“On Wednesday, the Pentagon reported on its casualties website that 18 American service members had been killed during the war in Iran. By Thursday, the Defense Department had lowered that number, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war. Three military officials said that one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a ceasefire in the war in April.” — New York Times

Modern warfare is full of consequences that continue to exist even after the president says they do not. Fortunately, the Pentagon has begun replacing outdated military doctrine with a simpler system that should feel familiar to anyone who has ever lost an argument near a swing set.

NUH-UH
Nuh-Uh is used when journalists, intelligence agencies, satellite images, eyewitnesses, or the Pentagon’s own website claim something happened. Civilian deaths? Nuh-uh. School bombed? Nuh-uh. The official government website said eighteen yesterday, and now it’s substantially fewer? Websites say lots of things. Should journalists continue asking questions, officials may proceed directly to I Know You Are, but What Am I?

NOT IT
Not It determines which country must accept responsibility for a military disaster. The last country to touch the war is responsible for the entire war, unless the United States says “not it” first while touching the side of its nose. An enemy nation may attempt to invoke Not It, but it does not count because we already called it and they were not in the room.

THEY STARTED IT
This permits any military response as long as the other country did something first. Should evidence show that the United States acted first, officials may move backward through history until they find something the enemy did earlier. This could be an attack, a threat, a mean look, or something Iran did in the 1970s. Once located, that action becomes the new beginning of the conflict.

DO-OVER
Sometimes an invasion does not produce the promised outcome. The government may fail to eliminate a weapons program, remove a hostile regime, establish democracy, or remember why the operation began twenty years ago. This is the beauty of the Do-Over. It permits the military to try the same strategy again with a different operation name. The previous attempt does not count because we were not ready.

I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?
This powerful counterintelligence technique neutralizes accusations by immediately returning them to the accuser.

You violated the ceasefire.

No, you violated the ceasefire.

You are concealing the death toll.

No, you are concealing the death toll.

You entered a war without congressional authorization.

Maybe Congress entered a war without our authorization. Ever think about that, genius?

If this fails, the Pentagon may upgrade to I’m Rubber, You’re Glue.

I’M RUBBER, YOU’RE GLUE
This is an advanced missile-defense system in which all criticism bounces off the United States and sticks to the enemy. Accusations involving civilian casualties, illegal strikes, escalation, or war crimes are automatically redirected toward the enemy. No evidence is required because Rubber does not have to explain itself to Glue. Any criticism that somehow penetrates Rubber may still be neutralized with Nuh-Uh.

NO FAIR
No Fair activates whenever the enemy retaliates in a manner that negatively influences approval numbers back home. American strikes are strategic, proportionate, and necessary. Enemy strikes are reckless escalations proving they cannot be trusted to respond calmly to American strikes. Officials must appear genuinely surprised each time this happens and ask why the bad guy always makes everything into such a big deal.

BASE
Senior leaders may avoid accountability by having at least one hand or foot touching a secure military installation and loudly declaring “base.” While on base, they cannot be tagged by Congress, international law, casualty statistics, or Congressional committees.

TIME OUT
When casualty numbers become too large, Congress gets too curious, or the enemy starts hitting back, the president may yell “time out.” Everyone must stop counting costs and casualties immediately. Any deaths after that belong to the next war, which means No Backsies, which means we win.

The Batman Effect: people in an experiment acted more altruisticly when the caped crusader was present.

I appreciate the plain speech of Science magazine’s Derek Lowe in his recent piece, The Assault On Science Funding Continues.

When I talk to people about this subject (and that includes some journalists as well) and say what I’m about to at the end of this paragaph I am sometimes met with disbelief. But I mean what I say and I am trying my best to say what I mean: The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.

That’s it. That’s the story. They are naturally not putting it in those words, but instead talking about “gold standard science” and the “reproducibility crisis” and funding “bold inquiry” for “transformational breakthroughs”. This is all bullshit, and it’s important to realize that. Shameless hand-waving bullshit, delivered in a how-dare-you-think-otherwise manner is the defining style of the entire Trump administration. You can see it in every appointee, in every part of the executive branch, and in the pronouncements of all of Trump’s supporters. I realize that this is a simple heuristic to apply, and a very unambiguous and unflattering one, but I find it to be all too useful and all too accurate. Give it a try.

Yep. He’s the mob boss president — everything is about favors, taking his cut, deals, tough guy-ness, bending the world to his will, power, and white male supremacy.

