I get mail

My address is easy to find, and if nothing else, you can just send it to me, at the University of Minnesota Morris, and it will find its way to my mailbox. Lately, I’ve gotten mundane pages from the Watchtower (Jehovah’s Witnesses are instantly recognizable by the style of their illustrations), and this…this kookrant. The guy really, really hates trans people and the expectation that you will be kind and respectful to your fellow human beings.

He doesn’t seem to understand numerals. “6000 thousand” is six million. Unless he’s in some weird sect that has a different age of the Earth than other fundamentalist Christians, he’s confused, or just innumerate.

My eyes glaze over. Would you believe this letter goes on for 8 pages of intolerance and hatred? I’ll spare you the middle — it’s all the same — but here’s the last page, where he tells me to become a Christian.

No, not ever. I have no desire to become garbage.

The company they keep tells you all you need to know

Holy crap. Guess who these guys are looking towards for advice. Gad Saad.

Musk: I mean, there’s a guy who posts on X who’s great: Gad Saad.*
Rogan: Yeah. He’s a friend of mine. He’s been on the podcast a bunch of times.
Musk: Yeah, he’s awesome. … And he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, if there’s, like, there’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So that we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it’s like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
Rogan: Also, don’t let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.
Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, and I think empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
Rogan: Right. Understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
Musk: Yes. Like it’s weaponized. Empathy is the issue. Yeah, weaponized empathy.

He’s awesome…I’m going to have to puke. Gad Saad is a marketing professor with no qualifications in science, but is thriving by jumping on the evolutionary psychology bandwagon. Or, as Eiynah describes him,

He is a white nationalist, someone who calls for expelling Muslims, a vicious transphobe, someone who refers to anti-Zionist Jews as insects. A truly vile man who they described as ‘a Canadian professor’.

His latest schtick is to claim that people are caring too much for their fellow human beings, especially if they belong to ethnic groups he doesn’t like, and calling it suicidal empathy. He’s written a whole book on the topic, a book I’ve mentioned before, and not one I’d ever care to read. Let’s take a look at the Amazon reviews, where it has 4½ stars (the reviews show all the signs of being carefully pruned of criticism), and all you have to do is look at who is praising him to know it’s trash.

“Western civilization is doomed, unless the core weakness of suicidal empathy is recognized and actions are taken that are hard but necessary for survival. Gad Saad articulates this well. All of Gad’s books, including this one, are great.” — Elon Musk

“Over the course of nearly half a century tracking culture war issues I have some perspective on our time and society, and I am deeply worried that the West faces a challenge like no other. But I was unable to link the disparate threats—the DEI, BLM, and trans movements, the fetishization of victimhood status, the ennobling of terrorists and criminals, and the failure to solve the drug and homelessness problems—to the underlying cause until I read Gad Saad’s magisterial work on Suicidal Empathy. There it is! We’re killing ourselves with kindness and it must stop before the patient dies, starting with this book, which includes the contagion’s diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.” — Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic magazine, author of The Moral Arc and Conspiracy

“What happens when society becomes so empathetic that it tolerates intolerance? Gad Saad is the evolutionary psychologist who can tell us whether the enlightenment can endure in an age of suicidal empathy.” — Lord Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist and Birds, Sex and Beauty

Western civilization is doomed, unless we purge it of DEI, BLM, and trans movements and stop being kind. But Musk, Shermer, and Ridley are the people you should listen to only if you plan on doing the opposite of what they advise.

Instead, respect every branch of human civilization equally, regard them with fairness and generosity, and give them nothing but kindness. Except for Nazis.

Sucking up to Rogan or Musk will only make you popular with Nazis, and those people are bad.

The lesson of apples

I grew up in Washington state, and many of my relatives worked the apple orchards in season — they were good, hardworking fruit pickers. But I hadn’t even thought about where apples came from. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been the Yakima valley, and of course I knew of the legend of Johnny Appleseed, but wouldn’t have been able to even guess what their origin was.

It turns out they’re from Kazakhstan.

What I thought was most interesting in the video is that it mentions Nikolai Vavilov, and his famous hypothesis — so famous that we take it for granted in any discussion of human origins.

