St Louis got spiders!

I am so relieved. If they didn’t, this trip to Skepticon would have been a total waste of time.

I knew there would be, of course. Although, I took a stroll around the hotel, and it was a wasteland — it looked like the exterior had been hosed down recently, and even the few cobwebs I found were sad tattered shreds. Then I discovered the federal building behind us, and man, the windows there are dense with webs. I saw big ol’ orb weavers hanging out in massive webs that covered an entire picture window pane, and lots of my little pals, Parasteatoda, lurking in the corners. I caught a few, like the male above, that I’ll take home to start a Missouri colony. I’ll go back later and get some more.

One downside is that if you’re hanging about a federal building with a big camera with a long lens, and you keep peering at windows, I guess you look a bit suspicious. A policeman stopped by to ask, “Uh, what are you doing?” I told him, and he watched as I scooped up one in a vial, so I think he believed me. Also, it helps to look like an old white nerd (it shouldn’t, but it does. I also don’t have a Russian accent.)

Oh, and hey, the Skepticon conference starts this afternoon — the young people who organize it apparently don’t believe in getting up before 11am, so you’ve got plenty of time to get down here. Sure, go ahead, you’ve got time to look for spiders before the events start up.

Quillette is deliciously trolled…and they helped!

Quillette published an article titled “DSA is Doomed”, written by someone named Archie Carter who claimed to have attended meetings of the Democratic Socialists of America and found them pointless, riven by dissent, full of hipsters, and counterproductive. This was exactly what Quillette wanted to hear, and they fast-tracked it for publication.

One problem: the author lived in Illinois, had never attended a New York meeting, and was making it all up.

“Tell them I live in the area of [Jacobin managing editor] Micah Uetricht,” said the playful voice on the other line. Carter — this twenty-four-year-old Illinoian’s pseudonym — had reason to be happy. He had successfully baited Quillette — the self-described “platform for free thought,” though more widely known as a platform for phrenology — with a “little Sokal experiment.”

That little aside is a good snipe, but I must correct them. They are best known as a platform for craniometry, not phrenology, although both are equally bogus.

What’s most amazing, though, is not that someone got a fake article published in a magazine, but that the original copy wasn’t juicy enough for Quillette, as disparaging as it was, so the editors of that rag jazzed it up a bit, adding new details that they invented to the story.

Comparing the original draft Carter had written (verified through a Google Doc link included in his email correspondence with Quillette), it’s clear that the publication made an extra effort to add embellishing details to the story — separate from Carter’s original fabrication — in order to advance a right-wing narrative of DSA as hopeless, dithering, anti-working class snowflakes.

For example, it was Quillette, not Carter, that included the line, “My union friends were horrified. While these people spend hours reproaching themselves and each other, real people in America are suffering.”

Quillette also suggested that DSA meetings “would drag on forever in order to accommodate the neuroses of the participants and to ensure that the proceedings observed the norms of ‘inclusivity.’”

Wow. The article has been taken down now that it was revealed that it was a hoax, but it’s revealing that not only were they soundly trolled, but they assisted in amplifying their own trolling.

Quillette is just the worst.

At Skepticon!

I’m in St Louis for Skepticon, and I am disappointed. The rooms at this hotel are huge and clean — too clean — the shower is like a pressure washer, and the location is amazing, right off the Metrolink line*, so I got here from the airport for just a few bucks, walked up to the street level, and there was the hotel, right there, and it was probably the easiest access to a conference venue ever. However…

There are no spiders anywhere in this gigantic suite. I went around with a magnifying glass to verify. It’s sterile. So I’ve donned my spider hunting gear, and am about to embark on an exploration trip to a) find some breakfast, and b) survey the environs for spiders. I have collecting vials and am not afraid to use them.

Hey, if you’re in the neighborhood, come on down! The conference is free, it’s held in the Red Lion Inn right next to the Civic Center rail stop, and it’s up on the 13th floor.

*Oh, incidentally, about the Metrolink — it’s a nice rail line direct between city center and the airport, and when I got on, I was the only white guy on the train, which is not an issue, except that at one of the stops another white guy got on, looked over the occupants, and charged over to sit next to me, like the train wasn’t half empty anyway. Not a problem, of course, except that he was staggeringly drunk, and he wanted to talk about religion with me.

Why me? Do I look like a Lutheran pastor or something?

Anyway, the conversation didn’t go far. He was so drunk he could barely talk, and he chose to lecture me on the Trinity. You know, the Father, his Son, and…Jesus’s sister? I had to just ignore him, although the bait was awfully tempting.

Leaving my Minnesota spiders behind?

