Are we screwed? It sure looks like we are.

Classes are over. Christmas is less than two weeks away. I’ve got a month of relaxation ahead of me. So what do I do? Read the most godawful depressing doom and gloom stuff.

Anglo-American society is now the world’s preeminent example of willful self-destruction. It’s jaw-dropping folly and stupidity is breathtaking to the rest of the world.

The hard truth is this. America and Britain aren’t just collapsing by the day…they aren’t even just choosing to collapse by the day. They’re entering a death spiral, from which there’s probably no return. Yes, really. Simple economics dictate that, just like they did for the Soviet Union — and I’ll come to them.

Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are now the pre-eminent symbols of suicidal collapse in the world right now. The core problem, though, isn’t going to disappear if those two were to melt into decaying goo right this instant. They have a network of criminal bureaucrats supporting their regimes. And below those are vast mobs of ignorant rubes willing to vote for them.

We are caught in a death spiral now. A vicious cycle from which there is probably no escape. The average person is too poor to fund the very things — the only things — which can offer him a better life: healthcare, education, childcare, healthcare, and so on. The average person is too poor to fund public goods and social systems. The average person is too poor now to able to give anything to anyone else, to invest anything in anyone else. He lives and dies in debt to begin with — so what does he have left over to give back, put back, invest?

A more technical, formal way to put all that is this. Europeans distributed their social surplus more fairly than we did. They didn’t give all the winnings to idiot billionaires like Zucks and con men like Trump. They kept middle and working classes better off than us. As a result, those middle and working classes were able to invest in expansive public goods and social systems. Those things — good healthcare, education, transport, media — kept life improving for everyone. That virtuous circle of investing a fairly distributed social surplus created a true economic miracle over just one human lifetime: Europe rose from the ashes of war to enjoy history’s highest living standards, ever, period.

I don’t think there is no escape, but this is a generational problem. We’re not going to dig ourselves out of the hole in a single election cycle, that’s for sure, and it’s going to take long term effort at root of our societies to repair it.

The problem is the same problem every democracy faces: demagoguery. For the last 70 years, US politics has been the playground of boogeymen. First it was the Commies, an external threat that led to the construction of the military/industrial complex, stupid wars, and a wasteful build up paranoia and guns. Then in the 60s it switched to an internal boogeyman: race and immigration. It turns out that if you play up a vast imaginary existential threat, you can lead the sheep to slaughter themselves. They’ll dismantle health care and education and social welfare willingly, just on the threat that The Other will benefit. The Republicans have built their base on bigotry, while the Democrats have gone along willingly on the promise of neo-liberalism and do-nothing centrism. The problems just grow and grow, building more generations of ignoramuses who make the problems worse and worse.

And so it goes.

I’d like to think we’ll reach a breaking point and the destruction of our pride and prestige will snap people out of these delusional acts of self-destruction, but they only seem to amplify themselves. Wreck education, and our lead in science and technology crumbles, and you’d think the people would say we need to repair the educational system to catch up…but no, instead they whine that it’s all those liberals coming out of the colleges that are the cause, so they resolve to wreck it more.

And that’s where we stand, thrashing about and chasing all the wrong solutions.

I’m sure there’s a way out. It’ll require some resolve and will, though, and it’s far easier to blame brown people and intellectuals and uppity women.

As soon as I posted this, I discover an excellent illustration of the problem.

Yep. The problem isn’t that we’re busy demolishing our infrastructure and tearing apart the people who make up our society, it’s that we aren’t doing enough to smash those “parasites” and root out the imaginary genetic inequalities. It’s people like Bo Winegard who are killing us all.

The secular predator problem

You probably don’t want to hear a summary of the latest descent into chaos of the atheist community, but in case you do, this is a good one with all the receipts to explain David Silverman’s fuck-up.

If I were to give any advice to David, it would be to say that the path to being a good person is often counter to being an influential and powerful person. He wants the latter, but in light of his terrible assumptions and abuses, the only way forward for him is to accept some humility. He’s never going to be the bold, heroic atheist in the eyes of the people again … but then, most of us never were. We cope.

