Fascinating things I learned today

We get helium as a byproduct of liquified natural gas processing. So it’s a nice side effect of our dependence on oil.

I did not know that.

Helium is heavily used by the semiconductor industry. Making all those fancy high end chips requires helium in the process.

I had no idea.

30% of the world’s helium supply is extracted in Qatar, which ships it the semiconductor manufacturers in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

There are all kinds of surprises in the global supply chain.

The ships that transport that crucial element are currently bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz.

I can see where this is going.

Iran just blew up one of Qatar’s helium plants.

Uh-oh.

All this destruction was triggered by a rogue American president, who is also a raging asshole and incompetent moron.

At least I already knew that!

I hope no one was hoping to get a new computer (or an MRI) in the future.

Oh, and hey, if you’ve got a birthday coming up, maybe ixnay on the artypay alloonsbay. They just seem wasteful.

What’s with all the pedos nowadays?

They’ve been here all the time, but somehow were allowed to continue to assault children. I don’t get it. This ought to be one of the greatest taboos in our society. We regard abusers of children as the lowest of the low, when they are caught, but when they’re running free our institutions seem to actively protect them.

The latest story is that another Duggar man has been caught. Joseph Duggar, one of the swarm of children exploited by The “Learning” Channel TLC in their show “19 Kids and Counting” has been arrested.

Former reality TV star Joseph Duggar is facing a child molestation charge in Florida, almost five years after his brother Josh, who also starred in the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” was convicted of downloading child sexual abuse images.

Joseph Duggar, 31, was arrested in Arkansas, where he lives, and was awaiting extradition to Florida on Thursday. Duggar is charged with lewd and lascivious behavior on a child under 12 years old, according to an arrest affidavit from the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Panama City, Florida.

Police officers in Tontitown, Arkansas, on Wednesday contacted deputies in Bay County, saying they had interviewed a 14-year-old girl who told them that Duggar had molested her several times during a family trip to Panama City Beach when she was age 9, according to the affidavit.

Remember that that show was cancelled in 2015 when Joseph’s brother Josh had abused his sisters and a babysitter. He’s in prison for that right now. I guess raping children was a family tradition. He’s from a Baptist family whose only claim to fame was a self-righteous belief that they should have more children than they could care for, and were further entitled by a terrible television network that thought it was entertaining to pump up their privilege by pretending they were role models. Maybe the parents and a few network executives should also be spending some time in a jail cell.

But if you thought the Duggar family saga was appalling enough, get a load of this. The Epstein files have been redacted and censored and hidden away under the shelter of an evil witch, Pam Bondi, who really doesn’t want the truth about her boss, Donald Trump, revealed. But there’s a way around that: congress people have been able to read the uncensored version, and here Representative Dan Goldman reads aloud one of the passages that the Republicans don’t want you to hear.

Trump tried to compel a 13-15 year old girl to perform oral sex on him, she was disgusted and bit him, so he struck her and called her a “bitch”. I am further disgusted by him.

Put Deviant Donald in a prison right next to Josh and Joseph Duggar. That’s one way to prevent him from bombing other countries to distract from his molesting of children.

But somehow we’ve got to fix this problem of rapacious older men attacking children — I don’t have an answer because I can’t even comprehend wanting to do such things.

Kudos to my 2026 Genetics students!

They have just completed the first half-semester experiment, a complementation test with two loci in flies, and we sat down in lab and did an analysis of the data. Perfect execution! We got the expected result (the genes complemented each other) and all of the students are now officially masters of basic fly breeding.

Then, just because the F1s from that cross were all heterozygotes at two loci, we went ahead and did another cross with them, your classic dihybrid cross, which should result in 4 phenotypes with a ratio of 9:3:3:1, according to that old guy Mendel. It did! It’s always thrilling to do these simple experiments that we all take for granted and see that, by god, Mendelian genetics actually does work under these specific conditions, and even a gang of undergraduates who’d never looked at Drosophila before can do it.

We’ve got another experiment in progress, a mapping cross that we started before spring break — we have to overlap experiments a little bit so we can get them all done in a single semester. I’m impressed with this bunch, though. They’ve got the potential to be fabulous geneticists. So hire them after they graduate!

