Famine fears allayed

I’ve got all these spiders getting to a size where fruit flies don’t cut it anymore, and unfortunately, my mealworm colony crashed, I tried buying live critters online but they’re expensive and half of them died en route thanks to the bitter cold, so I was panicking that this new generation of black widows might go hungry. This is not good. I was planning to start breeding in the next week or so, and hungry females are more likely to feed than to…ummm, mate.

Ice fishing season to the rescue, just in the nick of time! This time of year a popular bait is the lowly wax worm, so I was able to get a few dozen quite cheaply at the local bait shoppe.

Spiders love these things, but I can only get them during ice-fishing season. Fortunately, that lasts until April/May, so by then my mealworms should be back on track.

Good to know the administration has its priorities straight

Little Marco Rubio has taken decisive action and ended an oppressive policy.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken’s decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.
The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have the decorative angular features and was the default in Microsoft products.
…
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the cable said.

Yay! I feel lighter and freer already — Calibri is a woke font, after all.

Unfortunately, Calibri is a Microsoft font that isn’t automatically installed on Mac systems, so I guess I won’t be sending any diplomatic messages in the near future.

Sympathy for Samantha Fulnecky

The Algorithm keeps throwing articles and videos about this bad essay that was written by OU student Samantha Fulnecky. I can understand that — there is so much content being generated over the terrible writing by this student, because the internet is full of educated people who in many cases have professional expertise in evaluating writing. I’m going to be teaching a class in writing scientific papers this Spring, so I’m familiar with the work. Here’s an example:

If you didn’t watch it, that’s OK, you can find hundreds of similar examples on the internet. And that’s the problem!

I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of student papers, and some of them have been atrocious and earned zeroes. But I would never drag a student publicly, I would never shame a student’s lack of rigor or talent or ability on the internet. We have strict rules about that — I would get dragged into the division chair’s office, and get a few phone calls from the university’s lawyers, and face disciplinary action if I did that, no matter how badly the essay I was mocking was written.

However, in this case, Samantha Fulnecky exposed herself — she gave her awful essay to Turning Point USA, and they cruelly posted it online with full attribution, and invited the brutal savaging she is getting. I cringe a little bit deep inside every time I see these dissections of her paper, because normally a teacher would do that in confidence, one on one, with the goal of helping the student learn and get better, not to rip her apart in a public display.

I experienced this myself. The first essay I wrote in graduate school was for a physiology class, and I apparently expressed a view on the role of synapse structure that the professor did not like, so he spent an entire class hour going over it line by line and telling the entire class how stupid and wrong I was. It was not a good learning experience, except that I did learn that this one professor was an asshole.

Now, even worse, the entire internet is shredding Fulnecky’s paper, and probably millions of people are wallowing in schadenfreude over this one student’s disgraceful inability to make a coherent argument. What has Samantha Fulnecky learned? Probably only that she has to be more careful about letting people see how she expresses herself.

I also suspect that I’m seeing so much criticism of Fulnecky’s paper because she made herself fair game for the dammed up resentment so many of us have for the bad papers we have to routinely read in detail. Finally, we get to explode at this garbage we have to carefully evaluate, rather than being professional and courteous!

Racist old fool trash-talks Minnesota

Worst president ever.

