I am kind of impressed. Joel Greenberg totally filled out the Republican bingo card: cronyism, graft, gun fondling, sex trafficking, misogyny, pedophilia…oh, wait, he’s missing racism, so far. I’m sure there’s something in his history that will ooze out.
Rachel Maddow explains it all.
He does have an edge, though, being from Florida, and also being best buddies with Matt Gaetz. It’s nice to live in a country that is finally getting around to prosecuting these guys, rather than enabling them.
Speaking of animals following you home…
I’d like to imagine they’d eat the QAnon followers first, but they’re tasteless and greasy and travel in large packs.
Don’t try to argue that they’re also carrying overpowered firearms — startle a pack of QAnon twits, they’ll end up shooting each other.
We went for a walk yesterday. We saw one of these soaring overhead.
One is nice and impressive, but then there was a whole flock of turkey vultures wheeling overhead.
Then they followed us home.
I’m a little afraid to walk over to the lab now, but I must. My dental records are on file at the Dental Depot here in town, in case some skeletal remains need to be identified.
It felt like spring yesterday, and I guess the spiders were feeling it, too.
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.
But I finally finished the exam for introductory biology. There were two huge problems.
Now I have to collapse in a soggy heap. Tomorrow it begins again with an exam from my second course.
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.
I spent a pleasant morning playing with my little monsters, and one of them was lying just right, so I could look up into her jaws. I thought maybe someone else would enjoy the view.
You probably didn’t know how wet a spider’s jaws look.
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!
