What Is Science and What Isn’t It?
I. #TheScience Is Not Well.
I’m going to begin with two claims about the state of #thescience in the United States. I use the hashtag advisedly because one of my assertions is that the majority of what passes for science in the current zeitgeist is generally non-science, or, most charitably, bad conjecture, if we’re properly classifying the current crop of pop-culture fads attempting to pass themselves off as real Science (yes, I’m looking at you AGW and Covid-19 Scam-demic). To begin with, here are my two claims:
- The current state of science in the United States is…unwell. This is not to say that there isn’t some good science being done to which one can point, but the measure of the health of science in any age isn’t simply what things are invented, or what new technologies may be patented that lead to the ease of living of the species. I will take this up in detail below, but for now I make the claim that science in the U.S. is in a deplorable state, due to a confluence of factors that began from within science itself, but spread to other areas, such as the Law.
- A direct consequence of #1 is also a piece of evidence and a separate problem: the odds are extremely high that anything you’ve read recently in a mainstream media science piece, no matter how ‘peer reviewed,’ is garbage. My conservative estimate is that it’s about 80/20 in favor of garbage.
Before I can properly begin my argument, however, I must first define what I mean by science, as well as a number of related concepts in order that a metric is established by which I can show where things are currently awry, as well as the how and why that happened. So, I’ll leave these here and return to their proof below. Without trying to be pedantic, I ask some forbearance on this reiteration of the basics. Blame public education – I do!
II. What is Science?
It is a methodology for modeling the universe; nothing more, and certainly nothing less. To be more precise, science is the process by which we develop models of the real world with predictive power. Science proceeds on one giant underlying assumption: that there are “rules” and “order” to our material world, about the nature of… well, Nature, that can be discovered, and modeled, by mankind. In some cases, like Newton’s Law of Gravity, the model can be so powerful, with such mathematical precision, that predictions can be made about the future time, position, and even energy state of bodies on Earth or in space.
Science is also how you have been understanding the world from the moment your senses turned on and became capable of taking in and processing stimuli. You have been producing models from inductive reasoning, using heuristics and other cognitive tools, to come to grips with the stunning array of information presented to you, then updating these models as more data comes in – confirming some hypotheses, discarding others, modifying yet others, limiting the domain and range of some theories… What we traditionally learned as the scientific method is an articulation of that mental machinery that churns out models of how the world works.
You’ve probably seen something like this as a rough definition of the “Scientific Method” at some point in your life:
Observe
Ask a question
Develop a testable hypothesis
Experiment – TEST your hypothesis
Analyze the data/results
Make a Conclusion
This is an iterative process and can be entered from different points along the path. You may have a simple question that nags at you, or you may have a particularly well-developed theory – as in the case of Einstein’s gravitational waves – but in either case, if you don’t have a testable hypothesis, one that has measurements and criteria for validation, the problem remains. As this example above (hopefully) illustrates, Science does not necessarily yield absolute, universal truth… at least not NOW, or maybe not on the first go-around, or maybe not ever, which is why we have categories for scientific models based upon their predictive strength.
Here are the criteria and definitions for Modern Science:1
- Rational argument must be the zeroth axiom. This has a number of corollaries, but the most important of which is “consistency” or “non-contradiction” – for example, something can’t be both A and not A at the same time.
- Science is the source and repository of Man’s objective knowledge.
- Scientific knowledge is siloed in models, which are graded by the strength of their predictive power, from conjecture, to hypothesis, to theory, and then law.
- Observations are a registration of the real world on our senses or sensing equipment, BUT they do not become “scientific facts” until we can measure them against some standard scale. This is a non-trivial requirement.
- Scientific facts, the foundation of all model building and testing, are measurements with an established accuracy.2
- Models map a current fact to a future unrealized fact as a prediction. Another way of saying this is that a prediction is a forecast of a measurement.
- Validation and method are entirely independent. Whether the prediction came by inspiration or perspiration is irrelevant – what validates the conjecture or hypothesis is its predictive power.
- An important corollary to number 7 is that explanation of cause is in the eye of the beholder.
- The application of science to public policy with unvalidated models is unethical.
