Grisly & horrible

Sometimes my spiders make me queasy. This is the reality of nature, though.

I fed my Parasteatoda a mealworm this morning, and sadly, the spider was not particularly effective in killing its prey. It’s been gnawing on the worm for over 4 hours, while it writhes and twitches. It was frantically writhing away most of the day as the spider clung to it, nibbling.

Spiders are predators, you know.

The image quality is bad because I recorded it through the plexiglas of its container. At least it blunts the horror.

Definitely not for kids.

Another sleepless night

I was up at 2am again last night, and now I’m really tired. The reason is right here:

That’s my mailbox. It’s located under the eaves of my garage roof, and you might have to look closely to see it, but it’s covered with bat poop. I’ve gone out with a garden hose a few times and cleaned it off, but every night, without fail, a swarm of bats emerges from the voluminous (and unused) storage space above my garage, lightens their load with a quick evacuation, and then flits off to diminish the local mosquito population. From the amount of bat crap we see, I think we’ve got an impressively large colony of bats inhabiting our garage.

That’s fine. I like bats. I’m happy to provide a shelter for the local population, and while I’m not thrilled that they’re voiding their bowels over my mailbox, it’s always over the back half, so it doesn’t interfere with human uses of the mailbox.

But then, every once in a while, a bat somehow finds its way into my house, and they don’t like it. Late last night I heard a scratching and scuffling at the blinds in my bedroom, and then…flutter flutter flutter. I turned on the lights, waking up my wife, who looked up and saw this brown beast running laps around the room, going around and around in circles, with me putting on a robe and running to my office to get my butterfly net.

It was very exciting and a bit chaotic for a while. I was sweeping that net around, mostly missing (bats are agile critters), and banging into ceiling light fixture, which eventually broke and fell to the floor with a crash of breaking glass. Eventually I swished the net just right and captured the bat, which I took out the back door and released.

All that disruption meant we were now fully awake and it took a while to get back to sleep, briefly, because the alarm goes off at 5am so Mary can get to work on time.

I raise spiders and house a swarm of bats. Is my dream of becoming the Addams Family coming true?

An interesting, but arbitrary, engineering exercise

The World Humanoid Robot Games took place in Beijing a few days ago. They’re fascinating and baffling to watch.

That “Humanoid” in the title is clearly a significant constraint that artificially forces the human creators into making some very bad design choices. But why? No practical devices will be built with that limitation: in the races, for instance, if you’re going to mimic biology, you ought to go for four or six legs, and why bother to imitate an animal, just put wheels on the goddamn thing. What are the advantages of requiring your running robot to clumsily use a bipedal form? I suppose it’s an exercise in building limbs to a difficult and ultimately stupid specification, but why?

It is kind of menacing and intimidating to see a field of soldier-like robots, but only because we carry along associations with human armies. When I’m someday hiding in the post-apocalyptic rubble waiting for the Chinese Robot Army to kill me, I’m not going to worry about the bipedal ersatz human tripping awkwardly through broken terrain, I’m going to be scared of the flying drone with lasers, or the rat robot scuttling through wreckage to drop a grenade at my feet. The robots at the games are just comical.

In more benign situations, I’m not bothered by a machine being able to run faster than I can — I’m used to that. An autonomous e-bike could beat those robots easily.

The video focuses on the failures, which is a little unfair. I was actually impressed most with how some of them compensated for failure. They fell down, and then smoothly pivoted and twisted and stood right back up, unless they caught on fire, of course. There’s some really good and clever design work going on there. There needs to be, because people are bad models for high-performance physical activity.

I do have questions. Are these robots required to operate autonomously? If there is some Chinese nerd hunkered down behind walls of monitors with a joystick and keyboard, triggering series of pre-programmed routines, I’m much less impressed. If they’re run by AIs with massive datacenters trying to model human behavior, I’m also unimpressed, other than by the raw wastefulness of the exercise. I’m also curious about maintenance. Sure, you can fire off actuators to move a limb at a high rate of speed, but for how long before one burns out? And if losing one little electronic piston sends your whole elaborate robot with its sensors and cameras and expensive circuitry crumpling against a wall, what’s the cost-effectiveness or reliability of the robot?

I suppose there will be some long-term return on investment trying to solve those little problems, but I think the first solution is to ditch the stupid “humanoid” restriction and design machines that do specific tasks well.

Survival: Day One

I made it! I got through the first day of classes without passing out or having my pants fall down! There are a few things I have to work on, though.

