Rural Minnesota is problematic

Minnesota was trying to carry out a COVID-19 testing survey — a smart move, because what we desperately need is more information, and doing good sampling and determining what the frequency of infection in the state is will help us design good, evidence-based policy. I say was, though, because the state just called it all off.

A door-to-door COVID-19 testing survey has been halted due to multiple incidents in outstate Minnesota of residents intimidating and shouting racial and ethnic slurs at state and federal public health survey teams.

The CDC pulled its federal surveyors out of Minnesota this week following reports of verbal abuse and intimidation, including an incident in the Iowa border town of Eitzen, Minn., in which a survey team walking to a house was blocked by two cars and threatened by three men, including one who had a gun.

Jesus christ but I despise that kind of ignorant yahoo. They were being offered free testing, and they react with guns and blockades, and then they’ll probably go off to a Trump rally and will vote Republican. We are so fucked by our fellow citizens.

In other news, Minnesota’s pandemic status has been downgraded to “uncontrolled”.

Minnesota has dropped into the “uncontrolled spread” category of the COVID-19 Exit Strategy website, joining neighbors Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas that had been at that lowest rating of pandemic progress for weeks due to rising novel coronavirus infections.

I wonder if these two stories are somehow related?

Well, not ever gonna play Fall Guys now

Fall Guys is a popular video game. I’m not much into video games, so I probably wasn’t going to play it anyway, but now this illustration of the hypothetical anatomy of the creatures in it has totally turned me off.

What is the jaw connected to?

I understand some of you are repelled by spiders, but they at least have a logical structure. This is the kind of content that sends my brain screaming into the void.

Big busy day today!

I just finished dumping a load of stuff on my cell biology students — the answer keys for a previous quiz and a set of practice problems, and most horrendous of all, another take-home exam that will be due Sunday night. Yes, I have just ruined their weekend. Class today is a review session, and an opportunity for them to get me to clarify anything on the exam they’re finding difficult to understand. That’s my struggle today, and theirs for the next few days.

My weekend is going to be spent wrangling our grand fundraiser, the Carnival of Curiosity, which starts this evening. I’m still quarantined for another week, so it’s not like I have anything else I can do. Take a look at the schedule!

Tonight, 5pm PT-8pm ET, 1am BST, we’re doing introductions of people on the West side of the Atlantic. Meet some of our bloggers! Ask questions!

Because that’s a ridiculous hour for everyone East of the Atlantic, we’ll resume at 7am PT-10am ET, 3pm BST. Same thing! Meet the bloggers and socialize!

This is a fundraiser, so please do donate to our various buckets we’re putting out on the sidewalk.

It is an optional donation, though, so please do stop by even if your pockets are empty (no one can blame you in this particular moment in history). We’re also hoping to expose you to the breadth of cool authors here on FtB, so just having any audience at all is a win for us.

Halloween cancelled!

Bad news, everyone: Minnesota has cancelled Halloween.

Like many things in the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Halloween might have to be virtual this year — or at least celebrated at a safe distance.

That’s the recommendation from the Minnesota Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What’s out? Trick-or-treating, Halloween parties and haunted houses are all considered high risk by health officials.

This virus is ruining everything.

Arguing with evangelicals is like wrestling with a bollard

I hope you all have some fun with this conversation between the Knechtle evangelical group and some radical materialist named “Meyers” or “Meyer”.*

They were congenial enough, but I kept slamming up hard against their presumptions about what an atheist must think. No headway was made. I’m pretty sure that they’ll continue to assume that every atheist they meet is an amoral robot or is secretly imbued with the spirit of Jesus.

*I surrender. I have totally given up on correcting people misspelling or mispronouncing a name that is only 5 letters long.

You call them monsters?

Someone sent me a link to this page about using spiders in Dungeons & Dragons…as monsters. I am offended!

That’s right those creepy crawly bitey little buggers with all the legs and all the eyes. I hate them IRL [OFFENDED!], and will terminate any that cross over the agreed upon barrier into my home [<gasp> OFFENDED!]. Its a feeling alot of folks the world over share and that is easily exploited for your tabletop game. Which I suggest doing. Its amazing. So here we go – using spiders to torture your players in the best and most memorable ways.

First we have to establish a few things, the biggest of which are the types of spiders found in the game that can be used. Most people assume we mean either the tiny version or the giant version. There is however so~ many spiders that are all canon in 5e so don’t be afraid to mix and match them up to create more diverse encounters. For this blog we will just be talking about spiders not Drieders or spider demons, though I think those are also great things to add to the mix to spice it up. Below is just a quick list of those that can be found in the books. These are create starting points for an easy mix up to the normal spider.

  • Spider Swarm
  • Spider
  • Giant Spider
  • Giant Wolf Spider
  • Phase Spider

All right, if ever I were a Dungeon Master, first thing I’d do is replace all the player character races with that list. That’ll torture the players! Then I’d expand the list with more species of arachnids, and replace the Monster Manual with the Player’s Handbook.

Oh no! It’s another Argiope video!

For once, the YouTube algorithm is working in my favor. It’s currently saying “Oh, so you like big spiders, do you?” every time I check in, which is factually true, so I keep seeing spectacular Argiope behaviors.

This one tickled me because I have vivid memories of seeing my first Cicada Killer, the Most Terrifying Wasp in the World, as a child. It was perched on a tree branch in my back yard, and it was swiftly and brutally dismembering a cicada, the Most Obnoxiously Noisy Insect in the World, and it was mesmerizing. It would just tear into it sloppily with its mandibles, slurping down slimy crunchy bits, and scraps of chiting and fragments of body parts were raining down out of the tree. I swore I’d never go near one of those monsters.

Yet here’s Argiope, my hero, neatly turning a Cicada Killer into lunch.

The camera work isn’t great, but you can see how effective Argiope‘s web spinning is — she isn’t tying up her prey with single threads, but with these broad ribbons of silk. I’ve seen them immobilize a large grasshopper in seconds.

Why? I dunno.

I was asked by this fellow, Stuart Knechtle, to have a chat on his YouTube channel, so I guess I am. I’m easy that way, especially since it’s not framed as a debate. I don’t know if it’ll be live (it’s scheduled for 7pm Central tonight), I don’t know what they want to talk about, but looking over the channel it seems to be a pretty mundane evangelical Christian apologetics sort of place, so I don’t expect much. Tune in if you’re bored.

I’m going into this totally open to what they’re going to ask, expecting no surprises, and just willing to listen and express my opinion. Could be a soporific hour, so if you’re trying to get to sleep it might help.