I spent a pleasant morning with the spiders. Look how quickly they snap up flies!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I spent a pleasant morning with the spiders. Look how quickly they snap up flies!
Aww, poor Florida Man (Adam Christian Johnson). After fleeing Washington DC, it looks like he figured he’d shave to avoid recognition…only it didn’t work.
Now the regret and rationalizations are setting in as the FBI tracks these traitors down and arrests them. Actually, the rationalizing started early.
Asked why they were storming the Capitol, one woman became angry, saying they weren’t storming, and that that was a “media narrative.” They were just making their voices heard, she said. Then she continued climbing over a wall.
They hold the presidency, the senate, and the supreme court, and they still think their voices aren’t heard. I’m personally a bit tired of constantly having to hear these shrieking assholes.
Last summer, I did some spider-hunting around Murdock, Minnesota. It’s the typical slow, sleepy, small rural town (with spiders! But that’s every town). It’s unfortunate claim to fame now is that Asatru moved in and bought a church dedicated to the premise that white people, especially northern European white people, are better than others. They probably assumed that this would be a fine, comfortable fit with the predominantly German and Scandinavian folk of Minnesota.
Except the townfolk are less than thrilled with the city council choosing to approve the founding of a church.
The decision alarmed many residents, particularly residents of color who until recently lived comfortably in the majority-white town. Ms. Barron said she and other mothers had discussed taking turns to watch their children when they play outside. When the elementary school asked Latino families to participate in a video production, Ms. Barron said, many declined.
“I don’t feel threatened right now. But I feel worried,” she said. “What worries me is losing our sense of peace.”
Many residents fear that similar groups will try “to get some sort of toehold here because they feel this is some refuge where they can come and foment this hate,” said Pete Kennedy, 59, an engineer who has lived in the town for about 50 years.
Town leaders have insisted they had no choice but to grant a conditional-use permit, or CUP, because of legal protections that forbid governments from using land-use regulations to impose a substantial burden on people trying to practice their religion.
Interesting. I wonder if they’d feel the same principled concern when a new Baptist church, or Plymouth Brethren church, or Lutheran church, or Catholic church petitions for approval to take over some real estate in town. This is not to imply that the Asatru church should be allowed to do their thing (they are truly repulsive), but that what I’ve seen around towns in this region is that every vacant building is quickly occupied by yet another cult. When our movie theater in Morris went out of business, a group of fundamentalists threatened to buy it and turn into yet another church! Fortunately, they were foiled by a local co-op.
Maybe city councils around here should question every application by every religion to take over productive real estate and replace it with untaxable dead voids in our city planning.
By the way, here’s what it costs to start a church in rural Minnesota.
In June, it was sold to the Assembly for $45,000, according to county records.
Sheesh. You mean instead of paying off a lawyer I could have bought a whole church?
Three revealing hours in the life of Kevin Sorbo:
He’s a perfect reflection in miniature of the whole right-wing universe…stupid, dishonest, and constantly rationalizing their bad behavior with blatant projection.
I did something yesterday to throw my back out — I’m 63, which means I probably did something radical like sneeze. Anyway, I’m sitting here trying not to move a millimeter that way or twist this other way, which would send spasms rippling up my spine, and I think I’ll be immobile most of the day…except that I’m about to get up and walk to the medicine cabinet for some painkillers, trying not to scream or die, and then come back to my chair and just stop for a while.
Fortunately, my self-imposed agenda for the day is to hammer out a couple of syllabi and get them posted to our CMS, Canvas. It’s just fingers that need to work, and so far they seem OK. Classes start up again in 9 days.
Time to gently ease myself out of this chair and gingerly shuffle to the next room. If you hear a shrieking howl out of the upper midwest, I didn’t make it.
At long last the braying bloviator has been silenced.
I am not impressed that Twitter took this long and only found the courage to tell him to shut up in the waning weeks of his presidency.
I wonder if he’s going to get a Parler account now?
This was a new phenomenon to me. Walking into work today, everything was covered with these long whiskers of ice, typically close to 2cm long.
We’ve stayed below freezing for the last few days, and also we’ve had freezing fog every morning, which I presume feeds some peculiar crystallization process. It looks cool, anyway.
This afternoon when I was walking home I saw that they hadn’t melted, but were gradually falling off the trees as a very gentle snow.
Asking for a friend. I’m hoping to have a conversation about how to use YouTube for science communication on Sunday at noon my time. Maybe it’s not possible. Some of us just have a face or voice made for blogging. Tell me what you think this weekend.
If anyone wants to join the livestream, drop me an email and let me know, and maybe I’ll respond with a link so you can join in. Maybe. I’ll be a little discriminating about who I’ll share a screen with.
Hey, I just had an idea — more spiders. Maybe I could recruit a spider co-host to add more charm!
Today was a big spider maintenance day. I’ve got three lines of spiders I’m raising — R (from a spider collected at Runestone park), H (from the local Horticulture garden), and M (from the Myers garage) which I’m trying to bring to maturity, so they’re getting lots of food and care, which I want to start inbreeding and generate 3 lines of related spiders so I can start assessing their variation…and then start cross-breeding. It’s going to take a while.
Anyway, down below the fold is one that’s definitely male and might be ready for mating after the next molt. His palps look painfully swole.
This is the opening sequence for an anime. Let me know if the theme music sounds familiar — is this music not copyrighted?
The series is based on a manga, So I’m a spider, so what?, which I own and have read. I had hopes that it would be something like Jay Hosler‘s work, which is excellent and informative, and that it would be useful for teaching about how wonderful spiders are. It’s not. It’s this bizarre fusion of spider biology with video game dogma, and most of the emphasis is on how this person transported into a spider body can go up in levels and acquire new spider powers. Maybe you’d enjoy it if you’re more into video games than arachnids, but I’m the reverse of that.
