I had to change the title because there is no reason to think we’ve reached the bottom yet.
Commencement is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ve been encouraging all these students to go into science careers, and now I feel like I’ve been throwing them into a shark tank.
Rise up, America. I’ve been to Bucharest, and strolled through the Palace of Parliament — there are ways for a country to rid itself of a tyrant like Nicolae Ceaușescu. Donald Trump and his sycophants next?
A couple of medieval scholars are arguing over a dick pic. Apparently, the Bayeux tapestry depicts more than just a battle — it has numerous images of penises.
The Oxford professor George Garnett drew worldwide interest six years ago when he announced he had totted up 93 penises stitched into the embroidered account of the Norman conquest of England.
According to Garnett, 88 of the male appendages are attached to horses and the remainder to human figures.
OK, so a handful of warriors were flopping out of their gear, and the tapestry artists were careful to include that detail. The debate is over how many people had a wardrobe malfunction.
Now, the historian and Bayeux tapestry scholar Dr Christopher Monk – known as the Medieval Monk – believes he has found a 94th.
A running man, depicted in the tapestry border, has something dangling beneath his tunic. Garnett says it is the scabbard of a sword or dagger. Monk insists it is a male member.
I’ll let you decide. Here’s the figure in contention. Penis or dagger?
“I am in no doubt that the appendage is a depiction of male genitalia – the missed penis, shall we say. The detail is surprisingly anatomically fulsome,” Monk said.
Heh. “Anatomically fulsome” — I’ll say. That thing is hanging down to his knees and is so massive that he’s got to run with his legs spread wide. I wonder if it was stitched by his girlfriend.
I got a new toy! It’s a $30 trail cam that will probably cost $300 once the tariffs take effect, but I got it because I was curious about what has been going on in my back yard. There is a burrow under my deck, and every year we’re surprised by who takes up residence. Groundhogs are common, but one year we had a skunk under there.
I set the camera up to point directly at the hole, but you can’t see the burrow itself because of all the grass in the way. As expected, I knew there’d be squirrels and maybe rabbits hopping around, although the rabbits are currently in their shy phase, hiding with their litters of kits somewhere. We did spot a squirrel in the early evening (time stamp is correct, but I failed to set the date on the camera.)
All was quiet for most of the night, but then around 3AM something was popping it’s head up, multiple times, like they were repeatedly trying to figure out what that thing outside their front door was.
I’m not sure what that is. Maybe a skunk? Maybe an alien. I’d rather it were an alien visitor, because if it is a skunk I’ll need to set up a trap (a humane one, of course!) and relocate it later this summer.
Hmmm, I suppose if it is a small alien, I could also trap it. What kind of bait should I use? I think the last time we had a skunk, they were partial to cantaloupe.
Recall that I sneered at this new book coming out, The War on Science, edited by Lawrence Krauss. It’s a strangely focused book, given that it’s quite clear that it is the Republicans who have accelerated their attacks on education and science, yet Krauss is trying to blame any problems on DEI, the Woke, Leftists, and everyone but MAGA, Trump, RFK jr, Musk, etc. He has rounded up a real rogues gallery of awful and disreputable people to contribute articles to his patently bogus book.
Dorian Abbot, John Armstrong, Peter Boghossian, Maarten Boudry, Alex Byrne, Nicholas Christakis, Roger Cohen, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Janice Fiamengo, Solveig Gold, Moti Gorin, Karleen Gribble, Carole Hooven, Geoff Horsman, Joshua Katz, Sergiu Klainerman, Lawrence M. Krauss, Anna Krylov, Luana Maroja, Christian Ott, Bruce Pardy, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Richard Redding, Arthur Rousseau, Gad Saad, Sally Satel, Lauren Schwartz, Alan Sokal, Allesandro Strumia, Judith Suissa, Alice Sullivan, Jay Tanzman, Abigail Thompson, Amy Wax, Elizabeth Weiss, Frances Widdowson
The one virtue of Krauss attempting to step out of the shadows of his shame is that Rebecca Watson was roused to bring receipts and stomp this guy right down into the ground. I mean, really, if there were any justice in the world, Larry would be crumpled into a puddle, wheezing and begging for mercy through broken teeth, and would be crawling into a snake hole to bleed out and fade from public attention forevermore.
I recommend that everyone try to stay on Rebecca’s good side.
I was going to express amazement that Krauss can even find a publisher for this drivel…but it’s being published by Post Hill Press, a company that specializes in right-wing conspiracy theories. Krauss is now rubbing elbows with Tyrus and Dan Bongino and Kirk Cameron. His peers!
I should just get off the internet altogether, maybe. Get a tarpaper shack with no electricity or running water somewhere.
New York Times Pitchbot
@nytpitchbot.bsky.social
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Trump has slashed the NIH and NSF budget, hired an anti-vaxxer as head of Health and Human Services, and filled the government’s web page with crazed conspiracy theories. Here’s why we just published a volume on the left’s war on science.
by Lawrence Krauss and Steve Pinker.
April 24, 2025 at 9:08 AM
New York Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social
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24m
I’m going to tell you something about the whole new atheist crowd and the fundies they are argue with (this is not a slight of atheists or religious people in general, most aren’t like this): If you’re spending a lot of time arguing about the existence of an invisible sky man, you’re already lost.
For those who don’t know, the NY Times Pitchbot posts humorous, sarcastic versions of the kind of centrist bullshit the NY Times is notorious for publishing. Sometimes it hits a bit close to the bone.
There’s a week and a half until the end of the semester…will I make it? I’m giving myself a 50% chance of crawling across the finish line and then curling up into a soggy ball of tears, vs. a 50% chance of exploding before the end of the term and then raining down as smoldering cinders.
I could see this coming way back in August — it’s been a long decade — so I cleverly scheduled student presentations for the last bit of the term. I don’t have to do any class prep right now, even though I’ve got a lot of material lined up just because…because I can’t help myself, and am always tweaking things and making additions just in case I need it. For the same reason, I can’t leave well enough alone and every year I rewrite and change my classes despite having taught this stuff for about 30 years. Nothing is going to help. No matter what, I’m going to be clawing my eyes out and suppressing screams as every term comes to a close.
I really ought to retire, but I can’t, not ever. I guess I get to look forward to death.
The weird thing is that I like teaching. This would be a lot easier if I didn’t care.
Never mind me, I just have to scream into the uncaring void every once in a while.
I don’t think my flesh would be particularly bitter — maybe fatty and stringy, not particularly meaty in flavor or texture. This just-so story fails with the non-existence of the property it seeks to explain.
Go eat a tasty teenager anyway. Although, if you’re a feeble predator, I might be a good choice because I won’t put up much of a fight. You’re going to have to weigh availability over quality.
The federal government (innocently, I’m sure) checking on college faculty to identify which ones are Jewish.
Most professors at Barnard College received text messages on Monday notifying them that a federal agency was reviewing the college’s employment practices, according to copies of the messages reviewed by The Intercept.
The messages, sent to most Barnard professors’ personal cellphones, asked them to complete a voluntary survey about their employment.
“Please select all that apply,” said the second question in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, survey.
“The federal government reaching out to our personal cellphones to identify who is Jewish is incredibly sinister.”
The choices followed: “I am Jewish”; “I am Israeli”; “I have shared Jewish/Israeli ancestry”; “I practice Judaism”; and “Other.”
I’m “other,” so I guess I’m safe. Nothing to worry about here, folks, move along, move along…unless you’re Jewish, and then we would like to see your papers, please.
It always begins with mild impositions for your own good, doesn’t it?
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.
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?
