I have, of course, read all the Richard Scarry books, and will probably be reading more if ever I see the grandkids again, and this is just too accurate.
On the other hand, it might be exactly what the kids need to prepare for the modern world.
The Black Death inspired the flagellants — it seems to be a common human response to extremes of stress, that they may fall into religious manias and magical thinking. Our modern American equivalent, in response to a threat nowhere near as severe as the Black Death, seems to be QAnon and the cult of Trumpism. The cult of Q emerged from an unlikely place.
Yet, a consensus of leading researchers and critics who study and debunk QAnon disinformation told ABC News that a key to identifying “Q” has been hiding in plain sight for years — on a pig farm south of Manila in the Philippines — at least until recently.
And now it’s growing fast.
At least 24 candidates who have “endorsed or given credence to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content” — 22 Republicans and two independents — have secured a spot on the ballot in the 2020 congressional elections, according to the media watchdog Media Matters, though it remains unclear how many could actually win their races. Last month, one candidate who pollsters say is almost certain to win her heavily GOP district in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared to rescind her previous support for QAnon, telling Fox News that “once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”
We also know who Q is now. It’s Jim Watkins.
This is the deranged conservative wackjob so many people have been following, hanging on his every insinuation, “prophecy”, and whisper. The cult is already doing real harm, beyond just seducing people into a loony religion. People have been murdered over this, crackpots have been threatening people, all over this nonsensical claim of “saving the children” from imaginary pedophiles. Most commonly, it’s been destroying families as individuals get lured into kooky conspiracy theories.
I think I’d prefer flagellants. If you’re a Q enthusiast, just go away right now.
Matt Yglesias, the latest sign that you are talking out of your ass ought to be that Glenn Beck agrees with you.
Vox co-founder @mattyglesias and I don't agree on everything. But we both believe that having ONE BILLION AMERICANS is a goal worth striving for and crucial to keeping China from overtaking us as the top global power. pic.twitter.com/2CiIkUzYZk
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 20, 2020
He has a new book out titled One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, in which he proposes that we set a goal of pumping out more babies to give us an edge in international competition.
From one of our foremost policy writers, One Billion Americans is the provocative yet logical argument that if we aren’t moving forward, we’re losing. Vox founder Yglesias invites us to think bigger, while taking the problems of decline seriously. What really contributes to national prosperity should not be controversial: supporting parents and children, welcoming immigrants and their contributions, and exploring creative policies that support growth—like more housing, better transportation, improved education, revitalized welfare, and climate change mitigation. Drawing on examples and solutions from around the world, Yglesias shows not only that we can do this, but why we must.
The book has a website where you can find out more, but it’s rather unpersuasive. It has a section on praise which includes endorsements from billionaire Mark Cuban, his Vox co-founder Ezra Klein, Catholic creep Ross Douthat, and David Leonhardt (who?). Douthat’s blurb is about as empty as you can get:
“Trump-era bestseller lists are dominated by ‘exposes’ that tell us the same things, and (esp. under pandemic conditions) better books can’t get oxygen. So if you enjoy an excerpt or interview, buy the book!”
Gosh. An author has to be desperate to include that.
I have not read the book, nor do I feel at all compelled to read it. It just sounds dumb.
OK, maybe the book is a staggering work of genius that includes eye-opening revelations about how we can accomplish everything all at once and reach a utopia full of happy families facing a bright future, but somehow I think that would inspire more interesting conversation than a couple of vague, bland reviews from a friend, a billionaire, the New York Times, and a terrible conservative op-ed writer whose endorsement ought to be reader-repellent. Reviewers who have read the book describe it as a mish-mash of shallow ideas only loosely connected to its central thesis. But sure, go ahead and collect those endorsements from Glen Beck, Mr Yglesias!
No COVID-19 detected!
COVID-19/SARS-CoV, PCR
Undetected
SARS-CoV-2 RNA absent. This result does not rule out
COVID-19 in the patient, as the sensitivity of the test
depends on the timing of the specimen collection and
quality of the specimen. Result should be correlated with
patient’s history and clinical presentation.
I have been a very good boy about masking up and avoiding people, and I will continue to do so.
On Sunday, I put out a video about Kent Hovind, which sounded fine to me, but I got a lot of complaints that the audio sucked royally. I couldn’t hear a problem, until I tried listening on my iPhone…and yeah, it sucked. I got suggestions that it was a phase cancellation problem, so I tinkered and tried to fix it.
I’ve uploaded what I think is a corrected video. Try it! Let me know if it works!
The solution was an inelegant brute force fix. I took my file, split out the audio and video into two separate files, loaded the audio into Audacity and saved it back out as a mono mp3, and then fused the two files back together. This copy seems to work fine on my phone, anyway.
