Richard Dawkins And The Eugenics Argument That Literally No One Asked For
This is no way to live, Richard.
Yesterday, at 7:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins opened up Twitter, and for no discernible reason whatsoever launched a defense of eugenics that not a single person the whole wide world over had asked for. Well, not a defense of eugenics so much as a strange tirade about how believing that it would be bad for moral reasons shouldn't mean that people should assume it wouldn't "work."
It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it… https://t.co/2tmQJUb9UY— Richard Dawkins (@Richard Dawkins) 1581837982.0
I don't know what kind of dream Richard Dawkins was having that this was the first thing on his mind on a Sunday morning. Perhaps he was lying in bed, steaming about some conversation he had long ago with someone who told him that because eugenics was morally bad that it wouldn't work. Or that he interpreted as someone saying that because eugenics was morally bad that it wouldn't work, because who is even having that conversation?
Shocked that people would react negatively to his casual, early-morning eugenics commentary, he followed up by explaining that even though we totally could "breed humans" to run faster or jump higher, he wasn't saying that we should.
A eugenic policy would be bad. I’m combating the illogical step from “X would be bad” to “So X is impossible”. It w… https://t.co/pHpvMpdRPH— Richard Dawkins (@Richard Dawkins) 1581871285.0
This seems like it might be a bit of a straw man argument. People realize that things that are morally bad can technically "work" — there are certainly lots of problems that could be solved by murdering someone. Lobotomies, I suppose, also "work," but that doesn't make them a good idea.
We also don't have to fight eugenics on moral grounds, because no one who is not on the total fringes is going around fighting for it. There is no argument to lose. Eugenics, as practiced in Nazi Germany, as practiced here in the United States, was a notoriously horrible, cruel, and stupid practice. As practiced with royalty, it led to inbreeding and hemophilia. It's never worked out well. The American Eugenics Society changed their name to the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology decades ago. This is very much a settled thing. Fighting against eugenics is about as useful as putting signs up at a free clinic advising people not to treat their syphilis with mercury.
While none of this should be taken seriously, I feel like I need to point out that no, it would not "work." How would you even go about doing that? Make literally everyone in the world take a running and jumping test, and if they fail, sterilize them? And then repeat, ad nauseam for the next three hundred years?
And why on earth would we all go through all of this — even if it were not horrifying — just so that, at some point in the future, we'd have people who could run faster or jump higher. Who even wants that? The NBA? Probably not even them, because who would pay to go see people be really good at basketball if everyone were really good at basketball?
Athleticism is more about practice than natural ability anyway — both of my parents were athletes and I nearly died halfway through barre class the other day. How do you account for people who might have the right genetic makeup to run fast and jump high but are simply lazy? It's hardly as if you can take a blood test and find out that you are naturally inclined to be especially bouncy.
If he did not consider any of these things, he should perhaps consider ceasing to brand himself as a professional skeptic — because this is some real magical thinking.
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A Museum In England Has A Gender Neutral Bathroom And The Federalist Is On The Case!
There is a whole lot of stupid here.
Last month, a picture of a gender neutral restroom at the Charleston Trust, an art gallery located in a historic house in Lewes, England, caused a bit of a stir online — or at least in The Daily Mail — due to the presence of urinals in said gender neutral restrooms.
This may have been a fair criticism, if only there were not two separate gender neutral restrooms, one with urinals and one without, and also additional non-gender neutral bathrooms on the property as well. Options for everyone! It seems fairly obvious to me, or anyone else with half a brain, that the Charleston Trust had simply converted two non-gender neutral bathrooms into gender neutral bathrooms. Duh.
The Charleston Trust explained on Twitter that they opened the two gender neutral restrooms in September of 2018 to "help members of the queer and trans community feel safe with us, and to ensure disabled visitors who need assistance are not troubled by the gender of their carer." They then explained that the gender neutral restrooms with urinals are clearly labeled as such, and that they are looking into removing them in order "to make both toilet blocks truly gender-inclusive."
It is hard to see how anyone could actually have an issue with this. I mean, even if you really hate trans people, there is a non-gender neutral bathroom that you can use! What more could you want? And yet, a month later, The Federalist is on the case.
