That’s the Eastern Long-Legged Cobweaver, Theridion frondeum, that I’ve seen many times around here, but they’re very pretty.

Punch a Confederate weirdo today!

Even our ‘criminals’ are heroic.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota on Tuesday announced that 15 Antifa members have been indicted for their alleged roles in conspiring to hinder federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The suspects, 12 of whom are in custody, are all charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, according to a 94-page criminal complaint, and some are charged with further crimes. Federal prosecutors allege that each suspect took part in a conspiracy to obstruct federal immigration enforcement officers, including ICE personnel, through force, intimidation and threats.

The suspects are alleged members of the Antifa cell Direct Action Minnesota Network (DAMN), a radical far-left group accused of coordinating operations against federal immigration officers.

Hah, “radical far-left”. Those are just normal Minnesotans resisting the real criminals, the fascist state. Spread the news: most of us are antifa to some degree. There are almost 6 million citizens here, they better be prepared to arrest 3 million.

Anyway, Minnesotans are disgracefully and arrogantly proud of our state for many reasons, including our generally progressive politics. There’s a song about it.

Now if only we could be so unashamedly proud of our whole dang country, but it’s going to take a lot of work to change that course.

There was a violent crime in Belfast: a black immigrant stabbed a white man. It’s a common kind of crime, horrible and deserving of condemnation, but trust Elon Musk to fan the flames of hatred and turn it into a cause celebre, and the city was consumed with violent riots.

As the bedlam raged in Belfast after the stabbing—resulting in far-right rioters torching cars, buses, and even the homes of immigrants—Musk egged it on. Using X—the platform he acquired precisely for moments like these—he posted locations for groups of rioters to congregate. He elevated vile, overtly fascist and white-supremacist exhortations. When one far-right British politician called for the prosecution of officials who “placed dangerous third world savages in our communities,” Musk replied: “This is the way.”

These developments graphically illustrate the future that Musk truly envisions. They also demonstrate that Musk will use his stratospheric wealth and influence to incite untold levels of global fascist violence going forward. Which leads to an unavoidable conclusion: At some point, friends of liberal democracy throughout the advanced democracies—including future liberal governments—will simply have to come together in a concerted and deliberate way to constrain Musk and all he’s unleashing. Whenever Democrats take back power in the United States, this must be squarely on the agenda.

The article has a lot to say about Musk’s outrageous fascism, and don’t deny it: it’s fucking fascism of the kind Hitler would have endorsed, combined with the same crazy ignorance of actual genetics, and he has a plan that Donald Trump would recognize.

It’s instructive that amid the violence, Musk endorsed a call for “Reconquista,” an allusion to Christian military campaigns to retake the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces. (Modern-day keyboard fascists have long rather pathetically imagined themselves to be akin to Charles Martel, who turned back the Muslims at Tours in 732.) And Musk boosted a call for the removal of millions from the U.K.

I was wondering what Democrats could possibly do against a trillionaire. Here are some suggestions.

Then there’s what a future Democratic Congress can do. The Musk problem will have to be on its agenda in a serious and meaningful way. Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, points out a core problem here: His many government contracts, and his access to privileged information, pose a “national security threat,” even as Space X itself is in many ways a “national security asset.” We need to know a lot more about what Musk’s contracts actually translate into in terms of his personal influence inside the government.

“Congress has to do rigorous oversight of Musk’s government contracts as well as his entire financial empire,” Finkelstein tells us.

Other ideas abound. Brian Beutler has urged the next Democratic administration to closely scrutinize the murky circumstances of Musk’s own immigration to the United States. Beyond such things, we’ll need a coordinated effort across liberal democracies. Appropriately, the targeting of apartheid in Musk’s native South Africa provides a model. We need an international consensus that recognizes the threat Musk poses and works against it with boycotts, with the withdrawal of support and funding, and with whatever creative tools are available. Politicians and publics alike need to think internationally.

OK, let’s strip him of his government contracts, and then turn his own plans against him: deport Musk. Maybe we can seize all of his assets and turn SpaceX into a subdivision of NASA, too. And that’s a mild response: he really ought to be jailed for incitement.

And the winner is…

I can’t say that I’m particularly upset at our defeat — it was an unjust attack, a war of aggression instigated by our right wing and Israel, and it was doomed from the start — except that we killed a lot of people for no good reason. Fortunately, now Trump has signed what is called a “Memorandum of Understanding” that ought to be more accurately labeled our terms of surrender.

He signed it at Versailles.

On social media, the historian Kevin Kruse reacted with disbelief to the president signing the agreement to end his war in the same location where Germany was forced to sign the humiliating treaty of Versailles in 1919, accepting its loss in the first world war.

“He signed an unconditional surrender at Versailles?” Kruse wrote. “Come the fuck on.”

It is most definitely a surrender. Look at point 6 of the memorandum.

6. The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

The US also agrees that “frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available”. There are no concessions to the US other than the promise that Iran will never produce nuclear weapons, a promise that was in place before we started bombing everything. We’re paying $300 billion in reparations!

