Argh, So Much Anxiety

I'm having so much anxiety about this election. Argh.

News Sources I'm Reading

 I used to subscribe to the New York Times, but their policies became so openly transphobic that I dropped their subscription. After that, I subscribed to the Washington Post, until this past week, when they let their billionaire owner dictate their content, and became, thus, no better than Fox News. I cancelled my subscription and told them why.

Now I have subscribed to The Boston Globe and The Star Tribune. I also read The Guardian, mostly for what it has to say about international events.

If democracy is to survive, the nation needs reliable, trustworthy, non-partisan journalism. That doesn't come free. People have to be willing to pay for it. But also, the newspapers themselves must be willing to stand up to billionaires and wanna-be fascists. 

As I said in 2020, I didn't think the downfall of America would be quite this boring and depressing. But here we are.

Scalzi Endorses Harris

I mean, no surprise, but his post is worth reading nonetheless.

A pull quote:

I am deeply tired of Donald Trump and everything about his shitty, selfish, criminal and hateful self, a man whose only lasting legacy to this point is encouraging the worst parts of the American public to free themselves of any social bond to their neighbors and to be be just as awful as their idol. Kamala Harris fucking laughs, and seems happy, and actually appears to like people, not just tolerate people she needs something from. It would be too much to say she embodies the better idea of what the US could be — that’s a lot to put on anyone — but I will say that at least when I look at her, I know that there’s a chance that the better idea of what the US could be is possible. I can’t look at Trump at this point and see anything but hate and anger, and the worst of what we are as a nation.

I agree 110%, obviously. And when I look at Trump supporters, that's what I see too: hate, anger, lies, and cowardice. They are America at its worst. 

I have voted. Dr. Skull has voted. The kid and his fiance have voted. If you haven't voted, do it now.

I am so anxious, y'all. 

Ten days, now

The Drought

The drought is so bad here, I put two big ceramic bowls (Heywood's water dishes) out in the yard and I'm keeping them filled with water. 

So now my yard is filled with birds -- bright red cardinals, sparrows, doves, mocking birds, and dozens of others I don't recognize. The squirrels like the water too, but the birds keep yelling at them and chasing them away.

I might get bird seed next.

I Voted Early

 Straight blue ticket, as you might imagine. I voted against the casino and for medical marijuana.

Y'all, I Gotta Tell Someone

My credit score is so good.

It comes from paying off my credit card four years ago now, and then not taking on any debt (or none I didn't pay off within six months) until I bought this car. Taking out a car loan actually improves your credit score, which, who knew? Also no foreclosures or evictions! Go me!

The loan guy actually congratulated me. 

Four Years Ago Gas Was Realllllly Cheap

It's like a thing among MAGAts to pose the question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

I am, but only because COVID killed my father and I inherited all of his money. (He had dementia, but it was getting COVID that killed him.)

Which is the thing they're forgetting -- four years ago we were in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans so far.

I suppose I shouldn't say "forgetting." They deny the epidemic ever happened, and if it did happen, it wasn't any worse than the flu (which killed somewhere around fifty million people in 1918), or if it was worse than the flu, then it only killed the weak. Like my father. Or immunocompromised people, those losers. Or diabetics. Or....

THERE WERE SEMIS FILLED WITH DEAD BODIES BECAUSE THE MORGUES WERE OVERFLOWING.

[image or embed]

— L O L G O P (@lolgop.bsky.social) October 22, 2024 at 6:33 AM

And that's not even taking into account the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the attack on the Capitol which he orchestrated, his malfeasance, the separation of children from their parents at the border, his fucking the Supreme Court for the next 40 years, the eight trillion he added to the national debt, the inflation that kicked off due to his mishandling of the epidemic, his encouraging the Right to become vaccine deniers, his endless lying....

All of which MAGAts also deny, so it's no good trying to point it out.

WOOOOO

I am pre-approved for a house loan. Now all we gotta do is find one in Fayetteville in our price range.

Cat Pictures

 This picture of Baby Jasper, circa 2010, came up in my memories today:

The Real Voter Fraud

...is coming from the Right. No surprise there.

I Have to Get Out of This Town

My neighbor has put Trump signs all over his yard.

This is the neighbor who kept stopping me to chat when I was taking my walks in the neighborhood. I knew he was annoying, but I didn't know he was an idiot and a bigot.

Ugh.

ETA this story from the Guardian: "A Third of Americans Agree with Trump That Immigrants 'Poison America's Blood.'"

The poll also found nearly one in four Trump supporters, 23%, believe if he loses the election that he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.

And this:

What I'm Listening to Now

I've been listening to audio books while I exercise and while I'm trying to fall asleep (highly recommended, by the way). I've got the Hoopla app which lets me borrow these for free -- if your library is a Hoopla subscriber, you can probably do that too.

This are my recent favorites:

Kathrine Addison, Goblin Emperor, narrated by Kyle McCarley

I love Addison's books about this goblin/elf world anyway (there are also ghouls and dragons), and McCarley does a fine job narrating. This are books where the main characters acts with decency, intelligence, and as much justice as they can manage, despite being from categories -- like being half-goblin -- and past circumstances (being treated unjustly, and even abused) which make that difficult. Addison's world is richly developed, with several cultures, religions, and multiple languages. If you're listening to it instead of reading it that might be a problem -- the book has an appendix of characters, places, and words. But since I've read this one a couple of times already, I'm having no problem following it. The story in this one concerns Maia, the fourth and half-goblin son of the emperor of Elfland, who has been relegated to a distant hunting lodge with an abusive guardian, rather than being brought up at the court, since no one thought he would ever inherit the empire. Then his father and all his brothers are killed when their airship crashes, and Maia has to take over. This is my current go-to-sleep book.

Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons, Life Among the Savages, narrated by Lesa Lockford and Kirsten Potter

These are Jackson's two books about bringing up her four children from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. They're kind of twee but also charming and occasionally very funny. Jackson herself called them a "disrespectful memoir of my children." Lockford and Potter do an excellent job with the narration. Some of this material was also published in various women's magazines before being reworked for the two books. If you've only read Jackson's horror novels and stories, these are entirely different, and a lot of fun.

I also listened to these while going to sleep. They're perfect for that -- nothing bad happens, and very little is at stake.

