The world, and especially the United States right now, sucks. So I have little rituals to keep me somewhat balanced by, for instance, reading a set of webcomics every morning. Of course, I still have to complain about them, but the intent is there.

The Far Side frequently cheers me up with comics featuring spiders. There’s one today:

The Far Side

Has anyone else noticed a fondness for multi-limbed aliens in recent SF? It only makes sense, since humans are chronically under-supplied with limbs, and the ones we’ve got are over-specialized to specific functions. Or maybe it’s just my taste in SF.

Although…the newest Andy Weir book, Project Hail Mary, is being released as a movie, with a cute 5-armed alien, and I’m not going to watch it. I’ve detested all of Weir’s books since The Martian, which I wanted to throw at the wall and then set on fire. In general, I’ve grown to dislike novels about rescuing all of humanity with some guy in a spaceship, and I especially dislike Weir’s style of episodic cliffhangers resolved with epically unlikely instances of plot armor.

Wait, I’m supposed to cheer myself up with this stuff.

OK, come on xkcd.

xkcd

Naturally, the first spot I looked at was my home on the map. I’m in the western part of Minnesota, in what is called the prairie pothole region, surrounded by shallow lakes scoured out by glaciers. So that part is kind of right, but incomplete. I’d say the dominant force on the landscape around me is agriculture. We’ve only got tiny patches of native prairie left. The boundary waters farther north are pristine, so far, but the Republicans are scheming to open that up for copper mining. I’m going to have to redo that map and replace most of it with the legend “PEOPLE”.

One last attempt to salvage some optimism. I bought myself a Kobo e-book reader, and another ritual I have is to read something non-political every night before bed. I got this Kobo with a special deal: it came pre-loaded with every book Terry Pratchett ever published. Can’t go wrong there!

I recently finished Men at Arms, which is pure escapist fantasy. It’s got dragons in it. It’s also about a policeman who takes his civic duties as a servant of the people seriously. I know, dragons? I can suspend disbelief for that, but Sam Vimes is stretching credibility. Also, this book is about the importance of diversity, and efforts to widen representation in the city watch, another ridiculous fantasy element.

I’ve just started on Jingo, a very timely choice, since it’s about the vaguely Western medieval city of Ankh-Morpork going to war with the vaguely Middle Eastern empire of Klatch over a small island in the ocean separating them. It’s disturbingly relevant. It was reassuring to see Sam Vines resist militarizing the City Watch (they’re not a military authority, he says, they’re fellow citizens), but Pratchett better salvage some hope from this situation. I need it.

This is somewhat old news: I’ve mentioned before this strange entitled woman who has been harassing tenants, specifically by throwing tarantulas at them, but now at last she has been found guilty in the courts of the crime.

A jury on Friday found Marisa Simonetti, 32, guilty of one count each of domestic assault, harassment and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors.

According to the criminal complaint, an individual had been renting out the basement of Simonetti’s Edina, Minnesota, home through Airbnb in June 2024. They reported to police that “everything had been fine” until she requested that pest control be hired due to “a lot of large spiders in the basement.”

Simonetti started insulting and calling the individual names after they made the request, the complaint said.

OK, Ms Tenant, spiders are perfectly normal inhabitants of basement apartments, and this being Minnesota, there are few risks associated with our local species. Learn to appreciate them.

That said, there is no excuse for her landlady’s abusive behavior in response.

During the night of June 20, 2024, police responded to the home after Simonetti “intercepted” groceries ordered by the individual and refused to return them until officers told her to do so, court documents said.

The individual called 911 the next morning after Simonetti had been banging pots and pans, according to the complaint. The officer who spoke with them could hear loud banging and screaming for a “significant portion” of the roughly 28-minute call. They reported Simonetti had cut off Wi-Fi and had little ability to communicate with anyone to find a new place.
…
Officers at the scene heard loud music playing inside the home and loud metal clanking, the complaint said. When talking with police, Simonetti said she was “singing praise to the lord” and having devotional time. The officers said her behavior was erratic, per court documents.

