The last week of classes is winding down.

+ I’m all caught up on grading!

– I gave a few students permission to turn in late assignments, due today, so I’m not all caught up.

– I’m giving a lab final in cell biology this morning. so I’m not all caught up.

– I’m giving a unit exam to my intro students tomorrow, so I’m not all caught up.

– I’m giving two final exams next week, so I’m not all caught up.

It’s like you can make a few strokes towards shore, but the current is unending and fierce, and I’m already worn out. Grades are due on 21 December, so that’s my goal, I just have to keep paddling and hope I don’t drown before I get there.

Hey! Maybe there’s a beautiful mermaid waiting for me at the bottom, with a golden pirate’s treasure, so drowning won’t be so bad.

The other day, we were concerned that Twitter would lose its Apple app, with a devastating loss to its revenue. What about losing Europe?

The European Union has reportedly threatened to ban Twitter unless Elon Musk abides by its strict content moderation rules.

The warning, which has been reported by The Financial Times, could be the start of a regulatory battle over the future of the social media platform across Europe.

EU industry chief Thierry Breton made the threat during a video meeting with Musk on Wednesday, the news outlet said, citing people with knowledge of the conversation.

Breton told the world’s richest man he must adhere to a checklist of rules which are set out in the EU’s new Digital Services Act.

According to the report, these include a requirement to ditch an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users and to agree to an “extensive independent audit” of the platform by next year.

The landmark law aims to set the global standard for how tech giants must police content on the internet.

In a readout of the conversation provided by Breton, he told Musk: “There is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising.”

The impressive incompetence of the “world’s richest man” continues to be staggeringly entertaining. I look forward to the incoherent tantrum that will be incoming.

Thanks, Washington Post. And first thing in the morning, too! What a thing for an old geezer to wake up to.

Great. My demographic. Although, while I am over 65, I’m not sick or poor, so I can take some solace in that…except that I don’t think being old, sick, or poor should mean you get neglected by society, and I don’t think any of us should be categorized as an acceptable loss.

More than 300 people are still dying each day on average from covid-19, most of them 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that’s much lower than the 2,000 daily toll at the peak of the delta wave, it is still roughly two to three times the rate at which people die of the flu — renewing debate about what is an “acceptable loss.”

And while older Americans have consistently been the worst hit during the crisis, as evident in the scores of early nursing home deaths, that trend has become more pronounced. Today, nearly 9 in 10 covid deaths are in people 65 or older — the highest rate ever, according to a Washington Post analysis of CDC data.

If this disease does get me, I’m going to raise a bony finger to point at all the heedless younger people who don’t believe in masking, or any other basic preventative measures. And I’m especially planning to claw my way out of the grave to knock on the doors of all those people who think that saying “it’s just a flu” is an excuse for ongoing contempt for core concepts in epidemiology. Or anyone who claims the pandemic is over.

The cringiest. Some group of Musk cultists created a cryptocurrency called ElonGOAT, and decided to promote it in the goofiest way they could think of: by building a monument to Elon Musk.

Elon GOAT Token has really stepped outside the box and did something no other Crypto project has dared to do. We built Elon Musk a $600,000 monument on the back of a semi trailer in honor of his many accomplishments and commitment to Cryptocurrency! Since completion, $EGT has toured several states in the US and has now decided to deliver this gift to Elon at Tesla’s Giga factory in Austin!

We believe that Elon’s potential acceptance of this biblical sized gift could catapult $EGT into the limelight and accelerate its various initiatives.

$EGT’s future is bright with our ambitious plans to launch EGT PRO’s merchant processing solutions in early 2023. We also believe with proper execution the subsequent run at multiple centralized exchange listings will take us to the top!

Right. So they’ve invented some fake money, and they think the way to get people to invest in it is to spend $600,000 on an ugly-ass statue to get Elon Musk’s blessing. They’re also selling 5,000 NFTs…oops, I just stole one.

They also invented an ‘event’, driving this statue to the Tesla factory to convince Musk to tweet about them, which would somehow vastly increase the value of their precious imaginary coin. They’re urging everyone to buy buy buy now, before the anticipated Elon Tweet sends the price skyrocketing to the moon. That’s it. That’s the entire foundation for its value, getting a nod of acknowledgement from the petty god they worship. They’re chattering away about it online. They’re begging Elon Musk to come out and appreciate their work on Twitter.

$EGT TESLA SECURITY PERSONALLY CALLED ASHLEY AND GAVE HIM INSTRUCTIONS ON WHERE TO PARK!!!! ❤️❤️❤️🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂

That was from 15 hours ago, and was the last comment from the people dragging this statue to Austin. Maybe we can take a peek at how well their scheme is working.

Oops. The line go down. They lost 60% of their value the day they delivered their monstrosity.

Part of the problem might be that, goddamn, this is the ugliest statue I’ve ever seen. Maybe they’ve finally found a way to embarrass Elon Musk.

I mean, look at that thing! It’s Elon Musk’s head grafted onto the body of a goat, riding a rocket. It’s hideous. What drugs were they taking when they came up with that thing? I need to know so I never ever take them myself.

It’s a pile of aluminum scrap. Musk is going to pretend it doesn’t exist because taking ownership would mean he’d have to get it melted down, another expense added to his long list of woes. Although, I do have to admit that an ugly wasteful lump of metal built to celebrate stupidity and delusions might be the most appropriate monument for Elon Musk.

The grandson turned 5 today, and he is applying himself with great focus and intense concentration, even stripping down for the purpose, to that gooey chocolate cake.

I’m off to visit daughter+son-in-law+grandchild for Thanksgiving dinner, and I guess that makes me the grandpa.

