The Coming Age Of Payback

As we worry about the Rise Of The Machines and Climate Change and the currently occurring Extinction Event, let's not ignore the ability of Earth's Plant Life to engineer and facilitate our demise.

From BBC:

The more genes in your genome, the more highly evolved you are as a species.

We have a scorecard that shows humans lagging rather badly:

Homo Sapiens: 26,000 genes

Rice: 45,000 genes

A few things I really like thinking about because of this:

1. There are 650 species of carnivorous plants that we know of
2. A plant keeps its head below ground and displays its sexual organs to the outside world
3. If we associate intelligence with the ability to earn the right to survive, we may be in for some very rude surprises

Deep Thought

Baking is mostly just gluing broken plants back together with eggs

hat hit = reddit r/Showerthoughts

And On We Go

Recently, the Parade of Stoopid got a new float.

• the noise of windmills doesn't give you cancer
• climate change is not a hoax
• the earth is not flat
• vaccinations don't cause autism
• Sandy Hook wasn't a false flag thing
• ...and neither was 9/11
• evolution isn't "just a theory"
• and on and on and on

I can't believe we have to talk about some of this shit.

A Facebook Post

I don’t know - it’s hard for me to see any US ties to Russia, except maybe…

1. for the Roger Stone things 
2. and the Manafort things 
3. and the Cohen things 
4. and the Flynn things
5. and the Maria Butina / NRA thing 
6. and the NRA campaign contribution thing
7. and the Tillerson thing 
8. and the Sessions thing 
9. and the Kushner thing 
10. and the Carter Page thing 
11. and the Felix Sater thing 
12. and the Boris Epshteyn thing 
13. and the Rosneft thing 
14. and the Gazprom thing 
15. and the Sergey Gorkov banker thing 
16. and the Azerbaijan thing 
17. and the “I love Putin” thing 
18. and the Donald Trump, Jr. thing 
19. and the Sergey Kislyak thing 
20. and the Russian Affiliated Interests thing 
21. and the Russian Business Interests thing 
22. and the Emoluments Clause thing 
23. and the Alex Schnaider thing 
24. and the hack of the DNC thing 
25. and the Guccifer 2.0 thing 
26. and the Mike Pence “I don’t know anything” thing 
27. and the Russians mysteriously dying thing 
28. and Trump’s public request to Russia to hack Hillary’s email thing
29. and the Trump house sale for $100 million at the bottom of the housing bust to the Russian fertilizer king thing 
30. and the Russian fertilizer kings plane showing up in Concord, NC during Trump rally campaign thing 
31. and the Nunes sudden flight to the White House in the night thing 
32. and the Nunes personal investments in the Russian winery thing 
33. and the Wilbur Ross with his Cyprus bank thing 
34. and Trump not releasing his tax returns thing 
35. and the Republican Party’s rejection of an amendment to require Trump to show his taxes thing 
36. and the election hacking thing 
37. and the GOP platform change to the Ukraine thing 
38. and the Steele Dossier thing 
39. and the Leninist Bannon thing 
40. and the Sally Yates can’t testify thing 
41. and the Sally Yates firing thing* 
42. and the intelligence community’s investigative reports thing 
43. and Trump’s reassurance that the Russian connection is all “fake news” thing 
44. and Spicer’s Russian Dressing “nothing’s wrong” thing 
45. and Trump warning the Russians 
46. and Syrians before the Bombing thing* 
47. and the Trump refusing to provide Flynn's foreign ties documents to Congress thing* 
48. and Flynn's illegal Turkish lobbying being paid for by the Russians thing* 
49. and Flynn's illegal lobbying for Russia thing* 
50. and the Trump asking Comey for a "loyalty oath" thing* 
51. and Trump lying to the world about Comey saying he's not being investigated thing* 
52. and the Trump firing Comey thing* 
53. and the Trump or his stooges lying to the world about why he fired Comey with 3 different lies* 
54. and Trump hosting Russian foreign minister and ambassador one day after to demonstrate his authoritarian street cred* 
55. and the finding out that Trump actually tried to fire Robert Mueller in June 2017 thing 
56. and the claim by trump that the Russia investigation is over some unrefunded golf club fees to Robert Mueller thing... 
57. and the lying to the American public during the campaign about have no business in Russia thing…
58. and the Ivanka super-duper Moscow hotel spa thing…

So there’s probably nothing, all of this must be normal, just a bunch of separate dots with no connection whatsoever.

Today's Quote

Donald Trump, champion and avatar for the shallow state, has won power because his supporters are threatened by what they don't understand, and what they don't understand is almost everything.
Indeed, from evolution to data about our economy to the science of vaccines to the threats we face in the world, they reject vast subjects rooted in fact in order to have reality conform to their worldviews.
They don't dig for truth; they skim the media for anything that makes them feel better about themselves.
To many of them, knowledge is not a useful tool, but a cunning barrier elites have created to keep power from the average man and woman.

-- David Rothkopf

Today's Pix

click

One Way Or Another

If you install lightning rods on your church, how do you then expect your congregation to put their faith in what you're preaching?

But if you don't, and your church gets zapped, maybe that's god saying, "Get with the science, you stupid fucks."

Of course, no matter how it fails, faith will endure as long as believers insist on maintaining the requisite level of deliberate ignorance.

And a good preacher - like any good grifter - will always be able to deflect and change the subject so the questions that lead to uncomfortable conversations are put off long enough to be forgotten again.

He, Robot

There's always that moment in the sci-fi stories when people worry that the machines have become sensate and self-aware - and of course that's the dramatic conflict.

And also too of course, it's "just a story". 

Sure hope we're not talking 'bout memory that's institutional or machine-genetic or some weird sci-fi thing that can make it real.

Today's Tweet

Grit

The best demonstration of grit, persistence and self-confidence in less than one minute pic.twitter.com/QjDnsHliZv

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) March 31, 2019

Today's Today

This year, April 2nd marks the day when American women start their Income Year - as compared with American men, who always start their Income Year on Jan 1st.

Privilege is not a system that makes your life easy. It's a system that doesn't put artificial obstacles in your path that make it harder for you to reach some proximate equality with people who're supposed to be your peers.