Case closed. Crazy obnoxious landlady had her behavior recorded by the police, no wonder she was found guilty.

My major question remains unanswered, though.

Police later reviewed a video the individual recorded of Simonetti and the man, which showed the pair talking through a closed door while music was playing loudly, according to the complaint. The video later showed the door was breached, and Simonetti throwing a live tarantula onto stairs leading to the basement and spraying an “unknown substance” in the stairwell.

Where did she get the tarantula? What happened to the poor spider afterwards?

Simonetti is a Republican nutjob running for the US Senate. She doesn’t have a prayer, and she definitely won’t get my vote.

This year’s Spring Break is over, and it was a mess, as usual. The students got a full week of vacation, while I got nothing, other than a pile of grading and the need to do their lab work for them (admittedly, a small trivial bit of their work, because flies keep breeding no matter what the calendar says). Then we had a blizzard, which has disrupted everyone’s travel schedules — I have students who will miss class for the entire first half of this week, because airlines have been cancelling all kinds of flights into the upper midwest.

My modest suggestion is that in future years we abolish the tradition of Spring Break. Everyone just stays at the university working, and then we finish up the term a week early. Less chaos! More order! No more resetting unrealistic expectations by allowing them to escape to a warm sunny beach somewhere. No more youthful debauchery. Reality is cold, icy, white landscapes scoured by bitter winds, overseen by dour gray-bearded taskmasters. The sooner they get used to it, the better.

There may be some initial resistance, but everyone will eventually adapt, and I won’t have to go through this yearly ritual of having to modify course- and lab-work to accommodate these unserious childish hijinks.

Spring break is almost over, and classes resume on Monday, maybe.

So of course nature is getting its revenge. We’re under a blizzard watch from 7pm tonight until Monday at 4pm, as my students are trying to get back, but already I’m hearing from some that flights are delayed or cancelled. Classes are going to be under “reduced operations” on Monday, but they aren’t canceled, so I’ll be teaching over Zoom. Whee!

It’s already snowing.

Welcome back to Minnesota, gang!

Bruce Campbell has cancer.

If only it could be treated with a chainsaw.

All anyone can do is face it with courage and grace.

I am committed to retiring as of May 2027. I’ve yet to talk to any administrators about it, but this has been such a terrible year — knees going kerblooiee over the summer, a bad fall last month — that I don’t think my body can keep up with all the pressure. I can make it one more year, I’m pretty sure, and then I get to live a worry-free life, lounging about the pool, sipping pina coladas, etc., that’s how it works, right?

But then I looked around my office…I have over 26 years of accumulated books, just books.

That’s less than half — there’s another set of shelves on the other side of the room. I’ve been shedding a few, mainly giving them out to students, but now they all have to go. I think this is the summer I have to clear everything out somehow. I’ll sell some, give away some, some are going to a landfill (I’ve got toxic creationist books that it would be irresponsible to release into the wild.) A while back, I gave away a lot of old textbooks to a charity that would ship them off to African schools, maybe I can look them up and give them a good home.

Then there’s the lab. I hope Mary doesn’t mind housing a lot of spiders.

Anyway, I think shutting down and cleaning up will be my major summertime project. That, and occasionally skipping off to observe more spiders.

Several people have been asking how they can support the site, given our recent breakdown. I just want to say…don’t worry about it. It’s relatively inexpensive so far, and I have this patreon account that covers it 100% plus a bit more I can salt away for future emergencies. So sure, you can join that if you want to chip in a bit: it will be appreciated, and you get my videos commercial free and if ever my spiders start laying again, you’ll get cute and adorable spiderling photos.

However, I have also learned some surprising facts about myself from one of those cheesy AI-driven sites that claims to have inside information on ‘celebrities’ (they’re scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel if they’re speculating about me.) But look at this!

PZ Myers is one of the richest Biologist from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, PZ Myers ‘s net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

If I’m one of the richest biologists in the country, I pity the rest of you. And sorry, my net worth is nowhere near even a million. My main asset is my house, which is paid off, but is still only worth about $150K. I live in an area with low housing costs.

