The semester has genuinely positively started. It’s happening. Can’t turn back time now.
By the way, I seem to be the only person on campus masking up anymore. I will continue to do so. I missed Skepticon this year, so I escaped some consequences there: Three attendees have come down with COVID so far. The pandemic is still around, be careful out there!
I’ve pointed out before how creationists like to butcher quotes from scientists to completely change their meaning, in a practice called quote mining. Guess who else does this?
Jordan Peterson. Tell me you’re surprised.
He and his publisher spattered the back cover of his latest book, Beyond Order, with blurbs from reviewers that praised it highly…or did they?
Another objection came from The Times reviewer James Marriott, because the blurb included from his review quoted him calling the book “A philosophy of the meaning of life… the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written.”
In a now-deleted X post, Marriott noted that the ellipse covered up that his full sentence was “A philosophy of the meaning of life which is bonkers.”
“My review of this mad book was probably the most negative thing I have ever written,” Marriott said. He later added that he was amused by the situation, “Though my amusement is tinged with annoyance at being misrepresented to the tens of thousands of people who will buy that book in paperback.
Oh man, you can’t trust Jordan Peterson? Shocking.
Remember this guy? Bryan Johnson is a millionaire who has dedicated his life to obsessively striving to become ‘younger,’ sort of, and only seems to have become a boring monomaniac.
His quest is surprisingly granular, and won’t shut up about his little idée fixe. Guess what little thing he’s focused on now?
I’m done. I don’t want to know any more.
I will never attend another meeting in person again.*
I have a day of meetings scheduled for the rest of the day, but the first one nearly killed me. It was two hours long. We had a detailed 5-page agenda that had been emailed to us, and that should have been all we needed. I dutifully attended, ankle wrapped up and immobilized, as the pain continued to raise, despite the brain-addling drugs I’m taking, and worst of all, I’m taking a diuretic. Breaks? No.
It was fucking agonizing, a thoroughly unpleasant meeting in which I learned nothing I hadn’t already learned from a few decades of experience and reading the agenda ahead of time. I got to listen to a parade of administrators while squirming and almost breaking down and praying to a benevolent god for a merciful ending. I knew my prayer for a lightning bolt to end my suffering wouldn’t be answered, though. Jumping out a window was tempting, but the room was on the ground floor.
I’ve got more meetings scheduled, but screw it, I’m not going unless they’re over Zoom.
I’m two years away from retirement, and I swear, this experience confirmed my commitment to getting out in Spring of 2025. I just can’t handle it anymore. Maybe if I were in good health, I’d be able to cope, but I’m right on the edge of erupting and melting down, and it was too much.
Classes start next week, and that’s going to be interesting. Lectures are one hour, not two, so that helps, but I’m also going to have to give up on the medication, which makes me drowsy and stresses my kidneys. Isn’t it great when a job is a compromise between getting the work done and your health?
*Student meetings excepted. I like those.
Classes start in one week (there are also way too many meetings this week), and I’ve been housebound far too long, so this weekend is my last chance to escape for a bit before the crunch hits. And then I discover there’s an Exotic Pet Fair in Eau Claire this weekend. Perfect! It’s a twofer — I get to visit my granddaughter, and take her with us to go spider shopping. I’m in the market for a nice show tarantula for the lab, and maybe a black widow or two.
It’s not all spiders. They also have birds, reptiles, bunnies, guinea pigs, etc., so even a kid who isn’t that much into spiders should be entertained. I’ll also be glad to just get out for a day.
(Don’t worry — I’ll consult with experts, and won’t be getting any endangered species. If we get Latrodectus,I think I can keep them reliably confined. I don’t want to go do down in history as the guy who populated the basement with black widows, like the former professor who let cockroaches loose in the building.)
Things are not going well for Sam Bankman-Fried, the big-time crypto con man. He’s been out on bail, living the easy life pending his trial, but he just can’t resist blabbing and conspiring to intimidate witnesses to his crimes, so he earned a hard slap from justice.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail has been revoked for witness tampering — specifically, that he shared ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s private diary with a New York Times reporter. This was the last straw for Judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the documents were “something that someone who has been in a relationship would be unlikely to share with anyone except to hurt and frighten the subject.”
