All aboard the pandemic roller-coaster!

I already told you my university is removing the vaccine mandate for attendance at large public events, and now the major cities are removing them, too.

Twin Cities Mayors Melvin Carter and Jacob Frey on Thursday jointly rescinded their vaccine-or-test emergency regulations for restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, effective immediately, as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rapidly decline.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. This is bonkers. Yes, the numbers are going down, we’re past the peak, but look at the difference in the case rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

So we’re going to reduce the incentives for the unvaccinated to get vaccinated. These chickenshit politicians are calling it “invasive regulation”, when it’s a mundane public health measure, in the same way that we expect children to be vaccinated before they go off to school. It makes no sense. It’s pandering to Republicans.

Or maybe it’s something more nefarious. The Democrats see a way to reduce the number of Republican voters permanently. Hey, Mr MAGA Hat, please do cough and sneeze all over your friends at a rally, and while you’re at it, go play in traffic. We won’t get you all, but if we cripple you financially by throwing you on the mercies of your preferred health care system, or invalid you out with long COVID, we’ll be hampering your future effectiveness as a political force. <cackles evilly>

No, not really, I don’t endorse that. You’re already enough of a drag on society, and I don’t want to encourage a reservoir for new mutations to fester.

Meanwhile, as we wait for the next surge, here are some recommendations for you sensible people.

I’m using N94 & N95 masks entirely now. It’s kind of a shame, because last year there was a little cottage industry of artists making lovely cloth masks, but those are no longer recommended, unless worn as part of a set of layers. Things better not get so bad that I need a PAPR to go grocery shopping!

I also don’t understand the resistance to wearing masks. It’s -12°C and snowing with 55 km/hr winds here — even without a pandemic I’d be wearing a mask.

Every time. Jesus, this pandemic will never end.

Once again, we get to suffer with shortsighted thinking. I just got this memo from the president of my university.

Trends in COVID-19 transmission statewide continue to show significant decreases, both in terms of current data related to case numbers, positivity rates, and available hospital beds, but also in forecasts predicting continued declines. Given those trends, the University is lifting the temporary, systemwide policy that mandated all events with over 200 attendees require individuals to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. From February 10 on, proof of negative test or vaccination status is no longer required.

Masks remain required for all indoor facilities across the system. They are an effective tool for preventing the transmission of COVID-19 as well as influenza. We continue to monitor state and federal guidance and will update you as additional decisions are made.

Attendance at football games must have been down.

Here we go again. The precautions are working! So let’s stop taking them!

Panic city

I must be tired. I was sitting in my office reviewing my lecture notes, when I glanced at the clock. It’s 20 to! My class is at a quarter to! Panic followed, because I was still tinkering with a few slides, and I had yet to get to my classroom. Chaos! Rushing about! Slamming down the last few touches! Off to the room I go!

No one was there. What’s going on? My class starts at a quarter to noon — it was a quarter to 11. Sheesh.

At least I got to go back to my office and have a cup of tea. I’m getting too old for this stuff. It doesn’t help that I’m just generally losing my mind lately.

Summertime dreams

I like to haunt r/abandonedporn, where people post photos and videos of derelict buildings that they explore. I want to do that! It’s a bad time of year for it though, since it’s about -20°C out there, and if the spiders are all frozen, what’s the point? Once the world thaws again, I need to get out and do some exploring. These places are full of spiders, and I don’t have to interact with people to investigate them — spiders minus people? Perfection.

This summer you all have to help out by nagging me to get out and find abandoned houses, farms, and shacks, every weekend. I’ll reward you with pictures — lots of close-up pictures of creepy crawlies. It’ll be awesome.

For now, here’s an example: this guy explores an abandoned house and finds an abandoned 1973 Corvette in the garage. It’s February, though, so no spiders, which makes it a lot less interesting.

There’s got to be an interesting story behind it. This is an isolated, tiny house — am I the only one thinking it’s a drug house? — with an expensive car rotting and neglected. Where’s the owner? What happened that no one would claim that car? And most importantly, what kind of spiders will be flourishing there once the weather warms up?

Monitoring our grandchild’s media consumption

We had learned that our granddaughter Iliana is getting into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, so last night my wife and I watched a couple of episodes so that we could talk intelligently about it with her. I was shocked. The show is clearly socialist propaganda intended to promote communal solidarity and mutual aid. The whole story is antithetical to its capitalist origins as a marketing tool for a toy line.

We approve of this subversion.

