Dude

 

Credit: Shree Ganesh

A propos two previous blog posts. God loves bizarre ants. Adjust your theological speculations accordingly. We will now resume our regular broadcast. Thank you. 

There´s no such thing as free candy

 

So the US State Department offers 10 million dollars to whoever has information on the whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, the newly selected Supreme Leader of Iran. 

Darn.

I *really* could use 10 million dollars (I assume I can make my payments in American currency rather than yuan in Western Europe?), but unfortunately I´m not privy to bro Mojtaba´s bug out location. 

So I suppose I have to weather the new oil crisis in the usual way. By cutting back my candy consumption. Yeah, really.  

Bagdad Bob

Romina Pourmokhtari har ju länge varit något av den svenska klimatpolitikens Bagdad Bob. Nu har hon tydligen bestämt sig för att Bagdad Bobba Mohamssons deal med SD. 

She looked like such a nice girl.  

Mohamsson, Smygsvensson

 

Liberalerna något, något. Fast L hade ju *något* slags stöd när anpassade sig till SD, så det *kanske* fungerar? Och kanske inte, LOL. Eftersom halva partiet tydligen tänker hoppa av. 

Det kanske räddar Centerpartiet istället? Riksdagsvalet kan ju bli...intressant. För att inte tala om regeringsförhandlingarna.  

Alien Manson family

Peter Levenda is apparently the rumored author of "Simon´s Necronomicon". This is a short excerpt from a five-hour interview (which I´m currently watching). It´s some pretty wild stuff! Think UFOs, JFK conspiracies, Soviet and Amerikan intelligence fronts, renegade Orthodox Churches, und so weiter. 

Not sure how much of it is true, tbh.

In the clip above, Levenda discusses "Men in Black" (or something similar) who supposedly followed him several times. They looked like old fashioned cultists. Think the Manson Family! It´s very common that UFO researchers report stories like this. What the fuck could it be? Actual agents? Or do you become paranoid at some point if you look too deep into this stuff? And why would *that* happen, hmmm...

Can anyone call John Keel in the astral?

Xenoparity

 

Biggest science news of the decade, nay, century? Not even sure if I understand this. 

Apparently, the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) has a very peculiar life cycle. For some reason, mating between "normal" males and queens can´t produce workers, only other males and queens. The queens therefore have to mate with males from a *completely different ant species* in order to produce hybrid workers. This other species is known as Messor structor. This is apparently considered a form of parasitism, presumably because the sperm of M. structor is effectively "stolen" by the M. ibericus queens to produce infertile workers for ibericus colonies.

Weirdly, colonies of the Iberian harvester ant have hybrid workers even in areas where there are no Messor structor ants, including at islands. This is where it gets weird. Really weird. Scientists have apparently found structor males inside ibericus nests even in areas where structor simply doesn´t appear in the wild?! Further research suggests that Messor ibericus queens can "clone" Messor structor males. Yes: ants of one species can have offspring of an entirely different species!

WTF?!

It´s not clear to me whether the Iberian queen mates with her own offspring in truly incestuous fashion to produce the workers, or whether another queen gets the honor, but the point is that there seems to be an entire "slave race" within the Iberian colonies, a "clonal lineage" of structor males bred for the sole purpose to father the hybrid worker-caste and then die. 

Nor is it clear to me how this could even work. I assume the sperm of Messor structor must have been "harvested" at some point in the distant past (perhaps thousands of years ago) and is now passed on somehow by the Messor ibericus queens. Which makes me wonder for how long this can continue, if the sperm deteriorates, and so on. Frankly, I had to read this stuff about five times before I got *some* kind of inkling about what on earth these guys are even talking about!

But yes, it does sound like science fiction. Especially since the two relevant species aren´t even closely related, having diverged evolutionarily about five million years ago. But perhaps what´s five million years to Man is only one day to Ant?    

Almost like science fiction: European ant "clones" members of another species

One mother for two species (the original scientific paper)

On a planet alien

 

Japanese scientists found a bizarre species of ant (bizarre *even* for ants, that is) which consist entirely of parasitic queens which reproduce by virgin birth ("cloning") and then hijack colonies of other ant species. Again: welcome to planet Earth, visitor! Where every ant is a queen...

Every ant is a queen in this parasitic species

Psychedelic Eleusis

 

Were the crazy hippies on to something, after all? Bring baq Boomer science!

Ancient Greek mystery cult used ergot  

Our destiny in the stars

 

A propos the previous (very speculative non-scientific blah) blog post, here is another far out speculation. Maybe the gods have sent 3I/ATLAS to remind us of our mortality and cosmic insignificance? It´s a portent hailing the end of the Space Age. The comet "disrupts" the Sun (Sol/Helios) and Jupiter (Zeus). That is, our inflated self-image and belief in constant (God-given) expansion.

Our destiny wasn´t in the stars after all.  

Messenger

 

I´m not a great fanboy of astrology (you know, the ancient superstitious pseudo-science blah blah), but I wonder how an astrologer would interpret the intrusion of 3I/ATLAS into "our" solar system. 

It´s been conjunct the Sun itself, and is currently passing very close to Jupiter. In astrology, both the Sun and Jupiter are very important. The Sun is the Self, while Jupiter (mythologically the king of the gods) is the Great Benefic. Comets, by contrast, are invariably seen as malefic. Recent reserach suggests that 3I/ATLAS is 12 billion years old! What could it mean that an ancient malefic is fucking with the Sun and Jupiter (or should I say Helios and Zeus) at the very cusp of the Age of Aquarius...

Probably nothing. I mean, it´s just some lump of dead matter, right? But if I had been an astrologer, I would probably be very, very worried right now!