Naomi Novik, The Temeraire novels, narrated by Simon Vance

I read the first two of these a long time ago, and then our library didn't have the rest and that was when we didn't have any money, so I just didn't read any of the others. So now I'm listening to them while I exercise. Vance is an excellent narrator, so much so that I sometimes exercise just a little longer so I can find out what happens in the scene. If you don't know these books, they're about a minor member of the nobility during the Napoleonic wars, who is serving as a ship's captain when he accidentally "harnesses" a dragon, and thus must leave the navy and join the aerial corps -- a very different kind of service indeed. The bond between him and his dragon, Temeraire, makes him willing to put up with the disruption of his life. A knowledge of the history of the time helps, but I know only what I've learned from reading Georgette Heyer novels and Jane Austen novels, and I'm pretty well able to follow it. These are the first audiobooks I've listened to without reading the novel first, and I'm enjoying them a lot. 

Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? narrated by Ellen Archer

This is my favorite of the Jackson Brodie novels, and Archer either has or does an excellent Scottish accent. This is the first novel Reggie is in -- she's about sixteen in this book, and her mother has just died, leaving her an orphan (though apparently legally of age in Scotland?). There's some violent deaths in the background, but mostly in the novel we see Reggie and her mentor Dr. Jo as well as Jackson Brodie and Louise, a Scottish police officer, handling things as well as they can, while also (both Jackson and Louise, who are hot for each other but married to other people and thus unable to admit the attraction to each other.)

The Scottish accent is at least 20% of why I liked this one so much. But also Reggie is a great character. I listened to this one while I exercised and it make the process practically enjoyable.

Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries, narrated by Kevin Free

Also bedtime books. These are about a construct security unit who hacks its governor module and becomes a rogue unit, but instead of murdering people watches a lot of media instead. Then he makes friends with a giant space ship and...oh, who doesn't know the plot of these already? Free is less good in the first volume, but he rapidly improves, and since I know these so well by now they're a good going to sleep listen.

Please More Xanax

I am so anxious about this election.

FB is full of people spreading lies about immigrants, crime, and what a whore Harris is. I've had to ban myself from the site because I keep trying to reason with them. You cannot reason with Trump supporters. They are disconnected from reality, and they are proud of that. They are dupes, liars, and fools. There is no way to reason them out of positions they did not use reason to get themselves into.

I'm just going to read SF, give money to the Harris/Waltz campaign, and try to write more. Also, I'm so glad we're moving out of this benighted town. 

What's This?!

We have a frost advisory tonight!

Apparently we have gone straight from summer to winter, skipping fall entirely.

Oh No Fall Break Is Almost Over

I really enjoyed this fall break -- it finally has cooled down here in the Fort, and I am able to sleep. We saw the kid twice, and I figured out how to make pinhead oatmeal in my rice cooker. I also read a lot of science fiction and wrote reviews for some of it. Plus, I caught up on all my grading.

Sadly, tomorrow I must return to teaching. What a good job this would be except for the teaching*.

*A joke, obviously. I love teaching.

Fall Arrives

 Fall has arrived in earnest. We have all the windows and doors open, and the cats are very much enjoying their screened porch.

There might even be frost on Wednesday.

What I'm Reading Now

This doesn't include books I am reading for reviews -- that explains the lack of science fiction here.

Richard Powers, Playground

I don't know how I've gotten this far into my career as an extreme reader without encountering Richard Powers, but I am delighted I have finally stumbled across him. I was about fifty pages into his latest novel, Playground, when I started saying how have a missed this guy? I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned he has won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and a McArthur grant. How did I miss all that?

Anyway! Playground is a great book, a near-future about four people whose lives intertwine. There's a lot about oceans, and about AI. The ending left me bemused, and I can't decide if I like it, but the book is very much worth reading. I've put all his other books (or those my library has) on hold.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Father Time

I've loved Hrdy's work for literal decades now. She's a biological anthropologist who focuses on what babies do to parents and to their communities. Here, she looks mostly at what babies do to fathers -- that is, what being around babies, taking care of babies, and interacting with babies does to the neurological and hormonal makeup of men. (These don't even have to be the actual fathers of the babies.) 

Conversely, she looks at what not being around babies does to men, in those cultures (like her own "tribe" of 1950s Texas) where men are kept from interacting with or taking care of babies for whatever reason. (In Texas, because that was "women's work.") Spoilers: a lack of contact with babies spells bad news for men, which frankly explains a lot about toxic masculinity.

This is a fascinating book which ranges through world cultures and looks not just at homo sapiens but also at primates, rats, and other animals. It's not just enlightening but, like all of Hrdy's books, extremely readable. Highly recommended.

Liana Moriarty, Here One Moment

Moriarty has written some brilliant books -- my favorite by her is What Alice Forgot. She also has three or four books that left me cold. This one, Here One Moment, is about a woman, Cherry, who suffers a kind of episode on a plane flight, and goes up and down the aisles, telling everyone the age they will die and what they will die of. Most passengers treat it as a joke, though others are freaked out, including one mother of an infant who is told her infant will die at age seven, by drowning.

This happens in the first pages of the book. The rest of the book follows the woman herself and several of the people on the plane, as the predictions begin to come true. It's mostly about the past and currents lives of these characters, and it is really well done. Cherry turns out to be the daughter of a professional psychic who has had some psychic moments herself. She does not remember the episode on the plane, and insists she cannot see the future; that no one should take her predictions serious. The narrative itself plays with the idea of whether the future can be seen, whether the future is fixed, and how we struggled to control our lives. I liked this one a lot. 

My Kid Does Art

This was actually done for a presentation he and his group are doing for a seminar:

But honestly, it's beautiful.

"Of course I've Got Sources!"

So in case you missed it, the latest MAGAt conspiracy theory is that "the government" is creating these huge hurricanes on purpose, so that they can aim them at Red States, and kill all the people who would otherwise be voting for Trump.

On one of the sites I was glancing at, a person made the claim that the government was indeed controlling the weather, that this was a "proven fact."

People asked this person for their sources. Now usually when that happens, your average MAGAt is confused, since they have no idea that people are supposed to support their claims with credible sources. Usually MAGAts will then call anyone who asks for evidence a sheep, brainwashed by liberals, and so on.

This person replied, though, giving their source: When they were a child, a weatherman their family knew got drunk and said it was true, that the government did indeed control the weather.

That, for your MAGAt, constitutes credible evidence.

Which is why they're voting for Trump. He tells them stuff, like that Biden and Harris are giving all the FEMA money to immigrants, or that FEMA is refusing the help Republicans, and they believe it, because Trump said it was true, so it must be.

How can we reason with people who don't know what a credible source is, or how to evaluate evidence? "My uncle's girlfriend's daddy said it, so I know it's true!"

