Jester Time! Introduction and a Tale of Professor Josef’s Typical Thursday Workday
Some light-hearted entertainment. No need to be serious all the time.
What is Jester Time?
I was thinking, after receiving a couple pledges, about how to potentially monetize my substack writing in the future. The thing is, I want my intellectual writing to be entirely open to the public, as a matter of maximizing its reach and impact. Yet writing substack articles takes more time than I had anticipated, and time has opportunity cost. So I figured out a potential strategy to mediate these two concerns: I shall begin to also write articles that are purely for entertainment purposes. Hopefully readers will enjoy them, and for this enjoyment or out of a general willingness to throw me some money for my efforts, I can obtain some revenue to remunerate my time writing by making a major portion of my comedic articles appear behind a paywall in the future.
Such articles will always be marked as “Jester Time!” in the title. I will start with writing several free “Jester Time”s, interlaced with my regular intellectual output, before introducing paid ones.
There is also a matter of ideological power strategy behind my planned comedic output. Indeed humor is a cerebral fitness signalling mechanism that mostly men use to display their verbal IQ in order to attract mates and social respect. Now at this point in my life I don’t care about mating opportunities. However, for influential open minded intellectuals who understand human nature, a target of people to convince of my principles, demonstrating my capability for writing humor will also signal my intellectual credibility and thus facilitate the spread of my philosophical and ideological principles and theses.
With that autistic fourth-walling foreplay out of the way, let us now get to the main event. After reading my composition, if you found that you enjoyed it and are willing to pay for more, please indicate as such with Substack’s “pledge” feature.
I wish to declare that by continuing, you accept that I hold zero responsibility for any electronics damaged from forceful laughter nose-launched liquid projectiles. You have been warned and are an adult who can arrange your humor-reading logistics to be both comfortable and safe.
Professor Josef’s Typical Day at the University
Professor Josef walks into the Mathematics Department’s building on campus on a quiet 8:30 in the morning, beginning a typical Thursday in his professional day to day life. He must first visit Maximillian, the Department’s tech and IT guy, in order to pick up a laptop that Maximillian repaired after the operating system began exhibiting some frustrating malfunctioning for Josef.
Josef knocks on the door of Maximillian’s office and hears an immediate “come in!” As soon as he opens the door and takes his first step in, a large swarm of drones, all covered in costumes of white doves, flies past him out of the office before turning around and going back in, settling on a bed of hay on top of one of the bookshelves.
Maximillian does not mention his new visitation ritual and calmly states
“Your device is ready. Beyond the fixes you asked for, I made a few upgrades.”
Josef, inquisitive and slightly concerned, inquires “upgrades?”
“Yes. To begin with, it’s now recommended that all devices have a 5-factor Authentication Process in order to log in to the University network. The first three are as before, then after you complete the third, a note to prepare number four will appear, and you need to write the displayed code on a piece of paper. One of my birds will come to you to pick it up and then fly to the server to match the password.”
“Oh...OK. And the fifth?”
“In order to perform the fifth authentication, you will be given an address of a street corner in town on the screen to proceed to. Once you get there, a man wearing a black onesie will approach you and hand you a phone. About twenty minutes later you will receive a call with instructions on how to get to the authentication cave. Once you reach the entrance to the cave, there will be a living garden gnome who will ask you a riddle. After you answer the riddle you can step inside and collect the Sword of Security. A goblin will appear which you will battle to the death. You must then retrieve the goblin’s heart from his carcass, and inside you will then find a slip of paper with another 6 digit authentication code and a phone number. Dial the phone number and then wait outside the cave. When you sense a foul smell, that’s Joe, who has refitted his Tesla to run on biofuel. He will pick you up, retrieve the phone, and drop you back off at your office or other place of origin. You then enter this 6 digit authentication code, plus one more letter that Joe will tell you on the ride back, to complete the authentication. It’s a pretty reliable system, so far no hacker infiltrations. Any questions?”
“Oh...no, I guess not. OK...thank you”
“There is one more upgrade”
“Yes?”
“See this pouch behind the computer? This is a robotic arm. If you make a spelling mistake when writing paper or code syntax error, it will reach out and slap you.”
“Why not just output something to the screen to inform me about the mistake?”
“Remember, I installed that already, and yet you don’t seem to pay attention to the popup warnings.”
“How do you know that...actually never mind...OK fine.”
“Great, here is your upgraded laptop. By the way, the TPU cluster is up and running again. With the new set of nodes, in order to log in, just search for ‘Villa for Jensen Zone E Division 18 Number 41’ and log in with your credentials. Also, if you see her, can you please ask Sonya to stop using the cluster for generative AI porn?”
“Thanks, and...sure, I usually run into her regularly.”
“Great, have a good one”
Josef walks out of the IT office and heads down the hall towards his office, with his minted performance fresh laptop in hand. As he turns the corner to the final hallway of his office, he sees Sonya. Deciding to best get the awkwardness over with, he stops her to relay Maximillian’s request.
After listening to Josef’s tentatively worded message from Max, Sonya understands instantly and exclaims.
