Friday, September 26, 2025

The story of Lance Twiggs

So this is just a rant about what I feel I am seeing happen in Utah right now. As you well know, so long as you haven't been living under a rock, on September 10th, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a public event in Utah, just as he happened to be talking with someone about transgender mass shooters. Kirk, being a darling of the far-right, was assumed by many to have been shot by a far-left activist. Many on the right essentially called for a war against the left in America.

Then, the shooter was caught, and it was, in fact, a white conservative Christian male, as so many shooters are. Etchings on the bullet casings seemed to point to the shooter being a member of the Groyper movement, essentially neo-Nazi trolls. This was, of course, a bit of a letdown for Kirk's fans, who were really itching for a fight with the left.

So then, the whole story makes a swing way out into left field. The shooter lived in an apartment with other men his age. One of them was named Lance Twiggs, and when he was interviewed, he was dressed in an animal onesie.

 


This is where the official story goes from there: the FBI claims to have gotten hold of texts between the shooter and Twiggs. These texts revealed that Twiggs was in fact the shooter's transgender girlfriend, and the real reason for Kirk's assassination was retribution for his transphobia.

There have been a lot of articles in the news about the relationship with Twiggs, and what sort of a person Twiggs was. In none of these articles does anyone who knew him refer to Twiggs as transgender, or use feminine pronouns for him. Many people have commented on how the texts don't sound like they were written by someone the shooter's age. Personally, I keep questioning what transgender woman (as the vast majority of transgender people rename themselves after coming out) names herself "Lance".

I actually have friends who are believing the official story, but to me, it sounds like completely fabricated bullshit to place the blame for the death of Kirk on transgender people. What do others think?

Monday, September 08, 2025

Does life begin at conception?

Okay, let's break this down. The most common thing I hear about a fertilized egg being a "person" and how life "begins at conception" is this argument that "it's a living thing in a woman's body that has different DNA". There's a big problem with this.

That's also an apt description of a cancerous tumor, or a parasite. If this is really what you have as your argument, then you are effectively arguing that we shouldn't treat cancer and we shouldn't try to remove a parasite. Is that what you want?

"But the 'unborn baby' has human DNA!" you respond. Yes, this fertilized egg has human DNA, but do you really want to call anything with human DNA a "person" and claim that killing it is "murder"? Biologists and doctors estimate that fully half of all fertilized eggs fail to survive nine months for purely natural reasons, most of them from simply failing to implant. That means that every time you have unprotected sex and the woman is fertile, there's a 50% chance that you are committing murder. All that "trying to have a baby" stuff? You're a serial killer.

Oh, it gets worse. So much worse. You know what else is alive in a woman's body that has different human DNA? Egg cells. They're alive, and each one is a potential baby. If you're a woman who has a menstrual cycle, once a month your body releases one (at least, could be more; I have fraternal twins) egg cell, which has about 24 hours to live and get fertilized. Every time you ovulate and you don't get pregnant, you've committed murder, at least according to your logic. It was alive, with its own human DNA, and you murdered that "unborn baby".

But of course, it's so much worse for men, because, according to the internet, "A healthy adult male can release between 40 million and 1.2 billion sperm cells in a single ejaculation." Each one is a living thing with its own unique human DNA, and how many will actually end up fertilizing an egg? This isn't murder, it's fucking genocide. Hundreds of millions of "unborn babies" with every single ejaculation.

Is this ridiculous? Yes it is.

Now those of us who are a little more sane about these things say that saying a fertilized egg is a person is like saying throwing a couple eggs with flour and sugar in a bowl is a cake. A cake and a person are both things that start with certain ingredients, but take time and a process in order to be complete. A bag of flour is not a cake. Flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl is not a cake. Flour, sugar, and eggs mixed together in a cake pan and set in a cold oven is not a cake. That cake pan ten minutes later in a warm oven is still not a cake. It's not a cake until it has spent the full time at the full temperature in the oven and has been taken out. Then, and only then, is it a cake.

