He’s gone full-on hate monger.
I’ll also post the transcript here tomorrow evening.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
He’s gone full-on hate monger.
I’ll also post the transcript here tomorrow evening.
Next time some Libertarian tries to convince you that the government should not be involved in charity, let the churches do it instead, tell them to read this article about the Mormon church.
Near the start of the pandemic, in a gentrifying neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah, visitors from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived at Danielle Bellamy’s doorstep. They were there to have her read out loud from the Book of Mormon, watch LDS videos and set a date to get baptized, all of which she says the church was requiring her to do in exchange for giving her food.
Bellamy, desperate for help, had tried applying for cash assistance from the state of Utah. But she’d been denied for not being low-income enough, an outcome that has become increasingly common ever since then-President Bill Clinton signed a law, 25 years ago, that he said would end “welfare as we know it.”
State employees then explicitly recommended to Bellamy that she ask for welfare from the church instead, she and her family members said in interviews.
Get that? State employees told her to go to a church, and the church sent missionaries to her home.
She is not a Mormon.
She refused to get baptized as a Mormon.
So the church denied her the aid she needed.
It’s a shame. Utah is a beautiful state, but the Mormons have poisoned everything. I lived there for a few years, but would not go back.
Oh boy, Minneapolis-St Paul is bracing itself for a sudden surge.
Steps from an interstate and minutes from an airport sits a nondescript building with a tenant never more in demand.
Whole Woman’s Health is one of the nation’s largest independent abortion providers, and the location of its Minnesota clinic is no accident.
“Some patients may fly, some may prefer to drive. So being near the highways that we are and the airport in Bloomington gives patients the most options available,” said Sharon Lau, Midwest advocacy director for Whole Woman’s Health Alliance.
Lau says the clinic is bracing for an influx of patients from states with more restrictive abortion laws than Minnesota after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and enabled states to determine abortion access.
Planned Parenthood of Minnesota tells CNN that on Monday, the first business day after the Supreme Court decision, it received its highest call volume ever — an increase of 50% — with many of the calls coming from out-of-state.
This is hitting at a difficult time, when medical services are already strapped nationwide by a pandemic people have been trying to pretend doesn’t exist.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to handle the increase,” Stoesz said. “There is already a healthcare worker shortage and we’ve been struggling with that since the beginning of the pandemic. That hasn’t gone away.”
Stoesz expects an increase in the use of the abortion pill as an initial solution, “because appointments are going to be difficult to get,” she said.
Whenever I feel stressed about my occupation of teaching and the risks therein, I just have to remind myself that it could be worse — I could be working in healthcare. Yikes.
I know I was worried about feeding my spiders — they’re so tiny, 1.2mm long, and fruit flies are huge, maybe 3 times that size — so some of you must have been worried. Also, don’t worry, no photos in this post.
I went in to the lab to feed them this afternoon, and I shouldn’t have been concerned. Every one had fiendish, cunning traps strung across their containers, and when I tossed a fly in, they were on them instantly, wrapping them in silk and biting them and sucking out their succulent juices. I’m used to adults being so voracious, but young Parasteada are usually more passive and clumsy. Steatoda triangulosa seem to emerge from the egg sac with their killer instincts already primed.
One somewhat surprising observation: I was curious how the adults get their distinctive zig-zag stripe on their abdomen. What I’m seeing so far is that the spiderlings emerge with pale abdomens, which then darken up fairly uniformly. Today, in the 5-day-old spiderlings, I saw a set of white spots along their abdomens. It’s possible these spiders don’t have a dark zig-zag stripe at all — they have dark bodies (like other familiar Steatoda species), and then they make light-colored triangles to create the stripes.
I’ll be watching closely over the next few days. I also have another egg sac that is darkening up and will probably spawn another set of babies for me to play with.
Someone just signed me up for lots of gay porn. Reminds me of the old days, when all the Catholics seemed to have access to tremendous amounts of porn that they’d send to me.
Sorry, guys, it’s about the most ineffectual protest you can make. All it gets from me is a shrug and a block.
Oh, I did learn something: “p-spot” is short (kinda) for “prostate”. Life is a journey, you can learn all sorts of things from it.
There’s an American fetish for “businessmen” and “entrepreneurs” that I can’t quite understand. I’ve never been particularly impressed by “businessmen”; they generally seem to have a very narrow perspective on the world, but somehow, they’re supposed to be our ideal. And sometimes, they can be unbelievably stupid in service to their money-making goals.
I don’t expect that man to have taken a biology course, but has he ever actually talked to a woman?
To me, Mike Lindell is the apotheosis of the American businessman.
Complexity, complexity, complexity. This article sure talks about complexity a lot, but it’s all produced spontaneously by spiders.
Across 44 mating trials, researchers found males copulated more and faster if they produced complex signals in their courtship.
This meant mixing up the transitions between two noises, what sounds like a fingernail on a rough surface (aka ‘revs’) and the clattering of high heels on a linoleum floor (aka ‘idles’).
These signals are not only watched by the female spider, they are felt in the form of vibrations (as spiders don’t have ears).
In cases where the female looked especially fertile, as conveyed by her body size, successful male spiders stepped up their transitions and began improvising with patterns of sound.
The findings suggest male wolf spiders are altering their signaling complexity according to feedback from the females.
“We see that in lots of other animal groups, but people who work on other animal groups are often surprised when they see stories of spiders engaging in these sophisticated behaviors,” says behavioral ecologist Eileen Hebets from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
I think it’s a modern fusion, Jazz-Flamenco. The spiders I work with do similar sorts of artistic courtships, but it’s all about plucking strings leading to percussive massage.
