I’m outta here!

This past month has been something else — overworked, trapped in my office all day long, stressed out to the point where I’m severely lacking in sleep. I’m a physical and mental wreck. But that all changes shortly. I’ve been meeting with students all day, trying to coach them through their last few assignments, and my last appointment of the semester is at about 1:00…and then I’m done. They’re all on their own at that point. They’ve got their final exams in hand, they do them and turn them in on Tuesday, and it’s one last surge of grading, but I’m free until then. Days of freedom. I won’t know what to do with myself.

Well, actually, I kind of do.

By 1:30 I’ll have finished my last meeting. Then I’m bolting outta here. It’s a warm sunny day, I’m going for a nice refreshing walk. I might stop at the coffee shop — I can do that, I’m vaccinated — which I haven’t visited in over a year. I might just breathe fresh air for a while. I’ll try to avoid getting hit by a bus, which would be a terribly ironic end to a long painful year.

Then I’m coming home to sit out in the sun room and work on our Mother’s Day Fundraiser. See the link over there on the left? It’s empty at this point, but only because I’ve been too swamped to fill it in. The other good people here at FtB have been making plans, I’ll be consolidating those and putting them on the page, and then we just have to do it all, while begging you for donations to cover our legal expenses. I’m making a video about an intersex mother — it turns out you don’t have to have XX chromosomes to be a good mom, surprise, surprise — and we’ve got stories about mothers on various blogs to be unveiled. But all that isn’t work, it’s a change of pace, and fun.

But first, leg-stretching and lung-filling and pretending I’m human again for a while. Maybe I’ll sleep through the night tonight, too.

I think my theme for the day will be, “Look, mom! I’m still alive!”

Marshrooms and araneiforms, oh my: the ongoing absurdity of Rhawn Joseph

Rhawn Joseph is back. Two years ago, I posted a comprehensive list of my engagements with that fraud, so if you want, you can review it there. There’s a lot. It’s all very silly. I even made a video about his claim to have found Marshrooms. Last year, I made a post about his latest publication, in which I wrote, “Let’s hope this is the end of Joseph and Wickramasinghe.” Hah! Right.

Here, in May of 2021, he has again published a Martian mushroom paper titled Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images in the journal Advances in Microbiology. It’s 63 pages long! Of course, most of it is photos cribbed from NASA that are blown up and processed to make his imaginary point. To quote some legitimate scientists:

Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University in Australia, said “there’s some pretty horrible over-interpretation of blurry photos,” while Gretchen Benedix, a geophysicist at Curtin University in Australia, noted “increasing image sizes to investigate the objects of interest does not change the resolution of the image and therefore does not give better analysis of the objects of interest.”

Rocco Mancinelli, the editor in chief of the International Journal of Astrobiology, called the science and logic “completely flawed,” and said he would recommend it be rejected for publication.

Yet various versions of this garbage hypothesis were and are being published. Here’s the abstract for Rhawn Joseph’s latest:

Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments. Sequential photos document that fungus-like Martian specimens emerge from the soil and increase in size, including those resembling puffballs (Basidiomycota). After obliteration of spherical specimens by the rover wheels, new sphericals-some with stalks-appeared atop the crests of old tracks. Sequences document that thousands of black arctic “araneiforms” grow up to 300 meters in the Spring and disappear by Winter; a pattern repeated each Spring and which may represent massive colonies of black fungi, mould, lichens, algae, methanogens and sulfur reducing species. Black fungi-bacteria-like specimens also appeared atop the rovers. In a series of photographs over three days (Sols) white amorphous specimens within a crevice changed shape and location then disappeared. White protoplasmic-mycelium-like-tendrils with fruiting-body-like appendages form networks upon and above the surface; or increase in mass as documented by sequential photographs. Hundreds of dimpled donut-shaped “mushroom-like” formations approximately 1mm in size are adjacent or attached to these mycelium-like complexes. Additional sequences document that white amorphous masses beneath rock-shelters increase in mass, number, or disappear and that similar white-fungus-like specimens appeared inside an open rover compartment. Comparative statistical analysis of a sample of 9 spherical specimens believed to be fungal “puffballs” photographed on Sol 1145 and 12 specimens that emerged from beneath the soil on Sol 1148 confirmed the nine grew significantly closer together as their diameters expanded and some showed evidence of movement. Cluster analysis and a paired sample ‘t’ test indicates a statistically significant size increase in the average size ratio over all comparisons between and within groups (P = 0.011). Statistical comparisons indicates that arctic “araneiforms” significantly increased in length in parallel following an initial growth spurt. Although similarities in morphology are not proof of life, growth, movement, and changes in shape and location constitute behavior and support the hypothesis there is life on Mars.

I admit, I perked up at the mention of araneiforms — that’s spider-like shapes. It’s not about spiders on Mars, darn it, it’s about these complex dendritic shapes that appear and disappear on the Martian landscape. Joseph wants to claim that that is evidence of fungal life, based on over-interpretation of photos from Mars rovers. It’s not. No one is denying that there are ongoing changes on Mars — seasonal variations, windstorms, erosion, shifting dunes, all that sort of geological stuff. The question is whether it is caused by biology, and so far, the answer is it is not. There are better explanations for the araneiforms, for instance: The formation of araneiforms by carbon dioxide venting and vigorous sublimation dynamics under martian atmospheric pressure.

