Curses! Foiled again!

Never say "How much weirder can things get?"

Ordinarily I'm the least superstitious person in the room, but I make an exception in this case.  When you say this kind of shit -- like I did when I was working out with my athletic trainer yesterday -- the universe is listening.

What spurred me to open my big mouth was, of course, all of the bizarre cabinet appointments by President-elect Donald Trump.  We had accused pedophile and sex trafficker Matt Gaetz for Attorney General; I say "had" with a smile on my face because he just withdrew, apparently sensing correctly that his accusers have the goods on him and he would be fucked sideways if he did his usual chest-thumping, I'm So Tough And Belligerent Act.  (What's amusing is that he's already resigned from Congress; I wonder if he's going to try to tell them, "Oh, wait, never mind about my resignation"?  The majority of his colleagues hate him, so my guess is they'll say "Sorry, buddy, no takesy-backsies," resulting in Gaetz doing something my grandma used to call "falling between two chairs.")  We have a WWE executive for Education Secretary and a Fox News host for Defense; both of them have also been implicated in sex scandals, which is more and more seeming like a qualification for being a Trump nominee rather than a disqualification.  We have a dangerously wacko anti-vaxxer for Health and Human Services Secretary and a loony alt-med personality to run Medicare and Medicaid.

So in an unguarded moment, I said to my trainer, "Well, at least the world can't get much weirder than it already is."

Ha.  A lot I know.

I got home from training, showered and dressed, then got a snack and sat down for a quick check of the interwebz.  And the very first thing I saw was that there is now a service on Etsy where you can pay $7.99 to have a witch put a curse on Elon Musk.

The whole thing became internet-famous because of a woman named Riley Wenckus, who apparently found out about "Etsy Witches" who will do spells for you, and she hired one of them to curse Musk -- then went on TikTok and bragged about it.  "Elon motherfucking Musk!" she shouted.  "I just paid an Etsy witch $7.99 to make your life a living hell!"

This video has been viewed five million times.

"The Three Witches from Macbeth" by Morton Cavendish (1909) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Wenckus explained her actions by saying "I was feeling really existential about what I can do," to which I respond, "Um... yay?  I think?  Or maybe 'I'm so sorry?'"  Because I have no idea what she means by "feeling existential."  But I'm happy that she's taken a concrete step toward feeling either more or less existential by cursing Musk, depending on whether she thinks it's a good or a bad thing.

I dunno.  I'm as confused as you are.

In any case, we also learn that the recipe for an anti-Musk curse involves a white candle, cayenne pepper, lavender, salt, and bay leaves.  So at least it'll make your house smell nice.

Wenckus herself says she's not sure it'll work, but is hopeful that if she's started a trend, maybe it'll accomplish something.  "I am a person grounded in reality who believes in science," she said.  "But I still think there's something to be said for having millions upon millions of people wishing for your downfall."

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that ill-wishing a horrible human being like Elon Musk isn't completely understandable.  He is one of the most genuinely loathsome people I can think of, and deserves every last one of the hexes that are thrown his way.  I'm just doubtful that it'll work.  But by all means, if you want to follow suit and add your own curse to Wenckus's (and, I'm sure, many others), knock yourself out.  You can find out how in the link provided.

As for me, I'm gonna save my $7.99, but I'm also formally announcing my abandonment of any expectations that the world will undergo some sort of normalizing regression to the mean.  Whatever the cause of how insane things have been lately -- if, for example, my suspicion is correct, and the aliens who are running the computer simulation we're all trapped in have gotten drunk and/or stoned, and now they're just fucking with us -- I give up.  Y'all win.  I'm embracing the weirdness.

I guess this is what they mean by "living in interesting times."

So go ahead, universe.  I'm ready.  Have at it.  If things are going to be terrible, at least keep making them entertaining.

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The cabinet of Doctor MAGAligari

So Dictator-for-Life-elect Donald Trump has started to select his appointees for cabinet and other major government positions, and his choices are as appalling as they are unsurprising.  Apparently the only qualification for being selected is how fervently a prospective candidate has kissed Trump's ass.  Many of these are so awful they'd be funny if the consequences weren't so dire; the worst make replacing a distinguished jurist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the vapid Amy Coney Barrett seem like, "Eh, okay, that's not so bad."

Let's start with one that's so weird that when I first saw it posted, I thought it was a parody.  Alas, it isn't.  Trump has proposed a new department of the federal government, to be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, called "The Department of Governmental Efficiency."  Or... DOGE.

I swear, sometimes the jokes write themselves.

It's unlikely that Trump can just declare the creation of a new department without Congress's approval, so it might be that this will be some sort of advisory board -- or considering the current Congress, maybe they'll just rubber-stamp it.  Whatever form it takes, Musk has already promised to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget, which is going to be tricky because the discretionary budget is only around 1.7 trillion dollars.

But Musk's grasp on reality is such that he considers the loss of three-quarters of the users of Twitter since he took over a sign of his excellent business acumen, so why not?