It’s OK if you skip around. This video of Argiope aurantia making an egg sac is over 8 hours long.
It’s very cool, though. It’s an impressive feat of spider engineering, and the mama spider invests a lot of effort into building that sac and filling it with many hundreds of eggs. My spiders build quicker, simpler sacs, and though I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to catch them in the act — it also doesn’t help that they seem to construct them in the middle of the night.
It also makes me anxious. I’m quarantined — hopefully for only a few days — so I can’t go into the lab to feed the colony, and they’re probably getting hungry. It’s nothing to panic over yet, since spiders are adapted for sporadic prey capture, but if I get bad news on my COVID test, I’m going to have to do something. My idea is to make one visit to the lab at some late hour and bring all the spiders to my house for prolonged care. It’s a lovely home decor idea as well, don’t you think?
I’d much prefer to get positive news in the next day or two so I can get back in the lab without cluttering up my house with more spiders, though.
I just discovered this marvelous thread by a librarian on what she has learned on the job. Really, libraries are the best part of any town, and we ought to support them fully. A taste:
15. Libraries aren't quiet anymore. They're community hubs now. They may have quiet study areas but most libraries are bustling with activity. Between kids' classes, singing and memory groups for those with Dementia, craft sessions and noisy office equipment, don't expect silence
— grumpwitch (@grumpwitch) May 15, 2019
16. Libraries remain the only place where you can spend hours in a publicly-accessible building without being expected to spend money. Parents come to entertain their children for free on wet days. People in poverty come for a warm place to sit. Libraries are a haven.
— grumpwitch (@grumpwitch) May 15, 2019
Free public wi-fi is a big one, especially for people who can’t afford internet access otherwise.
The thread was pre-pandemic, though, and I’d like to see an update on how the pandemic has disrupted the essential services the library performs. I know our local library was closed for a while, and has reopened with special hours for at-risk individuals and now provides curbside pickup, so you can check out books without going inside.
You would hope that the bright young minds attending an excellent university would be smarter than this, but apparently there was an opportunity to party in a courtyard at the university, so everyone shed their masks and abandoned all pretense of social distancing to mill about and swap viruses.
I guess the campus police broke up the party (FASCISTS!) shortly after the photo was taken, but still…
I wonder if this kind of thing has anything to do with the Fall Surge in coronavirus cases we’re seeing?
Next Sunday, 27 September, we’ll be remembering the life of Ed Brayton in a conversation.
If any of you would like to share a few words, write to me and I can send you a link. If you’d rather not make a direct appearance, show up and leave a comment in the chat — I’ll read some of them into the record.
If you’ve been missing the heady old days of creationists popping onto the blog to make outrageous claims, I smoked a few out in my last video. Here’s one who jumped in to tell me that all of science agrees with the Bible and that there’s tons of science in the Bible.
The Meek
The Meek
6 hours ago (edited)
There is more science in the Bible then in your head! You follow prooven liars who lost court cases for fruad all throughout history and we are the ones who are wrong? Nah, all the observable science agrees more with the Bible than with your science textbooks! How many debates do you guys have to loose, before you figure it out? We are all presenting the same evidence, but just interpreting it differently through our favored worldview! You have to look past your bias and go deeper into the false assumptions being taught in science in order to see through all the lies! The real issue is you just hate the idea of a God telling you how to live! Good luck with that when you die!PZ Myers
6 hours ago
Cool. What chapter of the bible contains Maxwell’s equations, or Newton’s laws of motion, or a discussion of signal transduction in neurons? Or maybe something basic, like the importance of hygiene in preventing disease.Hey! is the germ theory of disease in there?
1popblocker9er
1 hour ago
@PZ Myers The answer is not in said “which chapter,” it is in the actual event of following the instructions given as a whole and seeing the obvious results. We have literally been doing that for thousands of years. You will find that in the Bible, there are explanations for some of those very questions you just mentioned such as hygiene to prevent disease. Do you not understand homeopathic medicine, or how long it’s been successfully curing diseases and ailments? Of course logically you’re not going to see “theory” like newton’s own, or maxwells equations. I mean what kind of a silly question is that? The Bible has been here for thousands of years before those people were born, and it’s still the way of life provably, while everyone else is arguing over theories that were literally disproven many years ago, and on top of that it has been proven these men perpetuating these ideas and “scientific theories” were occult practitioners, and were steering their own beliefs and views onto the public domain, which were met with great resistance. I mean that is all public record sir. What reality are you living in my friend, you seem interested in intelligence so let’s utilize it shall we?
His answer is … HOMEOPATHY! Homeopathy is in the Bible. Therefore, it’s science.
I haven’t seen this degree of lunacy for a while.
