An ugly word: “warfighter”

I’ve been hearing this word “warfighter” a lot lately, often coming out of the mouths of macho assholes like Pete Hegseth. It implies that the role of the military is simply fighting, fighting, fighting — and I’d rather see the military as a stabilizing force, less about fighting and acting more as resilient response to threats, and also as a practical investment in a region that would be squandered if they were actually fighting.

I’m not alone in feeling as if the term misrepresents what our soldiers (what’s wrong with that fine, familiar word?) actually do.

someone binged on YouTube videos of old recruiting commercials or watched “Top Gun” too many times in a row. He (or she) birthed the term “warfighter,” which quickly took root in all the government circles and is spreading slowly into conventional media as well.

“Warfighter” is perfect. It’s dripping in red, white, and blue at a time when the military has never been more popular, or more lionized.

I hate it. “Warfighter” is the rhetorical equivalent of a “Support the troops” bumper sticker or an American flag lapel pin. It reduces the complexity and ambiguity of modern national security, dragging it back to an imagined era of good wars, bad guys, and clear-cut victory. It’s hard not to hear the phrase and picture a G.I Joe lookalike waving an American flag.

Using “warfighter” destroys our capacity for reason at a time when it’s desperately needed. With strategic flops in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear that the U.S. needs to take another stab at the national security paradigm. We should be thinking objectively about how to stabilize the international system, promote free enterprise, and share that burden across the full range of our allies. We need a clear strategy that Americans understand, but as well as our friends and, most importantly, our actual or potential enemies.

I have a son in the army. He’s never fought in a war. What he seems to do is plant his men into a place, build up infrastructure and facilities just in case a war breaks out, and then come home, or get transferred to another place that needs maintenance or upgrading. I would never call him a “warfighter,” because being a “warfighter” means you’ve actually failed.

Can we please get rid of Hegseth?

Speaking of Hegseth:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered modifications to a room next to the Pentagon press briefing room to retrofit it with a makeup studio that can be used to prepare for television appearances, multiple sources told CBS News.

The price tag for the project was several thousand dollars, according to two of the sources, at a time when the administration is searching for cost-cutting measures.

I’m not qualified to use the term as a hard-core civilian, but my uncles who served in WWII did teach me what a “REMF” was, and I’ve also read Catch-22 a few times.

Our government is occupied by pure evil

Law? We don’t need no stinkin’ law. We’re trying to banish children here. Kids are being hauled into court and told by a judge that they are trying to decide whether to kick them out of the country.

“The reason we’re here is because the government of the United States wants you to leave the United States,” Judge Ubaid ul-Haq, presiding from a courtroom on Varick Street, told a group of about a dozen children on a recent morning on Webex.

“It’s my job to figure out if you have to leave,” ul-Haq continued. “It’s also my job to figure out if you should stay.”

The parties included a 7-year-old boy, wearing a shirt emblazoned with a pizza cartoon, who spun a toy windmill while the judge spoke. There was an 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old sister, in a tie-dye shirt, who squeezed a pink plushy toy and stuffed it into her sleeve. None of the children were accompanied by parents or attorneys, only shelter workers who helped them log on to the hearing.

Enough. Enough. Shut down ICE, arrest every fucking member of the Trump administration, and give them some toys to play with while a humane judge decides what to do with them. How can that judge preside over a kangaroo court to decide on the fate of children?

Do they suspect those dozen kids are members of MS-13? Do they have tattoos?

This is a good time to say “NO!”

There’s a letter floating around among American universities. It’s a good letter that expresses some commendable statements, but is a bit light on specific actions they’re going to take. They “reject the coercive use of public research funding,” which is nice, but how?

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.

America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves. It includes research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses. Some institutions are designed for all students, and others are dedicated to serving particular groups. Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good. Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many provide healthcare and other essential services. Most fundamentally, America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.

The letter has over 200 signatories, a good start. I notice, however, that the University of Minnesota is not one of them. Even Columbia has signed on, but my university is taking their sweet time. I heard from our chancellor that there is going to be a meeting this week to discuss our response to the Trump regime. I hope they come up with the right answer.

Another mammoth resurrected!

David Futrelle has brought back We Hunted the Mammoth! Go read it!

