Why should I trust an organization that honors the worst among us?

Actually, in my experience the decay is spread everywhere

A commenter made me aware of a conflict I’d completely missed. The FFRF, an organization I’ve always appreciated, published an article by Jerry Coyne. It was the usual anti-trans, anti-scientific, hateful heap of bogosity; the FFRF retracted it, too late; Coyne was chagrined by the retraction; and I just missed it all. Here’s a good summary.

If you believe gender-related issues are tangential to atheism, I assure you that religious conservatives believe the topic is perfectly intertwined with their faith. Just as they used religion to fight marriage equality and abortion rights, they’re using the Book of Genesis in defense of their anti-trans beliefs. If you don’t want religion dictating our laws, and you believe LGBTQ people deserve civil rights, then you understand why these are issues atheist activists ought to care about.

And yet some prominent figures in our loose movement have spent years arguing the opposite, allowing white evangelicals to control the debate on LGBTQ rights—and often taking their side. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, is another one of those atheists who has spent years spreading anti-trans rhetoric on his website. His blog is now mostly a cesspool of blockquotes from his favorite conservative writers. A deep dive through his “sex and gender” posts will rid you of any respect you may have had for him. (Coyne gave a similar anti-trans talk at the Center For Inquiry’s CSICon in October. Dr. Steven Novella, who spoke at the same event, rebutted it here.)

Accurate. That’s one of my complaints about the atheist movement. Coyne is still a member of FFRF’s honorary board; Richard Dawkins is still a big name in the atheist community; his handpicked agent, Robyn Blumner, still runs CSI. The rot isn’t just a scattered subset of the community, it’s rooted deep in the leadership, and it’s not going anywhere soon. It makes me wary of wading into even the shallow end of the pool.

Do I want to hang out with atheists any more?

I’m tempted. American Atheists national convention is being held in Minneapolis on April 17-20 in 2025. Hey, that’s just down the road! It would be easy for me to attend!

I used to enjoy these events, and liked being part of the community. Unfortunately, I am actively hated by a subset — I still get hate mail from atheists — and I don’t know who the speakers at this event will be yet, so I feel some hesitation. Maybe I can just show up, sit quietly in the back, and see how it goes. Maybe if some of the sensible atheists from the upper Midwest show up I’ll be comfortable with the event.

I like this Neil deGrasse Tyson fellow

Neil deGrasse Tyson went on Bill Maher’s terrible show (that’s not good, I wish everyone would just starve that guy of air) and dismissed him quickly when he brought up Elon Musk’s plan to go to Mars. It makes no sense.

I have strong views on that. My read of the history of space exploration is such that we do big, expensive things only when it’s geopolitically expedient, such as we feel threatened by an enemy. And so for him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do. What is that venture capitalist meeting look like? ‘So, ELon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen.

Tyson has offended Elon Musk! We need more of that. Musk fired back on Shitter.

Wow, they really don’t get it. Mars is critical to the long-term survival of consciousness. Also, I’m not going to ask any venture capitalists for money. I realize that it makes no sense as an investment. That’s why I’m gathering resources.

By “gathering resources,” of course, he means “plundering our investment in space research”. Sure, he doesn’t need venture capital money now, because he’s got his hooks into the federal government.

I am most aghast at that claim that Wow, they really don’t get it. Mars is critical to the long-term survival of consciousness. The arrogance of the man! He sees himself as vital to humanity when he’s actually a selfish, weird parasite with an ego that leads him to think all he has to do is build a bigger rocket and people will love him as a savior.

That was enough to entice another very stupid man, Piers Morgan, to bring Tyson on to his show. If there’s anything Morgan likes, it’s being able to pit high profile people against one another in a spectacle. His second favorite thing is to ladle out smarm for rich people, so he says I’ve got massive respect for you [Tyson], I also have a lot of respect for Musk. I also like the fact that he dares to dream very big. Morgan sucks up painfully, talking about vacationing in the south of France with Musk and how he wants to protect humanity from total ecological collapse and the heat death of the sun. So Tyson launches an even longer discourse on how the whole Mars dream is impractical and wrong.