So it is with a baby.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

It's artificial, but it's not intelligence

So my phone's battery was dying, and as sometimes occurs to me in such situations, I thought maybe I should turn it off to save the last bit of the battery in case I needed it for an emergency. I pulled out my phone and pressed down on the power button, which had always in the past been the way to shut down the phone, but a recent software update had apparently changed that. I was greeted by a message that I had activated the "AI assistant" for my phone now, and what would I like to ask it? There was no option to shut off the assistant, or to shut off the phone, and I struggled in vain to pull up the phone's settings and find the setting that would reprogram the button to do what it used to. The phone died.

This was more than simply a minor frustration. I don't want an AI assistant on my phone. I just want to use my phone the same as I always have. I'm tired of the way AI chatbots have become so pervasive in our society, and I want it to stop.

Earlier this year, I applied for a job. To my dismay, I found that the job application process was gatekept by an AI chatbot. It asked me if I would prefer an interview on Tuesday at 11:00 or 2:30. I responded that neither was convenient for me. The bot said, "Okay, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with." It couldn't help me with scheduling an interview at a different time. It couldn't connect me with a human. It couldn't seem to actually help me in any way, and it was my only contact at the company I had applied to. I never got an interview.

I don't want an AI assistant on my phone, but I also don't want one on my search results. I don't want AI to sum up what's happening on my social media, or to help me write a post. I don't want AI to help me navigate your website or to rewrite my resume. I certainly don't want AI to manage my health insurance coverage or the operations of my government.

One of the biggest problems with AI is that the I is supposed to stand for "Intelligence", which seems to be completely lacking in the AI chatbots that tech companies are presenting us with. They seem to be rather accomplished at sounding fairly human, but not so accomplished at actually thinking about what they have to say. They'll say whatever sounds like the right thing to say based on sentences that they have read, rather than what might be actual fact. And that seems to be the state of the science as it now stands.

This is problematic on many different levels, one of which is the amount of misinformation that is out there in the world that no doubt was a big part of the data that was fed into these language models. The other part is that people seem to be very ready to trust AI to feed them "facts", completely oblivious to the fact that that's not what they are programmed to do. I had an argument with a woman on social media on an important topic, and on her side of the conversation, there was a lot of, "ChatGPT says..." I couldn't seem to explain to her that ChatGPT was not actually a source for factual information, and she just kept going back to ChatGPT for her source. I know this will not be the last time I have such a conversation.

The other problem with this technology, for those not in the know, is the fact that it requires a massive amount of energy to operate. Behind these bots are data centers that are using up a great deal of power, and also using literal tons of water to cool their processors. All of this just to supply users with more sophisticated sounding misinformation.

I don't want to be part of it. More than that, I want to make it go away, because I feel like it's hurting our society. It's not artificial intelligence, it's artificial stupidity, and it seems like people who use it stop using their brains. But like so much technology in the past, it's out there, and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Saturday, July 05, 2025

A Plea for Understanding

Senator Padilla (D), Senator Schiff (D), Representative Levin (D)

I’ve come to a point where I feel there is no use in pleading with you anymore. I have written countless letters and signed dozens of petitions asking you to stop, but you continue. My Representative and my Senators insist on voting for every new shipment of weapons to Israel, in violation of Leahy Laws, international law, and common decency.

The world has changed since the Holocaust. What the Nazis were able to do largely in secret would never be a secret in the 21st century. What is happening in Palestine is a genocide, livestreamed to the world. Not only do Palestinians record the atrocities committed against them, but Israeli soldiers themselves proudly video themselves committing them and post them on social media.

Virtually everyone knows now. There are very few people who are uninformed despite mainstream western media refusing to cover it for the most part. It’s genocide, and there are only those who oppose genocide, and those who support it. Apparently the U.S. government, along with the governments of a handful of other countries, are supporters. Democrats and Republicans alike know full well that war crimes are being committed by the IDF daily, and yet they send more weapons. No matter what the people say, the weapons will continue to flow into this genocide until every last Palestinian is dead.