Tags: Derek Lowe · Donald Trump · politics · science

There is persuasive evidence that the smoke from climate change-driven Canadian wildfires isn't being pushed into America by prevailing winds. It's entirely because of how much our current government sucks.

On Friday, both Donald Trump and Republican legislators made threats against Canada over how their fires are affecting air quality across a wide area of the United States. Because—and this is a great surprise to Republicans who have long argued to the contrary—there's only one atmosphere, and we all have to share it.

The stupidity. It really does burn.

First, Trump decried our northern neighbor's refusal to properly groom the 3.7 million square kilometers of boreal forests that covers 40% of the Canadian landmass. And he's going to charge them for it.

Yeah, Canadians, get out those rakes. Trump owns golf courses, so he knows that you can keep every tree in the taiga perfectly trimmed if only you practice "basic Forest Management." Trump, as many people have said, understands grooming.

But, is simply putting a tree tax on Canada sufficient? Nay, say GOP legislators. They have interrupted their busy schedule of pretending Mitch McConnell is breathing on his own to introduce the CANADA FIRE Act.

"To impose sanctions with respect to the Government of Canada in response to transboundary wildfire smoke affecting the United States, and for other purposes. … The Government of Canada has failed to take sufficient and timely measures to prevent, mitigate, or respond to repeated transboundary wildfire-smoke events affecting the United States."

Exactly how Canada is to turn back smoke at the border goes unstated, but there is a good deal of chest thumping about making them get out there and do some unspecified hard work. The bill provides for seizing the property of any Canadian official involved in resource management or policy making, along with that of their family members, should Trump declare a "transboundary smoke emergency." It also allows Trump to block all Canadian imports, close the border, cancel all Canadian vias, and declare the Canadian ambassador and other diplomatic personell to be “persona non grata.”

In other words: Trump gets to declare war on Canada if they let their stinky smoke cross our sacred border. Maybe we should start planning now for control of the St. Lawrence seaway.

As of Friday, over 850 wildfires were burning across Canada. As the Detroit Free Press reports, wildfire summers are the "new normal," and we can expect them to keep recurring.

The last three fire seasons have been among the 10 worst on record in Canada, according to the Canadian Climate Institute, the nation's leading independent, nonprofit climate change policy research organization. Research shows accelerating climate change, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, makes wildfires bigger, hotter and more destructive — and Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, according to a 2019 Canadian government report. Canada's area burned in wildfires has quadrupled since the 1970s.

The incidence of wildfire is increasing, not because Canada suddenly slacked off on sweeping up pine needles, as Trump seems to believe, but because their forests are getting hotter and drier. And it's getting worse.

The sanctions that he is applying, and the laws that Republicans are trying to pass, are targeting the effect of something whose cause Trump has celebrated.

That smoke blanketing the Midwest? That smoke is Trump using war time powers just one month ago to protect the most polluting power source on the planet.

"As a result of the $700m investment that I'm announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines, a tremendous number, and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal," Trump said.

That smoke is Trump sending Duke Energy $179 million to stop building a wind farm before it could go into operation. And then spending $765 million to kill a whole group of offshore wind projects already in the works.

“Today marks a significant step in advancing President Trump’s energy agenda and lowering energy prices for Americans,” said Department of Justice Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. “By ending these offshore wind leases and pivoting investment toward dependable natural gas infrastructure in multiple states, Invenergy is helping revitalize American energy and national security."

That smoke is Trump cancelling the nation's largest solar power project along with $83 billion of clean energy spending that had already been approved.

The analysis found that 223 manufacturing and clean energy projects representing $82.9 billion in investment and 111,765 jobs have stalled or been cancelled during President Donald Trump's second term.

That smoke is Trump ending support for electric vehicles at a time when they are poised to dominate sales and rolling back fuel efficiency standards to increase burning of oil.

"We're officially terminating Joe Biden's ridiculously burdensome, horrible, actually, CAFE standards that impose expensive restrictions," Trump said, referring to the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules, often called CAFE standards. "And all sorts of problems, all sorts of problems for automakers."

That smoke is "drill, baby, drill."

That smoke is "wind kills dolphins."

That smoke is "clean, beautiful coal."

That smoke is every Republican who has, for over four decades, denied the existence of human-caused climate change while encouraging its acceleration. And, unfortunately, it won't be going away soon as the Canadian Climate Institute makes clear.

