Apparently, all the students, faculty, and staff were warned to stay away from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus this morning. I didn’t hear about it until all the danger had passed. Some fool named Joseph Rongstad threatened to go on a rampage and start killing students.

The notice did not offer any specifics about the threat or how it was communicated, but Olson told the Star Tribune that the suspect went on an hours long threat-filled rant on his landscape company’s Facebook page. Some of the postings included a specific family as an intended target.

“Here we go AMERICA,” the last of his many postings read. “I am heading out … to the U of M Minneapolis mn to start killing kids. … if I can’t get the USA military to [come] talk to me face to face then I’m going for it to try defend your freedom America. … I may have been played … on this brain reading technology but today I find out for sure.”

The posting then warned, “IM COMING FOR YA KIDS AND ITS GOING TO GET BLOODY.”

A previous posting from the man also made a threat against Iranian students, saying, “If this government don’t have the total lock down of ALL university’s of Minnesota by this morning sun up watch out PARENTS … Kids will die for real amongst them u of m students.”

Other postings from the man made explicit threats to Sheriff Olson, and Chippewa County judges Thomas Van Hon and Keith Helgeson. In 2016, Van Hon ordered the man civilly committed for six months as mentally ill and chemically dependent.

What I find a bit irritating about this is that the was in Watson, MN which is about an hour away from Morris, while the Twin Cities campus is almost 3 hours away, and we didn’t get an email notification until after Rongstad was confined and we were all out of danger. He did specifically mention the Minneapolis branch, but also threatened “ALL university’s of Minnesota” and we were the closest potential target. We got notified well after the SWAT teams had shut down the town of Watson for this ranting kook.

I’m just saying it would be nice if we all got the warning, not just the big city campus.

This is a watch I inherited from my late grandfather. I believe it was from the 1940s or thereabouts — he served in the Army Corps of Engineers in WWII, and then worked as a highway engineer in Washington state.

The watchglass is missing, and a couple of hands have broken off. The mechanism is still kind of functional, in that when I wind it up it ticks away.

I post this on the off chance that anyone might know anything about it. It has sentimental meaning (I wore it when I got married!), and I’d also be interested in knowing where to take it for repair.

Also, it’s pretty and shiny.

After our brown Xmas and New Year’s Day, we’re finally getting a good slosh of snow, with a prediction of 5 more inches today. Right on time, the administration has sent out an email telling us to “develop a plan” to deal with inclement weather when classes start next week. We get no resources to implement this plan, of course, we’re just on our own on that. Good thing I’ve been dealing with this stuff for 24 years!

It needs a few more eyes, though.

I was at SeaTac with Knut and Connlann and an unnamed muppet before Xmas. I’ll let you guess who’s who.

Three of them were on the way to Korea, I was going to Minnesota. Knut is still in Korea, dining on kimchee and all sorts of delicious food. He needs it to keep up his rate of growth.

Anybody got any ideas?

I don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve. I won’t be staying up until midnight, I won’t be drinking champagne with my sweetie, there will be no party. I will acknowledge a few common New Year’s Eve practices, though.

Predictions! It’s traditional on New Year’s Eve to look forward and predict what the coming year will bring. Here’s my prediction:

Everything will get much, much worse. Chaos will reign. Everything will fall apart. Expect the Republic to fall, genocide will rage all around the world, crops will fail, plague will sweep across the planet.

Prove me wrong.

Resolutions! Nothing really matters, but I will be making one change. I’ve refrained from going full arachnophile on this blog, and that means I’ve neglected the founding ethos of Pharyngula: I write for me, not you. So no more restraint, I’ll post spiders when I want to.

Some of you may argue that my resolution is contributing to my prediction, but hey, when the world burns, snuggle up to a spider.

I know that Sam Altman is rich, is controversial, is in charge of OpenAI, yadda yadda yadda, but I was wondering what his expertise was, what he actually does to earn attention, because it’s not as if there’s anything I can point to and say, “Sam Altman was responsible for that.” He just seems to have a lot of money that he spends on other people who do a lot of different things. The Washington Post ran a long and laudatory article that I read to find the answer.

Here’s the shortest summary I could find.

In a Silicon Valley milieu in which shooting star companies often give birth to cults of personality around firms’ founders, Altman has stood out. An investor with a dizzying array of interests, Altman might lack the singular focus of a Steve Jobs — or the sophisticated technical skills to create the products he sells — but according to fans and rivals, he has had since an early age an uncanny entrepreneurial energy and a force of will that inspires others to do their creative best.

Jesus. That’s a particularly vacuous bit of empty PR, isn’t it? So he has an “uncanny entrepreneurial energy” and “force of will,” and what he does with that is inspire other people to do the work he can’t.

Reading between the lines in the rest of the article, it becomes clear that what he has is lots of money, which he acquired by becoming best buddies with people like Peter Thiel, and that lots of people want to say nice things about him in hopes that he’ll give them some of his money. He’s a college dropout with no particular skills, other than money.

The article ends with this bullshit.

“He’s the kind of founder that can bend reality,” said Hemant Taneja, a friend of Altman’s and managing director of the venture capital firm General Catalyst, adding that Altman had invited him to invest in OpenAI but that he declined because he couldn’t understand the company’s complex structure. “By creating the fastest and most popular consumer application of generative AI, he showed us the art of the possible. … This is the first technology where every CEO of every company in every industry is now thinking about how to do AI in their business. He made that happen.”

So he’s a hype machine, aided by highly placed friends, who promotes the AI buzzword which people are already beginning to back away from. OK, got it.

One of our modern problems is that the structure of our society incessantly pushes money-shuffling assholes to the top of everything, rather than competent people with actual constructive skills. I’m not impressed by Altman or others of his ilk…which is, unfortunately, why I’ll die poor someday.

My daughter is having a big Xmas party today, and she doesn’t sound thrilled about it — the in-laws are coming to visit, and she’s doing all the cooking. We’re not adding to the burden though, because she’s in Madison, and a 7 hour drive is just too much for us this week.

Middle son is really far out of reach. He’s in Korea for two weeks!

We were planning on visiting our oldest son in St Cloud, only two hours away, but then we saw the weather alert for Christmas day: “Mixed precipitation expected. Total snow accumulations of up to one inch and ice accumulations of around a tenth of an inch. Winds gusting as high as 40 mph.”

I think Mary and I are trapped together, alone in an icebound house for Xmas day. I don’t exactly have a Xmas feast prepared either, but I did make a simple lentil soup. It’ll help us stay warm.

Meanwhile, several of the webcomics I follow have a tradition of taking a week or two off this time of year, and they make low-effort filler strips that can be weirdly entertaining. Oglaf (NSFW!) has True Slut Adventures, Unspeakable Vault (of Doom) has a Mandatory Xmas Strip, and Questionable Content features a week of Bembo the Bembarian which, this time around, is perfect for me.

We’re all taking it easy (except for poor Skatje) today and this week. I hope you’re all enjoying some slack for the holidays!