MyFuckwit needs to get off the crack (again)

Look, I don’t know if Mike Lindell is actually still a crackhead or not, but if he’s not he’s either using something else or he’s experiencing kind of amazing damage from the years when he did… Whatever the case, there’s a lot wrong with the guy, as his ongoing fellating of Donald Trump demonstrates, and the latter has come back to bite him in the arse. Mike has been particularly active in the whole “wah, the 2020 election was stolen from Glorious Leader” movement, to the extent of offering a $5m challenge to anyone who could disprove the data he offered to show Lord Dampnut was the real victor in 2020. And, well, someone did:

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to shell out $5 million to an expert who debunked his data related to the 2020 election, according to a decision by the arbitration panel obtained by CNN.
Lindell, a purveyor of election conspiracies, vowed to award the multimillion-dollar sum to any cyber security expert who could disprove his data. An arbitration panel awarded Robert Zeidman, who has decades in software development experience, a $5 million payout on Wednesday after he sued Lindell over the sum.
CNN has obtained arbitration documents and video depositions, including a deposition of Lindell, related to the dispute.
“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract,” the arbitration panel wrote in its decision. “He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”

So Lindell refused to pay up, Zeidman sued him and won again, and now Lindell’s threatening another court case so he doesn’t have to pay up… the likelihood of Zeidman actually getting that money anyway is minimal, though, given that Lindell may not actually have $5m at hand; according to himself, he’s taken out twice as much as that in loans to stay afloat while battling various other lawsuits he’s facing over his election bullshit. Still, it’s a delightful spectacle… made even funnier by the fact that Robert Zeidman is a Trump voter. That detail just elevates the entire thing…

Fyre! (I’ll take you to court)

Yeah, the guy behind Fyre Festival who isn’t Ja Rule is now promoting a sequel to his first event. You know, one of the most infamous debacles of its kind in history, for which he spent four years in jail and he still owes $26m, and the government of the Bahamas still considers him a fugitive from their justice system; during his trial he refused to pay his legal team and continued to commit fraud by selling tickets to events that didn’t exist or didn’t sell public tickets.

The question isn’t why you should be invited to part 2, the question is why should anyone believe McFarland is actually going to do part 2 at all, let alone get it right. He himself says “well duh, I’ve got to pay back that $26m somehow” and fair enough, he does, but… I’m assuming that setting up a festival of this sort would actually require several million dollars, so is he implying he already has that, or at least has access to it? Cos if he does, wouldn’t he be better using that to pay off his debt directly? It’d be a gesture of goodwill, and probably better than sinking it into an event that probably won’t actually make that money and leave him further in the hole, because people know of his history as a con artist (there are in fact two documentaries on Fyre Festival) and what happened first time round and only complete idiots and people who somehow missed the original shitshow would trust him with their money now. Surely. I’m all for redemption arcs, but not everyone gets one or deserves one, and I’m not sure Billy Z. does. In any case, if it does happen somehow, I hope the people at the festival take their own lunch with them…

Terror Thomas

The downside (OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh; Amy’s pretty great really) of having a friend who’s very left-wing but otherwise a good Catholic is that, when she bites back at some idiot on Twitter, I am thereby exposed to that idiot when I otherwise might not have been. There’s so many idiots I already can’t avoid cos everyone talks about them (hi Elon), but my friends all have their own specialty idiots on top of those. And oy but this one was a particular goon…

I don’t know much or indeed anything about Thomas Merton other than him being a prominent Catholic of decades past, and as an avowed non-Catholic (or indeed religionist of any sort) I consider his “heresy” meaningless. That said, I understand where Michelle’s coming from; after all, any time I see a major religious figure realising that people are good, even the ones from other religions, and that social justice is actually a better thing than social injustice, the first thing I want to do is puke vehemently over their grave. Common fucking decency towards other people, even the ones who aren’t like you, what an appalling thing…