  • No one wanted to talk. I had multiple questions for them and invited them to express their ideas, and as usual, they were reluctant. They were probably afraid of my fierce attitude. After I tore the tape off their mouths and managed to refrain from thrusting my fingers into their eye sockets and ripping out their skull and vertebral column, they started warming up and I got some responsiveness out of them. There is a lot of promise there and I think I’ll get them contributing more soon. Or, you know, eye sockets, skulls, vertebral columns, etc.
  • I think most of them failed to read the paper I’d assigned in the syllabus! That fact may have accounted for their fear of speaking up, beyond just shyness. I gave them an incentive to look it over, though: I told them I know where I’m going to get a lot of questions for the quiz that they’ll get on Friday, which is even better than skull ripping at getting students to do the reading.

I did have a little problem I had last year — my voice starts to give out on me before the class is over. I managed to muscle through it and make my voice heard. I have to resume a habit I started last semester — having a cup of hot tea before class.

I will march into that classroom confidently!

I woke up a 2am last night, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I also didn’t feel like getting up. I know the reason: today is the first day of classes, and I always feel some low-level anxiety before getting up in front of 30 strangers and talking for an hour. The one thing I’ve learned in 45+ years of this business is how to hide it.

I’m really good at concealing the fact that my guts are writhing and my brain is whirling and I’m sure I’ll forget what I’m supposed to say as soon as I step up to the lectern. I just refuse to let it show.

Also, don’t you dare tell me to imagine my audience naked — these are 19-20 year old students, the thought of that would send my anxiety through the roof and also would be morally wrong.

Support your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!

J. Jonah Jameson got his way and Minneapolis Spider-Man was unjustly arrested, alongside arch-criminal and career racist Jake Lang. Fortunately, there is a friendly neighborhood GoFundMe to support him!

I am raising funds for SPIDER-MAN, a Minneapolis antifascist superhero! On August 22, 2026, Nazi provocateur Jake Lang came to our city to rally fellow racists to his cause. Community members showed up to protest, and SPIDER-MAN was among them. Bravely defying a phalanx of MPD officers, he taught the Nazi a lesson he will not soon forget. But then! After letting the Nazi get away, the MPD officers tackled SPIDER-MAN to the ground and arrested him!

Minneapolis, let’s stand up for SPIDER-MAN the way he stood up for us. This money will go directly to him to defray the costs of bail, legal fees, or whatever else he decides to use it for.

I bet they’ll take your donations even if you aren’t from Minneapolis.

Another right-wing hater squashed by Minnesota

This state is a magnet for the worst of the worst. Jake Lang, in a repeat visit to the state, discovered how we handle these creeps.

Hundreds of people were outside of the Minneapolis City Hall for a counter protest against Lang at noon.

Lang arrived in Minneapolis on Saturday to advocate for a Rochester woman who called a Black autistic child a racial slur, according to a profane-ridden post on his X account. In a post on X earlier this week, Mayor Jacob Frey told people to stay away from the rally.

“Let this lame-ass racist rally fall flat and fade into irrelevance,” he wrote.

No, Jacob, let him face the state’s wrath. Also, Jacob Frey can shut the fuck up about “both sides.”

January 6th rioter and far-right instigator Jake Lang held another “hate rally” on Saturday, and it was quickly drowned out by crowds of Minneapolis counterprotesters, including the city’s own Spider-Man.

Minneapolis police (MPD) and protesters clashed after Lang drove along a sidewalk in front of City Hall, and MPD and private security seemed to shield Lang.

Lang first tried to hold an anti-Muslim rally on Jan. 18, which was also met by Minneapolis protesters and eventually led to him being chased out of the area. He announced last month on social media that he would be returning to City Hall to lead a “peaceful Freedom of Speech” rally, though Saturday’s attempt at a rally was no different from January’s, with over 100 counterprotesters already holding their own demonstration in front of City Hall during the time Lang was scheduled to be there.

In total, fewer than a dozen individuals showed up for Lang’s scheduled rally. Lang and six others, including far-right activist Jayden Scott, showed their faces briefly when they decided to drive along the sidewalk that was initially barricaded.

The decision caused chaos, as crowds of protesters gathered around the cars to attack Lang before pepper spray was deployed by a man dressed as a law enforcement officer who appeared to be working for Lang. Protesters threw water balloons, bottles, glitter, and more at the group, as they tried to pull the offensive signs away from the instigators.

At one point, a man dressed as Spider-Man jumped onto the back of Lang’s truck and began attacking Lang before the superhero impersonator was pulled away. Lang was later photographed being arrested by Minneapolis police.

The mayor and the police are pretty much useless, but at least we’ve got Spider-Man on our side.

