Feeling: Happy

I added a page on the Caesar cipher.

• The pros and cons of impeachment.
• Republican Mitch McConnell doesn't understand why people are still getting mad at the Republicans for not even bothering to show up to vote in favor of paying into the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.
• Republican Phil Benson is annoyed that those "freaking queers have gotten too much sympathy," saying they are an "abomination," and should move away to "a place [they are] wanted."
• Trump continues having trouble finding people stupid enough to ruin their reputations by getting a permanent position in the White House.
• Yes, Republicans are putting asylum seekers into concentration camps.
• Another white male gun nut with an assault rifle and Republicans will do nothing to stop this.

I met Sarah Levin when I went to Michigan's State Capital to speak to congress. She was really cool.

Greece has joined the rest of civilization and repealed its blasphemy laws.

In the past 100 years, the Catholic church has been growing in the poorer nations of the world in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa, but has been dropped from 65% of the European population down to 24%. A large part of this was the result of World War II proving to many families that their belief in a loving just god was misplaced, but the Vatican's systematic protection of child rapists hasn't helped them at all. While the third-world growth is keeping their numbers up, Catholics don't have the long-term cultural foothold they used to enjoy, and many of the potential clergy men aren't willing to remain unmarried and celibate. So, in order to prevent the death of the Catholic church, the Vatican is considering allowing married men to become ordained priests. It's currently only for remote regions, but, give it time, and I'll bet the church will abandon yet another one of it's oldest established traditions to remain in the world.

After a sentence of one day in jail is passed down, those who took part in the scandal where celebrities bribed their children's way into college are proving that the rules simply don't apply to rich white people.

Way back in July of 2016, an unarmed black mental health worker was shot for the crime of lying on the ground holding his hands in the air next to one of his autistic patients. Despite being told that the autistic man was holding a toy truck and not a gun, trained SWAT officer, Jonathan Aledda, shot, not the autistic man whom he claims he thought had a gun, but the black man on his back with his hands in the air. Officers then handcuffed the shot black man and left him bleeding on the ground, refusing him medical treatment, for over 20 minutes. When asked why he shot at an unarmed black man lying on the ground with his hands in the air three times (hitting him once), Aledda responded, "I don't know." A lawsuit ensued, and, almost three years later, officer Jonathan Aledda has found not guilty of manslaughter. Aledda was found guilty of culpable negligence, but the charge is so minor, he may remain a police officer.

The quantum nature of space itself.

Feeling: Happy

I went to an adults-only bouncy castle park with Wallee, Allan, Danielle, Daniel, and Roopa. It was raining for most of the event, so we were soaked to the core, and by the end of it, we were all covered with fiction burns, but we had an amazing time! Despite pushing 40, I was still in better shape than a lot of 20-somethings!

Though it's not exactly in season right now, I finished reading Charles Dickens's, A Christmas Carol.

• Trump is trying to downplay the fact that he is an American traitor.
• Trump's new pick for Secretary of Health is Alex Azar, the man responsible for tripling the cost of insulin.
• Trump's internal polling group found that he's losing to all of the major Democratic candidates, so Trump is firing them for reporting facts.
• Imagine if a newly elected Muslim senator held a meeting where only other Muslims were allowed, and Christians were refused entry. How do you think Americans would react? They would probably freak out and demand the senators immediate resignation. However, when Republican Brian Dahle holds a Christians-only meeting, that excludes all Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and atheists, every thing is fine, right?
• Trump is still on his first term, but he can't wait to violate the US Constitution and have a third consecutive term.
• Democrats descend on Iowa.

The underlying flaw present in all portable air conditioners.

We live in a country where it's now normal for cops to pull out their guns, shout obscenities at a family and their children, and arrest them all because one of the kids was -suspected- of stealing a $1 doll.

Jenny McCarthy was confident her son was a magical angel before being confident he contracted autism from a vaccine, then she was confident her house was haunted because she didn't know what her Google Home chime sounded like. Anyway, you should totally trust her to give you life advice.

Christian pastor Stephen Bratton, who has fought to criminlaize abortion because he loves children so much, was just arrested for repeatedly raping a child who he is related to. Also, Catholic priest Gerold Langsch just pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting an elderly woman.

Nicholas Sparks, yes, the same guy who write horrible Christian romance novels, is also a anti-LGBT bigot.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Rhodes piano.

• US military intelligence is stating quite clearly now that Russia, in violation of a US treaty, has resumed testing nuclear bombs, but since Putin pulls his strings, Trump will do nothing about it the same way he does nothing about the other dictators.
• Trump's, I think, third campaign manager, and now counselor, Republican Kellyanne Conway has violated the Hatch Act several times by using her position in the Executive Branch to publicly disparage political candidates and therefore affect the course of an American election. Of course, Trump doesn't mind having criminals working for him and refuses even give her a slap on the wrist, let alone fire her.
• Trump has admitted that he would accept dirt on political rivals from hostile foreign powers without even alerting the FBI. Democrats tried to pass a law making such traitorous acts illegal, but Republicans, traitors themselves, blocked it.
• 4-month-old Constantin Mutu, a Romanian infant, has become the youngest child on record to be stolen away from his parents by Republicans.
• Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders claims she's resigning as White House press secretary, but, she's so dishonest, I have a hard time believing her. She will leave behind a legacy of lies and the effective elimination of the free press's ability to question the White House. Like most of Trump's cronies, she belongs in prison.
• Trump is currently losing to every major Democrat in the polls, despite his lies to the contrary. But don't take that as a reason to ease up on campaigning. Remember how easily Republicans cheated their way into victory last election!

Never forget that the gay pride festival began because police were bullying black transgender people.

New York has wisely eliminated religious exceptions for public school vaccinations. The reality is, there are almost no religions that require or even suggest not vaccinating children, and nearly every parent who doesn't vaccinate their child is really just pretending they have a religious issue, but they're actually scientifically ignorant. A lie that has caused a serious outbreak of preventable diseases in the state.

We shouldn't have to keep reporting on the scam of multi-level marketing (AKA pyramid schemes), but they're becoming more popular now that fewer women have jobs.

Despite having it as part of their policy rules, Google refuses to eliminate bigoted hate videos on YouTube.

Feeling: Happy

I've started a page on the various ancient mythologies which feature a man being created by the gods who form him out of the earth.

• Trump's former White House employees, and convicted criminals, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, are being called back to Congress for more testimony about how they helped Trump cheat the election with help from Russia. And speaking of Trump getting help from Russia, Trump, in no uncertain terms, admitted he would probably accept dirt on his political opponents from hostile foreign powers without informing the FBI. Of course, he probably already has, and Russia isn't being very friendly right now.
• You can never trust a Republican to properly explain the Green New Deal.
• Trump accidental let slip his super top secret plan with Mexico. Turns out, there isn't one.
• When Republicans criminalize abortion, women die because they seek out alternate ways to have abortions, like consuming all-natural organic poisons.
• Roy Zimmerman has a new song called Covfefe: Grounds For Impeachment.

Christian Pastor Greg Fritts wants the police to execute LGBT people, not a big shock there, it's typical for Christians to show their love by demanding murder, but things become a bit scary when you learn that Fritts also works for Knox County police.

New York is trying to deal with climate change by building a seawall.

Most bad Christian arguments about morality never bother to define "good," "evil," or "morality," which is why the arguments are this awful.

Say it with me everyone, you can't sweat out toxins.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Tanakh.

• Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, has broke the law by refusing to speak to a Congressional hearing. As such, Congress is planning on voting to hold him in contempt so that he may be punished for his crime. However, Barr is no stranger to dirty politics, so he's threatening to have Trump use his executive privilege to redact all government documents about the Republican's illegal addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 US census questionnaire. Barr is a criminal who is trying to protect other criminals in order to prevent being held accountable for his crimes.
• Trump is taking American contracts for weapons manufacturing and giving them to Saudi Arabia, and the Republicans in Congress are refusing to do anything about it.
• Facebook has refused to take down a video of Nancy Pelosi that was purposely altered to make it look like she was slurring her words (and later shared by Trump). When asked if Facebook would react the same way to a video of Mark Zuckerberg, they say yes. So, a group of artists have taken them to task, creating a deepfake of Zuckerberg claiming to have stolen billions of people's private data to control the future. Currently, the video is purposely marked as a fake, but, no doubt, far worse videos of Zuckerberg will be made soon claiming to be genuine.
• More about Trump's fake threat of tariffs on Mexican imports.
• A recap of Trump's European trip. It was mostly another vacation for his family at his own properties paid for with our taxes. The entire time he rambled incoherently while the European media trolled him.
• Trump is having a hard time keeping his Twitter followers.
• Trump continues to attack individual Americans, but, with his massive following, he's really just amplifying the voices of otherwise unknown people.

A mother and registered nurse was kicked out of the Nessler Family Aquatic Center in Texas City, Texas for breastfeeding her son. She was harassed by a lifeguard, then by the pool manager, and finally, by a police officer whose body cam recorded him saying, "You can't just have your titties out everywhere. I mean I get that you got to feed your kid, that's all fine and dandy, but go sit under a blanket or something." But the officer, just like the manager and lifeguard, are all wrong about the law. Texas law clearly states that mothers may breastfeed in any public space where both mother and child are allowed, so that means malls, restaurants, and, yes, public pools.

Public schools in the South are still inviting Christian speakers to try and convert children to Christianity, preach abstinence, and tell children abortion is evil. How do we know this? Because the people who are invited under the guise of teaching sex-ed keep bragging about it on Facebook.

Genetically Modified Skeptic explains his transition from Evangelical Christian to Atheist Youtuber.

Epic Rap Battles of History pits The Burger King against Ronald McDonald.

The more processed a food is, generally the less healthy it is for you. Part of it comes from all the additives, but part also comes from the fact that it's so much easier to eat more of it.

Feeling: Happy

I finished reading the science book, Science Matters: Achieving Science Literacy.

• Women still aren't treated as equals according to the US Constitution. Who is to blame? The usual culprits: Republicans and Christians.
• Trump continues to go out of his way to stay at his own properties, forcing the American taxpayer to foot the bill.
• Republicans claimed they were against Trump's Mexican tariffs, but, let's be real, they would have knuckled under and licked his boots if her went through with them the same way they have for every other hair-brained ideas. Of course, in this case, it didn't matter since the Mexican tariffs were all a sham.
• Trump takes his ball and goes home.

While searching for online science quizzes, I came across one published by The Christian Science Monitor. It's a fantastic example of how -not- to make a science quiz. Rather than test your ability to understand the process and purpose of science, it tests your memorization of facts semi-related to science. Example questions include, which organism did Gregor Mendel observe to develop his theory of genetics? What does the A in AM radio stand for? Which obsolete dinosaur genus did the US post office put on a stamp? and many, many more. These questions are an interesting part of the application of science, science history, and technology, but they're not about actual science. You can take the quiz here.

US Customs and Border Patrol just announced their security company was breached and the personal information (including photos of people, their vehicles, and license plates) of around 100,000 people was stolen. The CBP claims they learned about the breach on May 31st, but assured reporters that they couldn't find the data anywhere online, which is extremely embarrassing for them because multiple news outlets found the stolen data as a free download as early as May 23rd! The CBP didn't even acknowledge their massive breach until June 10th, probably because they had to. The CBP later claimed that the data was just pictures of people in their vehicles, but another security firm pointed out the CBP often took fingerprints and close up photos which might also have been stolen even if it wasn't posted online. This is why you shouldn't let a third party have your personal information. Even if you can trust them, you can't trust the people who steal from them!

Children's minister Matthew Tonne was arrested after molesting a child at Village Church, a massive multi-building church whose leader, pastor Matt Chandler, helped to cover up the crime.

Botswana has finally decriminalized homosexuality after 54 years of having it illegal because of a law put in place after Great Britain invaded the region.

Looking at how one type of sound compression worked on the Game Boy.

Feeling: Happy

Over the weekend I finished reading Ursula K. Le Guin's novel, The Lathe of Heaven.

• Turns out Trump's threat to push tariffs on Mexico was a sham from the beginning. It had been resolved even before Trump made the threat, so he was lying about it the whole time, a lie that caused a massive swing in the US stock market. And now hes threatening to tax the American people with another $300,000,000,000 on imports from China.
• Somebody probably should have told Trump that the Moon isn't part of Mars.
• In the USA, Republicans are trying their damnedest to criminalize abortion, meanwhile, in Canada, they've just added universal coverage for the abortion pill.
• Some Nazis carrying fire arms (Trump calls them "good people") showed up at a Michigan Pride festival. Meanwhile, Mark Sahady and his white supremacists friends who are trying to organize a straight pride parade have, without understanding the irony, asked an openly-gay man to be their grand marshal.

I would be very happy if Elizabeth Warren became president.

The Duggar family used to be known as the over-bearing cult-like Christian family who tell people never to use birth control or family planning of any kind. Then they were known for protecting their son, Josh Duggar, from being punished or treated by a professional after sexually assaulting children. Now, they're known for encouraging rape by telling wives to always let your husband have sex with you, even when you don't want to have sex.

The NRA is experiencing a massive loss in members in large part because their contributions are all going straight into the pockets of the board members.

Turns out Boeing was planning on waiting three years before finally fixing their 737 Max. Even the two crashes killing a total of 346 people, wasn't enough to get them to act. It required the grounding of their entire fleet that finally caused Boeing to address their issue.

Christian pastor, William Weaver, has just resigned after three men have accused him of sucking their penises as part of an exorcism ritual.

What it's like to live in a cult that spans an entire city, part 1 and part 2.

Feeling: Happy

• Despite the Saudi Arabian government murdering an American journalist, Trump is giving them access to nuclear bomb technology because they're willing to pay him enough money. This is what happens when you bankrupt the government, you are beholden to any criminal agency who can pay your debts.
• Republicans paid $935,033 of our tax dollars for a single eight mile limousine trip so Trump could visit his golf course. Compare that to Obama's visit, which cost $114,000 for three days of traveling.
• Republicans have been caught lying to courts about the fact that they were Gerrymandering districts to lessen the impact of black voters.
• While overseas, Trump continues to embarrass the USA.
• Boris Johnson is a pathetic buffon, just like Trump.

Another pathetic incel (short for "involuntary celibate," they're men whose hatred of women disgusts women so much they refuse to have sex with the men) murdered a bunch of women.

If you're a woman, simply reporting sexual harassment can be a career killer.

Barronelle Stutzman is a hateful Christian who refuses to sell flowers to the LGBT. She tried suing the government claiming her religious bigotry was protected, but she lost, and was fined $1,000. She's been trying to fight this legally for six years now, and each and every time she appeals, she keeps losing.

This clipshow of Stephen Colbert is pretty great.

For real though, a straight-pride parade would just be a bunch of dudes.

The Angry Video Game Nerd readdresses Superman 64.

Feeling: Happy

• Hazardous waste cleanup is extremely expensive because the people doing the cleanup need to be properly compensated for risking their lives and the waste needs to actually be disposed of properly. Unless Republicans are in charge, in which case, they just declare a proclamation that radioactive waste isn't that dangerous, so they don't have to clean it up.
• Trump's father called in a lot of favors to convince a family doctor to make up a fake bone spurs diagnosis to keep his son out of Vietnam, but now, the deferred coward says he would have been honored to serve. Hey, it's not too late! Let's send captain bone spurs into Iran!
• The whole reason Presidents are expected to put shore up their businesses before taking office is to prevent them from being like Trump and using the Presidency to try and save their failing businesses or to use them to convince foreign politicians to make statements to promote your wars.
• The Washington Post fact-checked Trump's visit to London. It was chocked full of straight-up lies. And, I have to say, I was very pleased to see so many Londoners protesting Trump's visit, even from high-ranking politicians, but, naturally he lied about them too.
• Republicans have figured out how to better keep asylum seeking children out of the US, deny them legal aid.
• Trump claimed he kicked all transgender soldiers out of the US military, not because he hates the LGBT, but because it was too expensive to keep them, and then his own Defense Department contradicted him, saying Trump was wrong.
• Conservatives who don't understand the metric system or the imperial system complain about the metric system.
• Republican Don Boys, who thinks homosexuals should be put in prison, and that rape only counts if the victim screams loud enough, doesn't think he should be called a bigot because his opinions come from his bible.

Insys Therapeutics has agreed to bribing doctors in order to get them to prescribe unnecessary and highly addictive fentanyl and is being fined $225,000,000.

Before being fired fo sexual harassment, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield spent hundreds of thousands of church funds paying off his victims, renovating his house, and partying. Think about that before your next tithe.

YouTube profits off the LGBT while at the same time, protecting those who are openly hostile to the LGBT.

Vidyagame memes.

Feeling: Happy

I rode my bike for the first time in about four years. My thighs were protesting after about 100 feet!

I added a page for the video game company, SNK.

• Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have Republicans preventing Republicans from investigating Republicans?
• Just before visiting the UK's royal family, Trump referred to Meghan Markle as "nasty," while being recorded, and then immediately claimed he never said that. Maybe that's why he wasn't even allowed to stay in Buckingham Palace?
• Because Alabama is so pro life, Republican Mayor Mark Chambers posted online that homosexuals, transvestites, and doctors who provide abortions should all be murdered.

If you tithe to a church, you're protecting child rapists and greedy charlatans.

Looking back on Commodore's IBM-compatible line of computers.

Want to make a custom piece of electronics?

Aerogels are pretty crazy.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Atari 2600 Joystick.

• Another lawsuit against Trump is in the works. It states that a now defunct Trump company in Panama evaded taxes by misrepresenting its pay to employees, failing to pay management costs, and doctored other financial records.
• Republican continue to fight for the rights of old men to marry under-aged girls.
• The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools lost its accreditation privileges because it was handing them out to for-profit diploma mills like Virginia College. Enter Republican Betsy DeVos who gives accreditation back to Virginia College, not because they made strides to become a real school, but because DeVos has a soft spot for scammers. Well, even with the Department of Education giving them a free pass, Virginia College couldn't stay open and has left all its students with a pile of debt and no degrees. The student have banded together to sue DeVos.
• It's nice to see that Londoners are continuing to protest Trump with the disturbingly accurate looking Trump baby blimp.
• How Christian Conservatives are trying a new tactic called Project Blitz which forces Christianity into public schools, and it's working.

Conservative revisionist always love to talk about America's Judeo-Christian heritage, as though it's a real thing, but it's a lie they tell to cover up two centuries of Jewish hatred. It doesn't help when they expand the narrative to include Judeo-Christian "science."

Pokémon in the 1800s.

Have you or someone you love been injured because of a faulty medical device? Probably, because a huge amount of medical devices are put on the market in America without any testing.

Some scientists are trying to save endangered crops before they go extinct.

Feeling: Happy

I've been replaying Secret of Mana. Goddamn, this is such an amazing game!

I added a page for the argument, astrology is bigotry.

• As the Trump administration tries to sell off the Veteran's Affair's health care to private for-profit hospitals, VA employee Jereme P. Whiteman discovered something shocking. Although the public patient wait list showed an average of around 15,000 veterans waiting for care (dangerously high by any standard), the VA kept a secret internal list which top VA officials keep hidden from the public that showed the actual number of Veterans waiting to be treated is 44,478!
• In order to prove how classy he is, Trump went to Virginia where there was another mass shooting. He wasn't in town because of the shooting, he was on another golfing vacation, but he stopped at a church, still wearing his golfing clothes, where he was invited on stage. He let the church congregation pray that he'll be a good President, and then left without saying a single word about the 12 people who were murdered.
• The FBI isn't doing us any favors by handing over their evidence for Trump's crimes, but refusing to clearly state that what he and his administration did was unethical.
• Republican Scott Alan Buss who draws a $53,000 yearly salary paid for by taxpayers, thinks public school is Satanic, that the Pope and Trump are both anti-Christs, and there is a homo-jihad in effect to make children gay. Meanwhile, Republican Darren Bailey has called on his god to issue a state-wide damnation. Sounds about par for the course.
• Yet another Trump staffer is resigning. Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers is quitting after Trump said he would escalate his already failing tariff war.
• Johana Medina Leon becomes yet another asylum seeker to die while in US custody. During the six weeks she was imprisoned in the USA, she was not given enough water to drink or a proper medical examination, and, shortly before her death, she tested positive for HIV. After she died, Corey Price, field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in El Paso, used the poor woman's death to scare other Americans from helping asylum seekers.

In order to prove how great of a Christian pastor he is, B.J. Blackburn tried to convince an underage girl to have a threesome with him and another underage girl.

The US spy planes that discovered Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Using fake evidence and lying does not help the feminist movement.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Windows utility, WinDirStat.

• A fact check on the various lies Trump told about the Russia investigation after Mueller refused to exonerate him.
• Republican's have a fondness for detaining migrant children in cages, often neglecting them to the point where they die, something that should be illegal. Now the Washington Post has learned that, for most of the detained children, the US us detaining them illegally, because there is a limit to how long the US government can detain a minor, and Republicans have criminally surpassed that limit.
• Trump's tariff war with China has been disastrous, but, like George W. Bush before him, he can't admit his mistake and must stay the course. So, he's imposing yet another tariff, this time on Mexico, and, as predicted, the US stock market tanked. Trump has taken the most competitive economy on the planet and dropped it to the third in only two years.
• Conservative Christians in Canada fined a store owner $10,000 for being open on a weekday they feel is special, now he's fighting the incredibly stupid law.

It isn't just priests who rape children, there have also been at least 100 credible cases of Catholic nuns sexually abusing or raping children.

Pushing Up Roses reviewed Maniac Mansion.

Creating colored underwater vortex rings and even knots.

What is the persecution complex like for antivaxxers? They believe vaccinating children is worse than the Holocaust.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Queen song, Bring Back That Leroy Brown and a list of my favorite cocktails.

• Republican Betsy DeVos has cause serious long term damage to Michigan's public school system, and now she's in charge of the nation's.
• Republicans are, with no attempt at satire, calling natural gas "freedom gas."
• Trump continues to side with foreign dictators over US intelligence.
• Young-earth Creationists, with help from the Republican party, have put together a concerted effort to inject their ridiculous beliefs into US public schools in an effort to eliminate the establishment clause of the first amendment, in a operation they call Project Blitz.
• The Trump administration is being sued yet again for trying to give people the right to deny health care to the LGBT.
• To give you an idea of just how petty Trump is, the White House ordered the US Navy to obscure the name of the warship, USS John S. McCain just so Trump wouldn't see the name and throw a hissy fit!
• One of the many reasons Trump is so terrible at his job.
• Kirsten Gillibrand discusses the Republican war on women.

Understanding tribalism is important for making clear decisions.

Feeling: Happy

I finished reading Judy Blume's, Tiger Eyes.

• Robert Mueller has officially shut down the Trump/Russia investigation stating very clearly, "Charging a president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider." Well, when you have a Republican Attorney General who stated explicitly that he would never charge a president with a crime appointed by a Republican president who thinks he's above the law, being investigated by a Republican-led FBI, you just can't expect justice.
• In 2016, Republican Mitch McConnell said that it would be wrong to fill a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year, even though there is a long history of that occurring in the USA. Well, we just learned that it had nothing to do with it being an election year, McConnell just didn't want a Supreme Court justice filled by a black Democrat. McConnell, with a grin on his face, just admitted that he would gladly fill a vacancy in the upcoming election year now that there is a white Republican in the office.
• Speaking of the US Supreme Court, the Republican-majority has decided that, yes, Mike Pence's law that forces women who have abortions to pay for funeral rites for the discarded embryos, is perfectly legal. To add insult to injury, the concurrence was written by serial sexual harasser, Clarence Thomas.
• U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos agreed to put the subpoena for Trump's financial records on hold for as long as his lawyers can drag out the case.
• Republicans have made it extremely clear, if you feed a starving person, and that person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, you -will- be charged with a crime.
• Republican Roy Moore, a man well known for trying to have sex with under-aged girls, is still trying to become the next Senator of Alabama, and even the Trump's want him to lose.
• Trump's failed trade war with China isn't going away any time soon, even if it means they can't see the series finale of a show where everyone says they hated the series finale.
• Like most of the people Trump chose to run the White House, Ben Carson is not only completely unqualified, but just plain stupid.
• Nazi's never like being called Nazis, even when they're actually Nazis.
• I'm all for the non-violent public shaming of terrible people.

