The Church Militant tries humor…badly

I’m weirded out here. This is a video put out by fanatical, old-school Catholics to tell their followers to obey Canon Law 1251. What is that, you ask?

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

That’s still a thing?

Anyway, in this video a caterer named Karen shows up at a church event with piles of meat. Lots of unappetizing grey, slimy meat and burgers that look like flattened hockey pucks and hot dogs on paper plates…you know, church food. She also, for some reason has a plush koala toy she uses to hypnotize people to eat her food, and also as an excuse to use a “koala-tee” pun, twice. She is defeated by a guy wearing a fish mask. I present it here as your Sunday morning venture into surreality.

What stuck with me is how dreadful the food looks. Photographing meat, and food in general, is hard, and these guys fail spectacularly at it. That’s just not the vegetarian in me speaking, either — the food is even worse than the humor, which is saying a lot.

I’ve been in grading hell all day

But I finally finished the exam for introductory biology. There were two huge problems.

  1. Never again will I give a take-home multiple choice exam. I thought I was being generous: 16 multiple choice questions, one multi-part essay question, and I even gave them a form to fill in. Somehow, many of them didn’t follow the instructions. A form with a space to put in A, B, C, or D for the answer? Nope. Many wrote out answers. What I thought would be an easy grading exercise turned into a nightmare. If I were to do it again, I’d be extremely obvious and specific in how to answer.
  2. Scores were abysmal, but that’s on me. I didn’t spend enough time going over the problems…so now I have to backtrack and cover the material again and give them some more exercises to try out.

Now I have to collapse in a soggy heap. Tomorrow it begins again with an exam from my second course.

I don’t understand how Thoughtslime can be more popular than me

You know, I just posted a happy, joyous video that should lift your hearts and make you feel good about the world. At almost the exact same time, Thoughtslime posted a miserable, depressing video that will make everyone feel bad, and he’ll get a gajillion more views than mine ever will. It’s not fair!

His video is about Amazon, rather than awesome spiders. See? You already know it’s going to be horrible.

Amazon is kind of indispensable in my part of the world. We are a small town with few retail services (well, we do have a plague pit of a grocery store), which means if we want anything but the staples we rely on Amazon. Wait, I wonder…is the ubiquity of Amazon one of the reasons we don’t have many local businesses? Maybe Amazon ought to be nationalized.

Anyway, the video does explain one thing to me. A month or so ago, I had ordered something (not even from Amazon, though), and I got an email notifying me of delivery. I went outside to check, and nope, nothing, it was mystifying. The next day I checked again, in case it had fallen down behind the shrubbery or something, and no, it just wasn’t there. So I went through UPS’s horrible lost package web site, filled out some forms, and awaited their response. I figured it had been misdelivered. This has been a common problem lately, because our county arbitrarily decided to renumber our house — I’ve gotten messages from people asking me why I didn’t answer their mail, and it’s because our old address no longer exists.

Then, the next day, a UPS driver shows up at our door with the package. Great, no worries! But she was so cravenly apologetic and so anxious to explain everything to me, I was somewhat embarrassed for her. Our house was late on her route, it was dark, she drove back and forth trying to see our address, the GPS was no help at all, she’d flagged the delivery because she’d thought she’d found the place, but it wasn’t, on and on and on. Really, I understand, I wasn’t that worried about it, I was aware of how the county had scrambled addresses, and she was so, so grateful when I signed off on the delivery and signed a note saying I was happy with the service. It was a bit wild.

Honestly, friendly UPS delivery driver who dropped off a package at my house in early March, it’s OK. I worry about you now, since it sounds like you’ve got quotas and unrealistic and maybe even dangerous demands on your time. If it takes an extra day or two to get something to me, that’s fine, I won’t give you grief about it, I’m not demanding instant gratification. Be well. If you’re not already, I hope you unionize.

