Do you think medical boards protect us from quacks?

She said, the longer you wear a mask, the more unhealthy you get.

She thinks vaccines wreck chromosomes. For those of you who say you are Christians, what will your life review look like at the end of your life? Will the Lord say to you: ‘You coerced people into being injected with this gene-modification technology that irreversibly disrupts your chromosomes?

She claims that that there is “some sort of an interface, ‘yet to be defined’ interface, between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers, and that the vaccines have caused thousands of deaths in the U.S.

She also says I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who’ve had these shots, and now they’re magnetized. They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick. Because now we think that there’s a metal piece to that.

She thinks cities are liquifying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply.

She has a mission.

In one session, Tenpenny implores God to release the U.S. from the tyranny of the mask, argues America is founded on your word and expresses hope it will return to being one country under God. In another, she refers to vaccines as a bioweapon to damage your children created by satanists who allow Black Lives Matter and antifa activists to operate as a front to drive socialism through the heart of America, which turns into communism.

I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to know that the state medical board has restored Sherri Tenpenny’s license to practice medicine in the state of Ohio.

Making good things cool

The pressure is enormous. I’m a pretty conventional guy, but all the messaging from the world around me tells me that people like me are terrible, hypocritical, and lack all empathy.

Normie guy feels unsafe when people protest genocide, is relieved to see cops busting heads

I’m still cheering on the protesters, though, and despising the cops. This comic from Mattie Lubchansky is mainly persuading me that I’ll never wear a purple sweater vest.

Then there’s all these strangely hateful people trying to tell me that being LGBTQ is super-cool.

The LGBT flag is like the modern day Jolly Roger. It’s a declaration to the world that you stand against order, civilization, and goodness itself

Look, that tempts me, but the social contagion isn’t influencing me at all. I’m a confirmed, committed heterosexual who finds himself attracted to women, not men, and even if you promised me a whole pirate ship and a chest full of gold doubloons I wouldn’t be able to switch my sexual preferences.

I’m not changing my brain around, but I’m convinced by this kind of media that I should be supporting protesters and LGBT people. They’re the ones doing the sane, cool stuff.

If that isn’t enough ferocity for you, behold…the Gender Ideology Hydra!

Spider gluttony

I was checking out our compost bin, which is swarming with young juvenile spiders, and what jumped out at me was how fat they’re getting. These little spiders are growing fast and are turning into regular whales. This one, I noticed, had a secret stash — they’d corralled a bunch of baby isopods to snack on whenever they felt peckish.

Parasteatoda

Yum. All gathered into one spot, and tender and delicious nibbles, too. No wonder they’re getting so plump.

Personally, I’m feeling well satiated right now. I scheduled one class to turn in their final assignment last night, and another class to turn in their term papers tonight. I’d rather lick isopods off a compost bin lid than read any more student papers.

Bari Weiss created a short, simple label for the worst people in media: “IDW”

It’s been six years since Bari Weiss published that silly New York Times article conjuring the Intellectual Dark Web into existence. I think a lot of us here, at least, instantly recognized that it was PR for a gang of grifters and that Weiss was trying to be the Queen Bee of an imaginary movement. It’s about time we got a retrospective on Weiss’s propaganda flop. Where is the IDW now? How are its heroes doing? The short answer is that they’re thriving, cruising along with growing audiences, because they’ve become the clowns in the circus.

So let’s take a look at the IDW today. Eric Weinstein:

Eric Weinstein, a mathematician who spent years working for right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, gave the IDW its name—which he has described variously as a “half-joke” and also a brilliantly calibrated troll designed to get maximum attention. He’s considered one of the least extreme of the original IDW members.

But both in 2018 and now, Weinstein decries what he calls the “gated institutional narrative” and the irredeemable systemic corruption he believes has infected a vast array of institutions, from academia to the media. He’s convinced that many of these institutions are conspiring to silence himself and his friends (and prevent them from winning Nobel Prizes).

Jordan Peterson:

While Peterson was always prone to hyperbole, he has become increasingly unhinged.

