The face of the Democratic party is tired and useless

I refused to pay any attention to the news yesterday, the first anniversary of the MAGA riot and insurrection. I was just so sure that the Democrats would be taking the event very seriously and working hard to bring justice to the criminals (one of whom is still preparing to run for president in 2024), so, as they assure me, nothing would happen because they’re so earnestly and quietly working behind the scenes.

Nope. It’s hard to believe the Democrats can be this tone-deaf.

Following a solemn discussion of imperiled American democracy between the Librarian of Congress and historians, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) chose to commemorate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by inviting the cast of Hamilton to give a virtual performance with the production value of a tinny Zoom call. The musical’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda said to his C-SPAN audience, “We should never take our rights and liberties for granted. That’s what I wrote about in the song ‘Dear Theodosia’ from Hamilton.” Cast members, all in separate locations and out of costume, appeared via videoconference on a projector screen in the Capitol. They sang the earnest song straight into the camera, some via visible headphones in their ears. The disconnect between the musical and the severity of the Capitol riot called to mind the celebrity coalition that produced the reviled “Imagine” pandemic video. As one Twitter user quipped, “This is worse than the insurrection.” New York Times reporter Astead Wesley wrote, “We owe Gal Gadot an apology.”

I get so much spam email from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because I once donated a small sum to the Democratic party, and I am totally sick of them and their histrionic headlines and pointless posturing. Sit down and shut up, because they’re just driving me away from ever supporting that party any further. Local candidates, yes; the occasional progressive candidate elsewhere, sure; Democrats as a party, nope.

Only a decade behind us

A bit over ten years ago, a bunch of us faced a dilemma: National Geographic had taken over hosting of our blogs, and they were sending not-at-all subtle signs that they did not like people who criticized religion, and they were going to start imposing new restrictions on what we could write. That’s why you’re reading this on freethoughtblogs.com — Ed Brayton and I decided to set up this independent site and move our blogs here, and host other godless bloggers. Others, like David Gorski, just set up their own independent blogs. A few were seduced away by the giant group blog, Patheos, who swore on a stack of Bibles that, while they were primarily a religious site, they’d allow atheists to have their own subdomain, with no severe restrictions on their content. They also had money and could provide a reasonable revenue to their bloggers.

I was never invited to join Patheos (I guess I was too atheist for them) and wouldn’t have been at all tempted to go under the wing of such a site — I wouldn’t like the company I’d have to keep, and I didn’t trust them at all. I’m not surprised at all that now, after a decade of tolerance, Patheos management has decided to change the rules on everyone.

Efforts to reach Patheos’ management team were unsuccessful, but the departing bloggers and their channel manager, Dale McGowan, said that about a year ago, Patheos decided to change its editorial direction. Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview.

All my suspicions are confirmed, and the temptation is great to say, “I told you so!”. We were snookered too, though — for many years we hired Patheos to provide our ad services here. You don’t see any ads now, do you? That’s because their ads were so obnoxious and intrusive that we finally canceled them altogether. So the bloggers that are now departing en masse have my sympathy, and I wish them the best of luck at their new site, OnlySky.

Well, except maybe Heman Mehta, who has been sticking his foot in his mouth for a while.

There aren’t any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists,” he said. “All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but don’t do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.

Oh, really? No other atheist media outlets? Freethoughtblogs is a media outlet, it’s also explicitly atheist/humanist. What about The Orbit?

We are “volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject”, but I’ve never considered that a negative.

We “don’t do business-savvy anything”, because we’ve worked on being independent of any capitalist control, whether it’s NatGeo or Patheos ad services. I presume OnlySky has learned the same lesson we accepted years ago.

What’s this about “falter and die”? We’ve been doing well for over ten years, and even weathered a $2 million lawsuit, with the assistance of our most excellent readership. It’s rather foolish to declare that all other atheists networks have died off, when a) we’re standing right here as a refutation, and b) you’re about to start a new atheist network in what you’ve declared to be such a hazardous and infertile field. We aren’t going to disappear just because Hemant Mehta doesn’t think we exist.

Good fortune, OnlySky, but I hope Mehta isn’t your spokesperson in the future.

Maybe reserve your hope that anyone “falters and dies” for Patheos.

Skating perilously close to burnout

And the semester hasn’t even begun! I think it’s clear that I’m in a fragile mental state.

Here’s the deal: I’ve been building up some enthusiasm and momentum for my genetics course. The last couple of weeks, I’ve made significant progress, using the experience of the last few years to build it up more flexibly and better able to cope with the awkwardness of teaching during a pandemic, but also looking back long-term on what works and what doesn’t. The last couple of days, in particular, I was rather happily rewriting the first couple of weeks of lecture, tweaking lab exercises, building up a library of problem sets to assign, etc., and looking forward to trying new ideas in the classroom. I was streamlining all the stuff students have had no problem with in the past, and expanding bits where I’ve found conceptual roadblocks before. It was productive work.

And then, I get an email telling me that my syllabus must incorporate PSLOs and CSLOs, and I’m sent a handy-dandy link to guide me step-by-step through adding these statements, if you already know all the PSLO/CSLO jargon. These are statements used by assessors in evaluating what general skills students learn in my course, they’re important for accreditation and assessment, and some of my colleagues worked very hard on them in committees around campus. I understand why they’re important and appreciate all the work other faculty have put into formulating them.

I hate them. It’s bureaucratic noise. I know very specifically what my objectives are in genetics, but now I have to reformulate them in the broadest, most general context to satisfy administrators, in a way that isn’t going to be at all useful to my students, and package them up in boilerplate bloat to tack onto my syllabus, which is just yet more verbiage the students will find irrelevant and won’t read.

