A new Minnesota state flag would be welcome

Minnesota has a state flag, and it is hideous. They stuck the state seal on a blue background and called it done, so it’s this horribly busy smear with a farmer and a fleeing Indian and flowery glop and a bunch of dates on it. It’s tasteless and ugly.

Ick. Not that the flag is particularly important, but could we at least have one that isn’t embarrassing?

A few people are lobbying for a new flag, an effort that doesn’t have a high priority right now, but they’ve definitely got some better designs. I like this one.

It’s simple and distinctive. I’d vote for it. Heck, I wouldn’t be ashamed to fly it in front of my house, if I bothered with flags at all.

The UMM D&D Wilderness Adventure!

Here’s a short solo D&D adventure that I play every day.

Your destination is the university (and specifically, my lab) on the right side of the map. You will enter from the left, or west side, either from town or my house, the blue marker. There are three main entrances: 4th Avenue, on the top, which is a bit round about and only has a pedestrian walkway to the north, and also skirts the perilous cemetery; 2nd Avenue, south, which is really only for vehicular traffic and mainly gives you access to glamorous parking lots; and 3rd Avenue, the middle and most direct route. It’s difficult and dangerous to detour to 2nd or 4th from 3rd Avenue, since there are no sidewalks along College, and the roads are currently packed ice, inhabited by wandering bands of student cars.

Conveniently, there is a footpath from 3rd & College, my starting point, directly to the Science Building. Excellent! Unfortunately, it slopes gently downward, and when we get any snowmelt at all, followed by a freeze, it turns into the Slalom of Death. We’re going to get a brief thaw today, followed by a plummet once again into bitter cold. I may die tomorrow.

That same path becomes more navigable in the summer, but it is surrounded on both sides by leafy ground cover and lots of trees, and is inhabited by clouds of blood-sucking monsters in the summer, the Tunnel of Blood. The stirges hibernate in the winter, at least.

Roll for initiative. Choose your path. ‘Ware wandering monsters. I hear there are bugbears and slime beasts in the administration building off map, to the right, so don’t get clever and think you can just go around.

There is a dungeon in the science building. Also a book store where you can replenish your supplies of t-shirts, pens, and candy bars (not much in the way of books, though).

Fancy, but how do you get through the door?

Or feed your little yappy lap dog? Or reach your latte? Or put on your makeup?

Also, it looks incredibly cheap and cheesy, like strapping a bunch of vinyl balloons to your body. If I’m going to have to live with the inconvenience, I want spikes and razors and rigid sharp protrusions that really mean business. I want to step off that NY subway train I had to struggle to board with my tentacles covered with the blood of innocents.

Anyone else feeling overwhelmed?

It’s all too much.

  • War in Ukraine is the latest horror story. All we can do is stand back and watch as the Russian army tyrannizes a civilian population.
  • The pandemic is not over, although there is a lot of noise from dangerously ignorant people that it is.

  • Climate change is still creeping inevitably over the world, and no one is doing anything significant about it.

  • You know what else no one is doing anything about? Economic inequity. Billionaires got even richer during the pandemic.

  • Our country is torn apart by racism, and it’s getting worse. It’s flaring up at all levels of society.

  • Somehow, the Right has decided that sexual differences are the biggest issue now. They’re passing laws that will kill transgender people.

  • We’re racing towards a 2024 election that will be more divisive than ever, and that will probably conclude with conservatives trying to dismantle democracy.

  • Personally, my mother is going in for heart surgery next week, & I’m facing the prospect of retirement in a few years.

  • You can probably think of many more.

I’m a science nerd and teacher. I’m completely helpless in the face of circumstance, and I feel that.

How are you all coping?

22/2/22

Another meaningless date that will get more attention than it deserves. It’s numerology, people, it’s an arbitrary pattern with no intrinsic meaning.

So what if it also happens to be the day the stars are in alignment and Cthulhu rises to swallow us all? It’s just a coincidence!

How to tell where you stand in the hierarchy

We’re in the middle of a major snowstorm, with maybe 6cm dumped on us overnight, and another 10cm on the way. The city has declared a snow emergency, which mainly means you can’t park on the roads so they can get the snowplows through.

I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails on the campus mail announcing that this office or that office is closed due to the weather, and they even closed one of the major food service venues on campus. We’re also not getting any campus mail delivery. I don’t blame them. It was even hazardous for me, a guy who walks half a block to get to work. So yeah, shut ’em down for safety’s sake.

Except, you know, classes aren’t canceled, so students and faculty still have to somehow get here (I’m sending an announcement to my students that attendance is optional today, I’ll post a recording of today’s lecture). I guess the life and health of administrators are more important than faculty & students. Although I suppose you could also argue that that means we’re more essential to the functioning of the university.

Also more essential: custodians and groundskeepers. I noticed that the sidewalks were all cleared well before I got here, and that our custodians were working hard to mop up the mess we were all tracking in.

When you’ve lost the crypto bros, you’re being rejected by the bottom of the barrel

How would you react to this announcement?

I can’t imagine ever wanting to attend a crypto conference in the first place, so telling me that Jordan Peterson is going to be speaking would be like ordering a shit sandwich and the vendor offering me a free shit milkshake. No thank you, twice.

What’s interesting though, is that this announcement was made on a subreddit full of crypto bros, the expected audience for such a conference, and their reaction was entertaining.

To paraphrase, “What? Jordan Peterson supports crypto? Maybe this bitcoin stuff is all a grift after all, maybe I better get out while I can.” They’re wondering if Alex Jones is going to get on the bandwagon, and that if Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson support it already that might mean they’re the baddies after all.

The right people are becoming toxic, I guess.

Sweet!

I told you all I was having internet troubles the other day, and you all made lots of suggestions. Big steps today: my internet provider brought a brand new router over, all big and clunky, and then I strung a cat8 cable from the router to my office. Wifi no more! Gigabit ethernet! Ten times faster!

Now I just have to find an excuse to really test it out, except today’s task is to get next week’s lab organized. No playing on the internet. I might get tempted to try a livestream at some point, though.