(One) Trouble with Religious Students

Living where I do, I often have Evangelical students in my classes, who have been homeschooled or sent to schools run by Evangelicals. They've been taught to view and understand everything through a single lens, that of Eschatological Christ as they have been taught he is. 

Frequently they have also been taught that anyone trying to get them to use another lens is demonic, or an agent of Satan, or at the very least misguided. Their job is not to learn to see new ways, but to hold fast to this single way.

It can be difficult to get them to understand global literature when this is the case. They want to view, for example, The Bacchai through their specific sort of Christian lens. Since the play is about Dionysus and the foible of refusing to accept Dionysus as a god, and the vengeance visited on mortals who think they understand the gods better than the gods do, this can cause difficulties.

Why are such people in a university, if they don't want to read new things and learn new ideas? Well, they see the degree as a job qualification. That is, like many people in America today, their parents and probably they themselves see the university as a trade school. They are here to get a degree as a qualification for a job, and to avoid being educated while they do it.

Not all Evangelical students, of course. Not all Jehovah's Witnesses either, to name another religion that is popular in this area. I've had some excellent students from religious backgrounds. But those are students with enough imagination and intelligence to learn to see with different lenses despite their religion. (Pretty much never because of their religion, at least in my experience. Christianity in Arkansas does not encourage learning as a virtue, or intelligence or curiosity either.)

FALL, FINALLY

This morning it is actually cold -- 56 degrees when I woke up.

FINALLY.

More Conservatives Lies

The new lies I've seen coming from the Right have to do with the destruction in North Carolina, and the response to it.

From the left, I am hearing about the help flooding into the region from ordinary citizens as well as the National Guard and FEMA. Some of the stories literally bring tears to my eyes.

Go here for more on this:

Disaster compassion is real. Here are some things I've seen today and yesterday in Western North Carolina:

— Margaret Killjoy 🏴 (@magpiekilljoy) October 2, 2024

Meanwhile, the Right is busy spewing their usual hate and lies:

• FEMA is broke because they gave all their money to immigrants 
• People who try to volunteer in NC are being arrested by FEMA/federal agents
• FEMA will only give victims of the hurricane $750 dollars 
• Biden's government is controlling the path of the hurricane, they sent it to NC on purpose, because NC is a red state
• FEMA won't give you help if you're white -- their new DEI initiatives mean they have to give all their money to immigrants and brown people
• FEMA is confiscating any money or aid sent to NC
• There's no money for disaster response because Biden sent all the money to Ukraine

See this meme, being shared by Trump supporters, for a sample of these lies:

It's gotten so bad that FEMA has set up a site to deal with rumors. But from what I've seen, any attempt to counter rumors is useless. When people try to talk sense to Rightwing weirdos, what they get is a response like, "You're just brainwashed by the Fake News Media," or "Do your own research, stop trusting federal lies."

Evidence and facts and good sources do not matter in the least to Trump supporters. That's why they're Trump supporters.

ETA: Even Republicans have had enough (though Trump supporters keep on ticking, as you can see in the comments):

local republican representatives in north carolina setting the record straight. pic.twitter.com/lgzXLSmBUV

— emily may (@emilykmay) October 4, 2024

Grading Papers

I have papers coming in. They're mostly good, but when they're bad, they're really bad. I have to bribe myself to keep working with chocolate and popcorn.

I also have to keep reminding myself: This is the second to last time I will have to do this.

Retirement can't come soon enough.

The VP Debate was Depressing

Partly this was because Vance lied nonstop and was only fact-checked once (about the immigrants in Springfield being legal immigrants); partly it was because Vance is just better at debates than Walz, who was visibly nervous, and misspoke or garbled his answers. 

It's also depressing when we consider the possibility that if Trump is elected, we could end up with Vance as president. 

Over on the cesspool that is Twitter, Rod Dreher was gloating over how well Vance did (despite Vance bearing false witness against immigrants, a thing that you think would bother Dreher, since his schtick is that he's such a Christian) because, says Dreher, at least Trump will get rid of trans people.

(1) Wow

(2) That's the religious right for you, folks. Forget anything Christ actually said or told them to do. Instead, they're going to obsess about trans people and abortion, even though Christ said nothing about either of them.

I've learned better than to argue with these moral monsters, though. They could not care less about facts, evidence, or anything Christ said. What they want is power, and they will do and say anything to get and hold onto that power.

My Kid in Graduate School

The kid is loving graduate school. From his newsletter on Patreon:

Grad school is going great! I'm working on an application for the Biological Anthropologist meetings in the spring! I'm having the time of my life! By that I mean like in the Left Hand of Darkness when they are traveling through the icy wastes and having an extremely hard time but there's joy there! I love it! I feel like that one summer in high school when the AC broke and it was 104 outside and my mom, the cats, and I were all dying, but the family dog was thriving! He loved it! I'm the dog! Also god I finally met people IRL I actually want to talk to and be friends with! Yay grad school!!!!!

You can support his Patreon here, btw.

Ruminations

I started watching The Shining last night, because it was there, and I had to nope out after an hour (horror that depends on claustrophobia is not my jam), but before I reached the nope-out point I had time to notice was an absolute asshole the Jack Torrance character is. 

I guess that's toxic masculinity, and I'm glad the movie notices what a monster he is even before they go to the hotel, but what hit me the most this time is how miserable the father in this little family is, and how his hatred for his family and his misery at his life affects his family. Both the wife, Wendy, and the kid, Danny, have learned to lie to the father -- and to some degree to themselves -- in order to escape his emotional and physical attacks. The scene where Jack holds Danny on his lap and makes him say he loves his father and he loves the hotel and he's having a good time is just so horrible. 

Danny has to invent an imaginary friend just so he can speak the truth (Tony lives in his mouth, but he swallows him down whenever anyone tries to see him). Wendy desperately tries to keep Jack happy, hopelessly trying to predict the storms of his temper. Both of them, when they can escape Jack, are more or less competent, healthy people; but when he's around they cease to be able to function.

There's a saying that families are only as sane as their sickest member. What this movie does is take a family that is desperately trying to survive their sickest member and lock them in a bottle episode. That's what's terrifying. The ghosts and blood and all are just images of that terror.

Stolen from PZ Myers

 This is how it happened, I was there:

But to be fair, he stole it from Tom the Dancing Bug

Mitt Romney Won't Endorse Kamala Harris

Which I guess is no surprise. He says he wants to remain politically viable in Utah, which apparently he could not do if he admitted out loud that Harris is a better candidate than Trump. Is this just because she's a Democrat? Or is it because she's brown and a woman? 

