The Department of Homeland Security is recruiting with a new trope, same as the old trope.| Planet Skeptic
Various conservatives are celebrating the publication of a new issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, or Peter Singer’s slush pile of pseudoscientific justifications for bigotry. The id…| Pharyngula
Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!| Pharyngula
Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Cooper v. USA Powerlifting, affirming that transgender athletes have the right to compete in sports without discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA). The decision also clarified the harmful precedent set in Goins v. West Group only applies in the employment context, and the court did not consider whether to overturn Goins because Cooper’s case is not an employment case.| Planet Skeptic
I wish people would stop running to Richard Dawkins for quotes defending regressive policies in science. He has nothing worthy to add, and it just damages his reputation more. Leave him in peace, to fade away gracefully.| Planet Skeptic
This article leads with a photo of a spectacularly beautiful joro spider.| Planet Skeptic
A beer ad caught my attention this morning, and I watched the whole thing. That’s good advertising! Except for the fact that it didn’t motivate me to buy any beer at all. It’s tit…| Pharyngula
We have a home Pholcus phalangioides living under our kitchen cupboard, who occasionally emerges when they’ve caught something in their cobweb. In this case, a ladybug, who has been trapped u…| Pharyngula
It is my habit to read quietly before bed every night, and I vary between cheesy sci-fi and classic literature. Lately I’ve been re-reading (after a long interval) Bury My Heart at Wounded Kn…| Pharyngula
The latest xkcd makes the point that science changes over time, and that the early days of space flight preceded the widespread acceptance of plate tectonics. Ha ha, there were astronauts in the 19…| Pharyngula
We just got our halloween spider put up, when we drove down the street and saw this awesome display. They have a whole graveyard with ghosts and skeletons and witchy things! Somebody clearly has Ha…| Pharyngula
We just tossed up one giant spider, a couple of smaller spiders, and the dessicated, skeletal corpse of a scientist next to our driveway. Preparations complete. We also have a bag of 200 pieces of …| Pharyngula
Found lurking in our bedroom, an assassin! It has been courteously escorted off the premises.| Pharyngula
I’ve been experimenting with feeding regimens for the spiders. What I’ve been doing is feeding twice a week with an excess of fruit flies until I feel like they’re big enough for …| Pharyngula
Deservedly or not, Harvard is the premiere research institution in the US, internationally renowned, magnificently endowed, so it’s shocking that Trump is demolishing our research capabilitie…| Pharyngula
I am resting at home, weak and weary, my knees knackered, because I have been on a quest that sent me staggering all over town. A quest that has ended in failure. Where it began was the weather, fr…| Pharyngula
Imagine if universities tried to purge conservatives from our faculty. There’d be well-deserved protests from within the university as well as from without. We have strictly enforced policies…| Pharyngula
I don’t normally read the Daily Wire, but they baited me with that title in an email. It’s classic DW: reduce a complex issue to a single point, challenge a group of people with it, and…| Pharyngula
JD Vance and Pete Hegseth know how to hurt Californians: on short notice, they shut down I-5 for four hours while the army fired live ammunition over the freeway. Why, I don’t know — it…| Pharyngula
Spiders in the genus Theridiidae (and their cousins, Latrodectus) are well known for hunting and eating prey much bigger than they are, including vertebrates. Here’s a vigorous specimen of St…| Pharyngula
I should save that title for a horror novel. The other day, I switched my juvenile Latrodectus from a diet of nice snackable fruit flies to huge, relatively speaking, mealworms. I posted a photo of…| Pharyngula
The right-wingers are now outraged by the announcement that BadBunny will be doing the Superbowl halftime show — he’s a Puerto Rican! He sings in Spanish! It’s Reggaeton, and as w…| Pharyngula
Remember: protest march this morning. We atheists have been declared traitors by this administration, so you better get out there and show your commitment.| Pharyngula
I don’t think she should graduate from college until she passes a basic English literacy test. She read a simple sentence in her “expensive” textbook and misinterpreted it. Kelbie…| Pharyngula
