Commencement 2023: the kids are all right

I’ve been through a lot of commencement ceremonies, and they all run together in my brain. It would be nice to say yesterday’s was exceptional, but it wasn’t — it was a joyous occasion, but it was much like many other well-run, appropriately managed events, and that’s good, because what you want out of this is respect and acknowledgement and a great send-off to all the students who are, we hope, going off to happy and successful lives.

As you might expect from a progressive liberal arts college, the program was pretty darned woke. The student body president, Dylan Young, is an American Indian from the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, and he gave an upbeat speech which touched on some of the unpleasantness of the last four years — the pandemic, an ugly incident in which conservatives plastered anti-gay and anti-trans posters all over campus, and the recent regent who whined about how we were “too diverse” — but emphasized student resilience. Our commencement speaker was Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, and he talked up liberal arts and small towns and hope for the future. The one I dreaded, the obligatory speech from a member of the Board of Regents (generally a stuffy lot of boring business people), was a pleasant surprise. Mike Kenyanya seemed to actually like and appreciate what the campus was all about. Maybe the regents aren’t all bad, after all.

It could have been so much worse. The University of Wyoming brought in Senator Cynthia Lummis as a commencement speaker, and she proceeded to give a god-soaked speech, dwelling on the Creator of the Declaration of Independence and fundamental scientific truths, such as the existence of two sexes…and got booed loudly. She was clearly taken aback.

Good work, students of the University of Wyoming. I don’t think our liberal students at a liberal university in a liberal state could have done a better job of expressing their displeasure. The only difference is that I think our administrators wouldn’t have brought in a disingenuous, dishonest loon like Lummis.

New boss, same as the old boss

Elon Musk has announced that he has found a replacement CEO for Twitter, currently rumored to be an ad executive name Linda Yaccarino. That could change. Musk is a dorky flibbertigibbet who might change his mind depending on how the rumor is received.

It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing will improve.

  • He’s personally selecting a CEO, which means it will be someone who aligns with his views.
  • Whoever he hires will be under his control, and he’s a micromanaging tyrant.
  • Whoever he hires will be subject dismissal if she crosses him.
  • He has driven the company so far into the ground, both in income and reputation, that there’s no hope.
  • It’s a Musk decision. Every decision he makes is terrible.

I feel pity for anyone who gets lured into this position, although, given the kind of person who’d willingly associate with Elon Musk, I suspect any sympathy would evaporate after their first day on the job.

Oh, actually, this announcement is a distraction. Quick, focus on the Twitter noise, not the costly recall of Tesla cars in China!

Tesla will recall more than 1.1 million cars in China due to potential safety risks, the country’s top market regulator said on Friday.

Starting May 29, the US company will take back 1,104,622 vehicles that were produced between January 12, 2019, and April 24, 2023, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement, citing a plan filed by Tesla (TXLZF) with the regulator.

That’s nearly equivalent to Tesla’s total sales in mainland China during the four-year period. From 2019 to March 2023, Tesla sold about 1.09 million vehicles in the country, according to CNN calculations based on figures from China’s state-backed industry associations.

In honor of the new Interim President of the University of Minnesota

Welcome!

(WARNING! Ghastly scenes of carnivores butchering animals ahead!)

Thanks to Akira MacKenzie for dropping this horror into a vegetarian’s comment section (it’s OK, I’m a biologist, I’ve done and seen worse.)

I should show this video to all the new students next year and let them know where the college president’s expertise lies.

A walk in the wetlands

Last night, Mary and I went for a bit of a hike at the Wetlands Management Office — they have a trail through a big chunk of very soggy land, full of ducks.

(Yes, that’s what the untilled prairie grasslands look like this time of year.)

It does look a bit brown, but spring just started. Give it time. We did find some prairie pasqueflowers, the first flowers of the season.

We also found spiders, of course, but maybe I’ll throw a few of those photos in a separate article on Patreon, so this one can be spider-free.

One more day, I think

I’ve got a committee meeting coming up at 8am, and then I’m closeting myself in the office for the day to hammer out two final exams. Once I get that done, all my heavy responsibilities vanish until the end of next week, when those exams come back and I have to grade them.

I can do this. One big push, and then it’s a summer of spiders.

One class done (mostly)

I just finished grading all those exams and lab reports for genetics. It is finished!

OK, almost. There is an optional final exam next week — it replaces any low exam grade they might have received over the course of the term, and I expect that very few of the students will bother.

I still have the other course to wrap up, though, so it’s still going to be a busy couple of days.

I went to a concert on campus last Saturday

It was quite nice and I enjoyed myself. Unfortunately, it was no LA Philharmonic.

Multiple people who attended the L.A. Phil concert on Friday reported hearing a woman making a moaning noise during the symphony’s second movement.

One attendee, composer and music producer Magnus Fiennes, described the sound on Twitter as that of a person having a “loud and full body orgasm.”

An alleged audio recording of the moment — where someone can be heard crying out during a quiet beat in the music — was making the rounds on social media. Attendees who spoke to The Times said that the clip was similar to what they’d heard.

Future audience expectations in LA are going to be hard to match.

Yes, I did see John Wick: Chapter 4

I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s 2½ hours of solid, non-stop chop-sockie and gun-fu, strung together on an increasing thin, baroque plot built around an imaginary and deeply improbable society of assassins. Time flew by! You don’t get to think, because if there is a brief pause that might give you a moment to consider the weirdness of the story, there’s a kinetic distraction that will fly in from stage right with a knife or a pistol or a seriously vicious dog. Which is OK, I guess, it’s a popcorn movie with no time to eat popcorn.

I was quickly desensitized to all the murder, but there was something that bothered me greatly. John Wick gets beat up badly — he’s hit by cars multiple times, and everyone — I mean everyone — is punching and kicking him. There’s one scene where he has to run up 222 stairs to get to a deadly appointment, and it is of course lined with bad guys who are continuously shooting and punching him, and he gets to the top and one of the heavies knocks him down and he rolls down the stairs. I don’t mean he falls hard — he rolls down all of the stairs in a long scene that is comical in its overdoneness.

That hit home. I don’t often get shot at or stabbed, but I have sometimes twisted an ankle or overdone the walking or stretched wrong in bed and ended up hobbling and aching for days or weeks. I just wanted to say, “John, don’t get up. You’re gonna need lots of ibuprofen, and you might want to ice your whole body for a while. Get some rest, John.” Oh, sure, I could watch him persevere in a gun battle with thousands of enemies and not blink an eye, but it was the falls that were just too relatable.

I sincerely hope that there isn’t a John Wick: Chapter 5. The franchise has been thoroughly milked at this time, and it would be a good idea to move on creatively. But most of all, I feel for Keanu Reeves, who had to have exhausted himself making this movie.

Keanu, you’ve got to be popping painkillers and icing every joint in your body. Get some rest, Keanu.