III. What Isn’t Science?
With this as the foundation upon which we build, it’s evident that the #IFL Science! Crew traffics in something more akin to a religion – scientism, but certainly not science. For example, nowhere in our schema above for science does the word ‘consensus’ appear. For some of us of a certain age, the word ‘consensus’ was never taught in conjunction with science; the word was never spoken in a science classroom. This is because consensus is not a part of the scientific method and its adoption into #science has a direct correlation to the cheapening of real science. Science cares nothing for votes or popularity; either a model delivers predictions that can be tested and measured, that is validated or not, or it is either (1) an incorrect model, or (2) isn’t science at all. This is where the popularity of certain ideas, mingled with the need for funding for continued research, can lead to bad outcomes. This is at its worst when popularity includes the government concretization of ideas.3
In truth, the new #science is the politicization of science, and it is, unfortunately, nothing new. The Lysenkoism of the 1930’s charts its rise quite nicely with the fall to our current state of scientific illiteracy and innumeracy. Science in service to the state is one (among many) of the defining characteristics of statist systems of government, such as socialism, communism, fascism, and even corporatism, of which we have more than our share. AGW is simply the newest version of Trofim Lysenko’s politicized science that seeks its answers not in seeking truth, but in power and control, in popularity, populism, and the censorship of competing ideas, all of which undermines the very foundations upon which science is built. Science proceeds on the refinement of models: as Einstein slightly narrowed the domain of Newton’s Laws of Motion to more accurately model what happens when the v = velocity in Newton’s equations approaches c, the speed of light. It is easy to forget that Relativity was a refinement that was four-hundred years in the making. Or to cast it in a slightly different light, five years before the Puritans started the Salem Witch trials, Isaac Newton published the Principia. Newton’s models withstood four-hundred years of human progress in science and, even then, Einstein only narrowed them for a few special cases, including objects traveling at light speed.
Einstein left us with numerous other models, some of which bear his name, on the basis of the profundity of his contributions. The same is true for Otto Warburg: the Warburg effect is what occurs when you drink a radioactive sugar and then have a PET Scan that “lights up” the cancerous tumor cells, as those cells preferentially uptake the glucose over surrounding healthy, non-cancerous cells.4 It’s why Glenn T. Seaborg had an element of the periodic table named after him, (Seaborgium, Sg – 106), while he was still alive. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan discovered Plutonium and both won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951. That line of transuranium elements on the bottom of the periodic table – the actinide series? Seaborg, as well.
IV. Industrial Science v. Academic Science.
As I noted in the opening piece, Jeff Glassman joined Hughes in the late-1960s, after he finished his PhD in Engineering from UCLA. Like many of his fellow graduates, given their interests and multiple degrees in electronics, applied mathematics, applied physics, and communication and information theory, employment was plentiful in the corridor north of Los Angeles that contained the heart of the United States’ burgeoning aerospace/defense industry, chief among them Hughes Aircraft Company. Jeff’s family had a legacy at Hughes and it was no accident that he would spend half of his three decades at Hughes as the Division Chief Scientist for both the Missile Development and Microelectronics Systems Divisions.
Among the projects to which Jeff contributed significantly was the AWG (pronounced in military slang like it rhymes with dog) Nine (AN/AWG-9) radar. That caught my attention when I learned about it from his son. I was an attack helicopter pilot in the 1990’s, but I grew up keenly interested in American military aviation of the 1980’s. The AWG-9 radar, and the plane that ultimately carried the famous missile guided by it, would be featured in “Top Gun.” The F-14 Tomcat was the final result of a long acquisition process to find a fighter-interceptor capable of taking advantage of the standoff distance of both the radar and the vaunted Phoenix missile. While the Iranians claimed to have splashed over 60 Iraqi MiGs with the Phoenix and the AWG-9, the only three ever admitted to being fired by U.S. fighters all missed their targets.
Regardless of its record, the chief deterrent effect of it lay in its effect on pilots on the other side of the Cold War. Almost all fixed-wing aircraft, and even some rotary-wing, have devices much like the ones you use in your car to detect police radar. The detectors work in specified frequency bands and detect the radiated electromagnetic energy that is being sent at your car by the cop’s radar gym. In return you get a tone, or a spike, on your detector. The ones in planes are using fundamentally the same principles, but the receivers will give returns for slightly more sophisticated radars, including a strobe for direction and strength of signal, up and including targeting radars, like the kind on missile seeker heads and their radars. These produce the “tone” that is now ubiquitous in modern aviation movies.
