While we’re at it, we should condemn all assassinations

Did you know that Melissa Hortman’s murderer has still not been charged with domestic terrorism, despite the fact that he specifically targeted Democrats in Minnesota?

Also, we still have no serious restrictions on gun ownership. You can gun down small children and far-right political figures, and we still can’t get gun control. In South Korea, guns are tightly regulated — even hunting rifles are expected to be locked up in the city courthouse, and if you want to use them, they have to be checked out. I would vote for that.

Charlie Kirk shot

A single shot was fired at Kirk during one of his rants at Utah Valley University, striking him in the neck.

Apparently, he’s still alive.

No automatic or semi-automatic fire? No bump stock? No large magazine? Violent liberals really need to learn more about the gear the Right embraces so readily.

Thoughts and prayers! Nothing more!

You guys didn’t pray hard enough. He’s dead.

This is bad news. Not only does no one deserve to be murdered, but this is going to be used to blame everyone the Right hates.

Remember what he believed.

An insufferable student

I would never want to teach in Texas…I wouldn’t even want to live in such a place. As an example, here’s a case of a dogmatic student objecting to the instruction in a class that mentions gender. This is from a right-wing twitter account where the tweeter approves of the student.


CAUGHT ON TAPE: TEXAS A&M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION… and A&M President defends “LGBTQ Studies.”

I’m referring @TAMU to the Trump Administration for investigation… and asking Gov @GregAbbott_TX to fire the A&M officials involved and to instruct his Regents at all public universities to immediately end all DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination.

Hidden camera video and audio, letters to the Trump Administration and Governor Abbott, as well as some of the course materials my office has obtained, are in 🧵 below.

If you don’t want to listen to the video, the instructor starts by briefly reviewing some basic concepts in gender and sexuality, and one student pipes up to say that she thinks the course content is illegal, because according to our president, there’s only two genders, and that he would be freezing agency’s funding programs that promote gender ideology and that it also goes against people’s religious beliefs, two arguments that I would never ever want to hear in the classroom. Authoritarian pronouncements from a dictator and religious beliefs are never a sound basis for reasonable understanding.

This student chooses to argue with the instructor, and incidentally reveals that she has no understanding of material that had been discussed in a previous class.

Can you explain to us how teaching us about gender identity and transgenderism and that there’s more sexes than…

“My gender isn’t illegal,” the teacher interrupts.

Huh?

“My gender isn’t illegal,” she repeats.

Gender? What do you mean?

Your gender is not illegal? According to President Trump’s executive order, it…

“If you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal, and if you would make the claim that it is you need to talk to the department head, or the head of undergraduates.”

The student then refuses to participate, and says she has an appointment with the university president to complain about this course.

She does more than that. She meets with the Texas A&M president and asks that the instructor be fired.


Audio of student asking Texas A&M President to fire the professor who kicked her out and who was blatantly indoctrinating students in transgender ideology.

A&M President snaps back at student: “THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!”

Exactly right. You don’t fire faculty because opinionated students disagree with course content, even if the student claims that it was indoctrination. Teaching is a matter of explaining concepts that students don’t initially understand; reciting ideas that students already know and only regurgitating their opinions is not teaching, it’s memorizing dogma.

Unfortunately, after giving a brief lesson in reality to the student, the president of Texas A&M later issued a statement.

I learned this afternoon that key leaders in the College of Arts and Sciences approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description. As a result, I directed the provost to remove the dean and department head from their administrative positions, effective immediately. Our students use the published information in the course catalog to make important decisions about the courses they take in pursuit of their degrees. If we allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised, we let our students down. When it comes to our academic offerings, we must keep our word to our students and to the state of Texas.

The excuse is now that the course catalog does not include a summary of all the concepts an instructor might introduce in a course. Uh-oh. My genetics course doesn’t have a catalog entry that mentions that I teach about the fallacies of genetic determinism, racism, and historical development of the chromosome theory of inheritance, so I guess my class faces the threat of being declared anathema…except that my university administration isn’t packed with dogmatic assholes on a crusade to purge science.