A compilation of Christian preacher, and convicted felon, Jim Bakker.

Mario isn't so cool in real life.

White people are still pulling guns on black people for doing absolutely nothing.

Yes, a massive array of satellites will give us cheaper Internet access, but it will also make ground-based radio astronomy impossible, despite the claimed ignorance of those pushing the satellites.

The periodic table of the chemical elements you're familiar with isn't the only way to look at them.

Feeling: Happy

I've created a page which discusses fictional nonhuman persons, and how they may one day become not so fictional.

• Trump continues to use the Office of the Presidency to pay back corrupt personal favors. When Trump wanted to buy the mansion of his sister, disgraced judge Maryanne Barry who resigned because of tax fraud allegations, he took out a huge loan from Professional Bank. Shortly after that, the bank's CEO, Abel Iglesias, was hired by the Trump administration to the Federal Reserve. Now, Trump is trying really hard to ensure that his useless border wall will be constructed by North Dakota-based Fisher Industries whose CEO was a major Trump donor.
• Trump's big temper tantrum where he held hostage funds for US infrastructure to protect his own ass will not convince Democrats to stop investigating his crimes.
• The casualties in Flint, Michigan continue to raise years after Republicans inadvertently poisoned the city's drinking water.
• Democrats may get a lot of views by appearing on Fox, but they're also legitimizing a station whose goal is to lie for Conservatives.

Sadly, the state of journalism is much like student loans, it requires a rich billionaire willing to pay for it all in one fell swoop.

Do you suffer from seasonal allergies? Climate change is making life much worse for you.

Call it schadenfreude, but I'm glad to see the bigots in the UK are failing just as badly as the USA at getting anything done.

Feeling: Happy

I finally got a a new tooth placed on my implant! I look slightly less like a hillbilly!

I just finished re-reading Carl Sagan's Contact.

• Pretty much everyone who works for Trump is either taken away in handcuffs, resigns in disgust, or is fired for trying to stand up to him. Oil tycoon Rex Tillerson, who was stupidly chosen for Secretary of State, was the latter, resulting in one of the shortest tenures ever. And since nearly everyone who works with Trump ends up hating him, there's no secret that Tillerson doesn't mind spilling the beans over Trump's inability to prepare before meetings and being caught completely off-guard when he confronted Putin in Germany when Trump took the word of the Russian government over every US intelligence agency.
• Republican Steven Mnuchin is refusing to honor abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill and is instead continuing to honor Andrew Jackson, the highly racist genocidal president.
• As Trump continues to obstruct, Democrats are one step closer to getting Trump's financial records after a federal judge agrees that Trump can't hide them from a Congressional subpoena.
• Trump, mad that Nancy Pelosi rightly called out Trump's cover-ups, got all riled up and refused to talk about infrastructure deals, and instead complained that the people who were investigating his many crimes weren't treating him fairly. Pelosi then, again rightly, called his outburst a "temper tantrum."
• Trump's tariff wars have wrecked havoc on American farmers. According to USDA economists, Trump's bone-headed policy has caused them to lost half their income! Rather than adjust his policies, Republicans decided to punish the USDA economists by forcing them to move out of state. This caused six of them to quit. Farmers are still getting shafted, but at least now, there's nobody left to report it.
• Should Democrats legitimize Fox by appearing on the station whose goal is to lie for Republicans?

When did children's cartoons become a vehicle for A-list celebrities? Aladdin.

How engineers use the formation of droplets.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for one of my favorite video games, Secret of Mana.

• After Trump said that funding historically black colleges and universities might not be constitutional, Betsy DeVos tried to appropriate them by claiming HBCUs were pioneers of her anti-public school "school of choice" campaign. Obviously, neither of these comments engendered love among the students, and when Bethune-Cookman University invited DeVos to speak their their graduation ceremony, the students demanded she not attend. But, the school must have hoped such a big name would help their image, but when the DeVos began her commencement speech, the students turned their backs and booed her. The was very courageous of them, as the school's administrators threatened to cancel their graduation if they didn't shut up.
• Republicans once again refuse to pass a law banning child brides. Republican's don't want you to be able to abort a fetus, but they apparently want to marry them.
• The IRS said, in a confidential memo, that Trump must turn over his taxes to Congress unless he explicitly invokes his executive privilege.
• Facing a contempt of court charge, Republican William Barr finally caved and has agreed to hand over more of the redacted Mueller report to the House Intelligence Committee.
• Trump has tapped Republican Ken Cuccinelli II to coordinate his son-in-law's bigoted immigration policy. To give you an idea what Cuccinelli is all about, he thinks homosexuality should be a crime, he thinks abortion for any reason should be a crime, he thinks public schools shouldn't be allowed to teach sexual education, he thinks students and people who "look" like migrants shouldn't have fourth amendment rights, he thinks businesses, not the EPA, should decide how much pollution is bad for people, and he likes making jokes women naked women at work. Basically, he's a model Republican.
• The leader of Housing and Urban Development, Trump-appointed Republican Ben Carson, doesn't even know the basic industry jargon.
• Republican Larry Inman has been charged with several crimes including soliciting a bribe, extortion, and lying to the FBI, but he still refused to resign from the Republican caucus, and had to be voted out.
• Republican Douglas McLeod, who is proud of his Presbyterian faith, punched his wife in the face giving her a bloody nose because she wasn't undressing fast enough when he wanted to have sex with her. After his wife locked herself in a room to protect herself from McLeod, he threatened to kill her dog is she didn't open the door. Although, in McLeod's defense, he was really drunk at the time. He's currently free on a bail of a mere $1,000.
• All through his presidential campaigning, Trump claimed to be anti war, but during his entire presidency, Trump has constantly kept the US on the brink of war.

James MacDonald, paster of the megachurch Harvest Bible Chapel, is currently being investigated over an allegation that he sought out a hitman to murder his son-in-law while they rode motorcycles to the Creation Museum.

It's great that a billionaire paid the student loan debt of an entire graduating class, but, maybe we shouldn't have to rely on billionaires to throw us a bone? Maybe we could give people a decent living wage instead of making more billionaires?

Polygraphs don't work, but that doesn't stop them from being especially popular on daytime television, even if people commit suicide because of them.

What happens when you purposely overload wires made from various elements?

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Wolfenstein fictional universe.

• The most telling thing about all these abortion bans is they don't affect men at all. They don't make the prison sentence for rape longer, they don't make it harder for me to avoid paying child support, the Republican abortion laws only hurt women.
• Trump has a long history of scamming people, and, for obvious reasons, he's been trying to keep his financial records hidden from Congress. However, he just lost his first lawsuit. He'll appeal, of course, but this is a step in the right direction.
• A fifth migrant child has died while stolen away from their parents and languishing in a US cage. Republicans are so pro-life.
• Trump's lawyer admitted that Trump's other lawyer told him to lie to Congress in a conspiracy to cover up Trump's business plans with Moscow even during his run for president.
• Trump appears to be forcing the US into another war with another Middle Easter country.
• "But her emails," apparently doesn't apply to Betsy DeVos.
• Republican Larry Lindsey hired mental health experts to review Trump's history and create a non-medical diagnosis. They each said he was clearly suffering from narcissism.
• SNL used the Queen song Don't Stop Me Now to roast the current Republican abortion they call our government.
• Some of Jeanine Pirro's advertisers didn't pull away from her despite her racist rant.

If you die under mysterious circumstances, your death may never be properly explained because so many counties in the US use completely unqualified medical examiners.

CFI is expanding their homeopathy lawsuit to include Walmart in addition to CVS.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Alanis Morissette album Under Rug Swept.

• A major player in the abortion bans being passed by rich white men is Republican Janet Porter. In addition to believing an embryo is a full human and person, Porter also believes that being gay is a choice, that Noah's flood was caused because of gay people, that Obama was born in Kenya, and that Christians are superior to everyone else. She also works at a large hate group. This is the foundation of abortion bans like the one in Alabama where Republicans admit they passed an unconstitutional law. Meanwhile, Republican Barry Hovis, who helped put into law Missouri's unconstitutional ban on abortion, explained that 98-99% of rapes are "consensual." Arkansas isn't much better with their abortion ban allowing rapists to prevent their victims from getting abortions if they don't want the women to get them.
• Convicted felon, and Trump's first choice for National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn told Robert Mueller that several people involved with Trump's administration contacted him multiple times in an effort to obstruct justice. In an attempt to distance himself from Flynn and blame Obama, Trump is claiming that Obama should have warned him that Flynn was so shady... of course, Obama did warn Trump about Flynn.
• Vice President Mike Pence gave the commencement speech at a Christian "school" where he mentioned Trump more than his god or Jesus combined. He also had student's protesting his appearance by wearing pro-LGBT mortarboards and refusing to shake his hand.
• Border patrol agent, and huge Trump fan, Matthew Bowen, called Central Americans, "disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire," before running someone over with his border patrol vehicle. In related news, Trump's pick to be the next director of ICE is Mark Morgan, a man who claims he can identify a future gang member simply by looking into a child's eyes.
• Don Jr should be in prison, but he's only now facing just preliminary questioning.
• Just a reminder, if you eat at Chick-fil-A, you're hurting your LGBT friends.
• Trump is always careful to mention that the US currently has a record low level of unemployment, but then why is the economy continuing to tank? Because, wages are also historically low. Everyone is working, but they're no the working poor.

In case you're unsure about which candidate to support, unlike most Democrat presidential hopefuls, Elizabeth Warren actually has detailed plans for solving the nation's problems and Kamala Harris is stone cold.

Feeling: Happy

Since I have been seeing it used a lot on Facebook lately, I've created a page for the argument, don't like it, don't do it.

• Republican Governor Kay Ivey, who signed into law the Alabama abortion ban, explains how pro-life she is while presiding over her seventh execution. Republicans are so damned pro-life, if you aren't pro-life, they'll kill you, and if they can't kill you, they'll neglect your children until they die too. And, if you hadn't guessed who is forcing their beliefs on the women of Alabama, The Friendly Atheist checked out all of the 25 old white men, and, as expected, they're all Christians. No wonder they know almost nothing about sex.
• To give you an idea of the caliber of the men Trump is choosing for federal judges, several of them are refusing to comment on Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court case that ended racial segregation is public schools. These men actually are afraid to give their opinions on racial segregation, which should give you an idea of what they believe!
• The USA can't seem to send rapists to prison, but we do give them custody of the children they fathered from raping women.
• Trump is so anti-immigrant, he wants to dump 1,000 of them every month into Florida. His belief is that the counties can't handle such a large influx of desperate people and it will have a negative impact on their economies. While this is true, think about how utterly vile that is. He's using human beings who are absolutely destitute as a punishment to people who care for destitute people. Of course, as is typical for Trump, he isn't taking into account any long-term affects. All of those immigrants are going to have children, all of whom will become US citizens. Trump is inadvertently pushing the demographics of Florida further from where he wants it to be (i.e., all white).
• Maybe Democrats would do better to stop talking about who is "electable" (read: conservative white men) and talk about the people Democrats actually want to elect?
• Trump broke yet another Federal promise, this time by cutting the funding of California's high-speed rail project, because Trump likes to punish people for disagreeing with his ridiculous (and frequently racist) views. The state now has a lot of partially built railways they will either leave to deteriorate or have to fund on their own.
• Just to be clear, Trump is lying about his failing trade war.

Tracie Harris shares some of the letters her Atheist group has received from people stuck in abusive religious families.

Why do drugs cost so much more in the USA compared to every other country in the world? It's complicated, but the short answer is, our capitalistic approach to medicine is paying for all of the development of drugs in the hope we can gouge the sick. Other countries buy their drugs in bulk, so they can sell them cheaper, and also use our safety data to offset the development costs. If we adopted their system, other nations would have to pay their fair share, and we would have cheaper drugs.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Weezer song, My Name Is Jonas.

• In defiance to Alabama's all-white all-male criminalization of abortion for religious reasons (Republican Governor Kay Ivey said abortion must be banned because fetuses are a gift from her god.), the three remaining clinics in the state vow to remain open even it means both doctor and patient will be charged with murder.
• Trump continues to be soft on white crime. His latest pardons include Patrick Nolan who plead guilty to corruption (but is a Republican), and Conrad Black was found guilty of robbing a lot of people and obstructing justice, but wrote a book praising Trump.
• Republicans are refusing to grant citizenship to the children of American same-sex couples because they claim their children are born "out of wedlock."
• Trump is still trying to downplay his failing trade war.
• Republican Kim LaSata makes her views on abortion clear, it should be criminalized and it should be painful, not because its unethical, but because it goes against how LaSata interprets her religion. She goes on to explain how all pregnant women should let her god deliver their babies.
• Republican, and Christian leader, Jim Beck, has just been indicted on 38 counts of fraud and money laundering regarding the theft of state funds.
• Republican Ted Cruz is so spineless, he even caved to Trump's ridiculous Space Force idea. And, to back up his nonsense, he invented fictional space pirates.

Want to start a cult? Here's all you need to know.

What caused the largest and deadliest California wildfire in history? Poorly maintained power lines at Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Christians fail to create a satisfactory explanation for suffering.

Another day, another church is raided for protecting child rapists.

That water has a lot of black balls.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Sierra demo, A Computer Christmas.

• One of Trump's many failures was his inability to repeal Obamacare, however, this isn't stopping his administration from removing it as much as possible from government web sites in the hope that people will forget about it.
• Trump gets pretty much everything wrong about tariffs, so here's what his tariffs are actually doing. Interestingly, Trump's trade war (that he doesn't want anyone calling a trade war) is causing so much harm to the US that even Republicans are beginning to criticize him, but they're still too spineless to actually do anything about it.
• Alabama just passed an unconstitutional law banning nearly every form of abortion in their state. The law was ratified by 25 people who voted in favor of the bill. Of the 25, 25 are white, 25 are old, and 25 are men.
• Christian preacher Terry Holcomb told the people who pointed out his violation of the first amendment to go kill themselves and because of that, Fox host Todd Starnes said he likes him.
• Trump's lawyer openly admitted he was traveling to Ukraine to try and find dirt on Trump's political rivals.
• Trump aide, and professional bigot, Sebastian Gorka lashes out at an Authur cartoon that features a same-sex wedding claiming it is a "war on [American] culture," which is interesting considering he's not American, and same-sex marriage is both legal and protected by the US Constitution. Maybe showing a wedding ceremony that happens literally every day in American is a war on his backward pathetic culture, but certainly not on America's.
• Trigger-happy conservatives will tell you that school shootings will stop simply by giving teachers guns, but all that seems to do is make the teachers the school shooters.

Having more women in Congress wouldn't make the country more fair, but it would make the country more fairly represented.

Vaccines aren't just for children. As you get older, there are a couple routine vaccinations you should get. You should also get a couple vaccines if you're pregnant or plan on being around babies or the elderly.

Religions work best when they first convince you that you have the problem for which they just happen to have the solution.

An actual biologist explains why evolutionary psychologists don't understand evolution.

Feeling: Happy

I created a page for the Rilo Kiley song, Papillon.

• Even after it was voted down, Republicans still can't stop lying about the Green New Deal, which has ironically given it more life. So, why not learn about what it actually is.
• The history of how America's presidential con man lied his way onto the Forbes list, despite losing more money than any other American.
• Kirstjen Nielsen, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was fired by Trump, and we're just learning why. Turns out, like most Trump appointees, she was evil, manipulative, and backhanded, but she wasn't quite evil enough to perform a mass incarceration of entire families without evidence of crime, which is what Trump demanded she do.

The Angry Video Game Nerd reviews Pepsiman.

Women are treated better in pretty much every other country compared to the USA.

Which is worse? Christian Pastor David Richards of Tennessee repeatedly raping his 14-year-old daughter over a span of two years, the pastor's congregation who refused to believe their preacher was a rapist even after his semen was found on his daughter's bed frame, or Judge Steven Sword who gave him an extremely lenient sentence because, as Judge Sword put it, the rapist is a "good Christian man."

Some background behind Richard Carrier's lawsuits where he is suing people for saying he's a creep.

Learning about the magnetic poles of the earth.

Aron Ra gives a talk on religious "values."

Feeling: Happy

I created a graphic that makes me laugh, and a page for the short-lived minor Japanese development company Newtopia Planning.

• As was expected, China has raised tariffs on US products in response to Trump's unprovoked aggression. This will hurt American and Chinese consumers and businesses, but, since Trump has bankrupted the US government, will give them much needed funds.
• The nation needs to know if secretly working with a hostile foreign power to undermine a US election (exactly what Don Jr tried to do) is a crime. Any patriotic American would say yes, but Republicans tend to care more about their party than the country, so they're trying to prevent even discussing whether it's a crime.
• There are a lot of Democrat presidential hopefuls, but the press seems to be focusing mostly on the men.
• Khalifa Haftar invaded Tripoli and left 300 dead, and over 1,000 more wounded. The United Nations has identified Haftar as a Libyan warlord who must be stopped, but, after being easily persuaded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Trump identified Haftar as a freedom fighter who is stopping terrorism!
• White supremacists in Poland used to love Trump's pro-white pro-nationalist agenda, but when he suggested Poland should have to pay reparations to Jews, they got their knickers in a bind.
• Trump can't even stop lying about who gets to see the Lincoln bedroom.
• After Tennessee Judge, Republican Jim Lammey, posted on Facebook that Jews need to "get the fuck over the Holocaust," he claimed he wasn't racist, and makes nothing but impartial judgments.
• To Trump, murdering people is a joke.

Looking back at the development of the game Lemmings.

As Mormon mothers speak out about the church that protected Christopher Michael Jensen, a child-raping church officials, even the congregation refuses to hear their crimes.

Victor Vescovo just beat the record for the longest time at the deepest point in the ocean (only the third time such a depth has been reached) and found human trash.

The crappy science behind clickbait articles claiming relationships are better for men who marry sexy wives.

A homophobic police officer arrested a man for having a sticker on his truck which reads, "I eat ass," saying the sticker was "derogatory." When the driver asked the officer, "how is it derogatory?" the officer complained that he would be furious if one of his children saw the sticker and he might have to teach his kids about gay sex. The driver refused to remove the sticker citing it was his first amendment right to display it (which courts have ruled for decades to be the case), but the officer, clearly ignorant of the law, arrested him anyway. Naturally, the driver was released without charge, and is now pursuing legal avenues to sue the sheriff's office for wrongful arrest.

Are human embryos more like tumors or parasites? A better question is are anti-abortion Christian apologists more like tumors or parasites? Both.

Feeling: Happy

• Trump probably lost more money than anyone else in the US, during the late 1980s, but a long series of cheating and lying allowed him to get out of debt. He tries to brush off his billion dollar loss as cheating the US system, but the problem with this argument, is it means he is actually the worst welfare queen in the world.
• Tariffs are raised yet again. China will go tit-for-tat, and all our consumer good will increase in price. Trump has succeeded once again in hurting the US economy.
• Under the guise of anti-discrimination, Texas Republicans are banning abortion for inviable fetuses. Even if a fetus has an abnormality where it doesn't have lungs, this new law would make it a crime for both the woman and the doctor to perform an abortion. It doesn't matter that the fetus will die a horrible death shortly after birth, Texas women will be forced to carry it until term and give birth to their dead baby, because Jesus. Meanwhile Ohio Republicans are reclassifying birth control as abortion and demanding that potentially fatal ectopic pregnancies that must be aborted can be fixed by magic.
• Donald Trump Jr. tried to work with the Russian government to help his father become president, however, as stupid as he is, he got scammed and his failure was made public. Naturally, when Republicans were in charge of Congress, they refused to even consider that he broke the law, but, now that Democrats have some clout, they're investigating whether it should be a crime for Americans to work with foreign powers to steal elections, but Republicans continue to obstruct.
• After Trump called for an immediate and reckless withdrawal of the US military from Syria, without even discussing it with our allies in the area, the head of the Department of Defense resigned in disgust. This left Trump with yet another department without a leader, so he randomly picked Patrick M. Shanahan. I say random because Shanahan had absolutely no experience in defense before Trump picked him. Instead, he's a retired executive of Boeing, you know, the company whose planes keep falling out of the sky.
• The NRA is imploding, and I think it's wonderful!

Black people, black women especially, are carving out quite a place for themselves on Twitter. It would be nice if politicians took note.

Delta Airlines ran a union smear campaign in order to try and convince their workers not to band together for higher wages and safer working conditions. Their brilliant argument was to tell their workers, if they weren't part of the union, they could buy more video games and beer. It didn't go as well as they hoped.

One thing you can say about Bernie Sanders, he's consistent.

One way to go about disproving gods.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Frank Turner album, Love Ire & Song.

• The US government is structured with three main branches so that no one branch can ever have too much power and run amok. During the Trump administration, the executive branch, where Trump sits, has routinely been over-stepping its authority and trying to do things that are criminal. Thanks to our three-branch system, the other two branches have successfully stopped Trump from becoming the King of the US, and Trump does not like this one bit. So, the White House's most recent power grab is to target the judicial branch of government and say that judges shouldn't be allowed to rule against presidential decrees.
• At one of his Klan rallies, Trump asked how the USA could stop immigration and one of his followers shouted "shoot them!" To which Trump smiled and chuckled.
• The White House is tightening its rules on how press passes are given out, effectively banning many journalists.
• Even if what they're doing isn't the legal definition of obstruction of justice, Republicans are literally obstructing justice.
• Remember when Trump patted himself on the back for stopping the missile tests in North Korea? Just like with every promise he's ever made, he didn't follow through.
• Republican Jonathan Stickland told Dr. Peter Hotez, who is professor of infectious disease at Baylor College of Medicine, that vaccines are "sorcery" and only his god can control illnesses.
• Another school shooting. Another will happen again shortly. Republicans will prevent us from making any progress toward stopping them.
• Women are still not treated equally under the US Constitution because several hold-out states don't want it. Naturally, those hold-out states are majority Republican.
• Trump is causing long-term damage to the US economy with his tariff war.

I for one welcome our new magnetic robotic overlords.

Thanks to the FFRF, a Pennsylvania public school will stop using their PA system to push religion on their students. They acknowledge it's a crime, but they admit they really want to keep doing it.

Could we solve our traffic problems simply by taxing drivers more?

Richard Carrier is re-suing, after losing his previous lawsuits, the people who kicked him out of their groups because of of sexual harassment accusations. Personally, I don't think these lawsuits are helping his case.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the religious "gotcha" question, why is there something instead of nothing?.

