Bad stuff, butt stuff, goats, carrot cake, taxidermy, and war

Happy 2026. What did we get stuck in our penises last year?
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Here's a fascinating article about how one of the world’s most brilliant theological thinkers’ works influenced one of the stupidest dumbasses ever.

Peter Thiel, the strange fascist billionaire, is apparently afraid of the end of the world because he heard about the end of the world from Rene Girard so he said the solution to prevent the end of the world is to be fascist, because this guy Schmitt said to be fascist, so now Thiel is fascist but he claims it’s Girardian brand fascism not regular original brand fascism so it’s OK and also Thiel is convinced the antichrist is coming soon and this might be good and it might be bad so the things that hold the antichrist at bay, such as promoting fascism, might be bad or might be good, so he just places financial bets in the form of investment capital to things that capitalize on the thing that Rene Girard says happens which is that people want what other people want and that’s why we fight each other. 

It’s a good article. I like Rene Girard. I don’t like fascism. Why do fascists keep liking things I like? I do not like this! Nazi punks fuck off! Nazi pseudo-intellectuals fuck off!

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I have been asking people to name their top three cakes. I think most people who think about it would put carrot cake as number one. I put box mix funfetti as number two and german chocolate number three. 

Real Ben Wildflower Dot Com Blog fans will leave a comment listing their top three favorite cakes. 

For consideration: flourless chocolate cake, angel food cake, lemon poppy seed cake. 

An excellent and easy carrot cake:

Mix the dry bits:
-2 cups flour
-2 cups sugar
-2 tsp baking soda
-2 tsp baking powder
-2 tsp cinnamon
-bit of salt
-Handful of chopped Walnuts

When I say "two teaspoons" I don't mean get a teaspoon dirty. Dump it in your palm. Eyeball it. Live a little.

Mix the wet/gloopy/sticky bits:
-4 eggs
-1.25 cups veg oil
-A pound of carrots, grated. This is a lot of carrots. They come in a one pound bag and I’m not saving two or three carrots to forget about then throw in the compost two months from now. Nobody complains about a carrot cake being too carrotty. 
-Handful of Golden raisins
-A couple capfuls of Vanilla.

Mix the dries and wets until it looks like cake batter. Good job. 

Bake. 350F probably. I like to do three 9” rounds. Do a thicker 9x13 or cupcakes or two rounds. There are no rules. It’s done when you stick a fork in and it comes out clean or it just looks golden browned right or when it’s sizzle-popping at the right volume and tempo when you hold it up to your ear. You know when a cake is done. 

Frosting: stick of butter, softened to room temp. Block of cream cheese, softened at room temp. Mix in as much powdered sugar as seems right. Probably 3 or 4 cups. I like a higher fat to sugar ratio. Butter makes it better. I do this in the stand mixer. Frost the top and in-betweens but not the sides. Why? Every bite has the same frosting-to-cake ratio that way and also the side is the hardest part to ice. Life hack: Don't do difficult unnecessary tasks if it doesn't bring you pleasure.

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In a previous blog post I bemoaned the fact  many fascist dweebs seem to like Lord of the Rings. I’ve just become aware of a surveillance company called Sauron and an autonomous drone company called Anduril. (Andúril is Aragorn’s sword that was reforged in Rivendell from the shards of Narsil.) This is a pro-nerd anti-fascist blog. Nazi punks fuck off! Nazi nerds fuck off! We need a scene with no fascists. 

Also, naming a surveillance company after an evil power-hungry force who longs to see all to dominate all is spot-on. Competitor names could include “Literally Satan” and “Hellworld.”

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Academy of Natural Sciences rules. I went for the first time this week. The specimens themselves are the focus. There’s not some overarching theme or story. It’s mostly cool dioramas of taxidermized critters. Two bucks if you have an Access card.

You can pet the dismembered furry skinsuits of long-deceased foxes. If that’s not cool I don’t know what is. 

