Its really sad how many Americans put stock in their so-called Democracy. First, its controlled from the beginning by the corrupt two party system, then theres a layer of voter suppression, filtered through the electoral college (more voter suppression) and a huge cloud of lies and media.

Most of us have heard of Nixons scuttling of the Vietnam peace talks [politico]:

Anna Chennault, a Republican activist with ties to the South Vietnamese government, sent word to Saigon that it would get better terms if Humphrey lost and Nixon took office, the FBI would discover. The South Vietnamese dragged their feet, infuriating LBJ who, in a taped conversation released by the Johnson presidential library several years ago, can be heard denouncing Nixon for treason.

What a sneaky ratfuck. Perhaps thats why Roger Stone was inspired to have Nixons face tattooed on his back. That is such a creepy thing, but what else should we expect from such a creepy guy? Anyhow, the fact that most of the US chose to overlook about that incident is that a bunch more Vietnamese (and some imperial stormtroopers) were killed in interval of the delay. But, hey, bygones be bygones:

Neither side wanted to push the issue. I think there was an implicit understanding between two very politically sophisticated people, who had been in the arena for a very long time, to say Hey, look, this thing is over, you know, neither one of us are going to gain anything by stirring up this pot, Huston says.

Thats politician for that worked, so we can expect it to happen again, or maybe itll be us doing it next time.

So, next time looked like:

If you look on the left side-bar, you can see the special section about the Reagan Inauguration. Reagan beat Carter, because Carter did not do a good enough job (The American People believed) of handling the hostage crisis. Note that the US embassy in Iran was a hotbed of CIA spies for a long time before Carter came into office, and Carter inherited a great big, stinking, mess regarding US/Iran policy. Khomeini did not trust the US because, among other things, he had operated as a paid CIA rabble-rouser prior to getting involved in politics as a figure in his own right. In other words, he knew the US methods and was on the lookout.

So, Carter had this situation with an embassy full of hostages held by Iranian dissidents and students who the Iranians were claiming were CIA spi...

There is a lot of crazy people in the Republican party these days. But in terms of their visibility, most of the attention has been focused on people like Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz. But there are others who share the same extreme views but have kept a much lower profile, trying to pass themselves off as more mainstream politicians. The group known as Indivisible has decided on a campaign to identify 18 of those crazies who managed to get elected in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020 and make their extreme views well-known to the electorate so that they have a better chance of being defeated in their swing districts at the next election. (I have coined the term MAGAts (pronounced maggots) to label those who are loyal to the Trump MAGA cult.)

Indivisible, a leftwing political umbrella movement founded in response to Donald Trumps election as president in 2016, has launched a campaign to unseat 18 Republican members of the House of Representatives from districts that Joe Biden won in the election of 2020.

The Unrepresentatives initiative is based on the premise that these 18 districts not the safe, deep red ones of Gaetz and Greene will determine if Republicans maintain control of the US lower chamber next year. They are the Achilles heel of the Maga (Make America great again) House.

Although the 18 are in swing districts, they are not really moderates. They are under pressure to raise money for their next election campaign. That means they have to make commitments to donors about how they will vote in Congress which is in line with Greene and the Maga wing of the party about 95% of the time.

Speaking from Austin, Texas, [Indivisible co-founder Ezra] Levin explained: They are basically Marjorie Taylor Greenes in how they vote. But then that gets to the third step: theyve got to convince the constituents in their own districts that, while Congress is messed up and theres a lot of dysfunction there, theyre normal, everyday folks who just want the best for their constituents.

These Republicans work hard to cultivate a low profile away from the bright lights of Fox News or other rightwing media, steering clear of hot button topics such as abortion or Maga circuses such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

But now Levin, a former congressional staffer, intends to shine a light on them and ensure they have no hiding place.

We have a clear goal and that is: lets make these folks famous famous locally, specifically. Lets make it as clear as possible to their constituents that they are in fact backing up the Maga majority.

Indivisible is coordinating groups in the battleground dis...

