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This is annoying: I’ve lost access to my email. I was trying to install some software that needed to access my Google account, I mistyped my password, and it then sent me into security hell, with codes sent to various devices that I had to type into various other devices, and somewhere in there I typed the wrong 6 digits into the right device or the right 6 digits into the wrong device, or something, and Google decided to teach me a lesson and locked me out of my account for 48 hours. I guess at that time it’ll allow me to reset my password and go through musical phone-tablet-laptop-desktop games again. I hope I get it right next time.

Anyway, the bad news is that I won’t get any email for two days, and I’m also locked out of my YouTube account. So if you have anything urgent to write to me, be patient.

The good news is that I won’t get any email for two days, except for official email through my university account, so nothing important from students will be missed.

I’m actually finding it kind of hard to complain about taking an email vacation.

I got shot up with Pfizer a few months ago, yesterday I got a buttload of pain-numbing happy juice, and today…

When can I officially be designated a cyborg transhuman mutant alien hybrid? I’m looking forward to when my nictating membranes, extra limbs and nipples, and compound eyes kick in.

I hope you’re all getting all of your vaccinations so we can team up and take over the world.

We just have to spread the word about what Facebook is really about.

Tech reporter Kevin Roose argues that what he sees in the revelations is a company that is in a desperation mode. He says that what keeps Facebook executives up at night is not the threats of lawsuits (that it has ample resources to fight) or fines (that it can easily afford to pay) or Congressional investigations or government regulations (that it feels that it can circumvent) but an existential threat that they cannot control: they are losing the desired younger demographic that is the key to their revenue stream. He points out that social media companies come and go as young people’s tastes change and that Facebook may be seeing its future as similar to that of Friendster and MySpace, both major players of their time that eventually became irrelevant. While Facebook has outlasted them, it is already seen by young people as a space for old people, which is a devastating image for the company..

All these problems have led to speculations that Facebook may be on the way out, sooner than we may think.

Oh, yeah, Facebook: that’s the place where uncool boomer grandpas and dotty old great-aunts go to share racisms and stupid conspiracy theories, right? Why would anyone want to join that? Everyone would rather hang out in the cool spaces, like Instagram.

Instagram is where vapid “influencers” pretend to be celebrities when all they actually are are shallow poseurs who can be lured off to Fyre Festivals. No one wants to be seen dead there. The hip people are flocking to…whatever the next fad is.

With the right degree of cynical ennui, the language of disaffected teenagers, we can kill off any nascent social media juggernaut!

Worst day ever, except for Thursday, which is worser. It’s just labs and classes and meetings all day long until the evening, when I get to drag myself home and spend a few hours grading.

To add a little flaming physical pain to the whole long process, my Achilles tendinitis has chosen to flare up again. For those of you who are blessed with ignorance, this is an inflammation of the Achilles tendon which sets my leg on fire and makes every step an agony, a lance driven up through my calf by a savage demon. I can sort of keep it under control if I don’t stand on it, and especially if I don’t walk on it, but even then it’s going to send sporadic spasm of intense burning pain to remind me that I’m not allowed to even sleep. Which means I’m on the edge of exhaustion right now.

Then, of course, to do my job on Tuesday, I have to go stand and lecture for an hour and a half, and then spend a few hours limping around a student lab. I’m thinking I might be able to perch on one of those wheelie office chairs to minimize ankle motion, but still — I’m going to need to be wrung out like a rag at the end of the day, and there might be some occasional shrieking.

This will go on for a few more days, I expect, and there’s nothing I can do but take pain-killers and anti-inflammatories, which go really well with — what am I talking about this week? — oh, yes, cancer and apoptosis pathways. Good thing I don’t need a fully functioning brain to do that.

I should have known — I remember when “Clapton is God” was a common phrase among the guitarists I knew. No more.

But when he saw Clapton at the Odeon theater in Birmingham in August 1976, Wakeling was gob-smacked. A clearly inebriated Clapton, who unlike most of his rock brethren hadn’t weighed in on topics like the Vietnam War, began grousing about immigration. The concert was neither filmed nor recorded, but based on published accounts at the time (and Wakeling’s recollection), Clapton began making vile, racist comments from the stage. In remarks he has never denied, he talked about how the influx of immigrants in the U.K. would result in the country “being a colony within 10 years.” He also went on an extended jag about how “foreigners” should leave Great Britain: “Get the wogs out . . . get the coons out.” (Wog, shorthand for golliwog, was a slur against dark-skinned nonwhites.)