A reader sent me a comment about how Catholics tell stories that they claim are in the Bible that aren’t, and that specifically they don’t include spiders. I had to double check. Here a…| Pharyngula
Have you ever sat down to watch a movie and realized, within 5 minutes, that it was going to suck, but you’d walked to the theater and your knees were aching and you just need to sit and rest…| Pharyngula
When I get back into the classroom in January, one thing I’m looking forward to is the ability to generate lessons with sophisticated computer graphics by simply clicking a button. So fancy! …| Pharyngula
I think this comic strip gets it right: we live in the Age of the Dumbass. After the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, and the age of iron, we find ourselves in this age of dumbassery. By…| Pharyngula
You’d think they’d learn. The Young Republicans had a signal chat where they thought everything was confidential among themselves, so they indulged themselves in profanity, misogyny, an…| Pharyngula
I’m back! We went to Madison, Wisconsin for our granddaughter’s 7th birthday, and also for brats (vegetarian style) and cheese curds and the fall colors and Kwik-Trip and all that Wisco…| Pharyngula
It’s my granddaughter’s birthday this weekend, so yesterday we spent 7 hours traveling all across Minnesota and Wisconsin, and boy are my knees sore. We’ve got a party to go to to…| Pharyngula
I hadn’t listened to this report on his history yet. Yeesh. He is and always been deeply racist — we’re talking cartoonish levels of racism. Just a repulsive shithouse pit of ugly…| Pharyngula
We have a podcast scheduled for Saturday at 4pm Central. We’re bloggers, so maybe you’re not familiar with what we look like, so here’s a portrait. You’ll never guess which …| Pharyngula
Avi Loeb is playing games with his peculiar interpretation of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. He keeps suggesting that this interesting, carbon-rich, and very old rock is an artificial construct buil…| Pharyngula
I suspect most of my readers are not manly, masculine “he-men,” according to this declaration by Edward K. Strong. Although…how can you trust Dr Strong? He was neither an engineer or fa…| Pharyngula
Trump is a gangster. Now he’s committing extortion against American universities. President Donald Trump’s war on academia continued this week with letters pressuring the leaders of top unive…| Pharyngula
Trump is a gangster. Now he’s committing extortion against American universities.| freethoughtblogs.com
The Oregon GOP posted this image on Twitter. Oh my goodness. I had no idea the anarchy was so bad. On all three platforms, the statement was illustrated with an image that seemed designed to suppor…| Pharyngula
And then I realize…they probably are pretty damned comfortable with their role as thugs who hurt people.| Pharyngula
This ‘person,’ David Love, is definitely a spider. Female spiders possess structures in their reproductive tracts called spermathecae that are used to store sperm. Humans lack them, and…| Pharyngula
It is not bringing glory to the fascists. In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building …| Pharyngula
MAHA is cannibalizing its own! This one dumb ‘influencer’ went viral with a tiktok in which she got outraged that Lucky Charms contains sodium phosphate, and she went to Home Depot to s…| Pharyngula
Yes, you are! President Trump (or more perhaps more accurately, Stephen Miller) has issued an Executive Memorandum on National Security for Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Vio…| Pharyngula
Professional sports in the US is dominated by male teams whose players get the big contracts and media focus and thus are able to build up a big fan base. Soccer is one instance where the womenR…| Mano Singham
Remember when Megyn Kelly was deeply offended at the suggestion that Santa Claus wasn’t white? It’s an imaginary figure, yet she insisted he was white. Now she’s doing it again. J…| Pharyngula
I ignored my doctor’s advice yesterday — I’m so fed up with being trapped in my house that I decided I was going to put my knees to work and go for a careful, slow, easy walk. I d…| Pharyngula
Trump gave an embarrassing speech at the UN, full of whininess and petulance and egotism, and on social media all you’ll find is conspiracy theorists inventing conspiracies about an escalator…| Pharyngula
RFK jr claimed over a month ago that this month they were going to find and announce the cause of autism. We all knew he was full of shit — he’s permanently full to the eyebrows with sh…| Pharyngula
Republicans are insane. Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma introduced legislation this week that would require every public university in the state to construct “a Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza”, with …| Pharyngula
