It may be cold out there, but this is fake

So stop sending it to me!

I have no idea how that could have formed naturally, but the first big clue that it’s fake is the lack of provenance. The second clue is the shape of the capture lines — this was made by someone who never really looked at an orb web. A third clue is that when you look for where it came from, you discover that it’s cropped to remove the ice sculpture of a giant spider at the bottom. Or you find that an entomologist had already debunked it.

Good morning, omicron!

We’ve got the omicron variant in Minnesota.

Minnesota has the second confirmed case of omicron COVID-19 variant in the United States, after California announced the nation’s first confirmed case on Wednesday. The Minnesota resident tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 24, shortly after attending an anime convention at the Javits Center.

The Minnesota Department of Health says they confirmed the presence of the omicron variant Wednesday afternoon. They say the man, who lives in Hennepin County, is quarantining at home. He experienced mild symptoms and is recovering. The man “most likely” contracted the variant in New York, authorities said.

This is not grounds for panic. We don’t know enough about the omicron variant to get too worked up about it — it may be a bit nastier than the delta variant, but if you’ve been vaccinated, it’s probably not going to affect you directly. Of course, that’s only the case if you’re some kind of weird Libertarian hermit with no friends who has retreated from society. The rest of us should be concerned about our unvaccinated (for any reason) loved ones, or other contributing members of our communities.

What does worry me is that this is a symptom of our lackadaisical approach to dealing with a worldwide pandemic. It’s like our health care system is an old car that we maintain poorly — sure, there’s some rust on the body, and the muffler is held in place with a twist of wire, and the engine makes a funny noise when it first turns over in the morning, but it would cost money to patch it up, and it still runs, so we can ignore it for a few more months or years. So what if it just now started leaking oil? It’s fine.

New variants are what you get when you let the virus run rampant in large segments of the population, when you slack off on basic preventive measures, and when you figure I’ve got mine, so what if there isn’t enough vaccine in India or Bulgaria or whatever — that’s not our problem. Until it is.

Four day weekends are a lie

I’m still recovering from mine. These long weekends are a trap: you decide that hey, I can take a day or two off to play with a three year old or something similarly harmless, but the trick is that the work doesn’t stop flowing over the transom and through the keyhole and under the door, and suddenly you realize on the third day that you weren’t actually supposed to stop working when you find yourself buried up to the nostrils in obligations. The last couple of days have been ugly, frantic efforts to catch back up, and today I find myself back where I started, with the worst over with and just the usual accumulation of too-much-to-do.

I’m never going to fall for the myth of the long weekend ever again. It’s how they get you.

Two weeks until the semester ends. Or, that is, until I stop piling assignments on the students and the work comes home to roost on my desk (Christmas break: also a lie.)

My new holiday greeting

I’m gearing up for the Christmas season.

Other steps: smashing the radio so I don’t have to suffer with those damn Christmas carols. Digging up my Santa hat so I can wander the streets of Morris telling excited children that I’ll be bringing them spiders. It’s a good time of year to be a curmudgeon.

I’ve got my booster shot, have you?

While we’re possibly out visiting family and friends on this traditional family holiday, I hope you’ve done what is necessary to protect yourself.

Also keep in mind that we’re probably going to see a surge of infection among the unvaccinated in a few weeks. Stay home if you aren’t up-to-date on the vaccines.

Some loss of privacy accompanies being a public figure

Explain something to me.

Doxxing is bad, OK? If someone doesn’t want their identity published, you should respect their privacy.

Death threats are bad, OK? As someone who has received many, I can assure you, you shouldn’t do that. If I get a death threat, it doesn’t justify me making them. Or you. Unfortunately, there are bad people in every group who are quick to rage.

So, JK Rowling accuses people of doxxing her and sending her death threats. That’s bad, OK? I don’t think the death threats are legitimate grounds to complain about a whole group, like trans men and women. Some of them are assholes, obviously, but the majority would never do that, just as the fact that some cis people threaten trans folk does not imply that all cis people are murderous monsters. Just some of them.

But the doxxing accusation baffles me. The protesters — 3 whole people — took a photo of themselves that included her house in the background. She’s turning that into an accusation. I don’t get it.

Here’s a whole photo essay published in the Mirror. Photographs inside and out of her $2.2 million pound Killiechassie estate near Edinburgh. Is that doxxing?

Here’s a breathless video tour of her Killiechassie estate. It’s kind of terrible, just using publicly available video, and also the narrator pronounces Edinburgh “eden-berg”. Is that doxxing?

All of her homes are discussed in this Wikipedia article, including the dates she bought them, when she applied for remodeling permits, it’s pretty detailed (not that I care at all). Did Wikipedia dox her?

I think this is nothing but a case of a TERF reaching for victimhood status again, while also grasping at a cudgel to harm the transes.