A citizen of the pre-eminent colonizing nation now thinks being a colony is bad? OK.

That was in 1976. Now, though, he’s jumped on the wacky anti-vax bandwagon.

Clapton does appear to have a credulous side: In the book, he detailed the bizarre incident in the Eighties when “a lady with a strong European accent” called him at home, told him she knew all about his difficulties with Pattie Boyd (his wife by then), and persuaded him to try all sorts of odd rituals — like “cut my finger to draw blood, smear it onto a cross with Pattie’s and my name written on it, and read weird incantations at night.” (At her suggestion, he also flew to New York and slept with her before realizing that none of that madness would bring Boyd back.)

Clapton’s current public views are a hot mess of those tendencies churned up by a global pandemic, fake news, and his own health issues. In the past few years, Clapton’s health — his hands in particular — have made more headlines than his most recent albums. In 2016, he confessed to Rolling Stone that he was having “a neurological thing that is tricky, that affects my hands.” The following year, he told the magazine he was having “eczema from head to foot. The palms of my hand were coming off.” He also was dealing with peripheral neuropathy — damage to a person’s peripheral nerves, leading to burning or aching pain in the arms and legs.

Last year, Clapton began watching videos by Ivor Cummins, a chemical engineer and author who has questioned the British government’s handling of the pandemic. “I was trying to keep my mouth shut, but I was following the channel avidly,” Clapton confessed. Clapton made his own feelings first known by joining with Morrison for “Stand and Deliver,” a single that connected the lockdown to individual freedom: “Do you want to be a free man/Or do you want to be a slave?” Clapton issued a statement about the collaboration, “We must stand up and be counted because we need to find a way out of this mess. The alternative is not worth thinking about.” (In a strange coincidence, Morrison was a special guest star at Clapton’s Birmingham show in 1976.)

I guess Clapton is not god, which is a good thing: we don’t have to kill him. We should just ignore him.

Why does everything it touches turn to crap? Hear me out. I have a theory, which is mine, which is clearly supported by the evidence.

It’s the cats.

Open your eyes. What is the internet full of? Cats (and porn, but that’s a different hypothesis^*). Cats everywhere.

What are cats? A predatory species that has seen what humans do to every cat with ambitions, like say lions and tigers. They know from experience what we do with the so-called “domesticated” species — we chop off their gonads and feed them the scraps we find unpalatable. They are not our friends. We open up a new environment for colonization, the internet, and what happens? They rush in and take it over first. Then they populate it with traps, wicked memes that will poison our psyche and lead us to destroy ourselves.

It’s so obvious. This is a clear case of inter-specific competition, and if we don’t recognize it, we’re doomed.

^*It may be that porn is Homo sapiens defense mechanism against the rising tide of cat photos. God help us all.

The university requires that everyone be vaccinated, as of 8 October.

All enrolled University of Minnesota students (whether taking courses in person or online) are now required to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or provide documentation for a medical or religious exemption. Students received an email with the link to the UMN Student COVID-19 Vaccination Form in their University email on Friday afternoon, August 27. To meet this requirement, please submit the form electronically by Friday, October 8, 2021.

There’s that ridiculous “religious exemption,” though. If your god says you don’t need to take basic steps to protect the community, that means nothing in my godless state.

Better late and half-assed than never, I guess, although this feeble response is going on my list of reasons I have lost confidence in the University of Minnesota administration.

I’ve told you before that the content I made on Scienceblogs years ago has been hijacked — the site was bought up (legitimately, I can’t do anything about it) by a conservative asshole who simply uses it as a vehicle to host ads. It’s a shame, but at least all that stuff I wrote didn’t disappear into the ol’ bit bucket. But now I have learned that they’ve added insult to their legally sanctioned theft.

“pharyngula” (at least they spelled that right) by…who??!?

Man, I ought to give up and have my name legally changed to PZ, just PZ. They couldn’t misspell that, could they?

Oh yeah, they could. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been called PJ.