Thanks to climate change:

• Snow cover is lower.
• Rainfall is more erratic.
• Forests are drier.
• Summers are hotter.
• Lightning is more frequent.
• Fires start sooner.
• Fires burn hotter.
• Fires spread faster.
• Fires burn more area.
• "Zombie fires" smolder through the winter. ready to start the process again.

All of that is happening because human beings keep burning fossil fuels. Because of stupidity and greed.

It is perfectly in our grasp to have clean, abundant, cheap energy. Republicans are doing everything possible to make sure American energy is dirty, scarce, and expensive. Because no one can monopolize sunshine.

I'm sorry, Canada, that you have to share our air.

Marvin Gaye’s isolated vocals on I Heard It Through The Grapevine. The man has pipes.

[This is a vintage post originally from Sep 2014.]

Tags: Marvin Gaye · music · video

By now, many of you have probably read or heard about the recent exposé revealing a secretive society in which the wealthy and the famous hunt poor people for sport. I more than understand fans being concerned about my reported involvement when they’re seeing bizarre headlines and posts about panels where we allow the poor person to plead for their life and the dinners in which an unhoused man is mockingly honored as “the king of the hunt” when we put a construction paper crown on his head and feed him empty banana peels and crusts of bread.

In other words, my critics are missing the nuance of my membership in the wealthy people hunting poor people for sport club.

To be clear, I have only been to three or four hunting poor people for sport conferences. Three. Or four. That’s not quite a dedicated membership to a secret society, is it? Nor have I ever met the billionaire known as the Founder of the Hunt. I have never spoken with him on the phone or with his representatives, other than to ask where the hunt will be held this year, what weapons will be considered fair game, and who needs to survive seventy-two hours in the forest to have all their debts cleared.

I’m not saying this out of ego, but it’s important to remember that many high-profile people need to ask these questions before attending an event like this.

Also, I want to reaffirm that the billionaire Founder of the Hunt has politics that are the complete opposite of mine. You can paint me as some right-wing lunatic if you want, but I know in my heart the good I’ve done for those who haven’t been as lucky as me. Okay? I support LGBTQ+ rights. I support a woman’s right to choose. I even do a land acknowledgment before they open the man’s thirty-four-by-twenty-three-inch cage to let him loose with a head start of ten seconds. Whatever you think being a member of this club entails, I strongly believe I wouldn’t be disguising bear traps with leaves and setting up a speaker that plays the sound of a distressed woman begging for help if we had politicians in office who uplifted those less fortunate. So, please don’t paint me with a broad brush when I’m out there doing the work.

At the hunts I’ve been to, there were a wide variety of hunters, with a wide variety of hunting opinions—some I agreed with, some I didn’t. I can’t speak for every person on the list, especially when I was only with a small subset of them when we crawled through dense grass in order to slice an unsuspecting hobo’s Achilles tendon. My experience was not of a single ideological gathering. Rather, we were able to have important conversations about our beliefs. If the victim dies fast, was it a test of speed and accuracy? Or was it more the sign of a skilled hunter if the hopeless target suffers as long as possible, no matter how many fingers remain and how much blood is lost?

I’ve had long, detailed debates with members of different political persuasions on whether we should eat the man we caught in a net and allowed to get so dehydrated that he hallucinated us as demons when we came to put him down. Those aren’t the types of discussions you’re likely to have in public, especially when so much of the media is ready to pounce on celebrities for stepping out of line. But how can we come together as a country, or even as a world, when we’re afraid to share our thoughts on the easy kill of a shotgun versus the clean kill of a sniper rifle? What does it say about the current cultural climate that two sides can’t find common ground on how long to starve the dogs before letting them loose on a man who’s hoping his wife and children won’t be visited by the loan sharks he owed money to?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been focused on making a positive impact on how the future unfolds, especially in tech, AI, and which areas of the body outside the neck can cause you to bleed out with the right shot. Part of that work means forming relationships with all kinds of hunters and trying to understand their strategies for making the man lose all hope when he realizes his stash of nuts and berries in the forest has been poisoned. Sometimes I try to get them to understand mine, which is pretending I’m there to help the victim escape and then, once his guard is down, claiming that sweet trophy for myself.

So, yes, I do respect that many of you have misgivings about me being in the wealthy people hunting poor people for sport club. But I also know that it’s productive to sometimes engage with those we oppose and to remind ourselves that we all want the same thing at the end of the day: To see the light leave the eyes of a living, breathing, feeling person who isn’t famous or wealthy enough to help my career.