I do believe in foreign interference in our elections

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Donald Trump gave a speech last night in which he he claimed that he only lost the 2020 election because foreigners interfered. He is obsessed with that ignominious defeat, because his ego is so huge that he can’t tolerate any contradiction of his self-regard.

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

I don’t believe China had anything to do with it — that country is happy to sell us crap, and no doubt is savoring our ongoing collapse, but they don’t have to do anything to trigger our self-destruction. Republicans are pleased to do that to ourselves, because they are busy pursuing an illusory and contradictory fantasy of American greatness that is centered on racial purity and coddling of capitalists. There is no evidence of election fraud anywhere. Every time those accusations are tracked down they find at best a handful of fraudulent votes, never enough to have any kind of significant effect, but every time a Republican loses an election they start shrieking about Democrats cheating.

They are overlooking the insidious and entirely legal interference that has been going on for decades: the lies and propaganda of Fox News, masterminded by Rupert Murdoch, and how it has corrupted the brains of an entire generation of Americans. This is the seed that has grown into the idiocy that fuels our descent, which is now self-perpetuating. Barking at the Chinese is futile and irrelevant. Look into our systemic failures to regulate our own media.

Our troops will be getting gender-affirming care

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Isn’t that sweet? Pete Hegseth is imposing mandatory testosterone testing, but is not requiring testosterone supplements, yet. As we all know, good soldiers are in a constant roid-rage, and can be recognized by their chronic bacne.

This policy is being enabled by the ongoing corruption of science by our government.

Hegseth’s announcement comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump administration officials are moving to make it easier for doctors to prescribe testosterone. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed easing prescribing limits on testosterone gels, pills, patches and injections.
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Last year, the FDA removed a boxed warning about possible risks of heart attack and stroke from the drugs.

Let’s ignore all our prior medical knowledge!

…current medical guidelines generally recommend against blanket testing of testosterone levels. Typically, doctors are advised to discuss testosterone therapy with men who have troubling symptoms and documented low levels of the hormone on two separate blood tests.

Testing for testosterone is challenging because levels of the hormone fluctuate throughout the day. Accurate testosterone readings are typically measured in the morning after fasting.

I have never been tested for my testosterone levels. I know that, for sure, they have almost certainly declined since my 20s, because that’s typical, but I have never experienced problems of the sort that might prompt testing. You can tolerate a wide range of variation without noticing any effects, so barring real symptoms, doping with T is just coping with diminished masculinity of a psychological sort.

But OK, let’s test everyone, new recruits and old generals, and let’s test men and women alike. Pete might be surprised when he discovers that trans men are already pumping themselves up with testosterone, maybe making them better soldiers than AMAB men.

Don’t bother testing Pete, though. He’s so insecure that he’s probably taking testosterone supplements already. Also, he’s a pig, scarcely human.

Hegseth has previously said he does not believe women should hold combat roles and that those positions should be based on the “highest male standard.” He has blocked some military promotions for women or fired female leaders since becoming Pentagon leader.

That alone warrants firing him.

Busy morning with spiders

We got up early this morning to run errands in the exotic metropolis of Alexandria (not the one in Egypt), which mainly involved the process of melting my flesh into the fabric of a car seat. It is unpleasantly hot, but we had things that needed to be done.

Before we left, though, I checked out the spiders around my back door. We have a guardian Parasteatoda in a nice cobweb between the door and the mailbox…she’s a lovely young lady.

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Five or six centimeters away, she had a suitor in waiting. He was busily wrapping up a present for her.

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Then nearby we found Theridion hanging out in a yarrow flower.

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They were turning away from me, so I got a second shot of their pretty face.

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Then we scooted off to do our errands. Unfortunately, on our journey, we encountered the Freedom Propaganda Truck.

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Yuk. The ass end of that ugly cargo of lies has a big sign that says “Follow me!”, so we turned and went in the opposite direction.

I don’t ask much of the Democrats

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So why do they always disappoint me?

Top of the list: demand an end to the war in Iran, and stop giving Israel support for genocide. Is this too much to ask? It’s the bare minimum exercise of human decency. Stop killing people. But too many Democrats are in the pocket of AIPAC to take a forthright position on something so simple.

Next on the list, but still pretty important: disband ICE. I know it was pushing it too far to ask to defund the police in general, but ICE is nothing but a right-wing murder squad. They killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine yesterday, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas last week. Their new excuse: they were fearing for public safety, so they were justified in gunning down a member of the public who was not threatening the public safety. That’s a damned fine excuse, one they could use to justify shooting me, because it’s so vague.

