This worked great when I was spending longer mornings reading things, which started during the early months of the PANDEMIC when there were no SPORTS.
But now basketball and Baseball are concurrent and that's chunk of my morning looking at box scores for both sports and going through my fantasy games in both.
"PragerU," the rightwing culture war factory started by former radio talk show host and moral scold Dennis Prager, has done a bang-up job of feeding misinformation on history and politics to Donald Trump's favorite demographic, the poorly educated. Through five-minute history distortion videos that claim Democrats Did The KKK And History Ended in 1964 or There Was No Southern Strategy, PragerU has already done a great job of spreading a lot of hooey online. If somebody who's terribly wrong about something insists they've "done [their] own research," that almost certainly means they've watched a lot of PragerU videos online.
As the American Prospect reports, PragerU's tendentious videos have been making their way to high school classes, especially as easy-to-find filler during the pandemic. It made national headlines last fall when an Ohio parent complained that her daughter's history teacher had been assigning the videos in class, but American Prospect's Amelia Pollard notes that high school students regularly complain on social media about teachers using PragerU videos as if they were reliable educational materials. Of the several high schoolers Pollard interviewed, all said they recognized the political slant of the videos being pushed by their teachers, but none of the kids were "comfortable confronting their teachers or school administrators" about the vids, because why piss off the rightwinger who could give you a bad grade?
See, the wingnuts are right! Teachers are pushing a political agenda, and students with different views are afraid to say anything about it.
And now, PragerU has started cranking out materials directly aimed at elementary and high school students as well, including videos for kindergarteners. Pollard notes that while the videos aimed at younger viewers "aren't as overtly political as PragerU's typical five-minute videos for adults, they are still suffused with right-wing propaganda." Here's a fun video for teens on how to respect the American flag; its instructions on how to properly fold the flag into a triangle explains it's a two-person job, so you need to make sure the person helping you isn't a communist.
It's even reasonably funny, sorta-kinda, with a dumb-guy narrator explaining things you shouldn't do with flags, as two guys demonstrate with a fake flag. Like don't carry it flat, or use a flag to hold things "like Care Bears."
No, there's no explanation of why one of the guys demonstrating what not to do is also holding a handgun prop. Maybe they originally made a joke about false flag mass shootings and edited it out?
The video ends with the teen host cheerfully suggesting, "Now that you know how to handle your flag, go do something patriotic, like converting your communist friends. And buying them a flag." If this happens in North Carolina, presumably teachers will have to show pro-communist videos too?
The video and other materials targeted at kids are the fruit of PragerU's newest hustle, a project called "PragerU Resources for Educators and Parents" or PREP. Now any kid can be in PREP school, or at the very least they can elicit funny looks from people who think they're taking Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis meds to prevent getting HIV. PragerU should maybe have checked out other meanings of the abbreviation, we think.
The PREP program is aimed at countering "left-wing indoctrination" in public schools, by "teaching our youth about America's blessings and limitless opportunities," and downplaying anything else in American history or politics as the aforesaid leftwing indoctrination. The stuff for younger viewers probably doesn't warn them to hector their communist classmates, but it still pushes what a great place America is, says Pollard:
For kindergarten through second grade, one of the new educational segments is a "storytime" that "celebrates American values of freedom, individuality, hard work, equality under God and more," starring the head of outreach for PREP, Jill Simonian, and a mascot named Otto, modeled on the bulldog of the organization's founder, Dennis Prager.
Also, yes, there really is someone in a bulldog costume, so wouldn't be fantastic if PragerU inadvertently inspired some kids to become Furries?
For the very youngest younglings, PragerU's PREP is putting together a series of arts-n-crafts videos it's calling "Craftory," a portmanteau of "crafting" and "history." Pollard notes the only one available so far is pretty light on history; instead, it shows kids and parents how to make a seriously ass-ugly Military Appreciation Wreath, an amalgam of camo fabric, burlap (burlap is very patriotic!), and flag-themed ribbons that can be displayed for patriotic holidays.
The so-called "history lesson" turns out to be a primer on the U.S. military and its various branches. As the first video released in the series, the wreath lesson puts PragerU's priorities front and center. In the video, Simonian clarifies that while she is using red-white-and-blue swatches, the fabric did not actually come from a flag. "Never, ever, ever," she exhorts, "cut up an American flag to make anything."
