This afternoon, I tried to sort out the newly emerged Bold Jumper spiderlings, with limited success. Unfortunately, they were faster and more eager to flee than I expected. I got most of them, but a few are now living in my house.
(The video will premiere tomorrow at 4pm, so you’ll have to wait to see it. Or if you’re a Patreon subscriber you can see it now.)
Quakers are just one step removed from humanists, but with an even greater commitment to social justice. I like that, although I could never join a group with any vestige of god-belief. Still, I appreciate them.
The Quakers in Britain have been promoting equality and tolerance for a long, long time, to the point where one subgroup has split off and formed their own little sect, Sex Matters to Quakers, which is associated with a broader group called LGB Christians. Notice the missing “T” — they’re one of those groups that makes a special point of not recognizing trans people. It’s like supporting Black Lives Matter except for the Senegalese (I have no problem with Senegal, I just picked a random African nation), which really just says you’re bigoted against one group. You’re still a bigot. I don’t like these Quakers.
We reached a point about three years ago when there were enough of us to attempt to become a ‘Quaker recognised body’. Our primary aims were to bring Quaker members and attenders together: to speak truth to power, that is, biological truth to gender-ideological power; and to state that women are adult human females and men are adult human males.
SMtQ fired off a letter to their parent organization protesting the existence of trans-inclusive restrooms, which is another signal that they are not good people. The Quakers in Britain got the letter, which was also broadcast all over the place, and so the Quakers responded with a long letter rejecting their request. It’s a good letter, maybe a bit over-long, but thorough in shutting down the protest. I’ll pull out a few points that I thought were particularly clear.
• Deliberate misgendering of a person is transphobia.
• Referring to trans women as men is transphobia.
• Assuming a trans person poses a risk simply for being trans is transphobic.
• Stating that trans men are vulnerable and “groomed” into transition is a
transphobic trope.
• References to “trans activism” as anything other than the legitimate effort to
protect and advocate for the rights of people who are trans or non-binary is
transphobic.
• Alleging that Quakers have been “infiltrated” by trans activists is a transphobic
conspiracy theory and we are particularly offended by it.
• The notion that supporting and advocating for the safety, wellbeing, and
inclusion of trans people could be damaging to the Religious Society’s
reputation, or even “might be the thing that finally destroys them” is shocking
and dangerous. It is fearmongering, threatening, and extreme.
It concludes with a statement of principle that I can agree with.
“As Britain Yearly Meeting, we have minuted commitments in recent years: to care for our planet, to become an anti-racist church, to make reparations for historical injustices, to welcome and affirm those who are transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse. Much work has been done on all these by some individual Friends and Quaker meetings, as well as by our yearly meeting staff and committees. However, some have disagreed with the actions and approaches of others. This has been a cause of pain and anguish. We have heard in ministry that the strength of a church lies in how it is able to disagree with itself. In Quaker discernment, unity is not the same as unanimity. Minority views may well continue to exist. Among ourselves, we need to find kinder ground for our disagreements.
Can we find joy? Can we bring joy?”
You go, Quakers! Excepting those weirdos among you.
It’s Friday, feeding day in the lab, and I went in this morning to throw wingless flies and mealworms at the horde, all the Steatoda borealis and Latrodectus mactans. I also have one adorable little Bold Jumper, Phidippus audax, that I keep around not because I have experiments in mind, but because she’s cute. Jumping spiders are always adorable. Of course I have to feed her, too.
I tossed in a mealworm, which she instantly devoured, when I noticed…hey, what are all these little dark dots all over the place? She had a silky refuge that she often disappeared into, and now I know that she was nurturing an egg sac. I hadn’t seen it, but apparently it popped in the last day or two.
Here’s a baby Bold Jumper.
Suddenly, I have lots. I put a whole lot of fruit flies into the container to keep them entertained for now…later I’ll have to separate them out into vials.
Donald Trump is clearly not healthy — the rapid cognitive decline, his terrible appearance, I can believe he’s going to be dead in the next few years, or so incapable of doing his job that he’ll have to be declared incompetent and replaced. I wouldn’t be as certain as Rick Wilson (who I don’t trust anyway), but we may see an abrupt change of leadership before his term in office is over.
“Trump is dying” and “Vance knows,” according to conservative strategist Rick Wilson.
Conservative anti-Trump activist Rick Wilson, who co-founded the Lincoln Project and hosts the group’s podcast, has written extensively about Donald Trump. On Friday, the strategist declared that the president is indeed dying.