Simpsons already did it

Florida Principal Ousted After Parents Melt Down Over Michelangelo’s ‘Pornographic’ Statue of David

I was kind of amused by the way a certain long-running TV cartoon show was described as predicting the Trump presidency, but then THIS happened:

A Florida charter school principal has been ousted after multiple parents complained that their sixth graders were made to view pornography—because they looked at Michelangelo’s iconic statue of David.
The statue was shown during a sixth grade art history lesson at Tallahassee Classical School, the Tallahassee Democrat first reported. One of the most famous pieces of artwork in the world, the statue shows a chiseled, naked man posing. But while most of the world sees it as art, some parents deemed it “pornographic” and said it “upset” their children.
Parents at Tallahassee Classical now want to take an advanced vote on any lesson their kids could be subjected to that’s deemed “controversial,” part of a growing nationwide trend to dictate education supported by Florida’s own education board and the DeSantis administration.

The Simpsons in 1990, way before they predicted Lord Dampnut

Of course, this is the only funny thing about this story; apparently the school usually sends letters to ~~idiots~~ parents when they’re teaching art history that may involve practical but evil parts of the body, but somehow that didn’t happen this and little Johnny got exposed to Dave’s Johnny, and now this poor woman is out of a job and Ron deScumbag’s creeping Florida fascism continues to be on the march thanks to a clerical error. And given how much art does involve naughty bits, I wouldn’t be surprised if these concerned parents decide to just remove all of it from the curriculum just in case…

Effort doesn’t require effort?

Well said that vandal. “Things that don’t require effort” includes “effort”. How the Orwellian fuck does THAT nonsense work?

Well there’s a shock

An Ivermectin Influencer Died. Now His Followers Are Worried About Their Own ‘Severe’ Symptoms.

Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”
Hours later, Lemoi was dead.

Oy. Mind you, this dickhead wasn’t your ordinary Covidiot, by the look of it; he’d apparently been taking the veterinary-grade stuff for years before Covid-19 was even a thing… and though we know ivermectin does have applications for people (Lemoi took it for Lyme disease, which is something it is apparently quite good at dealing with), the version meant for animals is something else:

And according to the Missouri Poison Center, ingesting large doses of ivermectin formulated for animals has a long list of side effects, including seizures, coma, lung issues, and heart problems. Veterinary ivermectin is not a cure or effective treatment for COVID, the FDA has repeatedly warned, and is highly concentrated because it is designed for large animals like horses and cows. “Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans,” the FDA cautions.
“Danny was fully convinced that his heart had regenerated after his incident with Lyme disease that almost ended in congestive heart failure,” the admins wrote, before claiming that “a family history of heart disease and chronic stress” were why his heart had ultimately become engorged. “All of his other organs were unremarkable,” the admins wrote. “And this was determined to be a death by unfortunate natural causes.”

It appears that what got Lemoi in the end was his heart, which was apparently found to be massively oversized, which is one of the side effects from taking animal-grade ivermectin, and now it looks like his fanbase are getting worried about the same thing happening to themselves. But that might not be their only problem:

In the days since Rhode Island-based ivermectin influencer Danny Lemoi died, his 140,000 Telegram followers have continued to promote his dangerous medical advice—including the use of apricot pits to treat cancer, despite official warnings that this “natural remedy” can be fatally poisonous.
“If you’ve been told you have cancer there’s enough proof right here to give you hope,” Lemoi wrote in February under a picture of apricot seeds. “You too could be added to the list of cured people who took back their medical freedom.” In Lemoi’s Telegram channel “Dirt Road Discussions,” Lemoi, who was a large machine operator, recommended that his followers take doses of up to 30 kernels a day.
Apricot pits contain a chemical called amygdalin, which is sometimes referred to as B17, and for years has been touted by conspiracy theorists as an alternative cure for cancer. But when ingested, the chemicals in apricot pits cause cyanide poisoning, which can cause dangerously low blood pressure, liver damage, coma, and death.
“Claims that amygdalin can treat cancer are not backed up by research,” Cancer Research UK states on its website, adding: “It contains cyanide, a poison and can cause serious side effects.”
“Eating more than three small raw apricot kernels, or less than half of one large kernel, in a serving can exceed safe levels,” the European Food Safety Authority wrote in 2016. “Toddlers consuming even one small apricot kernel risk being over the safe level.”