Being brown and a democrat would be enough to kill you here in Arkansas, as we saw in the last election when our voters put Sarah Huckster Sanders in the office rather than vote for a black physicist with a D beside his name.

And it's not that they thought Sanders was more competent. They knew she was a joke, a bootlicker, and a thief. But at least she wasn't a black man who supported progressive causes.

I think the woman part also matters in Utah, which like Idaho adheres to rigid gender roles; but the brown and democrat parts probably matter just as much.

Harris is ahead in the polls right now, but as we know from 2016, that's not a guarantee of anything. These next six weeks are going to be painful.

Weather in Arkansas

 Now that's better:

Highs in the 70s for the next ten days, and the lows are getting lower.

Kamala Harris Answers Questions

 Found this on YouTube:

Eight Days until October

It's eight days until October and we're still getting days with highs in the 90s. Worse, the air is like flannel and steam, and the pollen count leaves my throat raw.

Please can we have some fall now please.

 

A Christian Nation My Big White

I've been reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Father Time, which is a companion volume to her two books Mother Nature and Mothers and Others. Hrdy is a biological anthropologist who looks at parenting, including alloparenting. Specifically, she looks at how human evolution was shaped by our need to first produce and then keep alive fat little expensive babies, which have to be carted about for two or three years and then provisioned for ten or fifteen more years.

That's a huge investment in calories and time, and if we're going to compete as a species, we need to produce, and keep alive, three or four children per woman. Hrdy's overall thesis is that this is impossible without the help of alloparents (which is to say, people besides the parents who are willing to invest time in and to provide calories for the babies). In this new book, Father Time, Hrdy repeats that thesis, but looks more specifically at fathers, and at men, and at how being around babies shapes human males. She also looks briefly at the effect not being around babies has on human males. She's talking about the biological effects -- brain growth, hormones, that kind of thing -- as well as the cultural effects.

This is a fascinating book, and I encourage everyone to read it. Among other things, Hrdy looks at how our current generation of fathers and men have changed and are changing; she talks about how grandparents and fictive kin are encouraged in various societies to help provision and care for children; and she looks at what happens when a society focuses on the rights and honor of men and the ability of men to control women, rather than on those babies and the need to care for them and keep them alive.

Which brings me to my secondary point -- the "Pro-Life" "Christian" culture which our current "conservatives" keep claiming as their own.

Oddly, this culture has very little to say about caring for or feeding children, except that parents should not expect anyone to help them feed or take care of those children. Its "pro-life" aspect, as we all have seen, is focused entirely on forcing people to continue pregnancies against their will. That's got almost nothing to do with babies and almost everything to do with controlling women (and people the GOP defines as women).

Our current GOP and "conservative" culture are focused -- well, they're focused on wealth concentration and capitalism, obvious, capitalism being their true religion. 

But the "tradwife" movement and the "pro-life" movement and the push to remake the US into a Christian nation, ruled by the laws of a very few sects of Christianity -- those are all about control of people the GOP considers inferior, which is to say women, immigrants, poor people, and LGBTQ people.

You can tell because none of what they are trying to force the rest of us to accept has anything to do with provisioning people or helping families. You can also tell by the lies they tell and the laws they want to impose on us, all of which are about control, and none of which are about helping their fellow citizens.

Haitians are eating dogs and cats? That's about trying to control brown people, poor people, and immigrants, by bearing false witness, by the way, which is one of those ten commandments they idolize.

Democrats want to make it legal to kill newborn babies? That's about controlling the bodies and fertility of those inferiors.

Democrats are coming for your guns? The right of (certain) men to control others through violence shall not be infringed.

The things Christ actually said, which have to do with wealth redistribution, feeding the hungry, giving to the poor, and staying with and taking care of the family (which is why Christ forbids divorce), those are things our current "conservatives" not only ignore but actively treat as anathema. You should see my local FB page when they talk about beggars. It's not at all Christlike, that's all I have to say.

Christ, by the way, had nothing at all to say about gay people, or trans people, or abortion, for that matter. The only thing he had to say about violating sexual taboos has to do with not throwing stones. Our current conservatives do nothing BUT throw stones. 

They don't want Christianity. They want control. They're the Christian version of the Taliban, and everyone who looks at them can see it.

Weather Report

This Saturday coming up is the last day of summer, and highs will be in the 90s.

Shortly after that it looks like a front is coming through, and highs will be in the 80s and 70s.

I need winter please.

Happy 20th Birthday to My Blog

My blog is 20 years old this week. I started writing it in September 2004. 

If it was a person, it would be old enough to vote, old enough to buy a gun, but not old enough to buy cigarettes.

My Wonderful Kid Makes Me Very Happy

The kid sent me a text today, saying he thinks he might have to get a PhD after all. 

He says he loves graduate school and never wants to leave it.

He's also turned out to be an excellent teacher, just like his mama.

Whining

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm on campus from 6:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. That's just too LOOOOONG.

I come that early so I can drink coffee and prep. My actual first class is at 8:00 a.m. So I could come a little later, but on the other hand, I can't teach without coffee and prep, so.

I've got three classes in a row from 8:00 until 12:15, and then a break until 2:00, when my fourth class starts. I also have an online class, which I am always working on. It's a lot, but it's a schedule which gives me a four-day weekend to spend writing, so I guess it's worth it. 

I'm just really, really tired by the time I hit that fourth class.

Only four weeks until fall break.

LOL

Maybe my favorite moment from the debate last night:

Trump: She’s going to take your gun

Kamala: Bitch I have a gun

— Adam (@adamgreattweet) September 11, 2024

Don't get me wrong, assault weapons should definitely be banned; but I've listened for years now to MAGAts squeal about how they're going to win the civil war that they are convinced is coming because they "have all the guns," and I just shake my head. 

There may be a couple of Far-Right white nationalists with a ton of weapons, for whatever bizarre reason; but I know a lot of leftists who have weapons. 

I mean, granted, it's Arkansas, but still.

This was also a stellar moment. It came right after Harris noted that people were leaving Trump's rallies because they were so bored by his lies. He lost it right then and started shouting this kind of thing, and he never got it back:

You can literally pinpoint the exact moment where Trump lost the debate. pic.twitter.com/yzNV9BCpu9

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) September 11, 2024

Reminded me of this moment, which is probably why Harris's team had her do it: 

Yes Obama made a dick joke during his DNC speech. https://t.co/m1rCWSIXVR pic.twitter.com/9QV14XrSvC

— Nick ✨ (@slothropsmap) August 21, 2024

My Kid Does Art

This is off a photo I took, probably around 1988, of my brother sitting on a rock in Northern California. I forget just what river that is. Somewhere in the Sequoia Mountains, I think.