The origin of any cultivated plant can be found where its wild relatives grow with the greatest diversity.

Awesome! I’m going to have expand my discussion of extreme heterozygosity and centers of origin in my Spring semester genetics class (but not now, I have to focus on cell bio for next week). I read this most excellent review, Human-driven evolution of cultivated plants and the origin of early civilizations: The concept of Neolithic revolution in the works of Nikolai Vavilov and found it enlightening.

The concept of centers of origin of cultivated plants (crop biodiversity hotspots) developed by Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) is essential for understanding the origin and evolution of human civilization. Vavilov formulated the principles of the Neolithic agricultural revolution and substantiated the basic patterns for the emergence of agricultural civilizations. He established that the center of speciation of the plants that have a potential for cultivation determines the origin of primary civilization. Humans actively performed the selection of plants with valuable properties, which led to the formation of new cultivated species and varieties, while the starting point for such unconsciously human-directed evolution was the presence of potentially useful traits due to the increased genetic diversity in the center of origin. The spreading of agriculturally important cultivars from the center of their origin led to the propagation of beneficial farming technologies over large areas. The establishment of human civilization resulted from the dynamic quasi-symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated plants and animals, which human-driven evolution became an essential factor for the transformation and dynamics of human societies.

Here’s all the human history you need. (I exaggerate slightly.)

Fig. 5 summarizes the proposed views on the development of agricultural civilizations and phytospreading during the Holocene. The phytospreading process became to a major extent human-driven in the Holocene, which resulted in intensive biomass formation related to the production of crops. Centers of origin of cultivated plants determined the rise of early civilizations, which in turn facilitated the spreading of wild, cultivated, and weed species to higher latitudes. The process of phytospreading in the Holocene was described by Vavilov for the origin and distribution of cultivated plants. He identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants as the hotspots of genetic diversity for the plants potentially having agricultural importance. In these spots, the series of parallel variability (described as Vavilov’s law of homologous series) were very intense.

Fig. 5. Schematic illustration of the development of agricultural practices, spreading of cultivated plants, and social evolution of human civilization.

The law of homologous series is a very evo-devo concept. It’s the idea that similar variations can be found in members of the same genus, the same family, that is, that there seems to be something in the ancestral form that recurs spontaneously in later descendant forms, that the feature is an intrinsic property that can pop up in multiple branches of a lineage. These are brilliant observations rooted in Vavilov’s extensive study of native populations. Yes, he visited Kazakhstan and studied the apples there.

It’s especially impressive that he was doing this work that merged the disciplines of evolutionary biology and genetics in the 1920s.

You may have heard Vavilov’s name in another context: he was hated by the anti-science ideologue Trofim Lysenko, who eventually had him arrested and condemned to death in 1940. Vavilov died in prison in 1943, all because he recognized the scientific validity of Mendelian genetics, and opposed the nonsensical delusions and wishful thinking of Lysenko (delusions that led to the death of millions by famine). I can’t help but notice the similarities in the conflict between American science and the lies of MAHA and our modern Lysenko, RFK jr.

Vavilov’s mugshot

Thank goodness no scientists are being harassed in show trials and threatened with prison here! How many great scientists are going to wither on the vine thanks to the current radical politicization of science in this country?

Election denial is a psychological disorder

Remember this guy? He ought to be forgotten already.

Despite a glowing endorsement from Trump, Lindell was defeated by Demuth by roughly 11 percentage points in the Republican primary for governor on 11 August, a margin far beyond the 0.25% threshold that would trigger an automatic state-funded recount.

He lost by 11 percent. This was not a photo finish, he was clearly repudiated by the Republican electorate. Without question, Mike Lindell is OUT. However, he still refuses to concede, and is demanding a recount.

Because the gap is wider than the threshold, Lindell would need to formally request the recount and cover its cost himself.

The announcement comes after Lindell refused last week to concede the Republican gubernatorial primary, despite trailing by a double-digit margin. The Associated Press called the race for Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, late on election night.

Lindell’s campaign alleged “irregularities identified in election-night electronic reporting data” in the news release.

Minnesota law allows a manual recount if the loser pays for it themself, in this case at the cost of over $800,000. He’s planning to pay it, despite his pillow business being in a shambles and his bankruptcies.

