Monthly Archives: December 2020

The phrase data visualization is, at least for me, a modern phrase, often connected to computers. I suppose I exposed my technological provincialism there. Anyways, I was surprised to run across some historical research on data visualization involving … W. E. B. Du Bois, the famed Black scholar. In this presentation from October of 2019, current scholar Silas Munroe presents a study of the work of Du Bois and other Black scholars of his era in the area of data visualization. Just a couple of examples here, lifted from the presentation:

While perhaps not as impressive as Charles Minard’s classic graph of the French invasion of Russia in 1812 (right), they succeed in graphically getting their points across.

If you have an especial interest in data visualization history or W. E. B. Du Bois, it might be worth your time to look at Munroe’s presentation.

Our Arts Editor in the morning, self-described:

Or gaffe of the day:

Whoops. The latest legal filing from former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in her Georgia lawsuit accuses Dominion voting machines of flipping votes from Biden to Trump — which would mean the president gained fraudulent votes. One GOP attorney calls it an “epic fail.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/B93oTqwVQb

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) December 4, 2020

Which raises the question: do the incompetent flock to the Republican Party, or does joining the Party make them incompetent?

As an independent, this sort of crap just makes me sad.

You may have heard of a video purporting to show some illegal hijinks during the counting of votes in Georgia. Here’s the best way to discredit what turns out to be manipulated nonsense:

What you see in that video is Fulton County election workers arranging, sorting, and verifying ballots.

It is what they did before and after people left.

They were not unsupervised. The person in the blue shirt is a monitor from the Republican Secretary of State’s office.

What happened is at 10pm, the Fulton County Board of Elections announced they were sending most everyone home. The Republicans decided that meant everyone was leaving, but that is not what was said. The Fulton County Board of Elections and the Secretary of State both attest that it was made clear they were sending most people home, not everyone home.

The Secretary of State’s monitor stayed to observe.

Nothing nefarious was seen.

The monitor left to grab a drink and the GOP has selectively cut the video to make it look like the monitor left completely. He did not. The Secretary of State, the monitor, and the people there all confirm he was gone for only a few minutes. The Republican board member for the Fulton County Board of Elections also confirms this.

And who’s this? I know I critique and even make fun of him, but Erick Erickson was, in another lifetime, an election lawyer. So an expert and he’s on the same side as those manufacturing the uproar.

This is a believable discrediting.

I had not expected to see parrots in the snow.

Professor Robert Shapiro suggests that pre-election polls, which differ from public opinion polls, still have a future:

Hemant Mehta has a PSA about Rapid City, South Dakota:

Rapid City, South Dakota is where common sense goes to die. And this year, with COVID out of control throughout the Republican-led state, a lot of citizens are going that route too.

A couple of weeks ago, the city council voted 6-5 in favor of a local mask mandate, with the mayor breaking the tie. Good! But on Monday, they voted 9-1 to water down that ordinance to the point where it’s utterly useless.

The revised ordinance says businesses have to enforce a mandate if they want it — not law enforcement — and added an opt-out provision to the ordinance… meaning restaurants or stores don’t have to have a mask requirement at all. Which also means the least responsible people will be allowed to spread COVID and kill the elderly because the Rapid City council members don’t give a damn about their own citizens’ lives. [Friendly Atheist]

I’m repressing a shameful snark. It’s very sad to see exceptionalism in action, isn’t it?

Televangelist Mario Murillo must be sweating up a storm, now that the right-wing epistemic bubble has failed him:

Murillo, who recently proclaimed that he “will never accept” that Biden is president-elect, said that refusing to accept Biden’s election is a test of loyalty to God.

“I’m gonna say this,” Murillo announced. “That Joe Biden is president is the conspiracy theory. Not the Dominion voting, not all of the corruption that we’re uncovering. The conspiracy theory, the tinfoil cone hat theory is that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States. Get that. Now, here’s what you are doing. The Bible says not to fear their conspiracy theories but to fear the Lord and then he will be a sanctuary. … If you are filled with the Holy Spirit and give into fear, God is going to judge you. God is going to correct you for that.”

