid is guaranteed under international law.

Uh, Israel? You’ve seized the ships, you’ve got troops on board, if they were importing arms, you could be releasing photos of those imaginary crates of AK-47s. You could produce documents that you’ve seized showing correspondence with terrorist organizations. They haven’t! It wouldn’t be believable given Israel’s history of faking evidence, and given the flotilla’s obvious goal of establishing a peaceful propaganda coup.

Well, they succeeded. Israel’s ham-handed attack on the flotilla is just demonstrating that they are criminals who don’t like their ongoing genocide being interrupted by peaceful activists.

The misinformation economy

MAHA is cannibalizing its own! This one dumb ‘influencer’ went viral with a tiktok in which she got outraged that Lucky Charms contains sodium phosphate, and she went to Home Depot to show that you can buy industrial-sized tubs of the same compound, implying that this must be bad for you. Then a second idiot influencer copied the same content, almost word for word, chasing after the same gullible MAHA viewers.

As Jessica Knurick says, “Can the people who never took a chemistry class please stop ‘teaching’ us about chemistry?”

The first ditzy tiktoker racked up millions of views of her phony story. I guess ignorance pays.

Practically my first exercise as a young labrat many years ago was making up phosphate buffered saline. It’s routine and good and safe — you don’t need gloves or a fume hood. If you’re working with embryos, or surgically opening up adults, you can’t just leave them naked and dry on the bench top, you have to keep them immersed in an osmotically balanced salt solution of the proper pH. That’s what sodium phosphate salt solutions are good for. If they’re safe for laving little embryos, why are you upset that your kids are getting it? (The problem with Lucky Charms should be the sugar content, not the basic baking ingredients used to make them.)

I also have a big jug of sodium bicarbonate, research grade, in my lab. You know there are different grades of reagents that reflect the purity of the substance, right? It makes a difference. Food grade salts are purer than the industrial grade stuff you might buy at Home Depot, and research grade is purer still.

Hey, if I made a tiktok video of me measuring out phosphate salts and mixing them into distilled water, do you think I’d get millions of views?

Jane Goodall has died

Jane Goodall was one of my earliest role models, and now she is gone.

The Jane Goodall Institute announced the primatologist’s death Wednesday in an Instagram post. According to the institute, Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a U.S. speaking tour.

Her discoveries “revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” the Institute said.

While living among chimpanzees in Africa decades ago, Goodall documented the animals using tools and doing other activities previously believed to be exclusive to humans, and also noted their distinct personalities. Her observations and subsequent magazine and documentary appearances in the 1960s transformed how the world perceived not only humans’ closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals, while propelling her into the public consciousness.

Yeah, the 1960s…that’s when I was soaking in National Geographic and the pop-sci magazines, and that’s where I learned about her.

West Point is training antifa traitors!

West Point, the military training institution, has something called “Constitution Corner” where various plaques celebrating the principles of the Constitution are posted. This one is outright seditious.

The United States boldly broke with the ancient military custom of swearing loyalty to a leader. Article VI required that American Officers thereafter swear loyalty to our basic law, the Constitution
While many other nations have suffered military coups, the United States never has. Our American Code of Military Obedience requires that, should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law. Many other nations have adopted our principle of loyalty to the basic law.
This nation must have military leaders of principle and integrity so strong that their oaths to support and defend the Constitution will unfailingly govern their actions. The purpose of the United States Military Academy is to provide such leaders of character.

That is definitely antifa.