It’s a travel day. I’m getting ready to go to St Louis for Skepticon, which means the usual process — packing, making sure I’ve got the materials for my workshop, feeding the spiders. You’ve all been through it.

I thought this would be a weekend without spiders, but then I realized…they’re everywhere. I’m bringing my camera, some collecting vials, and a headlamp in my gear, and am thinking I might go looking for some Missouri Parasteatoda to bring back to the lab. Any other Skepticon attendees interested in a Spider Safari sometime?

I did have to get in a last minute spider fix, though. I think this uncooperative little lady (she’s young and a bit shy) is Neoscona, but I’ll be returning her back to the garden before I leave.

This handsome gentleman is Steatoda borealis. I’ve been seeing a lot of these lately — they seem to be thriving in slightly harsher environments than Parasteatoda. I like them a lot, and am going to try raising them in the lab, even though Parasteatoda is a more popular model organism.

He’s not being set free. I’m taking him to the lab this morning, where his fate is to provide stud service.

The only thing that makes life hard for men is other men

Unfortunately, they also make life miserable for everyone else, too. It’s not just the misogyny, either — the misogyny is a gateway to racism, violence, and organized opposition to any progress that doesn’t put them in charge.

The “Men’s Rights Movement” (MRM) regularly overlaps with and reinforces white supremacy and the “alt-right” through a shared belief that dominant groups in society — men and whites, respectively — are actually oppressed. Along with other “anti-feminist” activists, this misogynist coalition seeks to force its regressive viewpoint on the rest of society, from movie releases to federal education policy. From online harassment to deadly violence, the MRM and its activists are an immediate and growing threat.

Their “opression” is a garbage myth that festers everywhere. We white men are catered to constantly, and we get upset if someone doesn’t bow down low enough to us. It’s getting embarrassing to be in this group.

“Nobody cares about white men,” is a sentence I hear far too often. In facebook comments, tweets, article responses, emails, the op-eds of major national papers. Nobody cares about the white men left behind. Nobody cares about the white men who are collecting unemployment, or working middle management, or not getting regular blow jobs. Nobody cares about the white men whose hair is thinning and dad-bod is settling in and they never got to walk into a party with a hot girl on their arm and now it’s too late. Nobody cares about the white men who have to learn new terms like “privilege” or “cultural appropriation” or “social justice” — terms that don’t do anything to explain why they aren’t rich or powerful or happy.

But of course, everyone cares about white men. Do you want a movie about what it feels like to be a middle-class white man who has never gotten to skinnydip naked in the middle of the night with a hot girl? Oh it’s an entire genre. Do you want a really long think piece about how hearing the phrase “black lives matter” and having to go to community college instead of Harvard even though you only had a 2.3 gpa turned you into a neo-Nazi? If someone hasn’t written it yet, they will. Do you want a great American novel about how being a white dude working a secure, middle-management job with full health and retirement benefits makes you want to open fire at the next company potluck? Pretty sure your local librarian can point you to a few dozen.

Yeah, all you have to do is go to Netflix or Amazon Prime and open up almost any movie — anything from the 1980s is particularly awful, but there’s contemporary stuff that does the same thing — to find Big Men bullying or demeaning women or minorities, solving problems by shooting people. And those are the heroes. Our role models are mostly cocky, gleeful assholes.

You do find shows that feature women or black people in intelligent roles, but those are mocked. Worse, look at something like She-Ra where women play heroic characters, and then check YouTube, where you’ll find man-babies raging about how cartoon women have stolen roles from cartoon men. These are people who think their masculinity is enhanced by screaming about how portrayals of adolescent girls don’t have large enough breasts to suit their needs.

It can be humiliating to be a man, sure…because of that minority of loud, obnoxious cockwombles who use their privileged status to make the world worse for everyone else. The only way to affirm one’s superiority is to stomp on someone below you in the social hierarchy, I guess. I found this story insightful: it’s about how the system is set up to benefit the worst men. The system, in this case, being Facebook, which advertised a wholesome group about “Dads With Daughters” and wrecked the whole thing by bringing in swarms of asshole men.

Chatters says the ad, which features just a father and daughter, brought to his group a wave of single and divorced dads: “Unfortunately, a lot of, I guess I would say, jaded men coming from custody battles and situations where they’re not 100 percent in their children’s lives. They come to the group for support, but that’s a different type of energy. These men have been separated from their partners in a probably negative way, which means that men are coming to this group with a negative perspective of women.”

And even if the more extreme members are a minority in his group, they post a lot more. Given Facebook’s new “badge” system that rewards more active users, the smaller but louder faction rules, Chatters says.