(I don’t actually expect most of them to want to go on to careers in genetics, but they could. They have the potential.)

Anyone remember the Metaverse?

No? The huge investment Facebook made in launching a virtual reality social media platform that Mark Zuckerberg predicted would take over the internet? It was so important that Zuck renamed his whole company to Meta! How could you forget?

Well, now it’s safe to purge your memory banks. The Metaverse is dead or dying.

Horizon Worlds launched in late 2021 and never found its footing. The platform never drew more than a few hundred thousand monthly active users, which isn’t enough for a project that consumed billions of dollars. Reality Labs, the Meta division responsible for VR and metaverse development, has accumulated nearly $80 billion in losses since 2020. In the fourth quarter alone it posted an operating loss of more than $6 billion.

The costs were always the argument for staying the course. Zuckerberg had promised the metaverse would reach a billion people and generate hundreds of billions in commerce. Pulling back meant admitting those projections were wrong.

I am impressed that Zuckerberg can throw away $80 billion on a bad gamble on a whim. Surely this means the stockholders will rise up and depose their incompetent leader…nah, no, you know that once you’re rich enough you are free from consequences.

You might hope that they’d learn something from this, but no — their future is instead going to be built on AI.

What changed the calculus was AI. When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, Meta pivoted its public messaging fast. Its AI research division, long led by scientist Yann LeCun, gave the company a credible foundation to build on. Ad revenue improved. The stock recovered. By 2024, Meta had nearly tripled in value from its 2022 lows.

AI seems to have a niche in building stock market confidence and ad revenue, that’s nice. I think it’s going to face some consequences in the near future, as people realize they’ve been sold a shiny bill of goods, and maybe people will learn to tell Zuck to shut the fuck up.

I’m trying to keep it light here

The world, and especially the United States right now, sucks. So I have little rituals to keep me somewhat balanced by, for instance, reading a set of webcomics every morning. Of course, I still have to complain about them, but the intent is there.

The Far Side frequently cheers me up with comics featuring spiders. There’s one today:

Has anyone else noticed a fondness for multi-limbed aliens in recent SF? It only makes sense, since humans are chronically under-supplied with limbs, and the ones we’ve got are over-specialized to specific functions. Or maybe it’s just my taste in SF.

Although…the newest Andy Weir book, Project Hail Mary, is being released as a movie, with a cute 5-armed alien, and I’m not going to watch it. I’ve detested all of Weir’s books since The Martian, which I wanted to throw at the wall and then set on fire. In general, I’ve grown to dislike novels about rescuing all of humanity with some guy in a spaceship, and I especially dislike Weir’s style of episodic cliffhangers resolved with epically unlikely instances of plot armor.

Wait, I’m supposed to cheer myself up with this stuff.

OK, come on xkcd.

Naturally, the first spot I looked at was my home on the map. I’m in the western part of Minnesota, in what is called the prairie pothole region, surrounded by shallow lakes scoured out by glaciers. So that part is kind of right, but incomplete. I’d say the dominant force on the landscape around me is agriculture. We’ve only got tiny patches of native prairie left. The boundary waters farther north are pristine, so far, but the Republicans are scheming to open that up for copper mining. I’m going to have to redo that map and replace most of it with the legend “PEOPLE”.

One last attempt to salvage some optimism. I bought myself a Kobo e-book reader, and another ritual I have is to read something non-political every night before bed. I got this Kobo with a special deal: it came pre-loaded with every book Terry Pratchett ever published. Can’t go wrong there!

I recently finished Men at Arms, which is pure escapist fantasy. It’s got dragons in it. It’s also about a policeman who takes his civic duties as a servant of the people seriously. I know, dragons? I can suspend disbelief for that, but Sam Vimes is stretching credibility. Also, this book is about the importance of diversity, and efforts to widen representation in the city watch, another ridiculous fantasy element.

I’ve just started on Jingo, a very timely choice, since it’s about the vaguely Western medieval city of Ankh-Morpork going to war with the vaguely Middle Eastern empire of Klatch over a small island in the ocean separating them. It’s disturbingly relevant. It was reassuring to see Sam Vines resist militarizing the City Watch (they’re not a military authority, he says, they’re fellow citizens), but Pratchett better salvage some hope from this situation. I need it.

