Now I understand why the biggest billionaires all seem to get into the space game. It explains so much.
Don’t tell them how easy it would be to push someone out an airlock.
The heartbreak of a breakup is worse when you get the news secondhand. Putin has parted ways with Trump.
More than a month later than most world leaders, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated President-elect Joe Biden for his victory in the election, a delayed recognition that could set the tone for icy relations.
“In his message Vladimir Putin wished the president-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
I knew all along that the relationship would never work out — it was a friendship of convenience between two spoiled, selfish people who would only stick together while they thought they could get something from one another. Oh well, Donald still has a few potential dates for the prom on Saturday.
Putin was one of the last heads of state to acknowledge Biden’s win; Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un are other holdouts.
I can see where Bolsonaro and Kim have a lot in common with the loser-in-chief, but I was baffled by Obrador. Shouldn’t Mexico be happy to see a bigoted basher out of office? But here’s a brief explanation:
Few expected López Obrador, elected in July 2018, to openly embrace Trump and his hard-line border policies after all the dirt thrown. But that’s just what happened.
At heart, the two men are nationalists more concerned with domestic business than foreign affairs, experts say.
“I think we need to understand that AMLO has an uncommon worldview,” said Duncan Wood, director of the nonpartisan Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, D.C. “He is much more focused on what happens internally than what happens in the United States. He wants the world to know he isn’t beholden to the United States.”
OK, I can respect that — it’s not so much an affection for Trump as it is a need to stand independent of the US, no matter who holds the office.
Time to crash down into reality. Meet Bob Good, the newly elected congressvermin from Virginia.
You think electing Biden made everything all better? Think again.
Huh. The US didn’t suddenly become smarter on 4 November. I guess the work has only just begun.
The electoral college has met, and Biden is now officially and without a doubt the president elect (not that it’s been seriously in questions since the election). There has been no surprising defection of electors. The court cases have all gone down in flames. We ought to be done.
Who believes the delusional narcissist will now concede?
We’ve got a QAnon prediction here, everyone. It didn’t happen yesterday, so I guess that means today is the day when Trump will trigger the US military to take over the planet, for the internet, phones, and TV to be shut down, and for the trials to begin.
I’m really curious to see what RE-WIRING of Planet Earth
entails.
In case you hadn’t heard already, the WSJ published an appalling bit of nonsense from a Joseph Epstein in which, for some unexplained reason, he decided the important issue of the day is to berate Jill Biden for using the title “Dr.” I know. It’s idiotic. She earned the title, use it. There’s a serious reek of sour grapes here, since Epstein has, at best, a BA. Nothing wrong with that, all of my students graduate with a BA, and I’m proud of them. If you want to see it dissected, with excerpts, here’s the summary for you, complete with summary diagram.
But here’s the deal: among themselves, academics tend not to use fancy titles for each other. We might use them when introducing a colleague to others (but see below), but many of us won’t expect it even with our students, or anyone else for that matter. That goes for all you readers, too — I’d rather you didn’t address me as Dr Myers. That feels weird.
One exception, though: if you try to tell me that you’re not going to call me Dr because I only have a mere biology Ph.D., then for you, I’m going to have to insist on the formality.
Also, these data bring me up short. There’s a tendency for male academics to be more informal with female academics than with their fellow men.
Wow. When women introduce women, they’ll nearly 100% of the time use their title; when men introduce women, it’s down to less than half the time. That’s simple misogyny, diminishing the accomplishments of women, which Epstein has to an extreme degree, but a surprising number of us men also share. I think I tend to get formal when doing formal introductions, so I don’t think I’m guilty of that, but I’ll be more conscious of the problem in the future. I wouldn’t want to Joey Epstein myself, you know. No one wants that.
What makes it even sweeter is the target of the slap, Ted Cruz. What an ignorant wanker!
The tragedy of racism and bigotry and Cruz’s nationalism is that it routinely neglects the other human beings outside their own little in-group.
I actually considered going after Matt Powell again this week, because he has a “new” anti-evolution video out, but it was so godawful bad I couldn’t get up the energy. So instead, I thought everyone needs to know more about this ghastly woman, Jane Orient.
Script down below!
The Bolingbrook Babbler has the final episode of our story chain, and it’s epic!
I did the first link in the chain, and I have to apologize to the other authors — I stuffed far too much into the intro, which meant everyone else had to load up even more into theirs, which meant that to have freedom for creative elaboration the whole story just expanded to an intimidating degree. Everyone did great, but I made them all work so hard. We’re bouncing around ideas for future story chains that will be much more light.
The campus is dead quiet right now. The parking lot is empty. Offices are all closed. When you walk in, if you’re attentive, you might hear the constant faint hum of the air conditioning system in the science building, but your brain will tune that out after a short while.
The noisiest part of the feeding are the flies. You dump them from their bottle into a plastic cup; it sounds like rain as they tumble in. Then they scurry about frantically with a chitinous rustle, a distant shshshshsh from the cup. You turn to the vials of spiders and uncap them all. There is no sound, no movement. The dead stillness makes you look in and wonder, “are you still alive in there?” You see the motionless plump bodies. They’re in no hurry. Spiders possess infinite patience. It’s in their nature. Rather than wondering if they’re OK, maybe you should be questioning your own lack.
You tap the cup of flies to knock them all down, and open the lid. You flick a few flies into each vial, 1, 2, 3, move to the next. The loudest noise in the process is when a fly drops to the bottom of the vial, tik, tik. Except that when they fall directly into a web, they’re silent…tik, , tik. For a while, you swish flies into all the spider vials, tik, ,tik, tik, , , tik, ,tik, tik, tik.
The sound of spiders feeding is silence. They raise their forelimbs like a pair of daggers, they slip quietly on silk threads to their prey, turn, and knit a prison with their hindlimbs. No noise at all. Flies trying to escape the trap are louder than the spider assassins, and they’re barely a whisper as they scrabble at plastic walls.
I had a pleasant morning in the lab today, if you couldn’t tell.