I’ll be back on Saturday! At my age, it takes a few days to digest the whole rat.

We decided to splurge on Chinese take-out tonight, and of course we got a fortune cookie. I opened mine up, and this is what it said:

Say what? I’ve seen cryptic fortunes before, but this one was particularly puzzling. And stupid. I scratched my head over it a bit, thinking, “but does money really change everything?” and “how do I change the money? You mean like getting a roll of quarters?” Then I wondered what this has to do with me, or any customer for vegetable fried rice.

Then I flipped it over.

[Read more…]

If you still think the World’s Richest Man™ is also the Smartest Man Alive™, we’re laughing at you, too.

How do I know? My class with 20 enrolled had an attendance of 4 in person and 3 over Zoom. Thirteen ghosts! I make it easy for them because in addition to the in-person and zoom option, I also record everything and put that online.

I do rather miss having students right there, interacting with the material. It limits what I can do.

Anyway, I can now say in good conscience that I won’t be lecturing on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, because I know from past experience that hardly anyone will show up. Wednesday will be a play day, I’ve got a few science-related games I’ll bring in. If no one at all shows up, I’ll go hang out with my spiders for a while. They love me, at least.

Also, the second worst day for attendance is the Friday of deer hunting season, which hits in early November.

Moderation matters. It’s human nature that some people don’t grow out of their immaturity and find satisfaction in destroying things, splattering obscenities everywhere, and relishing being purposeless disruptors — it is, apparently, what gives their life meaning, since they are failures at everything else — so policing comments is necessary. That’ll never change for as long as some people savor being terrible human beings.

Elon Musk’s Twitter is being stripped of moderators, rules, and any vestige of sanity in what I can only interpret as self-destruction. Musk is one of those useless vandals who finds virtue in wreckage, and by removing any effective moderation, we’re going to see a steady decay of useful content. Twitter is becoming as lawless and unregulated as Facebook, and now people are rushing to insert misinformation…now blessed with the sacred Blue Checkmark, which can be obtained by anyone for a mere $8/month.

Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.

Hey, if I were a quack trying to sell patent medicines that haven’t been tested and don’t work, that’s what I’d do: pay a pittance for a shingle I could hang for my dangerous advertising, so I could pretend to be a legitimate authority, and that’s what they’re doing.

But the tools are now being used to create a false sense of validity in order to spread dangerous falsehoods, including about vaccines. And groups on other platforms, like Facebook, continue to circumvent moderation by making minor changes to their names and the terms they use to promote anti-vaccine agendas.

Verified accounts are frequently seen as reliable and trustworthy, and Twitter’s algorithm gives them a higher ranking in search results, replies and follow recommendations.

“There’s a sense of legitimacy that comes with it,” said Barry. “By verifying this anti-vaccine account, they’re kind of verifying all of the misinformation it shares … it makes people think, ‘Oh, well, this is a verified account. This must be true.’”

They’re lying to circumvent any restraints on their propaganda, and they openly admit it! Machines can’t detect spotlights in a those silly robot verification tests on the internet, they sure can’t see a cunning liar, like this guy who is determined to spread vaccine misinformation on Facebook. Twitter is just lying there with its immune system demolished, it’s becoming as riddled with this nonsense as Facebook.

Facebook group admins, like Tiago Henrique Fernandes, reconstitute banned groups by using slightly different names, like DSN Official instead of Died Suddenly News, while keeping the same focus on anti-science messages.

Fernandes coaches members not to write certain words that will be picked up by moderators, he explained on a recent show produced by Children’s Health Defense.

Facebook’s algorithms look for keywords – like vaccine, shot and mRNA – to flag potential problems.

“I basically train the members to … get away from that kind of language and get more into undercover, what I call ‘carnival talk’ – that way the algorithms can’t figure it out,” he said.

Group members often refer to the vaccines as food – “cookie”, “peaches”, “cheeseburger” – or use purposeful misspellings, especially for purported side-effects like seizures (“see jures”) or cancer (“can sir”).

One phrase that is picking up steam in the anti-vax world is “died suddenly”, which may be used in official media reports to talk about any sudden death, making it harder to moderate automatically.

This is one of the reasons I bailed out of Facebook — too much garbage being peddled to profit Mark Zuckerberg, and too many stupid or evil people thriving in the stew of dishonesty. Next on the social media chopping block: the disintegrating carcass of Twitter, which is now making life easy for frauds.

The vaccines to prevent severe disease and death from Covid-19 are extremely safe and effective, with millions of people around the world vaccinated.

Even so, anti-vaccine propaganda has increased dramatically during the pandemic. Anti-vaccine activists “were prepared for a pandemic to happen”, and they were prepared to exploit it, Barry said.

Verifying anti-vax accounts and elevating their messages on social networks further entrenches anti-vaccine ideology in our culture, Barry said. “Anything that further legitimizes them, the extent of their influence gets even worse, and people don’t even realize that the origin of it is anti-vax.”

I’m afraid it’s more than passive neglect that’s creating the ongoing deterioration, though. I’m convinced that Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to save it, he can’t possibly be that stupid (or can he?) I think it was an active act of vandalism. He loves the attention he gets on the site, but simultaneously hates that it opens him up to criticism, so he’s destroying it in a stupid act of self-immolation. How else to explain that he’s letting anti-vaxxers flourish, has allowed Donald Trump and Jordan Peterson to return, and has let James Lindsay out of his cage?

There’s no reason for any of it, except to accelerate the descent into crepitude. It’s surprising because he didn’t have to spend $44 billion to do that, entropy and competition would have disintegrated it eventually, like MySpace, but he seems to be rushing to do in weeks or months what would have normally taken years or decades.

Could he please buy Facebook next?