Mr. President, thank you. Um, the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, is saying that he’s actually proud to have the largest Somali community in the country. And his police chief,
he’s a fool.
Well, his police chief is also saying,
I wouldn’t be proud to have the largest Somalian. Look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It’s not even a nation. It’s just a people walking around killing each other. Look, uh, these Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country. They’ve taken billions and billions of dollars. They have a representative, Ilhan Omar, who they say married her brother. [Not true]It’s a fraud. She tries to deny it now, but you can’t really deny it because, you know, just happened. She shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman.[Why? Because she’s black and a member of the opposition party?] And I’m sure people are looking at that. And she should be thrown the hell out of our country. And most of those people, man, they have destroyed Minnesota.[Cool. I’m looking out my window at the snow coming down. Doesn’t seem to be destroyed] Okay, Minnesota, you have an incompetent governor. You have a crooked governor. He’s crooked as hell, but he’s incompetent. [no evidence given]
Uh Waltz is he’s should be ashamed. That beautiful land, that beautiful state, it’s a hell hole right now. [I don’t know about that. I kind of like it here] And the Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. [Isn’t that what Donald is doing here?] You have her. She’s always talking about the Constitution provides me with uh go back to your own country and figure out your constitution. [She’s an American citizen, she is talking about her constitution. Donald just doesn’t like the American constitution] All she does is complain about this country and without this country she would not be in very good shape. She probably wouldn’t be alive right now. So Somalia is considered by many [When a student hands in an essay with this kind of vague handwaving and evidence free claim, I fail them] to be the worst country on earth. I don’t know. I’ve I haven’t been there. I won’t be there anytime soon. I hope. But uh what Somalia what the Somalian people have done to Minnesota is is not even believable. It’s not even believable. [Correct. What the president says about Minnesota is not believable] And a lot of it starts with the governor. A lot of it starts with Barack Hussein and Obama because that’s when people started coming in. And you have to have people come in that are going to love our country, cherish our country. They want to kiss our country good night. They talk about our country. We want them to pray for our country. This is not the people living in Minnesota. And she’s a disaster. She should not be and her friends shouldn’t be allowed. Frankly, they shouldn’t even be allowed to be Congress people. Okay? They shouldn’t even be allowed to be Congress people because they don’t represent the interests of our country. [She represents my interests well. Trump? Not so much] Anybody else? There you are.

That’s just appalling. He just rambles on lying, and dumbass people accept it.

Are the Washington press corps going to just stand there and take it? Trump needs to be deposed and leave office immediately.

For the capitalist parasites: they’re asking for it

The right-wingers are fighting among themselves again, inspired by Hegseth’s bombing of boats. Claire Lehmann, the terrible racist founder of Quillette, starts the bickering by complaining about the sinking…not that she opposes murdering random people from South American countries, but that it doesn’t look good and you should be more quiet about the slaughtering:

This is really grotesque.
(And look I get it that sometimes hard men need to do ugly things. But if you’re going to do this, don’t broadcast it, & don’t brag about it. FFS)

Billionaire Joe Lonsdale responds. If you’ve forgotten who he is, he made his fortune by starting out under Peter Thiel at PayPal, and then got really rich with Palantir, the company that profits from spying on your internet usage all around the world. Later, he was one of the founders of the University of Austin, the fake college for far-right and libertarian freaks. He wants more publicity for extra-judicial murder.

She’s just wrong. Leftist schoolmarm leaders cause violence and evil in our civilization.
Sinking narco boats publicly helps deter others. As does hanging repeat violent criminals.
Killing bad guys is DoW job. He should brag more. Masculine truth: bold, virtuous men deter evil.

He’s a good example: bold, virtuous men failed to deter Joe Lonsdale. He might be on to something here, that maybe it’s time to hang a few billionaires to teach a lesson to those greedy parasites. He wants more than killing a few “narcoterrorists” (who haven’t been tried and convicted of anything), just public hanging for lots of crimes.

If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law.
We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others.
Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.

For future reference, this is how billionaires want to run their utopia, in a “masculine” fashion with lots of public violence. I say we should hang them first. Viva la revolución! Give them what they want.

No nervous system interference there at all, thank you very much

Remember this guy? A local chiropractor put up signs all around town touting “The Cancer Cure” (but taking care not to promise one, since he’s only a chiropractor). Those signs suddenly disappeared shortly after I complained, but it’s typical of these fringe wellness quacks — publicly veiling their promises while implying miracles. These guys are still in operation, of course, and still making bizarre claims, like that chiropractic allows the body to heal itself by removing any nervous system interference.

You won’t be surprised to learn that, on the national scale, chiropractors are generally big fans of Robert Felching Kennedy Jr.