He now says climate activists want to “sacrifice the poor,” compares them to Nazis, and suggests that global elites are using climate change as an excuse to depopulate the planet. He compares this effort to “genocidal societies” with a “utopian vision” which leads to the “mass destruction of millions of people.” He believes Vladimir Putin may well be on the right side of a civilizational battle against wokeness. He describes COVID-19 as a “so-called pandemic” and claims it’s “highly probable” that the vaccines (which he refuses to call “vaccines”) were more dangerous than the disease.

Dave Rubin:

Rubin’s North Star was “civility.” But these days he tweets things like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) is a “dishonest communist cunt,” and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is a “vile jihadist cunt.” Tweeting recently about United States Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Samantha Power, Rubin said, “this bitch can fuck off.”

Ben Shapiro:

Another member of this tribe devoted to civility and rational discourse is the popular conservative podcaster and writer Ben Shapiro. As the right-wing’s angry motormouth one-time wunderkind, he’s remained somewhat consistent—having gone from saying things like, “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue” to things like, “Hamas is running Columbia University.”

Bret Weinstein:

Here are a few of Weinstein’s fascinating insights today: He suspects that the United States is involved in a plot with China and the WHO to create a “turnkey totalitarian planet.” He claims that a “credible estimate” of the number of deaths caused by mRNA vaccines is 17 million. He suggests that China is financing infrastructure in Central America to launch an “undeclared invasion” with a covert army of “military age” men. He’s a big fan of RFK, Jr., who compared public health measures during the pandemic to Nazism and the Holocaust.

Joe Rogan:

To cite just one example, when Weinstein recently suggested on The Joe Rogan Experience that vaccine mandates in the U.S. military were meant to purge ethical and freethinking soldiers and replace them with disloyal and compliant immigrants—a force that would be “capable of acting on behalf of tyranny against Americans”—Rogan didn’t offer any critical comment.

Instead, he said: “Holy shit. Then you have a real coup.”

Candace Owens:

In a 2017 interview with Rubin, Owens said, “I think abortion is really just about population control.” Rubin replied with a characteristically uncritical and incurious follow-up: “That’s some serious red-pill right there.” In 2018, Owens claimed that liberals want to “exterminate blacks via Planned Parenthood, which she would later describe as a “silent genocide.” She said Black conservative politicians are “all called coons” by the media. She declared that “the word ‘racism’ is repeated obsessively by people who wish to enslave black people to the Democratic Party.”

Five months before Weiss published her piece, Owens called for the imprisonment of journalists and political opponents—something that probably should have pricked the ears of a movement which claimed to be unwavering in its defense of free speech and civil discourse.

There are others mentioned, including Christina Hoff Summers, Majid Nawaz, Douglas Murray, etc., but you get the idea. The IDW was a tarnished brand from the outset, and it’s only gotten worse as its members descend into greater madness.

Bari Weiss has an awesome legacy. Let’s hope it catches up to her someday.

May the Fourth proven false by a religious twit!

It’s fun to watch religious conservatives grapple with pop culture, because they really don’t get it. Today is the goofy pseudo-holiday called May the Fourth (it’s not a real holiday, ‘k? It’s a silly riff on the phrase “May the force be with you from Star Wars). The big dumb dorks at Answers in Genesis would like to get in on the fun in the worst possible way. Like a particularly clueless high schooler showing up at the prom to tell everyone dancing is stupid, their way of celebrating a fake holiday is to announce that Star Wars is fake.

We know, guy.

The AiG approach, though, is to “prove” that intelligent aliens don’t exist using theological “logic”. They imagine a group of fictitious aliens finding a Bible.

Let’s consider physical, intelligent beings like Wookies, Klingons, or other “humanlike” beings. Although they definitely make for good entertainment in sci-fi movies and shows, the concept of advanced alien races is theologically problematic. Let me explain using the following (imaginary) scenario, with Chewbacca, Superman, and Spock reading the Bible: can these intelligent aliens be redeemed from the curse? (See Genesis 3 and Romans 8.) In other words, does God’s plan of salvation apply to them?

These imaginary aliens would not think about that at all, any more than you would wonder whether you were going to be rewarded with some kind of paradise if you found some book of mythology. Are you wondering if you’ve been sufficiently “cleared” to earn Scientology’s afterlife? Probably not. Chewbacca is going to be similarly unconcerned about meeting weird-ass Christian criteria. However, AiG’s theology says poor Chewie is either “fallen” or irrelevant.