However, that isn’t the biggest surprise.

According to our records, PZ Myers is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, PZ Myers’s is not dating anyone.

Relationships Record : We have no records of past relationships for PZ Myers. You may help us to build the dating records for PZ Myers!

Form a line, ladies. One of the wealthiest biologists in the country is available!

You will have to fight your way past Mary, though.

Freethoughtblogs was first born out of conversations between myself and Ed Brayton in 2010-2011, when we were maximally disgusted with the direction the atheist movement was taking. So we set up our own little domain and tried to recruit fellow humanist/secular writers to fill up our pages. That was mostly successful, with a few setbacks now and then.

Then in 2020, Ed, who was suffering with a chronic illness, checked himself into a hospice and died, peacefully. He passed along all the logistical info for the website to me, we thought, so I had the account and password for our domain host, Bluehost. We kept cruising along.

Then Bluehost made a security enhancement: when I logged in, they would send a verification code to Ed, to make sure nothing underhanded was going on. Ed did not reply, for obvious reasons. So we can’t actually change anything about the domain, which again, was OK. We didn’t need to.

But then, Bluehost needed us to pay for their services. They sent notifications and bills to poor dear Ed, who didn’t care, and didn’t contact me in my dreams or anything, so those bills were unpaid. Ooops. Two weeks ago, they pulled the plug on freethoughtblogs.com. And no doubt sent an informative announcement to Ed, who didn’t notice.

So for the last two weeks, I’ve been shouting down phone lines and internet cables with the simple information that “ED IS DEAD, PLEASE UPDATE THE CONTACT INFORMATION AND FIX THE SITE”, and they would send me all these long legal forms that I would fill out with all the information that I had and send it back to them, and they would ignore me, and the next day I’d get into a conversation with a chatbot who would obliviously send me the same requests all over again.

Then this morning, a breakthrough. I didn’t try to update the information at all. I didn’t explain that Ed was dead. I just said, “I understand our bill is past due, here is my credit card number, can I please pay everything off?” and they said “Yes, we would be delighted to take your money” and they did, and they pushed a button, and our service is restored.

The only drawback is that freethoughtblogs is a company that is still officially owned by a ghost. No one cares as long as we the living pay the bills.

I paid up for five years in advance, so remind me in 2031 that I, or someone, needs to generously cough up a few bucks in Ed’s name.

For now, we can resume slapping words on a wall.

We’re cool, kids

I was sent a link to an intensely irritating article. It was by an old man complaining that his kids don’t email or call him enough, so he decided to test them.

Eleven weeks ago, I made a decision that felt both petty and necessary. I stopped being the one who always called first. No more Sunday morning check-ins, no more “just thinking of you” texts, no more being the family communication hub. I simply stopped reaching out to my three adult children and waited to see how long it would take them to notice.

The silence that followed taught me more about modern family dynamics than any parenting book ever could.

Then he’s annoyed about how long it took them to respond, and wasn’t sufficiently appeased when they did respond, and argues that all the previous communications were shallow and insincere.

Grow up, Grandpa.

I have three grown kids who are living their own busy lives.

My oldest has a stable job in a law firm and recently got a raise, but more importantly has a new girlfriend and a solid circle of friends. He’s probably the most sociable of my kids.

My second son is a major in the army, stationed in Korea, with a wife and child. He’s extremely busy and in a position of responsibility.

My daughter is working in academia…already I sympathize and know what she’s going through. She also has a young daughter.

I don’t want any of them to feel guilt for living their own lives, and they don’t need to call me. I’m just proud that they’ve grown up to be good people I can respect. I’m content. I think their mother and me, to a lesser extent, have succeeded at life.

My life is less interesting than theirs, and I also don’t need to call them and talk about my latest adventures (oh yeah, I fell down and concussed myself, not exactly entertaining news). I’m fine to occasionally learning that they’re happy. If they need help they can count on us.

But please, our reward is to know that they’re living well. That’s enough that we can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we did well, and that is immensely satisfying. We don’t need constant reassurance.