Playing with my camera

Today’s spider time was a bit abbreviated, because my day is jam-packed with stuff scheduled on top of stuff, so I only had a brief moment in the lab. I decided to tinker a bit with a camera lens I’ve been neglecting, the Laowa 25mm f2.8 Ultra Macro 2.5-5.0x. This is a strange little lens with a lot of potential, but I have struggled with it before. It’s just so different from my other lenses, with different properties, and I think I’ll have to invest some serious effort to master. Today was not that effort. I shot a few quick photos before I had to refocus on today’s classes.

Spiders are the ideal models for macrophotography, because the ones I have are so calm and stable. This little lady was practically immobile for the entire half hour I spent playing with lights and backgrounds and moving in close for pictures.

One thing I discovered is that the Laowa is surprisingly good at collecting light. My first photos were at f/2.8, an exposure of 1/500, and they were all washed out. I kept reducing the exposure and closing off the aperture, and still got usable photos. So it’s got that going for it. On the other hand, the depth of focus is still pretty shallow and I had to stick the lens right in the spider’s face to get it in view, and one thing I like in a lens is a forgiving working distance. Fortunately, this spider was imperturbable.

Anyway, I played for a bit. The one on the left is shot at f/16, the other two at f/2.8. I’m not straining for light in any of them, which is nice. All are at 2.5x, I’ll have to try the 5x option next and see how that goes.

I have a mostly free day tomorrow! I’ll have to practice some more, and maybe do some comparisons with the Tokina Macro 100 F2.8 D, which is currently my favorite lens for field work. I don’t think the Laowa can replace it, but might make a good choice for the lab.

Now…on to classes and grading!

You call that a defense?

Here’s a good summary of the first day in the trial of George Floyd’s murderer.

To summarize the summary, the defense has two key arguments. They are fundamentally racist arguments.

First, they want to claim that choking by kneeling on Floyd’s neck was not the cause of death. What killed him was poor health, specifically hypertension, and drugs. Don’t you know that all black people have high blood pressure and are jacked up on drugs? You can’t blame that poor white cop who was just doing his job in a perfectly normal way when Floyd up and died in custody! They claim that the killer was just following his training, which if true, means the entire Minneapolis police department ought to be fired and indicted.

Their second defense is even worse: that the killer didn’t mean to murder George Floyd, he was just so distracted by what the unruly mob of citizens, who were on the verge of erupting into savage violence, that he forgot how long he was crushing the throat of his victim. We’ve all seen the videos, the jurors have all seen them multiple times now, and there’s nothing accurate in that representation. It was a small group of citizens who are mostly begging and pleading with the cop to let him breathe. They are mostly black, though, so I guess this is an appeal to the prejudices of the kind of juror who sees a gang if they spot two black people in conversation.

These are bad arguments that rely entirely on biases, not facts.

They might just work.

Slack. More slack.

I’ve been slipping up. Our local grocery store, Willie’s, only reluctantly and belatedly started insisting on customers and staff wearing masks, which was why we’ve been driving an hour each way to do our shopping. But lately I’ve been ducking into Willie’s for quick items — like today, I was hoping for a fresh salad for dinner tonight, and taking a few hours to get that was too much. They’ve also been much better about requiring the workers to mask up.

But today…four separate clueless idiots wandering the aisles, maskless, and no one said a word. I guess we’re going back to driving long distances to find stores with responsible management, because this place is not trustworthy.

Are we ever going to get out of this pandemic mess? Not at this rate.

“I, a 38 year old man, was dating/not dating a 17 year old girl”

Well, this isn’t surprising. Matt Gaetz is under investigation for a relationship with a 17 year old teenager.

The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz — a Florida Republican considered a close political ally of former president Donald Trump — over an alleged sexual relationship with an underage girl, according to people familiar with the matter, though the probe has been complicated by the congressman’s assertion that his family is being extorted.