“It is not porn! It is my side hustle...I am making instruction videos for my course `Tantric Yoni Power’.”
“Oh, OK, just I still think the folks running the Department’s cluster would appreciate it if you didn’t use our computing hardware for your personal side hustle.”
“Oh!” and Sonya looks puzzled, clearly calculating how to continue her operation without these hardware resources.
“Just use the national cluster, they don’t check there” Josef says and gives her a wink.
Josef enters his office, fires up his computer, and, after performing the five factor authentication, checks his email.
One of his paper submissions received feedback from the journal, with a conclusion requesting a major revision. He reads the Associate Editor’s summary:
I received the reviews and am prepared to receive a revision of the work with the reviewers’ comments thoroughly addressed.
The first reviewer suggested minor revision, praising the contribution and indicating a list of minor corrections to perform to improve the readability of the paper.
The second reviewer wants to reject the paper, on the grounds of insufficient acknowledgment of a similar work.
The third reviewer wrote some things. Then recommends Major Revision.
Josef proceeds to scan the three reviews. The first appears to well understood the intentions of his work as Josef originally conceived them, appreciating its novelty and utility, then gave a list of about twenty minor corrections, a spelling mistake here, a benign dropping of a constant factor in a derivation there. This will be straightforward to address.
The second review is a brief one sentence:
The authors’ manuscript is clearly significantly inferior to [1] which solves the problem much better. Therefore the paper must be rejected.
Josef scans down and sees a check next to Reviewer discloses being an author of a paper referenced in the review. He recognizes the name of an irritating competitor in his field among the authors of [1].
At this point Josef knows the score: Reviewer 2 will never change his point, but by at least writing about this reference and showing superiority of Josef’s contribution, he can at least convince the other Reviewers to pay Reviewer 2 no mind.
Finally, he begins to read the third review.
I find this manuscripts intriguing, at times mesmerizing and at times profoundly disheartening. Flows of brilliance punctuated by holes of meaning and relevance. To really demonstrate what I mean: let me recall a time when I was in Nepal and observing a butterfly. The geometry of the shapes on the butterfly’s wings…
Josef skims down the page of the fifteen-page-long review. He comes across a set of completely unfamiliar equation systems. He continues scanning the pages, and sees the phrase
Thus, as the saying goes, “if the glove don’t fit, we must acquit!“ We can see how this gives credence to Spinoza’s point of view that…
Josef continues to skim down the review until reaching the final conclusion.
...and so from the arguments above, we can see that it is absolutely mandatory that the authors perform a comprehensive revision where they include a full study on the ecology of mollusks in the South China Sea.
Josef’s paper was on Statistical Methods for Metallurgy…
After writing to his co-authors his impressions of the reviews, he hears a knock on his office. It must be that his office hours have begun, which he confirms by checking the time.
John walks in, with his head down looking at his phone. He mutters a barely audible “hey” and sits down, continuing to look at his phone.
Josef asks “can I help you?”
Silence.
“can I help you?”
“oh, yeah yeah, sorry, one second” and John types something into his phone and puts it down in front of him on the desk.
John asks Josef to demonstrate the solution to an exercise on the board. Josef clears the board in his office, defines the problem at the top, and proceeds to continue with describing the motivation behind the solution method and then the initial steps of its derivation. After facing the board for an extended several minutes to write down a complex formula he turns back to John and sees him looking at his phone again.
“John!”
John is startled and looks up “oh!”
“Put away your phone, John”
“Oh sorry about that I forgot what the third album of the Beatles was, it was really bothering me”
“You came to learn mathematics, not the history of the Beatles. But it’s A Hard Day’s Night”
“OK, thank you sir, I’ll pay attention. Can you please go back a little bit, I got lost in the explanation”
“How far?”
“Maybe the last ten minutes worth?”
After finishing with instructing John on the homework, Josef goes back to checking on his emails. He hears a loud shuffling out in the hallway. Suddenly, through his open office door a big animal, which he recognizes to be a llama, squeezes inside. There is a leash on the llama, which Josef’s student Jenny is holding, as she follows the llama inside the office.
Josef exclaims, understandably, “what the fuck is that??”
Jenny informs him that the llama’s name is Marcus and is her emotional support animal.
“It better not chew up anything in this office”
“Don’t worry, Professor, he’s well behaved.”
“OK..OK...so, can I help you?”
“Professor, I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about your course”
“You should be feeling anxiety, you’re failing my course”
Jenny instantly swells with tears and starts bawling, then leaps to Marcus and hugs him tightly while muttering various self-esteem themed assurances to herself. Eventually she calms down and goes back to her seat.
Josef continues “look, you can still get a passing grade, you just need to really study. I recommend reviewing the homework exercises and the first exam”
Jenny again swells with tears and snuggles Marcus for another few minutes, before sitting back down and saying, still sniffing as her tears continue to flow.
“OK Professor, I understand. Let me talk to you about the exercises and topics to focus on. But first I need to talk to my therapist, it’s really hard for me to study because I am still recovering from PTSD from the election. Can I come to your next office hours on Monday to continue our conversation?”