When Kennedy ran an anti-vaccine non-profit before running for president, chiropractors were hefty donors. In 2019, for instance, they donated nearly half a million dollars to the cause — about a sixth of the organization’s revenue that year. When Kennedy created the MAHA Alliance super PAC for his presidential candidacy, more than half of its initial donors were chiropractors. And when Kennedy’s nomination to lead HHS seemed like it was on the rocks, a raft of chiropractors signed a letter of support for him.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: U.S. President Donald Trump, shakes hands with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alongside Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner (L) after Trump signed the "Fostering the Future" executive order the East Room of the White House on November 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Many of Kennedy’s most ardent chiropractic supporters are now at the forefront of his Make America Healthy Again movement, posting on social media and finding TikTok virality in a bid to spread his agenda to a larger audience and recruit more disciples. Their passion for Kennedy is palpable.

To be fair, not all chiropractors are on the MAHA train.

“RFK Jr. is a natural fit, because those people who believe in that vertebral subluxation myth are the same ones who think, ‘No, you don’t need vaccines because we can just align your spine so that your body can heal itself,’” says Aaron Kubal, a chiropractor based in Minnesota who does not subscribe to the spine theory and has gone viral online for his videos debunking MAHA-aligned chiropractors.

“align your spine so that your body can heal itself” sounds like what our local chiropractor, Christopher Wollner, preaches. I wonder if he’s a MAGA/Trump voter? Because that kind of unscientific idiocy meshes perfectly with that brand of political idiocy. It’s totally free of any nervous system interference, after all.

Jesus would have bombed those boats!

The NY Times did one of those things they’re so fond of: take an unscientific and inadequate sample of a subpopulation of voters, and ask them what they think of a recent policy decision. This time, they asked 6 Republicans what they think of bombing Venezualan boats. I’m not sure what the point is, except to let us know that Republicans are assholes.

Edward Padron, 67, thinks in principle that killing people in boats is OK, but killing survivors is wrong.

“I don’t agree with the second shot,” Mr. Padron said. “I do agree with them being stopped.”

Warning: Mr Padron holds the moral high ground in this group. It’s all downhill from there.

Erwin McKone, 55, has reservations about killing low-level guys in boats.

“If we were serious about the cartels, we would probably try to cut off the head of the snake,” he said, speculating that many of those who have been killed are “poor Venezuelans that see this as an opportunity to feed their families.”

I suspect he’d be fine if we just openly declared war on Venezuela.

Charles Vaughters, 25, favors killing alleged drug traffickers without much evidence.

“Drug traffickers are criminals who rape, murder and kill people, and they are dedicated to getting the product to Americans,” Mr. Vaughters said. “They don’t care if it harms Americans. I don’t think we should be feeling much sympathy.”

Rachel Uecker, 53, has a pragmatic perspective.

“​​If we take them to the courts, we’re going to have to pay for that and support them in prison,” she said. “If they’re bringing drugs into our country, I don’t care who gets rid of them.”

Brian Kozlowski, 41, wants more violence.

Brian D. Kozlowski, who is a strong Trump supporter, said the U.S. military should be used “more proactively to keep Americans safe.” He blamed the Biden administration for what he described as not doing enough to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country.

He’s a lawyer. Let’s get rid of that troubling concept of presumed innocence.

But my very favorite example of twisted moral reasoning comes from Naomi Villalba (no age given), who cites the Bible as justification.

Ms. Villalba said the second strike was also justified, and she does not believe the United States is indiscriminately targeting boats.

“They should have done that strike regardless,” she said. “Every human being does have value, but if you’re caught up in something that’s very detrimental to society, I think that you should die.”

She compared these strikes to a story in the Bible, when Jesus healed someone on a Sunday, contradicting religious rules that forbid work on that day. Some laws are worth breaking for the betterment of mankind, she said, just like the biblical story was trying to show.

Well, yeah. If Jesus could break one of the ten commandments to heal someone, then Pete Hegseth can also break one of the commandments to murder two people clinging to wreckage in the ocean. Same thing. Every human being does have value, but….

Does being caught up in something detrimental to society also include evangelical Christianity and MAGA?

I take back my disparagement of the NY Times’ methods of taking the pulse of the country. I did learn something after all.