I set up a simple pit trap in my garden. It worked! Got some spiders!

Michigan is seen as a swing state but recently in both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 mid-terms, the state has swung Democratic.

Across Michigan, which Trump lost by 2.8 points, voters have overwhelmingly rejected election denialism and embraced measures to expand voting access. Proposition 2, a ballot measure that established early voting and expanded absentee voting passed by 60%. Secretary of state Jocelyn Benson won her seat in a definitive race against Kristina Karamo, who spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, and voters in the state elected Dana Nessel as attorney general over Matthew DePerno, who led multiple unsuccessful legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election in Michigan.

But things were quite different in Hillsdale county, which remained a Republican stronghold in which Karamo earned 66% of the vote and DePerno swept, nearly earning 70% of Hillsdale county voters in his election. This county is also the home of Hillsdale College, a prominent conservative Christian college. (I was invited there during the height of the Intelligent Design controversy to debate ID proponents.)

The county was also a hotbed of election denialism with the township clerk Stephanie Scott engaging in all manner of shenanigans in support of the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump. This was too much for the Michigan Bureau of Elections who stripped her of her election overseeing duties.

Elected in Adams Township in 2020, Stephanie Scott, who ran unopposed, has spent her years as a clerk a position that would typically oversee township elections mostly removed from the electoral process. After she refused to turn over a voting machine for regular maintenance in 2021, allegedly shared confidential voter data with a third-party IT analyst, and spread lies about election-rigging, the Michigan Bureau of Elections removed Scotts power to administer elections.

Subsequently a recall petition was initiated against Scott and her ally, township supervisor Mark Nichols. The vote was held yesterday and both of them lost.

In a rebuke to election denialism and extremism, a small, heavily Republican township in Michigan successfully recalled a clerk who has been accused of elevating election denialism and her ally on the township board. The outgoing clerk, Stephanie Scott, and township supervisor Mark Nichols were replaced by Suzy Ro...

Ive got a committee meeting coming up at 8am, and then Im closeting myself in the office for the day to hammer out two final exams. Once I get that done, all my heavy responsibilities vanish until the end of next week, when those exams come back and I have to grade them.

I can do this. One big push, and then its a summer of spiders.

No one is done with Clarence Thomas. He has another channel for his bribery stream.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was raising him as a son.

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martins tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

I was dismayed by the first sentence of the second paragraph. People are paying $6000/month for a boarding school? Thats nuts. I could never afford that kind of payout, nor could most people. This must be how trickle down economics works the people with many millions of dollars subsidize the lifestyle of people who run over-priced private boarding schools.

Also, raising him as a son apparently means shipping the kid off to a school where we wont have to see him for nine months of the year.

Worse, in this case, is that Thomas has a billionaire sugar daddy paying the bills, and Thomas knew this was an ethical problem, because he kept it secret.

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martins education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crows.

Not clear? Crystal clear. He knew this was shady and was feebly trying to hide it.

Oh, hey, remember Herschel Walker, one of the dumbest Republican candidates ever (he lost)? Hes also in the news.

When Herschel Walker emailed a representative for billionaire industrialist and longtime family friend Dennis Washington in March 2022, he seemed to be engaging in normal behavior for a political candidate: He was asking for money.

But unbeknownst to Washington and the billionaires staff, Walkers request was far more out...

A while back, I talked about NY mayor Eric Adams plan to round up and forcibly commit unhoused people deemed mentally ill. Part of my point was that its disturbingly easy for police, mental institutions, and the courts, to label someone whos perfectly rational as crazy, and then force them into situations that are virtually designed to destroy a persons mental health:

They had the means to verify what she was saying, but instead they dismissed all of it as delusions, forced her to take powerful psychoactive drugs, and demanded that she convincingly lie about herself before she be released:

According to the New York Daily News, a treatment plan for Ms Brock at the hospital states: Objective: Patient will verbalize the importance of education for employment and state that Obama is not following her on Twitter.

This was torture. They imprisoned a person, and for nine days they told her she was insane. They forcibly drugged her, and denied her reality over, and over and over again for days. And then, one day, they gave her discharge papers, and put her out the back door of the hospital. A few days later, she got a bill for $13,000 worth of treatment. The idea of holding anyone criminally responsible for this nightmare was apparently never even on the table, so she went with the option left to her she sued them.

And lost in 2019.

Brock began sobbing as the verdict was read.

Its reasonable for them to diagnose me with bipolar even though Im telling the truth? Brock said through tears.

What am I supposed to do? Im crazy because of this verdict.

