My last video was edited in such a way that you could only see hints of what I was wearing, and some people were curious. It’s winter, so I was wearing a sweater, and it’s the holiday season, so of course it was a Christmas sweater, and I’m an atheist, so I don’t worship Jesus, so instead it celebrates my Lord and Savior, Darth Vader.
I know you’re envious and want one of your own, but don’t ask me where I got it, I forget.
What nonsense, you may wonder, is going to afflict us next? Surely we’ve hit rock bottom. Nope.
Cult-like extremist movements appear to provide an antidote to the potent mixture of isolation, uncertainty, changing narratives, and fear we have experienced during the pandemic by offering a skewed form of safety, stability, and certainty, along with a cohort of people who are just like us, who believe us and believe in us. As the activist David Sullivan—a man who devoted his life to infiltrating cults in order to extricate loved ones from their grip—pointed out, no one ever joins a cult: They join a community of people who see them. In 2022, this appeal of cults will only grow, and those that arise next year will make QAnon seem like the good old days.
Yeah, great, I’m going back to bed. Wake me up in, oh, 2025 and I’ll reassess.
We’ll be talking about COVID, oh boy. The thing is we’re all freethinkers and humanists and science people, so we’ll be talking about it sanely, so no weirdness, and we’ll probably be demonetized anyway.
An interesting local development: we were supposed to have a Division of Science & Math Holiday party back in December, but it got postponed to 13 January because of rising pandemic concerns. I was just notified that it has been outright canceled because those concerns have gotten worse.
I didn’t feel like a party anyway, and was planning to not show up.
We’re a bunch of scientists, you know. It’s not like we’re Boris Johnson.
Sorry. We can try poking the University of Austin with a stick, but it seems to be just lying there, inert, after the scathing laughter at the announcement of its existence. I guess Doonesbury is going to try prodding it a bit.
Do the kind of people who found fake right-wing universities read Doonesbury? Probably not. The corpse will continue to lie there, rotting.
New year, same as the old year. In 2020, I went into the spring term worried about this new virus everyone was talking about, and then it just got worse and worse until all in-person classes were cancelled mid semester and everything fell into chaos as we struggled to turn our courses into something new.
I’ll be content if 2022 doesn’t turn into a reprise of 2020, or 2021, or 1350.
Let’s look at vaccination rates for every county in the US against the percentage that voted for Trump, shall we?
That’s his legacy, ignorance and death.
A lot of presidents in every party can claim to have left a legacy of death, but this is a stunning anti-accomplishment that might only be rivaled by Ronald Reagan and W.
I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, so I’m going to start you off with something light. I just discovered this YouTube channel, “TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin” (I spelled every word correctly, don’t give me any grief), and I found it immensely relaxing. It’s just this guy, the camera focused on his gloved hands, playing with little toys or kit-bashing or assembling stuff, all while having the most mellow, easy-going, and positive conversation in this odd New Orleans accent. It’s like watching Snoop Dogg make latex molds while talking about peace of mind. Oh, there’s also a puppet. Here’s a sample:
It’s therapy for nerds. It’s not going to be everyone’s thing, but I found it soothing.
I actually walked all the way there, through the snow, got to the door, and discovered that Mary had stolen my keys and I couldn’t get in. So I trudged back home, retrieved my keys, and then was so worn out (I’ve been laid up for a few months now) and so cold (yes, it’s a major snow day) that I gave up and put on my warm slippers and told myself I’d try again tomorrow.
No hurry. We’re supposed to get around 10cm of snow today, better to spend the time indoors.