I don't want to say that I have a "favorite" Federalist columnist, but if I did, it would have to be Georgi Boorman. Boorman is the columnist who, back in September, wrote an entire essay claiming that abortion was not necessary for ectopic pregnancies, because the fetus will either die on its own or will self-deport from the fallopian tube back to the uterus, and also because, she claimed, people don't actually die from untreated ectopic pregnancies and that ruptured fallopian tubes are no big.
It was so stupid and so roundly criticized that Boorman was forced to do what few Federalist columnists have done, and walked that shit back a few days later. Unfortunately, just a few months later, Ohio Republicans put forward a bill that would require doctors to "reimplant" ectopic pregnancies, despite the fact that this is not medically possible to do.
And now Boorman is back! And boy is she ever mad about this month-old story about gender inclusive bathrooms in a museum in England!
Over the years, we've heard a lot of truly stupid arguments against letting trans people pee in public restrooms — that they'll just come into the restrooms and just start walking around naked for no reason, resulting in someone's four-year-old daughter seeing a penis, that cisgender men will pretend to be trans in order to go into the ladies room and commit an act of sexual assault (HOT TIP: Women can sexually assault other women too! Just ask these women who were sexually assaulted by nuns.), etc. etc.
But Boorman is claiming that the mere existence of not only gender neutral, but single occupancy bathrooms "rob[s] women of an important cultural" space wherein cisgender women can gather and bond:
The women's room is where women get real with each other and with themselves. It's where they gather to regroup when social situations get awkward or intense or they need to communicate in private. It's where chit-chat warms women up to each other in a world where it's easy to turn a cold shoulder or entertain suspicion or false ideas of what other women are like.
What lipstick is that? Where did you get your purse? Could you spare a tampon? Those questions might seem trivial to men, but they are part of the social cohesion that isn't fully appreciated until it's gone. Plus, sometimes you really need a tampon.
The resistance to eliminating women's rooms was never just about sexual abuse or having regular moments of awkwardness. The bathroom is where women go to take deep, slow breaths to overcome their anxiety before an interview or presentation. It's where teenagers vent to each other. It's where broken hearts spill out in hot tears onto wet counters, and blessed strangers come alongside to offer comfort. You think all that's going to happen in unisex washrooms?
Um.
I'm gonna say that's a little much. First of all, no one is "eliminating women's rooms." The Charleston Trust was not "eliminating women's rooms," as evidenced by the fact that they still have a "women's room." The existence of a gender neutral restroom doesn't make a women's room disappear anymore than a men's room makes a women's room disappear. It's just math! If you don't want to use a gender neutral restroom, don't use a gender neutral restroom.
Of course, Boorman isn't just referring to gender neutral bathrooms. Because most of this conversation has not been about gender neutral bathrooms and single stall bathrooms, which by the way, have existed as long as there have been private homes with indoor plumbing and dive bars and grocery stores and people in wheelchairs and parents of children too young to go into a bathroom on their own. It has been about trans women using women's restrooms and trans men using men's bathrooms. I do not know about Boorman, but I have been in restrooms with cisgender women who don't have a tampon, I have been in restrooms with cisgender women who do not menstruate, and I am perfectly capable of asking a trans woman where she bought her lipstick or purse. Hell, I have, in fact, asked cisgender men where they have gotten their lipstick or purse.
As usual, it appears as though, as creative as she is, Boorman has just really not thought this one through very well. Perhaps someday, if she keeps trying, she will hit upon a really clever point of some kind, but this ain't it.
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Rudy Giuliani: The Password Is 'ASSWORD'
Buckle up, chucklefux! This time it's WEIRD.
On Friday, after work, we decided to text one of our best friends to see what she was doing that night. So we pulled out our iPhone and typed "Hey, what you doing this evening," and then we laughed at ourselves because we realized we typed that INTO OUR GOOGLE SEARCH BAR, and we looked at ourselves in the mirror and said "OK Boomer," even though we are not a Boomer.
