I spent a pleasant morning playing with my little monsters, and one of them was lying just right, so I could look up into her jaws. I thought maybe someone else would enjoy the view.
You probably didn’t know how wet a spider’s jaws look.
Today’s spider time was a bit abbreviated, because my day is jam-packed with stuff scheduled on top of stuff, so I only had a brief moment in the lab. I decided to tinker a bit with a camera lens I’ve been neglecting, the Laowa 25mm f2.8 Ultra Macro 2.5-5.0x. This is a strange little lens with a lot of potential, but I have struggled with it before. It’s just so different from my other lenses, with different properties, and I think I’ll have to invest some serious effort to master. Today was not that effort. I shot a few quick photos before I had to refocus on today’s classes.
Spiders are the ideal models for macrophotography, because the ones I have are so calm and stable. This little lady was practically immobile for the entire half hour I spent playing with lights and backgrounds and moving in close for pictures.
One thing I discovered is that the Laowa is surprisingly good at collecting light. My first photos were at f/2.8, an exposure of 1/500, and they were all washed out. I kept reducing the exposure and closing off the aperture, and still got usable photos. So it’s got that going for it. On the other hand, the depth of focus is still pretty shallow and I had to stick the lens right in the spider’s face to get it in view, and one thing I like in a lens is a forgiving working distance. Fortunately, this spider was imperturbable.
Anyway, I played for a bit. The one on the left is shot at f/16, the other two at f/2.8. I’m not straining for light in any of them, which is nice. All are at 2.5x, I’ll have to try the 5x option next and see how that goes.
I have a mostly free day tomorrow! I’ll have to practice some more, and maybe do some comparisons with the Tokina Macro 100 F2.8 D, which is currently my favorite lens for field work. I don’t think the Laowa can replace it, but might make a good choice for the lab.
Now…on to classes and grading!
Here’s a good summary of the first day in the trial of George Floyd’s murderer.
To summarize the summary, the defense has two key arguments. They are fundamentally racist arguments.
First, they want to claim that choking by kneeling on Floyd’s neck was not the cause of death. What killed him was poor health, specifically hypertension, and drugs. Don’t you know that all black people have high blood pressure and are jacked up on drugs? You can’t blame that poor white cop who was just doing his job in a perfectly normal way when Floyd up and died in custody! They claim that the killer was just following his training, which if true, means the entire Minneapolis police department ought to be fired and indicted.
Their second defense is even worse: that the killer didn’t mean to murder George Floyd, he was just so distracted by what the unruly mob of citizens, who were on the verge of erupting into savage violence, that he forgot how long he was crushing the throat of his victim. We’ve all seen the videos, the jurors have all seen them multiple times now, and there’s nothing accurate in that representation. It was a small group of citizens who are mostly begging and pleading with the cop to let him breathe. They are mostly black, though, so I guess this is an appeal to the prejudices of the kind of juror who sees a gang if they spot two black people in conversation.
These are bad arguments that rely entirely on biases, not facts.
They might just work.
I’ve been slipping up. Our local grocery store, Willie’s, only reluctantly and belatedly started insisting on customers and staff wearing masks, which was why we’ve been driving an hour each way to do our shopping. But lately I’ve been ducking into Willie’s for quick items — like today, I was hoping for a fresh salad for dinner tonight, and taking a few hours to get that was too much. They’ve also been much better about requiring the workers to mask up.
But today…four separate clueless idiots wandering the aisles, maskless, and no one said a word. I guess we’re going back to driving long distances to find stores with responsible management, because this place is not trustworthy.
Are we ever going to get out of this pandemic mess? Not at this rate.
Well, this isn’t surprising. Matt Gaetz is under investigation for a relationship with a 17 year old teenager.
The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz — a Florida Republican considered a close political ally of former president Donald Trump — over an alleged sexual relationship with an underage girl, according to people familiar with the matter, though the probe has been complicated by the congressman’s assertion that his family is being extorted.
The investigation into Gaetz began some time last year, when Trump was still in office, after a criminal case against a different Florida politician led investigators to allegations that the congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel, a person familiar with the matter said on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. As that probe was underway, the person said, Gaetz’s family raised allegations that the congressman was being extorted, and the FBI is separately exploring those claims.
“Under investigation” does not mean he’s guilty, of course. There could be an innocent explanation. What’s suspicious, though, is his response. He went on Tucker Carlson, and his argument was: a) Hey, Tucker, you were once falsely accused, too; b) he denied that he travelled with a 17 year old and had travel records to prove it, and c) someone tried to extort $25 million from his daddy to hide the evidence.
That’s just weird. Trying to recruit Carlson as a supporter is irrelevant; that Carlson might have been falsely accused does not mean Gaetz is also innocent. No one thinks that being on a plane with a teenager is a crime. The accusations have emerged out of a federal investigation of a sex trafficker, so what he should have denied was that he was dating or had sex with her, which he didn’t do. Was he dating someone less than half his age or not? The next phase in his denial is right here:
What really mystifies me, though, is why is the extortionist running to Daddy Gaetz? Matt Gaetz is 38 years old and presumably an autonomous adult human being. If I were trying to blackmail or extort money from a victim, I’d go straight to them, terrify them with my wicked claims, and let them go running to a big-money source.
It’s all very strange. I’m sure more info will be emerging. Perhaps Gaetz will consult with a competent lawyer and come out with a logical, coherent explanation. Although it seems he’s sounding out an alternative strategy.
Separately, Axios reported Tuesday that Gaetz was telling confidants he was contemplating not seeking reelection and possibly leaving his post early for a job at Newsmax, a conservative media outlet.