Watercolor on paper.

What's This?

It was 58 degrees when I woke up this morning, and only 60 degrees now. That's cool enough to open the windows and doors. The cats are very happy.

How It Works

So I'm on this Fort Smith site on FB, which group members use to post questions, comments, and general news about the city. It's a cesspool of meanness and spite, so I usually don't read what's been posted there. I should really delete my membership to the page.

But then I would have missed this! On Wednesday of last week, where someone was asking why the Singaporean flag* was being flown at the air force base, someone said (as a joke) that it was because Fort Smith was going to be made a sanctuary city.

It was clearly a joke -- no one from Singapore is a refugee, for fuck's sake -- but by the next day someone had posted a question to the page, about whether Fort Smith was really going to become a sanctuary city.

And today people are stating, as a fact, that Fort Smith is a sanctuary city, and that's why we have so many homeless people and so much crime.

Misinformation becomes data becomes worldview. Welcome to your Red State experience.

*Here's why the flag was actually being flown

It's Official

I submitted my intention to retire letter, and it has been officially accepted. Last day of work: May 13, 2025. I can see the end from here.

When the kid was little, and we were driving back and forth to Fayetteville, or to Clarksville for our writing group, there would often be a moment when, as exhausted as we were, Dr. Skull and I would begin to feel like we would never reach home.

As we passed a mileage marker (49 miles to Fort Smith), one or the other of us would say, "Fort Smith is getting further and further away."

The kid would often say, "It's not! What do you mean? It's NOT."

Now he says he understands what we mean. He was coming home from teaching on the bus and he was like, "Home is getting further and further away."

That's me right now. Retirement is getting further and further away.

Weather in Arkansas

It's September 6 and we're supposed to get some cooler weather tomorrow: like a low of 57, and a high of 82,

After that, it's back up in the high 80s for the next ten days. 

It's almost fall. Two more weeks. I need cold weather.

I Am Very Excited Today Because

I'm very excited today because not only does Natasha Pulley have a new book coming out, but also I scored a review copy. 

Second go! This is the US cover of The Hymn To Dionysus, which will be out next year. I feel like a purple book is a good book. pic.twitter.com/SFJieAXw45

— Natasha Pulley (@natasha_pulley) August 20, 2024

Reading 1950s Science Fiction

George O. Smith,  The Fourth 'R' 

I picked this one up at a used bookstore, because it was cheap and the cover looked interesting.

This cover

I'd never read any George O. Smith before, though Wikipedia tells me he comes from the Golden Age of science fiction -- Isaac Asimov's buddy, contemporary of Heinlein, worked with John Campbell (and apparent ran away with Campbell's wife -- spicy!).

This book was published in 1959, and is about a kid whose parents invent a machine which educates the child from toddlerhood on, packing data into his young brain. This is apparently all it takes to give someone an education -- they just gotta know a lot of facts. Once you know a lot of facts, like the times table for instance, and a bunch of grammatical terms, and who Aristotle is, why, you're automatically a genius. That's all it takes: having facts crammed into you.

Smith doesn't think much of the educational system of his day, which he shares with many other SF writers from that era. When little Jimmy is sent to school, for instance, he runs into trouble with a "progressive" teacher who thinks all children were created equal, and "had to stay that way." In the early pages of the book, Smith also takes a swipe at John Dewey. 

Dewey had some influence on the educational system of the time, and pissed off a lot of conservatives. Dewey thought that for American democracy to work, we had to educate even people who weren't brilliant geniuses. As I recall, Harper Lee also hated Dewey's influence on education. In To Kill a Mockingbird, she has the young narrator react scornfully to her teacher's attempt to teach all the children in the class to read. Because Scout herself can already read, she's bored, and this is somehow a flaw in the educational system. Fuck them other kids, am I right? 

This is probably the weakest part of The Fourth R. Knowing facts doesn't make someone a genius, or turn a five year old into an adult. And that's what Smith is claiming here -- it's not that Jimmy Holden is a genius and the brain machine just educates him really fast. No, he's a typical kid, and the brain machine makes him a genius, the equivalent at five of someone in their early 20s. We know this is so because later in the book, Jimmy uses the brain machine to make an extremely ordinary seven year old, Martha, into a genius just like him.

Well, not just like him. Martha is a girl, see, so she's not that interested in math. Instead she's interested in learning all about how to run a home. Like sewing and cooking. You know, that stuff that girl geniuses really love.

Anyway, before Martha shows up, Jimmy is a victim of his evil godfather, Paul Brennan, who murders Jimmy's parents and then becomes Jimmy's guardian and the executor of his estate. Brennan mistreats little Jimmy by taking away his Meccano set and making him play with blocks instead. This is because Brennan wants the brain machine all for himself, so he can make money with it. The wanting to make money with it is not the problem, as Smith makes clear: the problem is that the machine belongs to Jimmy, because his parents invented it, so only Jimmy should be making money from it.

 Jimmy foils Brennan's plan by destroying the brain machine. Good thing Jimmy's parents didn't leave blueprints, am I right?

Anyway, Brennan is trying to blackmail Jimmy into building a new brain machine for him. Jimmy knows how to do this, because the machine taught him how. I guess you could say that's how Jimmy's parents stored the blueprints, in Jimmy's brain. 

There's some talk by Jimmy's grandparents into beating him into compliance, but Brennan doesn't want to use physical torture, since that would leave marks which Jimmy could complain about. So he sets out to bore him into submission instead. Clearly no court will care about Jimmy being forced to read Little Golden books instead of Aristotle, or being given blocks and finger paints instead of oil paints and canvases. 

Again, knowing facts in conflated with having knowledge -- even though Jimmy is five, he can and wants to read Aristotle, and paint with oils, simply because the brain machine put data into his brain. This is all it takes to make a genius, embedding facts. Later, when Jimmy is ten and his Pygmalion playmate Martha is nine, Martha's mother, Janet, is fine with leaving a nine and ten year old on their own for three or four months, because they've been made into geniuses by the brain machine. 

You gotta wonder if Smith had ever met a genius, never mind a ten year old genius.

Anyway, fleeing Brennan, Jimmy sets up housekeeping on his own, funding his existence by writing science fiction. (It was, in fact, possible to make a living writing in the 1950s, so I won't mock Brennan here.)

