Ice whiskers

This was a new phenomenon to me. Walking into work today, everything was covered with these long whiskers of ice, typically close to 2cm long.

We’ve stayed below freezing for the last few days, and also we’ve had freezing fog every morning, which I presume feeds some peculiar crystallization process. It looks cool, anyway.

This afternoon when I was walking home I saw that they hadn’t melted, but were gradually falling off the trees as a very gentle snow.

Can a homely old guy with no charisma succeed on YouTube?

Asking for a friend. I’m hoping to have a conversation about how to use YouTube for science communication on Sunday at noon my time. Maybe it’s not possible. Some of us just have a face or voice made for blogging. Tell me what you think this weekend.

If anyone wants to join the livestream, drop me an email and let me know, and maybe I’ll respond with a link so you can join in. Maybe. I’ll be a little discriminating about who I’ll share a screen with.

Hey, I just had an idea — more spiders. Maybe I could recruit a spider co-host to add more charm!

Big boy gettin’ swole

Today was a big spider maintenance day. I’ve got three lines of spiders I’m raising — R (from a spider collected at Runestone park), H (from the local Horticulture garden), and M (from the Myers garage) which I’m trying to bring to maturity, so they’re getting lots of food and care, which I want to start inbreeding and generate 3 lines of related spiders so I can start assessing their variation…and then start cross-breeding. It’s going to take a while.

Anyway, down below the fold is one that’s definitely male and might be ready for mating after the next molt. His palps look painfully swole.

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Not a recommended spider story

This is the opening sequence for an anime. Let me know if the theme music sounds familiar — is this music not copyrighted?

The series is based on a manga, So I’m a spider, so what?, which I own and have read. I had hopes that it would be something like Jay Hosler‘s work, which is excellent and informative, and that it would be useful for teaching about how wonderful spiders are. It’s not. It’s this bizarre fusion of spider biology with video game dogma, and most of the emphasis is on how this person transported into a spider body can go up in levels and acquire new spider powers. Maybe you’d enjoy it if you’re more into video games than arachnids, but I’m the reverse of that.

“Cheap Talk” skepticism

Oh, that is a useful term. As Aaron Rabinowitz explains, “Cheap talk skepticism occurs when someone expresses skepticism in a way that comes at little cost to them, though it frequently comes at a significant cost to others.” These are people who cultivate an environment in which they can make bold assertion and receive little pushback, who don’t actually invest something of themselves in challenging the status quo. And Rabinowitz delivers examples!

If there is any room for criticism in this explosion of cheap talk skepticism, I believe it should be focused on the individuals with the platforms that allow them both the time for proper skepticism and the obligation to skepticism properly. In the parts of the skeptical world referred to as the Intellectual Dark Web, there has been rampant cheap talk skepticism around both Covid and the recent American election. Under the umbrella of “distrusting institutions”, there has been such an absurd amount of “just asking questions” that Sam Harris felt compelled to very publicly “turn in his IDW membership card”. Unfortunately, Harris neglected to explicitly criticise anyone by name, which makes is hard to determine if his criticism was meant just for the brothers Weinstein, or if he was including folks like Maajid Nawaz, who he has frequently promoted and who I’d argue has been one of the worst of the cheap talk skeptics.

For example, here’s Nawaz retweeting Team Trump Twitter sharing a video from OAN (One America News Network), an unreliable right wing “news” organization, which they claim is evidence of election tampering. Rather than emphasise the high likelihood that the video proves nothing of the sort, Maajid’s response is “I see what this looks like & I hope I’m wrong” followed by “sensible people should agree that this entire controversy needs to be resolved ASAP & urgently”. That tweet is not an isolated event either, here he is unknowingly sharing election fraud conspiracy materials from the explicitly antisemitic Red Elephants website. Here he is getting strung along by Trump’s reality tv shtick . Here he is citing Ted Cruz’s election denialism as proof that Nawaz was “right all along”. I could continue, but the pattern is obvious, and it’s not unique to Nawaz. This is deeply irresponsible, but the cost of cheap talk skepticism will be born by the American electorate and not by Nawaz, who has since circled back around to claim the OAN video produced a state audit, but not to point out that Georgia found no significant fraud of the sort that Team Trump and OAN were claiming.

