I did it, but you didn’t make me do it! So I didn’t really do it.

Jordan Peterson had his Twitter account suspended over a bigoted tweet, and he insisted that he’d never delete it, you sons of bitches.

Guess what? He deleted it, finally. But he did it in the most petulant, childish way possible.

If you can’t see right through his game, you might just be stupid enough to be a Jordan Peterson fan.

Spider journalism isn’t great

I knew it all along. What I read in the popular press about spiders seems to be a lot of spook stories — it isn’t news unless it reaffirms peoples’ fears. I’ve wondered how bad the reporting is, and now it’s been quantified: a bit less than half are sensationalist. That’s slightly better than my impression, but still awful.

Overall, the quality of the reporting was poor: 47% of all articles contained one or more errors and 43% were sensationalist. Stories with photos of spiders or alleged bites were more likely to be sensationalized, as were stories that contained errors. Whereas quotes from medical or other experts were unrelated to sensationalism, stories that contained quotes from spider experts were much LESS likely to be sensationalized.

If it bleeds, it leads — or if it has fangs, too many legs and eyes, and is venomous, it justifies a freak-out on page 3. What to do about that?

We next conducted an analysis to describe the flow of spider news stories around the world and to get at what may be driving the spread of (mis)information about spiders online. Unsurprisingly, countries with shared languages and with higher proportions of internet users were more likely to be connected in the global network. The number of medically important spider species present (i.e., those capable of harming and potentially killing humans) also increased the connectedness of individual countries within the network. Most notably, we identified sensationalism as a key factor underlying the spread of (mis)information.

This study provides insight into what drives the global flow of information about spiders in particular, but can also teach us some more general lessons. Our results make us optimistic because they suggest a way to improve reporting on spiders, and in turn, to shift the quality and spread of online information more broadly. News stories are less sensationalized when they consult appropriate experts, and reducing sensationalism can help decrease spread of misinformation. We found that even local-scale events published by regional news outlets can quickly become broadcast internationally, which means improving news quality at the local scale can have positive effects that travel through the global network.

Journalists, you know you can pick up your phone and call your local university or extension service and contact someone knowledgeable about the species you’re planning to libel, right? It’s not hard, it makes your story better, and it doesn’t compromise your integrity. It would be less lurid and melodramatic, though.

Besides, everyone knows that spiders are really cute and playful.

Bad money drives out good, again

This was the Renaissance Center in Dickson, Tennessee. It was supposed to be an educational resource.

The Jackson Foundation created The Renaissance Center in 1999, four years after the foundation was started with the stated mission to “motivate and educate children and adults through the use of technology in the area of the arts, science and humanities.”

It took some tornado damage a year ago, but was still used to house a community college, a branch campus of Freed-Hardeman college, a planetarium, and various other properties, like a dinner theater.

No more. It’s been bought by David Rives Ministries, and they plan to put some kind of creation museum in there. Yuck.

Who, you may wonder, is David Rives? He’s a baby-faced turdlet who achieved some minor celebrity as an evangelical Christian and columnist for — Jesus, it still exists? — World Net Daily. Apparently, being a Christian fraud associated with conspiracy theories and far right politics is a recipe for riches.

Rives is the kind of guy who claims gravity is in, and only makes sense in the context of, the Bible. He’s a grinning simpleton who calls himself an amateur astronomer while rejecting most of the evidence of astronomy — he’d be laughable if he wasn’t such a goofy little gomer who mostly inspires pity.

Yet somehow he acquired the many millions of dollars needed to buy a local educational institution, spend many more millions of dollars to renovate it, and is planning to rip out anything of value inside and turn it into a collection of lies and religious bullshit.

Plans for The Wonders Center & Science Museum include replicas of life-size dinosaurs, hands-on experiments for children, space-themed exhibits, and a rare historical collection of artifacts, including ancient Biblical scrolls.

I bet he’s going to make it tax-exempt, too.

It’s less than 350 miles from Ken Ham’s parasitic fake museum, and Rives has already fired a shot across AiG’s bows, claiming it will be the largest museum of its kind. I do hope they parasitize each other’s clientele and crash and burn.

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.