OK, though, it’s part of the job. It’s drudgery, but I’ll derail what I was doing and switch to this task today and get it done. I admit I spent a good twenty minutes yesterday tearing at my hair and cussing furiously at my computer screen, but I’m a big boy, I’ll buckle down and get it done.

This morning, I drag myself to the computer and calmly and unproductively stared at the screen for a few hours. I am unable to proceed. I get nothing done. I pulled up the university’s list of these biology PSLO/CSLO thingies and let them suck all the inspiration and enthusiasm out of my brain. I can’t even warm up to actual genetics, and there I even have a little to-do list of specifics to get done before classes start. I have all these back-up plans in case we go into lockdown, for the inevitable result of having to cope with students requiring prolonged absences, for doing labs online (the worst possible thing that could happen), but I was totally unprepared for the university to reach in and crush all the joy out of my heart with these chains of bureaucracy.

That’s partly me, I know. It’s why I say I’m so close to burnout — in a normal year, I’d just roll my eyes and get on with it. I just don’t feel like I can do it right now.

You know, this university has done as little as possible to adapt to the terrible circumstances the faculty find themselves in, I would have thought they could at least stop pestering us about our TPS reports.

I think what I need to do is just say fuck it, and go spend a few hours in the lab doing worthwhile things, like washing glassware and feeding animals and scrubbing spider poop off the floor of containers and setting up a few more bottles of flies, and then maybe go for a winter walk. Maybe by this evening my brain will manage to regenerate some of the enthusiasm that has been recently vaporized. It would probably be for the best if I just ignore all official university email for a while.

Clearly, I must assert my claim to the throne

I stumbled across this old photo on the web, and at first I wondered why a random website would have a photo of my great-grandfather…and what’s with the uniform? He was a dairy farmer!

Then I discovered that it was actually King Haakon VII of Norway.

H.M. King Haakon of Norway’, 1942. From ‘Calling All Nations’, by T. O. Beachcroft. [The British Broadcasting Corporation, Wembley, The Sun Engraving Co., Ltd., London and Watford, 1942]. Artist Unknown. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

I think the passing resemblance is sufficient cause to claim a link. More evidence: Norway already has a king, King Harald V, and he doesn’t look much like his grandfather. I, too, don’t look much like my great-grandfather, providing further proof. I guess I’ll be nice and not usurp the throne, as he seems to be doing a fine job, but you know, if ever you’re looking for another heir, Norway, I’ll be available.

The environment defines my plans for the day

After my successful foray into the world of walking yesterday, I’m thinking today might be a good day to cower in my office: it’s -18°C out there, the snow is coming down, and we’ve got blizzard conditions. The spiders are warm, my lab still has no running water, and I’ve got to prep the first couple of weeks of lectures for genetics. It’s also snug and warm in my home office, and these fuzzy slippers are kind of cozy, and I’ve got a big cup of coffee. What more could I ask for?

Fallout from the MacDonald/Philosophia trash trickles down

The journal Philosophia is only beginning to reap the consequences of publishing an anti-Semitic article by Kevin MacDonald. The editor is digging in, but one associate editor has already resigned over it.

Philosophia is edited by Asa Kasher (Tel Aviv). In response to questions about the publication of these articles, he wrote that the papers were refereed prior to publication, but that it was “a mistake” to publish them, explaining that he was “not aware of the general background of the debate” and that he is “sorry for treating the discussion as an ordinary philosophical debate.” He added that further comments from him may be forthcoming.

Yesterday, Moti Mizrahi (Florida Institute of Technology) who was until last night the associate editor of Philosophia, wrote on Twitter: “I had nothing to do with the publication of this [McDonald’s] paper in Philosophia. I’ve asked the EiC to reconsider its publication in Philosophia.” Later in the day, he announced his resignation from the journal.

The ADL has also denounced it. The author of the ADL’s article on MacDonald, Marilyn Mayo, has a good take on the issues.

“It’s not about censorship, but looking at what someone is saying and whether you’re validating views that are antisemitic or racist or promoting ideas that have proven to be conspiratorial and not true,” she continued. “Of course, in academia there is understandably a drive to present all different kinds of views, and that’s understandable — but it is also incumbent upon institutions and journals to vet what’s put out there or put it in context.”

“proven to be conspiratorial and not true” is the key phrase there. Academic freedom is important, but it’s not freedom to publish lies as if they are true.

Elizabeth Holmes goes down, but not as hard as she deserves

Huh. The jury actually found Elizabeth Holmes guilty on some of the counts.

A federal jury found Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty on four of the 11 charges for a fraud scheme, delivering a verdict on the long-running controversy over her role in the now defunct blood-testing technology start-up and marking a big win for the government in its years-long probe into the entrepreneur.

The jury of eight men and four women returned their verdict on the seventh full day of deliberations. They found her not guilty on four counts and deadlocked on three counts. Holmes was acquitted on all counts involving patients. Holmes faces the possibility of jail time over the convictions, although a sentencing hearing has not been set at the time of the verdict.

That’s what I find interesting: she was found guilty of crimes against investors, but not crimes against all the people who were misled by Theranos’s claims. It was all those gullible Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were hurt, not all the people who went into Walgreen’s and got misleading, false test results. I guess that sort of makes sense, since Walgreen’s doesn’t care about their customers all that much — they sell homeopathic remedies, after all, and didn’t question the likelihood that a company with Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on the board might not have any medical competence.

I’m not surprised. It’s clear that the US government (even the judicial branch!) is in the pocket of the corporations, given their current policies which are all about putting the peasantry back to work no matter how sick they are. Even the Democratic party cares more about the health of Wall Street and Silicon Valley than of the citizenry.

Man, Holmes was such an obvious, unqualified phony from the get-go, yet she was briefly a billionaire. I am persuaded that Silicon Valley is mainly a pool of stupid people.