• Trump has just claimed that his privilege of being president should overrule Congress's ability to investigate his crimes.
• The New York Times got a hold of more of Trump's past tax returns from 1985-1994. They show that he went 8 years without paying a single cent in taxes, not because his accountants discovered a loophole to cheat the IRS, but because during that time he lost $1,170,000,000!
• Trump continues to drive more experts out of the US government because his policies are so anti-science the experts can't ethically be a part of this regime anymore. Even after we're done with Trump and we get a sane person in the White House, we'll still have to deal with a government that has been crippled by abuse for years to come.
• For every new steel worker job created or saved in America, Trump's tariff war is costing Americans $900,000. This is costing the steel industry $11,500,000,000 a year more than before Trump's tariff, a price that must be passed onto the consumers. No wonder Trump is driving so many jobs out of the country.
• Jared Kushner, the White House advisor whose many qualifications include son-in-law, said during a pro-Israel talk that Palestine has received more aid than any other group in history. Except that he was lying. In fact, Israel has received far more aid.
• The US antivaxxer movement is partially the fault of our inability to teach basic physiology and part Russian trolls. It doesn't help that our president is also a Russian troll.
• Trump continues to obstruct the FBI even after their investigation is complete.
• Georgia Republicans have just criminalized abortion to the point where women who have them will receive a life sentence in prison.
• Democrats successfully created a decent compromise to stop Iran from enriching uranium, but Trump's incompetent diplomacy has caused them to go at it again.
• One of Trump's biggest cheerleaders is the self-professed moral leader Jerry Falwell, Jr. Falwell passes extreme judgment on the Christian failings of Democrats, but has nothing but praise for the the guy who cheats on all his wives, never goes to church, and constantly lies, cheats, and steals. Why is Falwell such a fan? Is it that Trump hates all the same people that Falwell hates, or is it because Falwell and Trump share a sleazy lawyer who wasn't bery good at hiding incriminating photos of both of them?
• Sandra Bland, a black woman who Texas police said killed herself in prison because she was so depressed over her traffic violation of failing to signal, recorded the officer who arrested her, and it's finally been made public. The video is only 39 seconds, but it shows State Trooper Brian Encinia acting like a violent bully, ordering the poor woman out of her car and threatening to "light [her] up" with a Taser!

PZ Myers reviews a Fox op-ed about atheists.

China's trying to keep quite their Uighur internment.

No, there is no such thing as a humane execution.

Interesting stories of people who accidentally bought extremely valuable treasures.

Feeling: Happy

Iliana loves waking up at midnight. And 1 AM. And 2. And 3... every night!

Having just finished a re-read, I've added a page for the book, High Fidelity.

• 400 former department of justice prosecutors have signed on to an open letter saying the FBI had more than enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of Justice on multiple accounts.
• Trump just pardoned Michael Behenna, a man convicted of murder.
• Criminals of a feather obstruct together. Corrupt Republican Steve Mnuchin refuses to release Trump's tax returns to Congress. Also, the White House is ordering Don McGahn not to comply with congressional subpoenas of the documents where Trump tried to convince McGahn to fire FBI director Robert Mueller!
• White supremacists (Trump's great people) used a drone to drop over Sacramento California hundreds of pro-Nazi pamphlets.
• Trump doesn't like how all his criminal scandals were investigated, so he suggested getting an additional two years of his presidency. Sure, that would be a violation of the US Constitution, but he really thinks he's above the highest law in the nation. Well, if his first two years don't count, here is a list of all the vile things Trump did in his first two years that would have to be revoked.
• William Barr continues to hide the truth from America, just more obstruction from Republicans.
• Republican Theresa Kenerly, Mayor of a Georgia town, threw away the city administrator job application of a man because he was black. One of the town's board members, Republican Jim Cleveland, defended the Mayor Kenerly saying that Christianity teaches that blacks and whites should be kept separate. Georgia isn't just extremely racist, it's the kind of place where extremely racist people get political power.
• Thanks to pollution, climate change, and habitat loss, we're currently on the path to pushing over 1,000,000 species to extinction. The Republican response to this terrifying prospect is to congratulate our destruction by claiming it will create new trade opportunities.
• Trump honors a fellow adulterer with Medal of Freedom because he's also good at golf.

I sure hope we see Elizabeth Warren in the White House.

Why doesn't the US government file our taxes for us? Because H&R Block and Turbo Tax keep sue them every time they try.

The strangeness of trying to sing a specific note, and not being able to.

Epic Rap Battles of History faces Guy Fawkes against Che Guevara.

Feeling: Happy

Now that the girls are getting old enough to walk around, Emily and I spent the weekend chasing them around outside. So far, they love playgrounds, not so much for the equipment, but for the woodchips.

I've added a page for the film adaption of High Fidelity.

• Because Trump has to be both for and against every single issue, he is now saying Mueller should not testify despite recently saying he should.
• Not wanting it to reflect on his election, Trump continues to downplay US cyber-security, but that's not great news when the country really is being constantly attacked, even to the point of having our power grids shut down.
• Trump's pick for the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore joins Herman Cain on the cutting room floor, as years of misogyny and racism finally caught up with him.
• Russia is convincing Americans that climate change isn't real, both through a huge Internet misinformation campaign, and through their puppet president, Donald Trump. And, at the same time they're doing this, they're also conquering the Arctic as melting glaciers continues to uncover more land.
• More info about William Barr's refusal to answer congressional questions or even show up.

Christians continue to fight for their right to discriminate against everyone they don't like... which is usually everyone who isn't part of their religion.

Being religious doesn't make you a bad person, forcing your children to sing about violently murdering people makes you a bad person.

Instagram and Facebook are wiping banning the most popular bigots, but there are still millions more to go.

Boeing admits that it knew about the lift-off problem with their 737 Max aircraft, the one that killed 346 people in two separate crashes, a year earlier, but did nothing to prevent the problem.

The TV show Cops isn't just about good ratings at a cheap production value, it's also about creating a story where cops are always the hero, even when they aren't.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Queen song, In the Lap of the Gods… Revisited.

• Trump knew Republican William Barr was his savior when Barr said that presidents should be above the law, and Barr did not disappoint. In addition to lying and saying the Muller report exonerated Trump when it explicitly didn't, Barr has gone on to defend his lie in front of Congress, and now refuses to answer further questions. Luckily, Annie Donaldson kept notes of many White House meetings which provided the FBI with a lot of evidence of Trump repeatedly trying to obstruct justice. Now, she's probably going to be part of the congressional hearing.
• The US Navy has been begging for more money to upgrade its cyber-security system. This is important because a lot of the wars are no longer being fought with soldiers with guns, but with hackers with computers. Trump may have talked big about cyber-security, but a large part of his presidency exists because of the US's terrible cyber-security, so instead, he took the money the Navy wanted for security and spent it on another aircraft carrier they didn't ask for and don't want.
• Health care discrimination has come to law because of Republicans. Now, Jehovah's Witness doctors are legally protected to refuse to give you a blood transfusion, Catholic pharmacists can refuse to fill your prescriptions, and Christian Scientists can refuse to give you any treatment of any kind.
• Trump continues to claim he repealed the Johnson Amendment which makes it a crime for non-profit institutions to endorse political candidates. Of course, like nearly everything Trump says, this too is a lie.
• Trump's pick for the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore, has a long history of saying extremely hateful things about women, and even cheating on his wife while claiming that family and fidelity is paramount, but now we're learning that he's also very fond of racist jokes.
• In 2010, a BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing all the workers and flooding the Gulf with crude oil, causing the worst offshore oil disaster in US history. New regulatory rules were put in place in order to prevent a similar disaster, so, naturally, Trump has eliminated those regulations, making a future disaster an inevitability.

A ER nurse-turned-politician is trying to eliminate dangerous personal vaccine exceptions in Colorado, so antivaxxers are sending death threats to his children.

Alex Dainis talks about how brains learn.

Walter V. Wendler, President of West Texas A&M University, sent an email to all faculty and students where he lies about sex, contraceptives, and STIs claiming that he knew far more about these topics even than the American Academy of Pediatrics!

People who talk about the "Judeo-Christian" heritage of the USA are not only historically wrong, but they frequently do so to promote bigotry.

Feeling: Happy

I've reverse engineered the Ultima II dungeon map format.

• Trump's lackey, Republican William Barr, is pouting and refusing to go to Congress, probably because the mean woman publicly pointed out his incompetence.
• Republicans siding with Trump still haven't figured out that all the closeted skeletons come out by their proximity to him. Take Stephen Moore, his anti-women articles were just the tip of the iceberg. Now, we're learning about an article he wrote lamenting the downfall of the American family and the high divorce rate, which would be fine if he didn't just have his wife divorce him because he had multiple affairs and then refused to pay child support.
• Trump moves ahead with his evil plan to only help refugees who can buy American support. Meanwhile, another refugee child has died while being imprisoned by Republicans.
• Bernie Sanders currently has my vote again, but I like how the other Democratic hopefuls keep chipping away at Trump.
• Trump has the bast wards. He's also the youngest. And he's just learned a new word!

Antivaxxers and the people like Oprah who give them platforms deserve all the credit for allowing measles to rise to a 30 year high.

Trying to make Congress interesting.

John Earnest, the young white supremacist terrorist who used his assault rifle to shoot Jews attending Passover service, murdering one and injuring several others, states very clearly that the reason he wanted to murder Jews is because of his strong faith in Jesus and strict adherence to Christianity.

Country music's black history.

A child-rapist will not serve a prison sentence. No, not the one I just mentioned, this is a new one. Michael Wysolovski not only raped an under-aged women, but also kept her in a dog crate and repeatedly abused her. The girl, now a young woman, was so traumatized by the rape and abuse that she has mutilated her body and tried to kill herself multiple times. Despite pleading guilty to numerous crimes, Michael Wysolovski is a free man.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a very detailed history of the Ultima logo including a vector version of the original logo.

• William Barr's testimony is yet another reason for Republican shame. It started with Lindsey Graham lying for Trump and then rehashing conspiracy theories surrounding Hillary Clinton (seriously). We also learned that Robert Mueller said Barr's summary of the Mueller report did -not- keep the context of his report, and that the FBI had made their own summary which Barr refused to release.
• According to the NSA, warrantless searches of private property have not only continued under Trump, but they have increased. And, even though the NSA says their warrantless phone surveillance program (AKA spying on innocent Americans) is no longer justifiable, Republicans are going to force them to continue it anyway.
• Even as Trump is in the middle of several new scandals, he demands another $4,500,000,000 for his useless border wall.

NonStampCollector does an amazing review of the origin of the Gospel of Luke.

If you can't trust yourself to know right from wrong, how can you trust that a god (even one that truly does know right from wrong) knows right from wrong?

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page called emblems that describe me, which includes various symbols, logos, and signs that accurately describe who I am as a person.

• Because our water is just too damned clean (ask anyone in Flint), Republicans are working to weaken the EPA's definition of clean water, allowing more toxic chemicals than before.
• After two years of being attacked on both sides, from the press because Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did Trump's dirty work all-the-while praising the demagogue, and from Trump himself because Rosenstein was corrupt, but not corrupt enough for Trump, Rod is finally resigning in disgrace, just like the rest of Trump's goons.
• Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos, and co-founder of Blackwater, the for-profit mercenary corporation best known for murdering civilians, is finally facing criminal charges for lying to the US government over illegal dealings with... you guessed it, Russia. Republicans are trying to protect him, of course, because his crimes will make them look even worse than they already do.
• Trump's financial history with Deutsche Bank and Capital One is being subpoenaed because of probably criminal and ethical violations, so Trump is suing both banks to try and keep everything secret.
• Samantha Bee put together a fantastic show called the Not the White House Correspondent's Dinner in response to Trump's being a coward and refusing to let journalists satirize him. Topics included false balance, deep fakes, the importance of calling racists racist, and honoring the one sole member of Fox that isn't a bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorist, Shephard Smith. There was even a nice red carpet event leading up to it.
• To prove how great of a Christian he is, Trump is now requiring refugees to buy US help. Imagine thousands of Jews running from the Nazis during World War II, they've left everything they own behind and traveled across several countries and an entire ocean to seek refuge in the USA. They arrive on our shores hungry, poor, and barely alive. They beg us to help them, and our response is, "Unless you can pay us for you own food and lodging, you can't come in!" That's Trump's new policy.
• Republicans are trying to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Not because they've committed acts of terrorism, but because the current president of Egypt wants to make it easier to kill them, and a USA endorsement would make it much easier.
• Republican Darren Bailey isn't just openly defying the US Constitution, but he's also an antivaxxer who likes to spread lies about vaccines.
• Yes, Trump is a criminal, even if Republicans don't want to call him one.

A lot of the heartwarming news you see isn't heartwarming at all. Like, here we are in 2019, but people are still compelled to keep secret their biological sexual preference. And, yes, it's wonderful that the entire confirmation class at a Methodist Church has refused to join their church because of its hateful approach to the LGBT, but it's tragic that they have to do it in the first place.

Sadly, we live in a time where the only way we can convince companies not to pollute drinking water is to make a lake a person.

Just because someone heads the world's largest AIDS charity, doesn't mean they're scientifically educated enough to properly support AIDS prevention.

Feeling: Happy

I finished reading Dune Messiah. Despite the first book being fantastic, I didn't care much for the sequel. I've also reverse-engineered the planet and town map format of Ultima II.

• Trump has officially hit 10,000 lies! Great work everyone, handshakes all around! History may not be kind to Trump, but I'd rather the present not be kind to him either.
• On one hand, Trump's non-stop lying about abortion is causing his incompetent followers to accept even the most transparent lies about abortion and injuring women's rights. On the other hand, the more obvious lies he makes, the easier it becomes to point out to his followers how stupid they are.
• The data are in. Evangelicals and Republicans are straight-up hypocrites. They will adjust their morality to match their political leader, no matter how disgustingly evil they may be. Just look at Franklin Graham's unwavering support for Trump. They may as well just break up with Jesus.
• Government records show that Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort routinely passed up US workers in order to hire illegal immigrants.
• At least one Republican law makers clearly admits, they vote in favor of obviously unconstitutional bills and make them law, knowing full well the courts will strike down the bill and waste tons of money and countless person-hours just to appease the Christians who voted them into office.
• Trump's pick for the Federal Reserve board, Stephen Moore, is apologizing for the many hateful things he said about women. Not because he respects women, after all, he said that the only women who should be allowed to work in sports are the women he finds attractive, no, he's apologizing because people didn't find his sexist jokes very funny.
• Trump's tantrum about not having enough Twitter followers pretty much sums up his maturity level.
• Isn't it sweet that Trump can't spend a day without being around his wife mistress daughter.

Elizabeth Warren is still packing auditoriums.

What is rape culture? It's when Shane Piche, a 26-year-old man, can rape a 14-year-old girl, admit he raped her, and still not be sentenced to prison.

Feeling: Happy

The CFI day of advocacy was a huge success. Collectively, we met with over 50 state senators and representatives or their staffers to educate them about the existence of secular Michiganders, the unprecedented growth of the non-religious demographic in America, and our opinions on State matters. I really feel proud to have worked hard to make our voices heard.

I've reverse-engineered some formats from the DOS port of Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, including the full screen CGA graphics and the talk files.

• Deputy Attorney General, Republican Rod Rosenstein, rebukes his fellow Republicans and Fox and admits that he handled the Russia investigation properly, the he was right not to stop Mueller, and that Russian hacking is an extremely serious problem.
• Speaking of Russia owning Republicans, NRA spokeswoman Maria Butina, who was cozy with dozens of Republican politicians, is receiving her prison sentence today after she funneled secret American information to the Russian government.
• The CEO of Twitter personally called Democrat Ilhan Omar and told her that Trump's bigoted Twitter post, which compared Omar to the terrorists behind the 9/11 attack, will remain online despite inciting hundreds of other Twitter users to threaten to murder Omar.
• Good news for those people who voted to end Gerrymandering in Michigan. State judges have rules that the district lines must be redrawn under the new fairer method.
• Just a reminder to Republicans, while you're free to have your own personal religious beliefs, you can't use official government channels to promote your religion, and that includes your government Facebook page.
• Republican Matt Bevin blamed teachers who went on strike for better classroom funding for the accidental shooting of a child.
• Religions getting preferential treatment in the USA has led to many groups pretending to be religions in order to get all the benefits. At first is was televangelists who perform no religious services, but still get tax-free donations, but now, it's government-protected tax-free Satanists.

Catholics are cracking down on their massive collection of hospitals and making sure that none of them provide birth control to women surreptitiously like they've been doing in the past. Never mind that most Catholics use birth control, they only care about what the Vatican says.

It's always important to remember that just because a person is a skeptic, that doesn't mean they're a good person. Take Carl Benjamin, who goes by "Sargon of Akkad" on YouTube. He has a long history of using bigoted slurs to attack religions, races, and even people with disabilities.

Feeling: Happy

I'm off work tomorrow. I'm going to the Michigan Capital with CFI to speak to my state's congress about why they should care about secular voters.

• Republican Mick Mulvaney states it very clearly, the Trump administration's goal is to use their government authority to force Christian beliefs on everyone else. You know, good Christian beliefs like hating foreigners, cheating on your many wives, and taking money away from children to buy more bombs.
• Big shocker, Trump is opposed to allowing White House staff testify to Congress. However, considering how damning the Mueller report is, it may not matter.
• The UN was all set to pass a resolution saying that it opposed war-time rape. Then, US Republicans threatened to veto it because the same resolution said that survivors of rape should have access to sexual and reproductive health care, so the UN eliminated the part about giving raped women access to health care. Note that the resolution didn't say anything about abortion, but US Republicans are so obsessed with abortion, that the words "women's reproductive health care" have no other meaning to them.

Why the Canada goose has expanded all over North America.

Great work antivaxxers, you've brought us back 20 years.

Feeling: Happy

I've created a page for Ultima and its various remakes.

• The Mueller report made it very clear, it was not an exoneration of Trump, in fact, it was just shy of an indictment.
• Republican Mike Shea was caught talking with a violent Conservative hate group. The group was suggesting spying on people and violently attacking them, and Shea said he would help get personal information for the group to brutalize them while they're alone and with their children.
• Sarah Huckabee Sanders has admitted to lying multiple times to protect Trump from the FBI, she just won't apologize for it.
• Trump is a big fan of Khalifa Hifter, head of an insurgent group that is invading Libya and trying to topple the nation's UN-recognized official government. Trump prised Hifter for fighting "terrorism" and protecting the USA's access to the nation's oil.
• Trump's 2020 campaign is targeting the only people left who still plan to vote for him: old racist white people.

Why do video games always insist that you save the monarchy?

It's not good for your image when you call yourself a "skeptic," but you fall for a conspiracy theory, correct your mistake with a second conspiracy theory, and then blame the people who pointed out how you feel for ridiculous conspiracy theories.

A unique take on the Mandelbrot set.

Feeling: Happy

For the MS-DOS port of Ultima I, I've reverse-engineered all of the tile graphic formats and wrote a viewer to display them. I also discovered the format of the end game graphic.

• People are still reviewing all the dirt in the Mueller Report because there is just so much dirt!
• To benefit the Trump administration, Russian trolls used the picture of a miner who had died from black lung disease to promote miners for Trump.
• Republicans Matt Bevin and Betsy DeVos held a meeting about how much they cared about public schools, while at the same time, banning public school students from attending. So, the public school students wrote their own story about the meeting.
• It always pleases me when politicians shoot themselves in the foot and reveal just how little they think of people. Take Republican Maureen Walsh who said that nurses just sit around and play cards all day instead of treating patients, or Republican Stephen Moore, Trump's pick to work on the board at the Federal Reserve, who, upon learning his wife voted for a Democrat, complained that "Women are sooo malleable! No wonder there's a gender gap," and said it was a travesty that women feel entitled to play even amateur sports with men, and that women shouldn't even be allowed to sell beer at men's college basketball events.
• Conservative judges have ruled that the U.S. House of Representatives is allowed to religiously discriminate against invocation speakers, even against those that meet all of the listed requirements, but aren't of the religion that the House approves of, and the House of Representatives only approves of Abrahamic religions.
• Yet another white male terrorist was arrested by the FBI. Larry Mitchell Hopkins, a convicted felon who had a cache of guns, led a vigilante group that was kidnapping adults and children and holding them at gunpoint. The group was doing this to people they believed were illegal immigrants even though it would still be a crime if they were.
• Fox isn't just running ads for the giant wooden box called the Ark Encounter, they're even promoting it in their shows!

Hannah Fry, everyone's favorite redheaded mathematician, talks about the pros and cons of having a world run by computers, and answers questions afterward.

Awarding $250,000 to a really bright high school science student.

Oh good, the New Zealand church that believes drinking bleach can cure all diseases is coming to America.

Feeling: Happy

For the MS-DOS port of Ultima I, I've reverse-engineered the map tiles format, the tiles used in towns, and the town map format.

• With more of the redacted Mueller Report finally released, we discover that, no, Mueller most certainly did not exonerate Trump. In fact, Mueller listed ten individual examples where Trump specifically might be found guilty of obstruction of justice in a court of law, but concluded that it wasn't the FBI's role to determine if those ten potential crimes should be prosecuted. Look here for details of the ten potential crimes.
• Thanks to Trump and his fellow Republicans, the US has become a dangerous place for people who work to expose the truth, AKA journalists. With all the calls for violence against them, and the constant death threats they American journalists receive, Reporters Without Borders has downgraded the US from "satisfactory" to "problematic."
• The Mueller report also verified many of the events that Trump called "fake news."
• Trump's pick to fun the Federal Reserve, Republican Stephen Moore, believes that capitalism is more important than democracy.
• The redacted Mueller Report included more detail about the Russian hacking campaign which targeted the 2016 presidential election. It described how Russian hackers systematically tested the security of electronic voting systems and successfully breached voting computers in Florida and Illinois. Naturally, the entirety of the Mueller report is being rejected by Russia.
• Democrats are trying to tax the ultra-wealthy which may be the only way we can dig ourselves out of the biggest national deficit the nation has ever seen, thanks to Trump.
• Does Trump think he works for Fox?
• More details of Julian Assange and his poopscapades.

Good news, Gallup reports that church membership in hte USA is the lowest it has been since they started tracking it way back in 1938!

Bethany Christian Services in Michigan finally caved. They were hoping they could continue to discriminate against LGBT couples and never adopt children to them, but, upon facing the loss of state funding, and a potential walk out by several of their employees, the agency finally agreed to stop discriminating. They claim their mission and values have survived unchanged, but this is clearly a loss for their bigotry and a win for general decency.

Do you want measles? This is how you get measles!

Feeling: Happy

I've created a page for the Book of Joel. I also reverse-engineered the MS-DOS Ultima I map format.

• Trump is refusing to let any Americans join the UN's anti-racism committee. Not because he and this administration is horribly racist, but... because...
• Antivaxxers have typically been bipartisan, but I hope that this new trend of Republicans really pushing against vaccines will make it a partisan issue. Democrats will start learning science to separate themselves from anti-science Republicans and start vaccinating their kids more. So far, that appears to be the route the country is taking. Thankfully, many states and municipalities are becoming more vigilant over their vaccine laws.
• I honestly don't care much about the fire at Notre Dame. Yes, it is a wonderful example of beautiful architecture, but it was built on the backs of millions who were abused and violated by the Catholic Church, and it's sick to see so many people so eager to throw money at it when they can't be bothered to help people who are dying all around them. That being said, I love that the French fire department specifically pointed out why Trump's asinine idea would just make things worse. And what happened to Trump's "America First" attitude?
• I'm pleased to see that more Christian students are calling out the Trump administration, especially the hypocrisy of Mike Pence.
• Fox interviewed Bernie Sanders, it didn't go well for Fox.

Catholics, who can't seem to stop raping children, are suing the State of Michigan in an attempt to prevent the State from allowing LGBT couples to adopt children.

Katie Bouman, one of the people involved in imaging a black hole, has been convicted of the serious crime of doing science while female.

Over the years, Sam Harris has slowly become a bigot.

Feeling: Happy

I reverse engineered both the CGA and EGA full screen graphic formats used in Ultima I.

• Trump keeps refusing as more and more subpoenas for his finances accumulate.
• Republican William Bar, US Attorney General, is violating the US Constitution by refusing to give bail to asylum seekers.
• Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say Congress isn't smart enough to review Trump's taxes. Well, sure, not the Republicans, but the Democrats actually elected a woman who wrote a text book on finance.
• Republicans voted to abruptly close a Planned Parenthood in Muskegon, Michigan. This won't decrease abortions, because that branch doesn't provide abortions, but it will eliminate local women's access to affordable birth control, cancer screening, sexual assault counseling, and family planning advice. Good work Republicans, you have once again injured women.

