Welcome to the new wasteland, same as the old wasteland

YouTube has made a serious mistake. They usually try to pretend to be above all the petty bickering going on in their medium, intervening only when “objective” criteria are violated, but they slipped and openly ignored their own rules in the case of popular asshole, Steven Crowder. He’s been spewing bigoted bullshit for as long as he’s had a channel, and one could argue that that is the source of his popularity. Now, though, when he’s called on his use of incessant racial and gay slurs, YouTube punted.

To add to the irony, it’s Pride Month, and YouTube has put up their logo in rainbow colors…while the constant assault against LGBTQ creators is in full flood, unchecked by any rules or authority.

“I think controversy and the very aggressive communities that can exist similar to Crowder, I think that drives engagement, and that drives views, and that drives advertising revenue,” he said.

YouTube, Amer said, knows exactly what it’s doing.

“When you have a platform like YouTube does, you have a choice. You can make the world a better place or you can manipulate it to make as much money as possible, and YouTube is staunchly in the place of making as much money as possible,” they said.

Is anyone surprised? That’s always been the goal of the companies that dominate social media. They aren’t altruistic in the slightest.

However, the decision to support only combative content isn’t the only way to make money, it’s just the easiest, least mindful way. It’s the same decision made by proponents of reality TV; why put any effort into quality writing, good production values, or interesting and educational content when you can throw a couple of idiots in an arena, prod them a bit, and people will contentedly watch them flail at each other?

That creepy, inelegant metric system

Once upon a time, I would have said this was satire, but satire is dead now. Tucker Carlson and the Wall Street Journal complain about the metric system in a tirade that belongs in The Onion.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson railed against the metric system of measurement in his show on Wednesday night, describing it as inelegant and creepy. James Panero, a cultural critic and executive editor of The New Criterion, joined Carlson for the segment.

Panero recently wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal attacking the metric system with its meters and kilograms and urging America to stick to its customary system of measurement, which resembles the old British Imperial system.

Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny—the metric system, Carlson said. From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Lusaka to London, the people of the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. The United States is the only major country that has resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds.

Panero called the metric system the original system of global revolution and new world orders.

Carlson replied: God bless you, and that’s exactly what it is. Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted.

What a strange perspective to have…that other countries have fallen under the yoke of tyranny—the metric system when, rather, it was adopted because a common system of measurement is a great benefit to trade.

As for being the system of global revolution, that’s just a nice bonus feature. Using the metric system doesn’t cause revolution, but but being able to communicate and share does foster international unity.

They make other looney claims.

His guest said America should stand strong against pressures to switch to the metric system, bringing it in line with much of the rest of the world, because customary measures such as feet, inches, miles, and pounds helped foster the Industrial Revolution and put men on the moon.

The Industrial Revolution was not a product of British Imperial measurements, it was just the system they were historically using while they went through that period. Don’t give me that bullshit about putting men on the moon with feet and pounds — the scientific community has universally accepted the metric system, including the US. Our recalcitrance is to our detriment, not our advantage, as for instance:

NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency’s team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation

That Americans continue to use an antiquated, bizarre system of arbitrary units is a joke. Use metric for a while and it just makes more sense. I’m bilingual in metric and Imperial units, and it feels odd to have to switch to the archaic measures to communicate to American audiences. 30° is a warm summer day and 5mm is a small insect, dammit.

Carlson characterized the metric system is completely made up out of nothing.

They all are! You want to see some arbitrary argle bargle, read the history of imperial units.

Mile, any of various units of distance, such as the statute mile of 5,280 feet (1.609 km). It originated from the Roman mille passus, or “thousand paces,” which measured 5,000 Roman feet.

About the year 1500 the “old London” mile was defined as eight furlongs. At that time the furlong, measured by a larger northern (German) foot, was 625 feet, and thus the mile equaled 5,000 feet. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the mile gained an additional 280 feet—to 5,280—under a statute of 1593 that confirmed the use of a shorter foot that made the length of the furlong 660 feet.

Elsewhere in the British Isles, longer miles were used, including the Irish mile of 6,720 feet (2.048 km) and the Scottish mile of 5,952 English feet (1.814 km).

