A glimpse into the darkness

I police my social media fairly heavily, since I really don’t want to waste time on major bozos. This one snuck through, though.

Yeah, no. Ozone is a greenhouse gas, although a short-lived one that decays fairly quickly. Putting more ozone into the atmosphere isn’t going to help reduce global warming, although the stratospheric ozone layer is a useful radiation filter.

You don’t want to follow that clown. I looked, and it’s all flag-waving MAGA racist garbage, as you might expect.

You missed Convergence?

OK, here’s a cosplay gallery from last weekend.

I recognized a few of the costumes, but that wasn’t what I was into. You know, there’s a heck of a lot going on during a con like this. There was the costume pageantry, the mainstage stuff. I wasn’t into that. There were the musical performances; not my thing. There was board gaming. No, pass. There was video gaming. Completely missed it. There were SF & horror movies playing nonstop. Tempted, but I didn’t feel like sitting down for a few hours. There were anime sessions, which again, I am not into. There were interactive kid demos. Nah, I’m too old. I missed 90% of the con.

I did get into a whole lot of panel discussions, though. That alone kept me busy for four days.

It’s a diverse bunch there — you might find something to entertain you there next year.

Spiders are tiring me out

It’s been a long day — I’ve decided we can survey 8 sites per day, so we did, in the heat and the dirt, with constant drizzly rain, and by golly, we’ll do it again tomorrow. I look forward to the big pile of data I’ll have at the end of the week, and a nap.

Also, I think I’ve downed a couple of liters of iced tea since I got home.

Another billionaire leaps into the presidential race

Oh god no. Not another one. Tom Steyer has announced his candidacy. He doesn’t stand a chance.

I have a suggestion for all the wanna-bes.

Three quarters of you ought to be running for the House or Senate, ‘k? If you want to do some good, there’s where you should be, because you might have a chance of succeeding.

If you are a filthy rich billionaire who has some liberal goals (you’re not going to be promoting leftist/progressive goals, because you’ve already demonstrated a life-long commitment to stealing from workers), I have a different suggestion: run for president on the Republican side. You’ll do more damage to Trump that way, you might peel away the Republicans who are disgusted with Trump, and if you win, either the nomination or even the presidency, you’ll have transformed the Republican party. Also imagine the chaos in the confused media. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Try it. Think outside the box. Trump could be wrecked even before the election, or the Republicans could end up tearing each other apart.

History is going to repeat itself, isn’t it?

Read these old pre-WWII newspaper articles, in which a very nice American Quaker is arguing (to a conference of rabbis, no less) that if Jews throughout the world try to instill into the minds of Hitler and his supporters recognition of the ideals for which the race stands, and if Jews appeal to the German sense of justice and the German national conscience, I am sure the problem will be solved more effectively and earlier than otherwise.

It’s weird. The guy also repudiates the notion of boycotts, because that’s economic violence. Buy from fascists, because capitalism is a hell of a drug. There’s even an article from another person arguing that Hitler’s supporters aren’t racist, they’re just economically anxious.

We’ve been through all of this in the 1930s. Unthinking pacifism didn’t work then, it’s not going to work now.

Sorry, it’s Tucker Carlson

I know, it’s early in the morning, my fellow Americans, and you’re still working on your coffee and cornflakes, but if I have to be exposed to this talking emetic, you get it too. He’s now calling people who demand greater diversity in congress “racists”.

That’s perverse. So congress can go on for hundreds of years as a body consisting almost exclusively of white men, and that’s not racist, but anyone suggesting that there be a more balanced representation that includes more women of color is racist. That’s how systems of exclusion and oppression perpetuate themselves, by turning any resistance to a discriminatory system into a feeble rationale about that being discriminatory. You have to be really gullible to accept such a game, but that’s Tucker’s audience.

Tlaib is making a reasonable suggestion that any group that makes decisions for minorities ought to include representation of the target group.

Spider news!

Wring me out, I’m done. We’re back into the field work this week, and I’m glad we’re doing only 3 one-week sessions this summer. We visited half a dozen sites today, and while most of them were around 30°C, there were a few that were toasty hot and 35°, and they were dusty and cobwebby, too. It was more exhausting than I expected.

The good news, though, is that I’ve recruited an additional student, and it makes a big difference — we can rip through a garage almost twice as fast as before. We set a goal of 6 houses today, and finished by 3:00, so we’re going to line up 8-10 tomorrow. So far, my unsurprising hypothesis is holding up: we’re finding significantly more spiders during these hot midsummer days.

Mondays are also feeding days, so we did a little lab work on top of everything else. We set up a couple new cages, and also introduced a half-dozen new males to the more lonely females. The students got to watch a mating, and some vigorous dining, and Maya has set up a new cage for a different species, Tegeneria.

Everything is cruising along fine and dandy, except for the fact that I’m a sweaty tired mess when I get home. Also, I haven’t quite recovered from my 4-day weekend at Convergence. Productivity is its own reward, though, right?

I’m not even a sports fan!

Yet here I am, thinking it might be fun to watch a women’s soccer match. I’m not even talking about the women’s national team — a local team. They deserve support, too, and apparently, women’s teams play a better and more exciting game than men’s.

Then, after the USWNT won the world cup this past weekend, listen to the audience. This is amazing. They’re chanting “equal pay!” in response to the victory.

The discrimination has gotten so obvious that crowds of people are screaming about it. Will anything be done?

This also has me wondering “what about the menz?” The differences are glaring: the women’s team is bringing in more money, is empirically better than the men’s team, and are playing more games than the men, yet they’re getting paid a lot less. If I were on the men’s team, the discrepancies would be making me uncomfortable. But their response so far has mostly been silence. How…odd. I guess solidarity with one’s colleagues is just too much to ask.

(Via Skepchick)

A prosecutorial dilemma!

A prosecutor involved in trafficking cases in New York writes about what to expect in the new trial of Jeffrey Epstein. Basically, he’s screwed.

But, finally, it looks like justice will be served to Epstein in the form of new sex-trafficking charges filed by the formidable U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Epstein has reportedly been arrested for trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005. And this time, Epstein shouldn’t expect the ridiculous sweetheart deal he got the first time around.

Charges of federal sex trafficking carry mandatory minimums of 10-15 years on each count. Mandatory means mandatory. In other words, short of a cooperation agreement with the government—which in the SDNY famously means full cooperation against all possible other subjects and targets—Epstein will serve at least 10-15 years in prison (possibly more depending on the number of counts) if convicted.

He ought to be sweating, but that last paragraph brings up a legal problem. If convicted, Epstein is a horrible sleaze who has committed great evil, and yeah, he should be locked up. But should we complain if he gets a reduced sentence if he provides evidence that sends a host of other sleazy pervs tumbling down? He could, conceivably, be the downfall of people like Dershowitz and Clinton and Trump and other highly connected rich goons. Would that be worth turning an Epstein loose?

Also, the writer speculates that Barr could potentially meddle in the case to protect those same highly connected rich goons. What is our recourse if that kind of blatant corruption occurs?

This could be an interesting and revealing case. I’ve been conditioned by the last few decades of bullshit to expect that what will be revealed is only greater levels unscrupulous grift than ever I imagined. I guess that still fits the definition of “interesting”. I wish I lived in a less interesting country, though.