Before you spend thousands on a stained-glass window of a Christian preacher, it's probably best to make sure he doesn't beat his wife and protect rapists like Paige Patterson.

Home DNA tests can't tell you nearly as much as they claim to.

Christianity gloats over the fact that most people will never be able to figure out how to get to heaven.

Feeling: Happy

I've created a page called What is a religion? where I try to define the core components of religion.

• In order to prove how much they support veterans, Republicans deported the spouse of a US soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving the couple's 12-year-old daughter in Arizona without either parent. After a media shitstorm reminded the country just how callous and hateful Republicans are, they decided to let the spouse back in.
• Fox pundit, Laura Ingraham is in trouble for mocking a rapper who was recently murdered because he wrote a song which contained lyrics that were against Trump. She sneered her way through his music video, but couldn't even properly identify the rapper she was mocking.
• In a display of anti-corruption Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke are releasing 10 years worth of tax returns to the public. I wonder if Trump will do the same? Nah, Republicans continue to lie to protect him.
• Under Trump's incompetent rule, the opioid epidemic has gotten much worse and so has airplane safety.
• Republican Michele Bachmann says we will "never see a more godly biblical president" than Donald Trump. That may be true, Trump is nearly as horribly bigoted, racist, violent, ignorant, and hateful as the god of the bible.

Wall Street has responded to the Me Too movement by eliminating as many women as possible.

There have always been strange outbreaks of terrifying diseases, so it's important to remain vigilant and respect epidemiologists.

Palestinians get a bad wrap, but their views of the religious and non-religious are pretty much the same as anyone else.

AI and computer algorithms are not objective and bias free, they have the same prejudices as their creators, but, because they have far more reach and influence, it's even more important to fix.

Seeing extremely rare, extremely radioactive, and extremely deadly elements.

Feeling: Happy

My birthday party on Saturday was a huge success. Emily wanted about 10 people, and we only had 30... so, good compromise!

• Trump really hates immigrants, but not as much as Lou Dobbs and Stephen Miller.
• Trump claimed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is anti-Semitic and, since she is Muslim, related to the 9/11 terrorist attack. Trump is a bigot and his bigotry is inciting death threats.
• In case you forgot, Herman Cain is terrible at economics, sucks at global issues, and has a history of sexual assault. That must be why Trump sees a kindred spirit.
• Republican Ted Cruz is very upset that Yale Law will not reward students who work for Christian hate groups.
• Republican Mike Pence wanted to speak at Taylor University, a private Christian college, but, unlike the popular Evangelical schools, the Christians at Taylor U do not approve of an administration full of criminals, cheat, liars, thieves, and swindlers, and the majority of the staff voted to rescind Pence's invitation!
• Satire about the arrest of Julian Assange and what it means to real journalists.

Seven boys entered a girl's restroom in an Alaskan public school to protest transgender students, but when they entered the restroom they found it occupied! A girl who had no idea what was going on tried to leave, but, according to the girl's family, the boys wouldn't let her, so she kneed one of them in the groin to escape. School administrators then expelled... the girl. While the administrators are refusing to comment, it certainly seems like they expelled her because she fought against the seven bigoted boys who trapped her in the girl's restroom.

Physics girl talks about magnetic paper.

Thanks to antivaxxers, measles has ballooned to 555 confirmed cases in the US, the second worst measles epidemic in decades.

Want to decrease prison riots and save the lives of guards? Treat inmates as human beings.

Feeling: Happy

Emily took me to a murder mystery dinner last night with Wallee, Allan, and Danielle. We didn't solve the mystery, but I did win a best actor award for my portrayal of Enrique Estrada, Mexico's richest and sexiest billionaire!

I've added a page for The Sounds song, Underground.

• Prior to the presidential election of 2016, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks 141 times. The FBI later learned that this was no accident because Trump's advisor, Republican Roger Stone, was in direct contact with WikiLeaks getting getting access to Democrat emails which were stolen by Russian hackers, and Trump publicly begged Russian hackers to release stolen emails prior to the election. I bring this up because Trump is now claiming that he doesn't know anything about WikiLeaks and has no opinion of Julian Assange.
• Despite claiming zero tolerance against illegal immigrants, Trump actually tried on multiple occasions to dump illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities all across America in hopes that the extra burden of more immigrants would act as a punishment to the cities for not turning over their existing illegal immigrants to federal law enforcement. It's awfully telling that Trump cares more about punishing Americans that disagree with him than stopping illegal immigration. Meanwhile, families are still broken because of Trump's policies; Kristjen Neilsen would be proud.
• Ohio Republicans just passed a law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected with a medically unnecessary and painful trans-vaginal ultrasound, in many cases before a woman will even know she's pregnant. These bills have already been ruled on as illegal, so, hopefully it be struck down quickly, but with so many Republicans on the US Supreme Court, I'm not holding my breath.
• Conservatives really do think Trump is their new god. The Republican Jewish Coalition even swapped out the word "God" with "Trump" when singing a hymn!
• Trump wanted to put his ditsy daughter in charge of the World Bank.
• The arsonist who burned down three black churches appears to be yet another home-grown white American terrorist, Holden Matthews.
• Maxine Waters was not impressed by the childish antics of horribly corrupt Secretary of Treasury, Republican Steve Mnuchin.
• Trump is confident that he "won" the criminal investigation against him that he refuses to let anyone see.
• Republican Supreme Court Justice and sexual criminal Clarence Thomas, right after saying he doesn't know a single judge who would let their religion interfere with their job, said that people who don't believe in a god can't be trusted since oaths mean nothing to them. I can give him one example of a judge who lets his religion interfere with his job!

How Leonardo da Vinci made an accurate bird's-eye-view map long before people could get high enough to see it.

Feeling: Happy

Got the base put on my post for my tooth implant. Yay, more mouth blood.

I've added a page for the Unicode character map, BableMap.

• Turns out Trump's sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, is just as corrupt as her brother. She was federal appellate judge who was being investigated in a tax fraud case which alleged that she used her powers as a judge to avoid paying taxes on her and her sibling's inheritance. To avoid the investigation, Maryanne Trump Barry resigned. Apparently, if you're a judge, the law lets you just quit your job and all your crimes magically vanish, now she's getting a taxpayer paid $200,000 retirement.
• Despite hating working for Trump, Republican Kirstjen Nielsen was afraid to resign because of how bad she'll be treated after being known only as the woman responsible for snatching children away from their parents and putting them in cages. Maybe we should go easy on her and just take away her children and put them in cages? With news that they baby cages are going to return, Trump is dealing with it the same way he deals with everything. Blame Obama, and never stop lying.
• Republican Tony Tinderholt, married five times, is trying to pass a law that will allow the execution of any woman who has an abortion. Meanwhile, South Korea has ended their ban on abortion.
• WikiLeaks founder, accused rapist, and man who helped Trump cheat the election, Julian Assange, has finally been arrested.
• The Mueller Report is still buried, and will probably be so redacted, it will be pointless. We'll have to wait until Trump is out of the White House to actually see anything important.
• Fox posted poll results and Trump ran with them bragging about his great numbers. Of course, this was from Fox, so moments later, the people who actually made the poll called out Fox for changing the poll data. Fox lies, and Trump lies with them.
• Christians often turn violent and murder people who challenge their theocracy. Because of this, it's common for secular people to remain anonymous in lawsuits as to not paint a target on their backs. Unfortunately, Republican Hardy Billington is trying to pass a law forcing everyone involved in a state-church separation lawsuit to use their real name. Obviously, this will only affect non-religious people, and it will scare them into not filing lawsuits. As is typical with Republicans, they don't care about enforcing fairness, they only care about forcing their beliefs on other people.

Odd time signatures in video game music.

I wasn't that bothered by the parents who were caught bribing their children's way into prestigious colleges. It makes them look bad, it makes the colleges look bad, it reminds people not to trust someone who claims they're smart simply because they went to an expensive school. But, one of the cheating parents, Lori Loughlin, says that she's coping with the fallout from her crimes by... relying on her faith in her god! Priceless Christian hypocrisy.

If you live in a trailer, and don't own your own land, things are going to get very rough for you in the near future.

Feeling: Happy

It's my birthday again. Seems like I just had one last year.

I've added a page for the Valiant Comics series for The Legend of Zelda.

• More news about baby snatcher Kirstjen Nielsen and why she was forced to resign. Naturally, Trump is lying about it all, claiming that it wasn't he who put children into cages, but Obama, and Trump stopped Obama from doing it!
• Trump continues to lie about his taxes and immigration, and his racism is ruining life for a lot of people.
• The Republican-controlled Justice Department has decided that it's not political corruption if a foreign nation wants to bribe a US President, as long as they do it through his companies. This wouldn't have even been a problem with every president before Trump, because they all disassociated themselves from their businesses for this very reason.
• Because oil and gas companies are just too safe, Trump has signed an executive order taking away the rights of states to create regulations and restrictions meant to protect people from oil spills, explosions, and other deadly mistakes that are all too common.
• Tucker Carlson has disdain the poor, and even the middle class. He mocks women and homosexuals. He doesn't care much for people who aren't white. He isn't very fond of intelligent people either. And, when his views really came back to bite him, he made no attempt to apologize for them. So now, his show is losing money, a lot of money. 34 advertisers have stopped marketing on his show, but there are still a few organizations that don't mind feeding the ghoul including My Pillow USA, Nutrisystem, Sandals Resorts, OxiClean, and a few others.
• In order to effectively argue with Conservatives, you must first understand their underlying misconceptions.
• Trump isn't doing so well in optics.

The history of the Explicit Lyrics sticker and why Christians are incredibly gullible and incredulous.

How does Kirby, the pink puff, fly?

Astronomers finally got a picture of a black hole... or, at least, the effect of the black hole on the energy and matter directly around it.

A rap singer was murdered because of his ties to gangs, he did not have a cure for AIDS.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

• Trump is moving forward on his closure of the US Southern border and the imprisonment and separation of families and is even telling border patrol to disobey the rulings of federal judges.
• The Republican government is so piece-meal right now, they're mostly working with "acting" secretaries and directors, and Trump doesn't even mind firing the Director of the Secret Service, the very people who keep his crime family safe! He can blame the Secret Service for the Chinese woman who infiltrated Mar-a-Lago, but the lax security is entirely Trump's fault. A whole bunch of other people at the Department of Homeland Security are also being sacked for not hating Central Americans enough. They too probably won't be replaced. Let's hope Republican stupidity pays off.
• Democrat Ilhan Omar called Republican Stephen Miller a white nationalist. This is true, he is a white nationalist, but I would go further and say he's a white supremacist. Coming from anyone else, the Republican response would be, "sure he may do all the same things a white nationalist does, but he isn't a white nationalist because he says he isn't," but, because Omar is a Muslim, the Republican response is, "Omar's an anti-Semite!" This means very little coming right on the heels of Trump accusing Jews of not being Jewish enough to vote for the candidate Trump prefers.
• Treasury Secretary, Republican Steven Mnuchin, admitted that he gave Trump's lawyers special access to Treasury records, even before Democrats made an official request for his tax returns, so they could preemptively put together a defense plan. The Democrats are using the same anti-corruption provision used to discover the crimes of Republican Ricard Nixon.
• Trump's cuts to the disabled aren't going to just hurt the disabled, they're going to hurt everyone.

Like me, CosmicSkeptic eats meat, but sees vegetarianism as ethically superior.

Calculating how much force will be imparted onto Yoshi when Mario performs a Yoshi sacrifice.

There are plenty of medical conspiracy theories, one of them is the belief that eating unhealthy doesn't cause type II diabetes.

The history of recording video.

Feeling: Okay

Over the weekend, I finished re-reading Good Omens. It's even better the second time around.

• In the middle of Trump declaring a fake national emergency to steal funding for his useless border wall, and on the cusp of him shutting down the US Southern border to all three Mexicos, Kirstjen Nielsen, the bigoted head of the Department of Homeland Security, has unexpectedly resigned. Nielsen will make way for a third Secretary, as Trump's first choice, John Kelly was called into the White House to try and stop that shit show.
• Americans continue to demand the Mueller report and Trump's taxes, while Republicans continue to obstruct, demanding to remain ignorant.
• Racist bigot, and Fox pundit (oxymoron), Tucker Carlson, spends much of his show ranting about how bad the US elite are. So, naturally, Tucker Carlson has spent much of his career bragging about how elite he is, and he really is.
• Black church burnings are still a thing in the USA, but Republicans still don't seem to interested in addressing white supremacy.
• Just like Hitler in Nazi Germany, Trump says that the US is "full" and that immigrants are no longer allowed. He even said this in front of a bunch of Jews.
• Trump wants to get Herman Cain back into politics because he was so good at them to begin with.

Why compressed air cans get cold when you spray them.

Private Catholic school student Jerome Kunkel tried suing Northern Kentucky Health Department for barring him from teen sports until he was vaccinated because the district currently has an epidemic of chickenpox. Kunkel claimed that he couldn't get vaccinated because his parents read on the Internet how vaccines are made from aborted fetuses, and apparently his religion says he can't inject cells from aborted fetuses. While I'm pretty confident the bible doesn't say that, attorneys for the Northern Kentucky Health Department showed that, not only can scientists prove that the vaccines of today are not made from aborted fetuses, but even the Vatican says there is no moral problem with getting vaccinated. Thankfully, the judge ruled against the scientifically illiterate family. While that is good news, New York is going in reverse. A county wisely banned unvaccinated children from schools and public places during the states largest measles outbreak in decades, but a judge has ruled that banning these walking disease vectors violates their rights.

The very odd history behind the claim "breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

Much like the UFC, the WWE abuses its fighting actors.

Feeling: Okay

I added a page for a silly old game called Arcade Volleyball.

• While campaigning for presidency, Donald Trump promised to release his tax returns, which was customary for any presidential hopeful. Of course, he lied. Democrats are now working to force him to reveal them, but Trump, is protecting the evidence of his corruption like a mother bear and her cubs (which Trump just made it legal to kill).
• Trump became anti-abortion so he could become a Republican politician. Also, do you think Trump would even consider being anti-abortion if he knocked up one of the many women with whom he cheated on his wives? But America's Conservative Christians, who have no morals to speak of, continue to see Trump as their Messiah because he is helping them criminalize abortion.
• Windmills and oranges. This is the height of political discourse when a Republican is in charge.
• While they have no problem removing all regulations on predatory payday lender companies, Republicans continue to refuse to help students who are struggling with debt.
• Trump is looking at cutting $600,000,000 from the funding of the poor, elderly, and art culture. Interestingly, that's just about the same amount of money he is expected to waste in the upcoming years charging his vacations to US taxpayers.
• Handing over the private information of your customers to law enforcement without their consent is a far greater crime than illegal immigration, a $12,000,000 lesson that Motel 6 just learned. This is what happens when you try to help Republicans be bigots.
• Well sure, Trump lies and cheats about everything else, why wouldn't he also cheat at golf?
• Republicans, Trump especially, assured their incompetent voters that they would give them the best health care they've ever seen. But, for two years of owning the entire US government, all they did was lower taxes on millionaires. And now, they've given up on health care all together.
• One argument white supremacists use is that the great conquerers of the Western world, the Romans, were beautifully marble white. They're just as ignorant to history as they are biology.

Some of the more interesting controversies seen with Magic: The Gathering over the years.

Google used to have a motto, "Don't be evil," but their recent ventures into the military have shown that they don't care much about that anymore. In an effort to make it seem like they still care about helping humanity over their pocketbooks, they created an ethics board to oversee their own AI work, but they stocked it with Kay Coles James, a bigot from the Heritage Foundation. After thousands of Google employees petitioned to have the bigot removed, and the resignation of a fellow board member Alessandro Acquisti who refused to work with on an ethics board with a Heritage Foundation bigot, Google just shut down the ethics board all together. It lasted only one week. Google now needs to adopt a new motto, "Stop being evil!"

Jesus wants you to wear $3,700 shoes.

Dallas police charged L'Daijohnique Lee with criminal mischief even though she had been severely beaten and held at gunpoint by racist, Austin Shuffield. Thankfully, the charges against her were dropped, but Shuffield, the man who savagely beat the woman and threatened to murder her still hasn't been tried.

More terrible arguments about suffering from Prager U.

It's not censorship to not give platforms to people who are anti-science. In fact, it's necessary to the survival of the human race.

Feeling: Okay

I've added a list of my favorite emulators by platform in my emulators page.

• By refusing to vote on any of Obama's picks for years, the Republican Senate has created far too many vacancies for to fill under the normal vetting process. So, in order to get Trump's unqualified, but ultra-Conservative federal judges pushed through, the Republican controlled Senate is using the "nuclear option." It's called the "nuclear option" because it has the metaphorical impact of an atomic bomb on the US system of checks and balances. Ordinarily, someone appointed to an extremely high level of office like a federal judge must go through a serious vetting process to make sure they're both qualified for the job and aren't compromised by debt, foreign powers, or strange personal beliefs. Republican Mitch McConnell is permanently changing the way the Senate works to effectively neuter the vetting process forever, upsetting 213 years of US history. While this will certainly let them get a lot of their own judges into positions with life-time tenures, it's going to cause a serious swing the next time the Democrats have the Senate. It's a shame Republicans can't look any further than a few years into the future of the country.
• One good thing you can say about Trump is that he's at least consistent in his dishonesty. Like, you can be confident that if he says something, it's a lie. Take everything he says about wind energy, all of it; it's a lie.
• Shell, one of the largest fossil fuels companies in the world, is leaving the US oil lobby because the US oil lobby doesn't take climate change seriously enough! Got that? An oil company is telling the US that we're not taking climate change seriously enough! Speaking of which, Trump's latest pick to run the Department of Interior, after his last pick Ryan Zinke resigned to avoid another corruption scandal, is David Bernhardt who is already mixed up in several scandals, including the fact that he continued to lobby for the oil industry long after he was supposed to have stopped to get this job.
• It's not just the USA who lets their Conservative party dismantle their safety regulators and let companies like Boeing skimp of safety features and negligently kill people.
• Jared Kushner, the completely unqualified Republican who, for a long time was tasked with every job in the White House, has been outed as one of the people who was identified as a security risk, denied security clearance, and then given it anyway because the White House has been handing out security clearances like AOL disks. Republicans are not very appreciative of the whistle-blower who properly did her job to report this, and now they're abusing her disability because of it.
• Trump takes so many vacations at public resorts, it's basically impossible to keep him (and top secret information) safe, as arrested Chinese nationalist Yujing Zhang demonstrates. She failed, but have others before her succeeded? Will those after her succeed?
• Donald Trump is such a compulsive liar, that he even lies about where his own father was born.
• Republican judge Brian Hagedorn, who said the Christians are better than everyone else and that if we decriminalized same-sex marriage we would surely decriminalized bestiality is now on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Just a reminder in case you forgot, Oprah is a terrible person.

In North Carolina, if a woman first agrees to sex, but then changes her mind during the process the man legally doesn't have to stop having sex with her.

Jordan Peterson really doesn't know anything about basic human biology.

Texas loves killing people more than they love Jesus! The state was being sued by a man about to be executed because, while they would allow Christian clergy to pray over Christians being executed, they refused allow Buddhist clergy to pray over Buddhists being executed. Rather than be fair and allow the Buddhist to receive a final prayer, they decided to eliminate all clergy of any kind! Standard Republican behavior: we'd rather become secularists than allow people to have different religious beliefs!

Feeling: Blah

I've added a page to describe the gradient paradox.

• As predicted, Trump has pulled a 180 and is now claiming that he does not want the full Mueller report released, and his Republican servants in Congress are conspiring with him to keep it secret. If it does get released, you can be there will be a whole new shitstorm.
• Trump is threatening to close the border to all three Mexicos. That would be catastrophically bad!
• Usually when you think of Trump the words "defective baby stroller" don't come into your head, but, now that's all I can think about. The company Britax was facing a recall of 500,000 jogging strollers due to a defective front tire that had a tendency to fall off during a run and cause injuries to parent and child. However, once the Trump administration took office, the recall never happened.
• Not only did Trump approve the sale of US nuclear secrets to Saudi Arabia, but he did so without even consulting the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• As I'm recovering from food poisoning, I'm also reading how Trump has cut the USDA's safety inspections for meat. Great plan considering the guy thinks windmills cause cancer.
• Republican Rand Paul, who despises everything socialist, begged his fellow men for money to help him through a difficult time, just like Ayn Rand would want.

Survivors of the mass murder at Parkland school have been committing suicide. While it's impossible to point a finger and say that any one thing caused the survivors to kill themselves, one thing that cannot be denied, is that the bullying from "truthers" contributed to it.

Yes, the bible very clearly supports slavery despite what dishonest Christian apologists say.

Feeling: Sick

I caught a lovely stomach virus on Sunday. My body kept telling me I needed to vomit, but I refused to acquiesce. Instead, I just stayed on the toilet for two days straight. I finally got to eat solid food again today, although it's still quite painful. Good times.

I added a page for μTorrent.

• The US government keeps a list of everyone who has ever been submitted for security clearance and the results of that request. Often, people are rejected due to untrustworthy behavior, especially involving foreign governments, or unacceptable person conduct. A White House whistle blower has reported that, during the Trump administration, Republicans have silently granted security clearance to 25 people that were previously rejected! Of course, from a political party that doesn't mind giving security clearance to a nobody like Jared Kushner, you have to wonder.
• After yet another scandal revealing just how terrible she is, Betsy DeVos tried to defend her canceling of the Special Olympics by claiming her hand was forced by those above her. Ah, the old "I was just following orders" excuse. Where have we heard that before?
• It's been six months since the Saudi Arabian government murdered Jamal Khashoggi and dismembered his corpse, and Trump still has done nothing to punish those responsible. Trump may hate Muslims, but he sure loves their money.
• Big shock, everything Trump said about Puerto Rico was a lie.
• Republican Robin Hayes, head of the North Carolina Republican Party, has just been indicted on charges of wire fraud and bribery.
• Republican Mike Less said that you can solve every problem in the world by getting married and having a lot of children.
• We shouldn't have to have student protests against the incompetent Republican leadership, but here we are.

I'm pleased to see that Chick-fil-A franchises are being rejected from airports solely because of their hatred of LGBT people.

How much of that dinosaur skeleton is legit?

We need to get back to the good old days of baby cages suspended hundreds of feet over busy streets.

Rebecca Watson explains why, when it comes to pronunciation, most arguments are garbage. But "jif" is still wrong.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Rilo Kiley song Capturing Moods. I also created a, mostly empty, page for iOS.

• Still waiting for the Mueller report to be released, and I'm not in the minority.
• Trump failed yet again to try and stop the Affordable Care Act.
• Republicans have okay the sale of nuclear power plans to Saudi Arabia, the nation that murders journalists. The Muslim nation even asked for the sale to be kept secret from the media, and Republicans agreed, but, much like a barrel of nuclear waste, it leaked out.
• It's nice to see that Trump has again caved, and funding will be kept for the Special Olympics, but they were only a portion of the cuts made by Republican Betsy DeVos to all of eduction, which are still on the chopping block.
• A bunch of Republicans agreed that Trump didn't surpass the legal definition of "obstruction of justice," but let's be real, several members of his campaign did collude with Russia for political gain, and, even if Trump didn't personally collude, he publicly asked to, and did, benefit from collusion.
• Breaking the promises of previous presidents isn't a very good tactic, especially when it hurts the US military, but that's what Republicans do best.
• Decreasing the vetting process of government officials so Trump can appoint more unqualified people in positions of power is not a good idea, but Republican Mitch McConnell is probably going to do it anyway. Changing the rules forever just to give your side a slight advantage is stupidly short-sighted. What happens when Democrats take control of the Senate, and they no longer have to deal with any of these safety nets? Are you going to like it then?
• Ultra-Conservative Mick Mulvaney is slowly becoming the most powerful man in America.
• Trump has replaced the EPA with anti-science Republicans who don't know what an environment is. They have dismantled most of the major pollution monitoring programs and are no longer accepting a lot of scientific data that shows why air pollution is very dangerous. Now that there is little data left to show how smog kills people, they are claiming that they need to relax clean air laws.
• Tucker Carlson might keep talking and get fired, but don't worry, Fox has plenty of lunatics to replace him. Take a look at Laura Ingraham's most recent interview.

