This woman cannot fade into obscurity fast enough

WTF? Who is this Erika Kirk weirdo, other than the Charlie Kirk’s widow and a former Miss Arizona? She’s now going to be in charge of Turning Point USA, which is great — she’s going to eventually kill the organization, so more power to her. But now…

Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy.

No mention of her qualifications or why she was even considered for the position. It’s just part of Trump’s general policy of packing all kinds of positions with clowns, incompetents, and grifters. Look who else is serving on this advisory board:

Other people appointed by the president in March 2025 include the Republican Alabama US senator Tommy Tuberville, and Dina Powell, who was deputy national security adviser for strategy during the first Trump administration.

A number of Congress members from both parties make up the bulk of the rest of the panel, which includes two other Republican US senators elevated by John Thune, the chamber’s majority leader; they are Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, named recently as Trump’s pick to replace the fired homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.

In other words, the Air Force Academy is simply a dumping ground for every failed twit in the Republican party. They claim that their role is to inquire “into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility,” whatever that means. The clue, though, is Colorado Springs, the notorious center of televangelist/religious nutjobbery in the country.

I know that Candace Owens is spinning a whole set of conspiracy theories about Kirk. I don’t need to hear about them.

Does China know something we don’t?

I kinda sorta envy Chinese science policy.

The Chinese government is ramping up its support for science, announcing plans to boost two key budgets at the country’s biggest political meeting called the Two Sessions.

China has proposed to increase its overall research and development (R&D) expenditure by at least 7% per year over the next five years, which translates to billions of extra dollars each year. This typically covers government and private-industry spending on basic research, applied research and experimental development.

China’s R&D expenditure has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. Last year, it exceeded 3.9 trillion yuan (US$567 billion). For the past five years, it has has increased by at least 8% a year.

They had me at “support for science.” I don’t have an unqualified envy — the USA has been gutting science in this country, which I’d like to see stop — but there’s more to improving science than throwing money at it. China is going to direct money by dictating how it should be spent, and I’d rather see science supported by informed, peer-directed investment.

Unfortunately, the US approach is to slash the science budget and put it under the control of an asylum full of demented lunatics who know nothing about science. We’ve chosen the very worst science policy possible!

Apple Hell

I’m beginning to hate computers. I have been trying to deal with Apple security this morning, trying to log in to the system on my home Mac mini. The problem is two-fold: one is that I have to log into my Apple account; two is that I don’t own any of my computers. Somehow, they are all registered to my wife.I had to register with Apple all over again, which took an absurd amount of verification and re-verification and filling out forms. Finally got that straightened around, set up my new official account, tried to login, only for it to tell me that I needed Mary’s password now.

I took one stab at it and quit. The other delightful thing about Apple is that you get three tries, and then you are locked out of even attempting to log in for a week.

I have spent the last hour screaming profanities at the ceiling.

I get email

Yeah, I still get lots of this stuff.

Study am Right

human genus with child STAINS, died biology, more than genitalia.
.. M

Imax movie further x Man sexy sense bible archaic…

Perpetrators within don’t realise who I refer to..

No fundamental understanding of human genus creativity normal as fuck yeah

Imax movie wanna have it made for conscience on screen had deep..

Kill shot, mental, lost life thus far

Basic morals

Boyfriend material not child Friern weirdly to romantic millions with grown adults

Famous type Star

Look below

I AM presence

Frustrates, can correct Life Form at every moment that took my private evidence which is ducking weird I mean existence and is. A pervert..

I’m a normal British civilian..

Around here no small talk

Paradox stains front two, inner of incisors, thinks NHS gender clinic lesss legit when are more legit than psychiatrist sectioned sector

Love is public failing in love

“*” men””” ” outside creepy and weird old
. Not in 29s 20s 35s idk

There were attachments. I will spare you.

This poor person desperately needs counseling and mental health assistance, but I’m not going to reveal their email address.

Nice to know that good guys exist

Via Mano, I am reassured to learn that not all scientists were taken in by Epstein. Sean M. Carroll represents what I’d regard as the best response to the blandishments of a perverse, corrupt weirdo trying to seduce scientists with money.

His host interrupted the meal to call Epstein and then handed Carroll the phone.

“It was a 2-minute conversation, and frankly, it didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time,” Carroll says. “As best I can remember, we talked about the Big Bang and dark energy and things like that.”

But Carroll says when he told others about the call, including his wife, science writer Jennifer Ouellette, we “were rolling our eyes.” In a recent blog post, Carroll said Epstein came off as a “standard, fast-talking charlatan who trotted out lots of big words with no real understanding [of them].”

A few months later, Carroll received an email invitation to a scientific conference at Epstein’s home on his private Caribbean island. “It was billed as a workshop of scientists from different fields, something that I usually find appealing, and it sounded like fun,” he says. But he declined after learning a bit more about the arrangements.

“Jennifer was also invited,” Carroll recounts. “But when we asked if she would be a participant, they said ‘she could go shopping with the other wives.’ And we were repulsed by that sexist attitude.”

“I had no idea through any of this that he was a convicted sex offender,” Carroll adds. “That would have made it a much easier decision for me. But in 2010 he was not a famous person. If I had tried really hard, I could have found out about [his criminal record], but the thought that I would really have to try hard never entered my mind.”

Carroll says the lure of possible funding wasn’t an issue for him. “I’m not desperate for money,” he says. “And besides, at the end of your life, who you are is the accumulation of the things you did. It’s not just how much money you got.”

