The space people are getting busy

We have successfully invaded Mars again, this time to poke holes in it.

The InSight lander, operated by NASA and built by scientists in the U.S., France and Germany, touched down in the vast, red expanse of Mars’ Elysium Planitia just before 3 p.m. Eastern Monday.

There it will operate for the next two Earth years, deploying a seismometer, a heat sensor and radio antenna to probe the Red Planet’s interior. Scientists hope that InSight will uncover signs of tectonic activity and clues about the planet’s past. Those findings could illuminate how Mars became the desolate desert world we see today.

Oh. Practical knowledge, since we’ve got an ongoing experiment to see if we can turn Earth into a similarly desolate desert.

If you don’t want to learn about how to end all life as we know it, you could tune in here on Wednesday afternoon, when I’m getting together with some other space people, the Deep Astronomy channel, to talk about the origin of life. It’ll be fun! Space people are cool!

So now we’re a country that gasses children

Desperate refugees have arrived at the US border. They want to cross over to request asylum, which they have to do — they can’t stay in Mexico and make that legal request. So what do you do? Obviously, you close the border to everyone and fire tear-gas canisters at the families trying to cross.

Well, “obviously” for a fascist police-state run by racists, I guess.

Oh, America. How disappointing can you get? Don’t answer that, I’m afraid of the answer.

Facebook sucks, and it’s too big to die easily

If you’re a Facebook user, think about what you signed up for. I suspect that most of you are like me, you thought the idea of a hub for keeping in touch with family and friends was a good one, and that’s what you wanted — something like that old newsletter your Aunt Matilda used to send out every Christmas, only shorter and more casual and spread out over the year. Or like a bar where you’d stroll in and see friends from the community, and a few strangers, and you could strike up a little conversation. That sounds wonderful! Only it hasn’t turned out that way, because the barkeep has decided to be intrusive and obnoxious. He wants to introduce you to new friends, all the time, and it doesn’t matter if they’re a bit skeevy. He’s trying to sell you stuff on the side. He keeps asking you questions about your personal life, all with the helpful intent of trying to match you with more compatible friends (only he doesn’t seem to actually understand human interactions, and he’s more than willing to connect you to any guy who’ll tip him a dollar), or to better understand what he might be able to sell to you. And then he turns up the television news real loud because it’ll give all of his patrons something to talk about.

The problem with Facebook isn’t the idea, it’s the Facebook executives, like Zuckerberg, who want to control and profit from the conversation. It’s gotten so bad that even avaricious robots like Zuckerberg have noticed, but they haven’t realized that what the users want is for Zuckerberg to shut the fuck up and quit intruding.

In his February letter, Zuckerberg essentially acknowledged what was obvious to anyone who had a Facebook account during the 2016 election: the social network has not exactly enhanced our democracy. The News Feed, the main scroll of posts that you see when you open Facebook, fueled hoaxes (which were overwhelmingly “tilted in favor” of Donald Trump, according to an analysis by Hunt Allcott of New York University and Matthew Gentzkow at Stanford), and it overfed people stories and memes that fit preconceived notions. On social media, “resonant messages get amplified many times,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This rewards simplicity and discourages nuance. At its best, this focuses messages and exposes people to different ideas. At its worst, it oversimplifies important topics and pushes us towards extremes.”

He talks as if he understands, but the wheels in his head are spinning, and he’s trying to figure out how to keep his hooks in his userbase while acknowledging that maybe sometimes he’s an obnoxious ass, a little bit, occasionally (really, it’s always, a lot). This is not an indication that Facebook is a good place to find genuine communication:

For example, by cross-referencing your behavior on Facebook with files maintained by third-party data brokers, the company gathers data on your income, your net worth, your home’s value, your lines of credit, whether you have donated to charity, whether you listen to the radio, and whether you buy over-the-counter allergy medicine. It does this so that it can give companies an unprecedented ability to post ads that are presumably likelier to appeal to you. (I asked Facebook whether anything has changed to make the Post’s report no longer accurate; the company had no comment.)

