This is why error bars and expected variability are important to specify:

xkcd: Health Stats
Is that for your wife to hang on the kitchen wall? XD (Impetus to keep the counters and cutting boards clean. ; - )
That’s my idea of good needle point. I heard a joke I liked but I have no talent for passing them along. Too good not to try though.
A Jew, fretting over a point of interpretation in the Torah, looks up the opinion of a respected rabbi. Still unsure he looks up a statement on the same passage by another noted rabbi, but that one takes the opposite position!
Being a good Jew, he prays to God to reveal to him which of them is correct. To his dismay God tells him they both are. “But they can’t both be right!” exclaims the troubled jew. In response God says “All three of you are right.”
Not sure I completely get it, but I like it.
Mervin, I’m just dying here, laughing. Oh my goodness, this is REALITY these days.
Stinkbug Home Invasion
This is just too dumb to leave out and too silly to put elswhere. This winter our home in central Michigan (U.S.) has been invaded by STINKBUGS!!!
About 20 years ago and then maybe 5 years later we were invaded by lady bugs. At least they’re interesting and hang out where you can observe them. Stinkbugs, on the other hand are so obsessed with dive-bombing the light fixtures, and then the table and then my hair, they’re just a nusance. I don’t know how many of these dumb things we’ve killed in the last two months! Lots.
Right now there’s one buzzing around above me, and then ramming into the light fixture. Dumb bug.
That reminds me of a plague of millers we had when my younger son was born decades ago. It was pretty nasty, and not funny at all.
This post makes this bug lover a little sad inside.
Look at it from their perspective your house is like a Six Flags, a Speed Dating event, and a free Five Star hotel all rolled into one. 
But seriously, the brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys) is an invasive species in the US, so they have no natural predators and can easily reach plague proportions. Which is a really pain and messes up the ecosystem… so smush away.
We have the same issue in the UK with Harlequin lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) which, it turns out, are quite happy to predate the the eggs and larvae of our native lady beetle species - wonderful! So glad that horticulturalist decided to introduce them to control aphid populations in commercial nurseries
.
We have certainly provided these annoying critters all the best amenities! At least they seem to feel it’s worth staying.
As far as lady bugs go, probably all that were in our house years ago and nearly all outside are not true lady bugs, but these imported, invasive impostors. : ( I rarely see a bright red one any more, and when I double checked to make sure the harlequin is what I have been seeing, I noticed they come in a quite bright red as well. : ( In spite of their invasive nature, they were really interesting to watch with the magnifying glass. A few interesting things I learned:
*They seem to eat quite well out of the dirty dishes in my sink.
*They really enjoy shredded parmesan cheese, but seemed to die pretty soon after eating it. Maybe a cheese-based pesticide could be developed. ; )
*They don’t like to drink from “puddles” (a drop of water from my finger is a puddle to these guys), but will readily drink, if I smear a drop of water into a streak.
There you have it. My rudimentary observations of home-invading “lady bugs.”
Rudimentary observations are my bread and butter.
Very interesting about the Parmesan and the certain death it causes. Pesticide is an option for sure, could also be bacteria, or salt content maybe? Interesting… ![]()
And the imposter lady bugs bite!
Bigger beetles = bigger jaws. All the better to bite you with!
@jpm and @LM77 fortunately, they usually just ignore me, rather than bite me. Maybe they want more cheese and water.
And another observation I forgot:
If you use a wet finger to draw a circle around the lady bug, so there’s a circle of water around them, they won’t cross the water to get out of the circle. They might fly away, I don’t remember. But they won’t walk across the water smear. Maybe kind of like vampires or witches or some other creature of the night.
The risks you take in extemporaneous experimentation!
Somebody’s had some time on their hands!
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Reminds me of the time when a jumping spider on the ceiling followed my laser pointer dot around for just a little bit.
They were here for weeks. I had plenty of opportunities.
Love the spider observation.