What's most amusing about this one is that apparently Musk is already rubbing Trump the wrong way, and there are signs that his stay in the administration might be under half a Scaramucci long.  It's unsurprising when you think about it; there's no way in hell Musk and Trump could share the limelight.  There can only be one egotistical, sociopathic man-baby getting the praise, or else sparks start to fly.  What I wonder is what will happen when they have a serious falling out; Musk's way smarter than Trump (not that this is a high bar), and if he starts using his obscene amounts of wealth to sabotage Trump's agenda, things could get ugly fast.

Then there's the nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.  At first, tapping Hegseth struck many people as a puzzling WTF moment; his sole qualification seemed to be that he'd been a host on Fox & Friends.  But further inquiry into Hegseth's background found that there's something darker behind this choice.  Hegseth has frightening ties to the Christofascist movement, especially the "Reformed Reconstructionists" (nicknamed the "TheoBros"), who advocate laws based on Christian supremacy, male dominance, and "building the Kingdom of God on Earth."  A sign of his beliefs is his tattoo someone found an image of:

"Deus Vult" ("God Wills It") was the rallying cry of the Crusaders, and has been taken over by the Christian Dominionists -- who want laws passed requiring Christianity as a prerequisite for holding elected office.

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to be run by New York State congressman Lee Zeldin, whose definition of "protection" is "deregulate the absolute fuck out of everything."  Zeldin has strong ties to the fossil fuel and auto industries, and basically wants to repeal any legislation holding back oil and natural gas drilling.  "While protecting access to clean air and water," Zeldin said, almost as an afterthought, although how he plans on doing both simultaneously is a mystery to everyone, probably including himself.

Then there's Mike Huckabee -- who stated "there's no such thing as a Palestinian" -- as ambassador to Israel.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; in a speech Trump said he was going to let RFK "go wild on health care."  The man is an antivaxxer, a conspiracy theorist who said that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to spare Jews and Chinese people, and promotes a whole shelf full of fringe-y "alt-med therapies."  He, in fact, seems simply to be an all-around general-purpose wacko, whose extreme anti-science views and determination to spread them was directly responsible for a measles epidemic in Samoa that killed dozens of children.  

And how about Tulsi Gabbard, who called media coverage of the January 6 coup attempt "sensationalized," and labeled Trump's 34 felony convictions as "persecution," who has been nominated for Director of National Intelligence despite having zero experience in intelligence (in both senses of the word).  Representative Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, said about Gabbard, "Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.  As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security.  My Republican colleagues with a backbone should speak out."

But of course they won't, because no one questions Dear Leader.

Perhaps worst of all (at least so far -- heaven only knows what other hideous revelations await in this warped and surreal horror movie), there's the nomination of Florida Representative Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, which may have moved Trump onto shaky ground even with some of his supporters.  Gaetz has been the subject of investigation for having sex with a minor and for child sex trafficking, so putting him in the position of Attorney General -- the top legal advisor to the president, who oversees all issues of law enforcement nationally -- is a horrifying choice.  (I heard an interview with one Republican on the radio this morning who was one hundred percent supportive of Gaetz, and who said that one positive result of the nomination would be shutting down the investigation into Gaetz's actions -- further evidence that the majority of the GOP have more of a problem with a child being queer than they do with a child being raped.)  At least there were two Republicans, who (for obvious reasons) declined to be named, who said they were "stunned and disgusted" by the pick, and that "we wanted him out of the House, but this isn't what we had in mind."

Oh, and Republican Senator Susan Collins went so far as to say she was "shocked" by Gaetz's nomination, thus exceeding her previous most-overwrought emotional state, which was "concerned."  I'm sure she'll even make a frowny-face as she votes "yes" on confirming him.

What's coming?  I'd have said his next likely move was to put Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge of the Department of Education, but he's planning on closing that.  So MTG will have to cool her heels in the House of Representatives for a while longer.  Maybe the My Pillow guy can become the head of the Department of Homeland Security or Surgeon General or something.  I dunno.

The only glimmer of hope I can find in all this -- and it's a slim one -- is that his choices for cabinet members are, one and all, so dramatically unqualified that they're likely to resemble the Keystone Kops more than they do the Wehrmacht.  The problem is, as the entire mess implodes, it can do a lot of damage, depriving American citizens of services they depend on, and in the case of Kennedy and HHS, actually killing people.  As usual, the GOP is the Party of Small Government Until They Want Large Government.  Cutting services to ordinary Americans, defunding public education, destroying health services and medical care, deregulating industry, and killing environmental standards, that's all fine and dandy; but let's get the government into libraries, schools, and people's bedrooms, and along the way get the church into everything.

So those of you who voted for Trump -- I hope you're happy with the chaos that's about to descend.  It's grimly satisfying to know that with Republican control of the Executive Branch, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and (likely) the House of Representatives, you people at least won't have the option of blaming the Democrats when things go to hell.

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Dodging the Great Filter

There's a cheery idea called "The Great Filter," have you heard of it?