We decided not to blow $25 for a membership in PREP, because why give Dennis Prager et al. any more money? But we may have to come back to the section for third-to-fifth graders soon, since it's promising a very important educational "magazine" about Ayn Rand, to follow up on its initial offerings on Abigail Adams and Margaret Thatcher. Under "Fascinating Facts" in that one, we learn that Thatcher "became known as 'Thatcher, the milk snatcher' for ending a government-sponsored free milk program during her tenure as Education Minister." Apparently that's a really awesome thing, just like how she "stood up" to miners' unions and made everyone in Britain free and prosperous. It must be true, since adults wrote it!
[American Prospect / American Prospect]
President Joe Biden spoke at length Wednesday about his big, fancy American Jobs Plan, which he described as a "once in a generation investment in America."
BIDEN: It's the single largest investment in American jobs since World War II. And it's a plan that puts millions of Americans in the work to fix what's broken in our country, tens of thousands of miles of roads and highways, thousands of bridges in desperate need of repair. But it also is a blueprint for infrastructure needed for tomorrow, not just yesterday, tomorrow. For American jobs, for American competitiveness.
Republicans uniformly oppose Biden's infrastructure plan, because they all suck. They don't want to pay for it and they're not even sure it's infrastructure. Conservatives have a very narrow definition of "infrastructure." They seem to think it's just roads and bridges, but if that were true, you might as well just say "roads and bridges." Why even bother with a separate word for infrastructure. You're not saving that much time.
Biden pushed back against this strict constructionist (i.e. “bullshit") view of infrastructure.
BIDEN: They say, why not focus on traditional infrastructure. Fix what we've already got, the road and the highways that exists, and the bridges. I'm happy to have that debate but let me tell you my view. We are America. We don't just fix for today, we build for tomorrow. 200 years ago, trains weren't traditional infrastructure either until America made a choice to lay down tracks across the country. Highways weren't traditional infrastructure until we allowed ourselves to imagine that roads could connect our nation across state lines. The idea of infrastructure has always evolved to meet the aspirations of American people and their needs, and it's evolving again today.
Please watch Biden's full remarks, linked above, as I think the president makes a compelling case for going big on infrastructure. For some reason, the media chose to present this stirring “can-do" speech as Biden's attempt to “sell" the infrastructure plan, like he was pitching band equipment or a monorail.
The Financial Times, which leans right economically, claimed that infrastructure is a "deceptively dry word" in Biden's mouth. He wasn't talking about a Pinot Gris.
The US president's plan to spend around $2tn on the stuff includes $400bn on care for the elderly and people with disabilities. $100bn will go on job training for disadvantaged groups. And this is before the second tranche of the plan, due this spring, which is expected to enhance childcare and rights to paid leave.
Oh no, will the corruption ever stop! Working from home during the pandemic, when schools were closed, should've reminded everyone how vital childcare is to a functioning economy. The pandemic also disproportionately impacted "disadvantaged groups." There's no guarantee that every job that vanished during the shutdowns is coming back. This is all objectively good and important spending. It's an investment in America that's more forward-thinking than just building one big WALL.
It is bizarre to see Republican recoil in horror at spending money on the elderly and people with disabilities. Fine, whatever, have a semantic debate over what constitutes infrastructure, but are Republicans seriously going to tell old people in need of repair to get fucked because they aren't a bridge or highway?
Guess so.
Twitter
Marsha Blackburn, one of the Senate's dumbest Republicans, tweeted ominously that the "Biden administration is putting their priorities over Americans' priorities," because this idiot thinks the rest of us hate old people. True, Blackburn is herself 68 and annoying, but I'm still fine with her getting a taste of the sweet infrastructure stimmy.
Blackburn went on to declare that “President Biden's proposal is about anything but infrastructure" while calling out the $400 billion on elder care like the federal government's blowing money on eskimo poetry.
Mitch McConnell is usually better at "diabolical," but the Senate minority leader has called Biden's plan a “Trojan horse," because it's secretly stuffed with liberal policies Democrats are trying to sneak past Americans. He might not fully understand how the Trojan horse worked. See, helping old people is the shiny exterior gift everyone likes. It's not the Greek soldiers hidden inside who are going to kill everyone if they haven't already died from suffocation.