The latest post is about JK Rowling and Graham Linehan. OK, maybe you should run away instead — nothing good can come of those two nitwits. There is a healthy dose of schadenfreude here, though. The TERFs have won a victory in the UK Supreme Court, but they’re still miserable and bitter. Futrelle has a long list of various reactions from fervent anti-trans wackaloons, and they’re all whining about how people hate them so much.

Victoria Smith
@glosswitch
But then when there is hope it also hits you just how awful it is, how much open hatred of women has been enabled, how utterly worthless so many professional, paid ‘feminists’ have been, how they will always say nothing no matter how bad it gets.
Julie Bindel
@bindelj
I feel lower than a snake’s armpit the past couple of days – sending love x
10:36 AM · Apr 20, 2025

They don’t get it. Their critics are not expressing “open hatred” of women, they’re disgusted with this small, loud crowd of haters who succeeded at getting legal approval of their bigotry. We’re repelled by you, not women.

And then there’s Glinner.

Graham Linehan 🎗️
@Glinner
“Let it”. It destroyed my family because of the cowardice of my friends, who stood by while a whole generation of gay kids were mutilated and sterilised, and the women who fought it lost their livelihoods. You’re a coward and a fraud
@jonronson
Quote
On a clear day
@ICanSeeForever1
·
Mar 14, 2024
Adam Buxton and Jon Ronson on Graham Linehan
‘I was kind of obsessed with our mutual friend who let it take over his life to the extent that he lost all of his work and his family’

The “it” that destroyed his family is, he thinks, trans people, but really “it” was his pathological obsession with hatred of trans people. Graham Linehan is just a sad pathetic failure of a human being.

Welcome back, David Futrelle. Nothing has changed.

As for Rowling, here’s an accurate assessment from Salon, commenting on her selfie with cigar and liquor.

But no matter how much money you have, you can’t dominate the world if you’re not out in it. In her photo, Rowling is notably posted up on a yacht or some beach resort, enjoying the spoils of her wealth and a strong 5G signal from her cellular provider. She’s not joining the cheering members of For Women Scotland and the other anti-trans voices in person, she’s playing edgelord from the comfort of a life so far removed from reality that the truth is just a speck in the distance. After years spent tarnishing her brand with rampant trans-exclusionary takes, Rowling has assured that her writing won’t define her legacy; her flagrant cowardice will.

Despite what she might say, Rowling isn’t for anyone, especially not women, whom she claims to champion; she’s for herself. The author of a beloved book series about coming together to fight the rise of fascism has written herself into the story as a real-life villain. No matter how much fans try to separate the art from the artist, Rowling and “Harry Potter” are inextricably linked forever. And with the “Hogwarts Legacy” video game and Max’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series trying to breathe new life into the franchise, it’s time for even diehard Potterheads to put their money where their mouths are and leave Rowling’s wizarding world behind for good.

It’s amazing how this group of people who eagerly embraced discrimination and hatred of trans folk have become so wretched, in spite of any wealth and success.

Now that’s a good science fair project

Good question.

Does your cat’s butthole really touch all the surfaces in your home?

I’m impressed. It’s an original idea, executed simply, and that’s what I like to see in a science fair question. It’s simple but a little bit icky: he put lipstick on a cat’s butthole and had it sit down on various substrates and asked if it left a mark. I hate to call it “elegant,” but yeah, that’s elegant.

I know you all want to know the answer:

His results and general findings: Long and medium haired cat’s buttholes made NO contact with soft or hard surfaces at all. Short haired cats made NO contact on hard surfaces. But we did see evidence of a slight smear on the soft bedding surface. Conclusion, if you have a short haired cat and they may be lying on a pile of laundry, an unmade bed, or other soft uneven surface, then their butthole MAY touch those surfaces!

Our evil cat is a shorthair, wouldn’t you know it.

Earth Day (or is it Air Day?)