“If you’re giving in and you’re one of those that voted for Biden, if you’re one of those that is kind of using cheap grace as an excuse to accept this cultural change and say, ‘Well, let’s be loving,’ God is going to judge you,” he continued. “Right now, this is a test. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a test. It’s a test of whether you are going to stand on the word or go by what you see.”

Murillo said that “it would make no sense” for President Donald Trump to lose when various prophecies supposedly foreshadowed his reelection, and thus Christians have “got to be loyal to God in this hour and not give in because God will surely bring correction.” [Right Wing Watch]

The power of magical thinking. Wave at vague prophecies, inject a bit of emotion, hang on for the ride.

Once believers go whole hog, believing what the preacher says, rather than adhering to the social conventions that we’ve built and revised and rebuilt over the centuries, then we’re on the road to perdition, we’re on the road covered in stakes and writhing figures in flame.

Or so history teaches us. Once religious mania overtakes social sanity, we get religious wars, first abolishing the old order, which is considered anti-God, then on each other, slicing all the cults into finer and finer pieces, until the survivors get together and realize there’s real wisdom in admitting doubt.

In saying, I don’t know the mind of the divinity.

In the meantime, subjective certainty of the intentions of a divine being that may not even exist can wreak tremendous havoc on both believer and unbeliever, and it’s really sad. The arrogance of pastors such as Murillo, as well as his followers, are such a curse on everyone. Besides Murillo.

There’s no real comeback to Murillo, unfortunately, except to wait for real-world consequences to inflict themselves on his followers. He’ll never apologize, never back down. But a sufficiently disillusioned follower, who either has lost everything, or finds their credulity has been stretched beyond redemption by such facile arguments as This is a test! I’m not wrong! Don’t lose your faith!, will walk away. Intellectual arguments? Theological arguments? No.

They may think their way out of their trap, but leading them out of their trap seems unlikely.

Barstool blowhards is how I characterize most of the folks associated with the Trump Administration – but it also appears a lot of the MAGA-voters also qualify. Walter Einenkel has helpfully collected a series of tweets from a fellow who was watching the action in Michigan’s legislature recently, and they’re a sort of horrifying hoot. Like this one:

This is Dave. Dave is struggling a little but to get his story out. His proof of fraud is that they stopped counting at night and in the morning when they restarted it was too quiet in the room.

— Sandwich Breathe (@TepidButterASMR) December 1, 2020

There are even better examples at the link.

This appalling – and quite probably anti-Constitutional – announcement comes from Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK) in response to the Covid-19 pandemic:

Governor Kevin Stitt announced today he is declaring Thursday, Dec. 3 as a statewide day of prayer and fasting for all Oklahomans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Oklahomans have always turned to prayer to guide us through trials and seasons of uncertainty, and I am asking Oklahomans of all faiths and religious backgrounds to join together with me on Thursday,”said Gov. Stitt.“I believe we must continue to ask God to heal those who are sick, comfort those who are hurting and provide renewed strength and wisdom to all who are managing the effects of COVID-19.” 

Gov. Stitt also encourages churches and other houses of worship to continue taking precautions to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to care for vulnerable members of their congregations.

“I believe our churches and faith communities have an incredible opportunity during this season to provide hope to Oklahomans who are struggling as we close a year that has been mentally, emotionally and physically draining,”said Gov. Stitt.“It’s important that we continue to find safe ways to gather as we all do our part to protect our families, neighbors and communities from this virus.”

It would be really, really interesting to see an animated geographic time-series of Oklahoma, tracing Covid-19 infection sites – a big contact trace, as it were – just to see if the religious gatherings called for by Governor Stitt become super-spreader events.

While magical thinkers can often argue their way out of binds, a graphic animation showing disease and death emanating from churches would certainly make some people think a little harder.

But one other thought came to mind as I typed this: toxoplasmosis:

The parasite du jour. I figured this was nicer than showing a cat killing a rodent.