In the United States of America, it is apparently legal for police to decide that youre in need of medical treatment, restrain, drug, and imprison you, and for doctors to keep you prisoner, keep you drugged, and demand that you deny reality because they said so. Not only is it legal, its apparently barely newsworthy. I could only find two articles online that followed up on Kam Brocks story, and I needed a VPN to read them because theyre geo-restricted to the U.S., like so much other local news thats not considered worth a larger platform. How can this be?

...

I tend to be a bit picky about what personal information I do or dont share here. Part of thats because I dont feel like the minutiae of my life are particularly interesting, but a lot of it is that I often dont feel comfortable sharing personal stuff on the internet. That said, I got my first colonoscopy today, and like many before me, I feel the need to celebrate by telling other people to do the same.

Happily, my plumbing all seems to be in normal working order. I wanted to state that early on, because a lot of these PSAs come in the context of either catching cancer just in time, or of catching it too late. Im fine, but if I had not been, literally poking a camera in there to see whats going on is the best way to catch problems before they become crises. Over the past decade, my digestive system has decided that it cannot cope with an annoyingly wide range of foods, taking away many of my favorites. This means that Ive had reason to worry that somethings wrong, but with insurance bullshit in the US, an international move, COVID, and a smaller international move, I havent managed to actually get the procedure done until now.

It was an interesting, if not particularly pleasant experience. For those who dont know, there are a couple days of preparation that must be done prior to a colonoscopy. It includes a low-fiber diet, followed by a 24 hour fast, and starting the day before your probing, you have to drink large quantities of a thick, citrus-flavored potion that makes you shit out literally everything in your intestines. This is not a pleasant process, but its important if you want the doctors to be able to get a clear view.

Thanks to Irelands public health system, my health insurance is cheap, and completely covers hospital procedures, so I didnt have to worry about cost just 25 or so for the gut-cleaner. Apparently the default, at least in Ireland, is to get the stomach checked out while youre in the endoscopy unit, which is a much quicker procedure, though unpleasant in a whole other way. My throat is a bit sore from it, and thatll probably continue through tomorrow.

Even so, it was interesting to see what the inside of my own stomach looked like, and also interesting to see my own large intestine I even got to see the entrance to my appendix! I also got to watch them take biopsies of my intestinal and stomach linings, which was a little unnerving. Im grateful that there arent any nerve endings in there, because while the clipper/grabber they used is tiny, its still unnerving to see someone just snip at my entrails like that. Ill find out the results of those tests in a few weeks,...

Yesterday Lisa Birnbach, one of E. Jean Carrolls friends, gave testimony at the trial about how Carroll had called her immediately after the alleged rape by Donald Trump. She described how Carroll had been hyperventilating as she described what Trump had done to her. She said that she had urged Carroll to go to the police because what had happened to her was rape but Carroll refused and asked her not to tell anyone about it and she had honored that request all these years.

Another woman described how Trump assaulted her on a plane.

The court also heard dramatic testimony from a businesswoman, Jessica Leeds, who said Trump grabbed her breast and attempted to put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.

Leeds is one of two women the judge has ruled can give evidence about the former presidents alleged sexual assaults. She told the jury she was seated next to Trump on a flight to New York. After chatting for a while and eating dinner, he suddenly decided to kiss me and grope me.

He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40m hands.

It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength.

Leeds said she was able to pull away and fled to the back of the plane. She went public with her account of the alleged attack weeks before the 2016 presidential election, after Trump denied having sexually assaulted women.

Leeds said she saw Trump three years later, when she was volunteering at a Humane Society event.

He looked at me and he said, I remember you, youre that cunt from the airplane, Leeds said. It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.

There seems to be no limit to the amount of evidence revealing what a disgusting creep Trump is.

The news reports do not mention any cross examination by Trumps lawyers of these two witnesses but the trial is still ongoing so maybe that will come later. Trumps lawyer Joe Tacopina seems to be the bulldog type and has not shown himself to be subtle and sensitive. The two women are now 79 and 81 years old and subjecting elderly women to brutal cross-examinations may not play well with a jury.

Interestingly, the Leeds story with all its graphic details was prominently reported in Rupert Murdochs New York Post as well. I would have thought they would downplay or even ignore it. I wonder what that says, if anything, about the state of the Trump-Murdoch alliance.

This is a bit of a light hearted post, but with an interesting observation. I quite enjoy watching videos of people who move to Germany. Their surprise at things taken for granted gives me food for thought as well as amusement. Some themes seem to be constant: Germans walk. For fun. No matter whether the immigrant is from the US or Vietnam, they are both fascinated and appalled by the German passion for going for walks.