“Slow or fast, he’s headed down,” Wilson wrote, adding that there are “rumors” about what comes next. “Rumors from the Trumpverse are that the circle who knows what’s up is very, very small and very, very paranoid.”
It’s a possibility and a scary one.
Who has seen The Death of Stalin? If you haven’t, check it out: it portrays the mad scramble for power among a gang of selfish, incompetent boobs when the Great Leader suddenly died. That may be the United States in the near future.
JD Vance has made an announcement.
Vice President JD Vance has now made an unexpected statement regarding President Donald Trump’s health, stating he is ready to take over at any time.
On August 27, 2025, Vice President JD Vance declared himself prepared to step into the role of president should President Donald Trump’s health falter, a statement that has reignited speculation about Trump’s physical condition and the future of his administration.
Vance, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, confidently stated, “I’m ready to step up if, God forbid, anything happens to the president,” addressing concerns raised by Trump’s recent diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) and ongoing controversies surrounding his leadership.
I wonder how Trump is reacting to his lackeys’ publicly salivating at the prospect of his demise.
Within a month, we’ll know definitively what causes some forms of autism. RFK jr says so.
We’re finding certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism,Kennedy said.We’re going to be able to address those in September.
That’s a bolt out of the blue. These kinds of conditions are difficult to research, and we’d expect to hear that kind of announcement in scientific papers and presentations at meetings, rather than at Trump’s regular ego-stroking sessions with his cabinet.
It’s also surprising since this is the state of our knowledge, according to the NIH:
Scientists don’t know exactly what causes autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Autism was first described in the 1940s, but very little was known about it until the last few decades. Even today, there is a great deal that we don’t know about autism.
Because the disorder is so complex and no two people with autism are exactly alike, there are probably many causes for autism. It is also likely that there is not a single cause for autism, but rather that it results from a combination of causes.
So the NIH doesn’t know, but RFK jr does. But then, the NIH is a hollow shell of a scientific institution, since they appointed an anti-vax hack, Jay Bhattacharya, to run it, and since they canceled approved grants right and left. I don’t think the answer is coming from the NIH.
Maybe the CDC has been working on it? I don’t think so. RFK jr has taken a wrecking ball to that organization, firing its director, and seeing senior leaders resigning.
The ongoing chaos at the CDC reached its breaking point Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported in the afternoon that Monarez was being ousted just four weeks into taking over the role, a decision later announced by HHS on its X page. Over the next few hours, four senior staff members, including the CDC’s chief medical officer Debra Houry, turned in their resignation notice. Some of the members posted their resignation letters online, including Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
I don’t know where RFK jr is getting his revelations, but I do know that in science, it’s not just the answer you get, but how you get that answer, and he’s not only failing to show the trail followed to arrive at his answer, but is actively working to obscure the methods behind his conclusions.
As a guess, I suspect that the big announcement in September will be that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has been disproven over and over again.
By the way, he went on to claim that windmills are “wiping out the whale population” in the Atlantic. He’s just pandering to the crooked mafioso at the head of the table, so expect more of that in September.
Mary found this lovely lady hiding in the shrubbery — it’s the shamrock orbweaver, Araneus trifolium, and it was sheltered inside a folded leaf stitched together with silk.
In case you were wondering how big it is…
Thumbnail sized.
A stupid man
Do you like NASA and space research? Sorry, it’s all going away. The man in charge is not qualified, as if that is any surprise.
Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA for a little more than a month, has vowed to make the United States great in space.
With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already had a lot on his plate, serving as the secretary of transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies.
Sean Duffy is not the right person to run just about anything. My brain shut down at “reality TV star”.
What he’s planning to do is worrisome.
Nevertheless, Duffy is putting his imprint on the space agency, seeking to emphasize the agency’s human exploration plans, including the development of a lunar base, and ending NASA’s efforts to study planet Earth and its changing climate.
Putting humans in space? Robots do it better. Let’s not look at the damage the Trump administration is doing to the Earth — turn off the satellites that are looking at the planet.
Another mass killing, this time at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. It was horrifying: the killer opened fire at a group of kids in the school, killing two and injuring 17 before they killed themselves. No more horrifying than every other school/church/public killing with freely available weapons, but one thing will enrage the right wing: the shooter was a trans woman.
It’s more complicated than that, though, although we are already getting the usual fingerpointing at everything but the gun culture.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also confirmed the identity of the suspect, calling Westman a “deranged monster.”
