I took the PragerU teacher qualification test. I passed! I can just flash this certificate when the fascists take over the university.

I gotta tell you, though: it’s not much of a test. It’s a test on rails. If you get a question “wrong” (“wrong” as defined by PragerU often means “correct” by reasonable, rational people) it tells you, and gives you the opportunity to change your answer. You can just randomly guess, and it will guide you to the answer Dennis Prager wants. So I actually answered the questions honestly, which was often scored as incorrect, but there is no record of that. Basically all you have to do is stumble your way through the test in total ignorance and you’ll always get a 100% perfect score at the end.

Also, a lot of the questions are trivial and stupid.

I’m the executor for my late mother’s estate. Last week I thought I had completed all of my duties. I had liquidated all of my mother’s assets over the course of the past year, and then the final step was calculating the distribution of money, which was reviewed by our lawyer; that final summary was sent to all of the heirs, giving them an opportunity to dispute anything, and they then signed a form and sent it back to the lawyer. I wrote a whole bunch of checks and sent those to the lawyer.

Yesterday was the day the lawyer had received all of the signatures, all dutifully signed, had all of the pre-signed checks, and was going to pop them in the mail, and we’d be all done.

And then…another bill from an insurance company for my mother’s last days in the hospital arrived, for unspecified in-patient treatments, for $770. This was a year ago! The lawyer had posted a public notice last year telling all creditors that this was their last chance to get their final bite of the pie. It took a year to complete the accounting because these bills and claims had trickled in for months.

We thought we were clear. There was a 4 month cut off on claims, but it turns out there’s a medical exemption.

So today I get to recalculate everything with new final sum and rewrite all of those checks and send them to the lawyer. Oh boy.

You’ll never guess who the belated bill that messed up the completion of this chore came from: United Healthcare.

Google is pushing hard to get us to use AI for all kinds of things. We should just ask Google our questions about biology!

After all, I, as a biologist have so much confidence in the power of AI to address difficult questions about biology. For instance, ask it to explain an ovarian cyst to you.

(I’ve put this image below the fold to avoid triggering nightmares or confusion.)

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Just so know, my wife gave me a present: a wheelchair. It turns out that I was capable of hobbling about with one non-functional knee, but us bipeds are SOL with two blown out knees. I’ve seen spiders nimbly scurrying about with 5 legs completely missing, so this is a gross injustice.

I worked on mastering the chair this morning, and am getting nowhere with it. Our doors are too narrow! I may need to trade up to the combat-ready model, with rocket launchers that can forcefully widen doorways.

Rabbits in Colorado are being found with these horrifying growths on their bodies.

The scientists have an explanation: the rabbits are infected with a papilloma virus.

The cottontails recently spotted in Fort Collins are infected with the mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which causes wart-like growths that protrude from their faces like metastasizing horns.

Viral photos have inspired a fluffle of unflattering nicknames, including “Frankenstein bunnies,” “demon rabbits” and “zombie rabbits.” But their affliction is nothing new, with the virus inspiring ancient folklore and fueling scientific research nearly 100 years ago.

Yeah, right. It’s a coverup. The truth is that the rabbits were nosing around in a blasted heath, and…

They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule imbedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor’s strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all. Its texture was glossy, and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness. One of the professors gave it a smart blow with a hammer, and it burst with a nervous little pop. Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished with the puncturing. It left behind a hollow spherical space about three inches across, and all thought it probable that others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.

Run away!

It’s cute how the awareness that Jordan Peterson is just a cranky, opinionated ass is slowly seeping into the general zeitgeist.

Don’t worry that this perception is going to hurt Peterson. I’ve found estimates of his net worth that range from $10 million to $90 million. He really should just sit back, hang out with his family, take long vacations, maybe get a hobby (spider watching is a good one). We’d all be better for it.

It’s time for a FtB podcast tomorrow!

We asked what would be good to discuss, and the response was a visceral cri de coeur, so that’s the topic. There is a lot of pain in the world, and we feel it deep down in our bones, so we’ll just cry for a while.