The dream began with a sort of video game scenario, wherein I was a non-blue native american analog on an alien world.  I had to fight the big bad with only the power to purify poisons he produced.  I had to level up on some Dragon Ball bullshit.  There were other anime tropes involved in the scenario.  After the final battle I was trying to find clothing to wear and famous voice actor / internet funnyman SungWon prozd Cho was there, with some people fanning out about his anime parody content.  Despite now finding myself in the classic where are my clothes dream scenario, I was thinking of myself as the creator of the anime bullshit I had just played out, and I wanted to mention that to him seeking praise from the master of that art form.  But since I was basically naked, I had to yell at him from around the corner.

This transitioned somehow to another part of the dream that was a big elaborate musical about the invention of labor unions.  It was full of ludicrous anti-history, bad songs, and Oscar bait cast, which in my head was anybody famous that I had seen recently on the internet, whether or not they would actually be cast in an Oscar bait movie Johnny Depp, Brendan Fraser, Nicole Kidman, but also the guy that played Negan on Walking Dead, and some of those ladies from Klymaxx.  Negan was playing an intellectually delayed dude that was leading the union charge.  He also fancied himself a songwriter, but had really bad ideas.  In one scene he was trying to explain a song idea about a mixing bowl to Elvis Presley.  I was there and felt the need to explain that musicals are horrible, which in the context of this particular scene would be lampshading.

Johnny Depp was using an anachronistic computer terminal in this ambiguous early 20th century steel mill and discovered that he had a demerit in the system, without knowin...

As longtime readers know, I supported Bernie Sanders in both of his runs for the presidency in 2016 and 2020. But I started supporting him much earlier ever since I became aware of how, in his long political career, he has been so consistent and passionate in his support for those who are less well off and his excoriation of the greedy wealthy people who make obscene amounts of money while using every trick in the book to avoid paying taxes that come anywhere close to being a reasonable fraction of their income. His relentless advocacy for a single-payer health insurance system and his attacks on high drug prices in the US, especially for essential ones like insulin, while the drug companies make huge profits and pay lavish salaries and bonuses to its top executives, has resulted in those issues becoming part of mainstream political discussions and undoubtedly has paved the way for the recent drops in the prices of insulin drugs. He has been a supporter of civil rights from the days when as a college student he was arrested in 1963 for taking part in demonstrations. He was found guilty for resisting arrest and fined.

Robert Reich has served in government in various administrations, most notably as Labor Secretary during the first term of the Clinton administration and is a progressive himself. It should come as no surprise that he is also a supporter of Sanders and in this essay he gives his reasons why..

Let me just come right out and say it: I love Bernie Sanders.

I love his authenticity. Some people like Donald Trump because he says whatever he wants and hes an asshole. Bernies authenticity comes from saying what he wants and speaking the truth. And although hes blunt, hes anything but an asshole. When he growls this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral, he means it. And hes right.

I love his chutzpah. On Tuesday, Bernie announced that Starbuckss anti-labor CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which Bernie chairs. The National Labor Relations Board has filed more than 80 complaints against Starbucks for refusing to negotiate in good faith with its workers in more than 280 Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize. Schultz had refused the committees request to appear until Bernie threatened to subpoena him. I look forward to hearing from Mr. Schultz as to when he intends to end his illegal anti-union activities and begin signing fair first contracts with the unions, Bernie said.

I love him because hes never been afraid to call himself a democratic socialist. Soon after he began ru...

Mary is off to spend a week with our granddaughter, and its been a struggle. Shes supposed to have just gotten her own priorities straight you know, packing, loading the car, that sort of thing but instead shes been fussing over me, as if Im going to be helpless.

The cats even worse. When she sees luggage appear by the back door, she knows something is up and has been freaking out and puking all over the place.

Ill be fine. I got a weeks worth of lectures organized and queued up this morning, and am looking forward to making a jambalaya loaded up with shrimp (Mary doesnt like shrimp, so usually have to leave them out), and then, of course, the wild parties at my house starting tonight.*

*There will be no wild parties, sorry to say. Teaching resumes Monday.

