The orgy had a happy ending

First thing I had to check in the lab this morning was the status of the spider couples I’d paired off yesterday, one pair seen in this video. I half expected carnage, with the grooms all bled dry and the brides bloated with spider juice.

But no! No deaths at all! All of them were resting quietly, a couple of them were even snuggled up together. It was very sweet. I still separated them all this morning, you know, just in case. After class today I’ll be moving the females into extra-large, roomy, deluxe cages, where they can produce all the egg sacs I could dream of. Don’t tell them, but I’ll need a fresh egg sac soon — I’m going to be popping out eggs and embryos, fixing them, and staining them a few at a time over the next few weeks with DAPI. Anyone got a good DAPI protocol for spiders? Or fruit flies? (This one will probably do. I also see that the embryos at the mid-blastula transition look, in some ways, like good ol’ zebrafish.)

Germ-disc formation in Parasteatoda tepidariorum. A contiguous blastoderm is present at stage 2 of embryonic development. The mid-blastula transition (MBT) is at the end of stage 2 and germ-disc formation needs the onset of zygotic gene expression. The germ-disc is formed by a condensation like mechanism. Cell membranes (red); nuclei (grey circles); perinuclear cytoplasm (black); yolk (yellow). Upper left corner: schematic representation of the cross-section of blastodermal cells (st. 2). Upper right corner: schematic representation of the cross-section of germ-disc cells (st. 4). Lower right corner: schematic representation of the cross-section of an extra-embryonic cell (st. 4). Not to scale

Meanwhile, that other egg sac I’ve had my eye on as being close to emergence is still doing nothing. The biggest difference between Parasteatoda tepidariorum and Steatoda triangulosa that I’m seeing is that P tep develops like lightning while S stri dawdles along. That may be an advantage for me since I have to interleave everything with a fairly robust teaching load.

Girls get growth spurts

This is a fairly trivial change, but I color coded the growth rate data for Steatoda triangulosa (yellow for females, blue for males), and what jumps out at me is how the females so distinctly surged in size above the males. It’s also obvious differences in morphology, with the females developing enormous abdomens and the males looking lean and rangy.

Also, some of the females started out as the smallest of the cohort, but even they started surpassing the males in the last two weeks.
Now, unfortunately, I am summoned to the doctor’s office for more tests (no worries, all routine), which means I have to wait another hour for the answer to the question: did any of those little males survive spending the night with the majestic massive females?

Fortunately, I don’t listen to overpaid athletes’ opinions on physics

Shaquille O’Neal said some incredibly stupid things five years ago, claiming to believe the Earth is flat. Those stories died down a while ago — I suspect a publicist took him aside and explained “Ouyay oundsay ikelay anyay idiotyay, ixnay ethay atflay earthyay BS” — but it has flared up again with recent remarks on a podcast.

The NBA legend, 50, was asked during an appearance on The Kyle & Jackie O Show if his former comments about the conspiracy theory were a “joke” or if he did, in fact, believe the notion to be true.

“It’s a theory,” O’Neal told hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson. “It’s just a theory, they teach us a lot of things. It’s just a theory,” he repeated.

“I flew 20 hours today, not once did I go this way,” O’Neal said, noting he “didn’t tip over” or “go upside down.” He added that he’s also unsure about whether the planet is spinning.

It’s OK. If you don’t mind that I’ll forever after disregard everything you say about anything, just announce that you believe the earth is flat, or only 6000 years old, and I’ll happily file you away in my mental bin labeled “bollocks”. That stuff is so stupid that O’Neal might convince me that basketball must be imaginary.

I think we’ve figured out who Tucker Carlson’s role model is

So that’s where the weird speech patterns come from: Tucker Carlson is Jiminy Glick, fictional comedic character.

It’s uncanny.