Just wait until the general election! MAGA is going to go nuts.

Lock him up!

I told you about how James O’Keefe had tried to prank Minnesota elections. This state had a major fraud scandal where a few people had scammed childcare funds for millions of dollars, and the government has been hammering through those cases and slamming the con-artists into prison, while MAGA has been shrieking for justice because some of the perpetrators were Somali (never mind that the organizer was a white American-born woman). We are going to have to be strict in the prosecution of these white-collar criminals.

I guess we’re just going to have to drop the hammer on James O’Keefe.

The man in the video who falsely identified himself as William Pomeranz, whose real name is James O’Keefe, may have put himself in legal jeopardy.

“It’s illegal in the state of Minnesota to impersonate another voter, and this is apparently what O’Keefe did,” David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University, said.

Schultz, Pomeranz and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon say the video shows the system worked.

“As I read the law, you can’t impersonate another registered voter, and that’s exactly what they appear to have filmed themselves doing,” Simon said.

Impersonating a Minnesota voter at a polling place is a felony punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.

I wouldn’t object to seeing O’Keefe locked away for 7 years. We have to do it to avoid being seen as soft on crime.

I think this is a fictitious trend

There I was nodding along with all the stuff social media is telling me, when I was brought up short by an innocuous comment.

20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could.
Now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest.

Ha ha, yeah, people are so different now…hang on, wait a minute. None of that is true. I suspect that the person did NOT do a careful analysis of statistical trends. I remember 20 years ago — heck, I remember 40 years ago — and I don’t remember people avoiding technology.

Did you know the microwave oven was invented in 1946, and the first commercial consumer model was introduced in 1967? Now they’re ubiquitous. Who doesn’t have one in their home nowadays? They were readily adopted over the course of years.

I was first using the internet in the 1990s, when it was largely a university privilege, and then came AOL and the internet just exploded in the 2000s. Now everybody has to have WiFi so they can get Netflix.

In the 2010s, citizens were adopting hybrid cars, and now fully electric cars. Are “techies” rushing to buy piston-engine cars with carburetors now?

I believe there is a rejection of badly implemented technology — the enshittification of tech, for instance. But I think people are always ready to adopt tools that are cheaper, easier to use, novel and interesting.

The death of superheroes

One of the drawbacks to volunteering at the local theater is that you have to sit through way too many showings of movies you don’t like. I’ve suffered through four showings of Spider-Man: Spiderless New Day so far. I don’t actually sit through the movie, but instead wait in the concessions area, listening to the absurdly loud booming noises.

This may be advantageous as the school year starts — I’ll be able to bring my laptop and gets some work done while simultaneously supporting the theater.

Anyway, now I get to dwell on why I don’t like a Spider-Man movie, and Tom the Dancing Bug captures my feelings.

Where Marvel took a wrong turn was the success of those colossal match-ups where they scrape up every superhero from their long and storied history to fight the big bad guy. So you’ve got the guy who was bit by a radioactive spider, and the guy who turned green (originally gray, I know this because I’m old) from gamma ray exposure, a guy who built a suit of armor, a woman trained as an assassin, a literal god from a pagan pantheon, a sorceror supreme, a guy who can get really big or really small, a guy with a bow and arrow, etc. Individually, I could suspend disbelief to get through a story, but together…total indigestible chaos, that requires an excessive amount of exposition to get us to the point where the central plot even makes any progress. Apparently, the lesson Marvel has learned is that all their movies will be mash-ups of disparate superheroes with unrelated superpowers, and I hate it.

You don’t need that to make a long elaborate science-fiction story. A great counter-example: The Expanse, a multi-episode space opera. There is one key postulate, the contrivance of the unfortunately named Epstein Drive, which allowed a technological society to expand cheaply and rapidly enough to set the stage on which the human drama plays out (I think the bits where they introduce aliens and magical interstellar travel weakens the overall story, because it’s throwing in way too many gimmicks).

The better movie would be one where a relatable human story is told, with one magical being, no more, introduced to complicate events in interesting and novel ways. They aren’t ever going to do that any more. Stories aren’t as important as CGI slam-bam with lots of noise.