Or the utter confusion of rental flats not having a kitchen. The answer to that is: Germans dont move and love their kitchens. We plan them more carefully than the bedroom. And we really dont like moving. Theres a saying that goes moving twice is like burning down once, so once we moved in, we try not to move out again. The idea of buying a starter home is as alien as the idea of buying an AR 15 at Walmart. So unless youre moving into a student flat or a shared apartment, bring your own kitchen.

These matters are constants, but of course, other things will seem more or less strange, depending on your country of origin. But then theres a noticeable difference not in between people from different countries, but of US Americans of different genders. American women will often be full of praise: they can easily and cheaply get fresh produce! Childcare is only 150 bucks a month! Oh, and did I mention healthcare? US American men on the other hand complain about not being allowed to kill endangered species and pour oil down the drain. Its tyranny, I tell you!*

• Yes, you need a fishing license. Yes, you have to pass a test, showing that you know the fish, if and when youre allowed to catch them, minimum size and what bait is ok. Oh, and that you can kill a fish quickly. No Ive been fishing in the USA since I was 5 does not count. No, you are not allowed to wash your car at home. Washing it with soap will introduce pollutants into the wastewater. You have to go to a carwash where the wastewater will be filtered to remove motor oil and other pollutants.

One of the texts that led to Tucker Carlsons firing has been revealed. Its surprising.

Thats not how white men fight

Its not surprising because its a mild statement its not. Its deeply, implicitly racist. Whats surprising is that Fox News executives cared. Racism is what Fox News does. Its just that Carlson plainly spoke out the words of white supremacy, and they knew this was going to be newseven if the Fox News audience would have agreed with the sentiment, and even now are probably looking at each other quizzically, wondering whats wrong with the comment.

Me, Im just wonderinghow do white men fight? Have I been doing it wrong?

I think the way were supposed to do it is take advantage of any good fortune to oppress other people, make them weaker, and then exploit the hell out of them. Then theres all the lying and cheating and stealing we do to maintain any advantage, all while declaiming that we are obviously superior and meritorious because weve got our boot on your neck and arent going to let you up. Yeah, thats how white men fight. Then we live in terror that someone else might manage to do the same thing to us.

I love when seedlings are at that point where you can still see how the seed was constructed. Monocot or dicot, and all that.

Genovese basil

I maybe planted more basil in that pot than I should have, so Ill probably rip a few of them out by their roots and eat them, as they get bigger.

Cilantro

Grow my little children, all the better to eat you. Or something.

Thai peppers

This year I need to figure out if I have to somehow pollenate those little fellows. When they get bigger, though.

The weather here has been unusual, which I suppose is the new usual normal springtime but then maybe an ice storm or frost. I didnt try to collect maple syrup because the maple trees had no idea when to bud, and I didnt want to start tormenting them for sap, because they had sufficient problems on their own. Also, collecting sap is a great big pain in the butt, and so is boiling it down, and filtering it. Its all a great big pain in the butt.

During the time that I was a student in Sri Lanka, South Africa was an apartheid state. Nelson Mandela was an iconic figure for us as a freedom fighter, along with Che Guevara, but he had been languishing in prison since 1962, his arrest reportedly facilitated by the CIA. (The US for a long time supported the apartheid state of South Africa while giving lip service to human rights.) White supremacy was so deeply entrenched that I thought it would never yield unless there was a violent uprising by the Black and colored population that would result in enormous bloodshed. I expected Mandela to die in prison. So the peaceful transition to a democracy that resulted in majority rule and Mandela being elected president was one of the big surprises that taught me that one should never discount the possibility of things turning out better than one might have realistically expected.

The architects of that transition were Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, the president of that apartheid regime. de Klerk had the foresight to see that apartheid had to end one way or the other and that it was better to be part of the transition than being forced out. He saw the writing on the wall more clearly than his white predecessor presidents and so he released Mandela from prison in 1990.

I was in the US at the time and I recall being glued to the TV that was broadcasting live from the gates of the prison, waiting for the moment that Mandela walked out to freedom. I still remember that moment when he came out, not the shabby and beaten figure that one might have expected given his long stint in Robben Island prison, but elegant, striding out in a dignified manner wearing a natty suit and his trademark beaming smile. I had told my two daughters to watch with me even though they were far too young to appreciate the significance of the event, because I told them that it was a historic moment. (Recently I asked them if they remembered that moment and they said that while they could not remember the details of what they saw, they do remember me telling them that what was happening on the TV was really, really important and that they should watch. That may be the only time I ever told them that they should watch TV.)