It’s all so nebulous that the goons who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still running free, the FBI has been stonewalling Minnesota authorities (sub-goal: fire Kash Patel and have him arrested), and they only recently allowed prosecutors to examine the evidence, more than 7 months after the murder of Good. ICE is basically an interstate assassination cartel operating on behalf of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, specifically looking for an excuse to kill brown people and antifa.

If a candidate for office can’t pass those two easy hurdles, they will not be getting my vote. I’m fed up with politicians who refuse to address those two simple issues.

NOOO! TOO HOT!

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I released this wolf spider onto a rock, and moved to take a picture. I immediately noticed that she was incredibly still and obliging, and got one quick photo before I noticed the problem — that rock was in full sunlight and was hot enough to melt lead, I think. She was in total shock. I immediately flicked her into a nearby patch of dirt, with shade, and she recovered, but another minute and she would have been baked. So this is the only photo you’re going to see of that spider.

Sam Neill does not satisfy the Rule of Three

I refuse to accept the sacrificial substitution of Sam Neill for far more deserving people.

Sam Neill, the popular New Zealand actor whose career spanned five decades and encompassed more than 150 film and television roles, has passed away in Sydney. The actor, best recognized for portraying paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant across multiple “Jurassic Park” installments, was 78.

Lindsey Graham, zombie Mitch McConnell, and then Sam Neill? That’s not a match in any way.

Also, Jurassic Park? Yuck, retch, bleh. To me, he will always be the cursed, damned villain/victim of the Lovecraftian horror, Event Horizon.

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What an excellent brain exercise!

I had to fill in at the theater last night. I was not prepared for the exam.

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I hadn’t realized how difficult this was going to be. I was handling concessions: there were 3 of us, Kate handling popcorn, Rowan at the pop machine, and me at the cash register and candy. People would come up, tell me what they wanted, I’d ring it up, call out the popcorn and pop order, and we’d instantly put their order on the counter, and I’d get their money. Sounds easy, right?

Typical experience: parent with 3 kids comes up. I push the buttons for 1 adult and 3 kids. Then they all want concessions. Kid 1 wants a kid box, which comes with popcorn, a small soft drink, and one candy. I ask what they want to drink and to pick a candy — this is a child, these are major life choices. Say they want gummi bears and pineapple fanta. I grab the gummy bears and call out the order and go to punch ’em in, and fumble a bit trying to find the gummi button, while Kid 2 tells me he wants a kid box with a Bueno bar — wait, he ordered the candy before the pop, the point-of-sale system wants the pop first, I have to back track and get the drink order before I can click through, so I mentally file “Bueno” in short term memory while I get that, meanwhile Kid 1 tells me he wants Pocky rather than a gummi bear, so I have to change his order, while Parent tells me he wants a large popcorn and a large root beer, and I still have to figure out what Kid 3 wants. It’s all piling up with the first family to come in.

We had 62 people come to the showing last night.

This was a cognitive test! I don’t think I passed. I struggled all night to keep up. I get to do this exercise every week until I get it right, which is probably good for me.

Bonus observation! A lot of teenagers came in without their parents. This seems to be a common behavior, with parents dropping off a clutch of offspring, each one clutching a $10 or $20 bill, and turning them loose for a couple of hours without supervision. The interesting phenomenon is that the groups of teenagers were either 3 or 4 boys, or a pair of girls, no mixed groups. I guess this is the courtship protocol for young teens — no pressure to ask a person out, the theater is just a safe space to mingle and maybe make a connection. There weren’t many connections made, though. Boys stayed apart in rowdy groups, while I’d see the girls occasionally dart into the lobby to giggle and whisper together and maybe disappear into the bathroom. It was a weirdly inefficient procedure.

I was thinking back to my youth, and I might have been a strange outlier. I always went to the movies alone and didn’t interact with the other kids who were there at all. Maybe someone should have told me it was a way to meet girls, it could have changed my life. When I started dating a girl, going to the movies was not a good option (later we figured out that her subtle hearing impairment, which has gotten more severe over the years, may have been a factor in her disinterest in movies.)

Again, I didn’t see the movies — too busy. It turns out my volunteer work isn’t about watching movies, it’s about a weekly cognitive test and getting a glimpse of young people’s behavior.