Ablation zone found, also identified some firn

We must be approaching Spring, when the weather gets even worse. We had a brief thaw earlier this week, and all this liquid water trickled out from under the glacier covering our lawn, and then flowed across our sidewalk. Then the temperature dropped below freezing again, and is going to stay there for a few days. You know what that means: ice skating rink!

I tried to get into the lab again today, and saw that…and it gets much worse a little further on, where the walkway slopes downward. Decided I’m too old to risk these bones and turned around and went back home. That’s unfortunate, because nothing is more soothing than feeding the spiders. Instead I had to settle for salting down the sidewalk so I wouldn’t be at fault for any student casualties braving the path.

Then I decided I need to hang out with spiders for a bit, so I actually drove to the lab. It was a whole half a block! But it was safer than trying to walk on the ice ramp.

The spiders are fine, thanks for asking. They were hungry and wolfed down a couple of flies each.

Fraser Anning says, “hold my beer.”

Right after I declare that I’ve found the worst take on the Christchurch terrorist attack, what happens? I find Australian politician Fraser Anning’s declaration of who is really at fault here.

The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place. And he quotes the Christian bible.

Fuck me. I’ve got to get off the internet for a while.

The worst take on the Christchurch mass murder

So I wake up bright and early this morning, and first thing on my mind is the horror in New Zealand — I can’t imagine the nightmarish terror the victims suffered, and most of all, I can’t imagine the baseless hatred that inspired the murdering Nazis to open fire with assault rifles on unarmed men, women, and children. I’m still trying to understand.

And then I run across this one article that stopped me cold. I could not believe anyone wrote this. You see, one of the terrorists, who was live-streaming his evil, told everyone to subscribe to Pewdiepie on YouTube.

Soon after the world heard the gunman utter ‘PewDiePie’, hate had begun on the Internet.

Think about that. Hate had been festering on the internet long before those words were spoken; the evidence is that the terrorists had been fueled on 8chan and other sites where hating Muslims is de rigueur. And the terrorists were clearly motivated by hate. But that’s not what the writer was concerned about.

They were appalled that people were hating on Pewdiepie. The bodies were lying cold in their blood on the streets and the floor of the mosque, and oh no, we must be concerned about the real victim here, a poor innocent YouTube multimillionaire.

But thankfully, there are sane people too in this world. And on the Internet. At the time of writing this, #PewdiPie is trending on Twitter and lots of them have come out to show support to the YouTuber.

WHAT THE FUCK. There is a mass murder by terrorists, and we’re supposed to be relieved that, thank god, at least #PewdiPie is trending on Twitter. Jesus.

How dare you bring up a “political agenda” now in order to question the political agenda that has been thriving in the alt-right infested sewers of Twitter and YouTube. Not now. Not after that political agenda has successfully managed to murder at least 50 people. News18 and this ‘MightyKeef’ wackaloon are representative of a political agenda that they don’t want questioned.

But here’s the thing: I don’t hate Pewdiepie, and I don’t think anyone else should, either. He’s a racist idiot who has lucked onto a popular strategem. He didn’t tell anyone to go murder anyone else. He’s a symptom not the cause, the recipient of an ugly glitch in YouTube’s algorithm for recommending channels, which apparently reinforces popularity with a swirling vortex of chaos that makes him more popular. Fuck Pewdiepie. He’s a talentless nothing, so don’t blame him.

Instead, hate the 89 million mindless, mush-brained fuckwits who subscribe to his attention-seeking noise.

Unsubscribe from Pewdiepie if you’re one of them.

Uh-oh. I just encouraged an insane act of terrorism, I guess. Reducing his subscriber count is worse than blowing a child’s head off with an AK-47.

Nazi terrorist on murder spree in New Zealand

A monstrous act by an evil radical. He filmed himself like he was playing a video game.

In the first few minutes, the gunman says, “Remember lads, subscribe to Pewdiepie,” a popular Swedish YouTuber who has spewed racial slurs and made anti-Semitic comments on his channel.

A Twitter account that appeared to be associated with the gunman posted photos of the weapons used in the attack footage. The user also appears to have shared links to a manifesto around the time the shooting began.