Spider story time

This is a brilliant idea, in principle. Maybe I need to start reading to the spiders.

Except…no, not Charlotte’s Web. The spider [spoiler] dies at the end [/spoiler]! This is not the inspiration I want to give the spiders. I’m trying to get them to breed, and telling them they’ll die afterwards isn’t exactly a great message.

Maybe I should read them this one.

It is the last day of the semester!

Yay! Although I had to spend the morning in a search committee meeting, and then I had to get a final exam in rough shape. Class today is going to be a discussion of what everyone needs to know for the final exam, so I figured I’d better have it organized more or less.

Next up: I have a whole hour to do spider work.

This weekend I plan to put my feet up, relax, and recover. My one final isn’t until Thursday, so catching up with being alive for a while is high on my priorities.

We have a valuable export in this country!

It’s blood.

America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world’s plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country’s exports — more than corn or soya.

There’s more growth ahead for blood products, expected to “grow radiantly” according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17.

I had a hard time believing that, so I checked the source, and sure enough, 2.3% of US exports are of human or animal blood and vaccines, and it’s more than the value of our corn and soybean exports. To put it in perspective, though, our exports of refined petroleum are worth more than twice that.

So, I guess, there’s a market for American blood and oil.

If inequality continues as it has, perhaps there’ll someday a market for other human biological products. Pig meat products are only .36% of our exports, we could expand that by adding long pig.

We could also hope for a big boom in the vampire population.

Date night at the spider house

I have been neglecting my spiders this week — every day I get a little time with them, and then I realize I have to get grading done, and then I have to regretfully leave the lab to hunch over papers again. It’s unfortunate, too, because this is the week I’ve been trying to get them to breed, and there’s courtship to watch.

A little background: last year I had limited success with breeding because I was raising all the spiders in these 3cm diameter tubes, which is convenient and allows me to pack a lot of spiders into an incubator. The catch was that mating was fraught; put a male in a tube with a female and it was going to end in violence and cannibalism more often than not. Imagine that you wanted to study human courtship and mating, and your strategy was to keep women in those little capsule hotels, with plenty of food and water, and then every once in a while you picked some random guy and stuffed him into a capsule with a random woman, and then you planted a camera in the window to watch the fun. At best you’re going to see a strange and unrealistic version of mating…at worst, violence and death. Maybe cannibalism if you’re really lucky.

This year, I’m raising females in spacious cages where they can build large webs, and where there’s space to scamper off and be alone. I’m introducing males to these female-dominated spaces, and…well, so far it’s been less than exciting. It’s more like watching a junior high school dance. There’s a girl, hanging out over by the wall. Boy comes in to the gym, they notice each other, they look warily at one another. Their body language all says “I see you”, but they’re so nervous that you can’t tell whether they’re happy to see each other, or they’re threatening to vomit all over their shoes if they get too close.

The boy works up his nerve and approaches cautiously, sending as many friendly signals as he can. In spiders, this involves web plucking; they send vibrations down the web to each other. “Pluck pluck pluck?” he says. She fretfully replies “Pluck pluck pluckity pluck.” Is this promising? The boy is uncertain. “Pluck pluck,” he says, and reaches out with one arm, tentatively. “PLUCK!” she screams, and charges. Boy runs away. “Pluck pluck pluckin’ pluck pluck,” she hisses, in her position near the punch.

At least, that’s how I interpret this one encounter I watched.

We start out with the male spider center right; he’s advancing towards the female, top left, just out of view at first. He’s been plucking up a storm just before the clip, and both are slightly agitated. He reaches out to her and…devastating rebuff. He flees. She settles down, but continues to pluck at the web…sort of angrily, if I anthropomorphize. When he begins to approach again (off screen), she rushes out to chase him away.

