Transmillennial

A young Nebraskan's epic quest for the perfect piece of meat Chapter 1: More than a snack, but not quite a meal On May 17, a Monday morning, final examinations and 19th birthday over, Jordan Petersen set out, with a backpack full of clothes, and a brand new and unstamped Nebraska Beef Passport, to find adventure, Real Nebraska, and meat. Until now, the student's life had been uneventful, calm, boring even. The child of vegetarian parents, raised on beans, dairy, and (recently) something called Beyond Meat , Jordan had never tasted animal flesh. No chicken, pork, fish or lamb had passed the 19 year old's lips. Beyond Meat was a pale imitation of the beef of the teenager's dreams -- beef, succulent, dripping with juices, filling the mouth with its moist, thick texture. No, it made no sense to go 'beyond' meat, before one had fully experienced meat.  And, by a stroke of luck, Nebraska's governor had just announced the Nebraska Beef Passport program. One could...

 Conor Friedersdorf, a reactionary wolf in classical liberal sheep's clothing, is shocked, shocked! What this actually was was a 'panel discussion' between DeSantis, Scott Atlas , and the three authors of the Great Barrington declaration , trying to justify their repulsive actions during the COVID epidemic: the scientifically unfounded claim that one could reach 'herd immunity' via infection alone, along with abandonment of almost all public health measures to combat the disease, and a callous acceptance of a million deaths in the US alone.  The declaration, as is usual with such attacks on the scientific consensus, once drafted, was signed mostly by people with no experience in the field, with dubious qualifications if not a record of quackery, and a religious or political act to grind. Previous petitions that attacked the theory of evolution and anthropogenic climate change served as a model. DeSantis, whose record on COVID is disgraceful, was happy to get on bo...

 I used to tell my students that the fate of bad science is not to be refuted, but to be ignored. We ignore it, because to refute it takes time that could be used for more worthwhile endeavors, and refuting it also makes enemies. In fact, on one of the rare occasions I felt it necessary to publish a refutation of some particularly bad science,  one of a referee's major criticisms was that I was paying any attention to the work at all. That is one of the nice things about the scientific consensus.  I submit this formula no longer works, in an era when the bad actor can go on Fox News and spew their garbage to the world, or take a job with a Republican administration and put the lives of thousands in jeopardy.  This is why I'm calling out John Ioannidis. Ioannidis is often called an iconoclast, but I maintain iconoclast is one of those nouns that declines. My iconoclast is your bombthrower is his kook . When Ioannidis published  Why Most Published Research Findi...

 So many redundancies in the title. Of course they're promoting this . I'm guessing this bozo has zero scientific qualifications. This article debunks him.

For your reading pleasure, here's Glenn Ellmers . Glenn is white, male, bald, middle-aged, and believes that you're not American if you didn't vote for Donald J Trump. ...most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else. Oh, and Joe Biden? the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship, and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism. This, from a member of a mob that tried to overthrow the government on January 6. So what does Glenn want to do? Well, first... It is not enough just to smash all the bad things....If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a ...

 Yesterday 'Pastor' Greg Locke posted this on Twitter. Yes, it's stupid, and Locke epitomizes everything that's wrong with the white American male. He's Tennesseean, Baptist, abused his wife, and then cheated on her and ran off with his secretary. He's ugly and stupid and a Trumpkin. In other words, he's like half the middle-aged men south of the Mason-Dixon, and has concluded that the only way to stand out from the goober crowd is to excel in obnoxiousness. That's as may be, but with my ever logical mind, I wondered, how could he possibly know a mass shooting was about to take place? Unless... So Twitter restricted my account for 12 hours, for  promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm. This puzzled me for a bit, because while I'd certainly never discourage Greg Locke from improving the planet in this way, I hadn't actually suggested he harm himself. (And, in all sincerity, I'd prefer he just became a better human being). Then I realized...

For the prelude to this chapter, see here . James R Fortenberry, 2nd great-grandfather of Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, was born in 1826 or thereabouts, in Copiah Co., Mississippi. Copiah County Mississippi in the 1820s was the sticky southern edge of the American frontier, a bug-infested alligator-ridden swamp on the far edge of the new Republic. Whites had only recently stolen this particular swath of Native American land. The ‘treaty’ of Doak’s Stand secured what is now the western part of Mississippi for the whites. It was ceded to the United States after murderous thug and soon-to-be second-worst-president-ever Andrew Jackson threatened to destroy the Choctaw Nation if they refused to sign. The land became the huge Hind’s County is 1821; and was then broken up into manageable chunks in 1823, the southernmest corner becoming Copiah County. Copiah was the Choctaw word for calling panthe r. Wypipo for sentimental reasons liked to name newly settled land in the language of the people...