Here is the best photo of the event.

Yay Minnesota Spider-Man!

Is there a prize for bad apologetics?

The YouTube algorithm chose to stick a video titled What’s your best two minute apologetic? in my face. I expected the usual nonsense, but was surprised to see something novel. It’s even more stupid than the usual fare, but at least this guy is attaching his name to this foolishness openly.

OK, it starts out all right.

I typically don’t like apologetics. It’s just not my thing. It doesn’t feel like a great, I don’t know, if someone is ready to look into Christianity, and come into it and genuinely search into it, they will. I don’t like apologetics in the sense of trying to argue people into we’re right, you’re wrong, like believe what we believe. I don’t like that but, you know, I kind of have to have some reason to believe what I believe, so someone asked me recently, why are you still a Christian? Why do you believe in Jesus? Um, and, like, not in like a motive sense, which I addressed a couple of videos ago, but like, why. Why specifically god, what’s your best argument for god, for Christianity, or for Jesus?

Hackles raised at the claim that he doesn’t like apologetics but is making an apologetics video anyway, but I think it’s fair that he’s just trying to explain his personal rationale, rather than doing it to convert others. Everyone should feel free to express their ideas, especially if they’re not trying to browbeat others with them.

Unfortunately, his ideas are stupid and ill-informed.

And I think that the best one to me is looking at history itself since Jesus. It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like if Jesus had never existed. It is literally impossible. We, because, because Jesus, and by extension the new testament and the Bible and Christianity as a whole has so shaped the entire face, definitely of the West and peripherally, at least, of, um, the global south and the east, so. So much that we can’t. We can’t imagine what 2026 would look like if Jesus had never existed.

His key point is that he believes in Jesus because his imagination failed. Approximately 6 billion people do not believe in Jesus, and about 15% of the world population are atheist, but this guy can’t imagine what the world would be like if nobody believed in his personal mythology. I agree that Christianity has had an impact on the world, but so has Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism. Being impressed by a contingent fact of history as a justification for your specific religion is just weird.

We also discover that this guy who claims history is the best evidence for his beliefs doesn’t know much of anything about history.

Like, we can’t imagine it, and it’s because so many things shifted because Jesus existed. And Jesus keep in mind, was not an emperor, not a warlord, not a leader, not a noble, not a writer, not anything that everyone else in history is known for and remembered for. He’s a traveling homeless preacher from the backwoods Nazareth in some small little Roman state. And shaped the entire world, including taking over the entire Roman empire in less than 300 years, without violence, without conquering, without, you know, literally just the germ of an idea, um, as well of course the power and the spirit of God, uh, moving through his people in that short amount of time to where we are today 2000 years later, where it’s transformed the entire face of the world. And I think that that is beautiful in the sense that true Christianity, yes, it’s been misused so many times, obviously, but true Christianity done right, done lovingly, done well, um, woos people to come to it. Um, and the spirit calls people, and it brings life to people. And that’s how the world is transformed. And that is what has shaped the world for 2000 years. And I think it’s really hard to argue against that. So it’s not necessarily an argument for divinity, but just the sheer fact that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world 2000 years later is massive to me. What do you guys think?

This bit reminds me of Islamic apologetics, where they insist that Mohammed was illiterate and unaware of the greater intellectual background of his time, therefore making his accomplishments all the more remarkable. The fact that Jesus wasn’t an emperor means the success of his philosophy was a miracle, as long as we disregard the existence of successful proselytizers like Paul and the absorption of Christianity into the dominant power structure of the time, the Roman empire.

You know who else must be beyond this bozo’s imagination? Karl Marx. A mere philosopher, and yet today 1.5 billion people live in communist countries. Isn’t it amazing that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world in only about 150 years? What took Jesus so long? It’s not necessarily an argument for Marx’s divinity, but I’m just saying maybe we should all dedicate our lives to praising him.

It’s also convenient that the apologist brings up the “no true Christian” fallacy. What fraction of the world is practicing True Christianity™? I think that undercuts his claim that Jesus reshaped the whole world, since the overwhelming percentage of believers are not going to be True Christians™ — some wicked corrupters have apparently hijacked Jesus’ version of Christianity, and they possess the truly successful worldview, which seems to involve the worship of greed, the rejection of science, raging misogyny, and building a culture where child-rape can thrive. You know, I can imagine a world, a better world, where that perspective did not exist.

Also, a True Christian™ would know that their Bible prohibits tattoos. Not that that matters to me, but I think those ugly-ass chicken scratches on his skin ought to mean that he is damned to hell, the hell of superficial irrational dingbats.