OK already. It’s supposed to be my break, but I had to take care of some things, for the spring term. So I got students registered for my writing course, got flies ordered for my genetics course, and worked out my spring calendar. One pleasant surprise: my schedule fell out in such a way that I have no classes on Friday (three day weekends all semester long!) and no class before 11:45, which is a bit of a waste since I’m up by 6am every day anyway. Although it does mean I’ll have a fair amount of Spider Time to look forward to.

Now go away, job. I don’t want to think about you any more until January.

Except for the grading I have to do on Saturday, that is.

Some of us are trying to make ends meet. Some of us are worrying about how we can afford retirement. Some of us are looking at medical bills and weeping. But not Elon Musk! He’s the what-me-worry kid. He borrowed billions for an impulsive purchase of Twitter, and he’s not worried at all about his rather desperate situation.

With interest on his loans totaling over $150m/month and a company grossing $5B before screwing it all up and chasing the advertisers out, Twitter’s reluctant purchaser Elon Musk seems to be running out of options.

He’s bleeding $150 million every month on just the interest payments? On a company he is visibly mismanaging? In his shoes (his brightly-colored, oversized clown shoes), I’d be a wreck. I’d be worried about all the employees I was letting down, and how I’d meet operating costs, let alone the interest. But not Elon! He has a plan!

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.

Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.

The aggressive moves signal that Mr. Musk is still slashing expenditures and is bending or breaking Twitter’s previous agreements to make his mark. His reign has been characterized by chaos, a series of resignations and layoffs, reversals of the platform’s previous suspensions and rules, and capricious decisions that have driven away advertisers.

Whoa, you can do that? I could just refuse to make our mortgage payments or skip out on our credit card bill? That would free up a whole lot of money that I could spend on fun stuff.

I think, though, that at some point the law would catch up with me, and I’d be evicted or forced to meet my contractual obligations or maybe even be arrested and jailed. Could that happen to the second richest man in the world? Probably not, because the world is not just. We’ll have to settle for watching his reputation get flushed away.

I feel like I’ve been railing against nonsense for my entire life. I got into the skepticism side of everything starting with my opposition to creationism — there I was, diligently studying developmental and evolutionary biology, and I started encountering these raving loons who outright rejected all of science while claiming the earth was 6,000 years old and that all life was magically created in a short week. It was offensive. It was absurd. Yet those kooks continue to thrive.

Since then, the bullshit has continued to pile up. We have flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, QAnon conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens, crypto fanatics, and satanic panics, all patently bogus, and they have led to a world of transphobia, homophobia, insurrections, armed militias, anti-education sentiment, and a Supreme Court and Congress packed with some of the dumbest idjits ever to grace this country. People hold the incredible as credible. The media take the silly seriously.

What is going on? It’s an epidemic of idiocy.

I admit that I live in a bubble of sanity, but people outside that bubble aren’t stupid. They’ve been misled and misinformed, their fears have been stoked, but the people wearing MAGA hats and attending anti-vax rallies are also a minority. Perhaps a growing minority, but still…they shouldn’t have as much influence as they do. In a sensible world, they ought to be laughed at.

I’m going to blame social media. I saw it on Facebook, with old friends getting sucked down into a vortex of insanity, people self-reinforcing each other over the latest extreme conspiracy theory, which would be actively promoted by the medium. It was an environment designed for kooks; they got free license to say anything, which was fine, but then criticism of bad ideas was walled off and contained, so the circle-jerks grew unchecked. If you dared to speak up and say, “Errm, the world is round, all the evidence says so” you would be shouted down by a massive crowd of people finding confidence in their numbers. It was ugly. I finally had enough and had to leave that site, cutting off all connections and closing my account.

Now it’s Twitter. This service has the potential to be even worse than Facebook, because now it has been bought up by a billionaire with bad taste and bad ideas who is endorsing QAnon, going full anti-vax, and calling for Fauci to be imprisoned. He’s insane. He’s going to lead Twitter into full collapse as a madhouse of raging nitwits.