Tyson is laughing throughout, which baffles Morgan, who thinks he’s chuckling about the eventual destruction of humanity. No. He’s laughing at how ridiculous and how ignorant Morgan and Musk are. They don’t discuss Musk’s follow-up accusation.

The real problem is that Neil decided to grovel to the woke far left when he got hit with a #MeToo. You can avoid being canceled if you beg for forgiveness and push their nonsense ideology. The truth hurts.

It’s an all-purpose excuse: any criticism is met with an accusation of wokeness. He is not a clever or rational man. Also, you should realize that being in favor of equal rights for women is not antithetical to being in favor of science and exploration.

They had this discussion and focused only on the possibility of getting a spaceship to Mars, which we know is possible — it’s been done. Getting a crewed spaceship there is much, much harder, but like Tyson says, is entirely within the realm of possibility if you throw enough money at it. What they don’t discuss is the whole absurd idea of colonizing Mars, which I think is not possible in this era, and if it were, the effort would be better dedicated to supporting our existence on this precious jewel of a planet, Earth.

Maybe Morgan should read A City on Mars and learn something. That’s not as profitable as sucking up to billionaires, though.

Elsevier strikes again!

There’s been a mass resignation of the editors at The Journal of Human Evolution. The reason? Elsevier has, as usual, mismanaged the journal and done everything they could to maximize profit at the expense of quality. In particular, they decided that human editors were too expensive, so they’re trying to do the job with AI.

In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors. This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.

They also proposed cutting the pay for the editor-in-chief in half.

Keep in mind that Elsevier charges authors a $3990 processing fee for each submission. I guess they needed to improve the economics of their piratical mode of operation a little more.

The pettiness is the point

All the infighting has exposed the truth about Elon Musk’s dedication to free speech. He has deprived a gang of right-wingers their little privileges and badges entirely because they have a political opinion that differs from his.

Several conservative critics of billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk were stripped of their verification badges on X, Thursday after publicly challenging Musk’s stance on immigration.

Trump ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and the pro-Trump ConservativePAC were all stripped of their verification badges after criticizing Musk’s controversial remarks about American workers and foreign H-1B visa holders.

Their crime? They were too anti-immigrant. They opposed the use of H1-B visas to permit foreign tech workers to live and work in the US — Musk wants to keep a ‘loophole’ to allow some brown people to work for his companies. Musk is now using his power to silence critics. Is anyone surprised? I’m not.

I’m on Bluesky, but I’m not going to be smug about it — BlueSky also has the danger of centralized administration. They just haven’t flexed yet.

It’s killing the cats!

Tragic news from Shelton*, Washington: in an animal sanctuary that specializes in big cats, the Wild Felid Advocacy Center, the tigers and caracals and lynxes have been dropping like flies.

“They’re drowning, basically, in their own lungs,” said Melinda Mathews.

Melinda Mathews lives here full-time with her husband, Mark, who founded the nonprofit in 2006.

“They were immensely suffering,” Melinda said, her face drawn in sadness. “It was the hardest thing, so hard.”

The first to get sick was a cougar, Hannah Wyoming, back in mid-November. The veterinarian thought she had cancer. And when Crackle, an African Caracal got sick, the vet thought the cause was cancer, too.

But the big cats died and others soon followed.

“Basically, we’ve lost a cat every day for about two and a half weeks,” Mark said.

It’s the bird flu, H5N1, that was spreading through all the animals. They think it was transmitted through the cat food, which often contained bird meat. Now there has also been a recall of Northwest Naturals Turkey Recipe cat food after tests showed that it was tainted with H5N1, and after one domestic pet died of bird flu.

