Bethany Brookshire is wondering about how to justify writing about weird little animals. Sometimes, I write about weird animals, I post weird anatomy facts, because I need to feel a little bit of wonder. Curiosity. Joy. I want other people to feel that way too. I know how much we are witnessing. I know how much we need little things to remind us that yes, there’s pain, but there’s joy in this life too. Sometimes, it’s romance novels or bad TV or funny Tiktoks. Sometimes it’s sea squirts. The world is, indeed, awful. But it’s also wonderful, and bizarre, and fun. We need the wonder as much as ..read more

I was walking into work this morning, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the wolf spiders were underfoot, and I saw all these delicate lines of silk draped over everything (once your eye is attuned to spotting silk lines, you discover that they are everywhere, on every fence post and bush.) I stopped by the lab and saw that the temperature in the spider incubators was a comfortable 27°C, and the humidity is rising at last to about 35%, so I checked the colony. Nobody is laying eggs yet, but they are looking plump and healthy and ready for a season of fecundity. Steatoda triangulosa Once ..read more

Caitlin Flanagan is one of those creepy conservatives who manages to get regularly published in so-called liberal magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and simultaneously is loved by right-wing free speech warriors. She gets away with saying things like this, somehow. Dear NYPD: Please, please, please arrest these faculty members, says the free speech warrior. What, exactly, are these faculty members supposed to be arrested for? Is it for peacefully protecting the rights of minority students to express their political opinions? I thought that’s what we are supposed to do! I mean, f ..read more

I get email from creationists all the time, and it is so discouraging: there are a few people who manage to pump out so much noise and garbage, and there are a few people willing to engage their nonsense, and I guess I’m one of them. But I can’t possibly keep up! For instance, one obnoxious creationist has sent me a couple of links to his horrible website, Darhiwum, which just goes on and on with bogus misinterpretations at endless length. This particular article first quotes Conservapædia, and then explores the author’s misbegotten thesis, which is…let’s see if you can figure it out. The ca ..read more

I’m glad Jon Stewart is around to point out the absurdity of our news media. Yes. Following Donald Trump’s car on his commute to the court is not news. Reporting breathlessly on the courtroom artist’s rendering of the scene is not news. Endlessly describing what Trump, a man who hasn’t changed his wardrobe in decades, looks like is not news. Reporting on the ongoing minutiae of court procedure is not news. It’s all boring stuff that could be summarized in 5 minutes at the end of the day…and on days when nothing dramatic happens (that is, most of them), it’s overkill. I did not care for the sh ..read more

These little guys, wolf spiders of the genus Pardosa, are everywhere right now. Mary brought this one home from work because apparently she thinks we don’t have enough of them here. No worries, it scurried away shortly after I took this photo, and now owns our living room ..read more

Here is a typical gathering of UMM students, honoring the god of electricity. UMN Morris is a clean energy leader and destination. We are carbon neutral in electricity. UMN Morris produces more clean electricity per student of any campus in the United States. -100% carbon neutral electric status achieved in 2020 -1,000,000 lbs + of organic waste diverted from landfills by campus and community composting program -10 Million kWh electricity produced each year by two wind turbines -Gold STAR rating (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education ..read more

I honestly tried to give this Netflix movie, Rebel Moon: the Scargiver, a chance. I made it about halfway before giving up in boredom. It’s a sci-fi fantasy story about a rag-tag group of deadly warriors defeating an empire…prosaic enough so far. But what totally killed it for me, besides the deadly dull characters and ridiculous stakes, was the logistics. There is the gigantic, ultra-powerful galactic empire, you see, and the local governor sends this gigantic starship crewed entirely by psycho Nazis, to collect…grain. That’s the macguffin here, bags of grain. This grain is the output of a s ..read more

Sometimes, we do have to respect the humanity of those we despise, no matter how repugnant we find them. Penny Arcade What do you think, isolation and electroshock therapy? Or something milder and kinder ..read more

My son, Major Conlann A. Myers, has been published in Army Communicator, with a short history and current status of the 51st Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E) (his unit) on page 35, if you’re interested. I know I am. This is the best we get, though – vague statements about the broad general area of deployment, next to nothing about timing. The 51st ESB-E is postured to deploy to the United States Central Command area of operations (AoR) in 2024 as the first full ESB-E, taking over a mission that has previously been filled from ESBs and providing new capabilities to the area of ..read more