After seventy years of cover-ups and thousands of children raped by priests, the Vatican finally agrees to tell clergy they have report child-raping priests to the police... of the Vatican. Not the real police, just the Vatican's personal law enforcement. Problem solved!

The Muslim politicians of Brunei are moving forward with their murder by stoning law targeting homosexuals.

Andrew and Owen Renner are a father and son duo who came across a mother bear in her den with her two cubs. They illegally shot the mother, and then, as her cubs shrieked in terror, they shot both the cubs. Then, they high-fived each other with pride for their "hunt," took incriminating photos, and vocally mocked the legal system that made this type of slaughter illegal, not knowing that everything they just did was caught on camera by a couple scientists monitoring the bear because it's becoming endangered. Andrew was sentenced to three months in jail and a $9,000 fine, and his 17-year-old son was given community service. Both lost their hunting licenses for a period of time.

When science gets redacted, it's not the same as censorship.

A Catholic mother condemned women who wear leggings for corrupting her sons, so women put together an all-leggings protest.

In America, "reparations" doesn't just mean paying back the poor or disenfranchised, it means paying back the people who were abused, tortured, and raped for hundreds of years.

Why some Asians swap Ls and Rs.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page addressing the argument, more people are killed by hammers than rifles.

• Trump is making another half-assed attempt at ending the Affordable Care Act with no plan of his own to replace it which would eliminate health care for millions of Americans, mostly the elderly and poor. Even several other Republicans think it's a stupid move, but will they have the backbone to stop him this time?
• Democrats continue to demand the Mueller Report be released to the public, as they should.
• The NRA is working with people show claim mass-shootings are staged events with actors put on by Democrats in an attempt to ban guns.
• The USA doesn't have kings. Everyone is subject to the same laws are rules as everyone else. Unless it's Trump on Twitter.
• Science is neither elitist or partisan, but Republicans, the anti-science party, think it's both.
• Trump is still trying to stop any and all non-pro-Trump television.

A bunch of men with guns drawn broke into an apartment where a 4-year-old was celebrating his birthday party with a bunch of kids as they were playing duck-duck-goose. The parent's were terrified for the life of their children as the strange men shouted for everyone to "get your fucking hands up!" because, "we are doing a fucking raid!" The crazed gun-toting men then spent the next 45 minutes ransacking the apartment and even smashed the child's birthday cake. When all was said an done, it turned out that the men who broke into the house and traumatized the children were actually Chicago police who had just raided the wrong house. They were looking for someone who hadn't lived there in over five years. Turns out, they have raided the wrong houses over a dozen times in the past two years!

Sadly, cops don't just make horrific mistakes, they also frequently lie to people to get their way. Unfortunately, you usually have to be an attorney to know the difference. But, as Rashad James learned when he was detained for impersonating an attorney and carrying a fake driver's license. Even being an attorney with a valid driver's license won't save you from being black.

Aron Ra gives a talk at the Texas Capitol for the first annual Atheist Day.

Those video games that feature memes.

Prager University is not an accredited university, but it is a creationist propaganda mill.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the album, Tim Minchin and the Heritage Orchestra.

• Republican Attorney General William Barr still hasn't released the Mueller Report, and probably never will (but should), but it's probably safe to say that Mueller really didn't find evidence for criminal obstruction of justice, just non-criminal obstruction of justice. However, that doesn't exonerate Trump, and he's still the worst president this country has ever had, and an all-around terrible person.
• Republicans have, once again, been told by a federal judge that their ban on abortion is criminal.
• With a big smile on her face, Betsy DeVos explains why we need to cut all the funding to the Special Olympics and various other children's education programs. Useless border walls are very expensive!
• Facebook claims they're banning white nationalists from Facebook. I wonder where Trump's base is going to go for their social networking?
• Republican Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continues to compare Trump to biblical heroes. No, not the ones who lie, cheat, and steal (which accounts for most of the bible's "heroes"), but the ones that blindly help Israel.
• Trump is still complaining about how much money had to be spent on disaster relief in Puerto Rico way back in 2017 when he totally botched the repairs after Hurricane Maria and took about half a year to get power restored.
• US taxpayers paid for all the research into the creation of the HIV-preventing drug, Truvada, but somehow the company Gilead makes all the profits, and the profits are huge with the drug costing pennies to make, but selling for around $1,800 a month. So, why isn't the federal government fighting for their patent? Because Trump filled the White House with unqualified Republicans who don't know what the hell they're doing.

Did You Know Gaming? put out another video on the SNES.

It's sad that it requires a global pandemic before politicians finally start mandating vaccines again, but there you go.

If your raw vegan diet makes you dangerously ill, you probably shouldn't continue pushing it on other people.

Wow, Dorkly can really get dark.

In what is standard practice for women, NASA just scrapped an all-woman spacewalk because they didn't have enough spacesuits that would fit the women.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for Kid Icarus: Angel Land Story.

• In his continued effort to destroy the environment, Trump has eliminated energy efficiency regulations on light bulbs.
• Republican Betsy DeVos is cutting various student programs, including the Special Olympics.
• While claiming that "America can either learn from history or be doomed to repeat it," Republican Mo Brooks quotes Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to chastise Democrats.

Why it took until the age of cameras to explain why a cat always lands on its feet.

Yet another Christian tries to argue "it's against my religion," about something that nearly all Christians do. In this case, a fireman, who needs to be clean shaved to safely use a breathing mask, tried to argue that shaving violates Christian dogma. This same BS argument is used by antivaxxers.

Emily Quinn explains why our traditional understanding of biological sex is wrong.

Arkansas public schools once again tried sneaking in religious propaganda in school lessons. This time they included prayer, a monotheistic god, hymnals, and blessings... in health class. Thankfully, the Freedom From Religion Foundation convinced the school to get rid of the propaganda.

Simply limiting the amount of painkillers doctors can prescribe will not fix the opioid epidemic.

Feeling: Happy

I finished reading the The Great Gatsby. It's overrated.

• The Mueller Report remains a secret, but Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, has released his 4-page redacted version. Barr himself quotes Mueller saying that the report "does not exonerate [Trump]," Trump immediately crowed that the report exonerated him. And, while Trump claims he wants the report made public, I think this is the same type of lie he used with his tax returns; claim that you want something out in the open to make it look like you value transparency, but, when it's time to do it, refuse. Of course, if this report truly does exonerate Trump, he should be pushing to make it public, but I doubt he will. From the meager scraps Barr has released, there doesn't appear to be any additional incriminating evidence for Republicans beyond what has already been made public, which is a lot, and this is where I'm confused. Several people in the Trump administration have been convicted of crimes directly related to Russia. Trump's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was found guilty lying to the FBI and the Vice President about his involvement with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, used a pro-Russia Ukrainian group to help him launder millions of dollars. Trump's campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos, along with Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr, and Jared Kushner, all met with several Russian lobbyists who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails, which Don Jr repeatedly lied about. Finally, Trump's campaign advisor, Roger Stone, is currently on trial for working with WikiLeaks and a Russian hacker, to help release Hillary Clinton's hacked emails. Manafort is in prison, Papadopoulos is in prison, and Stone is likely going to prison, so why would the FBI say nobody in the Trump administration colluded with Russia? I understand why they said Trump didn't commit this specific crime. Sure, he publicly begged a hostile foreign government to attack his political opponent, but there isn't any direct evidence he worked with Russia, but his administration sure did.
• And a couple of pre-report videos I still want to post.
• The New Zealand terrorist seems to have incensed an American terrorist to set a mosque on fire as they made mention to the NZ murders in graffiti in the mosque's parking lot.

After being found guilty of sexually assaulting two children, Hadmels DeFrias was defrocked from being a Catholic priest. Now he's teaching children in Dominica.

The death of a single-celled organism is a bit terrifying to watch.

Dogs can actually see some color, and other false beliefs about animals.

The British could have helped unite India and Pakistan when they left, instead, they made an already tense region far worse.

What can happen when math goes wrong.

Feeling: Happy

I finished reading the Trees of Michigan: Field Guide.

• Another Trump fan has been discovered to be a terrorist. Cesar Altieri Sayoc just plead guilty to mailing bombs to people who were critical of Trump.
• Trump continues to bad mouth John McCain, and even claimed that he was the one who had to okay McCain's state funeral, to which the organization responsible for state funerals shot back, no, you did not okay McCain's funeral, because that isn't the job of the President.
• Everything bad thing that Trump warned about Hillary Clinton has come true under his administration. He warned that Hillary would constantly be embroiled in legal scandals, Trump has been sued hundreds of times, and frequently lost. He said Hillary didn't have the stamina to be president, he has taken more vacations and watches more TV than any president in history. He said Hillary would be dangerous for national security, Trump continues to use an insecure phone, all his staff use private email servers, and his son-in-law, who was given top secret security clearance for no reason, has been caught doing the same.
• Just a reminder, the US still has in place extremely bigoted laws thanks to Trump.
• The battle between Trump and the husband of his campaign manager is a sad microcosm of just how awful the current administration is. Kellyanne is even siding with Trump over her husband despite him accurately pointing out that Trump is suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.
• Mississippi just became the next state to effectively ban abortion with another heartbeat canard. Before I would say that the US Supreme Court would rule the law criminal and strike it down, but with Trump stocking the Court with ultra-Conservatives, now I'm not so sure.
• After Democrats won Wisconsin, Republican Scott Walker and various other Republicans tried a lame-duck power grab quickly passing a bunch of laws to eliminate the power of the incumbent Democratic Governor. This is typical cheating Republican behavior, and a state judge thankfully struck down their crap.
• Republican Mike Pompeo, a man who calls himself a Christian, says it is possible that his god sent Trump, the lying, cheating, stealing, self-aggrandizing lunatic, to save Israel. I guess this is the best Mike Pompeo's god can do.
• There may be far too many Democrats running for president right now, but I still like their goals.

Algorithm are mindless, so it may sound odd to suggest that they can be racist, but it's important to remember that algorithms are created by people, and people are often racist.

The political history of Kashmir is long and perilous.

Faith is believing what you know ain't so.

Golf ball technology has gotten so good, golf courses are having to be redesigned to be made more difficult.

Feeling: Happy

I've read and reviewed the Book of Malachi. It's awful.

• Trump continues to attack deceased POW veteran John McCain, complaining because he wasn't personally thanked for approving McCain's State funeral that he couldn't even be bothered to attend. Trump went on to say he was never a fan of the dead man. Now, even other Republicans are calling Trump's words "deplorable." I guess they accept that Hillary was right all along?
• Directly following a mass-murder where the killer used an assault rifle, New Zealand banned assault rifles. It's amazing what a nation can accomplish when they don't have incompetent politicians owned by NRA lunatics.
• Why didn't the FAA detect the serious safety flaw in Boeing's nose-diving 737 MAX 8? Well, since Republicans keep cutting their funding, the FAA can not longer afford to hire engineers to test the safety of planes. At this point, they're basically have to take Boeing's word that the planes are safe. Not a very good tactic when the company doesn't respond to the safety concerns of their pilots, or even train them properly.
• Republican Matt Bevin is an antivaxxer and purposely infected his children with chickenpox. After gambling with his children's lives (even today, people die from chickenpox), he now wrongly asserts that his children "all turned out fine," but he's ignorant that his children will now possibly develop painful shingles later in life. And while we're talking preventable diseases, here's why measles is so contagious.
• As expected, Devin Nunes's lawsuit has only put a huge spotlight on all the people rightfully mocking him.
• Republican Steve King is still really racist.
• Just more evidence of Trump being shitty.

Would you trust a judge to rule fairly in a case if they were a fan of the Book of Deuteronomy, one of the most unjust, violent, and horrible books in the bible?

Magnetic fields affect how our brains function, but can we sense them?

More on Prager U's failed attempt at explaining away the problem of suffering.

Catholic Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was found guilty by a French Court of not reporting a child-raping priest, so he tendered his resignation to the Vatican, but Pope Francis refuses to accept his resignation because he doesn't accept the judgment of a secular court.

Aron Ra's third and final video correcting an incompetent preacher failing to teach science.

The nation's largest Christian-only retailer, LifeWay, is closing all of it stores and focusing on Internet sales only. Let's hope this is just a slow decline into bankruptcy.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for one of my favorite video games, Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

• Summing up the three primary events that connect the Trump administration to Russia.
• Trump doesn't care too much for being the president of the USA, but really wants to be the president of TV.
• Fox pundit Katie Pavlich argued that the USA should be applauded for being the first country to end slavery after only 150 years of using it! That statement is completely false as many nations that once practiced slavery outlawed it sooner than 150 years of the nation's founding. In fact, many nations outlawed slavery before North America was even discovered by Westerners.
• Trump claimed that he would "fix" the TSA, but the only thing he's done to it so far is cut its funding to help pay for his useless border wall. In fact, he continues to mock the TSA by sharing a video originally made famous posted by QAnon-booster, Jeremy Stone, two years ago!
• A recap on how Trump completely bungled the New Zealand white supremacist attack.
• Republican Governor Kristi Noem is forcing all public schools to preach her religion by requiring every school display a plaque reading "In God We Trust."

What happens when you make a CPU the size of a room so that people can actually see where the data is going?

Italian antivaxxer politician who opposes the nation's chickenpox vaccine spends four days in the hospital after contracting chickenpox!

Google's motto used to be "don't be evil," but their $1,700,000,000 fine in the EU for pressuring manufacturers to use their software shows that they don't take that very seriously.

The Attorney General of West Virginia is suing the State's Catholic diocese for knowingly employing a child molester at their elementary school.

During this Women's History Month, it's important to remember the famous women who were evil.

Prager U is really terrible at answering the problem of evil.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Where's Waldo series.

• After 50 Muslims were murdered in New Zealand by a white supremacist who called Trump "a symbol of renewed white identity." Trump responded, not by claiming that white supremacist are terrible, nor by sympathizing with the murdered Muslims and their families, but by saying, incorrectly, that white supremacists are a small group. The reality is, they're growing because of Trump.
• New information is coming out about Trump's massive debt. Just prior to becoming President, Trump lied about his net worth and even offered kickbacks to Deutsche Bank in order to secure a loan of $2,000,000,000. Not surprisingly, Trump's budget is also massive debt where a huge chunk of the expected income is falsified.
• Only a handful of Republicans had the backbone to stand up to Trump's fake border emergency, but not enough to prevent a veto.
• Republican Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a meeting which not only barred all press, but also only included religious people! Now they refuse to tell the public specifically who came to it, and what the meeting was about.
• Russia is doing what Trump dreams about, controlling their journalists so that they can't disrespect the government, even when the government is wrong.
• Never forget that Evangelicals have sold out their god to Trump. Even after multiple years of scandals, corruption, affairs, bribery, theft, and cheating, white Christians still adore Trump.
• I never knew there was a Twitter account called "Devin Nunes' Mom" or that the account posted pictures of Devin Nunes being the end of a human centipede with Trump and Putin in front of him. However, I know both of these things now that Republican Devin Nunes made headline news for trying to sue Twitter and the people are making fun of him for $250,350,000.
• The Michael Cohen / Rudolph Juliani he-said-she-said just keeps on going.
• According to a survey by Hollywood Reporter–Morning Consult, the majority of Republicans think Saturday Night Live has gotten too political. That sounds like snowflake behavior to me.

If you're going to publicly shame someone, make sure you're careful about how you do it.

It's shocking how incredibly ignorant a Christian pastor can be about science, and still pretend to be an expert.

Alex Dainis embroiders DNA.

Trying to make sense of the religious excuse for suffering.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the Super Advantage joystick. I've also added categories for software that is free or open source.

• Trump claimed that his tax breaks for the wealthy would directly help keep automotive jobs in the US, and while they did help make billionaires richer, they haven't stopped GM from cutting 14,000 jobs. Rather than admit his tax breaks did nothing to help the working class, or even keep companies in the USA, Trump is blaming workers who expect a living wage.
• Jeffrey Epstein was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl, so why was he only charged with having sex with a 16-year-old girl? You'll have to ask Trump's Labor Alexander Acosta, who helped eliminate most of Epstein's charges.
• Trump continues to threaten free speech demanding investigations for those satire programs which make fun of him.

Correcting Evangelicals on their ignorance of science is a full time job. Thankfully, people like Aron Ra actually rise to the challenge.

I'm just saying, if our society actually cared about helping everyone instead of only their own kids, we would have a much smarter society and a lot fewer rich people bribing their children's way into college.

NES Works released part 2 of their Metroid review.

Feeling: Nerdy

I've started a page called False origins used by Christians which is meant to collect false etymologies and origin stories for cultural phenomena. I'll add to it as I research more of them.

• Trump again encourages law enforcement and vigilantes to violently oppress his dissenters. He thinks he's a mob boss, but he's actually a petulant child.
• Tucker Carlson's misogyny and racism isn't anything new, he's still this way on Fox.
• Trump tried personally threating Republicans who might choose defy his ridiculous border emergency, but that appears to have backfired, and enough Republicans choose sanity and shot down his fake emergency.
• Republicans have decided that nursing homes are should be trusted much more, and have decided to cut the fines when they endanger the lives of their residents.
• Republican Betsy DeVos, whose family got rich through a pyramid scheme, is trying a third time to ruin the lives of students in debt. Previously, a judge ruled that she broke the law in her actions, but she's hoping the third time's a charm.
• In addition to cutting health, education, and research in order to increase our already bloated military, Trump's new budget will also wipe out 90% of the funding going to research and preservation of the Great Lakes.
• I'm pleased to see Paul Manafort indicted with new crimes, and hope he goes to prison longer than the mere 7.5 years he got so far.
• You can criticize Judaism and Israel without being an anti-Semite, but you can't say people who are Jews are bad without being an anti-Semite. The same is true with Muslims.
• Republican Joe Balash says in private that he's thrilled that Trump can keep the public distracted with his many scandals so the fossil fuels industry can go back to doing the same deadly off-shore drilling done with the disastrous BP Deep Water Horizon without people paying attention.
• Donald Trump really loves his sons.
• After a man filmed himself murdering 49 people at mosques in New Zealand. That's horrible, but Senator Fraser Anning, who is clearly a white supremacist, blamed, not the gunman, but the Muslims who were murdered for having the audacity to immigrate to his country.

I actually don't care much about the pay-to-play college admissions. Yes, some people will cheat if they think they can do better for themselves and their family. Punish them, punish the system that allows them to function, and move on to bigger things.

How far out of the EU will the UK need to go before it's really out of the EU?

Learn about the strange way black holes appear to violate the laws of nature, and how they might not after all.

Is Kirby actually a god of destruction?

Remember video game magazines, and how awful they were?

Feeling: Nerdy

Yesterday I finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It wasn't that great.

• Back in 2018, Trump tried to get his personal pilot to be the head of the entire FAA despite having no experience running such a massive organization. Thankfully, the plan fell through, but the FAA still lacks a permanent leader, over a year later! Possibly due to this lack of leadership, the US was the last nation to ground Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts after the massive crash.
• After being sentenced for his other crimes, Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort will now have to spend 7.5 years in prison. Still not nearly enough for the millions of dollars he stole. But, on the plus side, he's been indicted again on a whole new set of charges!
• Despite claiming he would protect Medicare at all his Nazi rallies, Trump's new budget cuts it deep.
• Republican Jacob Wohl reported a death threat to the police. The only problem, he made the death threat himself using a fake account, and accidentally filmed himself doing it, and this isn't the only time he's done this!

Want to lower health care costs? Get heath care providers to post their prices publicly.

Did You Know Gaming? tackles the Mario Kart series, again.

Joe Rogan and Sam Harris bash trans people for awhile, and here's why they're wrong.

You're probably recycling wrong.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the video game developer, Trilobyte.

• Republican Betsy DeVos has publicly declared that the Department of Education will no longer enforce the First Amendment and will not even attempt to stop private religious schools from taking tax payer money to force their religion on children.
• Trump continues to lie about things that occur on video, and cry victim the entire time.
• Three days in a row of Tucker Carlson audio tapes surfacing. In the most recent one, he mocks a 17-year-old Miss USA contestant, mocking her intelligence and saying he wanted to have sex with her, despite her being underage. Naturally, everyone at Fox is behind him all the way.
• Republicans are preparing to eliminate all international immigration offices which is only going to make our immigration problem worse.
• Republicans continue to chip away at abortion rights. Iowa just passed a law that will ban most abortions.

You probably don't know much about the Green New Deal because most news organizations aren't talking about what it is, but rather, how people feel about it.

Will you be more healthy if you drink alkaline water?

Catholic Cardinal George Pell has been sentenced to six years in prison because he raped several boys. Although I appreciate the fact that Australian courts are actually punishing child-raping priests, Pell was facing 50 years, not six. Also, Catholic priest John Capparelli, has been murdered, possibly in relation to multiple accusations of sexually assaulting boys. Catholics are not taking their ongoing scandals very well. The Brooklyn Diocese doesn't appreciate the shame they get, and claims that they have done more to combat and prevent sexual abuse than any other institution ever, which is patently absurd.

Strange flexible machines.

A college professor gives his take on the most recent college admissions fraud scandal.

How old speech synthesizers worked.

Brexit continues to crash and burn.

Feeling: Happy

I've created a page for a game mechanic called save scumming.

• Trump has released his new budget. It cuts education, student loan programs, Medicare and social security, most science programs, research into renewable energy, all so that he can increase the nation's already bloated beyond reason military spending.
• Only a day after Media Matters released a clip of Fox pundit Tucker Carlson calling women "cunts" and "pigs" and defending child brides, which he refused to apologize for, they released a second recording of him calling Iraqis, "semi-literate monkeys," who "can't govern themselves." He also said that he liked the host of the radio program "in a completely faggot way."
• Erik Prince, chairman of the scandal-ridden Blackwater for-profit military company, admits he "forgot" to mention a 2016 Trump Tower meeting, and then, shortly thereafter, "forgot" to mention a second meeting!
• Sick of robocalls? They're largely the fault of Republicans.
• Trump continues to telegraph the fact that the White House is for sale.
• Manafort's 4 years is yet more evidence that criminals who are rich white men are treated much better than everyone else.
• Trump has decided that the nation should have a party to help celebrate the USA. The chosen date: July 4th. Very original.
• In addition to evolution and sex education, Republicans are adding climate change to the list of subjects they want banned from school.

The amazing tricks architects uses to keep skyscrapers from swaying.

Want your children to get raped? Head to NewSpring Church. They can't seem to stop hiring pedophiles.

Are you a witch? Here's how you can find out!

Exploring queer coding in video games.

Yet another white teen will receive no jail time after violently assaulting a black mentally disabled student. And, by "violently assaulting," I mean, John R.K. Howard shoved a metal coat hanger in the boy's rectum, and then kicked it.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for video game company, id Software.

• The number of children Republicans have placed in cages continues to grow, and so does the number of children lost and sexually assaulted. This is their legacy.
• Manafort was expected to get 19-24 year in prison, but he didn't even get four.
• John Kelly, Trump's former Chief of Staff, explains how working for Trump was terrible and that the border wall is a huge waste of money. Yeah, no kidding, what did you expect? He has publicly been a terrible person long before you signed on, are you expecting sympathy?
• Unsurprisingly, Republicans are using the same tactics as Russian Internet trolls who helped them win and creating fake websites to spread propaganda.
• Republican pundit and Fox host Tucker Carlson remains unapologetic after an audio recording of him surfaced where he endorsed underage marriage, dismissed statutory rape, and said that women are generally "extremely primitive," "pigs," and "cunts."
• Why did Republicans fail to fit tax returns on a postcard like they claimed they would? Because it's just not realistic, and they knew it wasn't, and they were lying about it.
• Trump just can't figure out how names work.