When we talk about societies coping with climate change, a huge part of any conversation tends to be about dealing with mass migration of people. With changing weather conditions and rising seas, many places that have historically held large populations are becoming increasingly hostile, and the number of people displaced by climate change is ever-growing. The thing is humans arent the only ones being displaced. You probably dont need me to tell you this, but changing climate conditions have also been driving animals to seek out new places to live, or new sources of food. With so much of the planet affected by human activity, and so much habitat being destroyed in the name of greed, displaced animals are increasingly showing up in populated areas. This, in turn, is driving an increase in conflict between humans and wildlife:

The new study shows that climate shifts can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats like sea ice for polar bears as well as the timing of events, wildlife behaviors and resource availability. It also showed that people are changing their behaviors and locations in response to climate change in ways that increase conflicts. Other examples of the effects of short- and long-term climate events include:

• Torrential floods in Tanzania led to more lion attacks after their usual prey migrated away from floodplains.
• Higher air temperatures in Australia triggered more aggressive behavior in eastern brown snakes, leading to more incidents of snake bites.
• Wildfires in Sumatra, Indonesia triggered by El Nino drove Asian elephants and tigers out of reserves and into human-inhabited areas, leading to at least one death.
• Disruption of terrestrial food webs during La Nina events in the Americas drove black bears in New Mexico and foxes in Chile into human settlements in search of food.
• Warmer air and ocean temperatures in a severe El Nino led to an increase in shark attacks in South Africa.

Most cases of human-wildlife conflict linked to climate involve a shift in resources not just for wildlife, but also for people.

A majority of cases on land also involved a change in precipitation, which will continue to be affected by climate change. Many resulted in human deaths or injuries, as well as property damage.

In 2009, for example, a severe drought struck the western part of Tanzanias Kilimanjaro Region. This reduced food supplies for African elephants, which in turn entered local fields to graze on crops at times destroying 2 to 3 acres daily. Local farmers, whose livelihoods were directly threatened by the drought, at times resort...

One of the more damning testimonies from Ken Ham occurred in his debate with Bill Nye, in which he declared that no evidence could ever change his mind (so why bother debating him, I would ask?). Now AiG has turned that sentiment into a poster-sized meme that only shows that theyre not scientists.

Ken Ham:
Evolutionists have to changing their ideas as more evidence (contradictory evidence) keeps coming.

Isnt that the whole point of science? You keep gathering empirical evidence and adjust your interpretations as you go, in order to keep your hypotheses and theories in alignment with the real world. Its how science hones itself and gets better and more accurate.

Poor creationists. They have to close their eyes and ignore all the evidence that contradicts their perspective.

(via Dan Phelps, because the AiG web site makes me nauseous.)

Men these days have decayed from the power and virility of their forebears. Think of those mountain men whod go off into the wilderness alone and hunt and fish and trap and live off the land, to return after months or years with a sledge loaded with valuable animal pelts. They were awesomely self-sufficient. We have degraded over time, to the point where some men are little more than weak parasites on society who depend on others to tend to their frail, fragile selves and pathetic needs.

I speak, of course, of American conservatives.

These smug, self-satisfied little men chortle and laugh as theyre asked if they would rather do dishes or laundryand admit with an air of pride that they dont do either. Not only are they ineffectual and incapable, they are vain about their deficiencies. It makes them a special elite, I guess.

Listen. It makes them spineless atavisms.

Heres what a real man should be able to do:

• Cook a healthy meal.
• Clean up after themselves.
• Maintain their clothing and their home.
• Sew a button.
• Humanely remove a spider from a room without squealing.
• Change a diaper.
• Have a relationship with a partner, not a servant.
• Call their mother.
• Cry when appropriate.

(This is what a real woman should be able to do, too, so maybe its a list of what real humans do.)

These guys have gone from whining about stand up straight and clean your room to bragging about their incompetence at elementary chores. I do all those things, including washing dishes and doing laundry, and Im a wokefied candy-ass liberal who uses pronouns.

On the bright side, American conservatives are on the road to extinction.

So the Belarussian journalist who edited Tut.by and just got sent to jail for a decade+ for the crime of telling the truth when the people in Belarussian power didnt want her to? Sure as hell looks like a dyke to me.

Okay, yeah, Im stereotyping, but if she is a dyke, Im not at all surprised. Why? Well, heres what I want to say about that:

This is why theyre afraid of us. The dykes, the trannies, the Black preachers from Georgia. Weve seen shit at its pretty damn bad (even if many of us havent seen it at its absolute worst), and we responded by speaking up about what was important to us anyway.