They have “algorithms” to figure out what ads you’d like to see. But their algorithms suck, and are easily gamed, and even more easily bought. Every time they glean some scrap of information, like that recently I’ve been looking up camera gear, they use a sledgehammer and start throwing buckets of ads in my face for inappropriate stuff grossly out of my price range or not at all related to my specific interests, but it has the words “photography” or “camera” somewhere in it. The bartender here has a motor-mouth and low intelligence and is prone to manic obsessions. How about if you back off and just let me chat with friends?

So I’m backing off from Facebook instead. I’m going to stop interacting with Facebook at all for a while; I’m still going to do blogpost links there, but even that will go away eventually. And after a while, no hurry, I’ll just close my account altogether. I might skim through it once a day to see what everyone is up to — in particular, I get grandbaby updates for Knut there, although my other grandbaby has a mother who is very tech savvy and has mostly abandoned Facebook already. If you want to have a conversation with me, though, Facebook ain’t the medium for that.

I’ve been looking for alternatives, and Diaspora looks promising. I signed up for Pluspora this morning, and it’s already better. Not perfect, though. I said on signup I’d like to see various #science-related hashtags, and first thing in my face is a bunch of anti-vaxx bullshit…so my first experience with it involved learning how to filter out the garbage. I guess even if you’ve got a nice bar with an unobtrusive barkeep who isn’t poking his nose into your business all the time, you still have to deal with other customers.

Here’s an enthusiastic summary of the advantages of Diaspora.

Spiders will just break your heart

Last Wednesday, I was so optimistic. I’d paired up Vera with a first-generation son of Gwyneth (GI-♂), they’d gone at it hot and heavy, and had produced an egg sac — an egg sac with a peculiarity I’ll get to in a moment. My plan was to go in today and open up the sac and see what embryos I’d find.

The peculiarity was that although I’d classified all my spiders as Parasteatoda tepidariorum, there was still a little uncertainty. The patterns of pigment on their cuticles were a bit ambiguous. Here’s part of the description of P. tepidariorum from Common Spiders of North America.

This is a medium-sized to large cobweb weaver. The abdomen appears teardrop shaped as the spider hangs updide down in its web, spinnerets uppermost. The cephalothorax is tan or brown. The abdomen color is extremely variable, usually shades of light brown with a mottled tan or brown. Some individuals are nearly black, others unmarked and pale. The legs are darker at the joints.
…
The egg cases of this spider are tan and tardrop-shaped, point uppermost.

This describes my spiders perfectly, given that there is variability in the patterning of the abdomen. They look different, which had me worried that I may have gathered a couple of different species, but then the description of the egg case settled it for me: Gwyneth had produced lovely tan, teardrop-shaped egg cases. Case closed, right? Gwyneth and her progeny were P. tepidariorum.

Then Vera produced an egg sac. Vera herself also fits that description of P. tepidariorum to a T.

But the egg sac she produced was a cottony, pure white ball. What? I flipped through my books looking for some indication of what this might mean, and found a description of Steatoda triangulosa, which is also common in this part of the country.

This is a medium-sized cobweb weaver. The cephalothorax is reddish brown. The legs are light brown with dark brown bands. The apdomen is light brown with two rows of angular spots or bands of dark reddish brown separated by white areas with a mottled appearance. In some individuals this pattern looks checkered.
…
The egg case is a fluffy white sphere.

Uh-oh. Are Vera and Gwyneth from two different genera? There’s nothing in Vera’s abdominal pattern that fits S. triangulosa, but maybe that’s highly variable in this species, too, and the egg case definitely fits this description. But she’d bred with P. tepidariorum! Were the new eggs hybrids? Was I just a terrible ignorant klutz playing the taxonomy game poorly? I went into the lab to take a few steps towards finding out.

And…disappointment. The “fluffy white sphere” was gone — it had been torn apart. The eggs within were dried up lumps. Uncertainty reigns.

I put the two lousy parents into a petri dish and made a video. You look and tell me: Parasteatoda tepidariorum or Steatoda triangulosa? Looking at just the adult morphology, I’m saying P. tepidariorum, but what do I know. Video below the fold, with an agitated pair of spiders scurrying about.