Polls shows broad bipartisan support for the American Jobs Plan, but Republicans in Congress only listen to their donors. They won't want to raise taxes on struggling corporations to the levels they were in the distant past of 2017. Biden explained that the corporate tax rate was once 35 percent, during extended periods of economic growth, but he'll meet in the middle at 28 percent so no one thinks he's a commie. Billionaires won't starve, especially those whose wealth grew during the pandemic.
BIDEN: New independent study, put out last week, found that at least 55 of our largest corporations use the various loopholes to pay zero federal income tax in 2020. It's just not fair. It's not fair to the rest of the American taxpayers. We're going to try to put an end to this. Not fleece them. 28%. If you're a mom and dad, a cop, firefighter, police officer, et cetera you're paying close to that in your income tax. [...]
Not trying to punish anybody, but dammit. maybe it's because I come from middle-class neighborhood, I'm sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced.
Biden also tried appealing to Republicans' nationalist zeal. He argued that investing in infrastructure now can keep us ahead of China, which is counting on “American democracy to be too slow, too limited, and too divided to keep the pace."
The president probably realizes he'll have to pass the American Jobs Plan without any Republican votes while also stroking Joe Manchin's ego, but he's still willing to cooperate with a political party that includes Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley.
We'll be listening, we'll be open to good ideas and good-faith negotiations, but here's what we won't be open to: We will not be open to doing nothing
Unfortunately, the GOP has no good ideas and is incapable of negotiating in good faith. Republicans can either do nothing or something terrible. Those are the only options. We prefer nothing. Nothing's always better than voter suppression laws and Amy Coney Barrett.
[Rev / Financial Times]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
PANDEMIC
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
If you prefer your data in a visual format, here's the current map from COVID Exit Strategy, using data from the CDC and the COVID Tracking Project.
I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.
ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
Deaths:
Recovered:
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THE HATEFUL TREASONOUS STUPID FUCKWIT ASSHOLES SECTION
https://www.wonkette.com/why-did-tucker-carlson-have-to-go-and-show-us-hunter-bidens-squirtle
Tucker Carlson did some extremely important journalisming last night in an interview with a Daily Mail reporter who exposed the shocking fact that Hunter Biden's recent memoir did not, in fact, tell all. For instance, reporter Josh Boswell says that videos and photos from Hunter Biden's laptop very definitely showed Hunter doing sex with prostitutes, and that isn't even in the book! To help make the point, Carlson helpfully ran, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern when children might definitely be in the room, a couple of the pics from the Daily Mail story, complete with a red circle of a little doggie that was on the bed at the time.
Also, here is another weird detail: Not only did Carlson's production team pixelate out the nipples of one woman, they also pixelated the swimsuits (or lingerie) both were wearing, suggesting they were more nekkid than they actually were. The Mail, by contrast, went with pixelating the faces and adding a classic black censorship bar over the nippular area. Strangely, the more-redacted photo looks a lot more like coitus is going on, while poor Squirtle the Pokemon had to witness it all.
Imagine that! You can find video of the segment at Mediaite.
So why was Tucker putting porns on national cable TV, at dinner time in many parts of the country? Well because the emails and images from the laptop (verified as authentic by Daily Mail forensic experts, no less) show that Hunter Biden did crimes maybe, like cavorting with prostitutes and also taking drugs, so why isn't he already in jail, and his dad impeached, huh? At least, that was what Carlson was "worried" about, because this is a very important scandal about Joe Biden, somehow, and Fox News favorite Matt Gaetz, a sitting congressman who may have paid for sex work with public Venmo payments, is LOOK AT HUNTER BIDEN. Sean Hannity got into the act later too.
Or maybe it was just more titillating than Tucker's 88th repetition of the warning that Democrats are trying to replace white people with a lot of scary Central Americans who aren't like you Fox viewers.
That "Great Replacement" conspiracy bullshit was explicitly invoked by multiple mass murderers, like the New Zealand mosque killer, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, and the El Paso Walmart killer, but Tucker didn't mention those; he just griped that "leftists" would be "hysterical" at his perfectly rational claim that Democrats seek to replace real American voters with "more obedient voters from the third world."
Yeah, why could anyone object? We'll just hysterically point out here that no, people who seek asylum in the US can't just automatically vote, though they may eventually become citizens. Also, we hear that people who immigrate to the United States are actually quite capable of thinking for themselves, at least unless they regularly watch Fox News.
