Since we were talking about antiquated, largely wrong metrics built on Victorian bullshit, here’s an appropriate video from Katy Stoll on BMI.
I think it’s generally true that any attempt to reduce an individual’s existence to a single, simple number is always going to be wrong.
These are cute. “Loessbians” — clever.
We biologists have always been allies.
That is a hate symbol aimed directly at me.
I knew the Supreme Court was corrupt, but they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. Their recent decision to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people was a total sham, in violation of basic principles even I, a legal ignoramus, recognize as baseless.
But what makes this clown show even worse is that the complaint at the heart of 303 Creative v. Elenis is completely made up. In Masterpiece, there really was a baker who really did discriminate against a gay couple, creating both standing and a fact pattern to discuss in court. With 303 Creative, however, the “facts” justifying the case are all make-believe. The plaintiff, Lorie Smith, sued on the grounds that she doesn’t want to make wedding websites for same-sex couples. But no one had actually requested that she do so, for one simple reason: She didn’t make wedding websites. Her lawsuit was purely hypothetical. Legally, she shouldn’t have had a right to sue at all.
To get around the fact that their client had no right to sue, ADF claimed she had received an inquiry from a man named “Stewart” who had some vague questions about maybe hiring 303 Creative in the future for a wedding to “Mike.” But it appears that the entire story may be fabricated. Melissa Gira Grant of the New Republic contacted Stewart, using the email and phone number included in the lawsuit. He denies having sent that request, pointing out that he is already married, to a woman.
Who needs facts anymore? Just make up any ol’ story you want, demand justice, and this Supreme Court will invent an excuse for you, as long as it aligns with their biases. I wasn’t surprised to learn that this particular decision was authored by Gorsuch, who is always happy to lie to promote his religious agenda.
This isn’t even the first opinion Gorsuch has written based on made-up “facts.” Last term, Gorsuch ruled in favor of a football coach who wanted to lead prayers at a public high school, in direct violation of the First Amendment. To get to the desired outcome, both Gorsuch flat-out lied about the situation. Gorsuch claims the coach merely “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.” That, and this cannot be stated firmly enough, is a lie. As Sotomayor noted in her dissent, the coach actually held showy prayers at the 50-yard line during games. He made such a spectacle that “[m]embers of the public rushed the field to join Kennedy, jumping fences to access the field and knocking over student band members.” She even included helpful pictures, which is unusual in a dissent, to illustrate what a lying liar Gorsuch is.
The court is illegitimate and needs to be dissolved. Expect it to instead litter the law with phony precedents that will poison justice for years to come.
Good. Can they die a little faster, please?
I always felt that living in Utah was like living in a nest of Scientologists — all this money-making scheming plastered over with a veneer of florid scripture written by a mountebank. I wouldn’t miss it if it disappeared altogether.
That’s nothing special about Mormonism, though. Look! All religions in the USA are dying slowly.
There are many factors behind this decline. Here’s one:
Meanwhile, the church’s close alliance with the GOP might be costing it members. As Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell, who was raised Mormon, told me, “There’s an allergic reaction among many Americans — particularly those who lean to the left politically — when religion and politics mix. We see it among Catholics. We see it among evangelicals. And we’re seeing it among Mormons.”
It gets messy when you include politics, though: the Republicans have become increasingly cult-like. That’s the next religion that needs to go!
As mentioned, my task for this morning was murdering spiders. Mission accomplished, and now I feel terrible.
It was a simple procedure. I put the vials of happy gamboling spiders into the refrigerator to calm them down and numb them — I gave them about 15 minutes of chill. Then I went into each vial with a paintbrush and teased them out, and they descended into a tube of icy, pre-cooled alcohol, where they died within minutes. Now their bodies are packed into a freezer, awaiting delivery to the person who will chop them up.
The worst part was going through the assortment of spiders in the colony and having to choose which ones would die.
You have to understand that this was the very first time I’ve had to kill an adult spider. I’ve been wiping out embryos right and left, and I’ve had adults die of natural causes — but actually terminating their existence by my hand? Unpleasant. I like my spiders lively and interesting. I’m a biologist, not a necrologist.
That’s the topic of our next podish-sortacast:
I think the August topic might have to be “Spelling”.
It’s some kind of national holiday celebrating our independence, but I don’t feel like celebrating in a country where justice has been deposed and our supreme court is nothing but a corrupt arm of the far right Federalist Society. So instead I’m going to murder spiders.
I’ve got a set of wild-caught Steatoda triangulosa, and another set of wild-caught Parasteatoda, and yet more long-term lab-fed S. triangulosa, and they’re all going to feel the kiss of cold 95% ethanol before being stashed in a freezer. Then this weekend they get delivered to a collaborator up north who will disembowel them and sequence their microbiome.
That’s how we celebrate America’s birthday around here.
Also this weekend, we’re going to visit a few cemeteries around Gary, Minnesota and check out the graves of some long-dead relatives, and do some sight-seeing of great-great-great grandparents’ old haunts, while also chasing down a few spiders. It seems appropriate.
One of our goals this summer is to map out the developmental stages of our embryonic spiders, and to that end we made our first crude, short timelapse recording this afternoon. Aren’t twitching baby animals so cute?