This is how those sneaky viruses get you. H5N1 is spread widely in bird populations, but is unlikely to spread to humans, and does so only rarely. Now a variant has a toehold in a common, widespread mammal that thrives in our homes and farms and cities, numbering about 75 million animals. If a pandemic spreads through that population, which would be terrible news in itself, a variant that can thrive in people could arise, and then…lockdowns and mask mandates and a frantic search for a vaccine. Unfortunately, this could come at a time when a big chunk of the population likes to defy basic practices in hygiene and when an incoming administration has expressed a desire to gut the scientific enterprise in the USA, and we’re about to have a demented anti-vaxxer in charge of biomedical research.

I guess the evil cat is going to have to go. I’m not going to harbor a plague vector in my home.

Wait, what’s that? The cat has informed me that she’s an indoor cat and we never let her go outside anyway, despite all the tail-twitching staring she does at the window. Also, all of her cat food is fish-based, because she doesn’t like the taste of bird — she wants to murder them, not eat them.

Also, we haven’t trimmed her razor sharp claws in a while, and she knows where we sleep.

*I know where Shelton is! My grandson lives in Lacey, and I have other relatives in McCleary.

I am quite enjoying the chaos on the right

Sometimes I do regret leaving Twitter — I have to get all the gossipy infighting second hand.

For instance, you may recall the depths to which Nick Fuentes sank after the Supreme Court gutted Roe v. Wade:

Your body, my choice. Forever.

What, you may wonder has happened to little Nicky ever since?

I will now have to uproot my life and relocate. While I can handle whatever comes to my front door, it is irresponsible to expect my neighbors with young families to share that burden.
In the mean I will have to contract 24 hour security to protect myself and my property.


If anybody would like to contribute to defray the cost ($13,000/week) of private security and rebuilding my studio, here is a donation link.
I can only accept cryptocurrency because I am banned from banking services and CC processing. Thank you.

His choice, he needs to learn to live with it. It’s a fitting fate for a hateful racist and misogynist.

In addition, that freaky obsessive Laura Loomer is jealously trying to defend her ‘boyfriend,’ Trump, from that wicked interloper, Elon Musk.

The elephant in the room is that @elonmusk, who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. @realDonaldTrump
He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all his accomplices in big Tech to slither into Mar a Lago.

I will give her this…it takes one to know one.

Elon Musk: Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.
Laura Loomer: Telling the truth isn’t trolling.
Read the room! @elonmusk
You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago after Trump almost had his head blown off in Butler. Remember when you voted for Biden and propped up @GovRonDeSantis and you said Trump was too old?
We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing.

Delicious. It all reminds me of junior high school. And this is how the American presidency operates?

Have your genes been pacified?

A reader sent me a request to help him debunk an evolutionary psychology paper. It’s easy: it’s evolutionary psychology, which ought to be sufficient, but also it’s by Henry Harpending, notorious white nationalist and spewer of scientific racism nonsense.

To be fair, I’ll give you a chance to read the paper and judge for yourself: Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification. The premise is that the operation of the death penalty culled out some mysterious genes that gave Western people a propensity for violence, so that nowadays white people are nicer and more civilized. Our violent genes have been “pacified”. I tried looking up this concept of “genetic pacification” in the scientific literature — it seems to be a term of art used only by evolutionary psychologists, without any quantifiable definition. This paper claims to try, though.

Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. Such pacification proceeded slowly in Western Europe between the 5th and 11th centuries, being hindered by the rudimentary nature of law enforcement, the belief in a man’s right to settle personal disputes as he saw fit, and the Church’s opposition to the death penalty. These hindrances began to dissolve in the 11th century with a consensus by Church and State that the wicked should be punished so that the good may live in peace. Courts imposed the death penalty more and more often and, by the late Middle Ages, were condemning to death between 0.5 and 1.0% of all men of each generation, with perhaps just as many offenders dying at the scene of the crime or in prison while awaiting trial. Meanwhile, the homicide rate plummeted from the 14th century to the 20th. The pool of violent men dried up until most murders occurred under conditions of jealousy, intoxication, or extreme stress. The decline in personal violence is usually attributed to harsher punishment and the longer-term effects of cultural conditioning. It may also be, however, that this new cultural environment selected against propensities for violence.