Infection with T. gondii has been shown to alter the behavior of mice and rats in ways thought to increase the rodents’ chances of being preyed upon by cats. Infected rodents show a reduction in their innate aversion to cat odors; while uninfected mice and rats will generally avoid areas marked with cat urine or with cat body odor, this avoidance is reduced or eliminated in infected animals. Moreover, some evidence suggests this loss of aversion may be specific to feline odors: when given a choice between two predator odors (cat or mink), infected rodents show a significantly stronger preference to cat odors than do uninfected controls. [Wikipedia, citations omitted]

The cases are rather parallel, wouldn’t you say? The worse the infection of fundamentalist religion, the more likely the infected are to become, err, infected with the virus causing Covid-19.

While it sounds self-correcting, it’s the secondary and tertiary victims of the latter infection, who may not be infected with the former, that also suffer. That’s why I can’t just shake it off. Too many innocent victims.

Souk:

: a marketplace in northern Africa or the Middle East
also : a stall in such a marketplace [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “There sure is evidence of fraud. Just not the fraud Trump is ranting about.,” David Von Drehle, WaPo:

I could go on. The Internet is a souk of cheap-jack merchandise — banners, flags, hats, bumper stickers, T-shirts — aimed at poor saps suckered into Trump’s phony war. This cynical commerce is a fitting end to an unseemly presidency: one more grand con, another monetized lie. There’s a massive fraud going on here, for sure. But not the one Trump is ranting about.

If you like it when a partisan admonishes their fellows concerning their shared delusions, Erick Erickson delivers just such a lesson, and I finally clicked that damn button in his mail so I could deliver the link to you. His conclusion?

To admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad at this point. So it’s better to double down on the lies and blame everyone else from the Trump-appointed Attorney General to the Trump-appointed FBI Director to the Trump-appointed CIA Director to various Trump endorsed Governors to the GOP establishment to corporate America, the Carlyle Group, the Rothschilds, the Russians, and the Chinese, along with Fox News that spent four years letting the President have nearly uninterrupted air time. …

It really is remarkable how everyone always fails President Trump in the end. From Jeff Sessions to John Kelly to Mick Mulvaney to General Mattis to William Barr to John Durham to Brian Kemp to Doug Ducey and the list goes on and on, all these people just fail or betray the President, allegedly. I just suspect when the failures are so complete and so thorough and so widespread among people he chose, hired, or endorsed, that maybe they are not the ones failing.

But the entire rant is entirely predictable and could be written by anyone who’s been paying attention and is not a Trump cultist. The Lincoln Project’s anti-Trump videos, all of the Biden endorsements from current and former Republicans, even from Trump Administration officials, former and serving – they have all served to make Erickson’s rant, necessary as it is, nearly pro forma and almost boring.

But Erickson has to write this because of the right-wing epistemic bubble. They talk to themselves only, they convince each other that the mainstream media is fake, and when the bubble develops a hole – they don’t think, Maybe we were wrong. No, their leaders tell them God is on their side, it’s all cheating by the other side, their campaign officials, OUR campaign officials (welcome to the bus, Raffensperger!), and just keep on being … un-American assholes. Indeed, Erickson has been complicit in tarring mainstream media as being fake.

And that’s the real challenge facing America today. We’ve allowed greed to run rampant, and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown.

Over the last four years, Steve Benen has, from time to time, expressed puzzlement over a particular quirk of President Trump, which is the use of dogs as a form of deprecation, such as this rant from yesterday:

But putting that aside, why in the world does the outgoing president keep referring to dogs like this?

In June, Trump was interviewed by Sean Spicer, his former White House press secretary, and argued that the impeachment charges against him were “thrown out like dogs.” A year earlier, the president boasted to the world that ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “died like a dog” — a phrase Trump liked so much, he used it twice.

The phrasing seemed familiar for good reason. As regular readers may recall, shortly before his State of the Union address in 2019, Trump told a group of television anchors that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) “choked like a dog” at a press conference a few days prior.

A few weeks before that, we learned of an anecdote from Cliff Sims’ book in which Trump told then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in reference to the closing days of the 2016 election cycle, “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog!”

It’s clearly one of this president’s favorite metaphors. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for example, was “fired like a dog.” According to Trump, so were conservative media figures Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck.