The war might be over, except for one little clause.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles.

Our “ally” in this war was Israel. Netanyahu has already declared that they aren’t leaving Lebanon. He’s going to start firing missiles everywhere, isn’t he?

The MAGA rationalizations are going to be epic.

The thing is, when they’re on that web and the wind is blowing, they’re just vibrating all over the place. You’d think they’d be hopelessly motion-sick.

I couldn’t stand it so I let her take a break from the gale on my finger.

Don’t worry, I returned her to the same branch.

Ol’ Kent is going to have to flail about a bit in response, and I’ll be looking forward to it. I’m going to predict that what he’ll do is declare McClellan to be an atheist by default.

Also, I despise those tik-toks or whatever that feature someone just smiling and nodding along, but making sure that their face is on screen the whole time. I’ve seen a few lefty videos like that. Speak up and contribute something!

As an undergraduate, my introductory neuroscience course was taught by Johnny Palka, a developmental biologist and neuroscience who worked with Drosophila, who had to explain to us on the first day of class that flies have brains. It was memorable because I was surprised that anyone thought otherwise (don’t worry, the class got much more sophisticated and mathematical after that). But it’s true that there are an awful lot of people with that degree of ignorance.

Confirmation:

“Most people think insects are reflex-based machines,” said Dr Olli Loukola, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Oulu, Finland, and senior author. “That they can’t have any emotional states or feel pain. Some people don’t even realise that they have brains. I hope that these results change the worldview about that.”

That’s from an article about bee intelligence, and if you think insect anatomy is a confusing topic for the general public, wait until you find out there are people who think intelligence can be reduced to a single number.

Only…biology can surprise you. We don’t even understand what intelligence is, so you should avoid limiting preconceptions. All it takes is a simple test to demonstrate the capabilities of insects.

The bees, which were only a couple of weeks old, were first trained to associate a blue artificial flower with a reward of sugar water. During the test, the flower was moved to the ceiling of a transparent petri dish-style chamber whose ceiling was too high for them to reach, but with insufficient space for them to hover. A ball was also introduced into the chamber. To reach the flower, the bee had to roll the ball under it and climb on top – a behavioural sequence they had never previously encountered or been trained to perform.

In the most basic version of the test, 75% of the bees were successful in reaching the flower. “This is essentially an insect version of the classic ‘box-and-banana’ problem,” said Loukola. “The animal must realise that an object can be repositioned and then used as a tool to reach an otherwise inaccessible goal. What stands out about the result is that this kind of spontaneous problem solving is now demonstrated in an insect.”

This is not to say that bees have the breadth of ability that a chimpanzee has. It’s saying that some things we regard as a significant intellectual capability can be implemented with a tiny number of neurons, and that includes tool use.

“There’s a general perception that intelligent behaviour requires big brains because we are big-brained and relatively intelligent among animals,” Chittka added. “Bees are a model of how much intelligence you can squeeze into a small nervous system … It’s a good reminder of there being a motivation to pay some respect to these other beings.”

Another example I’d point to is corvids — teeny tiny little bird brains that are remarkably smart.

• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.
• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.
• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.
• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.
• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.
• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.
• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.
• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.
• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).
• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview

• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.

What is a “biblical answer”? I don’t think there is such a thing — the Bible is a tremendous hodge-podge of archaic, conflicting, and fuzzy ideas. This is an assumption that there is a clear “biblical” position on everything, so I’m unsurprised that there is an absence of a coherent response. The survey returned results that don’t match Barna’s presupposition of what Americans should believe.

• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.

57% is still too damn high. I’m curious as to what the 43% believe.

• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.

That’s just a fundamentally horrible belief. What is sin? What is it that a newborn is a sinner? I’m happy to see that belief is in decline.

• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.

I believe that human life is valuable and should be protected, but I don’t believe in the “sacred,” so I guess I’m in the majority. A lot of people are becoming cynical if they think life has no intrinsic value.

• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.

The pro-life movement has always been nothing but an ideological game that was ginned up in the 1970s. The Bible doesn’t say much of anything about abortion, and basically takes it for granted that it happens. Is this one of the things they score as a “non-biblical answer”?

• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.

Good. Let’s see that number continue it’s decline. The concept of an ominipotent supernatural agent is nonsensical.

• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.

I’ve never even thought about this idea! Why would anyone care about the sin-status of a rabble-rousing Jewish preacher who lived 2000 years ago? Apparently it’s a serious theological question, which is an indictment of theology.

• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.

Don’t you suspect that most people are confused about this whole business of a “holy ghost”? I know I was only exposed to the concept of the trinity as a grade school child, and found it absurd, so I’m sure theology has a more “sophisticated” muddle of excuses, but I suspect most Americans have the equivalent of my childish explanation.

To be a good Christian, must one believe in a nebulous space ghost?

• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).

“Spirits.” Stop there. When your survey is treating spirits as discrete entities that need to be evaluated, you’re lost.

• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview

OK, good. Ken Ham is thus rebuked.