He needs to hire Martha's mother Janet as a housekeeper to act as cover; he chooses her because she has a young girl, which he knows will make her desperate enough to stay in the job. He convinces her to let him hook Martha up to the machine because he needs a companion, and also he thinks that will be yet another thing that will keep Janet working for him. He offers to hook Mom up to the machine, but she's not interested. All she wants to do is have the machine embed some "pet recipes" into her brain. Because (1) she's cooking without knowing those recipes and (b) that's what women like to do, cook and keep house.

The plot swerves a little when Janet starts dating a local guy. (Jimmy has set up housekeeping in a small town somewhere.) Now Jimmy, who's nine now, has to try to figure out sex. Remember this is before the internet. The local public library has nothing useful. He buys books through newspaper ads, but they don't really tell him what he wants to know, which is why Janet wants to have sex. It's a puzzler!

Anyway! Eventually Jimmy decides the time has come to settle with Brennan. So he makes himself into a lawyer by having the brain machine embed a bunch of law books into his brain. That's all it takes. No need to learn how to argue or think critically! You just gotta know the laws! There's a courtroom scene, and Jimmy gains control of his machine and his life and sets up academies where other children are made into geniuses with brain machines, but to be honest I just skimmed through the last 20 or 30 pages, because I had long since stopped caring about any of these characters. 

This is typical of 1950s science fiction, in my experience -- there's a cool idea, which is then used to explore the author's personal bugaboos. Pretty much no attempt at characterization, setting, or realistic dialogue. 4/10, only interesting for historical purposes.

I mean, Who Knew

Apparently trans kids can get gender affirming surgery at public schools. WHO KNEW.  We had to go through years of therapy, and find about ten thousand dollars, and hunt down a certified surgeon, and go through several more months of working with them, and...

This is honestly what today's "conservatives" seem to believe, that a ten year old child can be convinced that they are trans by someone, usually a teacher, and two days later get gender affirming surgery (or, as these "conservatives" usually put it, get some body part "chopped off"), no therapy needed, no questions asked, no parents consulted.

And, of course, they're absolutely obsessed with trans people. It's not just a delusion, it's monomania.

LOL

 

Woman brings a new baby into the office.

Walz: *shakes tiny hand* Pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss. Glad to see you didn’t inherit your dad’s looks.

Vance: *stares silently for 30 seconds* She already has all the eggs she’ll ever have.

— Jean-Michel Connard 좆됐어 (@torriangray) August 29, 2024

Advice I Give My Workshop Students

I'm always telling them to trust their readers -- that is, to believe that their readers will pick up what they're putting down; but I like this advice better:

 

Can't remember who came up with this, but it remains one of my favourite pieces of advice for writers of fiction: Write as if your reader is cleverer than you.

— Simon Spanton (@simonguy.bsky.social) Aug 29, 2024 at 6:32 AM

(Skeet: Can't remember who came up with this, but it remains one of my favourite pieces of advice for writers of fiction: Write as if your reader is cleverer than you.)

I also tell my writers that they can't write for their worst readers. Don't dumb that shit down, don't try to keep your bad-faith readers from being offended. Write like the world's on fire and you're the only one with water. Give the readers that water.

What I'm Reading Now

Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

Picoult is one of those authors I like to read without really being a big fan of her work. This is a departure for her -- it's part historical novel, part contemporary. In Elizabethan England, we have Emilia, who lives in the orbit of Elizabeth's court, and who is sold at age 13 to be the kept woman of an English lord. (He sells her to someone else when she gets pregnant.) It's Picoult's theory that this woman is the actual author of some of Shakespeare's plays.

In the present, we have Emilia's descendent, Melina, who has been unable to succeed in New York's playwriting scene, while mediocre male writers win accolades and see their work staged. 

I was put off this book by its main idea, that of someone else writing Shakespeare's plays, and I still don't buy it; but Picoult makes an interesting case. I'd also heard all the arguments for why men sell more books/get more reviews/are taken more seriously as authors in the present day before, so that part of the book bored me a little. Picoult makes a good argument in both parts of the book, I guess is what I'm saying, but I'm probably not the intended audience. 

I liked the Elizabethan sections a lot more than the modern day sections -- Picoult might think about writing more historical novels.

I am reminded of one of my professors when I was in the writing program who set us a question on a big exam: name a writer we thought was not as famous as they should be, and say why. I named a woman writer, and made the argument that she was not receiving the fame she deserved specifically because she was a woman writing historical novels. That (male) professor wrote historical novels, and I think he felt attacked, because he gave me a low grade and claimed my argument was "wildly corny." And yes, I'm still holding a grudge.

Peter Heller, Burn

Speaking of mediocre male writers.

Honestly this is a typical Peter Heller book. Two guys in a homosocial (definitely not homoerotic) relationship go through some shit. There's weird spacing which I agree has an effect on how the narrative reads. No dog in this one, but there's a small child in a lion suit which kind of stands in for the dog.

The event that causes the guys to have trouble is a civil war, kicking off not in Texas or Alabama as you would expect but in Maine. I kind of liked that, it's a bit fresh. 

There's never any explanation about why the Maine secessionists assassinated the president, but that works, I guess, since our two guys are as confused as the reader about why all this is happening. I also like Heller having the federal government pursue a scorched earth campaign against the rebel territory, like Sherman marching through Atlanta (which Heller lampshades in the text). The rebels turn out to be equally ruthless in their actions against the U.S. troops sent in to handle the rebellion. Both sides, am I right?

Anyway, it's a readable book. I read the whole thing in one evening. But since Heller is determined not to examine the ethics of starting a civil war, or even notice why the civil war is happening, the book is ultimately unsatisfying.

Also I see that Heller still has not figured out what women actually are or how one would act. 6/10, only read it if you're desperate for something to read.

C. J. Cherryh, Cuckoo's Egg

Speaking of women authors who don't get this fame they deserve.

This is a Cherryh novel which somehow I had never read. It's pretty good, and Wikipedia tells me it was nominated for a Hugo in 1986. An alien civilization (really well done by Cherryh here) has a brief war with some humans who arrive in their solar system. The humans are all killed, but the aliens are worried that they might come back, so they clone one of the humans and a Hatani from the alien world raises the child from infancy, training him up to be a Hatani himself.

Cherryh never defines Hatani (since everyone in the alien civilization knows what one is), or tells us why this Hatani has a human baby, so we have to figure this out as we go along. That's Cherryh's usual technique, and you either like it or hate it. I like it, for the record.