Speaking of that, computer genius cyber expert superlawyer Rudy Giuliani appears to have texted his password, or a password, to a reporter named Roger Sollenberger, who had just published a thing at BuzzFeed where Giuliani had confirmed some new Ukraine crimes for him, like Giuliani does all the time whenever he opens his mouth. And then it was a dark and stormy night, and Rudy went to a baseball game with Alan Dershowitz:
Two days after publication, on the evening he attended a Yankees playoff game with Alan Dershowitz, Giuliani — President Donald Trump's 75-year-old informal cybersecurity adviser — accidentally texted me what appeared to be a password: Eight characters, beginning with the name of a networking company and including a capital letter, a special character, and a number. Multiple IT experts confirmed it could be nothing else, and, given the iPhone's messaging setup, impossible to type with your butt or in any other unwitting way.
Au contraire, Roger Sollenberger! Maybe Rudy Giuliani's butt just has remarkable dexterity! But is he left-cheeked or right-cheeked? That is what enterprising journalists need to find out.
Sollenberger decided to be nice and say hello, my dude, you appear to have just given me your password, and Rudy said no I gave you my ASSWORD!
I alerted him. He replied, "Oh, that was just a butt dial," but thanked me, punctuated with a smiley-face emoji.
:)
OK, so obviously "Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Expert" is a running joke at this point, because he is BAD AT CYBER.
But this story is just beginning!
Now Is When The Story Gets Weird! Because It Was TOTALLY NORMAL Before.
This whole password/assword situation seems to have set Sollenberger off on a bit of a chase that ended up maybe possibly confirming the identity of "Charles," whom Giuliani had referenced that time his ass dialed a reporter and left a bunch of voicemails:
"You know," Giuliani says at the beginning of the recording, "Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case 'cause he didn't do any due diligence."
Sollenberger tells the story of how Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Sexpert, hired a comms director back in September to fix his cybers, and she is (of course) a 20-year-old person who goes to Liberty University and who spells her name "Christianné Allen" because that's where accent marks go. Because if you were the President of Cyber like Rudy Giuliani, you'd only hire the best people as your comms director, and when all the best people said no, you'd hire some dick Liberty University student.
Allen's Instagram is private now, but her bio describes her as a "saved by Jesus Christ" and a "comms for Rudy" and a Trump idiot and a Turning Point USA idiot and also a Daily Caller idiot.
And, you see, it turns out that Christi-ah-nay is also somehow related to the criminal case against Rudy's Ukrainian-American Chucklefucks, which is running parallel to the impeachment investigation into Donald Trump, because Christi-ah-nay knows a "Charles."
The new hire — 20-year-old Liberty University Online communications major ('22) Christianné Allen—is currently the most solid connection between the work the President's private attorney was doing in Ukraine, an ongoing federal investigation into two of his clients, and a Long Island personal injury lawyer who for reasons still unclear reportedly paid Giuliani $500,000 in two lump-sum "loans" on behalf of a scam business in the fall of 2018.
Wait What? OK, Let's Back Up!
The "Long Island personal injury lawyer" Sollenberger refers to right there is Charles Gucciardo, who might be the "Charles" Roodles was talking about in that message that went straight from his ass to a reporter's voicemail. Wonkette's Five Dollar Feminist told the story of Gucciardo right here. And it seems that Christi-ah-nay interned for Mr. Gucciardo back in 2016, when she was like ... 17, we guess?
Anyway, THAT GUY threw $500,000 in the direction of a "company" called Fraud Guarantee, started by Lev Parnas, one of the Chucklefucks, which was named "Fraud Guarantee" so that when you Googled "Fraud" and "Lev Parnas," you'd find his company, and not ... you know ... anything else bad that might come up when you Googled those terms. And Rudy Giuliani, AMERICA'S NEXT TOP CYBER, was going to do the commercials for "Fraud Guarantee."
That $500,000? That was Roodles The Clown's "pitch fee." And Gucciardo's investment would mean he'd have a stake in this VERY REAL COMPANY that fights ALL THE FRAUD, they GUARANTEE IT.
Per Gucciardo's lawyer, he did so because Giuliani was involved, and Giuliani was "the first name in cybersecurity."
No, he isn't.
Anyway, everybody says this is all on the up-and-up, you betcha and like such as, collect underpants, ???????, PROFIT!