I read the whole paper, and I’m mainly confused about why we should consider it significant that American religious belief is complicated and messy and does not conform to one particular view. There are tens of thousands of protestant denominations! I guess it’s nice that Barna is highlighting how incoherent religious belief is.

Near as I can tell, it’s perfect, and her peers also thought so. The only suggestion I could possibly make is to maybe add a few spider photos…or a picture of my granddaughter? I don’t know that my suggestions would necessarily help.

It’s nice to have a vague idea of what she’s been up to!

No one will be surprised to learn that RFK jr is trying to bias the scientific literature. He’s upset that the journal Toxicology Reports had killed an article that supported his weird belief that childhood vaccines are causing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, so he pressured them to restore it.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, is demanding answers from a medical journal that recently removed a paper suggesting a link between vaccines and infant death, saying their decision was “of great interest to me”.

Public health advocates immediately criticized the move, and said Kennedy appeared to be trying to intimidate and influence the journal’s editorial process. The journal Toxicology Reports had removed the paper this spring after editors determined it was so seriously flawed it could harm patients and pose a risk to public health.

This is patent meddling in the publication of scientific ideas. David Gorski commented on it.

Dr David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who has written extensively about the antivaccine movement, pointed out in a post that Kennedy has portrayed himself as pro-free speech, but that he was “apparently using the power of his position” to put pressure on an editorial decision by a private publisher.

“To antivaxxers, it’s free speech for me, but not for thee,” Gorski wrote on X.

I’m interested in that bit about how the paper was “seriously flawed”. The first clue is that the paper is yet another example of VAERS cherry-picking, a common tactic by vaccine deniers to scavenge through reports of vaccine effects to find isolated examples that they they then assemble into fanciful fairy tales of statistical significance, and that’s what this paper is.

The paper raised concern among scientists soon after it was published in 2021 by Neil Z Miller. It used reports made in the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to find what Miller said were “unusual patterns and safety signals highly suggestive of a causal relationship” between vaccination and Sids. VAERS is a vaccine safety monitoring program where anyone can submit a report about any suspected adverse health event that happens after a vaccination.

The second clue is that the author is Neil Z Miller. They can stop right there — Miller has an entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons. He’s not a scientist, not a doctor, and has no qualifications whatsoever, and all he does is comb through diverse data to assemble “evidence” supporting his a priori conclusion that vaccines are bad, mmmK?

Neil Z. Miller is a “medical research journalist”, “health pioneer”, “independent researcher” (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) and Director of the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute, an anti-vaccine organization listed here (and Miller has a long history in various altmed and antivaxx organizations). Gary S. Goldman is an “independent computer scientist” affiliated with WAVE – World Association for Vaccine Education, another anti-vaxx organization, and President and Founder of Medical Veritas, a rabidly anti-vaccine “journal” (listed here) that is into HIV/AIDS denialism as well, having published dubious “reanalyses” of autopsy results of victims of AIDS. Neither Miller nor Goldman have any qualifications that would lead one to think that they have any special expertise in epidemiology, vaccines, or science. But they have google and are not afraid to use it.

Together they have actually managed to publish a paper or two in obscure journals, where they completely misunderstand data in favor of their cherished hypotheses. In “Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?” they “found” that nations requiring the most vaccines tend to have the worst infant mortality rates, and their cherry-picking of data and speculation needed to reach that conclusion are rather painful – quite simply yet another poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly analyzed study that is poorly done exactly because it needs to be in order to show what the authors want it to show, namely that vaccines cause autism, a hypothesis so thoroughly falsified as any in the history of science. The study was of course praised in the venues you’d suspect, and where the assessment of the methodology used in the study is determined by whether it supports the conclusions the praiser wants it to show. Indeed, it was even praised at NaturalNews in a long post written by … Miller himself.

That paper should not have been accepted in the first place, and now we have RFK jr stepping in to push for its publication. And what qualifications does RFK jr have to assess scientific papers? Also none whatsoever.

It’s also an example of where bringing in yet-another-foreign species, in this case moths and scale insects, defeated the problematic invasive species. For now.

If I’m not back by noon, call out the helicopters and the search parties. (I also have an ace in the hole: Morris has an informal bus service where you just call and they eventually deliver you right to your door. Don’t worry.)

I’m back, call off the emergency search teams. It took an hour and a half to walk there and back? I’m getting so slow.

We present a morphological description of a recently discovered species of spider in the family Trogloraptoridae from the Columbia River Gorge in northwestern Oregon. The family was previously monotypic (Trogloraptor marchingtoni) and only known from populations near the southwestern Oregon—northern California border. Trogloraptor tulishpun sp. nov. retains the key family synapomorphy, distinctive subsegmented raptorial tarsi, and an oblique membranous division of the basal segment of the anterior lateral spinnerets. Trogloraptor tulishpun is distinguished from T. marchingtoni by its color pattern, clypeal height, vulvar and palp structure. We have found T. tulishpun in four localities in the Columbia River Gorge, which show little mitochondrial sequence divergence from one another, but are highly genetically distinct from T. marchingtoni. Trogloraptor tulishpun is found in basalt features, including lava tubes and shallow talus caves, and has been observed to eat arachnids and moths, making them top predators in these environments.