A nautical mile was originally defined as the length on the Earth’s surface of one minute (1/60 of a degree) of arc along a meridian (north-south line of longitude). Because of a slight flattening of the Earth in polar latitudes, however, the measurement of a nautical mile increases slightly toward the poles. For many years the British nautical mile, or admiralty mile, was set at 6,080 feet (1.85318 km), while the U.S. nautical mile was set at 6,080.20 feet (1.85324 km). In 1929 the nautical mile was redefined as exactly 1.852 km (about 6,076.11549 feet or 1.1508 statute miles) at an international conference held in Monaco, although the United States did not change over to the new international nautical mile until 1954.

Yeesh. Give me multiples of ten any time.

Don’t get me started on shoe and dress sizes, either.

The spiders may be the death of me tomorrow

My big spider survey project launches tomorrow. I’ve got a long list of people who have volunteered their residences, and starting at noon, we start cruising the mean streets of Morris, Minnesota, seeking spider-haunted garages, and plunging into them to count and classify arachnids. This will be painless if they’re sparsely occupied, but judging by the surge in the spider population at my house this week, it may be a grueling task with hundreds of eight-legged freaks clamoring for our attention. Thousands? Oh god, may die. The price we pay for Science.

I’m estimating a week spent on this first phase. Then another week a month from now. Then another week a month after that. Then some spot checking as fall and cool weather descends. In between, we’ll be culturing spider embryos in the lab — my colony is currently about 20, 25 strong, and I plan to triple that in short order, and then at last, the spiderlings will be pumped out assembly line fashion, and there will be no limit to my aspirations!

Is there hope for atheism?

Maybe. As disgusted as I am with the regressives making the most noise (and the most profit) in the current iteration of the atheosphere, there are some promising indicators. Gregory Paul has an encouraging article, The Great and Amazingly Rapid Secularization of the Increasingly Proevolution United States, that is full of surveys and graphs that show a steady, consistent trend: secularism is growing. Maybe not your usual aggressive atheists, but lots of people are fed up with the efforts of a minority to impose theocracy on us. The United States is a weird outlier with greater religiosity than other ‘first world’ nations, but we’re getting better.

As for the demographic future, there is every reason to expect the USA to continue to secularize more towards the western norm at a fast pace despite the frantic but inherently insufficient effective counter efforts of organized theism. The unprecedented nonreligiosity of youth and the dechurching power of modernity cannot be overcome, which is why there never has been a serious religious revival in any advanced democracy. Because the rise of proevolution atheism is a largely automatic, casual lifestyle conversion in response to subtle but powerful socioeconomic forces usually done without deep thought, it will remain true that neither side can do much to alter the course of events one way or another.

Atheist evangelism isn’t going to be effective, but just setting an example and letting the churched drift our way naturally might.

My personal cause, accepting naturalism as the best scientific approach, also gets a mention — he favors what the NCSE has been doing in broadening their science outreach beyond just evolution, although he’s not enthusiastic about the success of trying to prop up theistic evolutionists.

As for the proevolution effort, the tactic of trying to educate theists to accept the evolution of humans over deep time is at best marginally effective – there is no such thing as a developed democracy that is both proevolution and highly religious and probably never will be – but if in the unlikely event it can be made to work it is the only means of speeding up the acceptance of bioevolution. The most practical strategy is to wait for the organic increase in the size of the atheist cohort to automatically boost proevolution opinion. As such the recent deemphasis of proevolution activity by the NCSE and AAAS is logical; but of course educational and legal efforts must continue as long as creationism is a serious societal and antiscientific issue – after all, we’re still dealing with flatearthers (whose views are often Bible based BTW).

Hey, let’s look on the bright side of Donald Trump! He’s been doing an excellent job of yanking out the moralizing rug from under the feet of the evangelicals. Given how often Christians whine about atheist morality or the lack thereof Trump is a useful tool for atheists.