I get excited when I find a couple of delicate strands of silk*, but then Mary has to come along and gloat about all the birds she saw just yesterday:

American Crow, American Goldfinch, American Robin, Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, Brown-headed Cowbird, Canada Goose, Cedar Waxwing, Chipping Sparrow, Collared Dove, Common Grackle, Common Pheasant, Common Starling, Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, Great-tailed Grackle, Hairy Woodpecker, Hermit Thrush, House Finch, House Sparrow, Mallard, Mourning Dove, Northern Cardinal, Northern Flicker, Northern House Wren, Purple Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-winged Blackbird, Rock Dove, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Song Sparrow, White-breasted Nuthatch, White-throated Sparrow, Wood Duck, Yellow-rumped Warbler.

It’s no fair! She has set up this grand array of birdfeeders to draw in the local species.

There is ONE bird in all of that alluring food this morning.

Also unfair: stupid vertebrates. It takes a little longer for invertebrates to warm up. Give ’em time, they’ll outnumber the birds soon enough…probably already. They’re just not a bunch of show-offs.

Happy Earth Day!

* I’m also seeing silk in the compost bin, but the compost hasn’t thawed out yet. Soon!

Spidersign!

I’ve been checking this one spot along my walk to work all Spring, a row of metal signposts along a parking lot. These are simply dark metal objects that absorb what heat there is, and while they look barren and uninteresting, they have been a reliable home for a population of small spiders.

On Sunday, I saw nothing there. Yesterday, Monday, I saw this:

It’s silk. Just a few strands of spider silk across the bar, telling me that spiders have moved in. All of the signposts have silk to varying degrees, suggesting that maybe there was a recent hatch and a spider swarm is repopulating the area.

It’s reassuring to see, even as I’m buried under grading. Just two weeks to go before the semester ends and 6 months of sabbatical begins.

They want to claim vaccines are a bioweapon now

Well, hello there, Minnesota Republicans. You just had to pop your little heads up and prove to the world that you are ignorant, stupid, or insane. Behold, HF 3219, the mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act:

A bill for an act
relating to public safety; designating mRNA injections and products as weapons
of mass destruction; prohibiting mRNA injections and products; proposing coding
for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 609.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1. SHORT TITLE.
This act may be known as the “mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act.”

Sec. 2. [609.7121] MRNA BIOWEAPONS PROHIBITION.
Subdivision 1. Legislative intent. It is the intent of the legislature to designate mRNA
injections and products as weapons of mass destruction according to section 609.712 and
to prohibit possession or distribution of the mRNA injections and products in the state.
Subd. 2. Definitions. (a) For purposes of this section, the following terms have the
meanings given.
(b) “mRNA injections and products” means:

(1) with regards to the COVID injections, mRNA or “modified” messenger RNA as
related to the gene altering agents. The structure was altered by substituting two
N-methyl-pseudouridine amino acids for the usual uridine components so as to elude immune
destruction of the mRNA, which then allows the mRNA that produces the pathogenic Spike
protein to exist within cells for a longer period of time;

(2) all injections or products containing mRNA or “modified” messenger RNA;

(3) any human gene therapy product for any infectious disease indication, regardless of
whether the administration is termed an immunization, vaccine, or any other term; or

(4) nanotechnology or nanoparticles that alter genes and create a biosynthetic cell
replication.

For the purposes of this section, mRNA does not mean naturally occurring mRNA defined
as messenger ribonucleic acid that is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds
to the genetic sequence of a gene.

(c) “State or local government official” means the governor, attorney general, state
attorneys, county sheriffs, and other state and local law enforcement.

Subd. 3. Crime. Whoever knowingly manufactures, acquires, possesses, or makes readily
accessible to another mRNA injections and products is guilty of a crime and may be
sentenced as provided under section 609.712.
Subd. 5. State or local government official. A state or local government official must
use all lawful means necessary to enforce this section. A state or local government official
who does not enforce or investigate a violation under subdivision 3 when provided with
reasonable evidence of a violation is guilty of a crime and subject to the same penalties as
a person violating that subdivision.
Subd. 6. Civil action. A resident of the state may seek injunctive relief, declaratory
relief, and monetary damages from the state or a state and local government official for lack
of enforcement of this section.

Yep, they are designating mRNA vaccines as bioweapons, bioweapons of mass destruction, no less, and you can get up to 20 years in prison for manufacturing, possessing, distributing, or administering mRNA vaccines. This nonsense legislation has been peddled to legislatures all around the country by a guy named Joseph Sansone, a psychotherapist with a bug up his butt about vaccines.