First, that’s a truly awesome name, Trogloraptor, for a cave spider. Somebody hit a home run with that name.

Naming a new species isn’t a trivial thing, but the lab that found this one went above and beyond to come up with the name Trogloraptor tulishpun. They consulted the local people of the Yakama nation, and got the name “tulishpun” from them. And then they had a formal naming ceremony, as reported on NPR.

ANTHONY WASHINES: At this time, we’ll open this ground, the sacred ground that we’re standing on, and then we’ll begin.

PRICHEP: Naming ceremonies are usually, unsurprisingly, for people. It’s a formal introduction of the name, but it’s also a way to sort of welcome that individual and mark their place in the community.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WASHINES: You’re being a witness to this brother being acknowledged.

PRICHEP: Anthony Washines is the Yakima elder who came up with the spider’s name.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WASHINES: And so, from this day forward, we will call them by the name tulishpun. Repeat after me – tulishpun.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Tulishpun.

PRICHEP: Gifts and food were shared, and a traditional naming song was sung. A few spiders were gathered to receive their name and then returned back to the nearby caves. Washines knows people will see tulishpun as a small thing. But he says every creature has its place, and this little spider has been in this place even when his people were not.

WASHINES: We were literally herded to a reservation up in the high-desert plateau, which was not our land. But he stayed here and remained. He still took care of this land.

PRICHEP: Usually, the discovery of a new species is celebrated with a pizza party in the lab, maybe a nod from the dean. It’s an academic milestone. But for tulishpun, it’s a community event, a gathering of scientists and citizens, of human and animal, to name all of those who make up this land and honor the connections between them.

How lovely. I’ll keep that in mind if I ever discover a novel species, which is extremely unlikely. In my background, we didn’t go looking for new species — new mutations and new molecules, sure, and we had ceremonies, usually involving popping a champagne bottle, when a paper was published, but we lack a connection to the community, the people, and the land. A species, though, is something people may have interacted with before, and that interacts with other levels of its biome, and it is appropriate to add a scientific context to a known part of our world.

Donald Trump had his tacky birthday party on the White House lawn yesterday. A bunch of people I never heard of had fights in front of a crowd of rich people who did not get rained on, unfortunately, but they did manage to demonstrate how low-class they were.

Yet if the event was intended as a celebration of American strength and exceptionalism, it also repeatedly descended into something cruder. The most striking example came after prospect Josh Hokit stopped Derrick Lewis in the second round of their heavyweight bout. After exiting the cage to present Trump with a necklace at ringside, Hokit delivered a rambling post-fight interview that veered from praise for the president to religion before concluding with the false conspiracy claim that “Michelle Obama is a man.”

The remark, one of the oldest and most persistent smears directed at the former first lady, drew cheers from some sections of the crowd and bewilderment from others. Even on a night that had already blurred the line between civic ceremony, political rally and pay-per-view entertainment, Hokit still found a way to lower the level of discourse.

Hokit’s comments were not the evening’s only political barb. When former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley faced Canada’s Aiemann Zahabi, the bout took on a nationalistic fervor. Trump donned a white “USA” hat cageside while chants of “U-S-A!” rang out from sections of the crowd. At various points spectators shouted “Canada is the 51st state!” – echoing Trump’s repeated taunts about annexing America’s northern neighbor – while others urged O’Malley to “eat” his opponent.

He got the party he wanted, but not the party he deserved.

Please, make these people go away.

The spiders are more somber, but still pretty flashy.

In other news about UFOs/UAPs, would you believe our government has formed a “UAP Science Advisory Council” to chase the nonexistent science behind the illusory flying saucers? Of course you would, because our current government is all about throwing stupid money after stupid ideas. Guess who they’ve appointed to run it…

Avi Loeb!

The three UAP file releases thus far attracted more than a billion views and a lot of chatter on social media. However, to paraphrase the wisdom of basketball players: “we must keep our eyes on the orbs, not the audience!”

What could be a better way of doing that than the establishment of a new “UAP Science Advisory Council” by the White House, AARO, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and all Intelligence Community members. This is not wishful thinking but a reality now. Over the past week, I was tasked by the above organizations to create a research team of young scientists who will serve on this council. The Council under my leadership includes the following members: Dr. Richard Cloete and Dr. Regina Sarmiento with expertise in data analysis and data management with AI tools, Prof. Matthew Szydagis with expertise in instrumentation and data collection, Dr. Devesh Nandal with expertise in numerical analysis and astrophysics and Dr. Omer Eldadi with expertise in data management, AI and human psychology. This constitutes an amazing A-team of exceptional scientists.

I would not want to be associated with anything endorsed by this administration, and I would not call any group of scientists picked by Avi Loeb to be exceptional anything other than exceptionally irrelevant. As usual, it’s a game of picking the biggest idiot you can find to run an organization. Bonus points if they’re an egotistical glory-hound.