And for as much trouble as it is causing, the theocon minority – in alliance with an increasing secular white nationalist cohort – has handed Ameroatheism a big gift that will last forever – that a socially deranged faith-based theocon collective helped make Trump president bares like nothing else that they have long been pulling a colossal, cynical con as they proclaimed that as followers of the perfect creator they are the advocates of principled, unchanging morality and decency. By exposing themselves as in the main morally relative opportunists with a propensity towards neoracism, theocons have permanently wrecked their hypocritical pretense of having high moral principles, so much so that a minority of theocons are in despair over what has happened to the future prospects of their ideology. They can never take it back, and for decades to come when theocons start going on about their godly morality we can always bring up Trump.

He may tear down the Republic and the rule of law, but yeah, he is a poison pill for evangelical Christianity otherwise. Hooray?

In another appeal to native pride, Mark Silk reports that The Pacific Northwest is the American religious future.

Early in this century, the academic center that I direct undertook a research project to examine religion and region in American public life. Of the eight regions we divided the country into, the most distinctive was the Pacific Northwest (PNW)—Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.

The distinctiveness had everything to do with the region’s low degree of religious identification—something that had been the case ever since Anglo-Americans began settling the place in the 19th century. For that reason, we subtitled the volume dedicated to it “the None Zone.”

He argues that the low levels of religiosity in the region compels the religious to be more cooperative in order to get anything done. So while the region isn’t majority atheist, the non-believers are dampening the competitive fervor among the evangelical types. I guess we’re like the boron control rods in a nuclear reactor, keeping the nuclear reactions of the masses from going critical.

Another feature of the region is environmentalism — and interestingly, that’s driving a greater polarization between the moderate religious/atheists and evangelical Protestantism.

The main avenue of religious common cause was environmentalism, which in our view had become the region’s dominant world view—its civil religion if you will. A gospel of sustainability and biodiversity was strongly in evidence in the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, the non-Christian and New Age faiths, and among the Nones themselves. Yet the PNW also had its counterculture, located above all in its sizable evangelical community, where the region’s religious entrepreneurship was especially on display.

As one would expect, PNW evangelicalism was ranged against the dominant culture on abortion and gay rights. Most strikingly, however, the PNW was the one region where a majority of evangelicals took a negative view of environmentalism. Clearly, in this regional version of the national culture war, environmentalism had become part of a spiritual ideology that evangelicals felt obliged to set themselves against.

That brings back memories. There were people who hated environmental causes — loggers and ranchers, who were typically very conservative — against the majority I knew, who took it for granted that the natural beauty of the place needed to be cared for. I don’t recall associating the difference with degree of religiosity, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a correlation.

I really wouldn’t mind if the social attitudes of the whole USA became more like that of the Pacific Northwest…which also includes a nice chunk of Canada, don’t forget. It’s not perfect, but it would be better in many ways.

I’ll also note that there is a strong connection between Minnesota and Washington state, especially in my experience with my family, and many of the residents with Scandinavian roots. Minnesota also has an affinity to Canada. Maybe it’s not the lessened religiosity that makes a difference, but the bigger influence of Canada in these states. However it works, I’ll take it.

A milkshake is a moderate, proportionate response

I’ve seen a lot of whining about how we shouldn’t throw milkshakes at fascists, and I can understand their reluctance. I’ll leave it to Greta Christina to explain why it’s necessary and reasonable.

You might think leftists need to stop painting conservatives as heartless bigots and stop painting the Republican Party as the Evil Empire. You might think punching Nazis or throwing milkshakes at fascists is unacceptable violence. You might think the word “fascist” is leftist hyperbole.

How bad do things have to get before you’ll change your mind?

Fascism typically turns the heat up a little at a time. “First they came for the socialists,” and all that. Each new horror is just a little bit worse than the last, normalizing the ones that came before it and numbing people to ones that are coming. It’s easy to see in retrospect that strong action should have been taken earlier — but when it’s happening, it’s easy to convince yourself that it isn’t really that bad. Especially if you’re not one of the main targets. Yet.

So how bad does it have to get? We already have concentration camps. We already have a sharp rise in violence against people of color, trans people, immigrants or people perceived to be immigrants. We already have an executive leader blatantly ignoring the Constitution and saying the law doesn’t apply to him. We already have the executive branch, the judiciary branch, and half the legislative branch corrupted and useless as a check on power. We already have serious rollbacks on women’s bodily autonomy. We already have white supremacist culture permeating police departments and widespread in the military. We already have historians who study fascism saying that yes, fascism is on the rise in the United States.