But as Sollenberger reminds us, if this is the same "Charles" Rudy Giuliani was speaking of with his ass to the reporter's voicemail, then what Rudy's ass said about him was that "Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case 'cause he didn't do any due diligence." Not that there are any "fraud cases" working their way through the criminal justice system at this very moment involving any of these characters, OH WAIT.
But what Sollenberger is really here to tell us is that, from what he can tell, Christi-ah-nay the Liberty U student comms director saved by Jesus intern is "the only thing that binds this group other than money," the "group" being Rudy Giuliani, Charles Gucciardo, and Lev The Chucklefuck.
She's known Gucciardo since at least 2015, and is on the internet in pictures with his son. She "tried to start a combination marijuana business–reality TV show in Nevada with her father" sometime after the 2016 election, but that didn't go nowhere. (Because of course! Hey, know who ELSE tried to start a marijuana business in Nevada? READ LEV PARNAS'S AND IGOR FRUMAN'S INDICTMENT!) Guess Liberty University is making exceptions for former marijuana business-ers these days!
And oh yeah, she's always at these idiot-ass Trump fundraisers, including those thrown by the America First PAC. (Hey, know who ELSE ... yeah!)
It sounds like one of those America First PAC events in June 2018, which Allen attended with Gucciardo, may have been the first time every moron in this story collided.
Here, have a picture! Christi-ah-nay is second from the left on the top, we think, Rudy is Rudy, and Rep. Peter King, who just announced he is quitting Congress, is also in it:
And ... just ...
After the Trump International fundraiser, Gucciardo donated $50,000 to America First. The next month Parnas and Fruman traveled with Gucciardo to Israel, where they were photographed with Anthony Scaramucci, who said Parnas and Fruman were trying to "rope people into their game" on the trip. On his return, Parnas pledged Giuliani the $500,000 payment, but, needing cash, got Gucciardo to front the money. According to the New York Times, this money secured Parnas's relationship with Giuliani, which as far as we know was about three months old.
Parnas and Fruman ramped up their work for Giuliani. In November 2018, according to Giuliani, Parnas began introducing him to Ukrainian officials, and Giuliani made his own trip to the country. Parnas and Fruman made some more trips abroad — including reportedly trying to shake down a powerful oligarch — and then, in April of this year, Gucciardo was given a "friend of Zion" award at a Times Square event that also honored Parnas and Fruman. Giuliani posed onstage for pictures.
And There's So Much More! But It's Making Our Heads Hurt, So You Should Read It Yourdamnself.
Anyway, now Christi-ah-nay, the 20-year-old marijuana Jesus-er Liberty University MAGA idiot, is the "comms director" for Rudy and she appears to have gotten there because she knows "Charles," who forked over $500,000 to Rudy so he could do TV commercials for Guaranteed Fraud or whatever it is called, or maybe Charles introduced her to Lev The Chucklefuck who introduced her to Rudy, or maybe she was also pals with Lev back in their marijuana business days, fuck if we know, and we are learning all about this story because Rudy's ass allegedly sent his internet password to a reporter.
The only thing we can say to all of this is just ... why? Why do we have to read stupid idiot stories like this? Why are the president's best friends such fucking imbeciles? Why is the president? Really, just in general, WHY?
And why is Christi-AH-NAY? That is not where accents go on names. It just isn't.
Why.
[Salon]
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Rudy Giuliani Cybered Himself Again
iPhones are hard.
It's Friday, the day we give thanks that the week is over and we discuss the things that bring us joy. You might be joyful about the Washington Nationals winning the World Series. We are joyful that Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Expert™, has cybered himself, yet again, right in the bottom.
Because you know he calls himself a Cyber Expert™, right? He does.
Yes, very soon after we learned about how Giuliani has a certain tendency to dial reporters' numbers on his cell phone with his old man ass and then proceed to leave long discussions of his crimes in their voicemail, NBC News reports that Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Expert™, one time in 2017 had to spend the day at the Apple Store because he locked himself out of his own iPhone.
This happened after he became Donald Trump's "cybersecurity adviser," because something something Trump picks best people something something.