Yeah, pardon me if I don’t shed any tears for shitheads like Danny Lemoi. How much damage has he done to these people that followed him…

Hercules: the legendary burn

OOF. Father Nathan Monk is one of the more intriguing people of Facebook that I follow, a very much lapsed Orthodox monk. I enjoy most of his content but DAMN this was a particular bitchslap and a half. Sorbo is an odious shit and frequent target of the God Awful Movies podcast, because his career is stuck in the toilet of Chrisian cinema so a whole bunch of his movies have ended up on their list; and he’s bitter cos he thinks Christianity-hating leftists have blacklisted him in Hollywood, which kind of overlooks the fact that his film career (as opposed to his TV career where he had two big hit series that kept him going for a decade) was a bit of a non-starter long before he made his super-conservative religiosity his whole personality… maybe if he spent less time being a Twitter political commentator and more time maybe writing a script that a real movie studio would want to produce, he might actually get out of the ghetto?

What a cock-up

So Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan’s daughter, posted this tweet (which was posted in the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm FB group):

Now she knows how the rest of us feel about the things her old man says

(Parenthetically… Fuller? Is that her married name? Interesting if so that she sticks to Peterson as her grift… er, professional name, that must be where the money is…)

Regrettably, when I went to see first-hand what had so hurt Mikhaila’s eyees, daddy had already deleted the offending post. Fortunately (for me, not him) this is the age of the screenshot, and few things are truly lost to the Internet, hence it only took a few seconds to find what the issue was:

WHAT?

WHAT?

WHAT

THE

FUCK?

So… somehow, Jordan “that’s a lot of goats” Peterson saw this BDSM fetish video and, also somehow, decided it must be footage of a Chinese government scheme to separate men from their semen. And then posted it to his Twitter. No wonder Mikhaila was aghast. Plus, as others noted, Peterson’s Twitter following is not only massive (nearly 4m followers—including, alarmingly, a few of my own Twitter mutuals, who I hope are following him ironically but I fear at least one might not be) but, as others have noted. probably also contains a fair proportion of, you know, non-adult people. Teenagers not yet over the age 18. Kids. Being exposed to extreme fetish porn by a complete fucking idiot. I mean, I’m sure most of his actual adult followers really didn’t want to see that either, but the non-adults really didn’t need to see it…

I genuinely don’t know what to make of this. I’ve been loathe to cast doubt on his mental health until now cos I think that sort of thing is too easy to do; I understand where Jake from Bible Reloaded was coming from when he suggested (in as nice a way as possible; I forget exactly which video he first suggested that in, but you really should watch the entire series anyway) that Mr 28% Goats might be somewhere on the autism spectrum, and to be honest that wouldn’t entirely surprise me if he were. But equally he could just be a fucking dreadful human being; I know quite a few people on said spectrum and, oddly enough, being whatever kind of autistic they are hasn’t made any of them completely shitty.

I don’t like medicalising people are who just awful, because when they do/say awful things they should be held accountable, and ascribing some medical condition risks that not happening. This is why I never liked casting aspersions of that sort on Donald Trump when others were diagnosing him with things like the early stages of dementia or something; Trump was and is a monstrous failure of a human being and has never been anything else. Similarly, I’m unhappy about attributing Peterson’s issues to his well-documented drug problems, and I should probably clarify that I don’t judge him at all for having those problems (as someone who was awfully close to alcoholism at one point, more so than I like to think/admit, I can’t really look down on him there). I do judge him for clearly having learned nothing from the experience, but that’s another matter. At any rate, I’ve been doubtful about the extent to which it might’ve affected his mental health, cos he’s such a basically unpleasant person now but then he always has been…

