What do you mean, “November”?

I remember a time when it was considered tacky to put up your Xmas decorations before Thanksgiving — the invention of Black Friday by the stores was the starting bell to signal when you should let slip the rabid dogs of capitalism. Now it’s basically all of November, and I’ve seen incursions into October. Christmas displays before Hallowe’en aren’t just graceless and kitschy, it’s a sign that you’re obsessive and intrusive. Stop it now.

Besides, what with the pandemic and all the supply chain problems and rampant cost-cutting by employers, only the millionaires and billionaires will be celebrating Capitalist Christmas. The rest of us will be shunning the shopping malls and having a quiet holiday with family at home. Which sounds rather nice, actually.

(Related: there’s a house in my neighborhood that goes all out with giant inflatable decorations in their yard. They know what they’re doing: the day after Hallowe’en, all the monsters and tombstones and skeletons are whisked away into storage, and the inflatable turkeys appear. The day after Thanksgiving, ziiiiip! the turkeys go away and Santa starts bobbing over their lawn. Calendars exist, use them.)

Yes, I do know why spiders curl up when they die

We’ve had several frosty mornings and even a brief snow flurry, so spiders have been dying off all over the place. I watched this video because I thought it would be more morbid, but it’s actually pretty cheery, with lots of short clips of beautiful spiders. It’s also very basic, but hey, I need to see more spiders!

One quibble: the narrator disses grass spider webs, saying they’re “not fancy”. I sense a bias favoring orb webs! Grass spiders build these slick platforms for prey to land on, with the sheet funneling back to an elegant cozy tunnel where they lurk. They’re very nice.

I could also make a case for cobwebs, which look chaotic but are actually 3-dimensional structures, unlike those planar 2-D orb webs.

The water-logged corpse of JFK jr did not appear in Dealey Plaza

I am so disappointed. I just got home from the lab and the first thing I had to check was whether John F. Kennedy Jr had shown up in Texas.

He did not.

It turns out his father was also supposed to appear. He did not.

You know who else was a no-show?

The Dallas QAnon believers had become convinced the Kennedys would unveil themselves on Nov. 2 around 12:30 PM Central time, right around the timing of Kennedy’s assassination. But they then began to add on other dead celebrities, convinced that they, too, would appear, having faked their deaths to avoid the deep state.

They began to pick out random people they encountered in the Dallas area as celebrities in disguise, claiming one man was comedian Robin Williams and another comedian Richard Pryor.

Also…

“I just can’t wait to see Kobe Bryant!” the new woman said.

The list of returning celebrities grew long, coming to include not just the Kennedys, Bryant, and Williams, but also actress Debbie Reynolds and racecar driver Dale Earnhardt.

“Yes, there’s been a rapper here, we’re not sure of his name,” said one man livestreaming from Dallas.

“Tupac, maybe?” asked one helpful listener.

None of them showed up, which may have been a good thing given one concern.

One Dallas resident pointed out that no parade permits had been obtained for the parade of dead celebrities that was supposed to follow on Tuesday afternoon.

Yes, I’m sure that would have been embarrassing if the cops turned up to hand out tickets to John F. Kennedy, his son Jr, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Kobe Bryant, Debbie Reynolds, Dale Earnhardt, and Tupac.

What? No love for Biggie Smalls?

Forgive me, for I have sinned

In my last post, I linked to a source in Newsweek. I should not have done that. Newsweek, like other such weekly news magazines, such as Time and US News & World Report, is garbage. It’s part of the grocery store media ecosystem, that collection of glossy magazines on racks near the checkout stand, living on impulse purchases by bored shoppers waiting in line. Newsweek is not to be trusted.

Writing in The Columbia Journalism Review last year, Daniel Tovrov depicted Newsweek, once one of America’s most distinguished magazines, as a shell of its former self. All that was left was clickbait, op-eds from the likes of Nigel Farage and Newt Gingrich, and a general sense of drift. “Nobody I spoke to for this article had a sense of why Newsweek exists,” Tovrov wrote. “While the name Newsweek still carries a certain authority—remnants of its status as a legacy outlet—and the magazine can still bag an impressive interview now and then, it serves an opaque purpose in the media landscape.”

Last week, Newsweek suggested one possible purpose: The legitimization of narratives straight out of the right-wing fever swamps. An op-ed written by John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, coyly suggested that Kamala Harris, who was born in California, may not be eligible to serve as vice president because her parents were immigrants. It was, as many pointed out, a racist attack with no constitutional merit, on par with the birther conspiracy theory that claimed Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Within a few hours, Eastman’s op-ed was being brandished by President Trump, who told reporters he had “heard” Harris may not be eligible to serve.

I’ll avoid them more thoroughly in the future.

Bargain basement second coming

Anyone in Dallas today? There is a small crowd of wackaloons gathering at AT&T Discovery Plaza to await the resurrection, the second coming, the beginning of a new era. It’s not Jesus Christ they eagerly await, though — it’s John F. Kennedy Jr..