Then again, Tucker has repeated that overtly white nationalist talking point so many times that maybe his viewers have become inured to it. So now he's apparently trying to find something else to stimulate their limbuses, which we are pretty sure should be a word.
In conclusion, we can only imagine that by mid-summer, Tucker Carlson will be showing pixelated porn videos too, for important political reporting purposes, because the limbuses demand it.
[Mediaite / Daily Mail / Guardian / Business Insider]
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/04/09/2158222/us-arrests-suspect-who-wanted-to-blow-up-aws-data-center
US Arrests Suspect Who Wanted To Blow Up AWS Data Center (therecord.media)
The US Department of Justice said Pendley was arrested on Thursday after he tried to acquire C-4 plastic explosives from an undercover FBI employee in Fort Worth, Texas. The FBI said they learned of Pendley's plans after the suspect confided in January 2021 via Signal, an encrypted communications app, to a third-party source about plans to blow up one of Amazon's Virginia-based data centers. The source alerted the FBI and introduced the suspect to the undercover agent on March 31."The suspect allegedly told an FBI agent that he wanted to attack Amazon's data center because the company was providing web servers to the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies and that he hoped to bring down 'the oligarchy' currently in power in the United States," the report says.
Pendley could face up to 20 years in federal prison if he's found guilty and convicted.
This weekend news broke that the Trump campaign, in the waning days of its losing 2020 campaign, found the snazziest, most creative way to separate Donald Trump's idiot fans — many of them old people on fixed incomes and the like — from their money. In the simplest terms possible, it was a scheme whereby the campaign, on donation pages powered by for-profit company WinRed (it's like ActBlue, if you couldn't trust ActBlue not to drain your checking account), would pre-check boxes that said "make this a recurring donation," and if you didn't see the pre-checked boxes, then surprise! Your money would come out today, and also next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that, and sometimes there'd even be a special pre-checked box for you to make a SPECIAL donation!
Rinse, repeat, until you ain't got no dollars in your checking account!
Make sense?
Here, have a visual aid, provided by the New York Times:
See all that word salad arglebargle bullshit before the teeny tiny print at the bottom, where it's like "LOL we are stealing all your money if you don't uncheck this box" or whatever it says? (We are not sure, they make the print so very small to read for elderly eyes!)
In just the last two and a half months of 2020, "the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors," per the New York Times. Overall they had to return $122 million.
Point is, this is not a great week for us to all see a fundraising pitch from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) that looks like this, pre-checked box and all:
Oh no! They are going to find out they lost you to the Radical Left, Grandma Myrtle! If you UNCHECK this box, Uncle Cousin Gomer Lou, they're TELLIN' TRUMP you're a DEFECTOR who sided with the Dems! CHECK THE BOX, Aunt Lurlene Sue Beth, and we can MAKE TRUMP STOP CRYIN' SO MUCH AGAIN!
(Some conditions apply, this is a monthly recurring donation and also some men are coming over to remove your kidneys later, yes both of your kidneys.)
Apparently this has been going all week. Tim Miller from the Bulwark got this text from the NRCC on Tuesday:
YOU WILL NO LONGER GET TO BE DONALD TRUMP'S FRIEND ON HIS NEW SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK THAT TOTALLY EXISTS IF YOU DON'T RESPOND TO THIS TEXT MESSAGE IN THE NEXT 10 MINUTES! ALSO, A KITTEN MIGHT DIE!
Miller ticks through all the reasons this is bullshit. Does Trump have a new social media site? No, that would require work on his part. Would the NRCC be part of that if he did? No. Is the NRCC trying to bilk people out of their money by offering an exclusive opportunity to be part of something that doesn't even exist and they wouldn't be part of it even if it did? Magic 8 Ball says looks like it, idiot!
Here's what you get if you click on that link:
Yay, that sounds very exciting, a new social media site from Trump, and we get to be the first to join! LET'S GIVE IT ALL OUR MONEYS!
As Miller explains, next up you see this:
If you want Trump to run again CHECK THIS BOX. If you HATE TRUMP and want him to CRY SOME MORE, uncheck this box! (Whisper whisper make it a monthly!)