…Up to now, anyway. This whole episode makes so little sense, even I’m starting to question whether Peterson’s mental health actually is heading south in the way some of his critics think. It’s not even that he mistook this porn video for some sort of weird Chinese plot, cos that’s just funny in a faintly tragic sort of way; it’s that he thought it was appropriate to then post it to his Twitter account—which, as I said, probably has a certain number of followers below the legal age to actually view it. I really don’t understand what he was thinking. This goes somewhat beyond him being the sort of buffoon arguing with (while being ignored by) the Pope on Twitter, sniping at trans people and calling an Asian model unattractive. That’s just him being a cunt, this is… something else and I’m not sure what. Remember that time he “quit” Twitter because it was making his life worse? It’s still not doing him any favours…

Yes, Jordan, I suppose it is

So Jordan B. Peterson has been having a somewhat baffling argument with the Pope of all people on Twitter about the true nature of Christianity, which is… something. The whole thing began with this tweet from old Frank:

Jurr Durr, of course, is so allergic to the very concept of social justice that he sharply corrected the Pope on that point:

…and if you want to see some of the responses to that, George Takei has a bunch.

Of course, if you’ve read 12 Rules for Blah-de-Fucking-Blah at all, then you’ll know that compassion is very far from being Jordan’s strong suit, and I think that’s true on a broad societal level as well as the personal level. If nothing else, Frank’s tweet expresses a noble sentiment (how well the Church has lived up to it is a matter for another time, perhaps); the fact that Jordibles finds the idea so unacceptable says much about him.

The weird thing is that he’s refusing to let the matter go, too; he’s had a few posts up now taking digs at Frank, including with this poll:

Even the poor should set their houses in perfect order first, I suppose. The poll, incidentally, led to the somewhat bizarre pair of tweets I began with; Jordan helpfully clarified that the “goats” thing was a reference to something about sheep and goats in Matthew chapter 25, which I suppose demonstrates that he remembers more about Matthew than me (the percentage of goats grew to 31 in the end, evidently). But I just found those two tweets so silly on the face of it that I couldn’t resist taking them out of context (and goats are a change from lobsters)…

Oh, and the Pope hasn’t replied to any of Jordan’s nonsense. I mean, he never replies to anyone on Twitter, but him not replying to Jordan is somehow funnier than usual. At what point do you suppose he’ll finally realise Frank’s not playing and the whole argument has been completely one-sided?

The Special Editions will be with you. Always.

What the fuck is Jon Favreau talking about?

The Mandalorian creator and longtime Star Wars fan Jon Favreau believes that fans of the iconic space opera franchise would likely not be interested in a re-release of the original film trilogy’s theatrical cut.
When asked in a Moovy TV interview about the potential for the first three Star Wars movies to have their original theatrical cuts released in the present day, Favreau expressed doubt that there would be enough demand. “Do you think anybody but us, like, the people who grew up with it … would care? Because … what I figured out [is] that the younger people have a whole different perception of what Star Wars is.”

Oh FUCK the “younger people”. It’s the old farts like me for whom Star Wars is the original trilogy in its original form who want this. We absolutely WOULD care BECAUSE we fucking grew up with it. We want the films as we knew them first time round, not as George Lucas tooled about with them in the 90s. Fuck, I’m not even really a Star Wars fan any more, I grew up on that original trilogy but by the time it kicked off again in the 90s I’d mostly lost interest (and the prequel trilogy hardly re-inspired me when I did see it); all I’ve otherwise seen of new Star Wars is bits of The Clone Wars, and that was only because it happened to be on TV while I was in hospital in 2009 for you-know-what, I didn’t go out of my way to watch it or anything. Anyway, you can fuck off with that nonsense, “longtime Star Wars fan”; get the original theatrical cuts of the original trilogy onto high-definition discs and watch them fly off the shelves, even into my hands, even into the hands of “the younger people”…