And it finally came to me:

Dogs are the epitome, at least in American society, of the concept of loyalty. You think loyalty, you think dog.

Our cats here at UMB are failing to take umbrage. They know how the dominoes lie.

And, for President Trump, innate loyalty is for suckers. If you aren’t looking out for #1, you’re a mark, a sucker. Trump deploys loyalty strategically, to keep the loyalty of voting groups he considers important, or people who have shit on him, such as the recently pardoned General Flynn (I still can’t believe that was allowed to go through, as he had not finished contesting his earlier guilty pleas!).

But he’s not loyal on general grounds. Given the chance to sell out the United States, he wouldn’t shoot the foreign agent between the eyes; he’d consider the offer, and maybe take it. As I suspect with the sale of arms to certain Arab powers.

Mystery solved.

Just a quick note that the potential terrors expressed here will probably not come to pass, as the case was essentially moot by the time SCOTUS‘ judgment came down.

But it’s still disconcerting to see such magical thinking on the part of the conservative Justices of the Court, excepting Roberts.

My goodness, The Lincoln Project is getting downright mean:

This might provide for months of future entertainment:

The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to court records unsealed Tuesday in federal court.

The case is the latest legal twist in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration after several of his top advisers have been convicted of federal criminal charges and as the possibility rises of Trump giving pardons to those who’ve been loyal to him. [CNN/Politics]

This is a bit puzzling as the pardon power is one of the least regulated powers of the President. He can basically use it how he wants, when he wants. So perhaps Trump will suffer no repercussions for accepting bribes to use the pardon power.

But does this hypothetical immunity, about which I could be completely wrong, also apply to the bribers? That I’m not so sure about. Maybe Trump’ll have to hand out two pardons per bribe, for the crime to be pardoned of, and for doing the bribe.

Is this just Trump making sure he remains in the spotlight after he’s out of office? I’m drooling just thinking about it – it has crime family written all over it.

The Daily Beast reports on an unique approach to Covid-19 infection prevention:

Scientists have started sounding the alarm over a strange new theory circulating online about the novel coronavirus. Basically, it argues that the coronavirus may not really be all that novel. Instead, the thinking goes, it could be an ancient virus hidden in our DNA that does not directly make people sick—until shifts in Earth’s geomagnetic field create a cascade of effects that ultimately activate that latent genetic code and cause COVID-19.

The wildest part: Thanks to its own unique geomagnetic properties, the theory maintains, “nephrite-jade amulets, a calcium ferromagnesium silicate, may prevent COVID-19.” In other words, you may be able to wear a physical piece of armor to ward off the deadly illness.

Unlike the bogus far-right conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and other diseases that have percolated over the years, this idea did not emerge from some secretive digital fringe. Instead, it originated in a peer-reviewed article in Science of the Total Environment (SOTE), a reputable academic journal, thanks in part, its authors claim, to funding“through grants from the United States National Institutes of Health.” (The National Institutes of Health did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

How embarrassing, not only for the journal (that’s Science of the Total Environment, folks, in case you weren’t paying attention – and, now that I think about it, that sort of title raises a red flag or two for me), but for the peer-reviewers as well.

Either that, or it’s not such a reputable journal. The problem with the phrase peer reviewed is that if you’re self-deluding, and your peers are self-deluding, well, what’s the point? I should like to see some other phrase come into vogue, although I’ll retract my first inclination: expert-reviewed. That could go so wrong, couldn’t it? I mean, a self-proclaimed expert on homeopathy might give a big thumbs up to a study on homeopathy that “proves” it can cure cancer! Whereas those who’ve studied homeopathy extensively would just shake their heads and reject the submission.

But speaking of retractions, following the provided link doesn’t take you to the article, but to a page that seems to suggest the paper’s been retracted, and long time readers know where to go next: Retraction Watch:

The co-authors of a paper that claimed jade amulets might prevent COVID-19 have tried to distance themselves from the work, in a letter to the co-editor of the journal that published it.

In fact, the first author, Moses Bility of the University of Pittsburgh, says of his co-authors:

the conceptual understanding and far-reaching implications of such an unconventional approach and complex idea that employed concepts/frameworks from geology, geophysics, and Condensed Matter Physics may have not been fully clear to them all.

