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Notes -
Sam Brinton is in the news this week.
For those who don't know, Sam is the first non-binary, gay drag queen to hold a federal government leadership position. I know him for his distinctive appearance, with moustache, bald head, and typical cross-dressing clothing and makeup. Here's another piece about him, from several months ago. The culture war angle should be obvious, as this man was highlighted, along with Rachael Levine, as examples of progressive hiring in the Biden administration. Suffice to say that he is not the kind of person I can take seriously, and I do not think he should have been hired, and certainly shouldn't have been celebrated. But that's not why I'm posting.
Now, why was he in the news this week?
Brinton was caught stealing luggage from an airport terminal. I'll notice that this article has no pictures of him. A summary, from here:
So he's been put on leave, for now, and he's due in court on the 19th of this month. At first, I wouldn't have considered posting this, as I simply found it funny in an absurd way, but then I ran across what is really the reason why I posted. I ran across a thread on twitter explaining why this was actually serious, and reflected a dangerous escalation of perverse behavior. I'll quote the main points:
Go ahead and read the whole thread.
I hadn't considered this angle, at first, but once it's been pointed out to me, I can't shake it. It's the most plausible argument I've heard of for why Sam would steal the woman's luggage, given that all others make no sense.
So, to wrap up, my questions. First, should he be fired for stealing? Second, how likely is it that Sam stole the luggage specifically for underwear? And third, does this move the needle for you in any way, when considering whether to trust, hire, or promote people like Sam?
I’m not sure there’s an explanation that makes Sam look good or innocent, but given that he doesn’t swing that way I’m not finding the ‘stealing a woman’s underwear for sexual purposes’ particularly convincing.
I will say that his apparent inability to separate his sex life from … anything at all should have been red flag numero uno that he would do something wildly inappropriate, and that stealing woman’s clothes was probably for the purpose of wearing them(why doesn’t he just buy them? Presumably for the same reason he insists on giving interviews about how much he enjoys dressing as a dog during sex to celebrate his appointment as a nuclear waste undersecretary). Would I hire him? I mean, if he was actually qualified(which he doesn’t appear to be) and showed up to the interview looking and acting normal(which he seems entirely incapable of), possibly.
At the risk of TMI, you don't have to be interested in women to be interesting in women's underwear, although the gay take looks significantly different from the straight one (and is usually far less interested in used women's underwear). "Male/male, crossdressing, lingerie" picks up 7 pages on e621, and there's a few artists that specialize in that as a theme.
From my understanding, Brinton's reasonably qualified, but that's kinda damning for the whole credentialing system in a radically different way: eg, this thesis is a lot of work done on a hard problem... in the most "What if we play a word game instead?" way imaginable. And while the modular small reactor stuff has some technical aspects, the waste fuel management side's more recent programs that Brinton's been involved in championing are even further down that scope.
You can find a lot of pervy people with deep interests in hard fields -- I'd like to think I'm one of them, if with better judgement, and while Brinton seems more furry-adjacent (the 'pups' here are a leather thing) than actually furry, you don't have to go looking hard at the furry fandom to find the obsessively bright. It's just that there's no signs of that sorta thing in Brinton's public profile. And people in the nuclear industry defended them in the sense that they believe that this emphasis on word games is not just the correct way forward, but the only one.
Afriad I only got as far as "The Department is committed to a consent-based approach to siting that enables broad participation and centers equity and environmental justice", but boy that sure reads like "taking all the study money and smearing it around political allies to do sociology studies and learning the ancient nuclear engineering wisdom of the Waquampa tribe"
It's just more federal money down the hole accomplishing nothing, so it shouldn't be so upsetting, but the intro speech about how nuclear is necessary to save the earth makes it chafe.
But I happen to believe this.
And while you sniff at the DEI-flavored position, I will note that nuclear waste handling was a bit more...lax in the mid-20th Century, so it would indeed behoove the FedGov to try and ask the Waquampa Tribe nicely if they're at all okay with being near a waste site.
It is definitely true that nobody wants a nuclear waste storage site in their backyard, so that does create difficulties for finding someplace to store the waste. It is necessary to store it someplace, especially if the future of energy generation looks like it's dependent on nuclear power.
So consent is needed, that is also true. And it's probably also true that the way you get consent is finding a way to funnel federal money to the interested parties in the area and buying them off. So Brinton's work (if that is what they are doing) on that could indeed be useful and valuable - how do we structure a system of bribes so that it doesn't too obviously look and sound like a system of bribes? One way certainly would be to paint over it a coat of "we are deferring to the ancestral wisdom of the Waquampa tribe"; to be cynical, if anyone objects "hey, this is a scheme of bribery!", the Waquampa make good cats-paws to deflect criticism.
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