The old adage in dog-fighting is that ‘first in sight wins the fight.’ This is because in dog-fighting, the person in the higher energy state – typically the person at higher altitude – all other things being equal, can translate that extra potential energy into kinetic energy at some decisive point in the fight, usually as airspeed, sufficient to shoot down the opponent. For Soviet-bloc fighters going up against the Tomcat, its radar, and the accompanying Phoenix (AIM-54) missile, it meant getting a tone in our headset and a “lock” signal while you were still flying blind, unable to “see” anything, because that’s what happens when someone else’s radar can “outreach” yours. Hence, regardless of the U.S. record with the Phoenix missile, the AWG-9 likely helped keep the Cold War cold and gave the U.S. air superiority because it could see farther than anything the Russians had.
The AWG-9 and the accompanying technology for the missile seeker head, the ability for the missile to track multiple targets, to travel at supersonic speeds, and to be able to shunt fuel in turns at 5-6 times the force of gravity, is all Real Science at a high level, where getting it wrong means lives and truckloads of money lost. Notice also that all of that work was classified top secret or better and therefore not subject to “peer review” or “publication” in a science-y journal; and the mathematics behind some of those radars was at a level that a very small coterie of people were even qualified to comment on. Radar is, fundamentally, the ability to distinguish signal from noise among a radar return from roughly 75-100 nautical miles away.5 That is both a highly technical math problem, and extraordinary engineering problem. And none of that even begins to address the ability of the radar to acquire, track, and target multiple aircraft traveling at high velocities in different directions all intent on doing harm to the person sitting in front of that same radar while it moves through space on an F-14 doing 1.5 times the speed of sound.
Compare that to the absolute mountain of dreck that comes out of universities and has the imprimatur of “peer review” on it. Does this prove that whatever is being “studied” is true? Does it even make a prediction that can be tested for validation? What does it even mean to make a claim about the p-value of a paper’s data? We’re going to cover this scientism in detail down the road, but suffice it to say for now that I hope the above example dispels some of the halo effect around terms like “study”, “peer review”, or “p-value” as having anything to do with real science. All of these are entirely artifacts of academic (i.e. university) science, where what has primacy is the government grant trough and personal reputation, not predictive power of models.
I want to finish this first chapter on Science with a reminder of Science’s truth-seeking function. I also note here that Science is in this aspiration no different than the Law, or Literature, or, more broadly, all of good Art. Good comedy is funny because of how well it presents the Truth – or apparent Truths – typically in a striking, ironic, or unusual light. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was written in the context of 17th century Elizabethan drama, yet it has been remade time and time again, into West Side Story’s Sharks v. the Jets, and many, many other variants. This isn’t because it’s false. Indeed, even Religion would be well included in this list of truth-seeking human endeavors and it serves (perhaps) as a reminder why the #IFL Science crew is so much closer to being a religion than to being scientists.
- Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: The Basis of Rational Argument, Dr. Jeff Glassman, Ph.D., CrossFit Journal #64, Dec. 1, 2007. ↩︎
- This is mostly a shortened version of #2, but it’s worth repeating to highlight the critical distinction between a mere observation and a scientific fact. ↩︎
- We’ll explore a number of those specific instances in future articles, in order to show how wrong science can go in model-building, but how much worse it is when government becomes involved in choosing which is the “correct” model. This is true from nutrition guidelines to cancer research, from fitness to hydration, and many more. It’s almost as if the government is completely ignorant of the ‘procedural’ nature of genuine science. For the more cynical, it may be assumed that this is no accident at all, and instead a feature of politicians intentionally picking whatever theory works best for their political purposes, the truth-seeking function of science be damned. ↩︎
- Warburg’s contributions to what might be called biochemistry now, but had no such name during his life, rival Einstein’s in physics. Warburg received the Nobel prize in 1928 for his articulation of the aerobic and anaerobic processes of cellular respiration. i.e. What makes cancer cells cancerous. ↩︎
First thing is first. First.
My favorite aspect of the I love science crowd is just how sure they are that they know how real science works, and that it involves rigorous peer review where scientists are just itching to tear each other to pieces if caught in a lie. Then you find all the junk that gets published, the scams that easily make it through the process (some to show the sorry state of the science), and you start to ask questions…
Most of the shit that gets published is never replicated. Couldn’t be.