You will not be surprised to learn that there is absolutely no data presented anywhere in the paper. The authors cite a purported correlation between historical endorsement of the death penalty and a decline in the homicide rate, while ignoring all the other complex social changes that were going on over the same period of time, a typical reductionist strategem. The paper fails to provide any evidence that criminality is heritable, but just assumes that it is.

What the authors pretend is evidence is a model they have built, but they don’t report any details about how the model works, and report very few quantitative conclusions from it…which are pointless anyway since they don’t explain how they derived them. What the do tell us about the model makes it laughable, though. Here are the assumptions they’re working from, in addition to their assumption that crime is caused by genes:

1.The death penalty was the only selection pressure acting against personal violence;

2.Without the death penalty, condemned men would have each killed only one person on average over a normal lifetime;
and
3.Condemned men had no offspring at the time of execution.

I think we can dismiss their whole model out of hand, based on the obvious falsity of all three of those assumptions.

At least the authors didn’t feel any need to make the implicit conclusion explicit — that white westerners are genetically more civilized than all those other people in the world.

He really means it

Donald Trump belched out a “christmas” message. It’s not the usual platitudes and well wishes, it’s instead a subconscious whine from the id of a demented tyrant. I’m not going to type this all out, so struggle with reading this mess…or don’t.

He keeps talking about seizing the Panama canal, annexing Canada, and taking over Greenland because “we need it”. I’m beginning to believe he’s really going to try to do it, somehow. Apparently, he’s going to try wheedling Canada into voluntarily ceding their sovereignty for lower taxes and the benefit of our “protection” (he’s openly asking for protection money, very Mafia). I don’t think Canadians are interested in being invaded by health care insurance companies, or being saddled with the kind of uncertainty about the future I have, and the only threat to Canada I know of right now is the USA. He has also deluded himself into thinking the inhabitants of Greenland want to be taken over by Donald Trump.

Panama is a different story. Now he’s falsely claiming that Chinese troops are in control of the canal — they aren’t, they’re investing lots of money in development in Panama — which is priming the MAGA clowns to justify military action.

I’m going to guess what’s going on in his mind. He knows his record as president was bad, and is going to get worse, although he thinks he can hide it with all this bluster. He’s trying to come up with something that will generate a positive legacy for him, and thinks that territorial expansion is just the thing to make him look like a strong leader. It’s what Putin did, after all. I think he’s also trying to pick out ‘easy’ targets (Canada has a history of wrecking American invasions, though, and I think he might find that a lot of American citizens would stand with our friend and ally to the north), because maybe he thinks Ronald Reagan looked tough invading Grenada.

The second half is just the typical whining about how everyone is picking on him.

25 days until this demented, delusional maniac is at the wheel of this country.

Lunch has been served

We all had something tasty for lunch

I spent some time with the spiders this afternoon, who were all extremely appreciative of the plump mealworms I gave them, devouring them immediately. I also learned something: I’ve often noticed that they will back away from their prey and then scurry back to their meal, as if they’d briefly entertained second thoughts. No, that’s not what they are doing. When I looked closely, I saw that they were attaching a thick webbing cable, practically a ribbon, and then attaching it to another strong cable in their existing web. It’s all part of securing a strong prey animal. I have a short video clip of this behavior on Patreon. These mealworms are strong — I saw one getting wrapped and bucking so hard it was lifting up the whole cobweb, which was attached to a wooden frame.

Then I came home for a fabulous Christmas lunch, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, the honey a gift from Karl and Ariela Haro von Mogel, of Biofortified. Thanks, guys!