Cherryh's worldbuilding here is excellent, as usual. This is part coming of age novel (as the infant grows up) and part mystery (what's happened, why are these aliens raising a human?), and works pretty well, though the end left me wanting more. 

If you haven't read Cherryh and you like science fiction, highly recommended.

The Legacy

My kid has also started teaching, his university and mine being on the same schedule. He's taking classes besides, as well as shadowing his mentor-TA (or whatever it is called), and sitting in on the lectures that go with the lab he's teaching. So he's got a more than full-time job, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, he and I are commiserating on how exhausted we are. Looking back at previous semesters (FB memories now handily provides me with previous semester comments) I can see I was just as exhausted during all those years as well.

Partly it's the heavy class load (I'm teaching five this semester so I can teach three in the spring), partly it's the relentless heat, partly it's that my classes are scattered all over the campus, so that I'm putting in literal miles walking to them every day. I'll adapt in a week or two, I know, but right now I'm at the "Oh Christ not again" stage when the alarm goes off every morning.

Six weeks until Fall Break. 

The Election

I'm feeling a little better about the election right now, but I can't feel great, not after 2016. God, that was the worst night. 

Also, all over my FB page, there are Trump supporters squealing about how Harris makes no sense when she talks, and how she stabbed "her boss," by which they mean Biden, in the back to get the nomination. I assume these are Fox News talking points, since neither claim is supported by evidence, or even makes sense, for that matter. As I previously noted, living in a Red State is depressing.

There are also these Trump supporters making faux-earnest posts asking "liberals" to explain why they're voting for Harris without mentioning that she's a woman. These have replaced the posts that claim "liberals" want people to vote for Harris "just because" she's a woman, while also not being able to define a woman.

Honestly, I have not had much faith in my fellow Arkansawyers, not since the 2016 election. So it's not like I can still be disillusioned. But yeah, this sort of filth is depressing.

Their Candidate of Choice

A conversation I had with a Trumper last night...

Him: "I like Mellencamp's music. Sucks he's a stupid liberal Democrat, though."
Me: What's your beef with Democrats?
Him: "Are you a Democrat?"
Me: Yes.
Him: "You need to change your ways."
Me: Why's that?
Him: "You actually like…

— Craig Rozniecki (@CraigRozniecki) August 22, 2024

Also...

My phone keeps track of how far I walk each day (for some nefarious purpose I am sure), and I learned on Tuesday that just in the course of teaching my four classes I am walking 2.3 miles a day.

This is why I'm so exhausted.

In Which I Am Surrounded by MAGAts

So I was at the gym yesterday, having finished working out and waiting for Dr. Skull to show up, and more than one old guy stopped in front of me to talk to some other old guy, and I had to listen to them both explaining why Biden was evil and how Trump was the only hope for the nation and how Kamel-a didn't have any idea what she was doing, she didn't know anything, the reason prices were so high now was all Biden's fault, and it was too bad Democrats were too stupid to understand that.

One guy, who was a farmer, said he can't sell his grain for as much as he was selling it last year. That's Biden's fault, although the fact that he could sell it for a lot last year has nothing to do with Biden.

It's kind of depressing having to live in the Fort, I guess is my point. 

Teaching is Exhausting

I came home yesterday afternoon, ate dinner, and went directly to bed. Woke up this morning at four a.m. Apparently my teaching stamina is gone.

Teaching from 8:00 until 3:30

You know, it is just physically hard to teach four classes in a row.

Even if every computer and SmartBoard works perfectly, which today none have, at least so far.

Eye Exam

I finally had my eye exam today, after a couple of delays. They dilated my eyes, so I was useless all day -- I couldn't read, or get any writing done, or even work on my online classes. I did do the dishes, and listened to audiobooks.

Anyway, the eye guy says they've done what they can for my eyes. Nothing's gone to make them 20/20 at this point. (They're 20/25 currently.) He says when they get rid of the cataract which is forming in my left eye, that might help some; but it's not serious enough to remove at this point.

So I guess I squint until then.

My Kid Does Art

This is our little dog Heywood, who died earlier this year:

Watercolor on paper. My kid painted it for Dr. Skull, who misses Heywood a lot.

Rain

Big storm here last night, with some much needed rain but also pretty fierce winds. None of my trees came down: just a lot of branches. Power is out all over the city, though not here.

The weather is going to cool down briefly. I'm pleased, as you can imagine. Five more weeks of summer.

Pre-School Conferences

 

...are the absolute worst.

Yesterday and I today I spent/will spend about six hours each in "conferences," which is to say sitting in an uncomfortable chair in close proximity to other people (while COVID is once again spiking in Arkansas) listening to people tell me things I could have just as easily learned via email.

Luckily I had my tablet. Previous to phones and tablets, I would have spent those hours in stultifying boredom.

Honestly I was still pretty bored.

There are some things we have to "confer" on, because of federal law, like ADA training, but ugh, the rest.

Fall Semester

Classes start on Monday, which is hard to believe. Just a minute ago I had a whole nice leisurely summer spread out ahead of me like a paradisiacal mountain meadow. Now here come the swamps again.

I actually start on Tuesday, since I have a T/R teaching schedule. But of course I have a ton of prep to do before then. (I've already started the prep.) I'm teaching five classes this semester, in exchange for only teaching three in the spring: three Comp I classes, one nonfiction writing class, and one global lit.

The good news: this is my last fall semester. Next fall I shall be retired and living in Fayetteville.

OMG

 This is the weather forecast for the next ten days:

High of 79 a couple days ago and I dared to hope that the worse might be over. Hubris!

Six more weeks of summer.

My Kid Starts Graduate School

My kid had his first day of orientation for graduate school today. He's going for his Masters in Biological Anthropology, focusing on paleoecology. No cultural anthropology for him, he says. Bones and worms and extinction events are what he likes.

He's got a TA, which will pay a stipend and his tuition. He'll be making slightly more than he made working the help desk, so that's nice. He's teaching two labs and taking I forget what classes.

He says he's already met some cool people. 

It's an Insult, See? Because Tampons are

 

Republicans: How do we win back women?

Dan Bongino: I know! We’ll label the Dem VP pick Tampon Tim like using tampons or supplying them is a slur.