Less than a month after he was named President Donald Trump's cybersecurity adviser in 2017, Rudy Giuliani walked into an Apple store in downtown San Francisco.
He wasn't looking for a new gadget. Giuliani was looking for help.
He was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times, according to two people familiar with the matter and a photo of an internal Apple store memo obtained by NBC News.
"Very sloppy," said one of the people, a former Apple store employee who was there on the day that Giuliani stopped by in February 2017.
"Trump had just named him as an informal adviser on cybersecurity and here, he couldn't even master the fundamentals of securing your own device."
VERY SLOPPY, Rudy! And ... ten times? All idiots who use the internet and the ringy dingy know that in the modern times, if you're still fuckin' up your password on the third try or so, you better figure out the right password or just reset the damn thing, because you're gonna get locked out.
Of course, we don't know how many PIN numbers Giuliani is dealing with. If the SDNY ever indicts him, we might get a sense for how many weird bank accounts he might be using, and we might think, "Oh, well he just has too many PINs to keep up with, that is all, could happen to any low-grade criminal who is an idiot." (NBC News helpfully reports that it was an iPhone 6, so in case any of you Apple users out there were like "the PINs are six digits now, it's harder than it used to be," let this longtime Apple customer remind you that the 6's still had four-digit PINs.)
NBC News spoke to a bunch of actual security people, from the FBI and elsewhere, who were shocked and appalled that Rudy Giuliani, White House Cyber Expert™, would be going to a commercial store and begging a stranger to open up his phone, saying that kind of lah-di-dah approach to his own technology could make him very vulnerable to hackers and malware from foreign bad actors. Of course, considering the kind of international cohort of garbage criminals Rudy G. hangs out with, maybe that is a feature and not a bug for him.
There are wingnuts on the internet right now going "HAW HAW! The FBI did the same thing, HAW HAW!" because they are wingnuts and therefore their brains have gas leaks, and apparently they don't understand that there is a big difference between the FBI getting Apple's help to break into a suspect's iPhone for which they do not have the password, and having to help Grandpa ChuckleBottom get into his own damn phone without accidentally wiring money to a Nigerian prince. You know, unless that Nigerian prince was offering made-up dirt on Joe Biden, in which case Rudy meant to do that.
Anyway, one of the wingnuts saying "HAW HAW!" is Rudy Giuliani.
Hey @NBCNews, last I checked the FBI, last year, had to ask Apple to unlock an iPhone too! We’re all human, just maybe not tonight...🎃— Rudy Giuliani (@Rudy Giuliani) 1572564657.0
OK, Roodles the Clown.
The point of this post is that Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Expert™, is good at a lot of things. He is good at iPhone. He is good at butt-dial. He is good at writing words on Twitter and accidentally turning them into links, which are then bought by hilarious people on the internet and redirected to websites that say Donald Trump is a traitor to America.
Mueller filed an indictment just as the President left for https://t.co/8ZNrQ6X29a July he indicted the Russians wh… https://t.co/YKyK3aSM5v— Rudy Giuliani (@Rudy Giuliani) 1543602115.0
He is good at doing "dark web scan" on his phone, presumably on a day he hasn't locked himself out of his phone.
oh look "security expert" Rudy Giuliani shows you how to do a special "dark web scan", courtesy of Experian. https://t.co/8DIlUY56Lu— Josh Marshall (@Josh Marshall) 1523047573.0
Did we mention that he is good at law, and also Constitution? This happened this week.
Aside from confessing part of the crime Donald Trump committed with Ukraine, wanna know what else Rudy Giuliani did there? As Andrew Feinberg helpfully pointed out to him ...
@RudyGiuliani @realDonaldTrump Rudy, if he’s acting under Article II section 3, he’s delivering the annual State of… https://t.co/G9GTdrg4G4— Andrew Feinberg (@Andrew Feinberg) 1572486922.0
Rudy Giuliani has now deleted his original tweet.
In summary and in conclusion, here is a video from the Chris Hayes show about Rudy Giuliani, Cyber Expert™, which includes Donald Trump talking on camera about how good Roodles is at cyber.
Rudy Giuliani, Cybersecurity Expert | All In | MSNBC www.youtube.com
Amazing.
[NBC News]
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