The same people who love science threw out a century’s worth of it overnight to wholeheartedly endorse mask wearing.
Point out to a AGW cultist that no climate model has accurately predicted the actual observed climate, and you will get sputtering stupidity back in return.
“Point out to a AGW cultist that no climate model has accurately predicted the actual observed climate,”
I think I first heard Bjorn Lomberg make this point. He noted that, yes, average temps have been going up but nowhere near what the models predicted but we are being asked to make public policy based on the models.
The models can’t even recreate past actual temperature. That is so fundamentally bad it would be laughed out of any other application.
That’s where the global warming crowd lost me. If the model doesn’t work when you know the answer, there is no reason to believe it works when we don’t.
“Then you find all the junk that gets published”
The one I like to discuss with students was the Wakefield study on vaccines and autism. I like this particularly because skeptics point out that it was the scientific method in action; i.e. study, counter-study, dispute, refutation.
But, I explain, it’s a lot more complicated. Yes, the article was controversial but this, roughly, was the process (for The Lancet) that it went through before publication: submission –> editorial review –> peer review (usually three) + statistical review –> peer reviews discussed in second editorial review –> authors respond to comments/review –> editorial review for data consistency. All these steps were followed and the article still got published despite (i) actual fraud and (ii) a conflict of interest that no one looked into.
Furthermore, the original challenge didn’t come from a scientific study but from a newspaper investigation. And, on top of that, the first word of the fraud came out in 2004 but The Lancet didn’t pull the article until 2010.
But other than that, the process worked perfectly.
something can’t be both A and not A at the same time.
Say hello to Schrödinger’s cat .
+1 dead cat bounce
No, possible cat in a box bounce
Science is like porn; I know it when I see it.
Go away, Proofing.
Hyperbole! Being funny, instead of just being contrary!
80/20
You’re an optimist. I doubt we’re even 90/10.
Depends on how wide you open the gates of science. The traditional “soft sciences” like sociology, anything dealing with the human mind and issues, and even economics have huge issues with replicability. That skews the total towards 10/90. If the aperture tightens towards less soft sciences and anything with the word “Studies” in the name, and AWAY from university run “science” then I think the ratio probably is skirting towards 40/60. Oil companies are paying geologists to find the oil-bearing formations and (hopefully) wouldn’t pay the salary for a so-called geologist to try to publish a paper titled “Queering the Pre-Cambrian: alternate gender identifications prior to the Cambrian explosion.” I can only qualify my assertion with (hopefully) since Boeing forgot that materials and aeronautical sciences don’t care about your DEI programs.
There realistically always has been a place in science where consensus mattered. What gets taught and accepted is going to be what the large majority of scientists purport to believe. But it’s like the oft-quoted line by Einstein: “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.” But to use consensus in lieu of actual evidence and predictive success is another thing entirely. It shows how corrosive AGW (that’s where I see this originating) has been to science and culture as a whole. It’s the appeal to authority fallacy writ large where a bunch of mediocre fucks use “consensus” in place of their own ability to reason or in having to jump through the hoops of proving their point in a convincing manner.
You can point out all the various things that were widely believed that have been debunked today until you are blue in the face. The believers won’t listen.
It says a lot about how junk climate science actually is that despite mountains of propaganda and funding that the majority of the population just doesn’t give a shit about it and even most of the believers don’t prioritize it when it comes time to vote.
Just So stories satisfy.
I reckon I’m First agreeing with you on this. Especially on the ‘appeal to authority.’
‘Science’ has become ‘Religion’ in the West, or has and is rapidly replacing it. The same ‘morals’ are involved, with the necessary clergy helming the ship. PrinciPLES v PrinciPALS, writ large. The religious realm has been replaced by the political, and the devotees have just as much fervor as their predecessors. It’s equally infuriating and tedious to watch their petulant squabbles.
It’s only religion to people who gave up religion.
What we traditionally learned as the scientific method is an articulation of that mental machinery that churns out models of how the world works.
Disagree. General cognition is not science. Science is a disciplined approach that is not ‘natural’ to man’s thinking; it certainly depends on perception and cognition, but is far more refined/formalized than the raw material. If anything, our pattern-seeking is one of the surest ways to go sideways in science.