The big difference is that Glick didn’t lie as much as Carlson. Science magazine went through the full transcript of one of Carlson’s recent tirades, and almost everything Tucker Carlson said about Anthony Fauci this week was misleading or false. I never watch Carlson’s show, so I had no idea how unhinged and divorced from reality his opinions have become. A taste:

Carlson asserted Fauci had committed very serious crimes and said he apparently engineered the single most devastating event in modern American history. Carlson, infamous for assailing people’s looks, also called Fauci a an even tinier version of the Dalai Lama and a Stalinist midget.

Carlson seems to relish criticisms of his comments, which inevitably draw more attention to him and his show. But at the risk of playing into his hand, Science fact-checked his criticisms of Fauci. The analysis shows Carlson took facts out of context and cited long-debunked studies or reports to attack Fauci. He also repeatedly blamed Fauci and other scientists for changing their minds based on new evidence—the bedrock of scientific progress. In Carlson’s calculus, such reversals equal lying.

Obviously, Fauci has committed no crimes, especially not serious ones, and did not engineer the COVID pandemic (which, I thought, Fox News belittled anyway — now it’s the single most devastating event in modern American history?) His ideas about Fauci’s appearance are his to hold, but I don’t think there’s anything Stalinist about him, and hey, what’s wrong with looking like a Tibetan or being a little person anyway?

The article goes through Carlson’s claims line by line and shows that they’re bogus. It’s astonishing that he’s the flagship commentator for a news organization. It’s almost as if Fox has nothing to do with “news”.

So beautiful…

Biden really is trying to make me vote for him in the next election.

This is big. Really big. Open up all that science, we paid for it! From the White House:

This research, which changes our lives and transforms our world, is made possible by American tax dollars. And yet, these advancements are behind a paywall and out of reach for too many Americans. In too many cases, discrimination and structural inequalities – such as funding disadvantages experienced by minority-serving colleges and institutions – prevent some communities from reaping the rewards of the scientific and technological advancements they have helped to fund. Factors including race, age, disability status, geography, economic background, and gender have historically and systemically excluded some Americans from the accessing the full benefits of scientific research.

To tackle this injustice, and building on the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to advance policy that benefits all of America, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released new policy guidance today to ensure more equitable access to federally funded research. All members of the American public should be able to take part in every part of the scientific enterprise—leading, participating in, accessing, and benefitting from taxpayer-funded scientific research. That is, all communities should be able to take part in America’s scientific possibilities.

What’s Crazy Joe going to do next? Legalize marijuana, create a Universal Basic Income, strip the broadcasting license from Fox News, free university, declare the Age of Aquarius? I like it.

Super Mama Spider

I walked into the lab with some trepidation — I have lots of teaching stuff to do today, and I have one egg sac that is ready to pop, which would require me to spend a fair amount of time pushing baby spiders around and sorting them into vials. Fortunately, no new hatchings today, but look at this! She just won’t stop! (don’t be scared, it’s just one adult spider here, and she’s just a fuzzy blob.)

That’s one, two, three, four, five egg sacs. She made a new one! You can see the one almost about to hatch out on the left — the spiderlings have legs that are darkening up. Then, roughly in the middle, there’s one that’s getting a bit brown, and it’ll probably go in two weeks or so. Then THREE more at earlier stages of development. You can probably see mama in the back, too.

Also, look at all the spider poop on the bottom. It’s about time to do a cage cleaning.

I’ve got a reprieve today, but maybe a cloud of spiderlings to deal with tomorrow, or on Saturday.

Mama’s first generation is doing well, near as I can tell. A few of the females are getting so huge that they can barely move anymore, and now I’m worried that they might be getting egg-bound. Fish get egg-bound, where they are full of eggs, but they can’t get them out and they bloat up and can die horrible deaths. Can spiders get egg-bound? I don’t know. Maybe they’re waiting for a helpful male to fertilize them so they can start producing a third generation of egg sacs.

I might have to introduce some of the boys and girls to each other this weekend and see what happens.