The one question I have, though, is why haven’t the Republicans banned it yet? It’s a brilliant attempt to infiltrate the minds of our children.

P.S. I think Iliana is a real Pinkie Pie.

The problem is all the qualified people have Imposter Syndrome

I think Marcus Ranum just diagnosed my problem.

I am so full of anger and hatred that it’s 3:00am and I can’t sleep.

Hey, that’s my problem! I just checked my dipstick, and yep, I’m overflowing with bile. No wonder I’m waking up in the middle of the night.

What’s making the bitter gall flow? It’s similar to what annoys me: Joe Rogan and the whole elaborate pile of bullshit that is the current ladder to success. Rogan is just one symptom, but hoo boy, his recent not-pology pushed all my buttons, too.

Then, Rogan made his elaborate not-pology, basically saying that he’s just a dumb jock, and he’s a curious guy who likes to interview trolls. Basically, he’s pulling the Oprah excuse, “I didn’t create ‘Doctor’ Phil, I just uh… promoted him and handed him my microphone. He’s the grifter, not me!” Everyone is playing the same song, and it’s edging perilously close to the “free speech” defense. You know, that one? It’s usually followed around by its nasty little cousin “Both sides”. And that’s where I have to stop and call ‘bullshit’ on the whole thing.

It’s grifters all the way up.

We have to be a lot less forgiving of the bullshit, “I am just trying to learn…” dodge. Let me speak as someone who used to teach (fairly well-reviewed and popular!) classes around the world: I would not give a 1 hour lecture on any topic whatsoever without developing the expertise, first. It usually took me most of a day to write any given 1 hour presentation and I already knew my topic. If someone offered me $1 mil to do a talk on virology, sure, I would do it but it’d be basically a wad of “this paper says this and this professor says that and isn’t it all cool?” That’s being a cheerleader, not an expert, but I’d take the $1 mil. Anyone who is trying to have a public conversation about any given topic, whatever, owes their audience the simple attention to detail to absorb the supporting knowledge necessary to have the conversation. That’s why I have to hoist another great big “fuck Joe Rogan” flag – he had Jordan Peterson on his show and simply batted the bullshit-ball back and forth; that tells me that he (and his handlers) didn’t do the simplest, most basic research, to figure out that Jordan Peterson is a sociopathic compulsive liar who doesn’t even bother to get his facts straight in the field he professes; never mind the other fields: the guy is omni-wrong. Interviewing Jordan Peterson is not the time to play dumb jock, it’s the time to pull out the verbal knife. That is the only way to get these people off the mainstream media: make them walk off the stage with the rhetorical equivalent a fat lip and a bootprint on the seat of their pants. Any “interviewer” who can’t hold their own against a bullshit artist is, ipso facto, a bullshit artist themself. Or they’re not qualified to hold a mic.

Right. I’m giving a one-hour lecture today, on a subject I’m familiar with and have been teaching for a couple of decades, and I still have to sweat over it for a few hours, reviewing material, trying to figure out better ways to present the topic, thinking ahead to how it will fit in the rest of the curriculum, putting in late nights and early mornings on the class. I can’t get up to the lectern and bloviate with a fellow bullshitter for an hour. Where’s my million dollars?

And seriously, is Rogan even worth the hundred million dollars Spotify paid him? He doesn’t bring any expertise to the table. Just go down to the local bar and offer the motormouth (there’s always one) $50 and a case of beer to sit in front of a microphone. Oh, right: he’s paid to bring his custom-built audience of artisanal stupid people along. That’s his value-added.

Oops. Whoopi Goldberg just got suspended for two weeks over her Holocaust remarks. Black woman gets stronger corporate response than dumb jock, news at 11.

Welp, scratch that charity off my list

World Wildlife Fund UK just made the most bone-headed announcement. As a supposedly environment-friendly organization, you’d think they’d know that the most environmentally unsound investment you could make is in blockchain and NFTs, but that’s what they’re doing — selling NFTs.

I don’t believe that claim that “each transaction has the equivalent carbon emissions of a glass of tap water”. It’s built on a lie.

This was an enlightening response.

That’s the way of it. NFTs are hopelessly confusing and complicated, but there’s always some enthusiastic tech-bro who wants to see his personal investment validated, so he proselytizes fanatically and convinces a befuddled management that this really is the way to get more funding for their cash-strapped organization (and charities are always cash-strapped, and so are good marks for this kind of scheme).

Have you got a passionate NFT-proponent working for you? Fire ’em. You see someone on Facebook or Twitter with an NFT avatar? Block ’em.