My niece is busily archiving a vast pile of family documents to ancestry.com, and I periodically get these announcements that something new about long-gone relatives has appeared. This is a family portrait of the Westads in Fertile, MN ’round about 1900.

The stern bearded fellow seated in front is my great-great-grandfather Jens Pederson Westad, and next to him is my great-great-grandmother Marit Oldsdatter Solem Westad. The tall young man standing at the back is my great-grandfather Peter. He looks to have been about the age of the students I teach nowadays, which is a bit strange to me, since I remember him as a tall old guy with a great grey mustache. We all get old, I guess.

It just reminded me that I’ve got Peter’s pocketwatch (he’s not wearing it yet in the photo, he won’t buy it until 1908) out for repair and it should be ready any day now, and I do have his Talebakke Totenkniv (not worn in the photo, again it’ll be a few years before he buys it) on the desk in front of me. I always feel this odd thrill at seeing connections like this.

I’ve been saying this for a long time: Musk is a poseur. He’s not a great engineer; when he directly meddled in the process at Tesla, the result was the Cybertruck, or his fake robot. He’s definitely not a good scientist, as witnessed by Neuralink. His efforts at social engineering are disastrous — look at what he’s done to Twitter. Musk is just a guy with a lot of money who buys people to do work he can attach his name to. The only thing exceptional about him is his ego.

So when he started bragging about being a great gamer, you could predict that that was all a lie.

During an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk boasted that he was one of the top-ranked Diablo IV players in the world.

Shockingly, this turned out to be true (at least, at the time), but really, it shouldn’t have been possible—presumably, Musk doesn’t have enough spare hours in the day.

Recently, Musk attracted the suspicions of gamers again after revealing himself to be a top player of Path of Exile 2, with his high-level characters equipped with extremely powerful gear, indicating that a significant amount of hours had been pumped into his account.

Rather foolishly, Musk livestreamed himself playing the game, and gamers instantly clocked him as an inept player.

A detailed Reddit thread laying out the evidence against Musk makes it clear that he wasn’t familiar with basic gameplay mechanics of Path of Exile 2, and couldn’t possibly have leveled up his own characters by himself.

Gamers noted that Musk’s equipment was even better than Twitch streamers who play the game full-time for a living—the world’s richest man appears to have hired players to strengthen his characters.

I’m not a great gamer, not even a good one, but years ago I played World of Warcraft, and it was easy to tell when you had a fake player in your midst. Playing that game well required a thorough understanding of the mechanics — you had to be familiar with optimal sequence of attacks, you had to know the cooldowns on your magic items, you had to know the choreography of a boss fight. You could just use lots of money to buy top-tier gear, and you could pay someone to level up your character for you, but then the person who did that wouldn’t have the reflexes or the expertise to be effective. Those were the guys you’d invite to a raid because they had the glittering armor and the magnificent sword who would then, in the fight, stand in the fire and spam one button.

It’s easy for real players to spot the phonies.

It is pathetic that the richest man in the world who is running (badly) multiple companies and has the ear of the soon-to-be president and has what, 13 kids feels the need to pretend to be a super-cool elite gamer, too. No one is fooled.

I had previously announced that I was going to retire after 2025-2026. That statement is no longer operational. We looked at our finances, and we looked at the orange clown who is going to be running the country, and decided that we could not afford to retire yet. Or in the foreseeable future. Or ever.

It’s not all bad news. My lab is right across the hall from the anatomy lab, so when I drop dead at the bench, they can just wheel me across the way to the cadaver storage room, and we’ll also save the university one yearly expense.

If you just want to listen to something soothing because the world sucks so bad right now, I have news for you: 31 years of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, 1983-1994, is now available in one place online. Start here with this playlist.

Some of us might need this.

Classes are scheduled to start tomorrow. I’m ready, I’ve got a couple of weeks of lectures in the can, swarms of flies at the starting gate, and a grand plan for lab work that’ll take me all the way to May. Students are probably trickling back this weekend, except…

It’s -12°C, snowing, and we’ve got 40kph winds howling outside my window. It’s supposed to drop to -20°C tonight. There are travel advisories up all over the place.

I’m anticipating a half-empty classroom tomorrow. I don’t anticipate the school being closed — this is Minnesota, we take a stubborn pride in plowing ahead through the most frightful weather — but I might have to offer the class over Zoom, for just this one day. I have a strong allergic response to Zoom anymore, but it might be the safest recourse.

Now, live from Wisconsin!

It’s amazing how sharp the boundary is between Minnesota and Wisconsin: you cross the border and suddenly it’s adult novelty stores, billboards for cheese, and roadkill as far as the eye can see.

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