Racist? Or not?

The happy lady at the right is Kim Crockett, a Minnesotan who is running for the office of Secretary of State. I don’t want to rush into any accusations here, but she might be a bit racist. I’ll let you be the judge, and just present the facts.

  • She’s a Republican. I know, I know, but let’s assess the preponderance of the evidence.
  • She’s an election-denier who says the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”.
  • She was dismayed at all the Somalis immigrating to Minnesota. “I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” she was quoted as saying. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.” See? She’s not anti-immigrant. It’s fine if they’re coming from Norway.
  • Now she is concerned about who should be allowed to vote in our elections. “So, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that indeed you can help an unlimited number of people vote if they are disabled or can’t read or speak English, which raises the question: Should they be voting? We can talk about that another time.”

Oh, wait. I think maybe “racist” is an inadequate word to cover the breadth of her bigotry. Never mind.

And she’s running for Secretary of State, the office that oversees our elections! Fortunately, her opponent is a competent DFL guy, Steve Simon, who is going to run right over her in November.

Harnessing the power of spiders to bomb Nazis

This is an unusual story: in WWII, the US government needed the finest, strongest strands of silk for bombsights, so they turned to the Spider Lady, Nan Songer. She was commissioned to extract the silk from spiders and pass it on.

Songer began experimenting with black widows (genus Latrodectus), which produce a silk dragline composed of six strands to stabilize themselves in midair and control their landings. By separating this thread into individual strands with a needle, she achieved the width that the military needed. “The strands were virtually invisible to the naked eye,” Sahara Quinn, a historian and vice president of the Yucaipa Historical Society, tells The Scientist. Yet they carried illumination better than silk from other species, helping the crosshairs stand out against a background.

Through her experiments, Songer also devised a novel technique for extracting silk in greater quantities. She carefully pinned living spiders belly up and then used a hairlike yucca strip to stroke their abdomens until they produced strands, which she collected with a small hook. Using this “silking” technique, Songer was able to harvest reams of silk that she wrapped around frames for transport. The US government quickly became her biggest client; its couriers traveled to Yucaipa with empty briefcases handcuffed to their wrists to prevent theft.

I am impressed. I’ve extracted long silk lines from spiders unintentionally — that part is easy — but then separating them into single strands? I didn’t even know there were 6 strands in a line of silk!

Unfortunately, the process has been replaced with synthetic fibers. Too bad. Retiring to a spider croft where I spend my last days spinning artisan silk was sounding attractive.

Also, the Nazis are all gone now, right?

Wipe it all out, and make the Republicans cry

I’ll have you know I took out student loans for college — it was mid-1970s levels of tuition, but it was still debt — and I also had to work my way through for four years, plus summers spent doing stoop labor to build up some savings. And then I paid it all off with the sweat of my brow, diligently making those quarterly payments, and eventually working my way out from under the burden. It was an obligation! I was loaned that money on specific terms, and I signed a contract!

And now Joe Biden is wiping out $10,000-20,000 of debt per college student with a snap of his fingers? They can just forget about it?

Good. It should be more, but this is a great start.

I don’t have good memories of all the labor I put in just to get the education I wanted. I was going to school to learn biology, not to pick weeds or put in long hours cleaning glassware or scrubbing cat poop out of an animal facility, and really, the job I was training for was not one that would ever pay a big salary, so deferring repayments until I was wealthy was never going to happen. So yeah, give those young folks a break, especially since tuition costs have skyrocketed since my day.

I have no patience for the flurry of outraged Republicans demanding that everyone must suffer as they did (as if they did — I predict that the ones who squawk the loudest are the children of privilege who had Mummy & Daddy pay for everything, and buy them a new car and European vacations on top of that). College ought to be free to everyone. It’s the only way we’re going to educate ourselves out of the mess we find ourselves in.

Additionally…

Those poor losers! You should give more money to some bankers to atone for their suffering.