So at this point, I feel the only recourse I have is to ask, “Why?” If you won’t end the genocide, can you at least tell me why it is necessary in your mind? Is it the case that since Jews were the victims of a genocide, they have free reign to commit genocide in turn? Is it that genocide doesn’t matter when the victims are brown skinned? Is it because Muslims are inherently evil in your mind (despite the fact that some Palestinians are Christians, and Israel doesn’t care)? Is it once again about money, as the Israelis want to build a canal right through Gaza, or so I have heard? What is it in your mind that makes genocide acceptable? Please, explain it to me.

It’s not about the hostages, as Hamas has on many occasions offered to release the hostages under very reasonable conditions. It’s not even really about Hamas, as Israel has consistently throughout the past 21 months targeted civilians, mainly killing women and children. No, it’s about putting an end to Palestinians once and for all, which is genocide. We all know it, including you. But you send more weapons still.

So tell me, what is it that you tell yourself this is all about? What allows you to see your bombs dropped on defenseless children, and you sleep at night? I myself have a hard time sleeping knowing that my taxes are paying for this. But you apparently have the answer. Please, let me know.

Monday, June 23, 2025

And Tango Makes Controversy

So, many years ago, I was rather proud to say that my blog was one of the leading sources for introspective posts on the subject of gay penguins. I wanted to talk about gay penguins again, because it seems to be a topic that never ceases to be a fount of subject material.


 



In particular, I wanted to talk about book banning and the children's book And Tango Makes Three. It's a delightful book based on the true story of New York Zoo penguins Roy and Silo who paired up for mating season; both were male penguins. The zookeepers, noting that obviously Roy and Silo could not produce an egg, found an egg that was not being tended to and gave it to the couple. The egg hatched into a baby girl penguin named Tango, and they were a penguin family with two dads. It's a cute true story about some penguins, who wouldn't love it?

Well, And Tango Makes Three was the #1 most challenged book for 2006 through 2010 (except for 2009, when it was merely #2), and continues to be a target for book banners in 2025, twenty years after its initial publishing. What's so offensive?

It's conservative Christians' belief that any media that touches on the subject of LGBTQIA+ individuals (even animals!) is immediately classified as pornographic. This is a very strange viewpoint which defies logic other than the logic of bigotry.

See, apparently if you talk about two men being in love with each other, it's inherently implying the existence of gay sex, and sex is porn. Never mind that the existence of heterosexual couples likewise implies the existence of sex (especially if the couple has children), but of course, straight sex is somehow less pornographic than gay sex. Oh, and transgender people are also somehow pornographic by their very existence, even though gender is separate from sex. (Imagine if Finding Nemo had given mention of the fact that clownfish are transsexual in nature; there goes your G rating, right?)

A part of this aversion to LGBTQIA+ subject material for children is this strange idea that exposing children to the idea of gay people (and penguins!) will make them turn gay, and exposure to transgender people will make them turn transgender. This is despite the fact that science continues to assert that sexual orientation and gender are determined before birth, and the fact that children who are exposed to exclusively cishet media still turn out LGBTQ. Listen people, you're not protecting children; you may in fact be hurting children who are enriched by the existence of diversity in the media they consume. And LGBTQIA+ children (who, sorry, not sorry, but they do exist) will love to have representation in the books and films they see.

Anyway, in the end, it's not really about protecting anyone from inappropriate material, unless of course you have a warped idea about what constitutes "inappropriate" based on bigoted ideas of of what's acceptable. There used to be (and still are) a lot of people who felt that media portrayal of mixed-race couples was inappropriate. We've mostly evolved as a society past that, and we need to evolve past stigmatizing LGBTQIA+ people. And penguins.

Sunday, June 08, 2025

Christian Buddhism

I've been considering the possibility of becoming a Buddhist without leaving Christianity. I know there are a lot of people who would view this as nonsense, or even blasphemy, but I've thought for some time that the idea has merit.