YOU ARE MISSING! Your Trump Patriot Status is EXPIRED! We are very disappointed you ABANDONED YOUR DEAR LEADER! If you don't give us money RIGHT NOW, you will be REJECTED BY YOUR LORD FOR ALL ETERNITY! (An extra $50 would help appease his spirits.)
And all that goes along with the fundraising page about how they are going to TELL TRUMP you are a DEFECTOR!
Again, this isn't even the Trump campaign. This is the NRCC fundraising off Trump's name using a fake social media site as bait, and using the same scammy tactics to confuse old white people out of their money for weeks and months on end.
Miller comments:
I'm sure there's some formal legal difference between the NRCC tricking someone into signing up for a nonexistent social media site—and then having a default box opting them in to both double their pledged amount and make it recurring—and the criminal advance-fee scams made famous by the imaginary Nigerian princes.
But as a moral matter, the difference is awfully hard to suss out.
Yeah.
Shane Goldmacher, who broke the original story about the Trump campaign's scam, has more at the New York Times. If you don't CLICK THIS LINK and go READ IT, something VERY BAD will happen, something that UPSETS LIBERALS, like maybe there will be no ARUGULA at the STORE next time you GO THERE.
Or something.
If you'd like to make a donation to Wonkette, please physically click the widgets below and freely choose to give us all your money. No tricks. We are just saying you can do that if you want.
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!
“A Scam”: New Report Details How Trump Campaign Bilked Millions From Supporters
The New York Times reveals deceptive tactics.
When Donald Trump’s campaign budget was largely tapped this fall, his staff resorted to deceptive online fundraising practices that tricked donors into signing up to make extra or recurring credit card payments.
According to a New York Times report, the strategies, which involved automatically checking boxes above language consenting to the donations buried below lines and lines of near gibberish, sparked a huge number of complaints, which helped push the campaign to refund an eye popping $64.3 million dollars. According to insiders interviewed by the Times in credit card fraud departments, complaints about unwanted and unexpected charges from Trump donors accounted for as much as 3% of all traffic for periods during the campaign—a stunning number when compared to the massive amount of non-political credit card transactions the companies process. “It felt,” one victim tells the Times, “like it was a scam.”
The Trump campaign paid out many of those refunds after the November election, as new piles of cash were coming in, purportedly earmarked to fund legal battles related to his false claim that his reelection was stolen. As the Times reports, “the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.”
Since leaving office, Trump has kept his political money machine operational. Just last month he sent cease and desist letters to the Republican National Committee and other party arms demanding they stop using his name and likeness in fundraising, and told donors to instead give to a PAC he controls.
RACIST BULLSHIT - BLACK LIVES MATTER
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2021/04/chicago-adam-toledo/
Chicago Police Rolled Out a Cover-Up After Killing a 13-Year-Old Latino Boy
“The police are never going to tell the truth at all.”
Last Sunday, Elizabeth Toledo was relieved to see her 13-year-old son, Adam, walk in the door of their West Chicago home. She’d filed a missing-person report with police a day before, but he returned in time to join his mom at a relative’s memorial service. That night she put him to bed in a room he shared with his brother, grateful he was back.
The next morning, he wasn’t there. Adam Toledo had gone out, and in the middle of the night, around 2:30 a.m., Chicago police shot and killed the seventh-grade boy in an alley behind a high school, not far from his home in Little Village. But nobody told Elizabeth, who thought he’d gone missing again.
When the police finally reached out to her on Wednesday, a full two days after the shooting, they requested a photo of Adam. She assumed it was related to her earlier missing-person report. A half hour later, they knocked on her door and asked her to go to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office to identify his body. “I couldn’t even see him; they showed me a picture of my son Adam for just a couple of seconds,” she told Block Club Chicago. According to her attorney, she wasn’t told how he died—he was shot in the chest—until she met with authorities later.
In the days after Chicago police killed the boy, Elizabeth Toledo wasn’t the only one kept in the dark; city officials were also slow to provide key details to the public. In a carefully constructed statement issued hours after the shooting, the police department only revealed that officers had seen “two males in a nearby alley,” and that one of them was armed and began to flee. (The other person in the alley was a 21-year-old man.) A “foot pursuit…resulted in a confrontation,” and an officer “fired his weapon, striking the offender in the chest.” Along with these bare details, the police department tweeted a photo of a gun they said was recovered at the scene.