It doesn’t bode well for the future when people are aghast that we might respond to a betrayal of the rule of law or outright murder with hurled dairy products, but here we are, cowering in terror behind our so-called principles, afraid to trigger change for the better because there’s too much change for the worse going on.

Last week on Facebook I saw that Greta recommended this book, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World, so I ordered it and read it. It’s good! The author is an organizer who has taught activists living under various fascist regimes how to resist, and it’s definitely not a handbook for terrorists. It explains how to undermine tyrants with little non-violent actions that diminish and weaken them — it’s also realistic about how difficult the process is, and how there are multiple potential points of failure. You won’t make any progress if you refuse to start, though, and over and over again, it emphasizes how important it is to find ways to laugh at the ruling regime.

Remind me not to do that again

Last Friday, I went to the doctor for a few minor complaints: tinnitus and a painfully spastic trapezius muscle. I got drugs! Cetirizine to shut down those spring allergies that might be worsening the tinnitus, and cyclobenzaprine for the muscle pains. Like a good boy, I took them exactly as prescribed over the weekend.

I don’t know whether I’m just peculiarly sensitive to them, or whether there was some major synergy between the two, but that was a totally lost weekend. Both say “may cause drowsiness”…I was constantly fading out and falling asleep, and I got little done. The cyclobenzaprine warns of “dry mouth”, and I was totally parched, dry mouth, dry adenoids, dry throat, dry vocal cords. I creaked when I talked. So I stopped on Sunday, figuring that hearing cicadas everywhere I go and having my chest spasm every time I coughed or laughed was less of a bother than the drugs.

Unfortunately, it’s taking a while for them to clear from the system. Here it is Wednesday and I’ve still got dry mouth (although it’s easing) and my eyes are still a bit blurry, and I’ll probably have to take a nap later today. At least I know these drugs are potent, they’re maybe just a tad too much for what ails me. I’ll keep ’em around in case I feel the urge to have the most boring party in the universe.

Classic example demonstrating how online polls are worthless

We haven’t screwed with an online poll in a long time, but I think this one deserves a special bit of attention.

It’s from Arizona Wingnut Paul Gosar, DDS. It’s stupid because the wording is so flagrantly biased to the point where it shouldn’t even be a poll — if you feel that strongly about the issue, why are you asking for others’ opinions instead of standing up for your principles? I answered “no” to everything except the last one. I wonder if he gets enough votes that reject his biases, that he’ll then do an about-face?

I wasn’t even trying to be mindlessly contrary. I think “no” is the right answer to every question there but the last.

I’m straight, I should get a parade!

This is going to be amusing. A small group of white men are planning a “straight pride” parade for Boston in August.

“Straight people are an oppressed majority. We will fight for the right of straights everywhere to express pride in themselves without fear of judgement and hate. The day will come when straights will finally be included as equals among all of the other orientations.” – John Hugo, President of Super Happy Fun America

It’s three bros with a website who think they are oppressed. For being so diamond-hard straight, they’ve strangely chosen Brad Pitt as their “mascot”, presumably without his permission. They have made a flag.

They are so danged rigidly straight that they’ve looped all the way around to gay, themselves. I expect their parade (with floats!) will either be the campiest event in Boston, or will simply droop in pathetic impotence…which will be fine with them, since if no one joins in their limp effort, it will be evidence that they really are persecuted!

Oh, wait! They had a Straight Pride Parade in Seattle last year!

One guy showed up.

He brought balloons, though. Totally worth it for balloons.

I’m told feminism is cancer

I still get this kind of message all the time — there are ugly hordes of men (and some women) who make this flat declaration that they don’t like feminism, and they’re usually the kind of cretinous clown who doesn’t see anything wrong with Donald Trump’s behavior. So it’s good to see Sadiq Khan rebuking our jerk of a president with a short simple message.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to announce that feminism is cancer, you get to fuck off and leave me alone now. I’ll have nothing to do with you.