“There is a lot of the research that focuses on masculinity, and how most men are in a place where you can reach them positively and help them understand certain aspects,” he explains. “But when there is a minority of men who are not, that minority of men basically control the larger group of men with their behaviors. And that is very much playing out in this group.”

We could talk about how a social media site like Facebook can be so dazzlingly incompetent at comprehending social behaviors — they’re about bringing in advertising dollars, not facilitating healthy conversations, and pathological train wrecks are always better for that — but this post is about bad men. I think that it’s important to note that a majority (maybe?) of men want to do what’s fair and right, and don’t feel threatened if someone who is not a white man is succeeding. Unfortunately, the system is set up to give control to the most disagreeable and overbearing jerks in a group, whether it’s a little forum on Facebook or the US Senate. That means this becomes the face of every white man on the planet.

I don’t want to be that guy. Most of us don’t want to be that guy. Sadly, the men who do want to be that guy are given the keys to drive us into the ground at birth.

Don’t blame the octopus

This poor woman thought it would be funny to pose for a photo with a small octopus on her face. The octopus disagreed, and bit her.

“And I’m still in pain,” said Bisceglia. “I’m on three different antibiotics. This can come and go, the swelling, for months they say.” She says the whole painful experience taught her a valuable lesson about handling a live octopus.

“This was not a good idea,” said Bisceglia. “I will never do it again.”

That’s one reason they have venoms, you know, besides streamlining the killing of prey. Never do it again. Also, tell all your friends if you survive that they shouldn’t disturb the octopus.

Isn’t evolution grand?

Chop wood, carry water

I haven’t been sleeping well lately — I woke up at 4 this morning, got up at 5 after failing to fall back into sleep. So I got up, and did my morning thing on autopilot.

Go to the bathroom. Wash hands and face. Go to kitchen. Start water boiling. While I’m waiting, feed the cat. Wash the coffee press. Grind coffee beans. Wash two cups. Add milk to one. Pour boiling water over coffee. Stand, waiting, two minutes. Think about the day to come. Pour coffee into cups. Carry the one with milk to the bedroom for my wife. Carry the one without to my office. Sit. Turn on the computer. Write something…”chop wood, carry water.”

I’m thinking this is ritual. It’s a pattern that provides a solid foundation to my day, and as a bonus, it gets things done. It might not be a grand accomplishment, but it carries me forward day by day, and makes sure I get out of bed with a plan and a series of little actions, and sets a pattern for doing. Just doing.

Ritual can be a good thing.

I can also see where it’s a danger, when it changes into a pattern of not doing, when it becomes a rut that carries one to nowhere. I’m not concerned that making coffee and feeding the cat is a path to uselessness, but I can imagine a ritual of distraction and pointlessness that can consume day after day, so I also have to be prepared to break the rituals and take pleasure in change.

Chop wood, find a new spider, carry water, teach, make the coffee, write something you didn’t write before.

Spiderzilla

We found one unusual spider today, and she was frustrating. First thing we noticed about her: she looked like our familiar Parasteatoda, except that she was half again, maybe twice the size of the house spiders we usually see. She was also relatively lightly colored, compared to the mottled brown of our familiar friends. So I caught her, with the idea that I might be able to more closely examine her in the lab. Hah. This was the most frantically active spider I’ve ever had to work with, scrabbling non-stop at the sides of the vial. I tried everything to get her to hold still and let me do some close-ups and measurements — she was having none of that.

I put her in a vial, I put her in a small petri dish to confine her. Nothing worked.

I finally just let her out to scurry about on my hand — I thought if nothing else, it would help give some perspective on her size. Have you ever tried to focus a camera and keep a spider in view as it is running all over your hand, and while you’re trying to make sure it doesn’t escape? She wasn’t cooperative at all.

One alternative, one a real arachnologist wouldn’t balk at, would be to kill and fix her, maybe even do a little dissection. The thing is…I’ve never killed a spider, not even in my lab work, and I’d like to maintain that record. I’m a biologist, dammit, I study life, not death, and while I’ve killed flies, fish, kittens, rabbits, mice, dogs, and goats in the line of duty, I’d rather not, thank you very much, and if I can study living animals without harming them, I’d rather do that. I’m sure I’ll eventually have to do some of the dirty wicked killing business with adult spiders, but I’ll put that off as long as I can.

Anyway, I think I exhausted her eventually, and she just wanted to curl up and hang off the end of a brush. I still couldn’t get her into the orientation I wanted.

My current plan: I’ve put her in a large vial, fed her some flies, and hope she spins a nice cobweb in there. Once she’s hanging from a nice strong web frame, I might be able to rotate the vial around and get a better shot of her.