JFK Jr died in a plane crash at sea in 1999. His decomposing body and that of his two passengers were recovered after 5 days of decay and marine scavengers had been at him. I don’t think he survived.

QAnon followers have gathered in Dallas, Texas, where they believe John F. Kennedy Jr. will reappear and announce Donald Trump is president.

A large crowd of QAnon believers descended on the AT&T Discovery Plaza on Monday, ahead of the supposed return of the deceased JFK Jr. before midnight today.

The Daily Beast contributor Steven Monacelli shared several photos that showed a dozens-strong crowd, with some wearing t-shirts that said “Trump: JFK Jr. 2024.”

Right, “dozens”. I think we’re seeing the fringe of the fringe.

You might be wondering what else they believe.

Conspiracy followers also believe the clocks will go back an hour, that people will adopt the Julian calendar and that the date will go back to October 20.

The QAnon conspiracy, which originated on online message boards, holds that an elite global cabal of Satanic pedophiles is engaged in mass child sex trafficking and that, somehow, former President Donald Trump will expose this group and order its members arrested and sentenced to death.

They are sort of right about one thing: the clocks will be set back an hour next Sunday. The rest? I don’t think so.

But wait! There’s more!

But there is a section of the QAnon conspiracy movement that has also latched onto the belief that John F. Kennedy Jr. will reveal he did not die in a plane crash in 1999 and will help usher in a new period of American prosperity.

The outlandish theory posits that JFK Jr. has been in hiding for more than two decades and would return as Trump’s vice president.

A popular QAnon Telegram account with more than 100,000 subscribers echoed the conspiracy in a Monday post and said Trump would be reinstated as president and JFK Jr. would be named his vice president.

The post continued to claim Trump would then step down, meaning JFK Jr. would become president and name Michael Flynn as his vice president.

It continued to push a messianic narrative, with the post adding Trump would “most likely” become king of kings, failing to elaborate on what that would entail.

Their iconography is amazing.

By the way, I found that image, and many more, in a “Donald Trump is Jesus” group on Facebook, which is still a major vector for spreading bullshit, like anti-vaccination memes.

Time to walk the walk, Leslie

I didn’t know Leslie Cannold had an agony aunt column. Let’s take a look at it.

This week, she’s asked by someone if they should quit Facebook. Her answer is yes.

I’m inclined to say yes, everyone should quit Facebook (or is that Meta?) because it’s a determinedly monopolistic and rabidly self-interested company that does little good and a whole lot of terrible in the world. This includes commodifying our personal information, allowing misinformation to flourish and algorithmically encouraging the political radicalisation of users, all of which is like rat poison to democracy.

Why give your time, attention or custom to that?

I agree. It’s why I finally quit Zuckerberg, may he rot in hell.

But Cannold should have stopped there, because…

Having said that, I confess that while I despise Facebook, I’m still on it. Why? Because in the same way you are attached to the events page, I am served by being able to promote my writing to followers that right now I can’t reach anywhere else.

In part, that’s the fault of Facebook and the other big tech monoliths too, who have done all they can to gobble up competitors who did or might have provided something better like Instagram and WhatsApp while monopoly regulators did — and continue to do — nothing.

LinkedIn offers the best alternative to date. A different business model but the same gender breakdown of users and an events feature, though the average user age is older. However, if that’s not an issue for you and those you plan events will come with you, maybe give that a try?

Yikes. Step back and look at what you’ve written, Dr Cannold! You’ve just told someone else they should quit Facebook because it’s “a determinedly monopolistic and rabidly self-interested company that does little good and a whole lot of terrible in the world”, and then immediately said it’s fine for you. Way to totally undercut your own advice. It may be “rat poison to democracy”, but you’re going to continue to consume it while telling everyone else to eschew the warfarin.

I know I stayed on for far too long, because I had connections to family and friends there, but at least I wasn’t telling everyone else they should get off while making excuses for myself.

I would never have predicted such a fall

The Church Militant — you know, the fanatical fringe of conservative Catholicism, home to Michael Voris, etc. — has a new product to sell. For a mere $75, you can buy CDs of the Psalms and Proverbs being read aloud by…

Are you sitting down for this?

…Milo Yiannopoulos.

The comments are full of people praising the power of God to rescue such a sinner, but I’m a doubter. I don’t think he’s saved at all. He’s found another grift, is all. I’d be more impressed if he’d found a humble faith to follow, but I’m sorry, the Church Militant is a mob of extremist weirdos.

They disrespect the people they claim to be defending

Every time. Every time these conservative defenders of all that is right and good try to explain what they’re trying to do, they end up smearing everyone involved. Remember the pious anti-feminists who tried to tell us that they are supporters of womanhood and femininity, so they have to accuse women of being sluts? Same thing now with the preachers of true manhood, like Josh Hawley.

I have to wonder who these men are that are so hurt and despairing that they have retreated into video games and porn? All you men out there who read this, and play games (OK, or watch porn, you don’t need to admit it): are you all just doing it because you’re oppressed and had your feelings hurt and don’t know what else to do while sitting around suffering with self-pity?

