iNaturalist has been observing me

iNaturalist does this thing where they’ll give you a graphical summary of your contributions in the past year. Here’s mine.

See all the orange? That’s what they use to color-code arachnid observations. I might have a little bit of a bias there, and I have no idea how any birds and mammals crept in there, and I’m afraid plants don’t exist in my universe. Still, despite my narrow focus, I spotted 68 species this year. That’s not at all impressive. Can you name 68 species? Apparently, I can, and I’ve even photographed them.

I’ve been terrible at contributing identifications, that is, helping others by identifying what’s in their photos. I should aspire to do better at that next year.

Maybe I can strive to look at something other than spiders in the coming year, too, although that might be difficult, since they’re not as interesting.

Incredible! A Republican held accountable?

I know it’s hard to believe, but George Santos has been expelled from congress.

By a vote of 311-114, the House voted to expel Santos, with 206 Democrats and 105 Republicans voting for expulsion, and two Democrats and 112 Republicans voting against it. This was just the sixth time in U.S. history that the House has expelled one of its own and the first time the House has done so without a criminal conviction, though Santos doesn’t dispute that he lied about most of his resume. (He does, however, dispute that he broke the law, despite the 23 criminal counts against him and substantial evidence in his indictment—as well as an Ethics report released two weeks ago—that detailed a number of alleged legal violations.)

As members voted on Santos’ removal, the serial fabulist was in and out of the chamber, at one point leaving, and then reappearing with his coat draped over his shoulders to watch the finally tally and shake hands with certain members.

It is revealing, though, that lying on your CV and misappropriating campaign funds can get you expelled, but enabling pedophiles and committing statutory rape, as people like Jordan and Gaetz have done, doesn’t even get you a slap on the wrist, and the ethical standards of the Supreme Court are a joke. It’s the money that matters.

Space Scam

There is a company claiming to be opening a hotel in space — a great big spinning wheel like the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are a few clues that it’s actually a great big fake.

The first is that they claim that they’ll be opening the first hotel in 2025. You know, sometime within the next two years? Only they don’t have a lick of work done on the project yet.

Then they claim they’ll be opening a second, even larger space hotel in 2027. The first will accommodate 28 guests (or is it 280? The number varies with the source) and the second will house 400.

The rooms will be luxurious. This is far bigger than any cabin on an earthbound cruise ship.

So much room! Such big windows! Such thin walls separating you from the cold vacuum and hard radiation of space!

The founder of the company, John Blincow, is a former airline pilot, lacking any training in the sciences or engineering. He seems to have spent the last 20 years founding companies with big dreams that don’t do anything.

The company seems to have scaled down their promises. Their old ad copy says the goal is to build a space station-shaped hotel near a Disney theme park. That was in 2021. They don’t seem to have done it.

The original company seems to make money, not from engineering, but from computer dating.

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The new company, Orbital Assembly, seems to change their name fairly regularly. There’s nothing on their web page about a space hotel, but they did get a $1.7 million contract from the Space Force to build something. Communications gear? It’s kind of fuzzy.

Somehow, this “space hotel” gets promoted in newspaper articles/ads (hard to tell them apart) every year for the last few years. The latest was just a month ago, still making the same incredible claims every time, and always with the same opening year.

Scammers gotta scam, but it’s still appalling how news media, from CNN to Business Insider to MSN, are falling for it. Maybe they’ll get competent editors someday.

P.S. They’re also suggesting that a weekend stay in a space hotel would cost about $5 million. No mention of funeral costs, cancer treatments after the visit, etc. That’s all extra.

The day is ruined

I got up at 4:30am, went straight to work and hammered out the exam & exam key for my students, and prepped my lecture for today. I was on fire, gettin’ stuff done, and then I made coffee and decided to whip up a breakfast burrito, as one does.

I am out of hot sauce.

What is the point of our existence anyway? Nothing matters. We come from the void, we go into the void. Why did I get out of bed? Why am I here? There is nothingness all around me.

It could have been worse

News from the Florida GOP:

Christian Ziegler, Florida’s GOP chairman and husband of Sarasota County School Board member and Moms of Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is under criminal investigation after a woman filed a complaint with the Sarasota Police Department alleging the longtime Republican official had raped her, according to a heavily redacted police report obtained by the Florida Trident.

The complaint was filed on October 4 and the alleged sexual battery occurred inside the woman’s home in Sarasota on October 2, according to the report. Among the few words that went unredacted in the report are “rape” and “sexual assault complaint.”

The woman, according to sources close to the investigation, alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a longstanding consensual three-way sexual relationship prior to the incident. The incident under investigation by Sarasota police occurred when Christian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, without Bridget Ziegler present, the sources conveyed.