Not quite – but keep an open mind about how close induction is to science. I promise this will get fleshed out in detail as this series moves along.
See, I would argue that Einstein wasn’t really a scientist even though he had some of the most amazing scientific insights – he just didn’t arrive at them via the traditional means/tools (and his beef with Bohr I believe bears me out). He didn’t even validate them – that would be the work of others.
If you’re not familiar with William Briggs, you might want to be – he’s good.
Seconded.
I am fortunate enough to call the good professor a friend. We’ve broken bread together on a number of occasions and you will see his magnum opus “Uncertainty” mentioned in later chapters, as well as his more recent book “Everything You Believe is Wrong.”
For whatever it’s worth, he reviewed the outline I’m working off of for this whole series of articles.
It’s about time we have some peer review around here. 😉
Boyd’s OODA loop is applied scientific method.
I would agree with that.
This is because consensus is not a part of the scientific method and its adoption into #science has a direct correlation to the cheapening of real science.
At the risk of being Second to the Bro (but in reality, who isn’t Second the First amongst Firsters, or whatever he calls himself), I will quarrel just a touch with this, though, semantically, with the addition of “scientific method”, you are correct.
Consensus is not part of the scientific method and does not update your observations with respect to an hypothesis in any way to make it more or less plausible. However, I think that’s the wrong direction of causation when it comes to consensus. Consensus should be downstream of repeated updates to the assumptions made in evaluating and testing a given hypothesis. Modulo your point 8 in the scientific method, consensus comes with repeated refinement of the observations and, possibly, the theoretical basis of ‘method of action’ in support of a given hypothesis. Strong hypotheses become theory become ‘law’ (of the scientific variety) when “some” – often undefined – threshold of evidence and accurate prediction is reached. That leads to consensus amongst scientists and can be shorthand for representing the long, detailed slog of refinement, provided the scientists in question are honest brokers. Of course that later supposition can often be very wrong, especially if interested parties are buttering all the scientists bread so to speak. So consensus as part of the scientific method? Absolutely not. As a downstream effect of repeated, rigorous hypothesis testing? Absolutely yes.
Of course, the way consensus is used in the media and by the credentialed ‘elite’ today reverses causation. There is a consensus, therefore the hypothesis or theory is, at least locally, true. That reversal, whether intentional or not, short circuits what should be a plausible operating standard – for a robust scientific community of honest brokers, or at least intelligent people operating in an environment that rewards independent thought rather than conformity, we should be able to trust that consensus is downstream of rigorous scientific inquiry. It’s not practical for everyone to independently evaluate every hypothesis and the chain of observables.
In other words, the reversal of causation with ‘consensus’ has been in many cases intentionally (even if only for short term personal gain) employed to short circuit the rigorous standard necessary for scientific inquiry, and impose the will of the short-circuiter, or his benefactors, on everyone else. But properly monitored constrained and understood, it can be a useful short-hand for foregoing the rigor needed to establish hypotheses and theories as, more likely than not, true. NOT a foregoing of that process by scientist – they need to follow the scientific method and never let “but all the kids with the cool lab coats are doing it” be a piece of evidence/observation. But for the bulk of humanity a short hand to allow them to trust, to one degree or another, scientific results.
Whether that later is feasible is debatable. That’s true of all human endeavors though, eternal vigilance and all that jazz.
I strongly approve and agree with all of this.
The tricky bit humans can’t get ’round to sorting: Humans are humans. They will continue to be such, for all its faults (and promise). People have the hubris to believe that we’re special, when we’re ‘just’ the social primates we are. Nature don’t play. And we’re part of it. Hence humans trying to play every system they encounter. It’s natural.
The trick is finding how to account for the inherent trickiness inside every one of us. When actors interact, the trickiness mutliplies. Get a group together and the multiplied trickiness is amplified in absurd proportion.
‘Tis tricky. The near-universal belief that humans are somehow ‘special’ is part of the permeating hubris within our species. Me no likey. Along with Money and Power, it’s the root people ‘believing’ they can ‘solve’ things for other humans.
It’s like that old (IMO good) opinion that ‘the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.’ It’s rare for people to know themselves through consistent principles, yet we find ourselves surrounded by those with the gall to imagine they know what’s best for the nation, species and planet, all at once. Immediately. (And with your money. Fuckers.)