The local redistribution of granular material by sublimation of the southern seasonal CO2 ice deposit is one of the most active surface shaping processes on Mars today. This unique geomorphic mechanism is hypothesised to be the cause of the dendritic, branching, spider-like araneiform terrain and associated fans and spots—features which are native to Mars and have no Earth analogues. However, there is a paucity of empirical data to test the validity of this hypothesis. Additionally, it is unclear whether some araneiform patterns began as radial and then grew outward, or whether troughs connected at mutual centres over time. Here we present the results of a suite of laboratory experiments undertaken to investigate if the interaction between a sublimating CO2 ice overburden containing central vents and a porous, mobile regolith will mobilise grains from beneath the ice in the form of a plume to generate araneiform patterns. We quantify the branching and area of the dendritic features that form. We provide the first observations of plume activity via CO2 sublimation and consequent erosion to form araneiform features. We show that CO2 sublimation can be a highly efficient agent of sediment transport under present day Martian atmospheric pressure and that morphometry is governed by the Shields parameter.

You’ve got a thin atmosphere where the repeated freezing and sublimation of carbon dioxide is a major factor, and you want to claim that mushrooms are thriving to the point that they spring up overnight in the tracks of Mars rovers? OK, pull the other one, guy.

By the way, Joseph still touts his affiliation as being with cosmology.com, his vanity website where he publishes articles about the Quantum Physics of Time Travel and the consciousness of the universe. That’s the fake journal I trashed, which he then put up for sale for $100,000. If you check it out now, he’s selling it for $50,000. I’m waiting for the price to get down around $1.98, and then I’ll snap it up.

Or…hey, Rhawn, I’ll take the responsibility off your hands right now, no charge, and keep the site up as a historical curiosity, with maybe just a little front-page editorial commentary. You know it’s an embarrassment, just dragging you down, pass it on to someone who’ll keep it alive a little longer.

There’s nothing like a divorce to spill the tea

Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing, news that does not interest me at all. A pair of meddling incompetent billionaires are splitting their fortune? Whoop-te-doo, as we say down here in the holler, does that mean they’ll stop trying to interfere in healthcare and education? Probably not.

But what does make me sit up and listen is that Melinda is letting all her resentments hang out. Oh boy! I am not at all surprised that Bill was suckered by Jeffrey Epstein.

Melinda Gates met with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein alongside her husband Bill in New York City and soon after said she was furious at the relationship between the two men, according to people familiar with the situation.

The previously unreported meeting occurred at Epstein’s Upper East Side Mansion in September 2013, on the same day the couple accepted the Lasker Bloomberg Public Service Award at the Pierre Hotel and were photographed alongside then-mayor Mike Bloomberg.

The meeting would prove a turning point for Gates’ relationship with Epstein, the people familiar with the matter say, as Melinda told friends after the encounter how uncomfortable she was in the company of the wealthy sex offender and how she wanted nothing to do with him.

This is what I don’t get about these people who willingly associated with Epstein. As the article says, Epstein was rude and arrogant and was constantly name-dropping, so why would anyone with billions of dollars want to hang out with him?

The ties between Gates and Epstein ran much deeper than the tech mogul first admitted. As The New York Times reported, starting in 2011, Gates met with Epstein on numerous occasions. This was three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl in Florida; by then, accusations that Epstein exploited girls and young women were widely reported in the press.

Oh, and this is fun: catch Gates lying about his relationship.

Indeed, the Times reported Gates visited Epstein multiple times from 2011 to 2013, and that Epstein had tried pitching a new charitable fund to JPMorgan honchos and to the Gates foundation. In 2013, Gates also took a ride on Epstein’s private jet (christened by tabloids as the Lolita Express), from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, according to flight records reviewed by the Times. CNBC also reported that Gates rendezvoused with Epstein in New York in 2013.

When Gates first met Epstein, he was still Microsoft’s chairman and the second richest person in the world with a net worth of $56 billion.

“I met him. I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him,” Gates said in September 2019, as media coverage into his connections with Epstein were heating up. “I didn’t go to New Mexico or Florida or Palm Beach or any of that. There were people around him who were saying, ‘Hey, if you want to raise money for global health and get more philanthropy, he knows a lot of rich people.’

Oh, yeah? What were you doing in Palm Beach, Florida in 2013 that you now want to hide, Bill?

No one, other than trolls and corporate lawyers, likes DMCA takedowns

Rebecca Watson has been getting lots of them, and threats of lawsuits, in a tangled web of complaints from a couple of parties fighting over porn addiction vs. no porn addiction. I don’t want to even try to untangle it, but it sounds like Rebecca is just a civilian casualty taking friendly fire, or not-so-friendly lashing out by one side of the argument. I’ll let her try to explain it.

I’ve been there. It always seems like those most religious about free speech who fling around SLAPP suits and try their hardest to silence everyone else. I’m with Team Rebecca on this one: I’m not going to sue anyone no matter what they say about me, and it’s just abuse of the legal system to play these games. Did Richard Carrier or Ben Radford improve their reputations with their shenanigans? No.