The investigation into Gaetz began some time last year, when Trump was still in office, after a criminal case against a different Florida politician led investigators to allegations that the congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel, a person familiar with the matter said on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. As that probe was underway, the person said, Gaetz’s family raised allegations that the congressman was being extorted, and the FBI is separately exploring those claims.

“Under investigation” does not mean he’s guilty, of course. There could be an innocent explanation. What’s suspicious, though, is his response. He went on Tucker Carlson, and his argument was: a) Hey, Tucker, you were once falsely accused, too; b) he denied that he travelled with a 17 year old and had travel records to prove it, and c) someone tried to extort $25 million from his daddy to hide the evidence.

That’s just weird. Trying to recruit Carlson as a supporter is irrelevant; that Carlson might have been falsely accused does not mean Gaetz is also innocent. No one thinks that being on a plane with a teenager is a crime. The accusations have emerged out of a federal investigation of a sex trafficker, so what he should have denied was that he was dating or had sex with her, which he didn’t do. Was he dating someone less than half his age or not? The next phase in his denial is right here:

What really mystifies me, though, is why is the extortionist running to Daddy Gaetz? Matt Gaetz is 38 years old and presumably an autonomous adult human being. If I were trying to blackmail or extort money from a victim, I’d go straight to them, terrify them with my wicked claims, and let them go running to a big-money source.

It’s all very strange. I’m sure more info will be emerging. Perhaps Gaetz will consult with a competent lawyer and come out with a logical, coherent explanation. Although it seems he’s sounding out an alternative strategy.

Separately, Axios reported Tuesday that Gaetz was telling confidants he was contemplating not seeking reelection and possibly leaving his post early for a job at Newsmax, a conservative media outlet.

Sad day in the lab

With great sorrow, I must report the passing of a member of the lab family. This beautiful golden spider my wife caught in Colorado in January of 2020 is no more. She was the wrong species, Steatoda triangulosa, for the work I’m trying to do, but I kept her around because she was lovely and vivacious, with her golden color and zig-zag stripes, and she was always eager to kill anything I put in her cage. She’s so pretty her picture is my cell phone screen.

I’d noticed she was a bit lethargic lately, and wouldn’t respond to flies in her web. Yesterday, she was slumped low in her cobweb — they usually favor a high position — and was only feebly responsive to a gentle touch. Today, I found her corpse lying on the floor, legs curled inward.

It’d been a year and a quarter since she was caught as a fully grown adult, so she may have been a year and a half, possibly even just shy of two years old. That’s a long, long life for these little spiders.

Could you be a little less obvious in your hints, Death?

I mentioned before that there is a company that has a “natural organic reduction” process that allows them to compost dead bodies. That’s great! Sign me up! Also, curiously, the company is based in Kent, Washington, the town where I grew up — they have a discreet warehouse in downtown Kent with 10 vessels for processing corpses.

Now I grew up in Kent. However, my parents moved to Auburn, Washington while I was away for my first year of college (they thought they were so clever, but I had a quarter of a bachelor’s degree and was so smart that I managed to track them down). My mother still lives in Auburn, as do several of my brothers and sisters, so it’s kind of a second hometown to me.

Which makes it a little weird that a second, larger composting facility has opened in Auburn.

What happens next is analogous with composting. In this case, the mix and the body reach a temperature just south of 140 degrees, which is almost cooking heat. The process is aerobic, meaning oxygen flows continuously in and out of the vessel. It takes the microbes in the body and puts them on hyper-drive, making them work incredibly fast. Typically, it takes many years to get that done, leaving behind soil.

“It’s what nature meant us to do. We just do it faster,” Truman said.

Carefully-trained technicians monitor the process. An air-filtration system informally called “The Octopus,” which is attached to all 72 pods, carries the odors to a machine where they are treated.

Within a month, the body is gone, leaving only the bones, which workers reduce and then return to the soil in the pod.

Wait, a key part of the system is called “The Octopus”? Is fate sending me a message, calling me home? But I’m not ready yet!

This could be me, in the distant future, I hope.