This is a review of both the TV series, and the webcomic. The reader should be aware that I greatly favor the critical review, so it should come as no shock that that’s what this is. Howeve…| A Trivial Knot
Walt Disney and Werner von Braun teamed up to tell us how we were going to get to the moon…in 1955. There’s a certain familiar esthetic to the exercise — shiny, long pointy spaceships w…| Pharyngula
I recently posted — and made a video about — a story about how de novo genes are made. I guess I was more timely than I expected, because The Scientist just posted on article on the sam…| Pharyngula
I guess we aren’t done with Charlie Kirk. The talk show host, Jimmy Kimmel, made a few entirely accurate remarks that were mainly critical of Trump and the Right’s efforts to capitalize…| Pharyngula
I’m relieved to not have any teaching obligations this term. I’ve been doing weekly homework problems/quizzes using the university standard Canvas tool, and I’ve always been prett…| Pharyngula
My lower limbs have been making this sabbatical half-year hellish. First, there was an unexpected meniscus tear in my right knee; that pain is still there, a sharp needle in that one joint. Then my…| Pharyngula
This video is about to go live on YouTube. And now I add the script, below the fold!| Pharyngula
People are having a grand time digging through Charlie Kirk’s own words to show that he deserved being dragged. It’s tempting to sit down and just compile a list of all the hateful thin…| Pharyngula
The US Federal Reserve has two missions: keep inflation under control and have full employment. What should be the desired rate of inflation? If it gets too low, that might be due to the economy st…| Mano Singham
I’ve been disturbed for the last day by all the unfounded speculation that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a far left fanatic, gay or trans, and that this was a hate crime against conservativ…| Pharyngula
Our garden is full of monarchs — here are three at once chomping through the foliage. The caterpillars are doing great, but look at those poor leaves. They’re a wreck. Also, the eaves o…| Pharyngula
Somebody is compiling a public list of people who “support political violence online,” which seems to mean only people who are insufficiently upset about the assassination of Charlie Ki…| Pharyngula
Did you know that Melissa Hortman’s murderer has still not been charged with domestic terrorism, despite the fact that he specifically targeted Democrats in Minnesota? Also, we still have no …| Pharyngula
A single shot was fired at Kirk during one of his rants at Utah Valley University, striking him in the neck. Apparently, he’s still alive. No automatic or semi-automatic fire? No bump stock? …| Pharyngula
I would never want to teach in Texas…I wouldn’t even want to live in such a place. As an example, here’s a case of a dogmatic student objecting to the instruction in a class that mentio…| Pharyngula
There’s a new book out to defend science, titled uncreatively The War on Science, by Lawrence Krauss. The theme is nothing new: I’d recommend instead The War on Science by Shawn Otto, o…| Pharyngula
None of the above! These are actual posters from the US Department of Labor. To be honest, the Soviet propaganda had a lot more style and sincerity. The modern American stuff just looks like AI slo…| Pharyngula
Wait, no, that’s not true — the Republicans are gunning for everyone who is tolerant of other people’s sexual orientation. The gays are just next in line. This is reminding me of …| Pharyngula
So much of the nonsense about the gender binary is projection, and imposition of cultural biases on top of biology. Case in point: this very silly post that claims that putting feathers on dinosaur…| Pharyngula
Nathan Robinson explains why the pundits and far-right apologists are not funny — they’re horrifying. The breaking point for him was how these horrible people, like Bret Stephens and Ba…| Pharyngula
Quakers are just one step removed from humanists, but with an even greater commitment to social justice. I like that, although I could never join a group with any vestige of god-belief. Still, I ap…| Pharyngula
Within a month, we’ll know definitively what causes some forms of autism. RFK jr says so. We’re finding certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism, Kennedy sa…| Pharyngula
My favourite aunt in law married a card carrying conservative guy. He is, like many of them, a wonderfully nice person when you’re a member of the in group and I actually do like him as a person.But his politics… Now, I have decided that I will not discuss politics with him until he’s back in the workforce. You see, the current conservative motto here is that people unjustifiably have a life and don’t work enough. There are plans to abolish the 8 hour work day for more “flexibility...| freethoughtblogs.com