After Mandela was released, there were negotiations between de Klerks government and the African National Congress that Mandela had led even while in prison about how to make the transition. While those talks were never easy (de Klerk faced pressure from die hard Afrikaners to resist giving in to the ANCs demands and similarly Mandela faced pressure from his more militant supporters to not yield anything to the government) they managed to keep talking and making progress.

Then came a crisis. Two racist white South Africans shot dead Chris Hani in the street just outside his home. Hani was the general secretary of the Communist...

Hes such an unfunny, horrible, selfish little man, but I am thankful that he has taught me about another plank of the conservative agenda: they want to abolish no-fault divorce. I had no idea! I assumed this was a safe and entirely reasonable right!

Steven Crowder, the right-wing podcaster, is getting a divorce. No, this was not my choice, Crowder told his online audience last week. My then-wife decided that she didnt want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.

Crowders emphasis on the state of Texas makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia have no-fault divorce laws on the books laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It was a hard-fought journey to get there. It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didnt come around until 2010. (And there are caveats: Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage, for example.)

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that reform led to dramatic drops in the rates of female suicide and domestic violence, as well as decreases in spousal homicide of women. The decreases, one researcher explained, were not just because abused women (and men) could more easily divorce their abusers, but also because potential abusers knew that they were more likely to be left.

Today, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women.

I had no idea. I was married in 1980, and I just assumed that this was an entirely voluntary association, taking for granted that she had the same rights I do. Was that a radical idea? I guess it was, once upon a time. What I take for granted is under threat from Republicans now.

Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isnt a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control. Crowders home state could be the first to eliminate it, if the Texas GOP gets its way. Last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform calling for an end to no-fault divorce: We urge the Legislatur...

I just finished grading all those exams and lab reports for genetics. It is finished!

OK, almost. There is an optional final exam next week it replaces any low exam grade they might have received over the course of the term, and I expect that very few of the students will bother.

I still have the other course to wrap up, though, so its still going to be a busy couple of days.

As you are no doubt aware, recent reporting has shed a little light on the depths of corruption in the US Supreme Court. While hes far from alone, Clarence Thomas has received much of the attention recently, over his failure to disclose a whole host of gifts from billionaire weirdo Harlan Crow. After the news broke, there was a veritable stampede of influential people rushing to insist that this was no evidence of corruption, which they knew because they also got gifts from Crow, and also because Crow clearly didnt get anything in return.

Right?

Well, no. Obviously not. First of all, for a capitalist like Harlan Crow, there are a whole host of benefits to a Supreme Court justice that reliably sides with corporations and capitalists. Second, the claim that Crow had no cases before the court turns out to be false (Clarence Thomas lied? Inconceivable!). Third, Thomas vote on Citizens United dramatically increased Crows ability to directly use his billions to influence people and politics:

Since Thomas provided a deciding vote in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the Crow familys ability to influence federal elections has increased by a factor of almost nine, according to an Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) analysis of campaign finance data.

In Travel Rewards: What the Crow Family May Have Bought by Hosting Those Luxury Trips for Justice Thomas, ATF shows how Thomas vote in the 5-4 decision that effectively legalized unlimited political spending has allowed the Crows to increase their average annual campaign contributions by 862%, from $163,241 pre-Citizens United to $1.57 million post-ruling.

...

Japan is instituting some new guidelines for recognizing religious abuse. It would be nice to see something like this in the USA, but thatll never happen.

New health ministry guidelines in Japan will classify as abuse any acts by members of religious groups who threaten or force their children to participate in religious activities, or that hinder a childs career path based on religious doctrine.

A few details:

The law stipulates four types of abuse: physical, sexual, neglect and psychological.

Inciting fear by telling children they will go to hell if they do not participate in religious activities, or preventing them from making decisions about their career path, is regarded as psychological abuse and neglect in the guidelines.

Other acts that will constitute neglect include not having the financial resources to provide adequate food or housing for children as a result of making large donations, or blocking their interaction with friends due to a difference in religious beliefs and thereby undermining their social skills.

There go most of the churches in town, as well as the state of Utah.

I can imagine the arguments if this were even proposed here, although theyd be easily defeated by all atheists. This is a law to protect the children, you love children, dont you? Anyone who opposes this law is probably a groomer, trying to indoctrinate innocent kids. Are you in favor of child abuse? It could be fun.