Back when I was in college, I took a philosophy course in which we examined eastern religions/philosophies (there's not really a clear delineation for most of them). I found them all very interesting, but I was particularly taken by Buddhism, and even way back then, I thought that so much of Buddhist thought was rather compatible with Christian thought within the practical realm, although obviously not the theological. Still where Buddhism in its original form was essentially atheistic, believing in the non-existence of higher beings, in that gap, one could place the God of Abraham and have a pretty solid system of morality that was quite compatible with Christianity.

At the center of Buddhism was the idea of following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I present here, cribbed from Wikipedia and edited for clarity and brevity:

  1. Right View: recognizing our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death.
  2. Right Resolve: striving toward non-violence and avoiding violent and hateful conduct.
  3. Right Speech: no lying, no abusive speech, no divisive speech, no idle chatter.
  4. Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual misconduct, no material desires.
  5. Right Livelihood: no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, or poisons.
  6. Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states.
  7. Right Mindfulness: a quality that guards or watches over the mind, the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power "to take over and dominate thought, word and deed."
  8. Right samadhi: practicing meditation, culminating into equanimity and mindfulness.
While certainly there are values here that Christianity doesn’t uphold, like the avoidance of meat, they are not incompatible. Of particular importance is that all of these things are values I nonetheless hold for myself (I am a vegetarian, for instance).

As always, the thing I strive for in a post is feedback and dialogue. In this case, I would particularly like to hear from both Christians and Buddhists as to what they might think. (I don't personally know any Buddhists, but I'd like to.)

Sunday, June 01, 2025

About the pain

I pretty much never talk about it, but I think I'm underestimating the effect my chronic pain is having on my life.

For the past six years I have had chronic pain, nothing seems to work against it, and as time goes by, it seems to get worse and worse. I don't talk about it for two reasons. Firstly, I hate to complain about personal problems, and it's almost impossible to talk about it without sounding like I'm complaining. Secondly, the world is so screwed up right now that despite the intensity that the pain often reaches, it's not in the top five of the list of things that I'm worried about right now.

The reason I'm bringing it up now is because I am considering the possibility that the pain is having an effect on dealing with those things that are more important. When you feel like your head is simultaneously in a vise and on fire, it's difficult to find mental clarity to deal with life in general. The problem is that I don't know if putting more focus on the pain is going to lead to a solution. I've already talked to several doctors about it, including a neurologist who has tried about a dozen treatments to zero effect.

The nature of the pain is odd, partially because it's not all pain. Sometimes I describe whatever the condition is as "A smorgasbord of unpleasant tactile hallucinations." Usually the only thing that makes it go away is falling asleep, which is difficult to do when I'm in pain, but I almost always wake up symptom-free. Then once I'm awake, the symptoms eventually creep back up on me.

I used to call it "long COVID" and who knows? Maybe it is. It pretty much started when I got COVID, and at first it was mainly COVID-like symptoms, but over the years, the symptom list has gotten longer and stranger:

Headache, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, sore teeth, sore lips, sensation of teething, sensation of plugged sinuses, sensation of plugged nostrils, sensation of having been punched in the nose, sensation of hair being pulled out, sensation of difficulty breathing, sensation of tongue being pulled out, burning eyes, burning skin on my face, sensitivity to spiciness, tasting things that aren't there, feeling hunger when my stomach is full, sensitivity to water on my skin, burning in the soles of my feet, feeling like there's a piece of string wrapped around one of my ears, feeling like my teeth are razor sharp and cutting up the inside of my mouth, back and neck pain, sugar burning my mouth, salt burning my mouth, hair burning the side of my face,
All of these symptoms come and go at random, although once again usually later in the day. I feel fine in the morning, and a few times I have managed to make them go away with a nap in the afternoon. On a handful of occasions, they have gone away on their own, at least two of those times exactly at midnight (and one time I wasn't looking at a clock). It usually seems to be stress related.

Anyway, once again, I'm starting to seriously consider that this condition is standing in the way of more than just enjoyment of life. Maybe it's standing in the way of being functional in general. But I don’t know how to fix it. So what do I do, then?