I left the two of them alone after that. There was enough space in the cage that they could separate safely, and he was quick to run away, so she’d have to be strongly determined to kill and eat him to pursue, and I’d put plenty of fruit flies in the cage beforehand, so she wouldn’t be that hungry. I came back the next morning (it was like a junior high dance with a lock-in, and no chaperones!) and rescued the male, who was hovering maybe 6cm away, body oriented to the female and looking attentive. I have no idea if mating was accomplished.

That’s been my week. Introduce potential breeding pairs, watch a little angsty teen dating drama, scurry away to grade papers, come back to find two spiders staring at each other, giving no hint about what they’d been up to.

“How was your date, son?” “It was alright, I guess,” he replies, sullenly.

“How was your date, daughter?” She screeches angrily in spider. I don’t know what that means.

Good news! The male was left overnight with New Arya, one of my females who has built a cozy little nest with scraps of debris. When I just checked on them, the male was right outside the nest, tapping. New Arya was reaching out and waving at him. I decided to just leave him there a little longer and see what develops.

Also, Texanne of the triangulosa clan had made another egg sac. That’s three for her.

The worst Christmas song while grading is…

The mountain of papers have been graded! The grades have all been posted on Canvas! The students can now put down their pitchforks, and instead begin their pleas…”I’m only 0.2% away from a B+! Can’t you just bump me up a little bit?” Fortunately, I planned ahead: the final exam in this course is optional, and the score on it will replace their lowest exam score for the semester, so I can just tell them to go earn those extra points by doing well on the final. Then, after the final, I will vanish into a spider hole, they’ll all vanish to spend the break with their families, and I will be spared!

Now, though, I have to recover…I’m Christmas Caroled Out. I had to go to a dentist’s appointment first thing this morning — they were playing Christmas carols. I went to the coffee shop to buckled down and get my grading done — they were playing Christmas carols. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few essentials — they were playing Christmas carols. I’ve had enough. I hate Christmas carols, we’ve had enough of them for this year.

I have, at least, concluded empirically that the worst Christmas song to be forced to listen to while having your teeth scraped, or grading, or buying kitty litter is, without question, Ave Maria. Fight me.

We could probably dicker over whether the Andy Williams version or the Celine Dion version blows hardest.

Pitter patter — the beginning of the end

I have a mob of slavering students with pitchforks and torches demanding that I finish grading their lab final so that they can see what their ultimate grade in cell biology will be. I have a pile of papers to get through today. They are bracketed by a dentist’s appointment this morning, and a poetry reading by Chrissy Kolaya. My fate is predetermined on this day: sharp pointy things tearing at my teeth, followed by a long day of coffee and red ink, and ending on soothing poetry. I hope my students don’t track me down to the coffee shop where I’ll be wielding my cruel pen.

None of them ever read this stupid blog, I’m sure. I should be safe. I will get it all done.

And then…freedom! The light! Until late January.

Are you boycotting YouTube this week?

YouTube has threatened to drop any channels that are not “commercially viable” in the future, which is grossly capitalist and of concern to everyone, as capitalism destroys another medium. I guess I should worry; I have a YouTube channel, and last I looked it earns me about $15 a month, which doesn’t sound particularly viable to me (I’m not in it for the loot, fortunately). Meanwhile, the channels that earn big bucks and make their owners thousands and millions of dollars are total garbage. Do we really want to see the PewDiePieification of YouTube?

Anyway, there’s a call to walkout, you can read about it at Great American Satan and the Bolingbrook Babbler and stderr and Impossible Me and Intransitive. I’m pessimistic. I don’t think it can generate enough press or enough pressure to make any difference.

But we need to take a stand somewhere. This is an announcement of a policy to stomp down small content producers, killing niches which we already know will be selected against if they have the faintest whiff of sexuality, while the racist channels will be tolerated. They want to propagate the least desirable aspects of American culture and resist anything that might change it. I’m in. I haven’t even glanced at YouTube since the day before yesterday.

I want you to know if this experiment actually worked, three days of silence would cost me a whole $1.50. So I’m participating in this effort at great personal sacrifice.