Previously, Sam tried to get in touch via Signal with another witness, former FTX US lawyer Ryne Miller, about getting their stories straight — which nearly saw Sam’s bail revoked that time.
Our hero is currently at MDC Brooklyn — notoriously one of the worst jails in the federal system — but the government has asked that he be remanded at Putnam, where he’ll be allowed more computer access to prepare for his upcoming trial on October 2.
That’s going to be a fun trial.
Reading that, though, I was somehow reminded of someone else with a penchant for blustering and threatening witnesses on social media, someone else currently facing an October trial date, someone — I can’t quite put my finger on who — currently living freely in a gilded mansion in Florida. What’s the worst state jail in Georgia? I think he needs to spend some time there.
One result of my latest doctor’s visit is that I was told to stay off my cursed foot, at least until Wednesday, and to avoid much physical activity until everything heals up. This is not good! I’ve been imprisoned in my home for the last two and a half weeks — and I also got some new brain-fog medication (not that it treats the fog, it causes it.) I am going to go stir-crazy.
My daughter recommended that I pick up some new game, Baldur’s Gate 3, which is getting rave reviews, but of course it’s Skatje’s opinion that matters, so I did. It’s downloading now. Is my life over?
Got some new drugs, and a couple of injections, oh boy.
I’m kind of perverse, I really enjoy seeing knives and needles applied to my own flesh (but not to other people’s, I get squeamish about that). So this morning I got to watch as I got some local steroid injections.
If you’re uncomfortable at the sight of needles, stop here.
After more than a week of narcotics and steroids, I decided to quit this morning — the fog and haze and insomnia were too much. It wasn’t quite cold turkey, because I started dropping the dosage a couple of days ago, but still, this is my first day totally drug-free.
It’s not going real well so far. The pain is back (but still much less than last week), and now I get to deal with diffuse feelings of nausea, and I’m still foggy and slow. It’s one of those lose:lose situations and I’m not having a grand time. I also keep getting reminded that classes start in a few weeks.
I will get better. Next doctor’s appointment is early Monday morning.
I’m trying to plan some alternative teaching options for the Fall, since I might be temporarily incapacitated for a bit — I’m waiting on a call from podiatrist right now, which might define some of my limitations. One of the obvious fall-back strategies would be to do some lectures remotely, since we’re all well-trained on using Zoom nowadays. Except that now I learn Zoom wants to use us.
Zoom has rolled out a controversial update to its terms of service, adding a clause that allows it to use customer data for AI and ML training.
The pertinent clause is quoted below:
You consent to Zoom’s access, use, collection, creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing, maintenance, and storage of Service Generated Data for any purpose, to the extent and in the manner permitted under applicable Law, including for the purpose of product and service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning or artificial intelligence (including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms and models), training, testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom’s other products, services, and software, or any combination thereof, and as otherwise provided in this Agreement. In furtherance of the foregoing, if, for any reason, there are any rights in such Service Generated Data which do not accrue to Zoom under this Section 10.2 or as otherwise provided in this Agreement, you hereby unconditionally and irrevocably assign and agree to assign to Zoom on your behalf, and you shall cause your End Users to unconditionally and irrevocably assign and agree to assign to Zoom, all right, title, and interest in and to the Service Generated Data, including all Proprietary Rights relating thereto.
Those bastards. This is a sneaky way of violating privacy, confidentiality, and our ownership of classroom content. If they announced that my lectures could be lifted wholesale and sold for use by anyone else, that would be less of a violation than this. They figure they could use a computer proxy to take all that content, massage it, refilter it, and then distribute it without attribution in the guise of AI — no one will be able to blame or credit me as a source, which is an essential part of the way science works.
They’ll also be able to steal my students’ contributions, although mostly they’re all silent black rectangles on the screen. They will chime in with good stuff now and then, though, all of it to be grist for the AI machine.
Also, people use Zoom for business meetings, where real money is at stake. I wonder how they’re going to take to the idea of a digital spy lurking in the background?
Or how about medical consultations? Are those to be AI fodder, too?