Biologists aren’t funny

Also, we’re going to nit-pick all your jokes and tell you why this one is stupid.

So you might as well stop trying. In a study, some critics found that biologists are duds at getting a laugh.

Everyone knows that a good joke can liven up a talk. Sadly, however, good jokes are in
short supply — at least according to a survey of more than 500 presentations at biology meetings.

Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a “moderate success”, eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically. In fairness, 42% of jests were spontaneous remarks relating to glitches in presentations, such as slide malfunctions, that were not intended to bring down the house. And audiences might not have expected jokes, making it harder to get them to laugh.

Roughly 40% of the talks monitored were humourless, eliminating the risk of failed jokes, but probably raising the risk of bored listeners. The work is published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Just biologists? OK, now I want to see some comparative studies. Who’s funnier, biologists, chemists, or physicists? What about mathematicians? Or, dare I say it, philosophers? I want to see some competition here, because my experience has been that biologists are much funnier than all those other disciplines…possibly because I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Possibly because we all know that bodily functions and sex are a much richer playground for jokes.

If you want a real snooze, listen to business people trying to make a speech. There’s usually some kind of tired old joke from a tired old joke book to break the ice, and then a lot of dreary numbers and ‘inspirational’ anecdotes.

They do provide some suggestions for adding humor.

Top tips for making jokes during a conference presentation, according to Victoria Stout, who
works in student support at Sacramento City College and is also a comedy performer.
• Authenticity is key. But if you’re super-sarcastic and mean, that’s not going to be appropriate.
• Use humour to connect with the audience, not to isolate them.
• Scientists respond well to puns. They also like analogies.
• People relax with a joke attempt. That primes the way for successful jokes later.
• Scientists have had incredibly interesting lives, and humour comes from the reality of our lived experience. Therefore, you are funny.

All that is mostly fair. “Scientists respond well to puns” sounds a little bit like an insult. “Scientists have had incredibly interesting lives” sounds like she doesn’t know very many scientists. I spend way too much time peering into dark corners looking for arthropods to be called “interesting,” and all you have to do is ask my wife or kids to learn that I am one of the most boring people on the planet.

Republican landlord abuses tenants and spiders

This is somewhat old news: I’ve mentioned before this strange entitled woman who has been harassing tenants, specifically by throwing tarantulas at them, but now at last she has been found guilty in the courts of the crime.

A jury on Friday found Marisa Simonetti, 32, guilty of one count each of domestic assault, harassment and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors.

According to the criminal complaint, an individual had been renting out the basement of Simonetti’s Edina, Minnesota, home through Airbnb in June 2024. They reported to police that “everything had been fine” until she requested that pest control be hired due to “a lot of large spiders in the basement.”

Simonetti started insulting and calling the individual names after they made the request, the complaint said.

OK, Ms Tenant, spiders are perfectly normal inhabitants of basement apartments, and this being Minnesota, there are few risks associated with our local species. Learn to appreciate them.

That said, there is no excuse for her landlady’s abusive behavior in response.

During the night of June 20, 2024, police responded to the home after Simonetti “intercepted” groceries ordered by the individual and refused to return them until officers told her to do so, court documents said.

The individual called 911 the next morning after Simonetti had been banging pots and pans, according to the complaint. The officer who spoke with them could hear loud banging and screaming for a “significant portion” of the roughly 28-minute call. They reported Simonetti had cut off Wi-Fi and had little ability to communicate with anyone to find a new place.
…
Officers at the scene heard loud music playing inside the home and loud metal clanking, the complaint said. When talking with police, Simonetti said she was “singing praise to the lord” and having devotional time. The officers said her behavior was erratic, per court documents.

Case closed. Crazy obnoxious landlady had her behavior recorded by the police, no wonder she was found guilty.

My major question remains unanswered, though.

Police later reviewed a video the individual recorded of Simonetti and the man, which showed the pair talking through a closed door while music was playing loudly, according to the complaint. The video later showed the door was breached, and Simonetti throwing a live tarantula onto stairs leading to the basement and spraying an “unknown substance” in the stairwell.