[Read more…]

The movie this week was…Ralph Breaks the Internet

I must protest. The movie Ralph Breaks the Internet is totally wrong. That is not how the internet works, with little people zipping around inside the cable. Also, the product placement was excessive, with all kinds of internet companies represented with big signs in your face all the time. Wasn’t this one of the many problems with The Emoji Movie?

But still, it was a sweet movie with a nice message. I also liked how all these little kids in the audience got up and danced in front of the screen during the closing credits. They were terrible dancers, but they were enthusiastic.

How adorable

Every year, American Atheists has their annual convention on Easter weekend — it’s smart, because this is one group that won’t have conflicts with religious holidays. This year, it’s in Cincinnati, which has Answers in Genesis concerned, because that’s real close to their odious little theme park for the gullible, so they’ve decided to have their own conference at the same time! I really don’t think there will be many attendees who will be conflicted about which conference to see, so that’s also a smart move. These are two events with nearly perfect 0% overlap.

AiG seems to think it’s all about them, though.

Recently, the group American Atheists announced they are bringing their annual conference to Cincinnati during Easter 2019! And from what we’ve heard from reliable sources, they particularly want to be in our area because this is where Answers in Genesis, the Ark Encounter, and the Creation Museum are located.

We’ve also heard about some of the possible things the atheists might be planning in their attempts to oppose our creation-gospel ministry. So while the atheists are running their conference, we’ve decided to hold our own conference. Titled “Answering Atheists—an AiG Easter Conference,” this four-day event will be held at the Ark Encounter’s new Answers Center. We will equip Christians to answer the skeptics and to effectively share the truth of God’s Word and its life-changing gospel message.

How odd. I haven’t heard anything about any focus on AiG at the atheist conference. They haven’t announced any speakers yet, but they have put out a call for proposals.

Past proposals that have been selected include presentations on: activism and organizing; politics, public policy, and advocacy; community building; personal experiences with leaving religion; science, technology, and education; communications and marketing; and litigation and constitutional rights.

Musicians, comedians, poets, artists, and other performers are also invited to submit proposals.

Hmm. Nothing in there about “cunning ways to fuck over AiG”. Nothing specific about the Ark Park or the Creation “Museum”. I suspect there will be people discouraging everyone from bothering to visit the over-priced novelty show in Kentucky, although some might slip away out of curiosity to check it out, so if anything, they might get a few additional skeptical visitors, which will bump up their declining attendance very slightly.

Also, we always oppose the anti-scientific bullshit AiG peddles, 365 days a year, so this will be nothing new.

On the other hand, the AiG conference seems to be full of anti-atheist nonsense from all the usual, tired suspects. Ray Comfort is the keynote speaker, if that tells you anything. Like that it’s going to be a load of tiresome baloney. He’s going to be talking about “keys to reaching atheists”, which is amusing, since Comfort is one of the worst people at reaching atheists, which really says something, since all the AiG clowns and Living Waters bozos are all totally unconvincing to anyone who doesn’t accept the authority of the Bible.

I do notice that the registration for AiG’s event is set at $50 less than the full price of the AA conference. I expect, though, that the AA speakers will be more substantial and numerous than the 3-4 droning preachers per day that AiG has lined up. (I qualify for discounts that would make the atheist conference cheaper than the bible-thumpers conference, anyway).

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for AiG to extend a speaking invitation to me, to pad out their thin lineup, even though I’d probably add a little excitement to their schedule. Since I’m persona non grata with atheism right now, I guess I won’t wait for one from AA, either. My family doesn’t do Easter, so it looks like me and the spiders hanging out and mocking the holiday this year. They’re better company than Christian zealots, anyway.

Happy Spider Report: Vera was preggers!

It’s all good news. All the spiders are thriving right now, chowing down on flies. Vera produced a very pretty egg sac — I’m thinking the 14/10 light/dark cycle may have something to do with it — and has shrunk to about half her previous size. I’m planning to open up the sac on Sunday as part of my devotional, just to check on the health of her embryos. Although I’m low on adults, the next generation is coming along, and with any luck I’ll have a swarm of spiderlings this time next week.