At more than 74 pages, the document outlines a white supremacist motivation for the attack. The writer, who identifies himself as a 28-year-old white man born in Australia, quotes the so-called 14 Words, the slogan shared by white supremacists worldwide. He said that while he supported white nationalist groups, he alone had decided to carry out the attack. He described the victims as “invaders” and accused them of seeking to replace white people. He wrote about attacking two mosques, one in Linwood and one in Christchurch. He focused on the latter because it was the largest, he wrote.

No more tolerance for fascists.

Anyone got a cow handy?

There are a few things you should test that this fellow claims.

OK. Cows can do amazing things.

  • They can absorb radiation with their horns.
  • If you place a radio between their horns, you’ll just here “ommmmm”.
  • They poop plutonium (I guess they have to do something with the radiation they absorb).
  • Their urine cures cancer.

I don’t own a cow, so it’s a little inconvenient for me to try this stuff, although I suppose I could drop by the dairy farm a half mile away. The cattle yard is full of plutonium, though, and that stuff can kill you, so I’m a bit afraid to try.

Do you think dairy farmers and cattle ranchers and cowboys are all swigging down gallons of cow piss to counter the carcinogenic effects of all that radioactivity? Do radios between American cow horns just emit Slim-Whitman-like yodels instead of “Om”?

John Holbo drills down to the contradiction in the Peterson/Shapiro axis

Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin walk into a podcast and…it’s all one big joke! John Holbo thinks it’s funny, anyway. The three of them engage in their usual pseudo-philosophical babble — I’ll include a tiny sample of their long-winded gassing here, but there’s more at the link. Even more if you go to the original source, but I wouldn’t want to inflict that kind of pain on anyone.

Peterson: Here’s the idea. Imagine that you are in some sense the embodiment of that paternal spirit that has characterized mankind since the dawn of time. It’s locked in you, it’s part of your potential. That’s coded in part biologically, but it’s also coded sociologically, in the air and the mythos and the stories we tell each other … [snip out some stuff about Christianity]. It [the image] starts to force you to develop. The socialization. The stress of that transforms you biologically. That won’t be unlocked until you place yourself in the position … [snip more stuff about Christianity] … you actually produce a psycho-physiological-spiritual transformation that matures you into the representation of the Father on earth.

It must be nice to just wave your hands and claim that some complex phenomenon is coded biologically, without ever having to do the work to justify it. But here, Holbo is more interested in that idea that you’re the embodiment of a paternal spirit that also isn’t justified with evidence. You’re expected to accept it because feelings, and of course Ben Feelings Don’t Care About Facts Shapiro concurs.

The discussion concerns, so to speak, the status of certain feelings. You have a feeling that a certain image of positive masculinity (paternalistic, dominant) is valid, exemplary, normatively binding.

So: what is the status of this feeling?

Peterson speculates, on the basis of evolutionary psychology, that: facts care about his feeling. Shapiro backs him up by arguing that Aquinas and Leibniz concur. There has to be a reason why things are as they are, including our feelings about positive masculinity. There must be something underlying it! (My feeling can’t be resting on nothing. That would imply I am like a snowflake, liable to melt. Abzu forbid!)

Note: this is only masculine feelings. Facts care about guy feelings. It’s a priori!

To be fair, Peterson doesn’t claim certainty. But, to be fairer: the whole thing seems so transparently Just-So-Story-ish wishful and (to spin it in the most charitable way) wildly indulgent in rank speculation. (And Leibniz!) The conspicuously uncritical quality of it, especially in light of Shapiro’s famous catch-phrase?

Well, I thought it was funny.

Hey, I thought it was hilarious! But then, if you find entertainment in contradictions and pretentious foolishness stated with pompous certainty, then Peterson and Shapiro are world-class comedians.

Jacob Wohl may have Smolletted himself

Jacob Wohl, the right-wing dumbass who strolled through a pleasant neighborhood in Minneapolis and declared it a “no-go zone” infested with terrorists, has come out with a “documentary” about his terrifying experience. He even claimed to have received an online death threat from a gay Hispanic diversity coordinator! Except that, because he’s one of the dumbest people on the internet, he used one of his own fake accounts to send it to himself.