I’d say that Texas professors need to get the hell out of that shithole state, but they already know it. Professors want to leave Texas because of tense political climate, survey says.

Many Texas professors are looking for jobs in different states, citing a climate of fear and anxiety on their college campuses due to increased political interference, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors.

The survey interviewed nearly 4,000 faculty across the southern U.S., including more than 1,100 from Texas. About a quarter of the Texas professors said they have applied for higher education jobs in other states in the last two years, and more than 25% said they soon intend to start searching for out-of-state positions. Of those who aren’t thinking of leaving, more than one-fifth said they don’t plan to stay in higher education in the long-term.

“Morale is down,” said one Texas faculty member at a public four-year university in a written response. “Friends have lost contracts for no discernable [sic] reason. We live in fear of using the wrong word. We self-censor. We do not have academic freedom.”

The top reason faculty cited in the survey for wanting to change jobs was the state’s broad political climate. In Texas, faculty have criticized new state laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities; requiring university governing boards to establish policies on granting and revoking tenure; and limiting faculty’s role in crafting courses and hiring colleagues. Other reasons included salary and academic freedom concerns, the survey found.

Unfortunately, it’s not just Texas. Thanks to federal policies that mirror those of Texas, professors in 50 states want to get the hell out of this country.

American science is screwed

There was an interesting op-ed in the NY Times today (it’s been a long time since I could say that): We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself, by Stephen Greenblatt. Can you guess which scientific superpower he’s writing about?

Here are some interesting data.

According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The others are:
The University of Science and Technology of China
Zhejiang University
Peking University
The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tsinghua University
Nanjing University
Germany’s Max Planck Society
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
A decade ago, C.A.S. was the only Chinese institution to figure in the top 10. Now eight of the 10 leaders are in China. If this does not constitute a Sputnik moment, it is hard to imagine what would.

Given Trump’s mantra of China, China, China to blame that country, it’s amusing and depressing that he has completely handed over leadership in science to China. OK, and Germany. He is responsible for the abrupt change in status.

The article also makes a strong comparison.

From the start, this government investment in education wasn’t free of ideological interest. It was fueled by fear — fear of the Russians, fear of the atomic bomb, fear of falling behind in the “space race” — and intended to influence curricula. Not, to be sure, in the catastrophic manner of the Soviet Union, where Trofim Lysenko’s theories of genetics set back Soviet biology for decades, but rather by strengthening science departments across the country.
…
And now, notwithstanding its triumphs, the whole enterprise is in serious trouble. The Trump administration began its assault by using the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on many campuses to charge elite universities with antisemitism. The rationale has largely shifted to complaints about affirmative action, diversity initiatives, liberal bias and the like. Scientific research has been curtailed; postdoctoral fellowships have been abruptly canceled; laboratories have been shuttered and visas denied. The damage to scientific enterprise extends beyond our borders, whether it’s from the cancellation of nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA research under the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a kind of Lysenko lite — or the purging of data on which climate researchers around the world depend. We will never know what diseases might have been cured or what advances in technology might have been invented had the lights not gone out in the labs.

“complaints about affirmative action, diversity initiatives, liberal bias and the like”…sure sounds like someone we know at the University of Chicago.

I don’t know if I’d agree that RFK jr. is a Lysenko lite — he hasn’t come to the full power of a Lysenko yet, but you know that if he could he’d start imprisoning and deporting everyone who supports vaccination, for instance. Give him time. Give him a little more power and he’ll root out the Vavilovs in modern America.

What can we do?

For the moment, American universities still have the enormous advantage of their resources and their autonomy, and their joyous imaginative freedom. I walk through Harvard Yard on my way to teach a freshman course on great books from Homer to Joyce, and I am continually astonished by what I see and whom I meet. There are students from all over the world — from Mongolia as well as my hometown, Newton, Mass., from Athens in Ohio and Athens in Greece — and there are colleagues who have been immersed in a wide range of pursuits, from creating the first image of a black hole in space to deciphering the words on a scrap of ancient papyrus. We need to get up from under our desks and persuade our fellow citizens that the institutions that they have helped create with their tax dollars are incredibly precious and important.