With great sorrow, I must report the passing of a member of the lab family. This beautiful golden spider my wife caught in Colorado in January of 2020 is no more. She was the wrong species, Steatoda triangulosa, for the work I’m trying to do, but I kept her around because she was lovely and vivacious, with her golden color and zig-zag stripes, and she was always eager to kill anything I put in her cage. She’s so pretty her picture is my cell phone screen.
I’d noticed she was a bit lethargic lately, and wouldn’t respond to flies in her web. Yesterday, she was slumped low in her cobweb — they usually favor a high position — and was only feebly responsive to a gentle touch. Today, I found her corpse lying on the floor, legs curled inward.
It’d been a year and a quarter since she was caught as a fully grown adult, so she may have been a year and a half, possibly even just shy of two years old. That’s a long, long life for these little spiders.
I mentioned before that there is a company that has a “natural organic reduction” process that allows them to compost dead bodies. That’s great! Sign me up! Also, curiously, the company is based in Kent, Washington, the town where I grew up — they have a discreet warehouse in downtown Kent with 10 vessels for processing corpses.
Now I grew up in Kent. However, my parents moved to Auburn, Washington while I was away for my first year of college (they thought they were so clever, but I had a quarter of a bachelor’s degree and was so smart that I managed to track them down). My mother still lives in Auburn, as do several of my brothers and sisters, so it’s kind of a second hometown to me.
Which makes it a little weird that a second, larger composting facility has opened in Auburn.
What happens next is analogous with composting. In this case, the mix and the body reach a temperature just south of 140 degrees, which is almost cooking heat. The process is aerobic, meaning oxygen flows continuously in and out of the vessel. It takes the microbes in the body and puts them on hyper-drive, making them work incredibly fast. Typically, it takes many years to get that done, leaving behind soil.
“It’s what nature meant us to do. We just do it faster,” Truman said.
Carefully-trained technicians monitor the process. An air-filtration system informally called “The Octopus,” which is attached to all 72 pods, carries the odors to a machine where they are treated.
Within a month, the body is gone, leaving only the bones, which workers reduce and then return to the soil in the pod.
Wait, a key part of the system is called “The Octopus”? Is fate sending me a message, calling me home? But I’m not ready yet!
This could be me, in the distant future, I hope.
As I’m sure you all know, the trial of the cop who murdered George Floyd is going on in Minneapolis right now. I’ve been watching it out of the side of my eye because the whole thing is ominous. What is worrying me is that Chauvin is indefensible, and his lawyers are floundering, and the prosecutors are firing on all cylinders. Everything appearing in the conventional media is uncompromising.
The witnesses are so damned effective. They brought in a series of teenagers who witnessed the killing and the casual disregard of the cops for the life of that black victim. It’s horrifying testimony.
“When I look at George Floyd, I look at look at my dad. I look at my brother. I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they are all Black,” Frazier said. “I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them.”
“It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologized to George Floyd for not doing more,” she added. “And not physically interacting.”
Shortly before she was dismissed from the stand, Frazier added that she tries not to blame herself or the other bystanders for what happened to Floyd.
“It’s not what I should have done,” she said, before referencing Chauvin, seated several feet away in the courtroom. “It’s what he should have done.”
The defense line is that Chauvin was “distracted” by a violent mob and that it’s the fault of the witnesses that he didn’t release pressure on Floyd’s neck, and tried to portray them as a milling gang of thugs threatening the police.
You may think that it’s a good thing, that Chauvin is going down, that justice will be done.
Let me remind you of the usual fate of cops arrested for murder.
In the United States between 2005 and 2020, of the 42 nonfederal police officers convicted following their arrest for murder due to an on-duty shooting, only five ended up being convicted of murder. The most common offense these officers were convicted of was the lesser charge of manslaughter, with 11 convictions.
I see this as a crap shoot. The end result is going to hinge on the decision of a jury that has spent a lifetime soaking in the rancid broth of white supremacy and implicit racism, and is going to be, in many cases, trying to find excuses for Chauvin, and will be looking longingly at convicting him for lesser charges. The more powerful the prosecution, the stronger the public reaction if he gets nothing but a slap on the wrist.
I’m afraid that if Chauvin is not convicted of murder, Minneapolis is going to erupt in righteous outrage (this is not an argument that he should be convicted to satisfy the public). There will be demonstrations all over the place. Freeways will be blocked by protesters. I will join in the protests. Remember: no justice, no peace.
I sure would like some peace.
Our new representative for modern atheism that will scare the fundagelicals pantsless is a gay black man, Lil Nas X.
I’ve never been as heretical as that. I approve.
Although the stupid shoe is ugly and overpriced, I appreciate that he’s just thumbing his nose at corporate exploitation, and his apology was excellent.
MSCHF x Lil Nas X "Satan Shoes" 🏹
👟Nike Air Max '97
🩸Contains 60cc ink and 1 drop of human blood
🗡️666 Pairs, individually numbered
💰$1,018
🗓️March 29th, 2021 pic.twitter.com/XUMA9TKGSX— SAINT (@saint) March 26, 2021
Between Lil Nas X and Cardi B, the Christian Right is suffering from apoplexy. Good work!
Yesterday, Mary startled a jumping spider which had been hiding under a mysterious small object. That object was also attached to the wall of our house by strands of spider silk. Is it an egg sac? I put it under the microscope, and no, it is not.
It is something tiny, about 2mm long, and botanical. I know nothing of botany. It is not a spider thing, which is enough for me.
While I was in the lab anyway, I tended to the spiders, who are all doing fine. Here’s one just relaxing in a spider-like way.