Republicans: Brilliant!! pic.twitter.com/5OKYWbXHTP

— Emily A. The Spirit of Jezebel (@emzorbit) August 6, 2024

Don't Chonk on Me

 

Things the Right Wants Us to Be Angry about

 

Tim Walz 

• Passed legislation providing free meals to kids at public schools
• Passed legislation providing menstrual supplies to kids in public schools in the 4th through the 12th grade (they're spinning this as "gives tampons to boys," but nothing in the legislation mentions gender or specific sorts of menstrual supplies)
• Protected the right to an abortion and made Minnesota a sanctuary state for people seeking abortions
• Also made Minnesota a sanctuary state for trans people
• Adopted "clean car" regulations, in order to reduce Greenhouse gasses. 
• Passed legislation restoring voting rights to felons
• Retired from the National Guard in order to run for office a couple years before his unit deployed to Iraq (the war the Right now claims it was always against)

He also got a DUI several decades ago, after which he quit drinking entirely, and still doesn't drink. The outrage on this one amuses me especially since I can remember "conservatives" saying it didn't matter if Trump sexually assaulted people when he was in his sixties, since he was seventy now, and after all people can change, can't they?

They also want us to be mad at Kamala Harris because she laughs too much.

This is some real desperation, y'all. I gotta admit, it's making laugh, probably too much.

Testing, Testing

 

kinda hilarious that the "nobody can tell jokes anymore" crowd is super angry about a couch joke

— Mike Drucker (@mikedrucker.bsky.social) Aug 7, 2024 at 11:33 AM

Tim Walz's Cat

 Tim Walz makes an ad for the humane society, featuring his rescue cat Honey. This is from six months ago, btw.

Watch through to where Honey and Walz's dog are best friends. Cats and dogs living together!

Tim Walz Jokes

 Love these:

Well, Yeah

 I mean, this was my reaction:

Harris choosing Tim Walz as her running mate sets a dangerous precedent that Democrats might do cool shit that voters love

— @geekysteven.bsky.social (@geekysteven) August 6, 2024

(Tweet by geekysteven.bsky.social saying: Harris choosing Tim Walz as her running mate sets a dangerous precedent that Democrats might do cool shit that voters love) 

Weird Insomnia

 So I have a new kind of insomnia now, where I fall asleep okay, but then wake up four or five hours later -- asleep at 12:30 a.m. last night, awake at 5:30 this morning. I try going back to sleep, but no dice.

Don't know what could be causing this new torment. At least it will come in handy when the semester starts -- I have an 8:00 class this semester, ugh.

Medical Procedures Eating My Life

I have four medical appointments or procedures in the next six days.

And then the fall semester starts.

Leftist Memes

 Spotted in the wild:

Just a Note

After a certain point, we have to realize that arguing/explaining things to this current crop of "conservatives" is pointless. (Things like "Is Harris black?" or "Was that athlete actually male?" or "Why vaccines are good, actually" or "No, there really isn't any significant voter fraud in the U.S." or "Are hats real?")

These "conservatives" don't care about truth or facts. They want to say (and probably believe) bigoted nonsense, and explaining why they are wrong is (1) a waste of time and (2) useless, since (see above) they do not care.

I, too, as an educator want to believe that if we just explain clearly enough and provide sufficient data that we can get people to understand why they're wrong, which will lead to them changing their minds. I want to believe we can say, nicely, calmly, "That turns out not to be the case. Look at these studies, and this research review. We can clearly see...."

But that's not what happens. What happens is we waste a bunch of time doing research, providing evidence, and constructing clear, cogent explanations, and "conservatives" shrug and say whatever, I don't care, you use pronouns, nyah nyah.

Accept that they're determined to believe whatever they need to believe to support their bigotry, block them, and move on.

Also Obsessed (in a totally not weird way) with who Harris slept with and why

 

Oh wow. Imagine how fantastic it must be. pic.twitter.com/7cvfEFQDyb

— Brooke from Let’s Not Date (@Lets_Not_Date) July 31, 2024

Two Notes

(1) I saw someone call Trump "Fat Nixon," which cracks me up. Though honestly that's a little insulting to Nixon, who -- criminal that he was -- at least wasn't inept and willfully stupid.

(2) Someone should point out to the MAGA Americans that the only people who care so much what race Harris is their little cult. See also: they're the only ones who are making a huge deal out of the fact that  she's a woman.

Weirdos.

From BlueSky

...which as far as I can tell won't let you capture posts to post. I did a screenshot, but the quality, ugh.

In case you can't read it: Celeste Ng notes that "Thinking of 'conservative' as 'difference is bad' and 'liberal' as 'difference is normal and maybe even good' explains so much. The right HATES being called weird because they see difference as bad."

Not Weirdos, Not at All, No Way

 

The phrenology aficionados obsessed with women's fertility and schoolchildren's genitals and ages of consent and hording guns in anticipation of enacting their revolutionary Patrick Henry fever dreams ahead of the coming rapture would like you to know that they are not weirdos.

— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) July 29, 2024

Another Heat Dome On Its Way

Temperatures this past week were in the 80s and low 90s. Next week, back to the 100s. 

Seven more weeks of summer. At least our AC is working.

Let's Get the Vile Bigotry All in One Post

So far on the Right side of the blogosphere, I have seen claims that

• Biden is actually dead, that's why "they" nominated Harris
• Biden has had a stroke, that's why, etc
• Harris isn't "really" black (they used this with Obama, too)
• Harris slept her way to power 
• Harris is a whore
• Harris isn't "really" a woman (apparently she's a transwoman)
• Melania is a hot babe, unlike Harris, so therefore (?? I don't see where this one is supposed to lead -- I guess it means Harris is unfuckable, so she can't lead a country?)
• Harris "isn't qualified" (again, this was a popular move with Obama as well)
• Harris is unqualified because she's never actually given birth (being a step-parent doesn't count as being a parent)
• Harris is unqualified because neither of her parents were born in the U.S. 
• Harris is a DEI hire (mediocre white people sure get mad about DEI for some reason)
• The Left is only going to vote for Harris because she's a woman (again, this was a popular move with Obama, who we only voted for because he was black)
• The Left can't even define woman, but they want "us" to vote for one?
• Harris is "woke" (alors!)
• Harris laughs too much (sacre bleu!)
• Harris was mean to trans people/black people when she had power in California (neither is true, but also it always makes me laugh when conservatives only care about trans rights or black lives or women when they can use that "caring" as a weapon, and by laugh I mean projectile vomit)
• Harris is a cop (wait, I thought they liked cops?)
• Harris hates Israel
• Other countries will laugh at us if we have a woman president
• Harris is too stupid to understand the big decisions she'll have to make on the world stage
• Harris never served in the military, so how can she be commander in chief?
• The Democratic party doesn't actually want Harris, the "elite"/"deep state" is forcing us to accept her as our candidate, which "proves" democracy doesn't actually exist 

Did I miss any?