Snow day, sort of

We got word yesterday that the University will have “reduced operations” for a few days, all because of a little snow. Are we not Minnesotans? We can handle this!

Coursework should move to distance/online learning between 8 a.m. Wednesday and 12 p.m. Thursday. If your course cannot be delivered via distance, it should be canceled. Faculty and instructors should be in touch with their students as soon as possible to inform them about how to connect to distance learning or to determine how missed classes or related assignments may be made up. Students who have not heard from their instructors are encouraged to reach out for more information.
Only designated “essential on-campus” employees must report to work on campus while we are in reduced operations. Managers and supervisors have identified affected employees and should promptly notify them about scheduling. A number of employees are necessary to maintain our campus’ 24-hour operations and we greatly appreciate their service. We urge managers to work with essential on-campus employees to ensure they are taking proper safety precautions.

Yeah, I know, heavy snowstorm, blizzard conditions, yadda yadda. On the one hand, I agree: if you have to travel to get here, it’s going to be hazardous, stay home and stay safe. On the other hand, the weather news has been playing up this storm for days, talking about two feet of snow, etc. I’ve gotten used to discounting these predictions — I’m going to estimate we’ll probably get about 10 inches, because I tend to cut all the predictions in half. That’s not nothing, but it’s nothing to panic over.

This is Minnesota, and we’re equipped to handle this stuff. The snow plows were out in force overnight, we’ve got a snowblower, we’ve got a pantry with supplies to keep us well fed for a week or two (although meals will get boring by the end), our house is snug and warm, I’m not at all worried by this storm.

I’m reminded of my grandfather telling stories of growing up in northern Minnesota. They had to tie a rope from the house to the outhouse so they wouldn’t get lost and freeze to death on the way to relieving themselves. Now we have something better than a rope — it’s called indoor plumbing.

IOKIYAR

I fell for another tease. Remember Matt Grossell, the Minnesota state representative who was a sullen drunk picking fights in hotels and bars and hospitals when he got arrested for being falling down snockered? Here’s a non-update.

There was talk at the time about taking him off his committee assignments. Surprise: they did not. The Democrat in charge of that sort of thing is sill waffling. Worse yet, this bozo has a history of this sort of behavior.

Grossell had previously been arrested in 2019 on charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing after a drunken incident at a hotel bar in St. Paul.

The House Democratic leadership stripped Grossell of his committee assignments following his 2019 arrest. Part of the reason was that after he got out of jail he walked into St. Paul police headquarters and announced to officers that he was a state representative and that there would be “hell to pay.”

His committee assignments have since been reinstated. Grossell is a member of the public safety, judiciary and capital investment committees.

He’s done this before? He got a little temporary slap and was then reinstated? I think we can guess how this is going to go.

I did learn something in this non-update.

Alcohol is a factor in more than a quarter of Minnesota traffic deaths each year, according to state data, and drunk driving costs the state more than a quarter billion dollars annually. But neither the lawmakers getting arrested on alcohol-related charges, nor the voters who keep sending them back, seem to care a whole lot.

Yeah, you learn fast that going for a drive on these remote rural roads late on a Friday or Saturday night isn’t a great idea.

Fooled again

Dammit. I haven’t been to the movie theater in months, and I succumbed to temptation and went out last night. Unfortunately, it was Marvel movie time.

This one is about people shrinking into the “quantum realm,” which the writers interpreted to mean like a teeny tiny kingdom full of weird stuff and ants. It’s basically 100% CGI. It’s a Marvel movie, so the conclusion involves saving the multiverse with a punchy-kicky hand-to-hand fistfight.

I couldn’t enjoy it because the whole time I was watching the subatomic-sized people running around I couldn’t help but wonder, “what are they breathing?”

Someday I’ll learn that these movies aren’t worth anyone’s time.

It looks like a good day to just give up

Snow is coming down somewhat heavily right now, and the temperature is -10°C. It’s supposed to let up soon, but tomorrow through Thursday is the big storm, with this threat of “Heavy snow with total snow accumulations of 12 to 18 inches possible. Winds could gust as high as 45 mph late Wednesday into Thursday.”

Today is also the day I have to start teaching an additional class on top of my usual course load, and I foolishly volunteered to participate in a session for visiting prospective students. The administration accepted my offer! What were they thinking? I’m going to be showing high schoolers and their parents a room full of spiders! If attendance declines next year, it may be my fault.

I teach labs on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m already planning accommodations for all those students who’d rather not step out into a blinding blizzard.

Mary is in Wisconsin, and planning to drive across the state before the storm hits and the roads become impassable tomorrow. I get to spend the day in a state of anxiety.

Can we just cancel the whole week? All in favor say “aye.”

I went to a party last night

It has been a long, long time, and I don’t think my brain can process it. I was a quiet little lump all night, like usual, but the sensory overload of a half dozen conversations going on at once always leaves me dizzy. I also stayed up later than usual, and slept in until 7:30. So this is what sybaritic decadence feels like…

I had made a big pot of jambalaya for the party, using my usual method. Oh, this requires peppers? Chop up every pepper in the house and throw it in. Onions? Same approach. Add two teaspoons of Cajun spice…are you mad? Heaping tablespoons. That’s not much, so double it.Then the usual Law of Garlic, you can’t add too much. Cooked it all up with a pound of rice and some Impossible Sausage (so it’s still vegetarian). Don’t forget the red pepper flakes and cayenne!

It came out pretty well — good flavor, a little bit of a kick but still mostly acceptable to a room full of Minnesotans. Not too acceptable, I guess, because there were plenty of leftovers, but that’s OK. Guess what I’m having for breakfast this morning? It’s mighty fine, and it will wake a fellow up.

It better wake me up good, because I have an exam to grade, a problem set to assemble, one lecture to write and another to figure out what it’s talking about, spiders to feed and snuggle, and lots of dishes to do, both at home and in the lab. I’m home alone while Mary gets to frolic with a four-year-old, so it’s all on me.

Totally random, but I found this excellent summary of social media this morning.

Looks like you might have me to kick around for a while

This morning was my yearly checkup, and I’m afraid everything was normal. Cholesterol was down, blood pressure 120/70, not a hint of prostate cancer, probably going to live for a little while longer.

There was some funny business with my thyroid, so I have to go in next week for an ultrasound. Also I get to get another colonoscopy in the summer of 2024.

I’m home briefly, but I have to go teach a new class. Oh boy. And then I’m coming home again to cook for a potluck this evening.

Blizzarding world

We had an abrupt drop in temperature last night, along with some snow and 80kph winds. It was a blizzard! Howling all night long!

This morning, I get up and see the snow drifts everywhere.

I think that’s elegant and beautiful. For a sense of scale, though, that’s just my driveway, and the drift is about knee deep.

I also liked this snow sculpture.

The wind just carved a thin straight line of snow from the signpost. There are these interesting shapes all over the place.

Not so interesting, though, was walking to work through the knee-deep drifts.

Running up his score with a cheat

Crisis! Emergency! Elon Musk discovered a terrible injustice!

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.

I’ve never really worried about this before, but my tweets make less of a splash than Joe Biden’s. I would have thought this was no big deal — he’s the president, I’m some schmoe in Minnesota — but now that you mention it, that is unfair. People should pay more attention to me! So far, all I’m able to do is lie on the floor and kick and scream and cry about it, but Elon has control. He has engineers. He can hack the code.

That’s what he did. He told his engineers to cheat and artificially inflate his numbers.

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”

That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.

Keep that in mind when Musk brags about how important he is, based on “engagement” and “followers” and “traffic”. He’s cheating big time at this game.

Here’s a good thing to remember: Elon Musk is just dumb.