That’s nice and optimistic, but I think it’s harder to restore prestige than that, and also we’ve permanently changed our prospects for the future — who would want a career in a US university when all it takes is a single election to completely shred our scientific institutions? We’re going to be forever aware that we’re on shaky ground.

But will he pay it?

Trump went to court again, to claim that he should not have to pay the large sum he was expected to pay to E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault. He lost.

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks and public statements against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault.

Does anyone believe he will ever pay that penalty, no matter how many courts and judges declare that he must? He’s just going to delay and delay and claim that no one is allowed to interfere with a US president, and wait out the judgement until he dies. That’s how the rich operate. If I had a legal claim of millions of dollars against me that I refused to pay, the sheriff would come to tow my car away, the city would start carving away my property, I’d be kicked out of my house and it would be auctioned off, and if I were really obstinate, I’d be hauled off to jail. But if you’re rich enough that you could pay the sum, they’ll respectfully watch you dither and scheme to get out of it.

One law for the wealthy, another law for the rest of us.

Epstein had some weird and creepy friends

The Epstein birthday book has been released, and you can read it all for yourself. The content is not very interesting, to be honest–lots of heavily redacted photos of Child Epstein, Epstein frolicking with women/girls, sloppy greetings from people who ought to have known better, all kinds of innuendo. Voidzilla summarizes it all.

One thing caught my eye: one of the birthday greeters was Stuart Pivar, the crackpot pseudoscientist who threatened to sue me for fifteen million dollars. All kinds of people were sucking up to Epstein, and I don’t quite understand why…it was the appeal of money and a guy who proudly flaunted his depravity, I guess.

The official cult mask

The MAGA or Mar-A-Lago face is the new costly signal for anyone who wants to be part of MAGA (or right-wing news), and it’s pretty darned creepy.

It has a signature look.

Defined by copious use of Botox, a Miami-bronze tan, puffy lips and silky smooth skin, plastic surgeons told DailyMail.com it was giving Trumpland an almost ‘plastic’ and ‘Real Housewives’ look.

We can thank Donald Trump for this weird habit.

I wouldn’t normally be snarky about someone’s looks but let’s be clear: nobody is born with Mar-a-Lago face. These are not human faces, they are luxury meat-masks meant to signal wealth and in-group belonging. People such as Laura Loomer, Kristi Noem, and Matt Gaetz can afford excellent surgeons and subtle cosmetic work but, unless they’ve all had botched procedures, it seems they deliberately chose to look like AI-generated caricatures. One can only surmise that they live in such weird little bubbles, where everyone is addicted to filler, that this sort of conspicuous consumption of cosmetic surgery has become desirable.

Having the right look is certainly desirable to optics-obsessed Donald Trump, whose chief concern for his underlings appears to be how they perform on TV. In 2017, an Axios report claimed that Trump wanted his female staff to “dress like women” and demanded that his male employees have a “certain look.” Over the years it seems the “certain look” has only become more extreme.

An obsession with traditional gender norms also seems to factor into today’s exaggerated aesthetics. Earlier this year a New York-based dermatologist told Politico that fashion often shifts to more traditional gender expression in culturally conservative times. “It’s ironic … that they’re so against trans-ness and gender-affirming care for trans people,” the dermatologist said of Trump’s inner orbit. “Because, you know, they’re all doing their own gender-affirming care.” The Zambian bum-stick chimps seem positively sophisticated in comparison.

You know, I’m not unhappy at all about this. Remember the end of Inglourious Basterds, in which Brad Pitt pulls out a big knife and carves a swastika into Christoph Walz’s face, before he follows orders and takes him to the US to reward him for betraying the Nazis? This is the same thing. If we ever overthrow our fascist regime, the people behind it will have all self-labeled themselves.