On Thursday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown clarified that the so-called male “offender” who was shot by police was a juvenile. But even then, according to Carlos Ballesteros, a reporter at Chicago-based Injustice Watch, he did not yet specify the boy was just 13 years old; it took reporters digging through an autopsy ledger to break the news about his age that day, according to Lakeidra Chavis, a Chicago-based reporter at the Trace, which covers gun violence. “Someone knew early on the person shot was actually a young teenager. That information was omitted while crafting a self-defense narrative,” she tweeted.
The city also delayed the release of body-cam footage that captured the shooting. Initially, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates police shootings, said the video could not be released because Adam Toledo was just a juvenile. On Friday, the agency reversed its position: It had made a mistake, it stated, and would release it within 60 days. Toledo’s family confirmed they would be shown the footage next week. “The public deserves a complete window into the split-second decisions our officers are forced to make,” Superintendent Brown tweeted Friday.
The obfuscation echoes the city’s response to the 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, another minor from Chicago’s West Side. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, shot and killed McDonald, who was Black, while responding to a call about alleged car break-ins, and initially claimed the teen lunged at him with a knife. “City officials waited more than a year to release police dash-cam footage of the shooting—and did so only after a judge ruled in favor of an independent journalist whose public records requests were repeatedly denied,” Brandon Patterson reported for Mother Jones at the time. The video showed that Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times, even after the teen had fallen to the ground, and sparked widespread protests and calls for then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign. In 2018, Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder, as well as 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.
After more details of Adam Toledo’s death became known this week, Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez told Block Club that incidents like the case have left her with little trust for the police. “For a very long time the police have been taken at their word. We’re not accepting that anymore,” she said. “You shot a 13 year old.”
“We’ve figured out the police are never going to tell the truth at all or they’re only going to share what makes them look good,” she added.
The officer who killed Adam has been placed on administrative duty for 30 days. On Friday night, a small group of protesters marched through Logan Square demanding justice. In a news conference earlier that day, Elizabeth Toledo said she wants to know the truth about why the officer fired a bullet into her son. “I just want to know what really happened to my baby,” she said, crying. An attorney said Adam had no criminal history, and that he once dreamed of becoming a police officer himself. Elizabeth Toledo recalled him as being a happy kid who loved animals, and said he was far too young.
“He still played with Hot Wheels,” she said in tears.
What does it mean to be a “good” Christian? I grew up in the Evangelical Covenant Church and in the company of YoungLife—an over-the-top, (some would even joke) cult group for adolescent, “friendly” evangelicalism. The question was a part of daily life. It is a part of my daily life. (I still practice the Christian faith.) And Lil Nas X’s new song and video, “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” seemed to re-stoke that debate within me.
Amid a flurry of Christian imagery—the Garden of Eden, a snake, heaven and hell, ancient Rome, the devil—Montero (Lil Nas X’s given name) asks where he fits into God’s world. Or, if he fits at all. And it struck me. This is one of the most obvious Christian works I’ve seen!
And yet, many Christians didn’t see it that way. “Devil worshipping, wicked nonsense,” a pastor called it. The governor of South Dakota, Republican Kristi Noem, weighed in with similar anger. After seeing Lil Nas X collaborated with fashion brand MSCHF (pronounced “mischief”) to launch limited edition “Satan Shoes” in promotion of the track (each shoe contained a single drop of human blood), Noem even took to Twitter to claim that the only thing more exclusive than these sneakers was “[our kids’] God-given eternal soul.” Turning Point USA’s Alex Clark took to her “Poplitics” IGTV show to go on an almost 10-minute tirade against the artist, incorrectly claiming he has no Grammy Awards (he has two), calling his fans “jobless gays on Twitter,” and calling the shoes “100 percent Satanic” before telling Lil Nas X that “hell and the devil are completely real.”
I am not foolish. I understand why a Black gay man bothers some Christians. (And why the video—in which Lil Nas X pole dances down to Hell and gives Satan a lap dance—really, really bothers them.) But I also saw something else. Montero is engaging with the Church’s symbols seriously. Most pop stars sell “sex” in their work in a way that rejects the Church completely. But Montero is asking to be part of its lineage. In many ways, Montero’s claim here is not a rejection of the Church or its value. It’s an invitation for Christians to reflect and ask questions about how they might align their faith with Christ’s message: love.