“standard, fast-talking charlatan who trotted out lots of big words with no real understanding [of them]” is a pretty good summary of the the Epstein spiel. Keep that in mind when you read about scientists who were taking rides on Epstein’s plane — they had to be either stupidly naive or criminally greedy.

I just can’t watch TikTok

Twitter is bad because it is full of hate and lies, but TikTok is bad because it is full of stupid. I can’t engage with either of them, but occasionally the folly leaks through.

DNA contains sulfur, and is made up of 24 strands, and you can “activate” it, whatever that means, by making silly noises? These smiling happy people have had their brains pithed at some point.

69, nice

It’s my birthday, and my age is the kind of stupid joke I might have sniggered over when I and my friends were virginal nerds going har-de-har-har around the D&D table fifty years ago. Reality is less amusing.

Here’s the objective assessment.

My knees…if I were a racehorse, I’d be shot. If I stand for long periods of time, the bones tend to sink into the cartilage like its marshmallow fluff and they lock up on me. I might be able to walk away stiff-legged, but I’m desperate to put my butt on a chair and not move for a while. Fortunately, in this day and age I don’t have to worry about running away from sabre-toothed tigers, and even if I had the knees of an athlete, the tiger would catch me anyway.

My back is the current troublemaker. After my little fall last month, it feels like my spine is made of disjointed legos, fishhooks, and shards of glass. It’s much better than when it first happened and I was in so much pain I thought I was going to die, but the process of repair is far from complete. I’m not in pain most of the time, except when I bend, or go to bed — and then it takes forever to find a position that minimizes the grinding. It’s healing, but annoyingly slowly.

My brain seems to be functioning OK, but how would I know?

One nice development is that I developed a scotoma several months ago, a blind spot in my right eye caused by a broken blood vessel. It hasn’t gone away — if I blink fast so the visual field changes from light to dark at a rapid rate, I can still visualize it as a horizontal line of dark blurriness — but neural plasticity for the win. I don’t notice it most of the time, because my brain has rewired itself to compensate and fills in the gap with information from my visual map. I suppose if you aimed a frisbee at just the right angle at my right eyebrow, it could fit into the visual gap and I wouldn’t see it.

So, my weakness right now is against charging frisbee-flinging tigers. I’ll try to avoid them so I can make it to the next funny number, which is 420, I believe. I was fortunate to have timed my birth to completely skip the whole 6-7 nonsense.

A new level of cowardice

I heard all about the American torpedo attack that sunk the Iranian frigate, Dena, in the Indian Ocean. I couldn’t miss it — multiple channels on YouTube were replaying the footage over and over again. There’s an Iranian warship sailing along, when suddenly it was struck in the stern by a massive explosion that lifted the vessel out of the water, breaking it’s back and leading to its rapid sinking. It was glorious war footage, I guess.

Then Pete Hegseth is on all the news, bragging about the victory and all those dumb, blind Iranian sailors who met their fate at the hands of the brave American navy.

At least 87 sailors were killed in the torpedo attack in international waters in the Indian Ocean, and the Sri Lankan navy responded to the Dena’s distress call and rescued 32 survivors, but 61 members of the crew are still missing. The U.S. didn’t respond to the call, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth crowed about the attack to reporters on Wednesday.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said, calling it a “quiet death.” As a result of the attack, an Iranian supply tanker that was also near Sri Lanka, the IRIS Bushehr, has taken refuge in the island country.

The news stories, until now, didn’t mention one horrible, ignoble fact.

The U.S. Navy’s attack on an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, on Wednesday was the first time an American submarine has sunk an enemy ship since World War II. But the Dena may not have been armed because it was returning from an international exercise in the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. Navy likely knew it because it was taking part in the same exercise.

Both the United States and Iran were taking part in the MILAN 2026 exercise, organized by the Indian Navy, on February 15–26, with the U.S. sending a maritime patrol aircraft and Iran sending the Dena. Iranian sailors from the ship paraded on land before India’s president.

The exercise in question required ships not to carry any ammunition. Normally, the Dena carries various missiles and guns, including anti-ship missiles. Because the U.S. also took part, it would have been aware that the Dena was unarmed. Former Indian Foreign Minister Kanwal Sibal accused the attack of being “premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise.”

To add to the United State’s shame, the IRIS Dena immediately sent out a distress call; the Sri Lankan navy responded to rescue survivors. The American navy, despite obviously having a ship nearby, ignored the SOS.

Pete Hegseth is a motherfucking chickenshit coward. “Warfighter,” my ass.

This feels weird

Hey! I’m going to be speaking at an Iowa Atheists event tomorrow, which has me mildly shocked. I hope I haven’t forgotten how to talk, or worse, that the only thing I can talk about is spiders (No! Do not talk about spiders! People find it either boring or horrifying!)

It’s been a long time. You know, I’ve been effectively blacklisted by all the major atheist organizations because I’ve loudly criticized some of the atheist saints, like Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens, and then got attached to some hated shibboleths like feminism (but I’m not a woman), or gay liberation (but I’m straight), or trans rights (I’m also not trans), or some other heresy. The last time I talked to an atheist organization about speaking was about ten years ago, and that was painfully tentative — the person I spoke with wanted to check my availability, but they were afraid that some members of their group hated me so much that they’d veto the suggestion…which is what happened, I guess, because I never heard from them again.

Just as well. I’ve got an hour or more of macrophotos and videos of spiders that no one would want to see, anyway. If any of those groups that blacklisted me somehow decided to bring me on, that’s what they’d get, and it would serve them right.

Today I’m driving to the Twin Cities. Tomorrow at 2pm in Des Moines I’ll be talking about social justice, instead, which would make them cry even harder.