In 2014, the European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet. The project, called Rosetta/Philae, accomplished the incredibly difficult task of landing a tiny moving object on another tiny moving target, something like shooting a bullet at a bullet and having them intersect in space. The probe landed perfectly to rousing applause and international praise. On the landing day, cameras focused on one of the scientists – Dr. Matt Taylor. Taylor was wearing a shirt he had been gifted by a woman friend. Taylor didn’t look like a “scientist”. He was well built, with sleeve tattoos. The shirt he had on was brightly colored and covered with artwork of scantily clad women.

Instead of celebrating Taylor’s accomplishments and his scientific brilliance, the outrage mob focused not on the science but on the shirt. FemiNazis were outraged. The nerve of that MAN. Degrading women with art of…women. Taylor was deluged with threats, insults, and demands for his termination. His brilliance at his job was secondary to his shirt. He tearfully apologized to the outrage mob and slinked into a corner never to be seen again. It wasn’t the beginning of the “Everything is stupid” era but it was when I first recognized how completely stupid the outrage mob was and that they don’t care about substance, science, or reality — they only care about being outraged.

Another stunning, awe-inspiring moment in science was certainly sullied by two unrelated but equally stupid moments. First, Joe Biden, our utterly inept and clueless president, sat in on the release of the first photos from the James Webb Telescope. His response wasn’t one of wonder at the grandeur of space, of galaxies from billions of years ago no, Joe wondered “what the press was like” in space.

It’s expected, I guess. Joe can’t think past his next nap.

The 10 billion dollar James Webb Telescope is one of if not the most remarkable inventions NASA has ever put into space, and President PuddingBrain was thinking of the press.

And we can’t have awe-inspiring things like the James Webb Telescope without an outrage mob complaining about it being named after a “white gay-hating man.” That’s right, the Webb telescope is homophobic. The outrage mob is super outraged that NASA named the telescope after James Webb. Webb was NASA’s second administrator and the man who oversaw NASA’s greatest decade – the 1960s.

Webb was in charge of NASA in 1963 when a budget analyst nobody named Cliff Norton was arrested in Washington DC by the “Morals Squad.” His crime? It seems Norton picked up another closeted gay guy and he was arrested on a morals charge. NASA found out, interviewed then fired him. What does that have to do with Webb? Nothing. Webb wasn’t part of the Morals Squad, he certainly didn’t write the statutes, and he didn’t know Norton from a stapler, but because Webb was NASA’s boss somehow that makes him responsible for Norton’s dismissal. No, seriously – that’s the argument of the outrage goons demanding NASA rename the telescope.

This is real. pic.twitter.com/TyNN8H9fDj

— James Lindsay, blademaster (@ConceptualJames) July 14, 2022

The goon squad pining for a name change is led by a woman named Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Prescod-Weinstein said:

“Either [Webb] was a wildly incompetent administrator and didn’t know that his head of security was interrogating employees in NASA facilities, or he knew exactly what was going on and he was in some sense party to overseeing the interrogation of someone for being gay”.

Yeah, or maybe Prescod-Weinstein doesn’t know how business or bureaucracy works. CEOs don’t know or care when cubicle nobodies get canned. But Prescod-Weinstein is an activist — she knows better.

She’s black and “queer,” and she thinks black people are “terrorized” and hunted daily in America. That solid bit of nonsense led her to organize a boycott/strike — because “black lives matter” and STEM is racist. She said:

“The particle physics community remains intensely white and male, not just demographically but also culturally.”

Science is apparently racist and misogynist and, of course, homophobic.

Fortunately, NASA told the outrage mob and Prescod-Weinstein in particular to pound sand. The “homophobic” Webb telescope will not be renamed. It’s about a million miles from Earth so the mob can’t tear down that symbol of objective science and knowledge. No doubt Prescod-Weinstein will find something else white and male and straight to complain about. In science — for now — there’s no shortage of straight white men.

Everything is stupid.