Steven Spielberg can make some great movies, but he also has this solid wad of gullibility in his brain that emerges whenever he makes a movie about aliens. It happened when he directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET the Extraterrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it also leaked out a bit with A.I. Artificial Intelligence. They all made lots of money, though, so I fear there’s no way we can ever stop him.

Hey friends, I saw the new Spielberg movie Disclosure Day last night. The short summary, it’s mushbrain mystical bullshit through and through.
0:1313 It’s not as if I dismiss the idea of aliens altogether. As a biologist, I see it as almost certain that there’s
0:2121 life around other star systems. Life is chemistry and chemistry is universal.
0:2626 But I’m also aware of the existence of biological diversity. I’m confident that any aliens from outer space would not be
0:3333 spindly long-limmed pseudo monkeys with giant black eyes and gray bodies.
0:4040 That’s the only kind of alien Spielberg can imagine.
0:4444 I’m not a physicist, but I do believe that the cost and time of traveling from star to star would be so great that we’re not going to get fleets of clim
0:5353 flimsy tinfoil spaceships flying here to crash on Earth. What would be the point?
1:001 What would the aliens get at such uncountable expense?
1:051 Now, I’m going to sort of spoil the movie at this point. Sort of.
1:121 If you’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the movie that Spielberg made in 1977, you’ve already seen Disclosure Day.
1:241 I don’t know how I can possibly spoil this movie because it’s already been done with not a speck of originality.
1:311 To remind you about Close Encounters, a few people see UFOs which somehow telepathically infect them with visions and obsessions.
1:421 The movie focuses on two of them, Roy and Jillian, who struggle to understand their visions and make their way to the
1:491 mysterious Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, where they find an international team of government people sitting up setting up
1:561 musical communications gear to talk to the aliens. The UFOs show up. Little alien people emerge. Roy and Jillian
2:042 join them. And they all fly off to their destiny in the stars.
2:102 That’s it.
2:132 Jesus. But I dislike that movie. Yes, I saw it when it came out in 1977. I’m that old and I did not like it at all.
2:232 Nothing is explained. How the aliens implant ideas in people’s heads. They just can. How the military got involved.
2:332 Why the government is trying to keep everything secret. what humans and aliens were trying to say to each other. It’s all in patterns and tones.
2:412 How anyone involved basically got tangled up in this unexplained mcguffin and what they learned.
2:492 The message was simple. Aliens are awesome, but your government is hiding them from you.
2:582 If you missed it 49 years ago, now it’s back.
3:023 Two people, Margaret and Daniel, have been implanted with strange images and the ability to speak Korean, Russian, mathematics, and other alien languages.
3:163 And they are compelled to rush off to exotic Kansas City, where their fate will be revealed.
3:233 Daniel is carrying a stash of secret recordings of aliens that prove aliens are real. They are pursued by Noah, the bad guy.
3:333 He’s an angry intelligence agent who is best desperate to stop them before they expose the truth to the world. There are
3:413 car chases and fights and faints before they finally join forces with Hugo and
3:483 his team. Those are the good guys who want to expose the truth to the world, which they do by building a replica of Margaret’s childhood home.
4:004 Don’t ask me why.
4:034 And then taking over a TV station and broadcasting stolen government videos of Roswell, aliens, crop circles, and sadistic examinations of aliens.
4:154 That’s it. That’s the end.
4:194 Most of the movie is about conflicts and conspiracies that seem to be living in Steven Spielberg’s head. And I suppose they make sense to him.
4:294 But he can’t convince an audience that they’re true. His aliens all have psychic powers. Why?
4:374 What evidence do we have for any of that? Why should we think that aliens can read minds?
4:434 They’re visiting Earth and ships with bright flashing lights. But the general public can’t seem to get a decent infocus image of them. But the
4:514 government has excellent video recordings of dead aliens and spaceship wreckage.
4:584 Why are the aliens here?
5:015 Why does the government, all governments want them kept secret?
5:075 Why is Hugo, no, not Hugo, what’s his name? Um, the bad guy, why is the bad guy such a villainous walking temper tantrum?
5:175 None of this makes any sense except this is the world of Spielberg conspiracy theory soaked brain. He presupposes that UFOs have to be real alien vessels.
5:295 Therefore, the only reason we don’t have good evidence for them is that the aliens have magic mind control powers
5:365 and the government is suppressing the truth.
5:405 They can’t let the public know about the aliens because they’ll panic and because the mind of God is a mystery.
5:495 Yeah, there is some bogus theological weebling in there. There’s Catholic nuns in a couple of scen.
5:585 Okay. Why? I I I don’t know about anything in this movie.
6:046 The ending is only going to be satisfactory to a UFO conspiracist.
6:096 A bunch of videos get released on television and the internet, and we get shots of people and on buses and in trains and living rooms staring fixedly
6:186 at their phones and TVs with expressions of awe. Oh, nope.
6:266 Only the true believers would be that obsessed. We’ve seen FX renderings of aliens before, and this movie is an
6:346 example of that. And people are no longer dazzled. and are going to see it as just yet another hoham show.
6:436 It wouldn’t have that dramatic an effect.
6:476 The movie also presupposes that there is a deeper truth to the facts that we have now. The Roswell wreckage wasn’t sheets
6:566 of myar and a bunch of sticks like a broken balloon. If we had the actual film camera recording, it would show an
7:037 amazing metal spaceship with the broken bodies of aliens all around.
7:117 But what if it is just my sticks?
7:147 Disclosing a better recording or a higher resolution image of that pathetic wreckage won’t impress anyone.
7:277 So watching this mis movie was a misery.
7:317 I kept checking my watch hoping it would end soon. The only reason that I didn’t walk out was I hated it so much. I
7:387 wanted to be able to say that I saw the whole thing.
7:437 Nobody is going to be able to tell me I missed the good part because I hung in there until the last line before rushing to the exit and there was no good part.
7:567 It’s a shame, too, because Spielberg really is an excellent, talented, professional director. Just don’t let him make these bad movies about aliens anymore.
8:078 There he becomes a crackpot with millions of dollars and a schmaltzy sentimentality.
8:148 Okay, that’s that’s all I have to say about it was terrible.
8:218 really. I also think Close Encounters of the Third Count was terrible. I don’t think ET was particular…