Engineering increasingly relies on science, but that has only been the case in the past few centuries. It started, and still is mostly, a process of solving problems using rules of thumb based on incomplete information. This guy explains it well in the context of ancient and medieval architecture:
Building a Cathedral without Science or Mathematics: The Engineering Method Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivqWN4L3zU
Science as we know it is only about 500 years old, and every major advance came from *disproving* the consensus: earth is the center of the universe, everything is made up of only four elements, imbalance of bodily humors causes disease, etc.
put another way: think about all the medicines, materials, and machines people made before anyone had a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, etc.
All the plants and animals that came from selective breeding was based on farmers just using a combo of observation, trial and error, and common sense.
Thanks, Ozy. I’m enjoying this series.
Ths, sb. As it moves along I think it will (hopefully) give people some more to chew on. And I will be taking some shots at some sacred cows, as well.
We will discuss exactly what role “common sense” plays in both science and the law in the coming chapters.
I believe it was E.T. Jaynes in “Probability Theory: The Logic of Science” who said something to the effect that “When Laplace said that probability was the calculus of common sense, we didn’t understand that he meant that literally.” What is meant by that will hopefully be clear by the end.
Shit. That’s a misthread – meant as a reply to Derpy above.
🤔
After Nintendo announced that the Switch 2 would only support SD Express cards, they sold out on Amazon.
Either the gamers are getting ready, or the scalpers are betting that the whining of prices won’t stop the gamers from buying anyway.
Glibs, I just found on my shelf a legal copy of Windows Vista (Home Premium) that I have apparently owned for decades. Should I inflict that upon the poor Pentium 4?
Why would anyone inflict windows vista on anything?
Because I have two valid license keys for it.
Cunty Aunt Susie found a computer while she was packing up (oh, I just quiver in glee at typing that). It’s a Gateway. Mom’s friend who has reason to interact with Susie and Millie on the regular (but who is Team Phyllis all the way) sent her a picture asking if it was hers. Mom’s like, “No, it’s a Gateway and I’ve never had a Gateway.” Well, neither Susie nor Millie have ever had a computer at all. I said, “Gateway’s the one with the cow box.” Mom said, “I know, and I know I never had one. She said it was in the shred bin, but it must have been from the previous owners, so I told them to trash it.” I will admit I want to know what’s on a computer that has lived in a heretofore unnoticed shred bin for the last 13 years.
Anyway.
The interesting part of all that is: My mom is 81 and was on the verge of death 3 months ago, and she knows what a Gateway computer is, their branding, and about how long ago that stopped being a thing.
Meanwhile, her stupid sister can’t figure out how to call the gas company and ask how to pay a bill BY CHECK when she doesn’t have the bill. This is AFTER she made a stink about me paying their bills. (Susie: “Make Elizabeth send me the paper bills she gets and I’ll pay them by check.” Me: “Fuck you. I’m protecting my mother’s credit.”) Meanwhile, my mom gets a cut-off notice to MY ADDRESS, sighs, and goes online and pays it.
Millie’s just sitting back wringing her hands and rocking back and forth.
I do not know how these three women came out of the same hoo-ha.
I have known several families where full-blooded siblings raised together have come out as extraordinarily different types of people
My brother and I are incredibly different people.
I’m talking about comparable intelligence, though.
As a scientist I say this is an awesome article.
https://archive.is/o1sk0/0ce4fe5a5eb31da37b42fa579d8ec5d7a1f16e66.jpg
Titty Tuesday After Dark.
NSFW.
https://archive.is/G98VG/442bec51f66dc9cc4ba62ae99c5ba8af92899b79.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/Pvq1e/e2f81cc6bf419f3f310ddb1cc1ee0bca743e3886.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/IWJSI/6517b6a37506ddac0b56147c4e232c8063ff65bd.png
NSFW.
https://archive.is/eP2me/61f8d385a48e3bf1e37c784004132098eb2be258.jpg
NSFW.
At first, I wondered if Number 4 was a corset wearer. Then I realized it was more likely just photoshop.
I am so ready to do a scientific experiment.
95% certain I’ve seen #4 before and they’re spectacular – either touched by the hand of God or her surgeon was.
I’m willing to touch them. I’m a helper.