Nawaz has also engaged in cheap talk skepticism around Covid conspiracy theories, favorably retweeting a thread by a guy who thinks Covid is caused by 5G and directly quoting his claim about “the myth of a pandemic”. Similar cheap talk skepticism towards Covid and the Covid vaccine has arisen from Brett Weinstein and unsurprisingly from James Lindsay, given his ongoing business relationship with conspiracy theorist Michael O’Fallon. James recently attended a Sovereign Nation conference and a conservative event in California with Covid lockdown skeptic Dave Rubin. Rubin has attended several anti-lockdown events and posted cancel bait tweets implying that he’s hosting dinner parties in violation of social distancing rules. Again, the cost of their skepticism is far less likely to be born by them than by medical workers and vulnerable individuals, like my aunt Sue who suffered a stroke while being treated for Covid. Society doesn’t even condone the desire that they should directly experience the consequences of their skepticism. We’re forced to hope that their cheap talk remains cheap.

It’s a great term. Add it to your lexicon! One of the things skeptics and atheists have to do is police their own — we’ve been telling religious people to do that for years — and it’s only fair that we do the same for ourselves.

It has only taken four years for the media to wake up

Now, at last, in the last few weeks of the Trump presidency, do our newspapers start ringing the alarm bells.

It’s a bit late, gang. All these years you’ve been printing pro-Trump columnists, and only now you notice what kind of monster you’ve created?

Facebook has finally banned Trump, Twitter is still thinking about whether maybe a fascist might be a legit part of their brand.

And Fox News…oh jesus, fuck Fox News.

Who attempted a coup? The Nazis, that’s who

Guess who was pushing and promoting the recent insurrection? A couple of freakish ex-YouTube personalities.

They were bragging in a livestream about trespassing, and who knows what other crimes they were cackling over. Come on, law enforcement, this is a case where you should be enforcing the law.

The recent half-assed rebellion

A revolution can be a good thing — after all, this country was founded by one. When that collection of rascals signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that putting their name on that piece of paper was a deep commitment. They were either going to go through with their grand plan, or it was going to be a damning piece of evidence when King George III put them on trial, and the penalty otherwise was going to be hanging, prison, or at the very least, complete financial ruin. As Ben Franklin said, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” They knew what they were doing, and the stakes were extremely high.

This was not the case in yesterday’s insurrection. Instead we had a mob of Confederate LARPers with no guiding ideology other than QAnon insanity and a philosophy of libertarian selfishness, with no plan for what they wanted to achieve other than to keep a demagogue in office, a demagogue who also happened to be a demonstrably incompetent buffoon who waddled through the last four years doing nothing but wrecking government while enriching himself and his cronies. It was embarrassing. They had no idea what they would do if they “won”, and didn’t even have a clear idea of what “winning” would be. They were just an instance of bumbling chaos.

But like those founding revolutionaries of the US, we know some people who eagerly signed on to that chaos. We know many people who were part of the chickenshit insurrection. Like Donald Trump.

For hours, Trump made little effort to quell the violence he had helped instigate, finally sharing a video at 4:17 p.m. in which he told people to “go home” — while continuing to promote the falsehood that he had won the election.

“We love you,” he told them. “You’re very special.”

And Ted Cruz. And Josh Hawley, who saluted the rioters. And Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, who threatened to challenge the election results. And this man.

And every MAGA-hat wearing, Q-slogan-chanting, gun-toting asshole who thought storming the capitol was a fun way to spend the day. They all signed their name to a commitment to criminal insurrection, without thinking it through. When they yell, “GIVE ME LIBERTY or give me death,” they kind of overlooked the second half of the phrase, which is a conscious expression of their awareness of the moral cost of the steps they have taken.

But no, they all think they can materially aid an insurrection, then the day after they’d just go back to their offices in congress, or back home to their gun clubs and bars, whether they won or lost. This was a weightless rebellion. A joke. A photo op for their Facebook accounts. Or, for the politicians, an opportunity to pander to the mouth-breathing yokels in their home districts, assuming they can get away with any criminal act as long as they’ve got enough idiot constituents to support it.

As Marcus points out, though, there are straightforward legal codes that spell out that conspiracy, sedition, and insurrection are illegal acts with severe penalties.

18 U.S.C. § 2384 – U.S. Code – Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

§2383. Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States

They want to challenge our constitutional government? Fine. But be aware that if they win, there are tremendous obligations to build a new government; if they lose, there is a tremendous personal cost to the rebellion. They gambled. They lost. It’s time to pay the price.

Trump needs to be arrested and tried immediately. His Republican co-conspirators need to lose their seats in the Senate. They all need to spend some time in prison, and never be allowed to run for office ever again.

It’s really that simple. If the Democrats won’t grow a spine and enforce the law, then be prepared for more half-assed rebellions by dumbass conspiracy theorists for year after year.