I haven’t had any opportunity to work with recluses, but widows are shy little sweethearts. They have a potent venom, but they’re seriously reluctant to use it. I let mine scurry all over my bare hands and arms, and have never been bitten, because I treat them gently and with respect.

I’d say of 3,000 species, there are 3,000 to be cautious about, and none to be afraid of. Save the fear for dogs and cats, which are much more dangerous.

Brockman, my former agent for tech writing, told me Edge was an intellectual salon. Edge.org is indeed intriguingly sprawling, jammed with scholarly idols whose bios have “Booker” and “Nobel” in them. Members of Edge participated in conferences and symposia, and promoted each other’s work. Who was I to say no? Among Edge’s prodigious ranks were Ian McEwan, Yuval Noah Harari, Steve Wozniak, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman.

But if I’d read the member list more closely, I might have hesitated. Edge was overwhelmingly male, for one. It was said to be an intellectual salon, but in the club photos were tech bro billionaires, including Edge members Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Larry Page. And too many members were men now largely renowned for misconduct, professional or personal: Marc D Hauser, Jonah Lehrer, Lawrence Krauss, and Marvin Minsky.

Once upon a time, I was edging into Edge. Brockman was also my former agent. I’d been introduced to Brockman by Dawkins and Adam Bly, I was on his mailing list, I was invited to contribute essays to his series of books. It didn’t last. Partly it was because I was getting weird vibes from the whole group, but also my criticisms of various precious ideas that were current among them, like soft-pedaling eugenics and demeaning women, got me abruptly and finally dropped from the mailing list.

There was also the matter of Jeffrey Epstein’s poisonous influence. I never met him, and pretty much knew nothing about him, it was only later that I discovered what a factor he was in the New York science publishing scene, and was a significant factor in founding Seed, which I wrote for.

I flashed back to the Edge crew’s relentless criticism of the humanities in the 1990s. In The Diversity Myth, Thiel and Sacks bitterly complained about “diversity” as jargon that concealed a nefarious political agenda. Well, now we have metaheuristical eugenics, and the jargon’s on the other foot.

With the Epstein files, we’re confronted with exactly what all the Edge men – from Pinker to Dawkins to Musk to Gates – did with the intellectual territory they seized. With their Ivy League posts, their billions, and their blue-ribbon DNA, the would-be intellectuals in Epstein’s circle converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf. The Edge dinners have ceased and the site is now dormant, but generations of young men trained at Harvard, LSE and Oxford absorbed the lesson — and generations of young women learned that their place in intellectual history is sidelined, exploited, or prone.

I’d say I was lucky to have dodged that bullet, except that I was never a particularly good target for them. Although…those who were in the club, with exceptions, seem to have thrived. Has anyone paid the consequences for their association with Epstein? One of the most prominent ghouls who profited off their connections to Epstein, and Brockman, is Steve Pinker, whose unsavoury history gets exposed by Cathryn Townsend. Epstein was cultivating a group of scientists who shared his views on society, and Pinker was a prize catch.

Steven Pinker’s Panglossian worldview of inexorable progress, for example, is likely most appealing to those who have a vested interest in the hierarchical status quo.

There was a deeper ideology than that.

An exploration of Epstein’s connections suggests that eugenics and scientific racism played a role but that there was more to it than that. Investigations of Epstein’s relationships with academic scientists illustrate Epstein’s extraction of four gift types from them: 1) objectification of women, 2) legitimization of eugenics and scientific racism, 3) intellectual cosplay, and 4) cover for depraved and sometimes illegal behavior. The latter ranged from the reputation laundering service that was performed by all the academics who continued to associate with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes, to conspiring to help Epstein avoid the legal repercussions of his crimes against children. Each academic in Epstein’s orbit likely offered a unique set of gifts to him but these four types seem to be recurring.