You don’t believe me? Perhaps you will trust a far-right MAGA site that has all the assertions.

Minnesota Statutes § 609.712 criminalizes the development, possession, or use of weapons of mass destruction, including biological agents, recombinant or synthetic nucleic acids, and delivery systems that may cause widespread death, serious injury, or disruption to public safety. The statute defines “biological agents” broadly to include any virus or genetically engineered element capable of causing disease or biological malfunction in humans.

By referencing this statute, the legislature affirms that mRNA-based injections—particularly those using modified nucleosides to produce synthetic Spike proteins or alter gene expression—fit the statutory definition of a biological agent capable of mass harm. This bill, therefore, applies the existing legal framework of § 609.712 to classify and prohibit such products under criminal law within the state of Minnesota.

According to the peer-reviewed literature and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the COVID-19 mRNA injections have caused widespread harm and death. In fact, they are estimated to have killed more people than 121 Hiroshima nuclear bombings:

Filing this bill would not have been possible without the critical work of Dr. Joseph Sansone, who originally drafted the model legislation on which this bill is based. His tireless advocacy and early legal framework helped pave the way for states like Minnesota to take bold action against experimental gene-based technologies.

WHO estimates about 15 million excess deaths worldwide from the COVID epidemic, so according to this quack, there were more people killed by the vaccine than by the virus, as determined by abuse of VAERS statistics.

That’s enough for a bevy of state politicians, every one of them a Republican, to propose criminalizing a useful and successful vaccine.

There have been no hearings on this bill yet, and it hasn’t passed beyond the demented MAGA masturbation stage. Let’s hope the stupidity dies a quick and painful death.

What’s your IQ?

I don’t care, because most people’s understanding of IQ is ill-founded and wrong.

All the belligerent guys online who insist they have a high IQ? I suspect many of them haven’t actually taken an IQ test at all.

Not a proper one, anyway. Official IQ tests, whatever their limitations, are highly-refined scientific tools. They take a lot of time, and cost a fair amount of money.

Basically, I would be beyond amazed if actual IQ tests, and all they involve, have become so widely accessible that @BigNutzz32998762 on Twitter/X and his countless peers who brag about their 178 IQ have been genuinely, properly assessed.

Also, given how IQ actually works, if countless random people were scoring ridiculously high on real IQ tests, wouldn’t they have to recalibrate the underlying assumptions, to keep the average as 100?

Point is, if so many people were scoring extremely high on official IQ tests, their scores would be reduced, to conform to the bell-curve. Because it’s mathematically impossible for everyone to be ‘above average’.

I haven’t taken a full, proper IQ test myself — I’ve had my IQ extrapolated from my scores on long, complex standardized tests, like the SAT and GRE. I’m not going to say what it was, because I know the limitations and fallacies of these kinds of tests, and because it was forty or fifty years ago, and my brain has been constantly changing.

The one thing I know is that people who brag about their IQ are never very intelligent.

You know what else is silly? People who declare that the conformation of your chromosomes determines your identity, your behavior, and your role in society. I know for a fact that almost no one has had their karyotype done — the exceptions are cases where there is evidence of a serious heritable anomaly — so the knowledge about chromosomes is practically negligible among the general public.

Even worse: people who have opinions on the contributions of genetics on IQ.

Forget IQ. As we all know, the proper way to score intelligence is by birthdate.

I can verify this by personal experience. I was born on 9 March, my wife was born on 10 September.

There is an extremely smug crackpot prowling the streets of Minneapolis today

This past weekend, I had a brief encounter with a ranting, raving kook howling about nefarious Jews and the virtues of the Tao. He also predicted that the Pope would die in 48 hours.

Uh-oh. The Pope has died.

Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has died, the Vatican said on Monday, ending an often turbulent reign marked by division and tension as he sought to overhaul the hidebound institution.
He was 88, and had suffered a serious bout of double pneumonia this year, but his death came as a shock after he had been driven around St. Peter’s Square in an open-air popemobile to greet cheering crowds on Easter Sunday.

He was 88, had been very ill, so it’s not much of a prediction, but OK, he gets to score 1 point. I’m going to predict that the street kook is feeling full of himself today and is babbling more nonsense more vehemently, a prediction that is even more predictable.