The whole concept came up when considering the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, especially vis-à-vis the Fermi Paradox, which can be summed up as, "If intelligent aliens are common in the universe, where is everyone?"  Despite fifty-odd years of intensive searching, there has never been incontrovertible evidence of someone out there.  I maintain hope, however; the universe is a big, big place, and even the naysayers admit we've only surveyed the barest fraction of it.

The Arecibo Radio Telescope [image courtesy of photographer David Broad and the Wikimedia Commons]

"The Great Filter" is an attempt to parse why this may be, assuming it's not because alien civilizations are communicating with each other (and/or sending signals to us) using a technology we don't understand yet and can't detect.  You can think of the Great Filter as being a roadblock -- where, along the way, do circumstances prevent life forming on other planets, then achieving intelligence?

There are a few candidates for the Great Filter, to wit:

• the abiotic synthesis of complex organic molecules.  This seems unlikely, as organic molecule synthesis appears to be easy, as long as there's no nasty chemical like molecular oxygen around to rip them apart as fast as they form.  In an anoxic atmosphere -- such as the one the Earth almost certainly had five billion years ago -- organic molecules of all sorts can form with wild abandon.
• assembly of those organic molecules into cells.  Again, this has been demonstrated in the lab to be easy.  Hydrophobic interactions make lipids (or other amphipathic molecules, ones with a polar end and a nonpolar end) form structures that look convincingly like cells with little more encouragement than occasional agitation.
• the evolution of those cells into a complex life form.  Now we're on shakier ground; no one knows how common this may be.  Although natural selection seems to be universal, all this would do is cause the cells that are the best/most efficient at replicating themselves to become more common.  There's no particular reason that complex life forms would necessarily result from that process.  As eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins put it, "Evolution is the law of whatever works."
• the development of intelligence.  Again, there's no reason to expect this to occur everywhere.  Intelligent life forms aren't even the most common living things on Earth -- far from it.  We are vastly outnumbered not only by insects, but bacteria -- methanogens, a group of bacteria species that live in anaerobic sediment on the ocean floor, are thought to outnumber all other living organisms on Earth put together.
• an intelligent species surviving long enough to stand a chance of sending an identifiable signal.  That the Great Filter consists of intelligent life evolving and then proceeding to do something stupid and destroying itself has been nicknamed the "We're Fucked" model.  If all of the preceding scenarios turn out not to be serious issues -- and at least the first two seem that way -- then it could be that intelligence pops up all over the place, but only lasts a few decades before spontaneously combusting.

Most biologists think that if a Great Filter does exist, #5 is probably the best candidate.  There's nothing we know about biology that precludes any of the others; even if (for example) the evolution of intelligence is slow and arduous, given the size of the universe, there are probably millions of planets that host, or have hosted, intelligent life.

On the other hand, if they only host that life for a few years before it commits suicide en masse, it could explain why we're not getting a lot of "Hey, We're Here!" signals from the cosmos.

When people consider what could trigger an intelligent civilization to self-destruct, most people think of the development of advanced weaponry.  It's like a planet-wide application of the Principle of Chekhov's Gun (from 19th century Russian author Anton Chekhov): "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.  If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."  If we develop weapons of mass destruction, eventually we'll use them -- destroying ourselves in the process.

It reminds me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Arsenal of Freedom," in which a civilization becomes the salespeople of increasingly advanced weapon systems -- until they develop one so powerful that once activated, it can't be stopped, and it proceeds to wipe out the people who made it.

Of course, there's another possibility (because one way of self-destructing isn't enough...).  This was just brought up by inventor and futurist Elon Musk, who last week declared that he wants us to put the brakes on artificial intelligence development.  Musk says that if we develop a true artificial intelligence, it will not only inevitably take over, it will eventually look at humanity as "in the way" -- and destroy us:

[I]f we’re building a road, and an anthill happens to be in the way, we destroy it.  We don’t hate ants, we’re just building a road.  So, goodbye, anthill.  

If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it.  No hard feelings...  By the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it’ll be too late.  Normally the way regulations are set up is when a bunch of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry.  It takes forever.  That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization...  

At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die.  But for an AI there would be no death.  It would live forever, and then you’d have an immortal dictator, from which we could never escape.

It's possible that we could fall prey not to our weapon systems, but to something few of us have considered dangerous -- a created artificial intelligence.  (Although you'd think that anyone who has watched either I, Robot or any of the Terminator movies would understand the risk.)

So do advanced civilizations inevitably develop AI systems, that then turn on them?  It would certainly explain why we're not receiving greetings from the stars.  It's possible that the Great Filter lies ahead of us -- a prospect that I consider a little terrifying.

Anyhow, sorry for being a downer.  Besides Musk's recent pronouncements, the idea has been floating around in my head given all of the idiotic things our leaders have been doing recently.  I guess if we can survive for the next few years, we might break through the suspicion and violence and parochialism that has characterized our species pretty much forever.  I'm going to try to remain optimistic -- as my dad used to say, "I'd rather be an optimist who is wrong than a pessimist who is right."

On the other hand, I think I'll end with a quote from theologian and Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: "Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be.  Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes."

So maybe Elon Musk's adjuration to caution is well advised.