Because yes, our love looks like this, conflicted by religion, pained by its oppression, and reactive to those who condemn us. It looks like this music video.
“If your initial reaction is being offended, that’s totally understandable,” Matthew Vines, founder of The Reformation Project, tells me. “But I also encourage people to think more about why he thinks this—what does that say about the church? Because this is the message that so many queer people have gotten.” Montero himself made this exact point, tweeting: “i spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the shit y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay. so i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.”
Vines has spent years walking the fine line between the type of conservative Christianity that Montero has brought out of the woodwork and LGBTQ+ affirming theology. And he understands the backlash. But he’s also serious about where the backlash is coming from. “It’s definitely possible to be LGBTQ and Christian,” Vines says over the phone. “The video is just a reminder of how far there still is to go before that message can even be heard and internalized by so many people because so many churches still are teaching a false dichotomy.”
SLASHDOT AND OTHER ROUNDUP
https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/04/05/2256215/nasas-mars-helicopter-survives-first-cold-martian-night-on-its-own
NASA's Mars Helicopter Survives First Cold Martian Night On Its Own (nasa.gov)
To ensure the solar array atop the helicopter's rotors could begin getting sunlight as soon as possible, Perseverance was instructed to move away from Ingenuity shortly after deploying it. Until the helicopter put its four legs onto the Martian surface, Ingenuity remained attached to the belly of the rover, receiving power from Perseverance, which touched down at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The rover serves as a communications relay between Ingenuity and Earth, and it will use its suite of cameras to observe the flight characteristics of the solar-powered helicopter from "Van Zyl Overlook."
The research team looked at the consequences of social isolation in the case of ants of the species Temnothorax nylanderi. These ants inhabit cavities in acorns and sticks on the ground in European forests, forming colonies of a few dozen workers. Young workers engaged in brood care were taken singly from 14 colonies and kept in isolation for varying lengths of time, from one hour to a maximum of 28 days. The study was conducted between January and March 2019 and highlighted three particular aspects in which changes were observed. After the end of their isolation, the workers were less interested in their adult colony mates, but the length of time they spent in brood contact increased; they also spent less time grooming themselves. [...] While the study revealed significant changes in the behaviors of the isolated insects, its findings with regard to gene activity were even more striking: Many genes related to immune system function and stress response were downregulated. In other words, these genes were less active. "This finding is consistent with studies on other social animals that demonstrated a weakening of the immune system after isolation," said Professor Inon Scharf.The study has been published in the journal Molecular Ecology.
Lead author Dr. Elizabeth Claire said the work was originally meant to help conservationists and ecologists study biological environments. With enough development, though, it could be used for considerably more. Forensics units could pluck DNA from the air to determine if a suspect had been present at the scene of a crime. It might also be useful in medicine -- virologists and epidemiologists could understand how airborne viruses (like the one behind COVID-19) spread.
[T]he sharp, sudden rise in the value of NFTs and more recent pullback is reminding some of other similar historic market bubbles, such as tulip mania in the 1600s, the dot com/tech crash of 2000 and bank stocks and housing prices in 2008. NFTs may be here to stay, but they just may not be worth the staggering sums of money that some people have shelled out for them in the past few weeks.
Colorado Denied Its Citizens the Right-To-Repair After Riveting Testimony (vice.com)
The Colorado House Business Affairs & Labor committee met to consider the law on March 25. Twelve legislators voted to indefinitely postpone considering the bill. Only one voted for it. "I still have a lot of questions. I still have a lot of concerns," Rep. Monica Duran (D) said at the end of the committee hearing. She voted no on the bill. It was a stunning statement given just how many people testified on behalf of the right-to-repair legislation and how few questions the committee asked them. [...] In their own comments, the legislators repeated lines Apple and other companies often use to defend their repair monopolies. Shannon Bird (D), for example, said that manufacturers have the right to dictate how a customer uses its product. She stressed that Apple can sell licenses to whatever it wants. "Apple Music is different than purchasing a CD," she said. "I have a hard time believing that we would call it Apple having a monopoly on its own product."
NASA to land 1st person of color on the moon with Artemis program
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| NASA's Artemis program is working to put boots back on the moon by 2024 and establish a permanent presence there by the end of the decade. (Image credit: NASA) |
NASA will land the first person of color in addition to the first woman on the moon with the Artemis program, NASA's Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk revealed today (April 9).