Where did she get the tarantula? What happened to the poor spider afterwards?

Simonetti is a Republican nutjob running for the US Senate. She doesn’t have a prayer, and she definitely won’t get my vote.

The Newt Solution

It never fails — a Republican leader always turns out to be an absolute idiot. Behold, Newt Gingrich’s plan for getting oil tankers past the Strait of Hormuz.

Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks.

Easy! Just nuke UAE and Oman put a chain of craters across them. Can you see any problems with that? Here’s a short summary.

Realistically, it would take three to five years to survey and map the canal, identify where to place the nuclear devices, prepare the route, and drill explosion wells. Add another one to two years for the actual detonations, blasting out millions of tons of sand and rock, and creating a trench 400 meters wide and 60 meters deep. Then it would take another five to ten years to complete the canal, including dredging, smoothing, lock construction, and the necessary “cool-down” period.

So, not an instant solution to the current crisis.

But even if feasible, it’s not practical. The experiments conducted nearly 70 years ago by the Americans and Soviets found that the fallout and radiation released into the atmosphere by even a few nuclear devices negated the time benefits. Moreover, the immediate zone – the canal being built – would remain so radioactive that it would make the passageway too dangerous to transit for decades.

Would that still be friendly territory after that kind of treatment?

This is new

I walked back into work this morning — the place is really dead today, I think a lot of students are struggling to get back to campus, and those who are here aren’t enthused about walking across snow-choked streets. Since I’d been absent for a few days myself, I had a bunch of chores to catch up on, herding flies and checking on spiders, so I had to do more walking than usual. I noticed something annoying.

I’ve got this torn meniscus in my right knee that has been going untreated, in the hopes that it would close up on its own. It hasn’t. As I was walking, I noticed that my right knee was getting gradually hotter and hotter, like a mechanical part that was out of lubricant. It was getting so hot that I imagined it bursting into flames as I spiraled down into a catastrophic fiery explosion.

I have done the sensible thing and am sitting down in my office as the heat slowly dies down. I don’t think I have to worry about crashing now, but I was concerned about my right pants leg catching fire.

I don’t have to move until my class at 1:00, and I should have cooled down by then. If you hear about a case of spontaneous combustion in western Minnesota, though, I thought I’d let you know so you can all say you know the guy.

The mad tyrant speaks

Well, we know that gas prices are rising, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil tankers are stacking up before the strait, bombs are falling on Tehran, Tel Aviv, and all kinds of nearby countries, and honestly, I don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to happen, because my country is being run by a senile madman. Also, the media aren’t helping. For instance, here’s a report from Bloomberg that says that Trump is adamant and is going to keep the pressure on.

A senior Arabian Gulf official warned that it would ultimately only be the sustained rise in oil prices that would force Trump to stop fighting and claim victory, leaving regional allies to deal with the residual threat from a wounded and angry Iran.

For the moment, Trump is vowing to continue the campaign, claiming he’s not ready for a deal — though Iran is. Officials in Tehran remain convinced they can outlast the mercurial US leader, but the damage is mounting.

He shouldn’t have started this war in the first place, but OK, he’s taking a position. A stupid position, but let’s deal with it. Except this is the very next paragraph:

Trump pivoted sharply over the weekend to calling for other countries to join the fray to reopen the strait — a possibility seen in those capitals as ranging from questionable to fanciful. From his Florida golf course, Trump sent a string of mixed messages on social media, calling for support in a war he’s said repeatedly he’s won, and for help in a strait his administration has insisted remains open. He claimed Saturday that Iran wanted a deal, which Iran dismissed.

So now he’s begging for aid from his “allies” to reopen the strait while simultaneously claiming that he has “won” his “war”, if that’s what they’re calling it now. What’s obvious is that Trump done fucked up, has delusions of grandeur, and is going to continue to screw up the world. Now he’s talking about “taking” Cuba.

He can do whatever he wants, and the institutions of the United States, the Supreme Court and Congress, will do nothing to oppose him…while 30% of the country is also cheerleading for his insanely destructive assault on responsible leadership.

We’re the most dangerous country in the world. This is not going to end well, and we’ll deserve it.