When a Black preacher looks a white supremacist in the eye and says, You dont know Jesus, or when a dyke looks a man in the eye and says, Fuck off, no one here cares about your penis, or when a trans person says, No, you dont get to know whats in my pants before we start dating. Prove to me youre kind, trustworthy and attractive and maybe youll find out, we turn entire worlds upside down. White people dont own Black folk OR Christianity, straight men dont own women, and trans people arent desperately lying to get our nads off, you cis folk are just begging to get in our shorts.

And when were willing to tell the truth even when it counters such cherished myths, what else might we contradict? What other lies might we disprove? And how will our masters keep us under control when were so obviously persisting in the face of existing mountains of pressure, of intimidation, of outright threat?

What more can they threaten us with? Jail? You think thats going to stop Marina Zolotova? You think thats going to stop me?

No, they are desperate and afraid, the right wing, desperate and afraid of change, but even more desperate and more afraid of the people like us. The people who simply wont shut up when ordered, who wont even shut up when attacked, when jailed, when brutalized.

They are terrified. And they say that theyre terrified of injustice. Of unjust prison sentences. Of the government being weaponized. But theyre not. They revel in these things. They depend upon these things.

No, in the end, for all their screaming about cancel culture, their most paralyzing fear is that we simply will not shut up.

Sure, they sentenced Zolotova today, but there are a ton more outsiders who dont depend on the systems approval for our worth.

And we simply will not shut up.

A lot of projections about the effects of global warming come from easily confirmed and long-known facts about the physical properties of water. Remember what you learned about the water cycle in school? All of that is dependent on temperature, and when things get warmer, the patterns change. Another property of water is its ability to hold other chemicals, like oxygen. For all water itself includes oxygen as a major component, thats not what fish are taking in when they breathe through their gills. Instead, theyre absorbing dissolved oxygen, thats not bound up in any water molecules. Think of it like the air we breathe. About 70% of that is nitrogen thats sort of neutral to us. What were breathing for, is the 21% of O₂ molecules within that mix. For fish, water takes the role of nitrogen in this comparison, and dissolved oxygen is the O₂ that theyre able to absorb and use. The problem is that warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen. Its just a fact about how water and dissolved oxygen work.

That means that weve known from the beginning that as temperatures rise, and as oceans absorb most of that extra heat, oxygen content in the water is going to drop. Just as we can predict that, we can predict how it will affect oceanic ecosystems. While there are dead zones that dont have enough oxygen to support any vertebrate life, most of the decrease has been far more subtle, mainly causing problems for those fish, like marlin, that are large, have active lifestyles, and so require a lot of oxygen. When it comes to those fish, the drop in oxygen has been affecting them for well over a decade, but those areas that are dead zones for them generally still support other species. It might be better to say that theyre suffering from hypoxia lower oxygen levels than usual, and than needed by some species.

Ocean currents, agricultural runoff, landscape, and a variety of other local and regional conditions mean that our oceans have just as diverse an array of habitats as dry land, if not more. Consequently, while we know that, overall oceanic oxygen levels are decreasing, that doesnt actually tell us how that is progressing in different ecosystems. For that, we actually need to pay people to go check. Fortunately, while I think we dont spend enough on tha...

The other day I had a coworker tell me that once she gets to know me better she wants to tell me how her higher power changed her life. How do I respond?

I really like this coworker. Weve really connected recently and although weve never spent time together outside of work, I think we could become good friends. 

But were definitely an unlikely pair.

Shes Christian and everybody knows it. Shes proud of her faith and is pretty vocal about it even on the clock.

I dont think she knows Im an atheist. I told her I dont go to church and thats as far as I got.

So if this conversation about her higher power takes place, can I tell her why Im an atheist? It seems only fair but Im extremely skeptical. I feel like a conversation like this could either leave me feeling liberated or feeling ostracized. 

Deep down, I really want someone I can be open with. 

I really think this coworker is an awesome person which has made it easier for me to overlook our differences. Shes very resilient and her heart is in the right place.