When they built this diorama there wasn’t color photography. We can all just put on a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough now. You used to have to go look at the hand-painted blood of a seal being clubbed to death by a polar bear. Kind of cooler actually. Imagine how hard this hit in the 1930s.

Preserved amphibians always super-cool.

There’s a space rock older than the sun rubbed smooth by grubby hands. Mary spilled some apple sauce on it. Not an interesting picture though. It's just a rock under fluorescent lights. Here's a bird:

Mary with lions:

Also recommend the museum in Kolkata, which this reminded me of. Lots of cool specimens, like goats with too many legs or heads. 

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I recently met fellow weird leftist religious relief artist comrades Bex McIntrye and Sarah Fuller. We all hung out after I put the kids to bed one night then we chatted again on a video call and they did a wee write-up which you can read here. Don’t want to read about me? Fair enough. They write about other artists more interesting than me too: The Illuminator

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I recently carved a little logo for our friendly neighborhood community garden. According to the New York Times, a disreputable rag from a city a couple hours north of the finest city on the East Coast, Hart Lane garden is part of the effective violence reduction programming in Philly. I don’t know. It’s a nice place to grow tomatoes and snuggle goats, two nonviolent activities I enjoy. 

Come on by on a Saturday morning and you too could collect discarded syringes from the sidewalk, pull weeds, argue about the priority of fence repairs vs building play equipment, etc. Glamourous stuff. 

Do I like it with a gradient background? I don't know. I like the imperfections of analog printmaking. We'll probably hand-print it on some tote bags or something. 

Look how small Francis once was. Look how small Jasper was. Kids. 

Send money to Hart Lane Farm. You could do dumber things with your money. Or don't. I can't find our PayPal link anyway.

Hi-viz bandanna! You could have been the owner of this scrap of fabric if you'd been there this morning. Too late. Somebody else got it. You might see them, given how easy they are to spot now. 

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Australia just kicked teens off social media but it turns out the whole campaign was funded by a firm that makes gambling ads. Nobody under 16 on Instagram and TikTok so now it’s not a legal problem to be serving everybody ads for sports gambling. 

Also, kids are entirely capable of circumventing age restrictions. Some of the best critical thinking I did as a teenager was figuring out how to bypass rules and regulations. 

My most socially conservative opinion is that organized gambling is bad. Casinos are bad. Online sports gambling is awful. 

I enjoy a weird wager. Five bucks says I can hit that beer bottle with a slingshot. If anybody gets a flat tire on the ride to the brewery they have to buy the first round. I made a calendar to bet on what day my children would be born ($5 per 12 hour slot, winner takes all.) Stuff like that. You know who wins? You or your friends. 

You know who wins on an app designed to short circuit your brain and make you click Bet Bet Bet like a cocaine-addled rodent in an open-topped maze? The people who made the little maze with the flashing buttons and spinning wheel. Those people are horrible. No more money for them please. They want to get disgustingly powerful by becoming disgustingly wealthy by taking advantage of the misplaced hopes of the financially and emotionally vulnerable. 

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Nadia, the most faithful reader of my blog, recently complimented my writing. What writing? This text message,

describing this image:

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I woke up to news the United States is at war with Venezuela and has kidnapped Maduro. I hate the United States and what it stands for. It is an evil nation that does evil things. This nation will one day not exist and that’s a fact and that’s good news. 

There’s no good warmaking. Do we not understand what bombs do? They blow apart buildings, send blocks of concrete flying, smashing in the ribcage of someone walking home, crush the skulls of babies, rip off the arms of bystanders. There’s no massacre-device that oughtn’t be destroyed. There’s no circle you can draw on a map and say, Yeah, all the souls in this circle are unworthy of life. 

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Discussion questions: In what situations are people morally obligated to kill their oppressors? When is it morally defensible to kill a head of state? 

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Fuck the wars. Practice some peace how you can today. Me, I shoveled some shit off the sidewalk of Hart Lane and laughed at the goats doing goat shenanigans. 

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The world is still a beautiful place.