Friday Cephalopod: It’s Octo-Easter!

It’s always silly how the Christian Easter holiday is so arbitrary and seemingly random, and engaged so many people in pointless mathematical calendrical exercises to figure out what day it falls on each year. Right now, I have no clue when it will be Easter this year, and you don’t need to tell me, because I don’t care and I don’t celebrate it.

So in the same spirit of random decisions, but with at least a little more simple predictability, I hereby declare that the first Sunday after Darwin’s birthday is Octo-Easter. Here are some Octo-Easter eggs for you all.

I suppose we could claim we’re celebrating the fecundity of the sea, or just the deep dark cold depths, or whatever. Don’t care. You can also celebrate it or don’t. That’s the nice thing about these freethought holidays, you’re free to think whatever you want about them.

OK, grandchildren, what have you done for me lately?

Rotten kids. They haven’t been rejuvenating me. That’s the message I get from one silly study.

Grandparents planning hefty amounts of childcare this half-term might want to think again after research claimed to disprove previous findings of a “rejuvenating effect” from looking after grandchildren.

Many studies have appeared to show mental and physical health advantages for those who care for their grandchildren. But none involved researchers talking to the same grandparents before and after their caregiving responsibilities began.

When the authors of Is There a Rejuvenating Effect of (Grand)Childcare? A Longitudinal Study, published this week in The Journals of Gerontology, did that, they found that caring for grandchildren failed to make grandparents feel any younger than their actual age.

Sorry, Iliana and Knut, you know I only visited you to leech youth-giving properties from you, like a vampire or Peter Thiel. Now I know it was all a sham, so I can stay home in the future.

The one interesting thing from the work is that it exposed selection bias in previous studies. Those studies compared how subjectively younger grandparents who took care of grandchildren felt, compared to those who didn’t. Aside from just the subjective evaluation of the effects, wouldn’t there be obvious bias in that you had to feel fairly healthy and vigorous to volunteer for child care in the first place? That’s hard work, yo. When they compared the same individuals before and after, the Fountain of Youth effect disappeared.

Surprise. I don’t even understand why this was considered a valid hypothesis in the first place, but then I’m not at all familiar with that literature.

You know, in all the times we’ve made the long trip to visit the grandkids, and all the times my wife has had extended stays to help with childcare, we’ve never once contemplated the peculiar notion that it might shave a few years of senescence off of us. Every trip back home we’re mainly dealing with tiredness, because the little ragamuffins can run us ragged.

We go because it makes us happy. Isn’t that enough?

Hey, Apple, could you be a little more predatory on your customers?

See that trivial little cable to the right? That’s Apple’s proprietary iPhone charging cable, and that’s the widget that’s going to drive me right out of the Apple ecosystem.

We already pay a premium for Apple products, which is kind of OK because they are very good, reliable devices. On top of that, though, Apple also wants to lock us into their cables — power cables, peripheral cables, you name it — and our devices can detect whether the cable we use to plug in our phones is an Official Approved Apple™ cable, and if they aren’t, they’ll refuse to connect. And sometimes, when you most need it, your phone will decide that the cable you are using is no longer up to its standards.

My wife and I are now down to ONE (1) functioning cable between us. I had to take it away because I need my phone to connect to any university services (that’s another gripe I’ll put off to another day), and I can’t trust it not to fail on me. I have bought so god-damn many phone cables because I’ve got maybe an 80% success rate in seeing a new cable work at all. All I could do is throw a fistful of unlikely cables at my wife as I was going out to work and suggest she try them and see if one magically works now.

My new requirement for my next phone is that it have a basic USB-C charging connector. Goodbye Apple, hello Android.

All aboard the pandemic roller-coaster!

I already told you my university is removing the vaccine mandate for attendance at large public events, and now the major cities are removing them, too.

Twin Cities Mayors Melvin Carter and Jacob Frey on Thursday jointly rescinded their vaccine-or-test emergency regulations for restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, effective immediately, as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rapidly decline.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. This is bonkers. Yes, the numbers are going down, we’re past the peak, but look at the difference in the case rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

So we’re going to reduce the incentives for the unvaccinated to get vaccinated. These chickenshit politicians are calling it “invasive regulation”, when it’s a mundane public health measure, in the same way that we expect children to be vaccinated before they go off to school. It makes no sense. It’s pandering to Republicans.

Or maybe it’s something more nefarious. The Democrats see a way to reduce the number of Republican voters permanently. Hey, Mr MAGA Hat, please do cough and sneeze all over your friends at a rally, and while you’re at it, go play in traffic. We won’t get you all, but if we cripple you financially by throwing you on the mercies of your preferred health care system, or invalid you out with long COVID, we’ll be hampering your future effectiveness as a political force. <cackles evilly>

No, not really, I don’t endorse that. You’re already enough of a drag on society, and I don’t want to encourage a reservoir for new mutations to fester.

Meanwhile, as we wait for the next surge, here are some recommendations for you sensible people.

