Snide and funny!

This guy makes a series of smart points about fascists. I found it amusing.

I am fine with statues being torn down and military bases being renamed. This is not the destruction of history, it is the correction of distortions of history, a process that historians do all the time. Some people seem to think history is fixed and absolute, but then it would be done — and historians are well aware that our understanding of the past requires constant sifting of new evidence and reassessment of past interpretations in the light of new knowledge. US history, in particular, has been the victim of political attacks to change people’s perception of the Civil War, and to erase the struggles of black communities. It’s about time we rose up and rejected these weird ideas that Robert E. Lee was heroic, that the Civil War was about state’s rights, that the American Revolution was led by noble idealists who cared about liberty most of all, that colonialism brought enlightenment to barbarous parts of the world. Every generation lies about its virtues, and it’s the role of subsequent generations to correct the record.

If you need further dissection of JK Rowling…

Portrait of JK Rowling

I was only able to handle a single sentence of Rowling’s screed — it was too stupid to bear — but if you’re unclear on why the rest of it was so awful, Ashley Miller slogged through the whole thing, and if you’d rather see it analyzed from a trans perspective, Dawn Ennis looks at it and the context of the response to it. As far as I’m concerned, JK Rowling is dead to me and I won’t be reading anything by her ever again.

I don’t find that a particular loss. When the Harry Potter books came out, I was happy to get them for my kids — they were enthusiastic, there was some peer pressure from their friends, it got them reading, although that generally wasn’t a problem with my nerdish offspring. I read the first couple. I didn’t care for them personally. They were just too formulaic — does every book have to revolve around Quidditch, a game which makes no sense — and Hogwarts as an institution was far too offputting, seeming to fit better with the kind of British culture that thinks sending kids off to be tortured for a few years in a boarding school builds character. The movies bored me, and if you asked me now what happened in any of them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Uh, um, there was a Quidditch match. There were monsters? Harry Potter is tormented, but never seems to do much of anything? I dunno.

She seems to be trying to churn out spinoffs from the Harry Potter universe now. I didn’t care before, I am actively repulsed now. JK can just toddle off to her mansion and her well-earned irrelevance, and the Harry Potter phenomenon can be recognized as the peculiar phenomenon it was.

They’re afraid!

The thin blue line is cracking. A few members of the Minneapolis Police Department are realizing that their jobs are in peril, and are ready to throw Derek Chauvin to the media wolves and an angry citizenry, and wrote an open letter disavowing any association with the ‘bad guys’ of the police force.

Members of the Minneapolis Police Department spoke out on Friday out against former police officer Derek Chauvin in an open letter addressed to “everyone — but especially Minneapolis citizens.”

“Derek Chauvin failed as a human and stripped George Floyd of his dignity and life. This is not who we are,” said the letter, signed by fourteen MPD officers. “We’re not the union or the administration,” the letter says.

“We stand ready to listen and embrace the calls for change, reform and rebuilding,” says the letter, which comes as powerful police unions across the country are digging in, preparing for a once-in-a-generation showdown over policing and new polls that indicate that most Americans now acknowledge that African Americans are more likely to be mistreated or even killed by police.

“There were many more willing to sign, but the group opted to showcase people from across the PD as well as male/female, black/white, straight/gay, leader/frontline, etc. Internally, this is sending a message” said Paul Omodt, a spokesperson for the officers who penned the open letter.

Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t believe you, and fuck you. The MPD has had a reputation for brutality for decades, and the minority population of Minneapolis has a rich collection of stories. Where were these police in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980? Prioritizing loyalty to a corrupt union and fellow gang members, that’s where. Standing in unity with bad cops. Probably getting in a few licks of their own. This is like those cops who now take a knee for a photo op before heading out to bust heads with a baton or shoot bystanders with rubber bullets or hose down crowds with pepper spray. I’m not impressed.

That is who they are.

Don’t be swayed when the bully starts sniveling and begging for mercy. They all do that.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about the unintended consequences of technology — I hadn’t thought about it before, had simply taken it for granted, but the ability of popular cell phones to record video is only about 12 years old, and has progressed rapidly to the point where the majority of consumers won’t accept a phone that lacks video recording technology. Better and fancier phone cameras are a major selling point! They are now used all the time to record the viciousness of the police, and are much more reliable than the body cams that somehow magically get turned off just before a cop kills someone.

I might have been much more sympathetic to a subset of cops making a plea for “change, reform and rebuilding” in 2005, before it became apparent that they were going to have problems getting away with brutality, and before all those videos emerged revealing how horrifically cruel and callous the police were. It’s too late for them now.

Lazy day on the Pomme de Terre

After making a bunch of spider cages, I spent the rest of the day slackin’. The sun was shining! There was a nice breeze! We looked for spiders! Also, I dusted off the ol’ drone and tried to remember how to fly the stupid thing, so I threw together a few clips of Pomme de Terre park. Yes, it’s a real river. Yes, it’s French for “potato”. It’s pretty!

It’s centered on the Gazebo, and I buzzed a few pelicans. Mainly, you can see what my part of the country looks like.

Work!!?!

