mahiwaga

I have always been skeptical that the Tea Party was ever really primarily a grassroots movement. Much like Trump, it always looked like an astroturfing corporate-funded money-making scheme meant to capitalize on populist anger (which manifests mainly as virulent anti-government sentiment, xenophobia, and misogyny).

But Trump is far more popular and recognizable than the Kochs, so it was inevitable that they’d get kicked to the curb.

How We Killed the Tea Party • 2016 Aug 14 • Paul H. Jossey • Politico

It’s basically proof that—much like Communism—all practical implementations of Libertarianism devolve into crony capitalism and kleptocracy.

Twice now, Donald Trump and his campaign staff have accused Obama of using a time machine. Once to kill Capt. Humayun Khan in Iraq in 2004, and once to found ISIS in 1999. (To be fair, it was called Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad then, morphing into Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004, then finally becoming the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2013.)

What if Obama really has a time machine?¹

And it’s not just accusations of time travel, but accusations of creating alternate timelines!

This means Katrina Pierson lived in a version of the U.S. where 9/11 didn’t happen up until Obama created a temporal point of divergence!²

This last week in astronomy and physics seems really wild.

1. We still don’t know what’s causing the light fluctuation from Tabby’s star and the leading theory is a megastructure built by extraterrestrials

   Have we detected an alien megastructure in space? Keep an open mind • 2016 Aug 12 • Seth Shostak • The Guardian

2. There’s a weird trans-Neptunian object that orbits the sun in a totally different orbital plane than every other known object in the solar system, suggesting that our theories on how the solar system came to be might be off

   Scientists Just Discovered a Mysterious Object Beyond Neptune • 2016 Aug 12 • Kelly Dickerson • Mic

3. Physicists put a muon in orbit around a deuterium nucleus and there’s nothing in existing quantum theory that explains why the proton charge radius would vary

   Researchers orbit a muon around an atom, confirm physics is broken • 2016 Aug 11 • John Timmer • Ars Technica

4. There might be a fifth force.

   Physicists confirm possible discovery of fifth force of nature • 2016 Aug 15 • Phys.org