Imagine that on your CV

Zach Vorhies: “ex Google employee turned QAnon fan and committed anti-vaxxer”. He has a video in which he takes credit for Judy Mikovits “going viral” with her idiotic claims, and lies about her history in science.

In the video, Vorhies claims that Mikovits’ research was “derailed by Anthony Fauci,” who, as he puts it, “saw to it that her career was destroyed.” That’s flatly untrue: after Mikovits’ research—which claimed that a mouse retrovirus called XMRV caused chronic fatigue syndrome—was called into question, the National Institutes of Health funded a $2.3 million study at Fauci’s request to definitively settle the question of whether XMRV caused chronic fatigue. As part of that study, Mikovits was given more funding and a chance to replicate her original research, which she couldn’t do. In a press conference announcing the findings of the study, Mikovits acknowledged, “It’s not there,” and thanked the NIH.

That’s a far cry from the narrative Mikovits, Vorhies, and others now promote. In the unlisted video, Vorhies says that Mikovits “discovered that the vaccine supply and the blood supply was contaminated with zoonotic retroviruses coming from mice,” and, in a series of graphics, suggests that “hundreds of millions of Americans may have received vaccines contaminated with XMRV.” The idea that vaccines are contaminated with XMRV or any other dangerous retrovirus has been repeatedly debunked; the pro-vaccine site Vaxopedia has a list of the many studies that have confirmed that. Nor did Mikovits’ work have anything whatsoever to do with vaccines, though her supporters have more recently claimed that it did.

I hang out with a lot of smart people (at least I did, before about 2 months ago), and that used to fill me with optimism about our future. I suspect that Vorhies is also an intelligent guy. But it turns out that being smart isn’t necessarily a good defense against bad ideas. Suddenly, Snow Crash seems incredibly prescient. Has someone been wandering around Silicon Valley tech companies handing out hypercards with a mind-wiping virus encoded on them?

Genetics…almost done!

I got everything graded and entered into my spreadsheet, except…I have 3 students who have missing grades, so because I’m a wimpy candy-ass liberal, I told them if they got them to me by midnight tonight, I’d include them. If they don’t make the deadline, I just give them zeroes and grade them on whatever they got done.

I do have intro biology final exams pouring in tomorrow, so it’ll be another day of bleeding eyeballs.

Today is the day

I do believe that if I focus and buckle down I will wrap up my genetics course today. Today. Today I will be done. Today. Yes. Soon. Must retreat into my cocoon and get it done.

Later I will emerge as a beautiful butterfly.

A vengeful butterfly, because I’m so pissed off at the universe for how it has amplified my workload this semester.

An exciting morning at the doctor’s!

Nah, I lied. It wasn’t exciting at all, but that’s the best kind of doctor’s visit. I got referred to the dermatologist to check out a suspicious mole, they found another one today, and then I got spritzed with liquid nitrogen, some needles stabbed into me, and chopped into with some razor blades — just another day in a rough neighborhood. Will probably live. Might even have a couple of small scars to show off, although we’ll have to be really good friends if you expect me to drop my pants to see the one.

I was really hoping for more impromptu surgery, because now there’s no excuses for diving into the pile of genetics exams. I should have made them shorter and easier to grade.

My university? Cool.

Do we really need to explain that this cartoon is satire?

Although, to be fair, parts of it are pretty sweet. Free weed and the interfaith orgy look good, and I could really go for a tofu burger, but most of it is obvious mockery of conservative pseudo-issues, like “grievance studies” and the “oppression olympics”, which are all nutso concepts promoted only by far right wackaloons.

The beginning of the end

I haven’t been sleeping well — every night I wake up, look at the clock, and see that it’s 3am, and know that I’m going to be in a fog all day — and tonight at midnight is the deadline for all my Genetics students to turn in their take-home exams. So I got up this morning, glanced at my inbox, and discovered that many of those industrious little rascals had turned in their exams early. That’s good, but I need to drink a lot more coffee to get my brain into action. I have to get this dealt with by Thursday, because Thursday at midnight is the deadline for my intro biology take-home exam. This scenario of deadlines catching me unwilling and unprepared is going to go on all week.

There is a light at the bottom of the pit of despond, though! The plan is for me to be a good boy and get all this paperwork done, then to take a day to recover and get rested up, and then to hop in the car and drive for 12 hours straight to finally see Mary again in Colorado! And Iliana! And Skatje & Kyle! Then we’ll spend a restful couple of days in the company of a busy 1½ year old before Mary & I hop in the car again and drive north for 12 hours. Everything will be back to normal, as it hasn’t been since she flew away at the end of February.

I do have this nagging dread in the back of my head that the instant my circumstances are restored, that’s the moment I come down with COVID-19 and die. Or worse, the moment I run to her arms I wake to gasp out my last breath on a ventilator, a morbid twist on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Man, a lack of sleep messes with your head.

I didn’t need the ad to know I have to vote for Biden next fall

I hate it. I think Biden is a barely competent tool who is going to be a cheerleader for corporate America, but we’re not going to have a choice — it’s him or the totally incompetent grifter who is just in it for himself. Thanks, Democratic party! You’re a bunch of assholes!

But I do think they’ve put out an effective ad.

Remember, you’re not voting for a good candidate, you’re voting against a malignant one.