Have you ever been in this situation? Would you welcome a conversation like this or avoid it? How should I respond? Please keep in mind that I live in a red state in the Midwest and I have to work with this coworker every week.

Why is he always falling at the same place even though the vehicle is moving ahead? pic.twitter.com/1My2jfynqk

Domenico (@AvatarDomy) March 15, 2023

It is not a silly question.

The reason is that when we are on a moving vehicle, we have the same velocity as the vehicle and when we jump up, the velocity in that direction does not change and we keep moving in the same direction, with only air resistance to slow us down.

Some time ago, an elementary school teacher in Cleveland asked me a variant of this question. She asked, since the Earth rotates on its axis, instead of flying to California which takes about five hours, we could not just go up in a balloon and wait for three hours so that the Earths rotation would bring California to us, saving us time and all that fuel.

In the computer security world, the vulnerability of open above-ground transformer parks is a well-known problem. Its been a hypothetical on many a threat model for decades.

When gunslinging yahoos in North Carolina and elsewhere started shooting transformers, my email in-box lit up with a few messages saying, that thing we talked about, its happening. Now, the cat (as it were) is out of the bag. In the american tradition of overreacting once its too late, well probably spend billions on power substation defense, or well blame China for it, and start WWIII.

You will fly your X-wings through these 1980s graphics and shoot the wossname with a whosits.

I think my first conversation about the power substations was back in the mid 1990s. At that time, the US was starting to think about its smart grid (or, if were talking about the Texas power grid, the Yall dumbass grid) one fellow I knew opined that the real target is the generators: they are heinously expensive, there is no inventory of spares, and they are basically constructed in situ. Fast forward a few years and people were discussing, in hushed tones, whether a nuclear reactor could survive being hit with a suicidal commercial aircraft full of people. I know the analysis of that topic has been done, but none of the people involved will talk about it. Thats probably for the best. If the nuclear power plants are like pretty much everything humans have built, there will be complex flaws that can be explored by an adversary who puts some thought into it. Heres one hint to would-be terrorists: start attending computer security conferences and youll learn how airplane flight control systems are connected to the entertainment systems, and power grids were built by the lowest bidder, etc. The environment is target-rich and always has been, as long as like the rebels in Star Wars you dont expect to survive the experience. [coop]

Early one Sunday afternoon last September, for reasons that may never be clearly understood, someone fired three or four rounds from a high-powered rifle into the main high-voltage transformer in Garkane Energy Cooperatives Buckskin Substation, in far southern Utah.

It didnt take long for thousands of gallons of coolant to spill from the transformers punctured radiator fins. Soon...

The ridiculous efforts to gin up right-wing outrage continues apace. The latest are the proposed regulations to make washing machines more energy and water efficient. Naturally, this has been seized on by right-wing media to suggest that our clothes will come out dirtier. This follows the general manufactured anger over similar developments like low-flush toilets. These are being used as examples of the wokeness that is destroying the American way of life. They are even blaming the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on the management being more focused on being woke than financial matters. Yes, really.

Seth Meyers had a good segment on the attempt to make washing machines and dishwashers the latest examples of government tyranny..

The Biden administration is currently proposing changes to the clean water standards in order to reduce the amount of so-called forever chemicals because of their adverse health effects.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed limiting the amount of harmful forever chemicals in drinking water to the lowest level that tests can detect, a long-awaited protection the agency said will save thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses, including cancer.

The plan marks the first time the EPA has proposed regulating a toxic group of compounds that are widespread, dangerous and expensive to remove from water. PFAS, or per- and polyfluorinated substances, dont degrade in the environment and are linked to a broad range of health issues, including low birthweight babies and kidney cancer. The agency says drinking water is a significant source of PFAS exposure for people.

The science is clear that long-term exposure to PFAS is linked to significant health risks, Radhika Fox, assistant EPA administrator for water, said in an interview.

Fox called the federal proposal a transformational change for improving the safety of drinking water in the United States. The agency estimates the rule could reduce PFAS exposure for nearly 100 million Americans, decreasing rates of cancer, heart attacks and birth complications.

I am bracing myself for new scaremongering about how the government is coming to take our water away.

The thing is that people can compare this scaremongering with their own experience. My own toilets and energy-saving household appliances work perfectly well...