Police officer Leonel Marines is yet another example of why the police cannot be trusted with people's personal information, and why police departments need constant supervision.

Christian pastor David Nathaniel Powell was arrested for take pictures of nude men in a locker room.

Murder under the pseudonym "honor killing" is still going on in the Muslim world, and a large percentage of Muslims still endorse this type of murder, especially for women.

Want to help detect earthquakes with a Raspberry Pi?

Some morons in Canada's government thought it would be helpful to send fake doctors to Honduras to give sick people fake medicine, all on the taxpayer's dime. Thankfully, skeptics raised a ruckus, and the government decided to not waste money and not validate the ignorant.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Nightwish song, Nemo.

• Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight counts of various forms of fraud covering tens of millions of dollars. Throughout the entire process, he has been caught lying to law enforcement and never apologized for his crimes which held an expected sentence of 24 years in prison. So, it was quite a shock today when Judge T.S. Ellis III claimed that Manafort had lived an otherwise blameless life and gave him an extremely lenient sentence of only 47 months!
• Obama made a law requiring the US military to report all civilians killed in drone strikes to make the military more accountable. Trump, who doesn't care about civilian deaths, has eliminated that law.
• No really, Trump will do whatever Fox tells him to do. Fox, and Putin.
• A leaked document reveals that, under Trump's rule, the FBI, ICE, and CBP are now tracking journalists!
• The Trump campaign is probably going to be used for decades as the textbook example of nepotism.
• Why did Trump demand his school records be buried and then immediately demand Obama's?

The Sackler family has a death count, and it's really high, but they make a lot of money selling a highly addictive legal narcotic.

Schadenfreude makes me happy to see the Conservatives in the UK utterly failing, but unbalancing the stability of Europe even more than our own self-destructive Conservative party is capable of doesn't make me thrilled about there not being a World War III.

An unvaccinated boy in Oregon caught tetanus. It was the state's first case in nearly 30 years and the boy almost died. After two months of treatment and recovery, and a medical bill estimated well above $800,000, the parents are still refusing to vaccinate the boy.

It took eight police officers, one with his gun drawn, to determine that the man picking up trash in his own yard had the legal right to do it. Why did it take eight officers and a gun? Because the man was black.

Understanding the magical negro trope.

Alessandro Strumia will (thankfully) no longer be working at CERN because, like so many jackass white male scientists before him, he couldn't keep his bigotry to himself and kept explaining why he believed that men are just superior at physics. He will not be missed.

Feeling: Happy

I have added a page for the Seiken Densetsu AKA Mana universe.

I have had two interesting dreams recently, both involving the storage space of my house. In one dream, I go into my basement and it is filled with long rows of shelves, all covered with various objects left by the previous owner: camping equipment, board games, pots and soil, etc. It's essentially a treasure trove to me, because I love going through large piles of rarely used stuff like this. The basement also has a second level below it which is damp and musty, it's mostly empty, but there are huge leaky pipes, a boiler, and various things from an century-old basement. In the other dream, my house has an attic rather than a basement. I go up to the attic because the washer and dryer are there, and it too has long rows of shelves full of books, toys, packages covered in paper, and so forth. There is also a large chain-link cage that once housed a dog. As I walk down the aisles of the shelves, I see several racks of clothes, and people looking through them in order to buy them. I guess my house also has a shop! I see another staircase and, confident in being the owner, I climb the stairs that are off-limits to the shoppers. The next level up is a restaurant! There are tables covered in white cloths surrounded by guests, and servers bustle to-and-fro. I see that this must be some sort of Eastern European restaurant because the people are speaking a language like Slavic or Hungarian. I consider eating here myself since surely I must be charging this place rent to run out of my attic. I take another set of stairs and they lead to an observation balcony. I look down and realize that I am very high up, and a sense of dizziness overtakes me, and I wake up.

• Homeland Security Secretary, Republican Kirstjen Nielsen, tried her damnedest to explain why the chain link cages they detain thousands of children in, aren't actually cages. It didn't work.
• A federal judge has ruled that Commerce Secretary, Republican Wilbur Ross, not only broke several laws, but violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy in a strong showing of bad faith. So far, two federal judges have both rules this about Ross for his addition of a citizenship question on the US census.
• Republicans say that transgender people can't serve in the military because they're diseased, however, every major medical community says that transgender is not a disease.
• Alabama Judge Frank Barger states clearly that a fetus is a person, and a man whose girlfriend had an abortion can sue the manufacturer of the pill she used and the clinic that provided the pill. I wonder if the judge would also allow the father of a person murdered by a gun to sue the gun manufacturer and the store that sold the gun? But also, under what deranged definition of "person" is the judge using that includes living things without functioning brains?
• Trump's former lawyer has nothing but praise for Robert Muller.
• Trump might regret becoming president, just not as much as America.

Watch this animated graph of the top 15 countries by gross domestic product per capita since 1970. Watch as the USA falls to the Middle East, only to see the rise of a bunch of small countries in Northern Europe dominate the 2000s.

Transgender people are usually depicted is horrible ways in video games.

The shape of your throat determines what your voice sounds like, and parrots have a very different throat than humans, so how is it they can sound like us?

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for Studio Ghibli.

• After Trump totally botched his meeting with North Korea, the nation has started to rebuild its long-range nuclear launch site.
• After Michael Cohen named names in his testimony, subpoenas are flying left and right. The most recent has been the insurance broker of the Trump Organization.
• The American Medical Association, the nation's largest group of doctors, and Planned Parenthood are jointly suing the Trump administration's new rule that would criminalize doctors for discussing abortion.
• Trump sets two new records. The first is the worst trade deficit in the nation's history. The second is the longest rambling prattle by a president.
• In order for a news outlet to be unbiased, they cannot have a chummy relationship with politicians. This is why it's so wrong for Fox to be in bed with Trump.
• Republicans like to blame the loss of jobs on foreigners (even though it's corporations that decide to hire them), but the reality is, a large part of job loss comes directly from automation.
• White supremacist recruitment posters are appearing in vastly greater numbers, especially near Trump properties where they're most likely to find new members.
• Trump challenged Obama to publicly show his school transcripts, but, at the same time, hypocritically hid his own.
• Republicans have successfully pushed through another inexperienced judge, Allison Rushing. Rushing is notable because she has worked diligently to criminalize the LGBT and once worked for a hate group.

We could decrease the wealth inequality in America by taxing, not just the exchange of wealth, but the very act of having wealth.

LGBT gaming is important and hugely under-represented.

Progress for New Zealand who has repealed their ridiculous blasphemy laws. This is surprising since the country usually pioneers the way for civil rights, but the spectre of religion is very pervasive. Nobody really feared the law since there hadn't been a case since the 1920, and, even then, the person was found not-guilty, but it's always nice to see a bigoted law finally be thrown away.

Like so many self-proclaimed "psychics" before him, Thomas John is caught cheating. But not just caught being a fraud, he was caught actually using Facebook to read about his clients before their reading.

For those people who think of Judaism is a benign religion with quaint beliefs and cute Yiddish sayings, remember, like all religions, when they have power, they abuse it.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Queen album, The Game.

• I love how Republican's are calling Michael Cohen a liar and corrupt and a vile scumbag... even though they hired him. SNL had some more hilarious jabs at them in Weekend Update.
• In order to prove that he is not being controlled by Fox, Trump posted a direct quote from a Fox pundit. Check, and, mate!
• Iowa Republicans, still angry that their state allowed same-sex marriage before the federal government forced the rest of the nation to fall in line, not only booted all of their State Supreme Court judges, but now they're trying to replace their system of electing new judges with a purely partisan system so they can have only Republican judges.
• T-Mobile wants to merge with Sprint. Ordinarily, they would have to go through investigations and prove how their merger is good for the country, but since the Republicans are in charge, they just dumped a bunch of money into Trump properties to grease the wheels.
• Ben Carson, the man who eliminated civil rights progress in government housing, and continues to run a massively corrupt department, has explained that he, like so many... many of his colleagues before him, will end his reign of terror with Trump at the close of his term. Let's hope he gets arrested first.

Another major vaccine study has been published. This one that lasted a decade and included 650,000 children and shows that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Lewis Black will be pleased.

It's not shocking, but it should be. After a disaster, white neighborhoods receive far more Federal care than black neighborhoods.

Trying to understand Laminar flow and how to make a fake video about it.

Should we be working to reform Islam, or defeat it?

The famous picture of the Hindenburg disaster is the symbol of an end of an era.

Feeling: Happy

Last night, I beat the game the old Windows 3 game, Castle of the Winds. I've also added a video game ranking scale, and I will slowly be updating my game pages to use it.

• Despite tauting his great relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, Trump didn't make any progress at the Vietnam summit, and the meeting was a failure that ended prematurely, just like Trump in bed, ZINGER! This wasn't a surprise to anyone informed individual, but Trump can't come to grips with his impotence, so he's blaming the media and Michael Cohen's testimony.
• Trump truly is the most dishonest president in American history.
• Republican antivaxxer Bill Zedler is trying to make it easier for parents to opt-out of vaccinating their children (during his state's worst measles outbreak in decades, no less), by saying we have antibiotics that can treat the disease instead. Since Bill Zedler is clearly incompetent, let me correct his mistakes. Measles is a virus not bacteria, antibiotics don't treat viruses, viruses have no cure, getting measles causes permanent damage to your immune system.
• To Republicans, there is no such thing as pregnant women, but rather, host bodies.

American Airlines is in the news again for humiliating a mother with her child by kicking them off a flight because they both had a non-contagious skin condition.

Yet another Christian pastor is caught in a massive tax fraud case. Luckner Stimphil, and his daughter Elwolfine Dufort, pleaded guilty to using their church to help their congregation skip out on paying $11,000,000 in taxes.

Monsanto can still be an evil company even if Round-up doesn't cause cancer.

Singer Grace Slick tricked the Christian fast food restaurant and LGBT hate group Chick-fil-A into donating money to a pro-LGBT legal group.

If you're paranoid about privacy, you probably shouldn't watch this video about recreating sound by analyzing how an object moves when reacting to sound waves.

Feeling: Happy

Two days ago, I beat the game Circuit Scramble.

• The bulk of Michael Cohen's testimony isn't on any new topics, but the evidence he brings to the table adds weight to the earlier accusations. What I think is more damning is how Republicans are tripping over themselves to lie about a liar.
• Trump demanded that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has no reason to have access to top secret information or any training to safely handle top secret information, be given top secret government clearance.
• It's a bit disheartening when I do a Google search to find an article on Trump's lie about the trade deficit he gave yesterday, only to find millions of pages covering dozens of different lies about the same topic. Luckily, Fact Check dot org has cataloged his various lies on the subject.
• Republicans have appointed William Happer to the National Security Council to lead their anti-science panel against climate change. He goes against the scientific consensus on pretty much every topic. He doesn't think fossil fuels harm the environment, thinks massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will paradoxically help the planet, and doesn't think the ozone layer is beneficial!
• Antivaxxers have traditionally been politically liberal white women who are easily misinformed because they don't understand basic science or skepticism. However, the natural follow the herd mentality of conservatives, coupled with a science-illiterate antivaxx Republican in charge, means Republicans are also becoming antivaxxers as well. Take Republican Kelly Townsend who is pro-God and antivaxx. She believes that vaccinations are a secret Communist plot.
• What will the world be like if Republicans get their way and ban abortion? It will be like Argentina where an 11-year-old girl who was raped by her grandmother's boyfriend was forced to give birth through Cesarean section.

One of the many musicians who performed at MAGFest back in January, 88bit.

Ethics in science wasn't always as rigorous as it is today, just ask Ernst Haeckel.

Why bees buzz.

Feeling: Happy

Yesterday, I finished reading Small Great Things.

• Trump defends Kim Jong Un for North Korea's abuse and eventual killing of American student Otto Warmbier. Defending, and even praising dictators, while ignoring Americans is standard practice for Trump.
• Republicans ignore the century-old tradition of getting the approval of State senators before appointing a new judge that will directly affect their state, and instead force Eric Miller into a federal judge seat after only five minutes of questioning, none from a Democrat. Miller, is a Conservative judge who once clerked for the sexual-assaulting Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas. Republicans always claim they care about small government and state's rights, but, in practice, they use the power of the federal government to bulldoze over any states that disagree with them. Of course, by breaking this tradition, Republicans won't have a leg to stand on if Democrats decide to do the same thing.
• The Washington Post fact-checked the testimony of Michael Cohen. Interestingly, while most of what Cohen said was either true or unable to be falsified, a lot of what the Republicans said was a flat out lie.
• Trump claimed he would solve the problem of rising prescription drugs, but, during his presidency, their prices have skyrocketed to the most expensive they've ever been in American history.
• Ivanka Trump, who has had the world handed to her on a silver platter, says she doesn't think Americans want to see an increase in the minimum wage.
• Republican Christian Hardy Billington doesn't think judges can be trusted to decide which people can remain anonymous because they fear Christians will attack them or their family for suing the state over violations of the establishment clause in the first amendment, and he's ironically giving a great reason for why Christians can't be trusted.

The USA has a very dark racist murderous past.

Another white male rapist will serve no jail time because rape culture no longer exists.

Why can't Facebook stop online scams, when Pintrest can?

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page for the arcade version of Gauntlet.

• Michael Cohen's opening statement to Congress provides evidence for several of Trump's crimes including prostitution, charity fraud, corruption, and Russian involvement despite Republican Matt Gaetz threatening to blackmail him and his family.
• Trump remains friendly with his labor secretary Republican Alexander Acosta despite Acosta protecting a child rapist.
• In order to protect his bill that bans abortion, Christian Republican Micah Van Huss admits that he cannot see the evil in the rape of a 15-year-old girl.
• More evidence comes out of Trump committing tax fraud.
• Trump supporter Jacob Wohl admitted that he used fake social media accounts and constantly posted lies in order to manipulate elections. Twitter responded by banning his account because that is a violation of their terms of service, but Facebook and Instagram haven't done nothing. It's a bit telling that Trump's stated goal is also to be the equivalent of an Internet troll.

Psychics are still a thing in large part because terrible day-time television keeps giving them a platform.

Christian missionary Donald C. Miller, who is now deceased, had a large collection of historic artifacts in his home, however, after the FBI investigated them, they discovered that much of his collection had been obtained illegally, especially the 2,000 bones of Native Americans which were robbed from grave sites.

Like it or not, you're dumping a lot of plastic into the ocean, and most of it is coming from your clothes.

Not long ago, around 200 clergy of the Southern Baptist Church were outed as child rapists, so, naturally, the SBC has declared that the problem is solved and there is no need to do any further investigations.

Rana Ahmed describes why she wrote a book on atheism even though her Muslim family is trying to murder her because of it.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers universe.

• Are you shocked that the man who regularly sexually assaults women or pays to have sex with them also wants to control their reproduction?
• Trump has proven time and time again that he is terrible at making deals, so we're all bracing for how bad he's going to bungle an agreement with North Korea.
• After the September 11th attacks, Republicans waved a lot of flags, but when the first responders started having severe health problems, Republicans continued to wave flags, but refused to help cover their health care bills until Democrats allowed them to once again lower taxes for the wealthy. It was the work of Democrats and John Stewart who finally shamed Republicans enough to help the first responders, and now, they have to do it again.
• Trump has had to pay $7,700,000,000 of our tax dollars to farmers alone because of his failed tariff war. Imagine how many other professions have been affected, that the government has ruined. All of that money could have been spent on roads, schools, or bridges.
• Trump's climate committee is probably just going to be the villains from Captain Planet.

The third most powerful man in the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell, has been convicted of raping two boys. Tim Minchin's song came true.

Franci Neely, a rich white woman, saw a mixed race family trying to take pictures of their newborn and freaked out because they were standing on the private lawn of her homeowners association. She referred the mixed race couple as "these people," and was pissed that they were allowed to enter "our neighborhood," and then attacked the father.

Blindly calling anyone who is critical of Islam Islamophobic only helps the bigots.

Google has finally gotten around to demonetize antivaxxer videos on YouTube. Although the platform still allows people to post blatantly anti-science, anti-medicine, and anti-truth videos, those posting the videos will no longer get paid to lie to people.

The good Christian parents who tortured their children are facing 25 to life.

The funniest red neck Christian comic.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the NES version of Section-Z.

• Even as president, Trump can't stop sexually assaulting women.
• Republicans are creating a panel of people bought off by the fossil fuels industry just so they can claim that people disagree with the vast majority of climate scientists. And, in his revolving door of an administration, he has appointed billionaire Kelly Knight Craft to be the next U.N. Ambassador. Craft famously said that she believes "both sides" of the climate change debate. I guess that means she believes that climate change is a severe imminent global problem, but also a Chinese hoax.
• Goodloe Sutton, the white man who urged the KKK to violently "ride again," has been fired by his local newspaper and replaced with Elecia Dexter, a black woman.
• Republican Alan Clark has figured out how to increase reading scores in public schools. He's trying to pass a new law, if the school doesn't increase their scores he will prevent poor students from eating.
• The NRA has a history of making thinly-veiled violent threats at Democratic politicians. The most recent one is a large picture of Nancy Pelosi and Gabrielle Giffords (who was already shot in the head by a Republican) with the words, "Target Practice" next to them.
• Robert Mueller is finishing up the FBI's investigation on Trump's Russian collusion.

MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) aren't against a little lying, or a lot.

David N. Moss, a Mormon bishop, has been arrested for trying to be a pimp and Vernon Allan Richardson, who was both a Christian pastor and a police officer, killed himself when police discovered child pornography on his computer.

That's a lot of diamonds.

Roy Zimmerman alters "Secret Agent Man" to "Secret Agent Manafort."

What's a grawlix?

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the video game developer Square.

• Russia threatens the USA with missiles, and Trump is silent. The Russia investigation is wrapping up, now would be a good time for Trump to throw a hail mary and at least try to make it look like he's not a Russian subordinate.
• Trump's Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, helped protect the child sex trafficker and child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein, and the Department of Justice is opening a probe into the case. Although, considering the Justice Department is also controlled by Trump criminals who wouldn't like it if other Trump appointees went to prison, we shouldn't get our hopes up.
• Doctors are over-prescribing opioids so much that many Americans are dying, and a large reason they're prescribing so many is because they receive kick-backs from the drug manufacturers. So, naturally, Trump blames Mexico.
• Republican Mark Harris committed voter fraud so blatantly, than North Carolina has been forced to hold a new election in his district! No doubt, many voters will vote for him again because they don't care about honesty or integrity.
• Although many pundits are saying that, if Trump's fake and racist declaration of a national emergency is allowed to go through, a future Democrat president might use the same trick to declare global warming an emergency, they fail to realize that global warming really is an emergency.
• Trump has called for a roll out of 6G networks in the USA. Of course, 6G doesn't exist, and 5G has just started to be deployed. Is he also calling for Windows 14, FireFox 93, and Coke -1?

Marshal Joseph Patterson of Arizona is a cop who lies to children about why its wrong to lie to cops.

The rise and fall of the most valuable American brands since 2000.

Did You Know Gaming addresses the Game Boy Advance.

Words that turn 100-years-old in 2019.

Beating Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! blindfolded.

Feeling: Determined

I've added several more misunderstood words in the King James translation of the bible.

• Yet another home-grown white American terrorist has been caught. Christopher Paul Hasson, a white supremest trying to establish a "white homeland" had been stockpiling guns and ammunition in order to go on a mass-shooting spree to murder Democrats and journalists, the very same people Trump calls the enemy of the people. This is a real problem, not a national emergency that we don't need.
• Yet another Trump employee is looking at perjury charges because it looks like he lied to a congressional committee about Trump asking him to do political favors.
• John Harris, son of Mark Harris, the North Carolina Republican accused of massive voter fraud, admits in court that he told his father multiple times that what he was doing was a felony.
• Fox host Tucker Carlson goes on a f-bomb rant insulting his guest after being rightly called out as a millionaire accepting the dirty money of billionaires to vilify immigrants rather than address the real problems of society. And, while Fox refused to air the interview, the guest recorded it himself and released it!
• Let that be a lesson to you. If you try to force a child to perform a religious political ritual, and mock them when they refuse, you're going to lose a lot of money.
• Despite Roe v. Wade, Republicans are still trying to make abortion illegal, and that includes revoking the medical license of any doctor who performs them.

The Royal Institute's Christmas Lectures show what it means to be human.

Humans are driving a lot of insects to extinction, and that's a bad thing. Want to help stop the problem? cut back on the size of your lawn.

What is the best kind of playground for children? One that is dangerous.

Addressing the stupid Christian apologist argument that people trust their own thinking, so they must defer to the Christian god on all thought.

YouTube atheism is alive and well, it's just become more about philosophy and less about mocking people.

Feeling: Determined

I've started a list of misunderstood words in the King James translation of the bible.

• Republicans have been trying to sell American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia without federal approval, and Trump's boss Putin is threating to target the US with missiles if we help defend the EU.
• While campaigning, Trump bragged that he was a builder and he would build wonderful infrastructure for the USA. Instead, he's canceling infrastructure projects because, after bankrupting the government, he can't find any other place to get money for his useless border wall.
• Trump may have shot himself in the foot by saying he didn't need to declare a national emergency, while declaring a national emergency, and then going on to describe it in the most blasé way possible, and then going on vacation. But that doesn't mean he won't get his way. I'm pleased to see that my state is one of those suing Trump for his reckless abuse of authority.
• Trump's choice for Attorney General, William Barr, has been approved. A quick list of accomplishments for Barr: he's pro-execution and wants to eliminate the repeal process for people on death row so they can be executed faster, he has helped ban people entering the country if they're trying to get treatment for HIV, he's homophobic and wants to re-criminalize homosexuality, he believes Catholicism should take over the country and be the rule of law, and naturally sides with the ban of Muslims entering the country, he doesn't see anything wrong with Trump's past behavior and wants to end the FBI investigation against him, and, because he clearly cares about life so much, he's extremely anti-abortion and wants to repeal Roe v. Wade.
• Yet another extremely wealthy Republican has been caught red-handed in financial corruption. Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated his ethics agreement by mis-reporting his stock holdings. As is typical, he's calling it a simple honest mistake because you can't expect a billionaire to know their finances very well.
• Republicans in North Carolina are being investigated for one of the largest voter fraud schemes in the nation's history, but the Republicans who were clamoring for the end of voter fraud are completely silent on it.
• Sadly, Republican judges issued an anti-abortion ruling favoring Texas Catholics. Texas made a law forcing people who have abortions to also provide a burial service for the fetus even though there is no medical reason to do this. Naturally, a lawsuit occurred, but recently appointed Trump judge James Ho (who previously worked for an ultra-Conservative lawyer group) refusing to hear the case, and even wrote in his ruling why the religious opinions of Catholics are more important than the civil rights of Americans.
• The parents of Nicholas Sandmann, the boy wearing the Trump hat who grinned at a Native American veteran while his friends made racist comments behind him, are not doing their son any favors by suing the Washington Post and keeping his face in the press even longer.
• West Virginia teachers have had to go on strike a lot recently just to earn a semi-living wage, and they recently had to strike again to prevent their state from selling out their children's future to terrible private religious schools and for-profit charter schools.

Does being in love make you healthier?

Strange phenomena that science has gone on to explain.

Who pays for all those free points you get on your credit cards? People who pay in cash.

Genetically Modified Skeptic answers questions.

Feeling: Inept

I've added a page which discusses the various types of power-ups that exist in 2D platformers.