Romans 8 makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected all creation—not just mankind. So then we have to ask the question: are these high-level sentient aliens fallen? If not, then they’re redundant. God already has the angels (the cherubim, seraphim, etc.). And even if these aliens have never sinned, they would still suffer the effects of sin, suffering under the bondage of corruption—despite having never sinned!

So are they claiming that the Bible accuses the Wookies of Kashyyk of being slammed with the guilt of sin when Eve bit into the apple? Because it doesn’t say that. No human has any knowledge of aliens on other worlds, so it would be really weird if Moses, the putative author of certain books of the Bible, had enumerated all these unrelated alien creatures. So this is a rather stupid assertion. Also, sin is not an actual phenomenon — it’s invective used against certain behaviors, rather than something intrinsic to humans or aliens — so claiming it’s a property of people as well as Wookies is not demonstrable.

As for being irrelevant…that’s an ugly anthropocentric and often racist attitude.

Obviously, it makes no sense to have intelligent beings—who suffer because of Adam’s sin—but cannot be saved! Christ is able to redeem man because he represents man by taking upon himself a second nature—as being fully God and fully man. Christ is the God-man (i.e., he’s not the “God-Klingon” or the “God-Wookie”).

“Obviously” and “it makes no sense” are phrases no fundamentalist/evangelical Christian should ever use. The whole premise of their religion, that a god turned into a man who died and thereby allowed everyone to go to heaven, “obviously” “makes no sense.”

AiG somehow turns this strange twisted logic into proof that aliens don’t exist, because “it makes no sense.”

Simply put, the work of Jesus cannot atone for the sins of advanced alien beings. And so, the idea of intelligent life existing on other planets is completely unbiblical! Actually, these kinds of issues highlight the problem of trying to mix unbiblical ideas into a biblical worldview. I mean, can you imagine a gospel message that begins with: “Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” No, that would obviously trivialize the gospel!

And speaking of the gospel, I should also quickly mention that it’s unbiblical to believe Jesus somehow visited multiple alien worlds, lived there, died for them, rose again . . . and repeated this process on each world. In other words, Jesus dying multiple times is NOT biblical! The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus died once (e.g., Romans 6:10; Hebrews 9:28; 1 Peter 3:18).

There’s an awful lot of bullshit excused as “biblical”, so “unbiblical” is not the condemnation they think it is.

They then leap to rebut an argument no one has made. What about unintelligent life? The argument from sin and salvation wouldn’t apply, so maybe tauntauns could exist? Nope. Any planets orbiting those 1023 stars in the universe must be completely sterile.

…recall from Genesis 1 that God created everything for man’s benefit and enjoyment. In other words, we have dominion over God’s creation (Genesis 1:28), which is also stated in Psalm 8. So the question would be: do we have dominion over those plants and animals on alien worlds? What purpose would they serve for us? So, for this reason alone, I believe it’s unlikely that there’s any non-intelligent life out in the cosmos.

So trillions of dead planets many light years away must have been put there for “man’s benefit and enjoyment.” How does that work, anyway? What benefit do I get from an unreachably distant scorched cinder orbiting Betelgeuse, pray tell? Doesn’t the fact that I don’t, and that I don’t have dominion over distant planets, show that their interpretation of the Bible is already wrong?

I want you to know this was a challenge

A swarm of Parasteatoda have hatched out in my compost bin, and I’ve tried a few times to get decent photos of them, but it’s hard. They’re young and tiny — less than half a millimeter long — and they’re busy, scampering all over to build webs, so shooting them is tough. Also, I’m rusty from a long winter neglecting my camera.

Here’s one being spooky, its cephalothorax in shadow with just the pair of posterior median eyes visible and glowing.

I’ll keep practicing and they’ll keep growing.

Wouldn’t you know it?

This is the first day of my summer break.

Of course, then, in the middle of the night, the toilet float assembly breaks. The water won’t stop running. My wife is disturbed by this, and gets up at 1am to fuss over it to no avail — she can’t close the water valve to the toilet — and wakes me up. I tell her it’s too late to be worried about this, just turn off the main valve in the basement and go to sleep, which she does.