He reported that threat to the police! So now the Minneapolis police are looking into it as a false report of a crime. It’s kind of amazingly idiotic: he included video shots of the “threat” in his own “documentary”, and also included shots of him filing a police report. He committed a crime and recorded every step of it. He is so helpful to the police.

Even his own good pal, Ali Alexander, who accompanied him on this field trip, is now desperately distancing himself from Wohl, slamming his friend publicly.

“It confirms that he’s not operating at a level where there’s useful misinformation, but kind of stupid, vanity-filled, ego-fueled disinformation,” Alexander said. “And that won’t look good for Jacob.”

I saw the videos Alexander and Wohl made during their visit, and while he may not have been responsible for a fake police report, he certainly was an enthusiastic participant in spreading “stupid, vanity-filled, ego-fueled disinformation”.

Nuke college athletics from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

It’s one disgusting story after another, now that the Feds have flipped over the rock of college admissions. Deadspin has all kinds of grisly details on how athletics was used as a gateway for cheaters, including lots of face-palming transcripts.

The grift was to pay a coach or program big bucks to lie and say the prospective student was a worthy athlete, which allowed them be admitted under more lax standards.

Why are student athletes given special privileges, anyway?

Shut these programs down. All students should be admitted on their academic potential, not how well they can throw a ball. Fire all the coaches. Make sports a non-competitive extra-curricular activity. Burn the stadiums down. Jesus christ, at the very least we’ve got to make our admissions departments more accountable.

I’m getting a bit worked up reading about this scam. I’m going to have to close up my laptop and go spend some time with my spiders. They, at least, are incorruptible and honest.

Puncturing the myth of the elite college

As an old college professor, I have a few secrets to reveal to you.

There is no such thing as an elite college. That’s something that rich colleges like to call themselves, and when other colleges claim that, all they’re really saying is that they aspire to be rich. Harvard isn’t a better educational institution than your local community college — in a lot of ways, CCs are better because the teachers are just as dedicated (they have to be, they’re getting paid a lot less) and the students may be more focused on actually learning something.

College is worth exactly as much as the student puts into it. I’ve had slacker students, and I’ve had enthusiastic, interested students. I’ve taught them both exactly the same things. Guess which one actually learns more?

The amount of learning isn’t at all correlated with tuition. It’s a funny thing, but paying more money to a school does not mean your experience will be upgraded. It may actually be the reverse. Big Fancy College will do most of their instruction with grad student TAs; Small Cheap College will expect the faculty to spend more time working with students.

What you’re paying for at an “elite” college is social status. That’s it. Not a better education, not better teachers, not esoteric knowledge you can get nowhere else. You get to hang out and make connections with other students from a socioeconomic background that can afford this overpriced place. That may be a valuable asset, but let’s not pretend that the school’s primary purpose is education, then.

Admission is rigged. Ever hear of “legacy” admissions? If a parent is an alumnus of a school, their children get preferential admission. It’s kind of the opposite of merit — you get in by accident of birth. Walk around some of the “elite” college campuses, and you’ll see all these buildings named after people. Sometimes they’re named to honor distinguished faculty, but more often it’s because some rich person dropped a few million dollars on the school. Do you think if the offspring of said rich fat cat applied, they wouldn’t be ushered in the door?

Well now, thanks to a major sting operation by the federal law enforcement, another layer of corruption has been exposed.

Federal officials have charged dozens of well-heeled parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in what the Justice Department says was a multimillion-dollar scheme to cheat college admissions standards. The parents allegedly paid a consultant who then fabricated academic and athletic credentials and arranged bribes to help get their children into prestigious universities.

“We’re talking about deception and fraud — fake test scores, fake credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials,” said Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Lelling said 33 parents “paid enormous sums” to ensure their children got into schools such as Stanford and Yale, sending money to entities controlled by a man named William Rick Singer in return for falsifying records and obtaining false scores on important tests such as the SAT and ACT.