What the select group of academics got from the equation was money or expensive gifts, publicity, and the perceived glamour of being part of the Epstein class. Edge salons came with private flights, Michelin-starred meals, mink throws, and “beautiful young assistants”, after all. Who cared if it was, in Evgeny Marazov’s words “an odd intellectual club located on the dubious continuum between the seminar room and a sex-trafficking ring”?

Darn. I missed out on all those perks, probably because I didn’t provide gifts 1-4. Just think, I could have been at this party, if I’d played my cards right.

Now that’s disreputable group. The only one with a vestige of credibility remaining is Pinker, but the lies are starting to unravel even for him.

Harvard linguist Steven Pinker has claimed that he unknowingly contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense back in 2007, when Epstein was fighting charges involving the sexual exploitation and trafficking of minors. His claim is contradicted by newly surfaced evidence from the cache of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

An allegation that Pinker received $10,000 for a three-page letter appears in a 2008 memo titled “wrongdoing by attorneys in the Epstein criminal matter”. The memo was apparently authored by Darren Indyke, Epstein’s longstanding personal attorney. It states that “Alan had us give Steven Pinker $10,000 for a letter”. When questioned, Pinker has previously claimed that he was not paid for his expert opinion letter and that he didn’t know who he was providing the letter for. The “Alan” that the author refers to in the 2008 memo is Alan Dershowitz, a high-profile lawyer and former Harvard academic, who represented Epstein in his fight against charges related to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of minor girls.

I have written many recommendation letters over the course of my career, but I have never been paid a penny for any of them, let alone $10,000. If I were even offered $10K for a letter, I’d be instantly suspicious and the only thing I’d write is a damning letter reporting them to whoever they were trying to cultivate a relationship with. Pinker was lying. Pinker was unethical.

Pinker’s involvement in Epstein’s legal defense was first reported in 2019 by BuzzFeed. At the time, he told BuzzFeed that “I don’t recall [Dershowitz] telling me that the question pertained to the Epstein defense … I was not aware of the charges against Epstein at the time. And no, I was not paid for the letter—it’s something that Alan and I do regularly, as colleagues.”

Nothing he says is believable. He was just getting more devious in avoiding exposure.

Pinker claims that he couldn’t stand Epstein, never took funding from him, and tried to keep him at a distance, also describing him as a “kibitzer and a dilettante”. Perhaps, but for all that, he was willing to rub shoulders with him and accept gifts from him, for example traveling on Epstein’s private plane in 2002. Most of Pinker’s meetings with Epstein were through the Epstein-funded boy’s club known as the Edge. After Epstein’s conviction for sexually abusing a 14-year-old, Pinker continued rubbing shoulders with him, but Epstein’s presence within the circle of elite academics was carefully hidden from publicity. In the Epstein files, Pinker’s name appears repeatedly in emails related to Edge events, emails which included Epstein in the list of recipients, or which were forwarded to him, and which often pertained to exclusive salons for the Edge inner circle.

And he was hanging out with the worst people on the planet — billionaires. Yuck.

Pinker was a featured speaker at an Edge salon, billed as a master class on the science of human nature, that was held at a boutique vineyard in St Helena, Napa, CA in July 2011. According to emails between Epstein and Edge director John Brockman the salon was planned to be ‘confidential’ and limited to 20-25 invited guests. Epstein forwarded the email invitation, including the list of recipients, to a redacted email address asking “will you be in la. then”. The list of recipients included Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.

And not just billionaires — Pinker keeps willfully entangling himself with racists and racist organizations. Right, he just “accidentally” finds himself sharing a stage with Jared Taylor, just like he “accidentally” cashes $10,000 checks from Dershowitz and Epstein, and then forgets about them.

Pinker’s interest in legitimizing scientific racism doesn’t seem to have died along with Epstein. Recently, he has appeared on a podcast outlet that is infamous for promoting scientific racism and eugenics. The media outlet concerned has produced an interview with Jared Taylor, a white supremacist who was apparently banned from the Schengen Area of Europe, and a blog post arguing that in order to achieve economic growth in Africa, eugenics should be used to engineer more intelligent Africans. An undercover investigation by Hope Not Hate exposed the neo-Nazi connections of the outlet’s holding organization. In the Hope Not Hate investigation, one of the directors of the holding organization explained to the undercover investigator (who was posing as a potential donor) that well-known commentators like Noam Chomsky were being used as part of a deliberate ploy to attract “high-value” subscribers: “We’re using these people to get legitimacy by association,” similar to Epstein’s strategy. Incidentally, Chomsky is another academic Epstein managed to add to his trophy shelf. To be charitable to Chomsky, he did at least reject Epstein’s racist ideas.