A few other comments:

You too can support Rebecca Watson on Patreon!

I’ve noticed that she generally seems much happier and more relaxed since she kicked the atheist/skeptic movements out of her life and replaced them with surfing and a dog. There’s a lesson there. I’m replacing them with photography and an army of spiders.

Everyone congratulate her on her recent elopement! That seems to be a wise decision, too: my parents eloped, my niece is eloping at the end of the month. Getting out from traditional demands is another recipe for happiness.

Long-legged beasties

On my daily spider meditation in the lab, today I found that they’d molted again. They’re bigger, and they have this rangy long-legged look to them.

Very handsome, one and all, but something is troubling me: they’re 8 months old. Keep in mind that I suspect there are baby Parasteatoda emerging right now, and by June/July they’ll be big strapping behemoths raising families of their own, so it’s clear my lab colony isn’t growing as fast as it should have — I may have been starving them for much of their childhood. I’m shoveling flies at them every day now, but for most of their life I had them on a weekly feeding schedule. Now I want to get some fresh egg sacs and do some comparative feeding protocols and see if that can determine an optimal schedule.

In other promising news, on my walk home from the lab I checked out a few familiar haunts. There’s a place where last year and the year before I’d found many shy Theridion lurking, and while I didn’t see any yet, I did find some fairly dense new cobwebs there. I also checked under the eaves of my house where, last year, Mary found a huge cat-faced spider that we observed all summer long, and where we found its body after the weather turned cold. No spider there yet, either, but some egg sacs tucked into dark corners, so maybe later. I’ll have to look in on that spot regularly.

Science words!

You don’t need to understand the meaning, as long as you string together a few science terms you learned in grade school, it must be true.

Do I really need to say it? Being injected with an RNA vaccine does not replace your entire nuclear genome with RNA.

Although…it does make me wonder what would happen if a magic enzyme added a hydroxyl group to all your ribose sugars to convert DNA to RNA. Yeah, changing the chemical properties of all of your chromosomes to make them more labile and prone to rapid breakdown and unrecognizable to most of the key proteins for transcription, among other things, would be kind of catastrophic and thermodynamically costly.

There’s probably some vicious Hebrew abuse going on there, too, but I wouldn’t know.

Wait, does this mean that when you die, your soul retains some kind of DNA-based organic structure?

No, stop, don’t over-think this. Trying to puzzle out serious meaning from that text leads to madness.

Would you get into a van with this man?

What if he offered you candy, or had a puppy you could play with?

That’s Josh Duggar, the man who became famous for being on a reality TV show about a religious family popping out a train of babies. Then he became more famous for the fact that he had been molesting his little sisters. And now he’s hooked on the prestige and has been caught in another glamorous crime.

Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner, testifying for the prosecution, alleged Duggar downloaded computer files depicting child sex abuse on May 14, 15 and 16 of 2019.

The files were initially flagged by a police detective in Little Rock, Ark., and then allegedly traced to Duggar’s IP address on a computer at his workplace at the time, the Wholesale Motorcars dealership.

One file, according to Faulkner, depicted child sex abuse involving children ranging from 18 months to 12 years of age. Faulkner described the images as “in the top five of the worst of the worst that I’ve ever had to examine.”

According to Faulkner, when homeland security officials raided Duggar’s car dealership and asked to speak with him, without informing him they were investigating child pornography, Duggar “spontaneously” responded, “What is this about? Has someone been downloading child pornography?”

So that’s what used car salesmen do in their free time.

Anyway, now he’s begging to be released on bail with a novel excuse.

The motion further argued that because Duggar is a public figure, it is unreasonable to view him as a flight risk: “Duggar has a widely-recognizable face and has spent the majority of his life in the public spotlight—making any concern that he is a risk of flight all the more unwarranted.”

Widely recognizable? Gosh, if he’s released am I going to have to call the police on every pudgy, balding white guy I see on the street? Never underestimate the ego of a white man.

Donald Trump, reduced to the lowest of the low

The poor man. He was banned from Twitter and Facebook (he tried to appeal to Facebook, but they’ve recently denied him). Then he announced that he was going to create his very own social media platform, to make an end run around Big Tech. Now he claims to have done it. You can go to his grand social media platform right now, and I did.

I looked at it.

I puzzled over it.

It’s a web page where Donald J. Trump can type things, creating “posts”, which are displayed in chronological order, and you can go to his site and read them.

Oh my god.

Trump has created a blog, and is a blogger. That’s all it is! It’s not a very good blog, and it’s missing some important things, like allowing people to comment, or like having titles (every post is titled “Donald J. Trump”), or being able to link to individual posts, but by golly, it’s a blog! A half-assed blog, but a blog nonetheless.

Welcome, Donald! You and I…we’re peers now.

It’s adorable, dude.

Embrace it. Don’t be one of those wankers who insists their blog isn’t a blog. Also don’t try to claim you’ve built a novel social media platform — it’s just an ordinary ol’ blog, just like mine!