• Most Republicans approve of Trump lying about immigrants in order to rob Americans of the tax dollars to build a useless wall. Thankfully, a strong majority do not and think the reality is more like SNL's take.
• One of the things I appreciate about glory hounds like Roger Stone is that they frequently shoot themselves in the foot in public. For example, Roger Stone found a picture of the judge that is presiding over his case and posted that picture online with cross hairs over the judge's face! After he realized that this looked like he was encouraging people to murder his judge, he deleted the post, but it probably won't help his 29 criminal charges.
• The Green New Deal may be overambitious, but at least it's an attempt to make the country better, not worse. But, naturally, Conservatives have been non-stop lying about it.
• Although it may seem like no progress has been made at keeping guns out of the hands of violent murderers because there is still a mass shooting every day in America and Republicans thwart every possible attempt at stopping them, Democrats have still been able to make a little progress.
• A local newspaper in Alabama has published an editorial calling for the return of the KKK to murder Democrats.

Segregation in America is alive and well, but at least we have more businesses run by people of color.

Looking back at the development of Doom.

It's sad to hear there are so many ignoramuses in the UK looking forward to the destruction of their economy, but it's still nice to know the US isn't the only country with them.

Why microwaving a grape produces a plasma, for real this time.

Feeling: Frustrated

Over the weekend, I beat Super Win the Game, which was a lot of fun.

• Despite Trump declaring a national state of emergency to stop the historically low level of illegal immigration, he admitted that he didn't need to declare an emergency, and then promptly went on vacation. There are a lot of lawsuits in the works against Trump's flagrant display of overreach, and, if the ultra-conservative judges rule in his favor, it sets a dangerous precedence for future presidents.
• According to the FBI, Trump supporter Roger Stone communicated directly with WikiLeaks in order to obtain information from Russian cyber-criminals.
• If someone nominates you for a Nobel Peace Prize, it's probably best if it doesn't come out that you had to beg them to nominate you.
• Unless Trump pardons him, Paul Manafort should be going to prison for a long time for constantly perjuring himself to protect Trump.

An 11-year-old boy in Florida refused to stand for the school's recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, which is every American's right (and, some would argue, duty). Like many educators in the USA, the teacher didn't know that the school can't force or even discipline a student for refusing to take part in a Christian-appropriated ritual, and ordered the student to take part in the ritual. The teacher questioned and mocked the student until a verbal conflict arose. The school's police were called into the room to punish the child, and, eventually the child became so agitated that he made verbal threats, which caused the police to arrest him. When the smoke cleared, the teacher was fired, and the district agreed to better train their staff, but the 11-year-old boy still has an arrest on his record because a teacher repeatedly tried to violate his civil rights.

Caleigh Wood is an ignorant Christian, and she is fighting for her right to remain an ignorant Christian. When Wood learned that she would have to learn about the history of Islam and how it affected the world, she boycotted. How dare her school try to teach that science, technology, and culture could be created by anyone other than white male Christians?! Well, by refusing to do any of the assignments or read any of the material, Wood got the expected bad grade, to which she and her family sued the school. They've lost their lawsuit, but they may try to appeal because they really want to remain ignorant forever.

The Vatican has had a large-scale program in place for protecting child-raping priests for over 60 years, and while it's about time they finally police their own and defrock those members who have been caught raping children, it's too little too late.

A little late for Valentines Day, but here is a collection of relationship-related Dorkly videos.

Feeling: Okay

I added a page for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

• As is typical for dictators, Trump has declared a fake emergency in order to bypass the normal checks and balances that limit his power. Trump says the emergency is illegal immigration, but the truth is illegal immigration is actually the lowest it has been in over a decade. So, where does Trump plan on getting another $8,000,000,000 for his useless border wall? Part of it will be stolen from the housing and safety of US soldiers. Trump continues to amass debt at a hugely increasing rate, but it's still not enough. The only good news is, Trump's fake emergency is going to be challenged many different ways, so it may be a long time before he ruins the nation further.
• Despite Fox "News" successfully causing several previous government shut downs, and Trump usually doing whatever they tell him to do because, lets face it, he doesn't have a clue what's going on, Republicans didn't want to look even worse so the government will remain open for a little while longer. Congratulations to them for doing the bare minimum.
• Republican Lynn Hutchings favors the death penalty because it worked so effectively on Jesus.
• Exposing the stupidity and cruelty of Trump supporters with a costume.

A review of Kid Icarus.

Feeling: Okay

I've added mini pages for Tina Fey's Bossypants and Amy Poehler's Yes Please.

• There is no crisis at the US Southern border, but Republicans are inventing one so that the little Trump baby can have his completely useless wall and bring their already historic debt record further into the red.
• A federal judge has ruled that Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, intentionally lied to the FBI when he was supposed to be answering questions about his involvement with Russia.
• Thanks to misinformed anti-vaxxers, children are getting measles again. While they may think it's a harmless childhood disease, the reality it, does severe damage to the infected child's immune system which takes years to recover. This is especially concerning when you realize that the Trump administration has prominent anti-vaxxers (including Trump himself) who are literally calling for the diseases that have killed millions of children to be brought back.
• Yet another one of Trump's appointed goons has called it quite. William "Brock" Long has resigned as director of FEMA after failing to properly handle hurricanes and wildfires and, as is typical among Republicans, a lot of corruption.
• Trump has again lied to US troops and the American people in general. He claimed that South Korea agreed to pay $500,000,000 more for US protection, but, not only has a deal not been met, the current number on the table is only $70,300,000.
• Republicans have successfully stopped all government-funded gun research, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few organizations who still research it, and their findings are pretty terrifying.
• A Trump speech is basically a series of lies with some incoherent rambling mixed it.
• Trump's boss, Fox "News," is not pleased that he has once again caved and failed to receive enough funding for his useless border wall.
• More evidence to show why Trump is the laziest president we've ever had. And, how much of his $50,000 indoor golf simulator did you have pay for? Too much.

Aron Ra's Darwin Day lecture.

Even if a god existed, it wouldn't give meaning or purpose to your life.

Genetically Modified Skeptic explains why he's an atheist.

A cartridge that gives extra power to the Commodore VIC-20.

Feeling: Okay

I've added a page for the video game, Silpheed: Super Dogfighter.

• It's not a very good sign when the president uses a Native American genocide as a punchline, and it's an even worse sign when his apologists claim he couldn't have been talking about genocide because he's too stupid to know about it.
• More info about Paul Manafort's clandestine meeting with former Russian military intelligence staffer Konstantin Kilimnik has gone public. The two met in a building owned by the Kushner family on August 2, 2016, just two weeks before Manafort resigned as Trump's campaign chairman due to Ukrainian bribery allegations.
• Republican Eric Porterfield, when asked what he would do if his children were gay, jokingly said he would murder them.
• Donald Trump Jr. calls public school teachers "losers."
• Christians often claim to be the primary reason for the end of slavery and segregation and the creation of civil rights even though the bulk of conservative Christians were against these things and were the last holdouts for each. Now that same-sex marriage sees majority approval in most Western countries, Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia, is taking credit for its legalization, despite having actively worked to thwart it.

Evolutionary psychologists have a terrible reputation because they keep publishing research like claiming that lesbians exists because straight men find them sexy.

Police officers fired a hailstorm of bullets into a black man's car killing him. The man had fallen asleep in his car in a parking lot and passer-bys noticed that he had a gun in his lap. Police were called, and, they surrounded his car and scared him awake. They claim that he reached for his gun, and six officers opened fire on him. Sadly, this isn't even the first time this has happened.

The current highest rate of taxation in the US for the criminally wealthy is 37%. Economists can't agree on how much the highest tax bracket should be, but they do agree it should be much higher, around 70%.

If you were ever curious about how to restore an old PCjr.

Should you be worried if you find a fruit fly in your wine? That depends on if it's male or female.

Feeling: Okay

Gabriella has influenza. She's not amused. It will most likely spread to the rest of the family. We're not amused.

I've added a page for the Queen song, Now I'm Here and made a quote graphic to honor Darwin Day.

• Trump has once again incited his crowd of thugs into physical violence against the media.
• Trump picked Barry Myers to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Myers has no education in climate or weather whatsoever, but he is a lawyer, so that should help him understand ocean currents and atmospheric pressure. He also seems to understand sexual harassment because, when Myers was running AccuWeather, the company had a serious problem abusing its female employees, and the company just lost a lawsuit and must now pay out almost $300,000. Of course, Myers is still seeking nomination, and why shouldn't he? Sexually abusing women is basically mandatory for the Trump administration.
• At his rallies, Trump has repeatedly complained that football isn't violent enough anymore, that they need to take away the safety rules that prevent head trauma and concussions. However, when asked if he would let his son play football, when it affects him directly, suddenly Trump is protective and thinks football is too dangerous.
• Trump is being sued by one of his former aids, again.
• Republican Eric Porterfield says the LGBT community is a terrorist group like the KKK.
• It's unfortunate that they do this, but when voters want one thing, Republicans do the opposite.

Negative ions might be beneficial, but you won't get any from a salt lamp.

A look at a rare 8-bit portable computer from 1991 made by V-Tech.

A over-simplified look at the cold war: part 1 and part 2.

A compilation of Dorkly Luigi videos.

Feeling: Okay

Girls are 14 months old today!

I've added a page on the common religious dismissal, "you're just angry at god."

• Republicans don't know what democratic socialism is, but that doesn't mean they can't both hate and fear it.
• With a Democratic House, there is now a real chance that Trump will be forced to release his tax returns to the public. Some day.

• Rather than talk about building a wall which is treating the symptom, we should focus more on identifying the problem. Why are there so many migrants leaving South and Central America for North America? It's a combination of corruption in their countries due to US involvement, climate change due to massive US pollution, and a rampant US drug appetite.
• A host on Fox says he never washes his hands because "germs aren't real."

Because we can never have a day go by where there isn't a religious scandal of sexual abusers, the Houston Chronicle exposes rapists protected by Southern Baptists.

We've reached the point where children of anti-vaxxer parents are having to steal away to the doctors to get themselves secretly vaccinated because their parents are so uninformed.

Do corpses have a right to their organs?

What it's like arguing with a street preacher.

The 8-Bit Guy reviews the Tandy 1000.

Feeling: Okay

I've added a page for game artist, Denis Loubet and a category for my favorite video game covers.

• Even Trump's inauguration has now fallen under investigation for corruption.
• When your state has a majority Republican congress, it doesn't matter if the majority of voters demand an increase in Medicaid, the Republicans will cut it back anyway.
• In the State of the Union address, Trump said he wanted to eliminate HIV by 2030. Of course, he also stopped HIV research, so, that's probably not going to happen.
• In case you know someone who is stupid enough to share Trump's idiotic view that it was cold, therefore climate change can't exist, you can remind them that the past four years have been the hottest four years ever recorded.
• Trump's State of the Union speech was a mostly a tirade of lies, but it was also a kid falling asleep out of boredom. I'm sure that will put an end to his bullying.
• At a prayer breakfast, Trump explains that America's greatest achievement is not the civil rights movement, but its abolishment!
• The US government has a long history of invading democratic nations, installing puppet governments, and raping them for their natural resources, and we're still doing it today.
• Drunken rapist Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is certainly doing what he was hired to do by arguing that extremely restrictive anti-abortion laws should be upheld despite them clearly violating Roe v. Wade along with the other rapist Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch. Thankfully, the non-evil Justices voted in favor of upholding the law, but we still have a long way to go.

Considering the number of politicians who have been caught in blackface in the recent months, it's probably best that we learn more about black culture.

Some of the everyday things that scientists still haven't figured out.

It will always amaze me that looking into space is looking back in time.

World War II explained in an oversimplified manner. Part 1 and part 2.

Feeling: Okay

I added a pages for the video game developers, Maxis and Bullfrog Productions.

• I didn't watch the State of the Union because it's essentially pointless, and even more so when the person giving the speech is a pathological liar. However, I do enjoy all the commentary covering it.
• Trump's pointless military deployments to the Southern Border, a transparent attempt at hoping people will see his deployments and think there is a crisis when there isn't one, are expected to cost the US taxpayers about $1,000,000,000 before the end of the fiscal year.
• Republican Charles Carrico wants to force public schools to offer classes on his bible, but refuses to vote for any bill that would allow the teaching of any other religious book, and claims this all has nothing to do with promoting his religion.
• Republican Cindy McCain claims she saved a toddler from child trafficking, but the police call out her lie.
• Arizona Republicans successfully filtered over $1,000,000 of the public's money to a Christian hate group.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was shot in the back three times by police, and, after altering their story multiple times, the police finally admitted that Bradford was completely innocent, but the officer who killed him will not be punished or even stand trial for killing an innocent man.

Sandusky, Ohio (home of Cedar Point) is making strides, not only by eliminating the celebration of murderous colonialism known as Columbus Day, but turning it into Election Day!

What do we do when fake videos seem as real as real videos?

Patton Oswalt accurately describes faith belief.

How even a trashy 90s disaster film can be better than a modern gritty Speilberg film if you don't know how to handle proper character growth.

Islamic propaganda is just as dishonest and convoluted as Christian propaganda.

Feeling: Okay

I've added a page for The Darkness album, Permission to Land.

• Republican Mitch McConnell shredded the Democratic proposal that would make election day a national holiday because Republicans do not want everyone to vote.
• Trump not only goes on vacation more than any president in the history of the country, but he goes to his own properties so he can charge the secret service to watch him and profit off his own vacation. His last four trips alone have cost US taxpayers $14,000,000!
• Trump train of thought is permanently derailing.
• How deluded must you be to have everyone in the world disagree with you, including yourself, but still think you're a genius? Thankfully, the majority of Americans are finally realizing just how incompetent Trump is.

Just like Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses have a long sorted history with protecting child rapists.

John Romero's level design rules for Doom.

Imagine if Ash Ketchum actually tried to be the best.

A recap of Robert Scott's disastrous attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.

The character of the Abrahamic god is strangely both uncertain and evil at the same time.

The digital age has pretty much destroyed copyright law.

Feeling: Okay

I've added a page for the virtual disc imager, Virtual Clone Drive.

• Republicans have purposely stolen children away from their parents and put them in child prisons. Then, they adopted the children out to random families, some of whom were found to be sex offenders. Then, when the parents ask for their children back, they say they don't know where they are because they didn't bother keeping records of where they sent them, and finally, they aren't even going to try to find them because it would be too much effort.
• So far it has been discovered that Trump hired at least 18 illegal immigrants.
• True to form, Trump is nominating someone who has nothing but hate for the World Bank to run the World Bank.
• A lot of documents about Trump's inauguration have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors.
• Republicans who shut down the government hate the idea that they have to pay the government employees whose lives they ruined, so they're voting not to.
• Trump is such a chronic liar that he even lies about things that are clearly lies. Case in point, he claims his bright orange skin with white eyelids is a completely natural tan.
• Christian Republican Ralph Shortey was caught having sex with a 17-year-old boy which he promised to pay... WWJD?

Airlines have purposely complicated their boarding methods and slowed them down to make rich people feel superior, but there is an optimal boarding method that will, sadly, never be implemented.

What it's like to need an abortion at 35 weeks.

Feeling: Blah

I've added a page for the elusive graphic artist, Atsushi Fujimori.

• It appears to be official. Trump has helped drag the USA and Russia into the Cold War.
• Remember how the US military said the ISIS is still in Syria and the Taliban is still in Afghanistan even though Trump claimed he defeated both? And then Trump said US military intelligence was wrong, and he was right? Well, Trump just admitted that he never even read their report, and still felt it necessary to comment on how it was written!
• In addition to the most dishonest, most corrupt, and longest shut down loss, Trump can add laziest to his growing list of superlatives.
• Trump is deploying another 3,750 troops to the Southern border in an attempt to make Trump's power grab for wall money look less illegal.
• Just another white Christian male terrorist.
• When white supremacists rally, you should expect decent people to counter protest. When the white supremacists pull out weapons and attack the counter protesters, you should expect the FBI to investigate the white supremacists, so, why did they investigate the counter-protesters?
• Trump is still lying about voter fraud.

The names of 286 more Catholic priests with credible allegations of sexual assault have been released.

Another child is dead, tortured to death by Christians who felt the 7-year-old should have memorized more bible verses.

Some history on the failure of the DeLorean Motor Company.

The UK is finally enforcing their female genital mutilation law to doctors who cut off the labia and clitoris of little girls.

No matter how you spin it, forcing women to cover their heads is not freedom.

Just learning about your genes can affect what you believe about yourself.

An oversimplified look at World War I. Part 1 and part 2.

Feeling: Blah

I've added a page for the Atari 2600 game Outlaw, and a computer programmer, Ken Sykes.

• It's not enough the Trump is contradicting US military intelligence every chance he gets, the White House is diligently working to restart the Cold War with Russia. Nuclear bombs are preparing to fly again. Great work Republicans. And, when we're pulling out of the quagmire of the Middle East having solved absolutely nothing, we're entering into a new quagmire in Venezuela.
• I'm looking forward to seeing Roger Stone go to prison with the rest of Trump's cronies.
• We shouldn't have to ask Russia what our president is doing, but Trump is so deep in bed with Russia, it's the only way we can hope to know.
• Thanks to Trump's pointless government shutdown, families receiving food benefits are going to a much larger gap than normal without receiving food.
• January 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded in Australia, but, because Trump can't see past his own nose, he still thinks global warming is a hoax.
• Just a reminder, the US government spends way too much of our taxes on useless military projects that don't work.

Wouldn't it be great if cops stopped killing disabled people?

The beauty of BASIC.

New Mexico Democrats are stupidly trying to allow fake doctors to become registered as primary care physicians and even have the ability to prescribe drugs, regardless of the fact they lack medical training and promote procedures that are proven not to work like homeopathy.

Tell them the person in pain is a girl, and onlookers will assume she's in less pain than a boy, even if they're actually looking at a boy.

An oversimplified history of the American Revolution: part 1, part 2.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for the video game, Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!!.

• Republican Mitch McConnell says that letting all Americans have easy access to voting is a Democratic power grab. Of course, voter suppression is a big part why Republicans even have a chance at winning. Texas Republicans published a list of nearly 100,000 name who they claimed were non-citizen voters, but after they were challenged to provide proof, suddenly the list shrunk to fewer than 5,000 names, and, even then, they still didn't provide any evidence that the people listed are real people or that they ever tried to vote.
• Trump cheats on his three wives, frequently refuses to pay people for the work they do, mocks veterans, the disabled, and homeless, has a long history of racism and bigotry, has a very creepy unfatherly attraction to his daughter, and can't name a single bible verse. Naturally, Sarah Huckabee's god wanted him to be president. And Christian Evangelical Franklin Graham, who is a huge fan of Trump's, refuses to admit that any of Trump's over 8,000 verified public lies ever happened.
• The FBI has released information on the companies that worked with Russia to perform a massive misinformation campaign to help Trump get elected.
• Richard Nixon apologist, and Trump confidant, Roger Stone, seems to really be enjoying being busted by the Feds.
• Republicans have redefined domestic abuse to exclude pretty much everything that makes it domestic abuse.
• More on Trump using the movies to create policy decisions.
• Republicans recently moved a half-ton of weapons-grade plutonium, used for making nuclear bombs and one of the most deadly elements ever synthesized, from South Carolina to Nevada lying to state officials during the entire process.

Breaking the boundaries in Super Mario 64.

Hermann Geissler, the man in charge of handling claims of sexual abuse for the Vatican, has just resigned over allegations of sexually abusing people.

Could Tails really fly? Yes. Well, no. Not without more tails.

Minnesota has hired anti-vaxxers to help get to the bottom of autism. Next, they're going to hire moon landing hoaxers to setup their space program.

A lot of CSI methods are completely junk science, but they still put people in prison.

Feeling: Blah

I saw a doctor about my hip problem (the same doctor I saw when I broke my arms in 2007, and he's just as annoying). He wasn't very helpful, (he actually told me to Google my problem to learn more!), but his assistant answered my questions more fully. Basically, there is no obvious reason why my the cartilage around my hip is damaged other than the shape of my bones. So, it's not really my fault, but the problem won't ever go away because the damage is done, and will continue to be done because of my body's shape. I can do exercises and stretches to strengthen the area to alleviate some of the pain, but that's about it. Surgery should only be an option if it gets worse in the future, but the exercises should prevent that.

I added a page for the video game company, Enix.

• After taking America hostage to get funding for his useless border wall failed miserably, Trump is now trying to drum up support for declaring a state of emergency, so, he's wasting $200,000,000 to send more troops to the Southern Border to, I don't know, protect the rolling desert? Because it sure won't stop drug tunnels.
• If you want to assure people that you're not beholden to Russia, you probably shouldn't keep having secret meetings with Russia.
• Being violently raided by the law enforcement is perfectly fine for black people, but how dare they do that to a white man?! Roger Stone deserves a nice long prison sentence.
• The current serving Director of National Intelligence, and most other directors of military intelligence, have publicly disagreed with Trump's ridiculous claim that he defeated ISIS and the Taliban. They are both still serious threats despite Trump's stupidity. But, rather than admit his experts know more than he does, Trump insults them.
• After getting caught again hiring illegal immigrants, Trump's company has finally decided to use a program that will before a basic background check into the status of all new employees, which is odd because Trump insisted his company had had been using the program since 2006.
• Republican Chip Perfect is trying to eliminate child labor laws, possibly to prevent his own business from seeing a lawsuit.
• Seriously, we don't want or need another extremely greedy rich bastard to run for president.

Where do all those gold coins come from in the Mushroom Kingdom?

A look back at Periodic Videos.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for the band Weezer.

• The US Treasury is asking for another $1,000,000,000,000 to cover the cost of the Republican tax breaks (it needed a trillion last year too, and will probably need another trillion next year). On a personal note, I usually see a slow and steady increase each quarter in my investments and retirement, but they're currently down over $20,000 from last year!
• Investigators keep finding more and more illegal immigrants that were hired at Trump businesses.
• No doubt fueled by what is being uncovered by the FBI, Russia is trying to decrease the punishment for politicians found guilty of corruption.
• Republicans still think that the Nazis were politically left because they called themselves socialists, which means they're still willing to blame the Holocaust of liberals.
• Is Trump's entire world view just based on television?

In nations that don't have comprehensive vaccination programs, measles kills about 100,000 people (mostly children) each year. Wild measles was eliminated in the USA in 2000, but, thanks to antivaxers, Washington state is currently experiencing its worst measles outbreak in decades.

When arguing with an alt-right troll online, it helps if you assume they don't actually believe what they say.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for DragonLance Tales book, Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes.

• So, with airports shutting down, and another one of his close personal allies getting arrested by the FBI, Trump finally folded on his government shutdown. Financial experts have tallied up all the damage done to the government during the shutdown and estimate that it cost the American taxpayer over $6,000,000,000, slightly more than Trump was demanding for his useless border wall.
• The government shutdown is at least temporarily over, but it's important to remember just how bad and how dangerous things got right up until the very end.
• How do we know the border wall is useless? Because it didn't even slow down the man responsible for bringing more drugs to the US than anyone else.
• Trump wanted to use his voice-over in Disney's Hall of Presidents to promote himself, because, of course he did.
• Republicans in the White House hire yet another ignorant douchebag.
• How did that $1,500,000,000,000 tax cut to the ultra-rich help the US economy? It didn't. Of course it didn't. We've known since the 1980s that it wouldn't because giving more money to extremely rich people doesn't help anything.

Arguably the most powerful person in the world, Angela Merkel, will not seek reelection in Germany, creating a vacuum for all of Europe.

A three-part review of Super Mario World.

The more I learn about Steven Pinker, the less I appreciate him.

In an effort to define transgender people out of existence, Utah defines women out of existence.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for the Super Famicom, and am working on a new system of graphic links for common external sites.