We’re in the midst of spider season, and Mary has been finding every Parasteatoda that pokes its adorable little fangs out in the garage, so I’m running out of spider cages. I’m going to have to spend a few hours this morning with a glue gun building more, so I guess I’m going to have to go into work for a while this morning executing my weirdly specific and not at all marketable skills building happy wooden climbing structures for spiders. I’ll be back later this morning!

Transphobic trolls are not tolerated here

Over the years, I’ve noticed something: there are some subjects that instantly draw in the trolls. The two biggest ones are feminism and trans rights, which leads me to suspect that it’s the same subpopulation of self-righteous conservative assholes who abhor them both. The latest instance is in the thread about JK Rowling, in which a commenter named “coldhardrealist”, who’d been stirring up the thread for a while, is recognized as a previously banned commenter named “thirdmill” who had also been banned for their repeated trolling of threads about trans issues. He made a stunningly oblivious confession once caught out.

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve been posting here under probably a dozen different names, all but one of which have been banned. I’ve said a great many things that I don’t really believe, a few things that I partially believe, and some things that I really do believe, mostly to see what the reactions from others would be. (More about that in a minute.)

Does that make me a dishonest person? No more so than any other experimenter who doesn’t completely level with the subjects in advance that they’re part of an experiment.

In this incarnation, I’m a recently returned Iraq war veteran, who started life as a political conservative, has become greatly disillusioned with conservatism, is moving left, but isn’t quite there yet. He’s basically an honest person who sees holes in his previous world view, sees both sides to a lot of issues he once thought were cut and dried, and is really wrestling with difficult issues. Would someone like that be welcome here? Answer: No.

Yes, that makes him a dishonest person. This is not a laboratory, he is not a qualified experimenter, his “experiment” was badly thought out and incompetently run. He doesn’t seem aware that in social settings, people are often pretty good at spotting inconsistencies and feigned behavior, and it makes them suspicious and untrusting, especially when you’re as bad at lying as coldhardrealist/thirdmill. The reason he gets consistently caught out and banned isn’t because the people here are intolerant of differences of opinion, or are unaware of the complexities of the real world, it’s because he’s consistently an asshole.

Oh, and the conceit of pretending to be “a recently returned Iraq war veteran”! That his phony persona was detected and rejected does not mean that a real person like that would be unwelcome here — it just means he’s a terrible actor and is caught out every time. And every time, it seems that his overt transphobia is what exposes him.

He’s been banned, and claims he won’t be back. He will be. Because he’s an asshole. Any other transphobes who barge in here will also be banned, because they’re assholes.

Questions from Brother Kent Hovind

He’s still pestering me. Kent Hovind asks:

Can you, as a committed BELIEVER in the evolution religion please explain why;
1. ALL live forms from bacteria to whales “evolved” the myriad of complex processes to reproduce offspring.

You’ve got it backwards. Replication is a prerequisite for creatures to evolve, so they all inherited the capacity from their parent(s), all the way back to the first replicator about 4 billion years ago. At first it was just the crude expansion and division of a pool of metabolites, and gradually became more elaborate (and weird!), because this is an essential process for producing the next generation.

Do you think every new species has to re-evolve the entire reproductive apparatus from scratch?

2. Doesn’t this use lots of the individual’s resources and energy and obviously create more competition for food, air, water, housing etc?

Yes. Since, from the perspective of evolution, reproduction is the key process for populations to maintain themselves, it’s worth the investment. Your line goes extinct without it.

It takes a lot of work to keep yourself healthy and well-fed, so why do you bother? Just stop eating. You’d save yourself so much effort.

3. How does that benefit the individual?

Some of us find value and joy in our children and grandchildren, so obviously it’s a benefit to us. Others do not, and choose not to reproduce. That’s OK, they can contribute to society in other ways.

If you’re questioning the benefit of reproduction, then you must understand why some people use birth control, or choose to limit their investment in offspring with abortion.

4. Why didn’t any life forms “evolve” the ability to live forever instead?

Because it’s a physical impossibility. Life is fragile, any one individual is inevitably going to die, whether by accident or the actions of another individual. If your hypothetical Immortal falls into a volcano or is buried in a mudslide or pisses off another Immortal with a spear or gets eaten by a carnivore (all inevitable, given a long enough life, and none that you could acquire a resistance to), you’re done, no successor, if you don’t also have the ability to reproduce.

It’s a race between living fast, having lots of children, and burning out early, vs. longevity, a slow cautious life, and risking a death before you have a chance to have children.

5. Your offer to come visit Dinosaur adventure land in Lenox Alabama and learn REAL SCIENCE is still on the table.

In case readers were unaware, Hovind has offered to pay FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($500) for my travel expenses to go to his plywood fantasy land and hang out with his culties.

PZ, would you like to come to Dinosaur adventure land in Lenox Alabama for our Creation Bootcamp July 24-27? We will let you share the best three evidences for why you believe in evolutionism and take questions from the audience. We will pay your expenses to get here up to $500. Call 855-big-dino ext 3 if you want to come.

I’ve told him no. I’ve told him FUCK, NO! I’m especially not going to get entangled in that waste of time for a pittance.

My fee for creationist debates is $6000. For his 4-day conference, that would be $24,000. If he insults me again with such a ridiculous low-ball offer, the price is going up to $7K.