My exposure to multiplayer games is limited, but it does add to my appreciation of all those macho, aggressive players who called me a “fag” or “bitch” or used the chat to brag about their sexual conquests to imagine that they were all weeping and masturbating while they were doing it. Josh tells me that’s what they’re doing, and would he lie?

Every spider is as brilliant as it needs to be!

Uh-oh, curmudgeon alert. Everyone has been sending me this article, “Spiders are much smarter than you think”. It’s a good article. It’s just that a few things about it set me on edge.

Smarter than I think? You don’t know what I think. I already have a high opinion of spider intelligence. But OK, they’re doing good work to spread the news about the abilities of spiders. You should read it if you don’t already know about it.

I’m also bothered by the word “smarter”. We can’t quantify intelligence! Not in people, not in spiders, not in anything. We can isolate bits and pieces of aspects of intelligence, and measure some of it, but “intelligence” in the broad sense is multifactorial and hard to pin down. What the article actually describes is behavioral adaptability and the capacity to model their environment. Spiders can do that! By studying them, we can discover interesting things about how they do that.

Another concern is that the article is almost entirely about a single species, Portia.

No fair! Jumping spiders are a kind of charismatic microfauna, cute and pretty. They are active predators, too, which tends to bias our impressions of their human-like behaviors. We are self-selecting for what we quantify as “smart”, which is often a word meaning “human-like”. A lot of spiders, though, are ambush predators who have a different suite of behaviors. Are they less smart? A black widow that left its web to chase prey on foot would be less “smart”, but we might judge it as more in alignment with our expectations.

I do very much agree with these sentiments, though.

“There is this general idea that probably spiders are too small, that you need some kind of a critical mass of brain tissue to be able to perform complex behaviors,” says arachnologist and evolutionary biologist Dimitar Dimitrov of the University Museum of Bergen in Norway. “But I think spiders are one case where this general idea is challenged. Some small things are actually capable of doing very complex stuff.”

Behaviors that can be described as “cognitive,” as opposed to automatic responses, could be fairly common among spiders, says Dimitrov, coauthor of a study on spider diversity published in the 2021 Annual Review of Entomology. From orb weavers that adjust the way they build their webs based on the type of prey they are catching to ghost spiders that can learn to associate a reward with the smell of vanilla, there’s more going on in spider brains than they commonly get credit for.

“It’s not so much the size of the brain that matters, but what the animal can do with what it’s got,” says arachnologist Fiona Cross of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Yes! So let’s avoid judging animals whether they are smarter or dumber.

The Dawkins ennui

Richard Dawkins got a major fluffing from The Times this weekend, and I don’t care enough to try to get around the paywall. Sorry. We all know what kind of conservative BS he’s going to say, and the worst of it (I hope — if there’s worse in the article, I don’t want to know about it) is right there up front in the blurb, and in the title, even.

Richard Dawkins: ‘Race is a spectrum. Sex is pretty damn binary’

This doesn’t even make sense. Pretty damn binary — so he’s adding vague qualifiers to something he wants to assert is only one thing or another. Everything is black and white, as long as those shades of gray get ignored, I guess. Let’s also ignore the fact that there is a wide spectrum within each sex, with femaleness and maleness having huge individual variation, with overlap. These are forced categories. You’ve decided that, by definition, there are only two possibilities allowed, therefore everyone must be wedged into one or the other, and you look with horror on the boundary conditions that show your classification scheme is inadequate.

What does he think should be done with individuals who are in the pretty part of his damn binary? Shall we just ignore them, pretend they don’t exist, maybe torture them into non-existence so they don’t clutter up your boundaries?

Good grief, he’s an evolutionary biologist. Does he also insist that species are pretty damn binary, you’re either a member of one or not, and there are no individuals who fall into any kind of hybrid state? Embrace the blurriness of the boundary conditions. That’s where all the interesting stuff happens.

I am privileged to see the opening paragraphs of the article. I don’t need more.

There’s not much that frightens Richard Dawkins. He shrugs off his regular hate mail from angry evangelicals, occasionally taking to YouTube to read it aloud. He has never backed down from his withering criticisms of Islamic fundamentalism, despite the potential for blowback. He’s happy to pick intellectual fights with eminent fellow scientists and has even been known to find fault (hard to imagine, I realise) with the odd journalist or two.

But Dawkins tells me there are two things he does fear: one is being cancelled by the left. The other is hang-gliding. I think he’s probably in more danger from the former.

There is so much hand-wringing on the right about getting “cancelled”, whatever that means. It seems to be a rather ineffectual state in which some people stop treating you as a demi-god and are more willing to criticize what you say and do, and it’s only a threat to people who consider themselves deserving of uncritical adulation.

By that definition, sorry, Richard. You were cancelled long ago, as were we all. If not by one group, by another (like, say, the American Humanists). Get used to it.

By the way, this photo was embarrassing.

I will charitably assume that it was the newspaper’s idea to put him into a christ-like pose, but really, Richard, you can say no. Tamp down that ego a little bit and just realize that an occasional fit of humility will serve you better nowadays.