Today, President Joe Biden's administration submitted a budget proposal outlining its priorities for discretionary spending for the fiscal year 2022 to Congress. The proposed budget includes a funding increase that will support Mars sample return, research, climate science and more at NASA. Jurczyk responded to the news in a NASA statement and additionally revealed that the agency will be landing the first person of color on the moon with the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface.
This funding request "keeps NASA on the path to landing the first woman and the first person of color on the moon under the Artemis program. This goal aligns with President Biden's commitment to pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all," the NASA statement reads.
The statement marks the first time that the agency has specified it will land a person of color on the moon;, previous comments about Artemis have only referred to landing the "next man and the first woman" on the moon.
Related: NASA unveils plan for Artemis 'base camp' on the moon beyond 2024
Under the administration of President Donald Trump, NASA was aiming to complete the first Artemis lunar landing by 2024, but the Biden administration has not yet commented on whether it will keep NASA to this ambitious timeline.
Jurczyk's full statement reads:
"This $24.7 billion funding request demonstrates the Biden administration's commitment to NASA and its partners who have worked so hard this past year under difficult circumstances and achieved unprecedented success.
"The president's discretionary request increases NASA's ability to better understand Earth and further monitor and predict the impacts of climate change. It also gives us the necessary resources to continue advancing America's bipartisan moon to Mars space exploration plan, including landing the first woman and first person of color on the moon under the Artemis program.
"We know this funding increase comes at a time of constrained resources, and we owe it to the president and the American people to be good and responsible stewards of every tax dollar invested in NASA. The NASA workforce and the American people should be encouraged by what they see in this funding request. It is an investment in our future, and it shows confidence in what this agency has to offer."
Related: Can NASA really put astronauts on the moon in 2024?
The statement from NASA goes on to include details about the discretionary funding request, including the fact that it supports STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) engagement and "strengthens NASA's ability to better understand Earth and how it works as an integrated system, from our oceans to our atmosphere, how it all impacts our daily lives, and how it all is impacted by climate change," the statement reads.
Following this funding request, we will learn more about the administration's overall goals with regard to space, science and NASA programs. Within the upcoming months, President Biden is expected to release a complete budget that will include a more detailed plan for that spending. However, budgets for NASA and the rest of the federal government are ultimately determined by Congress.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Spooky 'spiders on Mars' finally explained after two decades
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| NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the "spiders" at Mars' south pole on May 13, 2018. (Image credit: NASA) |
Ziggy played guitar, and scientists in the U.K. played with a big chunk of dry ice to try to figure out what's behind the strange alien patterns known as the "spiders on Mars."
Those patterns, visible in satellite images of the Red Planet's south pole, aren't real spiders, of course; but the branching, black shapes carved into the Martian surface look creepy enough that researchers dubbed them "araneiforms" (meaning "spider-like") after discovering the shapes more than two decades ago.
Measuring up to 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) across, the gargantuan shapes don't resemble anything on Earth. But in a new study published March 19 in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists successfully recreated a shrunken-down version of the spiders in their lab, using a slab of carbon dioxide ice (also called dry ice) and a machine that simulates the Martian atmosphere. When the cold ice made contact with a much-warmer bed of Mars-like sediment, part of the ice instantly transformed from a solid to a gas (a process called sublimation), forming spidery cracks where the escaping gas pushed through the ice.
Until recently, scientists had no way of testing that hypothesis on Earth, where atmospheric conditions are vastly different. But in the new study, researchers made a little slice of Mars here on Earth, using a device called the Open University Mars Simulation Chamber. The team placed sediment grains of varying size inside the chamber, then used a system that resembles a claw machine you'd see at a local arcade to suspend a block of dry ice over the grains. The team adjusted the chamber to mimic the atmospheric conditions of Mars, then slowly lowered the dry ice block onto the grains.
The experiments proved that the spider-sublimation hypothesis is valid. Regardless of the size of the sediment grains, the dry ice always sublimated on contact with them, and the escaping gas pushed upward, carving out spider leg-like cracks along the way. According to the researchers, the spider legs branched more when the grains were finer and less when the grains were coarser.
While not definitive, these experiments provide the first physical evidence showing how the spiders on Mars may have formed. Now, isn't that sublime.
Originally published on Live Science.
PICTURE GALLERY
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2104.10 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2108 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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