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.

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.

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.

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.

I have just posted the final midterm (it’s an online exam) of my genetics class. The semester is almost over!

I will still have to put together two finals for my two classes, but that’s next week. I can shut off my brain for a little while.

Now also I’m a free-spirited bachelor for a week, as my wife gets to go spend time with our granddaughter. I don’t get to go, because there’s still a week of classes left. I’m going to drown my sorrows and celebrate the completion of this exam by walking downtown to the Mexican restaurant for fish tacos, and then I’m strolling over to the theater to see John Wick 4. I like Keanu Reeves, but he’s pushing my patience with this 2 hour and 49 minute movie. Good thing I got my work done.

Tomorrow I’m going out again — a student gave me a free ticket to the UM Morris Concert Choir and Vocal Jazz concert. I’m going to strive mightily to make Mary regret leaving me for a week!

When I’m feeling cynical, I’d say that Mattel has figured out another way to extract money from people…but honestly, this is also wonderfully nice. They’re making a Down Syndrome Barbie. Every kid deserves a little happiness and recognition of their existence.

Unfortunately, and predictably, right-wing a-holes are mocking the idea. Here’s Steven Crowder and his crew sniggering at the retards over this toy.

Mattel launches Down syndrome Barbie. https://t.co/DMUOlo5mYq pic.twitter.com/KyOzIcGozH

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) April 26, 2023

Crowder recently announced that he was getting divorced (he’s also pissed that no-fault divorce means his wife has the right to leave him). His reaction here might explain why his ex-wife got fed up with him.

You know we’re one of the good states, right? Look at us, being all sane and wholesome and supportive of all of our citizens.

That’s a rally for LGBTQ+ rights at our state capitol. It’s not that big, but that’s only because those rights aren’t as threatened here. In fact, our legislature just passed an important set of bills.

The Minnesota Senate Friday passed a trio of proposals aimed at legally safeguarding people who come to Minnesota for abortion and gender-affirming care and outlawing what’s called conversion therapy for minors.

The moves come as states around the country have banned or seriously limited access to abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and after 12 states – including Minnesota’s neighbors Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota – have banned gender-affirming care for minors.

We want more people to live freely right here, so come on up!

Supporters said the bill showed Minnesota would treat all people with respect and love.

“I wish that other legislatures across this country shared our values. They don’t. But guess what? If you need gender affirming care — and that is life-saving care, it’s medically necessary care. If you need it, you can come to Minnesota,” said Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, DFL-St. Paul, one of the bill’s cosponsors. “If you’re scared, or you’re looking for a new place to build your family, we want you here in Minnesota. We want you to take refuge here.”

We also have a budget surplus — we went woke, and we’re thriving here.

In the first State of the State address of his second term, Gov. Tim Walz detailed his vision for how a new Democratic trifecta in charge of Minnesota government would leverage a historic budget surplus for a new “Minnesota Miracle.”

Speaking to a joint session of the Minnesota Legislature on Wednesday night, Walz highlighted many of Democrats’ priorities, including billions more in spending for schools, families and the state’s most vulnerable. The more than $17 billion in new spending Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party members have planned aims to cut child poverty by roughly 25 percent and make the state the “best place to raise a family.”

“We have the resources. We have the shared vision. And for the first time in half a century, we have the political will to get this done,” Walz said at the conclusion of his roughly 30-minute speech. “So let’s not waste this opportunity. Let’s get to work building a state we’re proud to raise our kids in.”

We also have Republicans. Every news story has to leaven the good news by bringing on some dour Republican ass who whines about how we’re not torturing trans kids enough, and how we ought to give more tax breaks instead of providing services to everyone, and praying for a Ron Desantis to come along and flay the Democrats, but ignore them. They’re in the minority.

Are you packing up yet? We want you here, every one of you. We definitely need more people to populate our universities, but everyone is welcome.

The downsides: well, it does get a little chilly up here, but probably the worst thing about Minnesota is we might get a little smug about our superiority to our benighted neighbors. When you’re One Of Us, though, that’s not so much of a problem. One of Us, One of Us, One of Us!

I have been informed that the Slymepit is dead. The Slymepit was an online forum that was set up in the wake of Elevatorgate, when a small group of atheists decided to set up a base from which to hurl racist, sexist, homophobic slurs at Social Justice Warriors like Rebecca Watson, Stephanie Zvan, Jey McCreight, and many others, including me. It was one of the uglier sides of the internet, although its fans viewed it differently.

The Slymepit, a long-running atheist discussion board heavily involved in the A/S activism ‘Schism’, is shutting its doors after a ten-year run. Creator and host, ‘Lsuoma’, decided that the conversation, often humorous, insightful, and informative, but also at times pugnacious, scurrilous, or garrulous, had strayed too far from the site’s original purpose of “exposing the stupidity, lies, and hypocrisy of Social Justice Warriors.” Live commenting has therefore been shut down, with ten years of comments and user-created artwork archived.

(If you’d like to see examples of the Slymepit’s creativity, RationalWiki has you covered.)

OK, fine, you get to elide over the Slymepit’s many sins during its funeral. Goodbye, you won’t be missed.

Although I’m immensely amused by this comment:

The Pit’s greatest strength was always that it never took itself seriously. That really frustrated those who so fervently hated and obsessed over us.

Dude. The pit was frenetically abusive, regularly focused howling obscenities at individuals who dared to think social justice was an important cause, and took itself painfully seriously. You were on a mission to destroy people.

As for the “obsession” part — your little clubhouse of haters rotted out and collapsed six months ago, and no one, other than your fellow bigots, even noticed until now.

If anyone wants to find the Slymepit gang today, they’re usually hanging out on Jerry Coyne’s blog.

We’re supposed to get more snow on Friday. That’s fine. I keep telling myself the spiders are adapted to this climate, they can cope.