My favourite aunt in law married a card carrying conservative guy. He is, like many of them, a wonderfully nice person when you’re a member of the in group and I actually do like him as a per…| Affinity
Another mass killing, this time at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. It was horrifying: the killer opened fire at a group of kids in the school, killing two and injuring 17 before th…| Pharyngula
Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw the problem clearly in the 1940s. It’s the stupidity, stupid, and stupidity is more subtle and complex than you might think. Keep the MAGA movement in mind while readi…| Pharyngula
On an episode of “CNN NewsNight with Abby Philip,” the topic being discussed was a serious one: the Trump administration’s current program to purge the Smithsonian, and other museums, of exhi…| Pharyngula
Tragic. Avi Loeb lost the annual soccer match at his institution! Last night, we held the annual soccer cup match between the faculty and the students at Harvard’s Institute for Theory & Comput…| Pharyngula
I’m stewing in my own juices here — crippled, homebound, going stir crazy — and one of the things driving me nuts is the state of American media, since I’m stuck watching so…| Pharyngula
I told you that Brian Lauer is an ignorant buffoon, but you shouldn’t trust my opinion alone. Last night, Mark Reid and Dr. Dan worked over the same presentation and came to the same conclusi…| Pharyngula
Just so know, my wife gave me a present: a wheelchair. It turns out that I was capable of hobbling about with one non-functional knee, but us bipeds are SOL with two blown out knees. I’ve see…| Pharyngula
Yesterday, I was looking forward to visiting a local airshow. I made it. I was disappointed. It was not the fault of the airshow organizers, or the collection of planes they had on view. The proble…| Pharyngula
I am relieved that I am not a gay or trans person, since this country is getting worse and worse at dealing with its raging homophobia/transphobia. Even in Minnesota we’ve got self-righteous …| Pharyngula
Has anyone staged an intervention for Tracie Harris? [12:29] THEO: Uh, yeah. Let’s talk about it. First off, for your listeners, hi, I’m Theo. I’m not a persona. This isn’t …| Reprobate Spreadsheet
My impression of the ex-CNN news announcer, Jim Acosta, was that he at least had some principles. He quit cable news, after all, and that’s a positive mark in my estimation. Unfortunately, he…| Pharyngula
If you follow RetractionWatch, you know that there a lot of bad papers published in the scientific literature. But there you just see the steady drip, drip, drip of bad research getting exposed, a …| Pharyngula
I’d begun to forget that Jordan Peterson exists — does anyone still find him credible? — when potholer54 comes out with a new video demonstrating that he’s a pretentious foo…| Pharyngula
I ran across this ridiculous comment, and it struck me that the interesting thing isn’t that Joseph Martin is outright wrong, but that he presents his stupid ideas with such absolute confiden…| Pharyngula
Don’t you know? RFK jr is not anti-vax. He supports safe vaccines. News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety, Kennedy said in his openin…| Pharyngula
Agustín Fuentes has published a new book, Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary. I just started reading it last night — and it’s very good so far — so don’t…| Pharyngula
By luck, my mother and my aunts gave birth to three boys of roughly the same age: me and my cousins, Kelly and Don. Furthermore, they had second children who were all boys, my brother Jim to run wi…| Pharyngula
Everybody and their mother has been sending me links to this story, Spider divination. In Cameroon, they have a practice of cluttering up a spider’s burrow with leaves and sticks and stones, …| Pharyngula
Perfect! Arachno-communist, that’s me!| Pharyngula
The Department of Homeland Security is now trying to brighten our mornings by posting their vision of America: small towns full of white people, with a church across the street from a little one ro…| Pharyngula
Over 100 dead, and the toll is still climbing. The deadly floods in Texas swept through an area full of camping sites and Christian youth camps, and people died because they didn’t get any wa…| Pharyngula
A new video! This one is just science, a cool paper I read way back when I was doing my post-doc. It left a strong impression on me, so I thought it would be worthwhile introducing it to all of you…| Pharyngula
After finishing and reviewing the first season of Heartstopper (TV series), we were looking for another show to watch, and landed on Love, Victor, available on Disney+. This is a very different kin…| A Trivial Knot