“This level of violence is unthinkable. Our deepest prayers are with the children, parents, families, educators, and Christians everywhere. We mourn with them, we pray for healing, and we will never forget them,” Noem said in a statement.
Yeah, they were a bad person who committed a deeply evil act, but quit pretending it’s unthinkable: it happens all the time, it’s become routine, and all we’re ever supposed to do is “pray”…which never works. We don’t know why the killer snapped, but there is evidence that this was the end result of long-festering issues in this person’s life.
Two videos, posted Wednesday morning and since removed by YouTube, show someone flipping through dozens of pages of notes dated over the course of several months, which include what appears to be doodles of weapons, middle fingers, and expletives. There are also repeated references to killing.
The videos, which depict handwritten journals and a display of high-powered weaponry, paint a portrait of a person with a rambling and deeply nihilistic outlook, according to analyses by law enforcement and ABC News.
The writings in the notebooks and on the firearms, which are written in a blend of Cyrillic alphabet, English and other languages, indicate a series of grievances, anger and ideations of harm to self and to others.
The writings also appear to show overt references to other high-profile school shootings and shooters.
In one notebook, there is a sticker that says “defend equality” with an LGBTQIA flag, overlaid with a gun. A gun also has writings against Israel.
Taking up a full page of a notebook is a hand-drawn birdseye view of the inside of a church with pews. The drawing appears to show the interior layout of Annunciation Church.
In one of the videos the shooter refers to personal depression and apologizes to family members.
“Depression,” “nihilistic,” “grievances” and “repeated references to killing”. This person needed serious help. Were they given any? From this article it’s not clear.
Their mother was retired from a job at the Catholic church, and they’re clearly obsessed with the church, given that they targeted it. I came away from reading about them feeling that a significant problem here was conflict with the church’s position. Maybe rather than blaming transness for the shooting, we should consider Catholicism to be the problem?
Nah, this was a crisis that can’t be pinned to one single cause. Trust me on this though: the media will blame anything but easy access to guns and hateful religious beliefs.
Someone named Dewey took exception to my article about a prison being reopened, and quickly fired off a “rebuttal”.
Aw, cry more. Criminals belong in prisons. People who illegally enter homes belong in prison. People who illegally enter businesses belong in prison. People who illegally enter the country belong in prison.
Sure, criminals belong in prison. Listing crimes that get people arrested doesn’t impress me. By the way, he forgot “People who riot and commit violence against the police and vandalize the US Capitol belong in prison.” Or “People who rape women and sexually harass young women belong in prison.” The problem is that these penalties are not justly applied.
Also, people are allowed to enter the country and, for instance, apply for residence or for asylum. Just being in the country doesn’t make a person a criminal.
I’m sure you’d love to completely eliminate the prison system and switch to the honor system, but you’re not in charge, thankfully. Obama was a rockstar who deported over 3 million illegal aliens and did so without the nebulous “due process” you liberals love to whine about.
I’m not lobbying to completely eliminate prisons, but do find it wasteful to reopen prisons that were declared redundant and shuttered over a decade ago. Why reopen a prison unless you’re planning to throw more people into it, in a country with declining levels of crime?
“Due process” is not nebulous. It’s a specific legal process that requires that the state demonstrate criminality and give the accused an opportunity to present their case in court.
Trump probably isn’t competent enough to get even close to that record level of deportations, but any number helps. Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly. You’re going the way of the dinosaurs. It would be best that you accept that fact.
Why should I accept the fact that injustices are being done? I will oppose them to the end.
I was feeling a bit robust this morning, and managed to hobble all the way out to the backyard, where I could explore the fauna thriving there. Mary was hovering at my elbow to make sure I didn’t topple over, but I did OK — another week or two, and I might be going on real walks (as long as I don’t do anything stupid.) Things I saw that made me happy:
We spotted two monarch butterflies flitting over the garden. No photos, though, they didn’t land and pose for me.
The place is hopping with grasshoppers, which, while not normally associated with good gardens, is fine with me — the purpose of the garden is making spider food, not tomatoes. Mary may disagree with me.
Oh, and it was so bright. I’m not used to that anymore.
We also had lots of interesting pollinators, like this two-spotted longhorn bee.
Of course, the queen of the garden, the devourer of grasshoppers, the true monarch, was Argiope trifasciata.
It’s a fine crop, and congratulations to Mary on her superlative gardening skills. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it to the front yard to see what wonders flourish there.
