Max Headroom @Joel@qoto.org

"Banning drag queens won't work. The only thing that will stop a bad guy in a dress, is a good guy in a dress."

I've been disgusted by the lack of professional solidarity among journalists ever since Musk bought Twitter. As Musk bans journalists one-by-one, their colleagues stay on Twitter, tweeting out their work, hoping that they'll survive the next round.

WTAF?!?

FBI investigating GOP Okla. officials caught on tape talking about lynching Black people, murdering newspaper reporters

https://heartlandsignal.com/2023/04/17/fbi-investigating-gop-okla-officials-caught-on-tape-talking-about-lynching-black-people-murdering-newspaper-reporters/

#FBI #Oklahoma #News #GOP #Terrorist

Things just keep getting more absurd.

#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution #economy #incomedistribution #anthropology #culturalevolution

Stephen Jay Gould once stated that human cultural evolution is Lamarkian rather than Darwinian. Lamarkian can be a trigger word for some biologists so I will refrain from defending it. There are differences. Cultural transmission is much different than genetic transmission and the method of transmission is different, not discrete like genes, there is no evidence of memes like Dawkins has suggested. In addition, there are no lineages as such. Darwin had no idea of transmission either. Dawkins's attempt at memes is based on the fact that humans are biological entities subject to Darwinian evolution and culture is a human phenotype and thus is subject to Darwinian evolution. This idea has been accepted and rejected at different times by the social sciences, mainly because of the stigma of Social Darwinism and the failure of Darwinian Evolution to provide coherent answers. Yet, culture is still a biological artifact, like an ant hill is a biological artifact so somehow this conceptual gap needs to be closed.

Lewens, Tim. “Cultural Evolution.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/evolution-cultural/.

"Loneliness has more to do with our perceptions than how much company we have. It’s just as possible to be painfully lonely surrounded by people as it is to be content with little social contact."

https://fs.blog/being-alone/

I am continually frustrated by the number of people on social media who want to change democratic systems in a way that would be an obvious vector for abuse.

Most recent one was to require federally elected officials to pass a security clearance background inspection. They erroneously think that it would only filter out GOP demagogues like DJT and MTG. But lets be honest, would the DoD under Trump have done a fair background check or would any rumor or innuendo have been enough to disqualify all the serious democratic candidates.

Same thing with not allowing indited or convicted felons to run for office. You may thing this is aimed at Trump, but what happens when Pres. DeSantis (it could happen) convicts hundreds of Democratic candidates of illegally facilitating abortions and in that way has them disqualified from standing for office.

In Trump era of politics where honor and integrity no longer matter it is vitally important that our actions not be ones that can be turned against us by populists with no morals.

As Texas Gov Abbot prepares to pardon a white man & convicted murderer for killing a peaceful BLM protestor—Texas sentences a Black man to 70 years in prison for “spitting at police” to “make an example out of him.”😳

Systemic white supremacy is thriving in the GOP. Horrific.

Keep in mind that what ProPublica unearthed about Clarence Thomas and his wife may well be only a portion of their corruption. People with this kind of impunity, and contempt for everyday people, rarely see limits to what they can grift.

Got Taibbi right in the damn teeth.
---
RT @notcapnamerica
Y’all wanna see a dead body?
https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1644105313212039168

Tennessee's Republicans are well on the way to banning public dissent from their retrograde, extremist policies. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tennessee-s-gop-led-house-votes-to-expel-democrat-justin-jones-from-legislature-for-his-role-in-gun-protest/ar-AA19z0Vn

The CEO-to-worker pay gap is now 399-to-1. In 1965, the ratio was 21-to-1.

Trickle down economics was always a sham.

Nothing has ever trickled down. Hello?

With public polling data showing that trust in #SCOTUS has cratered (47%), justices should be tripping over themselves to enact a strict code of #ethics. Instead, we get paternalistic head-pats and patrician recalcitrance. https://news.gallup.com/poll/402044/supreme-court-trust-job-approval-historical-lows.aspx

Tech industry, please hire more writers. I can happily read docs for 3h and get much more out of them than watching a video for 3h. And while I'm watching the video, I'm making copious notes so that I don't have to watch the video *again* later to refresh my memory. If it was written down in the first place with good indexing I wouldn't have to do that. Video is such a crap way to document things.

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was directly involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Just thought I should remind everyone of that today.

I just want to say that if I ever get on the Supreme Court I am going to be reasonable. I will not require you to ply me with private jets and yachts to private estates and exclusive famous resorts and $5k bottles of wine.

Business class (or even economy plus) to an AirBnB in Maui and six or seven boxes of those Cutwater Mai Tais would totally do the trick. Then I will TOTALLY stop deferring to Chevron. I will not defer to ANY gas stations.

I am a man of the people.