That also leads into another big American difficulty — the way unfettered capitalism has produced a class of overvalued morons who can buy further degradation of the system.

It’s a nightmare, and I can’t abide it. I’m eventually going to have to kill my Twitter account, in the same way I murdered my Facebook account. Right now, I’m using Twitter as a free advertising service for the blog, and that’s it. I post links to Pharyngula there, but I am as of this moment refusing to engage further on the site: no other chatter, no conversation, no discussion — if you want to talk to me (and I do want to talk with other people), we’ll all have to make the effort to find other ways to engage. I’m on Mastodon, I have YouTube, and most of all, I have Freethoughtblogs.

I don’t know what else to do. Social media is a failed experiment that has had disastrous consequences. Bring back RSS!

It’s all different now. Yesterday was the day of my last big effort in the fall semester, when I sat down for most of the day to put together two final exams. I got them done! I posted them online! The ball is in your court now, students! My sense of relief was immense. It was so great that I went online and watched a movie*, while not feeling the customary dread that I’d forgotten something.

I’m not quite done, but it’s just clean-up left. I have an administrative meeting this morning, and I’ll have to grade those finals this weekend — but one is an optional exam that only a few students will take, and the other is designed to be machine-gradeable.

This morning I woke up to incredible silence. We’re at the beginning of a major snowstorm, and everyone is staying home, swaddled up to keep warm. No cars! Everything is blanketed with snow, muffling the sounds further! Even the birds have gone silent! It’s a good thing my exams are all totally online, everyone should stay safe at home. It’s still snowing, and is expected to snow all day, and keep snowing through Friday.

I should probably stay home too, but I might get out for a walk this afternoon, if it isn’t too icy. Big fat flakes coming down, temperatures that are reasonably warm (right around 0°C), that’s pleasant.

Man, it feels good to shed that load that’s been clinging to my back the last few months.

*The movie was Slash/Back, an Inuit/Canadian horror movie. I liked it! The setting gave a glimpse into the lives of a group of Inuit kids — there were honest illustrations of poverty and alcoholism, but also showed off their amazing self-reliance and casual adaptability. The alien monsters were cool and creepy, too. On the negative side, these kids were clumsy self-conscious actors, the ending was a bit abrupt and rather pat, but I forgave it all for being refreshingly different. I enjoyed it more than the last slickly-made Marvel movie I watched.

Minnesotans! This week is your last chance to name a snowplow!

Classes over! All grading to date completed! Freedom is in sight!

OK, I have to compose two final exams by Monday, and grade them next weekend. This won’t be too intimidating, though — my plan is to make the final machine-gradeable, mostly multiple choice and math problems, so with a little preparation I can just log in next Saturday, see all the scores waiting for me, and then I plug them into a spreadsheet that spits out letter grades.

So, next weekend…margaritas and tacos and lounging about, playing with spiders and data. Until then, one last push.

My wife was tidying up old papers, and found this letter. My daughter had written it to her grandparents to thank them for some Christmas presents (and also to share the family excitement, that her older brother had gotten a ball python). Grandma had put the date on it, and we got it back after they died.

Written when my daughter was about the same age as my granddaughter is now, 26 years ago. Jebus, but time flies by, and leaves me all old and sentimental. I may need to mope for a bit.

Almost there.

I have to finish grading this stack of lab finals this morning, then compose an exam for intro biology, and finally stagger into bed.

To celebrate the end of classes, we have two big events this weekend at UMM.

First up, park your butt in an auditorium (haven’t they had enough of that?), and watch a Marvel Movie Marathon. I’m not sufficiently interested in the Marvel universe to do that, but sure, soak in it for the weekend.

And then, top off Saturday night with the Yule Ball. This is a photo of a decorative pile of tchotchkes that were on a table. I like the sentiment on the button.

Party hard, young’uns! For the professoriate will deliver unto you a week of pain immediately afterwards!