• Yet another one of Trump's pals has been arrested by the FBI! Roger Stone was arrested this morning on seven counts of lying to Congress to help cover up Trump's Russian collusion.
• The government shutdown is really heating up. The FAA has shut down LaGuardia airport for all incoming flights because they don't have enough air traffic controllers! The shutdown will continue causing problems for government workers and people who rely on government workers. And poor Trump won't get to give a pointless speech until after he capitulates. Also, Republican Ted Cruz, who was instrumental in shutting down the government in 2013 because he opposed universal health care, says you shouldn't shut down the government because you don't like presidential policy.
• Republicans have worked diligently to redefine sexual assault and domestic violence so now both crimes exclude manipulation tactics, coercive control, and psychological abuse, all of which seem to be how Republican's conduct themselves at any given time.
• Republican Mike Ertel is resigning after photos came out of him dressing in black face in 2005 pretending to be a black hurricane Katrina victim.
• Rudolph Giuliani continues to stupidly incriminate Trump.
• Actual transgender people talk about being transgender in the military and how they feel about the Republican transgender ban.
• People who want to build the wall: Oh yeah, we forgot about ladders.
• It's nice to see that there are already several women candidates for president, too bad the media is already treating them like shit.

• Although I don't care about professional sports, I find it hilarious that the NBA champions went to visit Barack Obama instead of Trump!

Humans really like being part of a group.

We live in a country where a school superintendent will risk her job and her freedom just to help a sick student who can't afford medicine.

Feeling: Blah

So far, my shingles have only gotten worse than my previous photo. I hope the anti-virals kick in soon.

I beat the puzzle game Red, and added a bunch of new video game maps.

• Trump continues to hold America hostage until he gets his useless and expensive border wall because he's so easily swayed by Republican talking heads. Meanwhile, Republican Wilbur Ross says that he doesn't understand why the unpaid government workers have to go to homeless shelters to feed their families when they can just go to their banks and get loans. Talk about out of touch!
• Under Republican rule, the EPA has decreased their fining of polluters by 85%! This will certainly lead to a massive increase in pollution now that companies know they can get away with it.
• The Republican party continues to be a dumpster fire.
• Why is Trump posting altered photos of himself to look thinner and increase the size of his hands?
• Violent racist David Allen Boileau was arrested for breaking into the home of his neighbors and terrorizing them because they were of Iraqi descent. After being told that he can't frighten his neighbors away, Boileau said, "Trump will handle it."
• Not all religious Americans are hypocritical enough to support Trump.
• Republicans target the survivors of mass shootings in schools, they target the children of immigrants, but when a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing teens mock a Native American, suddenly they care about children. Sorry, Sarah Sanders, I'm not falling for it.

For those Republicans who say racism is dead in America: James H. Jackson, a white supremacist, plead guilty to murdering a black man and admitted to wanting to kill many more black men.

Just like Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses have a long history of failing to properly handle sexual abuse in their churches.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for the DOS game, Tank Wars, and the puzzle game, Yellow.

• Would you return to work if your job was hugely understaffed and you weren't even going to get paid? Because Trump's shutdown, the longest in American history, has lasted into tax season, the IRS has ordered 46,000 employees to return to work, unpaid, to process taxes, but the IRS expects a whole lot of no-shows, just like the TSA,
• It's disgusting when a white man uses MLK Day to promote another white man, but it's even worse when it's hate-preacher Mike Pence promoting narcissistic bigot Donald Trump.
• Trump's lawyer is really good at keeping his scandals alive and well.
• The MAGA hat kid and his buddies aren't the angels that conservatives are trying to make them out to be. In fact, the Catholic school they come from has a history of wearing blackface.
• How Trump "thinks:" We have a problem with forest fires? Well, we can fix that by clear-cutting the forest!
• Press conferences are a sham, but they're an agreed upon sham. However, one side is being parasitic to the sham.
• The for-profit prisons that Republicans love so much effectively turn their inmates into slave labor.
• Republicans love their charter schools, mostly because the lack of oversight makes embezzlement so much easier.

Another case of a public school teacher fired for forcing his religious beliefs on his students has finally ended after an appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court, but the over-bearing Christian lost once again.

On MLK day, a group of black people protesting housing inequality were surprised when Mark Allen Bartlett kept shouting the n-word and pulled a gun on them!

Is the atheist community a cult?

Well-intentioned, but science-ignorant, antivax parents have caused another measles outbreak in Portland with 19 confirmed cases, and several more being investigated.

Feeling: Blah

So, after getting sick twice in a row, I've developed shingles on my chest and underarm. They're painful, ugly, and itchy. Shingles are a result of having chickenpox as a child. When I was a kid, there wasn't a vaccine available, but there is now. Parents, get your children vaccinated for chicken pox so they don't have to deal with this crap!

I added a page for the Queen album, Hot Space.

• Republican Congressman and white supremacist apologist Steve King posted a fake MLK quote.
• After once again incriminating his client on TV, Rudy Giuliani is now trying to contain the damage he made when he admitted that Trump continued to try and secure a Trump Tower in Moscow long after stealing the presidency.
• Trump's ban on transgender people in the military has been allowed to be enforced. Trump not only hates everyone who isn't like him, but wants to make their very existence a crime.
• Another week of Trump's government shutdown. He's costing a lot of money to a lot of families that can't afford it.

Swapping generic henchmen between video games.

When a bunch of women scientists tell you your design won't work, but offer encouragement and advice on how to make it better, don't listen. Wait until it fails and some random guy offers advice instead.

Why science doesn't need apologists.

Feeling: Okay

Over the weekend I finished reading The Lost Continent and beat the puzzle game Black.

• The Republicans in the Senate continue to bend over backwards for Trump, despite the fact that they're losing support with Americans.
• A couple weeks ago, without warning even to our allies, Trump said he was going to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan because we defeated ISIS and the Taliban. Of course, even the Pentagon admits that ISIS is still a threat in Syria and the Taliban is still killing people in Afghanistan.
• I hope you weren't planning on traveling any time soon. Trump's government shutdown has no end in sight, and since TSA agents aren't getting paid, 8% of them are no longer showing up for work, with that number expected to grow as the shutdown drags on.
• Trump continues to outdo himself, assuring that he will always hold the title of the most dishonest president in history, telling over 8,000 lies in his first two years as president.
• A group of boys from an all-male private Catholic school, many wearing pro-Trump clothing, and were at Washington D.C. to protest a woman's right to choose, shouted at and mocked a native American veteran protester during the coinciding Indigenous Peoples March on Washington. Their Catholic school has apologized for the boys' behavior, but the boys have not. And, if you need to know where the boys learned this, one of the mothers defended her son blaming black Muslims (in actuality, the other group was Black Hebrew Israelites, who are very much not Muslim).
• Four women have been arrested and convicted of leaving food and water for refugees. In Trump's America; feeding a starving family who is feeling for their life is a crime.
• Why you shouldn't hire an imbecile for a lawyer.

Republicans like to lie about it all the time, but here's how tax brackets actually work.

Some tricks for being able to quickly tell if a number is evenly divisible by another.

The woman who tried to pray the child-molesting demon out of her husband, is facing prison along with her child-molesting husband for thinking her religion could protect her from doing what was right and reporting him for a span of 20 years, during which time her molested five different children.

Simone Giertz's brain tumor is growing back faster than expected.

The Christians on a California school board just lost tax payers $250,000 because they couldn't stop forcing their religion on everyone at their meetings.

Feeling: Blah

I've added a page for the FTP program, FileZilla.

• Ever since Trump hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer, Giuliani has assured the press hundreds of times that there was no collusion between the Trump administration and Russia, but yesterday he disregarded all those statements and claimed he has never once said there wasn't any collusion.
• Over the past two years, 22 immigrants have died while in an ICE jail. And it isn't the old and sick, many of them were younger, a couple were children, and one was transgender. This is the same organization that routinely tries to deport American citizens, who are guilty until proven innocent, their most recent attempt was Michigan-born Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a US Marine veteran who spent three days in an ICE jail before they finally released him.
• Every US defense organization agrees that Russia directly and purposefully interfered in the last two major American elections. This is why sanctions were placed on the country, but Republicans, knowing that their side won because of the Russian interference, is siding with Russia and refusing to enforce the sanctions.
• A federal judge tells American government workers that, if they want to keep their jobs, they must continue working without pay.
• The Trump administration has been caught in two more corruption scandals, the first is violating the US Constitution by using his status as president to illegally profit off his private businesses, the second is paying his lawyer to hire a tech firm to artificially inflate his standings in an online poll.
• Racists never think they're racists. Case in point, Republican Steve King.
• Trump continues to have some of the lowest approval ratings for a president in history, but now, even his racist Christian base is slipping.
• Coal is a dying energy source, and while Trump isn't the reason it's dying, he is the reason coal miners are not transitioning into a viable career path.
• After Republican John Engler publicly announced that women who were raped are enjoying their spotlight, the MSU board met to terminate his employment. They never should have hired him to begin with, but hopefully they will learn from their mistake. But, before he could be fired, Engler resigned in a letter that makes no mention of his horrible comments, but instead is filled with self-congratulations and blames his loss of job on Democrats.
• Mike Pence's wife, Karen Pence, landed a job at a private Christian school that automatically expels LGBT children.
• Trump's ridiculous hamberders escapade.

Showing how to beat The Legend of Zelda in only a few minutes by exploiting a bug to reprogram the game.

How can you know when you've reached the edge of space?

Imagine having to deal with morons like this all the time!

Feeling: Sick

I added a page for the Eve 6 song, At Least We're Dreaming.

• With the government shutdown continuing to have negative repercussions, Republicans are demanding that 50,000 more government employees return to work, but they will still won't get paid.
• After firing his previous hand-picked Attorney General, noted racist Jeff Sessions, Trump's new pick, Republican William Barr, says he will not recuse himself on Trump's Russian probe (despite already writing publicly that the FBI probe was a sham and Trump should be above the law) and, if appointed, might make sure that the results of the FBI probe are never made public. Naturally, the Republican-controlled Senate is still expected to confirm him.
• Trump is probably too stupid to be purposely working for Russia, but he's just stupid enough to be inadvertently working for Russia.
• Republican John Engler, acting president of MSU, just said that the MSU students who were sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar and are suing the school for protecting him are enjoying the spotlight that comes with being sexually assaulted and all the awards and recognition that go with it.
• When arguing that the government is working just fine during a shutdown, it doesn't help to say you're the only person in a huge government building.
• Republican County Commissioner Hope Fernandez Williams went on a bigoted anti-Muslim rant all the while claiming she knows a Muslim, so she can't be a bigot.

How is it that Switzerland can have tons of guns but very little gun crime?

After John Wetteland became the New York Yankees World Series MVP in 1996, all the while promoting his version of Christianity, he raped a 4-year-old girl several times, and then became a teacher at a private Christian school. He's finally been arrested.

Strange things happen when you do a double double slit experiment.

Computer algorithms are not objective facts, they're a way of converting an opinion into a mathematical formula.

Feeling: Sick

I started a page for Sunsoft graphic artist, Yoshiaki Iwata.

• By keeping the government shutdown because his ego won't let him accept the fact that most American hate both him and his wall, Trump is ruining America and the lives of Americans. In fact, Republican Kevin Hassett, Chief Economic Adviser to the White House, explained that unpaid furloughed government employees should be happy because they're basically on vacation.
• Although it is a common stereotype to picture a poor black person on welfare, the majority of welfare recipients in the USA are actually white. And, while it shouldn't have been, this was news to Trump.
• Rather than dispose of their waste properly, the US military often employs companies (in the past, headed by Dick Cheney) to create huge trash fires to burn all their refuse including tires, medical waste, batteries, plastic, and many other toxic materials that spew forth carcinogens. Despite going against safety regulations, these burn piles are often placed just on the outskirts of camps where soldiers breathe in the fumes all day. As you would expect, many soldiers have developed cancer because of this, and, they want to hold the companies responsible for placing the burn piles dangerously close to military camps. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has a majority of Republicans Justices, and they refuse to hold these companies responsible for their negligent behavior that will surely result in the death of countless US veterans. Just like Agent Orange before it, the US military poisons its soldiers and never accepts responsibility.
• Rand Paul, one of the most outspoken Republicans against socialized medicine, is going to Canada where socialized medicine is the law of the land to avoid America's crappy capitalistic health care. Although he argues that the clinic he's going to is a private clinic, the problem still remains, how is it that Canada has better clinics than all of the tens of thousands of clinics in the USA?
• Trump is the kind of person who thinks it's okay to have a candlelit dinner with silver trays, and serve McDonalds hamburgers.
• NASA has lost funding because of Trump's shutdown. Meanwhile, China has become the first nation to grow crops on the moon.

The band Psychostick has a new beard song.

Learning good debate tactics by studying Sam Harris.

Christians are furious that they can't discriminate against transgender homeless people.

Learning about black holes by measuring their output.

Feeling: Blah

I added a page for one of my favorite television shows, The I.T. Crowd.

• Well, he did it! Donald Trump has shut down the government for the longest stretch in the entire history of our country. And, while the American government now refuses to pay their employees, and Republicans fought to not even give them back pay, American scientific progress has slowed to a crawl and Canadian citizens are buying our meals. Even when Republicans had full control over the American government for two straight years, they couldn't get funding for a useless border wall, and now, it seems, Trump's only option is declaring a state of emergency so he can rob Americans, and he's not at all wishy-washy about that.
• Donald Trump has sexually assaulted dozens of women and has a history of cheating on his numerous wives. Being such a good Christian, he also doesn't want women to have access to birth control, but his most recent attempt to eliminate access was put on hold by a federal judge.
• Why has Trump been so secretive with his talks with Russia, even to the point of confiscating the notes of his Russian interpreter and ordering him not to discuss anything about the meeting?
• Nashville? New Orleans? What's the difference?
• Trump has threatened to devastate the economy of a US ally. What's he going to do, become their president?
• Which is more important to civil discourse, Democrat Rashida Tlaib calling Trump a motherfucker, or Republican Steve King promoting white supremacy? Clearly the word "motherfucker."
• In 1890, around 1,000 US troops slaughtered 300 Native Americans, most of whom were unarmed women and children, on an Indian reservation near Wounded Knee Creek. One hundred years later, the US government finally apologized for the massive slaughter. I bring this up, because Trump just made light of the slaughter in order to make fun of Elizabeth Warren.

Why do graphic cards use triangles instead of squares, circles, or some other shape?

Milking the thorium cow? It's as interesting as it sounds.

James Watson, one of the scientists responsible for discovering the shape of DNA, is, and always has been, a racist and a misogynist. I'm pleased to see that, in his life time, his honorary titles are being revoked because of his bigotry.

The carbon cycle, and how humans have disrupted it.

It only took about 60 years raping children, but American Catholics are finally starting to lose faith in the church.

What if Giovanni from Pokémon was competent.

Feeling: Happy

I've added a page about one of my personal heroes, Rebecca Watson.

• In addition to being the most dishonest, most corrupt, and least experienced, Trump will soon be able to add the longest government shutdown to his growing list of superlatives.
• Homeland Security made a salient point regarding the futility of Trump's border wall by using a hacksaw to cut a man-sized hole in it.
• Probably seeing the writing on the wall, Trump has currently backed down from declaring a national emergency to rob Americans for his useless border wall.
• As Trump is being sued for turning government employees into literal slaves, the Coast Guard gave their as of now unpaid employees some helpful tips on how to survive Trump's government shutdown: selling off their belongings. And prison guards are currently working double shifts without pay.
• Like craft beer? That's another thing you're going to lose out on because of Trump's government shutdown.
• Looks like Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort shared American polling data with Russia.
• When a woman has a miscarriage she is devastated and vulnerable, but she is also at risk of death until the dead fetus is expelled. Most miscarriages occur early in the pregnancy, and to not require invasive procedures like surgery, but can be handled with simple medication. Unfortunately, the simple medication is mifepristone, which can also be used to cause an abortion, so Republicans have made it extremely difficult for women to get it because Republicans don't trust doctors.
• With his constant sniffing, it does make one wonder if Trump is snorting drugs.

• Republican and white supremacist Steve King doesn't understand why the term "white supremacist" is offensive.

Some facts about the Nintendo Game Cube.

Rowan County, North Carolina refused to let non-Christians give invocations at their meetings, and now they've lost their taxpayers $285,000!

Why do we keep seeing outbreaks of salmonella that end up killing people? Because, strangely, the USDA doesn't actually try to stop it.

Is vinyl better than digital? No, but its technical limitations do help prevent the loudness problem heard in digital mixing.

Feeling: Happy

I got the metal post screwed into my jaw. Now I have to wait another 3 months for it to heal before I can get a mount put on for a crown. I'll be smiling like a hillbilly until April.

• Trump continues to ruin the nation because Democrats won't give him billions of taxpayer dollars to pay for a pointless wall that he promised Mexico would pay for, but now lies that he didn't. Instead of fixing our nation's crumbling infrastructure or updating our schools, Trump wants to waste billions on a wall that experts say will never work. And, during the shutdown, 30,000 Federal workers are expected continue working without pay or lose their job. They can't strike or unionize because Federal workers do not receive the same protections as private sector employees. Basically, Trump has turned 30,000 Americans into slaves. Oh yeah, and with the government shutdown, your food is no longer being inspected for safety, but an attraction in a Trump hotel is still open.
• When a free country allows a tyrant to become their leader, they suddenly realize how many hard lines they have to draw to limit the power of the tyrant in order to remain free.
• Having Trump as a president hasn't just emboldened neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the KKK, it's also increased bullying among children.
• Trump may not have personally colluded with Russia, but nearly everyone else in his administration sure did.
• Trump has threatened to block emergency funds to help California deal with the massive wild fires. What does he think California is, Puerto Rico?

The PokéDex has some pretty strange stuff in it!

Liberty Counsel, a Christian hate group, is okay with the idea of outlawing lynching, just so long as they can still lynch homosexuals.

Denver has officially banned anti-gay conversion brainwashing techniques.

Feeling: Happy

I added a page for the Queen album, News of the World.

• Trump put as much effort into planning his public address as he does keeping his businesses from going bankrupt, so it was little more than a tirade of lies last night and called it a speech. From his ramblings it's clear that he won't end his government shut down, and why would he, it doesn't affect him, it only hurts the poor.
• Trump confidently said he was pulling US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan causing a huge fallout, not just among the American people, but also world wide, and even in his own cabinet. This has caused him to not only change tack, but also lie that he never said it to begin with.
• Trump lies saying he can not only relate to those government workers that his shutdown has put out of a job, but also that they want him to put them out of work.
• Trump's destructive tariffs have hurt dozens of US industries because nobody is buying our exports anymore, including our cheese.

So many city flags are just garbage.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of France is facing three years in prison for his part in protecting child-raping priests.

Mario has insane strength to be able to shatter bricks with his hands, but that's not as impressive as Luigi doing it with his head.

Melissa Joan Hart is a bigot.

Weed helps you lose weight? Not really.

Feeling: Happy

Last night, I finally beat the NES game, Wrath of the Black Manta.

• The Republican's useless border wall is extremely unpopular with only 38% of Americans in favor of it. However, as Republicans are prone to doing, they're going to force themselves on us without our consent. In this case, Trump appears to be planning to declaring a national emergency to rob American taxpayers so he can build the pointless wall without Congressional approval. Also, Trump has also lied again saying that some of the ex-presidents wished they had build the wall, to which the ex-presidents all responded, nope!
• The Russian lawyer who tricked Donald Trump Jr. with the promise of dirt on Hillary Clinton, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has been criminally charged with obstruction of justice in a money laundering case, but she's currently on the run in Russia.
• After losing the Virginia Governor's race and then losing even worse in the Senate, neo-Confederate Republican Corey Stewart has declared that he is retiring from politics. Please let the door hit you on your way out.
• The Catholic order Opus Dei is paying out close to a million dollars because C. John McCloskey, a priest who coaches Republicans, loves to commit sexual assault.
• Despite their shutdown of the government, Republicans are reassuring Americans that their tax refunds will be processed and returned on time, even though 70,000 employees at the IRS are no longer working. Either the IRS justs just as efficiently with 70,000 fewer employees, or Republicans are lying.

Alex Dainis gives advice to students starting their doctorates.

Religious propaganda is pretty much always the same, even when it's Islam.

Eliminating the cash bail system is tricky, but important.

Really NASA? You chose a name with ties to neo-Nazis?

Feeling: Happy

MAGFest was, once again, amazing! I met some new friends and video game composers, got a couple games signed, and bought more video game junk that I don't need. And, I even got a decent amount of sleep.

I added a review of a Carmen Sandiego tribute game, Sandiego Inc..

• As Republicans begin to see hatred from their own base because Trump shutdown the government, they've issued a compromise bill. They still want $5,700,000,000 of taxpayer money to build a useless wall that Trump promised Mexico would pay for, but, in return, they will let some refugee and migrant children out of prison and provide aide to people who are dying. This is what a Republican compromise looks like. A party that is almost entirely Christian is only willing to help dying people if they can keep being xenophobes.
• Even as 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or continue to work without pay, totaling $1,400,000,000 in unpaid salaries, Trump was still all set to increase the pay of those in his already over-paid administration. But, after journalists made this information available there was a huge backlash and even Trump wasn't too stupid to see how bad that would make him look, so he finally held off on his own raises.
• And hey, you weren't planning on getting your tax returns back, were you?
• To prove how much he loves the troops, President "bone spurs" Trump called retired general Stanley McChrystal a "dog" with a "big dumb mouth."
• Trump is still buddy-buddy with the murderous tyrant of Russia.
• First, Trump shutdown the government because they wouldn't give him money for his useless border wall, and now, he wants to shutdown television to lie to Americans about his useless border wall.

Catholic priests don't just rape children, they also rape nuns.

Cyntoia Brown, the 16-year-old victim of human sex trafficking who was being sold as a sex slave to men while still a teenager, who killed one of the men who paid her pimp to have sex with an under-aged girl, and was sentenced to over 50 years in prison, despite being a minor, has finally been granted clemency after already serving 15 years in prison.

Yet another Christian hate-preacher has been caught doing drugs and sleeping with prostitutes.

Anther atheist victory as a cross on public land is moved to private land.

Feeling: Happy

I'm going to be at MAGFest from the 3rd-6th. Contact me if you want to meet up.

• Jerry Falwell Jr., a major player in the Evangelical Christian movement, states clearly that there is literally nothing Trump could do that would cause him to lose faith which Christian leaders. Falwell expanded saying, even if Trump did something that went against his own ideology, he has faith that Trump only wants what is best for the country, therefore, he will continue to support him no matter what. Trump can continue to cheat on his wife, continue to make racial slurs, continue his non-stop lying, continue robbing from the poor and giving to the rich, continue to sexually assault women, he could even murder a child, and Jerry Falwell Jr. would still support him.
• Trump-appointed Dana W. White as the Chief Spokesperson for the Pentagon, but, like most of Trump's appointments, she's resigning in the middle of a huge scandal.
• It's a new year, but not a new country as US border patrol continues to teargas migrants.
• As Europe eliminates the bulk of its coal mines, Republicans are making the ones in the US more deadly.
• Republicans set a new record when confirming judges picked Donal Trump. Translation: the judges picked by Donald Trump were pushed through with the least amount of vetting than any judges in American history.

Did you hear Auld Lang Syne at your New Year's party? Here's what the lyrics mean.

Rebecca Watson recaps her successful predictions of 2018 and makes new ones for 2019.

Lara Kollab, a Doctor of Osteopathy, has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments on social media, including calling for violence against Jews and saying she would give fake medicine to her Jewish patients.

Does a work stand on its own regardless of the author's unwritten lore, or should we treat the unwritten intent as canon?

Muslims are still forcing women to lick red-hot iron to prove their innocence.

Can you see polarized light? Maybe!