This morning I get up, close the shutoff valve to the toilet, turn the main valve back on, and make coffee. Then I start disassembling the float valve so I can replace it. No rush; we have another bathroom upstairs.

But then, I’m informed that as long as I’m doing this little job, she’d really like a whole new toilet that’s a bit taller, since this one is practically a squat toilet, and as long as I’m doing that, can I get a bidet installed? This has turned into such a big job that I’m going to just call a plumber on Monday.

Maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t retired yet, I had a terrifying vision of what life would be like if I didn’t have a formal job.

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER!

Last class today; I’m not giving any finals, but I do have some term papers coming in on Monday evening. I’m wrapping this thing up in short order.

This week my eco devo course has been nothing but student presentation. I encouraged them all to be creative, and one student gave us a grand finale with a song. Here it is!

Hex here! And welcome to “hi I made another song for a school project because I can” 2 electric boogaloo.

Context for the regulars on this channel, the Ecological Development class I’m taking this semester has some rather lax requirements in that like- It has to be 15-20 minutes, but I could do music and such.

So I’m doing a presentation on allergens because I discovered I’m allergic to cats and wanted to know WHY when I’ve been around cats all my life. Sadly, my research didn’t give me any good news, and in fact I might’ve developed worse allergies from being around so many cats for a solid 18 years of my life before spending the past few years in college.

As for this song? Basically me incorporating some of my research into a song that’s basically me being like “WHY AM I ALLERGIC TO CATS WHEN I LOVE THEM SO MUCH???”

Anyways, now onto the classmates who might be watching this. Hello! These aren’t humans singing. They’re vocal synthesizers! The feminine vocal is Mai, and the masculine vocal on the harmonies is Kevin. I had no reason to pick them other than Mai is cute and then Kevin gets used for memes.

If y’all are curious about exploring my channel or commenting, just remember to avoid breeching my privacy when you do. I do not share any of my personal information like my name on this channel for safety reasons.

A frustrating news article

I read this article, “Where seas are rising at alarming speed”, with rising exasperation. Look: the Gulf Coast is slowly drowning at a rate that is now obvious.

It’s great at explaining how the consequences of climate change are harming people right now, and they’re only getting worse, but…WHY is the Gulf Coast in particular experiencing this rapid rise? The article doesn’t say. So I had to look elsewhere, like NASA.

Although the average acceleration of global sea level rise has also increased over the decades, it was mainly due to melting ice in regions like Greenland. For the Gulf Coast, the team used tide-gauge readings and satellite data from NASA missions like GRACE to rule out a few potential causes.

“We checked vertical land motion, for instance, and could relatively quickly say no,” he said. “We looked into the ice-melt component but it couldn’t explain the magnitude of the change that we have seen in that particular area.”

This left them with one other possibility: sterodynamic sea level, or the combination of ocean-water expansion in response to warming, saltiness, and ocean circulation. The team found that beyond Cape Hatteras, this acceleration extended into the North Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea.

But what is the source of this shifting circulation? According to Dangendorf, climate models reveal two factors at play.

“Approximately 40% of the acceleration that we have seen since 2010 can be attributed to man-made climate change, but there’s a residual 60% that we couldn’t explain with climate models,” said Dangendorf.

The remaining percentage was caused by natural wind-driven ocean circulation unique to the Southeast and Gulf Coast, the researchers found.

“It’s a region bounded by the western boundary current, or the Gulf Stream, so that makes it very prone to fluctuations and therefore we can see these massive changes on decadal time-scales,” said Dangendorf.

OK, now I can read the WaPo article without looking for a causal explanation, and truly appreciate how screwed the citizens on our southern coast are. It’s not just that the seas are creeping into their streets and basements, but that there are no practical solutions available — they talk about exorbitantly expensive pumps, but where are they pumping the water to?

Do I need to point out the irony of all those oil refineries on the Gulf Coast that are not being shut down, while proposing to build water pumps (that would probably be driven by coal and oil fired power plants)? That’s not to diminish the tragedy and struggle of all the people who have to deal with these consequences, but to point out that we need to stop thinking about stopgap solutions in the short term.