At least this time, everyone involved was a full-grown adult.

Elon Musk is such a tough guy

Xitter is currently facing an advertiser boycott, all because Musk has been promoting, and contributing to, a culture of racism, misogyny, and hate. It was his anti-Semitic remarks that finally kicked me in the pants and convinced me I had to leave the platform. He’s mad about it now. He’s blaming the advertisers.

This is what happens when the richest person on Earth overdoses on redpills. A clammy, twitchy, agitated Elon Musk took the stage at The New York Times’ DealBook summit today and told former Twitter advertisers to “Go f*ck yourself.”

“Don’t advertise,” Musk told the brands who left because of Musk’s bizarre and offensive tweets. He jutted his chin and spoke in a clipped, more prominent-than-usual Afrikaans accent. His eyes glinted and snapped with aggression.

“You don’t want them to advertise?” asked the host, incredulously.

“No,” said Musk, turning his head and jutting his chin again.

“What do you mean?” asked the host.

Musk stuttered, then blurted, “If somebody tries to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*ck yourself.”

The nonplussed host stammered, “But–”

Musk interrupted and said in a tight, robotic voice accompanied by stiff gesticulations, “GO. F*CK. YOURSELF. Is that clear?” he said, whipping his head back toward the host.

“I hope it is,” he added. He waved to the audience and said, “Hi, Bob,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger. “I’m sure you’re in the audience.”

This is madness. The man runs a social media company that makes money by selling advertising — it would be wonderful if someone came up with an alternative scheme, but Musk isn’t doing that. Instead, he’s telling all the people who would buy his product to go fuck themselves, all while acting like an angry five-year-old bully. Look for yourselves: does this seem to be a stable, mature, responsible grown-up?

He’s even saying that if his company goes belly-up and fails, then “Earth” will blame the advertisers and not the incompetent CEO/owner.

Yeah, you go on telling yourself that. I’m saying that it’s all the fault of the guy who decided single-handedly to shape the culture to be tolerant of racists.

Frivolous space tourism?

I was booking flights to Seattle this morning, a fairly short hop away from Minneapolis, when I saw another interesting destination: a new planetary system only 100 light years away, HD 110067. United and Delta didn’t have any flights to that exotic destination, and I don’t think I can squeeze the trip into my 3 week break, unfortunately.

It looks like an interesting but impractical place to visit, in so many ways. Six planets, ranging in size between 1.94 and 2.85 Earth radii, so probably a bit of a workout to take a stroll, and you couldn’t walk there anyway, with surface temperatures between 170 and 525°C. The atmospheres are mostly hydrogen, so breathing will be tough.

The interesting thing is that they’r all whipping around their star at a rapid rate — their years vary between 9 and 55 Earth days. I’m getting dizzy imagining it.

Also, all six are in resonant orbits, which I guess isn’t totally surprising since they’re so close to each other in such tight orbits around their star.

Maybe if I wait until summer break I’ll have time enough to visit? It’s not very practical, but it does look like a fascinating novelty star system.

He’s done: Rebecca Watson takes on Avi Loeb

Loeb gets a quick filleting from Rebecca.

I know exactly how Loeb would respond, if he were to even notice, because he posted a rant 4 days ago.

The culture of superficial toxicity poses an existential threat to curiosity-driven innovation in science. This culture is fueled by social-media mobs, whose members use the megaphone of blogs and tweets to amplify hate towards professional scientists who are following the traditional practice of evidence-based research. Why would the critics do that? Because of jealousy at the public’s attention to novel ideas.

One might naively argue that there is nothing to worry about because scientific innovation was always about “survival of the fittest” in the realm of ideas. However, the professional test of innovative ideas is empirical evidence, and following it requires extensive work. In contrast, the opinion of superficial critics is easier to come by. It involves raising ash and claiming that they do not see anything. Toxic critics often use personal attacks to nip innovation in the bud. They poison the well of novel ideas by creating fear among young scholars who, as a result of witnessing trauma, hesitate to come up with new ideas because of the damaging repercussions to their job prospects.

Snrk. The traditional practice of evidence-based research and empirical evidence — things Loeb does not have. Evidence always has a context and a theoretical foundation. You can’t just pull something out of your ass, hold it up, and claim you’ve found evidence for your astonishing radical idea, and that’s basically what he’s got: he pulled up some tiny metallic spheres from the sea floor, and is claiming that they came from a meteor that wasn’t even of extrasolar origin, and he can’t even say with confidence that they came from a meteor at all, especially given that expert analysis suggests that it’s from terrestrial coal ash.

Man, I suspect that every night Loeb goes to bed angry and has a tough time getting to sleep because he’s busy building resentful retorts in his head.