I don’t feel much of a call to celebrate the Fourth of July. That first attempt at writing a bold statement about liberty in 1776 was 90% hogwash, undermined by the hypocrisy of supporting slavery, and in fact, eventually jiggering together a federal government that was designed to prop up slave states and give them enduring power.
The rationale behind the Fourth of July was seared away in the bloody Civil War. That war staggered us a few steps closer to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — slaves were nominally freed, at least — but it left in place the political structures that were built to benefit wealthy slave owners. We’re still saddled with an electoral college and an unrepresentative senate, and we’ve added more biases that cripple our politics, such as laws that have turned elections into competitions in burning money, with corporations chortling as they contribute to the bonfire.
The date is still a good marker, though. In that Civil War, the climactic battle that broke the slave-owner army was the battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 1-3, 1863. We staved off the threat of total capitulation to an unmistakably authoritarian, aristocratic oligarchy at that time, although the failure to address the shortcomings of American government has crept back strongly. At least we had that moment in 1863, though. We here in Minnesota hold a relic of that war. That Virginia battle flag above.
Marshall Sherman was a 40-year-old house painter in St. Paul when he joined the 1st Minnesota Infantry as a private in the Union army. Described as a soft-spoken gentleman in historical accounts, Sherman fought in the Battle of Gettysburg alongside the rest of the 1st Minnesota.
This brutal confrontation became the site of the highest number of casualties of the Civil War. One Union soldier from Minnesota described the Battle of Gettysburg as such:
“If men ever become devils that was one of the times. We were crazy with the excitement of the fight. We just rushed in like wild beasts. Men swore and cursed and struggled and fought, grappled in hand-to-hand fight, threw stones, clubbed their muskets, kicked, yelled, and hurrahed.”
On the third and final day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, Pvt Marshall Sherman took the Confederate battle flag belonging to 28th Virginia Infantry. After Pickett’s Charge, a massive turning point that led the Union to victory, Sherman emerged with the tattered flag. It was one of 25 Confederate flags captured by the Union Army that day.
We’ve still got it. The traitors who revere their ancestors role in the rebellion have begged for it back. They aren’t getting it.
Many Virginians became upset that Minnesota held on to one of their Confederate battle flags from the Civil War.
Roanoke Civil War reenactors who represented the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment officially asked for the return of the flag in 1998. They appealed directly to the Minnesota Historical Society, who then asked the state attorney general office for help.
Minnesota’s assistant attorney general denied the Virginians’ request, but the word was out. Now, Virginia’s state lawmakers wanted to get involved.
In 2000, both the Virginia House and Senate passed a resolution that formally requested Minnesota return the flag. Again, the Minnesota Historical Society refused.
On February 29, 2000, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura answered questions about the controversy concerning 28th Virginia’s battle flag. When asked if he would consider giving Sherman’s captured Confederate flag to Virginia, Ventura replied:
“Absolutely not. Why? I mean, we won.”
Ahead of the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg in 2013, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell requested the flag be loaned to his state to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton denied that request, saying that returning the battle flag would be “sacrilege” to Union soldiers who died in the Civil War.
“It was something that was earned through the incredible courage and valor of men who gave their lives and risked their lives to obtain it,” Dayton said. “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a closed subject.”
To this day, the Confederate battle flag that Union soldier Marshall Sherman captured more than 150 years ago remains in Minnesota’s possession.
That’s the right idea, but we’ve got to do more. It’s nice that we’re hanging on to a symbol, but people are still flying confederate flags. Tear them down and take them home as spoils of war. Let’s move beyond symbols and tear down more relics of the 18th century, starting with our corrupt and antiquated system of government. No more electoral college, no more privileged Senate, no more lobbyists, no more corporate buyouts, no more celebrations of our deep flaws. Tear them all down.
That battle flag is just a token and an unfulfilled promise. Finish the job. If you want to keep a few souvenirs of the old wickedness, I think there is a museum in Minnesota where they could be stored, next to a shameful old flag.
First Dog on the Moon does adequately capture our current sense of the state of the pandemic, although saying “10,000 dead” is so quaint — but then, it’s an Australian comic. American policy has been so consistently stupid that we have over 1,000,000 dead here. Also, I don’t know what a “bbg*” is, someone will have to explain it to me.
The fourth panel hits home, too.
Do you know someone who has had COVID? Was it you? I was at a rare bbg* on the weekend with a bunch of scientists and only two of them had ever had COVID. WHY? Because they were animal scientists. They are only ever at home or in the bush pointing their fiendish science machines at unsuspecting furry animals or birds and then they go back home again. No COVID.
I’ve never had COVID. WHY? Because am only ever at home or in the field or in the lab pointing fiendish science machines at unsuspecting spiders. I’ve been scrupulous about social distancing and masking everywhere I go, I’ve gotten 4 vaccine shots, and while I had to teach a mob of disease vectors, they all had to wear masks and spread out (former university policy), and I took measures to move as much of my courses online as possible. That’s why.
That was at some cost, too. My big pre-pandemic project was to do community outreach and get a baseline spider population count in homes around here…well, that got monkey-wrenched hard by the disease so I’ve been focused on just the spiders, forget the plague carriers. And oh, man, all the work involved in transforming my classes, without compensation other than not getting sick!
Now all those protective measures have been torn down by my university, and I feel like this is the year they’re going to reward me for 22 years of service with a potentially deadly disease. They’ll be saving on pension expenses, at least.