Well, there you go. And heavens forfend that Bility have to review the paper before submission himself! But wait, it gets better:

Elsewhere in the letter, the authors try to distance themselves from their conclusion that jade amulets might protect against COVID-19:

One of the major concerns of the scientific community expressed via the online press or social media platforms includes statements that appear to endorse the use of jade amulets in preventing COVID-19 infection. We did not intend for this to be our message, but we must contend with the fact that it did elicit such interpretation.

For reference, the statement about jade amulets, which appeared in the “highlights” section of the post, does not seem ambiguous:

Nephrite-Jade amulets, a calcium-ferromagnesian silicate, may prevent COVID-19.

But this may be the most telling bit:

In an earlier exchange, Bility accused Retraction Watch of racism for asking questions about the paper.

Sounds like someone was caught peddling bullshit and tried to bluster their way out of their hole.

And that’s your amusing bit for today.

Ever wonder where the unbelievers are clumping? Ryan Burge thinks he does:

Where are there high concentrations of atheists?

I think most people would correctly guess New England and the Pacific Northwest.

But, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming have a lot of atheists, too. That's interesting because Nebraska and Kansas have very low percentages. pic.twitter.com/HPB0wSIKTJ

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) November 30, 2020

South Dakota makes me wonder about the validity of the data, but, hey, maybe it’s really so.

If Governor Kemp (R-GA) has any thoughts about a promotion in 2024, he may want to consider being a little more forward than this:

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) “pushed back on exhortations by President Trump, suggesting that the president was asking him to interfere in the Nov. 3 election in a way prohibited by state law,” the Washington Post reports.

Said a Kemp spokesman: “Georgia law prohibits the Governor from interfering in elections. The Secretary of State, who is an elected Constitutional officer, has oversight over elections that cannot be overridden by executive order.” [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire]

My suggestion is that Governor Kemp issue the following statement:

President Trump is no longer welcome in the State of Georgia, and, if he should attempt to land and stir up more trouble, Georgia State Troopers are instructed to arrest him for conspiracy, name conspiracy to interfere in an official election.

Maybe not legal, but certainly would announce that Governor Kemp is not someone with whom to trifle.

Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan (R-GA) has stepped up and decided to cling to honesty rather than President Trump’s knees:

Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan (R-GA)

Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor on Tuesday joined a growing list of GOP officials in the state who are publicly rejecting President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud, saying the misinformation spread by the President and his allies is “alarming” and could jeopardize the party in upcoming Senate runoff elections.

Asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” about a falsehood spread by Trump that election officials in Georgia were “making deals,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan flatly replied, “certainly not.”

“What is alarming is the amount of misinformation that continues to flow. It’s alarming to me,” Duncan continued. “It’s certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to kind of put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie in the efforts to maybe to flip an election. … That’s not what democracy is all about.” [CNN/Politics]

Good for him, although I put him in the same category as election officials: just doing his job, it doesn’t warrant a parade.

The question is whether he has the stature to remind Trump cultists that honesty and honor are more important than winning-at-all-costs, as Trump advocates. That said, I fear Duncan has sunk his own career:

“I think short term we run the risk of alienating voters for our Senate race that is coming upon us for Sen. Loeffler and Sen. Perdue. And we need them,” he said. “And long term, I think we hurt the brand of our Republican Party, which is certainly bigger than one person long term … As Americans we need to see leaders that inspire us and not talk down.”

In Trump’s mind, and those of his cultists, it’s all about the Trump brand and himself; the implication that the Party is more important than Trump is anathema. He’s a pathological narcissist, after all.

The coming Senate runoffs in January will provide a convenient measuring stick. If the cultists are substantially enraged by Duncan’s remarks, they may well stay home. If they remain loyal to the Republican Party, then the incumbent Republican Senators will win, although it’ll be close.

I expect the Republicans will win. It’s possible that Perdue will win and Loeffler will lose, as it appears Loeffler hasn’t built up a reserve of good will among the independents, but I would be surprised.