I’m using N94 & N95 masks entirely now. It’s kind of a shame, because last year there was a little cottage industry of artists making lovely cloth masks, but those are no longer recommended, unless worn as part of a set of layers. Things better not get so bad that I need a PAPR to go grocery shopping!

I also don’t understand the resistance to wearing masks. It’s -12°C and snowing with 55 km/hr winds here — even without a pandemic I’d be wearing a mask.

Kids, you’re our only hope

I’ve been noting for years that the Christian right has been highly effective at packing school boards and city councils with idiots, primarily people who have made the Bible or Capitalism their god. It’s a tactic that works, since it’s a way to let a minority’s nonsensical perspective dominate community life. It allows them to introduce the most astonishing — and illegal — bullshit into the public schools.

Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school’s auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

This isn’t just a West Virginia thing. I’ve lost touch with my local public school since all my kids graduated and got the hell out of town, but the local schools would pull this kind of stunt all the time. There are traveling evangelical Christian groups all over this state that make money by billing schools to put on “wholesome” or “moral” assemblies — see You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministries, which has the goal To reshape America by re-directing the current and future generations both morally and spiritually through education, media, and the Judeo-Christian values found in our U.S. Constitution. They’re a known hate group, but they still manage to slither into our schools, and he’s still got a Christian talk radio show.

What they don’t take into account, though, is we can still get the kids. They’re too smart, and can see right through all that.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state” and, “My faith, my choice.”

A West Virginia school had a walkout led by the students to protest the willful insertion of evangelical Christian propaganda in their school. Let that sink in, preachers. Your message isn’t persuading the youth, it’s alienating them. Good.

Religion is a force that fosters fanaticism

What’s the difference between the insurrectionist’s prayer and the national prayer breakfast? Nothing.

It’s an unfortunately under-reported fact that our recent attempted insurrection had a strong unifying force: White Christian Nationalism. You didn’t see many atheists or Muslims or Jews storming the capitol, and you didn’t hear a lot of non-Christian rhetoric stirring up the mob. The organizations that promote the overthrow of the government are groups like the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, the Groypers, etc., all fanatically Christian…or at least, eager to adopt a Christian facade to rationalize their violence.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Seidel highlighted what he called the preponderance of “openly militant” rhetoric that conflated religion and violence. He pointed to William McCall Calhoun Jr., a Georgia lawyer who reportedly claimed on social media that he was among those who “kicked in Nancy Pelosi’s office door” on Jan. 6. (Calhoun later claimed in an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution that he did not personally enter any office.)

“God is on Trump’s side. God is not on the Democrats’ side,” Calhoun allegedly wrote in a social media post. “And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it is God’s will. Think ethnic cleansing but it’s anti-communist cleansing.”

In the report, Seidel recounts a conversation with New Yorker journalist Luke Mogelson, who recorded widely shared footage of insurrectionists attacking the U.S. Capitol and praying in the Senate chamber.

“The Christianity was one of the surprises to me in covering this stuff, and it has been hugely underestimated,” Mogelson told Seidel. “That Christian nationalism you talk about is the driving force and also the unifying force of these disparate players. It’s really Christianity that ties it all together.”

How can it be a surprise? This combination of Christianity and fascism has been openly on display for at least the last century. Here are a few ancient history quotes (ancient only because this is America, we forget the past as soon as it is behind us):

Eugene Debs in 1918:

No wonder Jackson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” He had the Wall Street gentry in mind or their prototypes, at least; for in every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both. (Shouts of “Good, good” from the crowd) (applause).

Lonnie Jackson, 1923:

“The Ku Klux Klan comes wrapped in the American flag, as it were, advocating the American principles openly, with a Bible in its hand, and the very next day they are passing their neighbors with a mask over their faces. My conception of the fundamental principles of Americanism is that a man should have nothing to be ashamed of.”

A letter to the Kingsport, Tennessee Times:

The contention of my articles will be that, if and when fascism comes over America, it will be on the Kingsport plan—iron hand encased in a silk glove:

For God and Country!
Freedom and democracy!
Pure Anglo-Saxonism!
Liberty and the constitution!

—catchwords which will thwart the actual and real rights of the citizenry . . .

And this familiar quote:

In his book, “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935), Sinclair Lewis wrote, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.”

I repeat, how can this be a surprise? They are talking about a report written by a committee which included Kathryn Stewart, who has a new book, The Power Worshippers, which is specifically about the rise of religious nationalism.

Christian nationalism is a political ideology that ties the ideas of America to specific cultural and religious identities. It’s an anti-democratic ideology because it says the foundation of legitimate government is not our Constitution, our democratic system of governance or our imperfect history of absorbing different people from all over the world into pluralistic society — but rather, our government is tied to specific cultural and religious identities. It’s also a device for mobilizing and often manipulating large segments of the American public.

Man, I wish we had an active atheist movement that wasn’t tainted by authoritarianism and bigotry. I also wish we didn’t have such deep economic rifts that allowed Christian billionaires to astroturf our media and various organizations with fascist assholes like Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson.