The gang that couldn’t shoot straight screws up again

JD Vance and Pete Hegseth know how to hurt Californians: on short notice, they shut down I-5 for four hours while the army fired live ammunition over the freeway. Why, I don’t know — it’s a pointless and risky exercise. Then there was a misfire, and a shell detonated prematurely over the freeway, spattering (harmlessly, fortunately) the police blocking the road with shrapnel.

This is insane.

Why do this at all, other than to let Hegseth flaunt his machismo? And maybe intimidate the citizenry a little bit. Have no fear, the military makes excuses.

A spokesperson for the Marine Corps told CBS News that the incident was under investigation.

“We are aware of the report of a possible airborne detonation of a 155mm artillery round outside the designated impact area during the U.S. Marine Corps Amphibious Capabilities Demonstration at Camp Pendleton, CA, Oct. 18,” said a statement from USMC, in part. “The demonstration went through a rigorous safety evaluation, and deliberate layers of redundancy, to ensure the safety of fellow citizens. Following established safety protocols, firing was suspended. No injuries occurred and the demonstration concluded as scheduled. An investigation has been initiated. We are committed to determining the incident’s root cause and applying findings to future missions.”

They did nothing wrong! And they will investigate to find out what happened.

I think what happened is that a pair of incompetent MAGA scoundrels meddled with an exercise to get them to stupidly fire big dangerous guns over the freeway, because they like pushing people around.

If you were wondering how big these juveniles are…

They are quite small. Here’s one stroking Abraham Lincoln’s cheek.

You can also see the juvenile coloration — the adults wil be solid black, with just a red mark on the ventral abdomen. One thing I noticed was that when I put them in a container with a jumble of moss, they practically disappear, even with the bright red markings. More than once I transferred a spider to a new container and lost it, and had to poke around to be sure I hadn’t accidentally set it free on the lab bench.

Big game hunters

Spiders in the genus Theridiidae (and their cousins, Latrodectus) are well known for hunting and eating prey much bigger than they are, including vertebrates. Here’s a vigorous specimen of Steatoda nobilis trussing up a shrew, which she then reduced to skin and bones over the course of three days.

I’m sad to say that we don’t have S. nobilis where I live, but there’s hope — they’re spreading across the country. Our spiders in my region can get fairly big (especially S. triangulosa) but they’re still a little smaller than S. nobilis. All Theridiidae have neurotoxic toxins in their venom.

Considering the range expansion and population densities achieved by S. nobilis over recent decades, it is unsurprising that the species utilizes its full repertoire of predatory tactics as it continues to adapt to new territories and exploit available resources. As this species continues to spread, such events of vertebrate predation are likely to increase. This contribution validates that S. nobilis is a habitual rather than an occasional vertebrate eater, thus demonstrating the potential impact of S. nobilis on native organisms and the continued need to closely monitor this species.

Don’t worry — you’re not on the menu, yet.

They like to eat things that are bigger than they are

I should save that title for a horror novel.

The other day, I switched my juvenile Latrodectus from a diet of nice snackable fruit flies to huge, relatively speaking, mealworms. I posted a photo of that right here.

I was curious to see how they would cope with such a large prey item. No problem! Here’s the result: the mealworm was sucked completely dry, leaving nothing but a transparent tube of cuticle.

I don’t know how they do it. The prey animal was completely hollowed out. Maybe I’ll have to try to capture it in timelapse.

Right wing culture is so bad

The right-wingers are now outraged by the announcement that BadBunny will be doing the Superbowl halftime show — he’s a Puerto Rican! He sings in Spanish! It’s Reggaeton, and as we all know, that ain’t real music! They’re torn up with anguish, that the music during halftime may not be twangy country music about pickup trucks and beer and unfaithful women. It’s very sad for them. TPUSA announced that they would host an alternative halftime show, but they haven’t provided any details and haven’t any specific artist they would include.

So someone posted a fake playbill listing an epic bunch of conservative artists. People fell for it.

Kid Rock
Ted Nugent
Travis Tritt
Jason Aldean
Aaron Lewis (of Staind)
John Rich
Lee Greenwood
Forgigato Blow
Featuring a guest appearance from MEASLES

That’s a horrible collection of washed-up freaks and fossils, all packed into an imaginary 20 minute show. I like that special guest, which should have given the game away, but I found people actually asking what band Measles was.

It’s all cope. The conservatives are desperate to capture popular culture, but they aren’t popular, and they don’t understand what’s good about music or entertainment.

All of this reflects what is a small ray of hope in our bleak political moment. MAGA’s relationship with pop culture only has two forms: Complete cluelessness and/or resentment that most people think their taste stinks. This matters, because it’s been a truism on the far-right for decades now that capturing the culture is the key to obtaining their larger political goals. MAGA influencers love to repeat, like parrots, Andrew Breitbart’s motto that “politics is downstream from culture.” The Christian right also has a version of this, which Kirk promoted: The “seven mountains mandate,” which holds that is crucial for conservative Christians to control pop culture. Over the years, untold amounts of money have been poured by right-wing donors and investors into remaking the culture in MAGA’s image, in hopes that will turn American hearts toward authoritarianism and evangelical Christianity.

But they are throwing their money to the wind. As I wrote recently, for all the hype around Kirk’s memorial, the actual event didn’t resonate beyond his existing fanbase. Nearly all the performers hailed from the world of worship music; there was nary a nod to what might resonate with people outside white evangelical subculture. This reflects a reality that the mainstream media ignored in the wake of Kirk’s murder. Even though he was widely known on college campuses, due to the ubiquity of his videos falsely promising to dunk on liberal college kids, he wasn’t well-liked. Although 94% of college students said in a recent survey they had heard of Kirk, a full 70% said they didn’t agree with his views.

Their idea of comedy is Joe Rogan and his stable of half-witted hangers-on. The Daily Wire — Ben Shapiro’s company — had a whole entertainment division to make movies and TV shows (remember Lady Ballers?), and it’s disintegrating as we watch. It’s CEO Jeremy Boreing has stepped down, and right now they’re just a money sink for billionaires. They’re coming out with a fantasy series, The Pendragon Cycle, which the teaser trailer reveals to be a series of set pieces of major battles featuring a dozen extras on each side, long slow character portraits, and guys with beards yelling a lot.

I think it’s going to bomb. Boreing decided to trade in the limp humor of his previous effort for taking himself far too seriously, and that doesn’t work.

The Morris protest march

We had a good turnout, somewhere around 100 people, despite the damp gray morning and intermittent rain. We had one cool cat show up, there was also a dinosaur somewhere in the crowd.

For a gang of anti-American agents of antifa, there was a lot of patriotism on display, with flags everywhere. Mary and I were carrying the new Minnesota flag — a few people asked us what it represented, I guess the update hasn’t gotten to everyone yet.

We also had dogs show up. Everyone despises Trump.

We did have one loudmouthed jerk show up, who raged at us at the top of his lungs, looking positively demented as he screamed about money being spent on foreign countries and the Democratic government shutdown. He was quietly separated from the group and wandered off to die of apoplexy somewhere else, I presume. He apparently worked at the UMM physical plant and was laid off recently, and is very resentful.

Good morning, good crowd, we did our part in the wave of protests sweeping across the country.

You didn’t know you’d wake up this morning to hear an old man raving about teenaged boys’ sperm counts

RFK jr went on a rant about sperm. It’s a national security threat, you know!

Today, the average teenager in this country has 50 percent of the sperm count, 50 percent of the testosterone as a 65-year-old man. Our girls are hitting puberty six years early, and that’s bad, but also our parents aren’t having children.

Parents who want to have children do not have access. I have seven children. I feel that God has blessed me with that and I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I did not have that blessing.

Sperm counts are known to decline with age, meaning a teenage boy is likely to have a much higher count than a man in his late sixties, according to experts.

our parents aren’t having children… think about that one for a moment.

Then consider Parents who want to have children do not have access. Access to what, you may ask, and also what makes them parents if they don’t have children? My head hurts reading whatever that ratfucker has to say about health.

It’s true that sperm counts have been reported to be declining, although very poor sampling of a variable parameter adds some doubt to the conclusion. We tend not to get sperm counts from teenagers! But I’d agree with him that environmental hazards, especially the ones that big capitalist corporations tend to spew everywhere, are almost certainly damaging the quantity and quality of gametes humans are producing. We should probably do something about that, but Republicans aren’t going to change anything that might affect the bottom line of Dow or Monsanto, so seeing a lackey of corporate interests piously expressing concern about forever chemicals contaminating the environment leaves me unmoved.

Also, making babies is a more complex process than just having a man making sperm (that’s probably the smallest part of the problem). Conception requires a consenting woman, and also requires that the parents have the time and money and interest to invest in raising a child. If you want more healthy babies in America, provide better medical care with low cost first — pumping up male sperm counts accomplishes nothing if no one wants or can afford children.

As for RFK jr himself — he has six children by two mothers (I think he’s counting his current girlfriend’s child as his own, which is fair). All of his marriages ended in divorce, and one was exceptionally acrimonious, and one of his former wives died of suicide. I don’t think he should be talking about “blessings”. He’s an old rich fuck and is not a role model for successful parenting. One of the causes of his divorce was the discovery of a book where he listed all of his extramarital affairs!

Wait…I thought conservatives blamed feminism for declining birth rates, but now it’s all due to those tainted, poisoned men shooting blanks? Cool.

English, do you speak it, Kelbie Murphy?

Dumbass

I don’t think she should graduate from college until she passes a basic English literacy test. She read a simple sentence in her “expensive” textbook and misinterpreted it.

Kelbie Murphy, a senior at the university, paid roughly $100 for an assigned textbook in her International Public Relations course. In Chapter 8, the opening passage reads: “An internet search produces the following modifier for identity: corporate, sexual, digital, public, racial, national, brand, and even Christian (a U.S.-based white supremacist group).”

“The way it was worded, it listed several marginalized groups, but then only called Christians to be White supremacists,” Murphy told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “But the scariest thing is that the book was written in 2007.”

That’s not a particularly expensive textbook.

The fact that “identity” when modified by “Christian” refers to a racist, white supremacist organization outraged her because she couldn’t comprehend that “Christian identity” is a narrow subset of Christian thought, and thought it was maligning all of the Christian faith (although maybe it was an accurate misreading, that wasn’t what the textbook was saying). She got lots of views on TikTok, and even got highlighted on Fox News, two places where ignorance prospers.

Dan McClellan dismantles Murphy’s whole argument.

The University of North Georgia should be ashamed if they cave in to her lies.

All for moi?

Yesterday, I started moving the larger juvenile Latrodectus to their very own special homes, and I give them a day to build a cobweb before giving them a homecoming meal. This young lady got handed a whole mealworm — imagine giving a teenager a whole cow and permission to kill and eat it. That’s what this was like.

She kept tapping it like she could hardly believe it was all hers. She’s been living on fruit flies for the past month or so, so this was like a miracle meal plopped into her lap. If spiders had laps.

Notice how she has the white juvenile markings on her dorsal abdomen. Those will fade. She also has a red hourglass on her ventral abdomen, which will not.