#2 hits me with her perfect face and everything.
#3 is nefarious, and needs to eat more, but damn, for that moment, I’ll eat out for several.
Meh to all, pretty ladies, no boobs
I firmly support your inclusion of smaller, more lithe females.
‘Tis noted and appreciated. My spank bank needs caulk. (So does she. (Never mind, now. I’ll seal her with spunk.))
Juicy!
Yeah, it seems that the people who had the clout and finances to stop the establishment of the Federal Reserve all died on the Titanic.
I don’t have X, so I can’t see the rest of the thread.
Has this made the rounds yet?
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/federal-judge-blocks-highly-unusual-chaotic-anti-trans-military-ban/
***
In her 79-page ruling, Reyes — who is an out lesbian and was appointed by former President Joe Biden — wrote that, throughout history, “leaders have used concern for military readiness to deny marginalized persons the privilege of serving.” In the past, these persons have included Black people, women, and gays, lesbians, and bisexuals — and now trans people, she wrote.
***
One of these things is not like the others…
from wiki
***
Reyes is known to bring her pet Golden Retriever, Scout, to work.
***
[head desk]
The Nazgul have made very clear in multiple rulings that the military can discriminate for any reason it believes will improve the readiness to fight and win wars. Flat feet, color blindness, not having an approved child care plan? Check, check and check. The Nazgul even ruled the military can discriminate against men and draft only them because the purpose of the draft is to create combat soldiers. They flat out said, “Yup this is discrimination, and they can do it for this reason.” This ruling should be quickly tossed. If not, then the military will be required not to discriminate at all for any reason because somebody can find at least one example of a discriminated against class that did well in the military.
If a draft ever is imposed again, no senior leader that I have ever interacted with in the last decade plus doubts for a second a judicial ruling will impose a restraining order because the draft does not include women. The Nazgul will need to rule again to see what shakes out. The Obama administration put the current ruling under a cloud because they admitted women to all military jobs. Even OMB 2.0 didn’t see fit to cancel the Obama policy, they are trying to finesse it with trying to change to higher physical fitness standards.
Keyword: privilege, not a right and if they impede effectiveness they can get bent. The idea of these people who often need lifelong hormone and/or ongoing physical treatments being in an important military position and people having to put their lives in their hands is so incredibly stupid it just boggles the mind.
Belated comment due to internet difficulties:
I am enjoying this series, and the explanations within the essays. One of the reasons for joining the site, to read expositions by intellects far superior to myself who at the same time are able to explain things with a minimum of jargon.
Your accurate description of the illness that is afflicting scientific inquiry is a huge problem for not just the country but the world. Look at how many billions have been pissed away trying to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer’s rather than trying to pin down the cause. I am attaching a link to a long screed by someone with a similar outlook to yours. It’s a long read but I thought it well worth it.
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/dieing-academic-research-budgets
I see a pile of bodies out in the streets. Damn tariffs.
💀🙇🏻🦨
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17gwTConxB0
🎶🎶
The Word Press block editor sucks.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Good morning, homey, Ted’S., Sean, and Stinky!
“German News Editor Convicted For Satirical Photo Montage Of Far-Left Interior Minister, Given 7-Month Probation”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/german-news-editor-convicted-satirical-photo-montage-far-left-interior-minister-given
Of course they look the other way for parody of the right wing pols
(as they should). The entire European political class should be horsewhipped onto a garbage scow and shipped to French Guiana where they could spend the rest of their days clearing out the jungle. Just a repulsive group of complete shitheads.
Europe is no longer Western. It’s pretty much down to the US. And only half of you.
Maybe it’s just the world going back to the authoritarian status quo. Other than the US and to a lesser extent France and Britain and the British Empire’s constituent parts democracy is a novel experiment that was introduced post WWII (and Rome and Greece of course but that was a long time ago). For the vast majority of recorded history an inbred, entitled, and largely incompetent iron-fisted ruling class was the norm and the people having a say is definitely a Western concept.
All the folk that would have resisted moved to the US a hundred years ago.
It’s a balmy 22 degrees up here.
Luckily I’m not on the stack so much this week.
Pie says 22 is warm.
A coating of snow on the ground this morning, which surprises me. I thought the ground wouldn’t have had a chance to cool off enough yet.