Independent Minnesota US Senate candidate Marisa Simonetti, 32, has been sentenced to three months in the Hennepin County workhouse after throwing a live tarantula onto the staircase leading to her tenant’s living space in Edina. She was convicted of gross misdemeanour harassment and misdemeanour domestic assault and will serve her 90-day sentence on school and work release. The court also ordered her to serve two years of probation and submit a written apology to the victim.
Simonetti’s sentence comes as she campaigns for a seat in the US Senate, hoping to replace Tina Smith in the November 2026 Minnesota election. Her candidacy has drawn further attention after a video she posted of herself confronting a Girl Scout and the child’s mother over selling cookies without a permit went viral, putting her own conduct under public scrutiny.
I don’t find tarantulas yucky and have had one as a pet.
They aren’t smart. They aren’t like dogs. You can’t teach them anything. The most you can get out of them is that they will learn you’re not gonna squish or eat them and be cool with you.
You can look this up “on the internet”. They aren’t even as smart as jumping spiders.
So yeah. He right on calling bullshit. Because it is bullshit.
Yeah, jumping spiders is where it’s at when it comes to intelligence in spiders, and even then only in highly specific ways (i.e., hunting, and calculating jumps), and a significant portion of their apparent intelligence is just them having very good eyesight for a spider; dogs, cats, birds, rats, and even probably bees are still much more intelligent than them.
Tarantulas on the other hand aren’t much smarter than your average politician or CEO.