Singer was the middle man, but he facilitated parents who lied and cheated, and school officials who collaborated. A bunch of coaches have been arrested — they would lie and say the sweet little darling prospective student was being recruited for an athletic program, even if they weren’t, to give them an edge in admissions. (That’s another big problem: athletics is a fertile ground for bringing in inappropriately qualified students.)

Describing how Singer worked to present his clients’ children as elite athletes, Lelling said, “In many instances, Singer helped parents take staged photographs of their children engaged in particular sports. Other times, Singer and his associates used stock photos that they pulled off the Internet — sometimes Photoshopping the face of the child onto the picture of the athlete” and submitting it to desirable schools.

“Singer’s clients paid him anywhere between $200,000 and $6.5 million for this service,” Lelling said.

Rotten through and through. Athletics should not be a factor at all in getting into college.

And then there was widespread cheating on the standardized tests required to get in, with paid proxies taking the exams for the kids, or sitting right there with them in the testing room, feeding them the answers.

Other defendants in the case include university athletic coaches and college exam administrators — some of whom are accused of accepting bribes. Court documents state that the scheme targeted these schools as part of a “student-athlete recruitment scam”: Yale University, the University of Southern California, Georgetown University, UCLA, Wake Forest University, Stanford University, University of San Diego and the University of Texas, Austin.

“There will not be a separate admissions system for the wealthy,” Lelling said. “And there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”

Yeah, right. There has always been privileged admissions for the wealthy. Does anyone want to break the news to him about our criminal justice system? It’s funny how the color of one’s skin is a major factor in admission to our prisons.

By the way — next time someone whines about affirmative action and how it lets in unqualified black students over superior white students, just haul off and punch them in the mouth. The system is set up to favor unqualified rich students over intelligent poor students.

“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” said U.S. Atty. Andrew Lelling. He said they “knowingly conspired … to help their children cheat or buy their children admission to elite schools through fraud.”

Prosecutors allege that Singer instructed parents to donate funds to a fake charity he had established as part of the scheme. Most of the parents paid at least $200,000, but some spent up to $6.5 million to guarantee their children admission to top universities, authorities said. The parents were then able to deduct the donation off their income taxes, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

They can afford to drop a million dollars to smuggle their kid into school, and then write it off their taxes? Oh, America.

I was all prepared to cut the kids some slack — they may not have known what their parents were doing. But then I read about Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of Lori Loughlin (an actor?), who paid half a million dollars to get her into USC. Olivia Jade’s interests are fashion, beauty, instagram, and YouTube, where she has acquired almost 2 million subscribers who listen to her prattle while she puts on her makeup.

Juggling school, a personal brand, and a YouTube channel isn’t easy. In her first week, for example, Olivia Jade had to travel to Fiji for a work shoot. “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend, but I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all,” she said in a vlog beforehand. “But I do want the experience of game days, partying…” She paused. “I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”

She doesn’t care about school. She’s there for football games and parties.

Fuck.

You know USC is a very good school, right? (They’re all good schools.) But apparently they are rather indiscriminate in the riff-raff they allow in. And this cheesy, shallow twit is taking up space that someone who could really use the educational opportunity would find productive.

And she has 2 million subscribers to her vapid channel? I’ve been experimenting with YouTube myself, you know, and I guess I’ve been doing it wrong. I’m gonna start recording my daily beauty routine — trimming my nose hairs, scrubbing the callouses on my feet, taking my Old Person Heart pills, while mumbling in a rheumy voice about getting off my lawn. It’ll be a hit!

Recall what I said about “College is worth exactly as much as the student puts into it“? That’s one of the biggest crimes here, that the system is rigged to allow rich students to waste the resources and opportunities of our educational system. And nothing is going to change because of this one-shot criminal proceeding.

More stories of the “students” who profited from this scheme are emerging — here’s Isabelle Henriquez, who gloated about how her parents had an expert flown in to hold her hand during the SATs, so she could get into Georgetown. Now her false pretenses are making expulsion possible.

Advice to children of rich parents who bought their way into college: shut the fuck up. Nothing you can say will help you, and everything you say is going to make others despise you. Lie low. Study hard. Prove you earned your education.