Separately, at a recent festival of cringe that Epstein would have loved, Pinker delivered a speech tritely titled ‘A Positive Vision for Scholarship and Society’ alongside titles such as ‘Parasitic Ideas and Suicidal Empathy Are Killing the West’; ‘Is Islamophobia Real? Finding Empirical Answers to Questions We’re Not Supposed to Ask’; and the showstopping ‘Truth, What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters’. Papers by authors who attended this conference are being prepared for a special issue in a social science journal that has recently had a new editorial leadership imposed by the publisher, Springer. It now includes Pinker on the editorial board alongside an editor from a conservative think tank that has previously sponsored research by The Bell Curve author Charles Murray.

That Edge gang was one fucking creepy gang of creeps. Don’t forget it, let’s not let these losers escape their well-earned reputation.

Epstein, Krauss, Pinker

You know, the Southern Baptist denomination was specifically formed in 1845 to uphold slavery — their whole raison d’etre was to separate themselves from those namby-pamby abolitionists who would later kick their asses in the Civil War. That’s not their only issue, though. They also don’t like those uppity women.

Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.

The amendment would tighten existing restrictions in the Southern Baptist Convention, which already has a faith statement opposing women pastors.

Can you guess what their position on abortion might be? Or on same sex marriage.

Basically, a good rule of thumb for living a moral life is to ask a Southern Baptist their opinion, and then do the exact opposite.

But wait! There’s more! I decided to ask the Google AI to explain the diagram. It didn’t see any problem.

AI Overview
• This 3D medical animation illustrates a medical-grade silicone menstrual cup inserted into the vaginal canal to collect rather than absorb menstrual flow.
• The visualization highlights the proper sagittal view placement, emphasizing a comfortable position below the cervix and angled towards the sacrum.
• It serves as a reusable, eco-friendly alternative to traditional period products like pads and tampons, capable of being worn for 8–12 hours.

Now you know. Just punch the cup into the bladder and through your cervix to completely replace your uterus.

I’m beginning my weekly duties as a volunteer projectionist at the Morris theater, which I will try to do once a week. It was not a great experience — it involves a lot of standing and some walking around, and my knee is not quite ready for it. After two hours, I was getting some unpleasant spasms, and was seriously concerned that it might buckle under me, so I had to go home early (no worries, there were 3 of us training or in training.)

It’s all good exercise, though, so maybe in another week or two I’ll be a bit more robust. I think next time I’ll wear a knee brace.

This is the time to come to Morris to watch Masters of the Universe or Mortal Kombat under my supervision. Sorry, we don’t have something better. We do have Disclosure Day starting this weekend, and we have Kung Fu Panda as a free matinee. We also have the classic Jurassic Park on the 22nd, as part of a special deal with the Met Lounge if you think you’ll need beer to survive it.

Who remembers the Secular Policy Institute? It still exists, it has a mission statement.

The Secular Policy Institute (SPI) is a think tank organization of thought leaders, writers, scholars and speakers with a shared mission to influence public opinion and promote a secular society. We believe governmental decisions and public policies should be based on available science and reason, and free of religion or religious preferences.

The latest news from SPI is dated 2016; they published a newsletter in 2020. It seems to be moribund.

Who remembers the atheist movement in the mid-2010s? It was crumbling fast, all these different groups were scrambling to stake out a position, and one of them was the Secular Coalition of America, which also still exists, and is actively lobbying the government for secular rights. But for a while it was led by someone named Edwina Rogers.

Who remembers Edwina Rogers? She was a Republican strategist who briefly led the SCA before getting fired in 2014, and then scurried off to found this pointless SPI think-tank.

We’re talking ancient history here, petty derailments of the atheist cause that plagued various groups over a decade ago. You probably don’t care about any of it. I don’t care about any of it. I hadn’t given any thought to SPI or Edwina Rogers for ten years.

But the other day, I got a legal notice from a real lawyer on behalf of Edwina Rogers that I had 14 days to delete two posts, one from 2015 and the other from 2017, claiming that they were in violation of copyright and were defamatory. The merely defamatory page is basically a quote from an SPI representative.

“I’m starting to believe that the reason the secular movement doesn’t have more women is the women. Prove me wrong.”

The quote is accurate, and I agree that it puts SPI in an ugly light, but I didn’t make it up. Don’t complain to me about the fact that SPI had several misogynists on staff.

The other post they want deleted is full of my opinions, and includes a promotional photo publicly posted by SPI, that features Dawkins and Harris and Shermer mugging for the camera. Back then this was something they wanted to advertise, but times have changed and now they’re apparently embarrassed by the situation. Mainly, though, it’s about the unsavory reputation of one Jonny Monserrat, and linked to his history of lawsuits.

I guess you better go check those old posts now, just in case I have to take them down. I don’t know that I will, because there’s nothing factually inaccurate in either of them, but jesus fuck I am tired of these corrupt cowards who now feel enabled to silence anyone who ever criticized them. Of course, most of you weren’t paying any attention to those topics in 2015, or have completely forgotten that period of atheist drama, or think Edwina Rogers and Jonny Monserrat are being really stupid. How many of you have bothered browsing the archives here from over a decade ago? But now I have to deal with lawyers again.

Someone needs to mention Barbra Streisand to those people.