“Jenny...you knew you were failing”
After another flood of tears and Jenny burying herself in Marcus’ fur, Josef’s patience begins to thin and he relents “OK OK, go talk to your therapist and we discuss your performance on Monday.”
Jenny and Marcus shuffle out of Josef’s office.
Instantly, his next student Jacinrae briskly walks in.
She sits down and says “I need to have a word with you, Professor.”
“OK, how can I help you?”
“First things first, do NOT use the second person pronoun ‘you’ with me. My second person pronoun is ‘!wúkña’” got it?”
“Yeah OK, go on.”
“I am here to tell you that you need to decolonize the textbook. I have prepared a letter to the administration, with a place for your signature to the affirmative. Here”
“No thank you, Jacinrae, I’ve been using this text for quite a few years and it’s a very well written one, with really informative exercises.”
Jacinrae swiftly gets up, takes a step towards Josef, and says:
“You Fascist Nazi Racist Chauvinist Transphobic Ableist...”
as she continues to hurl various accusatory labels of bigotry, Josef turns back to his computer and responds to a few emails. He turns back several minutes later, just in time for the final delivery.
“Imperialist Islamophobic amatonormative scum!” and then Jacinrae promptly storms out.
A few minutes of calm silence is interrupted by a knock on the door.
“The door is open, please come in”
Wilmur awkwardly shuffles in and sits down
“Wilmur, hi, how can I help you today?”
“Professor, sir, Theorem 3.2 in the textbook, I wrote a shorter proof for it, here is the printout, and here is a USB with the LateX. Also on the USB, for the code library you made for our final project, I rewrote it in Rust using asynchronous concurrency, and it now runs about fifty times faster.”
“Thank you Wilmur, that is quite helpful of you”
“Sir...I..uh...please...professor...I….would like….professor...I was thinking...uh…”
“Wilmur, relax, it’s OK, what is it?”
“Please...professor...I want...to….I want to...work...work...wi..wi...with you, sir.”
“That’s great, Wilmur, we have a summer internship program. I’ll be happy to do a project supervising you”
“Oh thank you so much sir! Thank you so much! Please tell me the topic and send me the relevant textbooks and papers and I promise I will study them carefully before the summer, and do all the exercises in the texts, and..”
“Wilmur, I appreciate your enthusiasm, I will send you an email with the details and some references.”
“Thank you so much, I will write my email, here”
“I have your email, Wilmur”
“thank you so much, Professor! I am very much looking forward to it. OK I will not take up any more of your time” and Wilmur gets up and walks out of Josef’s office.
Josef looks at the time. Office hours are over, but now he has an administrative meeting to attend.
As he walks down his corridor, he runs into his colleague Jeremiah, who stops him and begins, excitedly
“that problem we’ve been wrestling with for three years, the regularity paper”
“yeah?”
“So at burning man, I was performing my Digeridoo Carols for Druids, and after the show I met a guy named Pablo the Wise. He gave me some ayahuasca, and during the voyage, while I saw myself in third person impaled by the rhino horn of the God of Functors, it came to me, how to crack the problem” and he hands him a stack of pages. “I wrote it then and there with Pablo’s spiritual summoning drone note repeating.”
Josef looks over the writing “This is a 10 page proof using Multivariable Complex Analysis, Category Theory and Malliavin Calculus!”
“Yes, yes. Also, I figured out the Stifflan conjecture while kayaking in Botswana, but my notes on this are still drying, I’ll show you as soon as I can. By the way, want to go boarding in the Algerian Sahara and think about the structure of the flow of Einstein’s evolution equations?”
“Let me think about it, Jeremiah, but that does sound fun. Sorry, let’s talk about these later, I have a the staff meeting to attend now, OK?”
“Sure, Namaste Josef, Namaste”
“Namaste to you too, Jeremiah.”
Josef walks down to the main area of the floor to the main conference room and walks in. Sandra, the head administrator, is sitting in the middle chair with a large stack of papers defining the agenda for today. The rest of the department staff are sitting along the long conference table. A few quiet casual chats cease when Sandra begins “OK, everyone, we have an important list of agenda items for today. Let’s begin.”
Everyone stops talking and looks at Sandra attentively.
“To start with is the important matter of the website for the upcoming Scientific Computing conference we are hosting. Johnny wrote me an email indicating a strong preference to change the primary font color to Magenta. Any thoughts or concerns?”
“Magenta?? It should be Teal!” Joanna says
Sandra responds “OK, let’s put this to a vote, our options include the current blue, and the proposed alternatives of magenta and teal”
“But what kind of vote, Sandra?”
“I wish to register my concern in light of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem”
“Can we do Single Transferable Vote?”
After about an hour of procedural back and forth, the group eventually, somehow, settles on Orange, although no one at any point recommended it and everyone seems to dislike this color.
Sandra continues with the agenda:
“OK we have to fill a position for Assistant Professor, for which we have short-listed two candidates. First is Robert Miller, finishing a postdoc at MIT. He has fifteen Q1 publications, and for his postdoc project, made a robot that was able to navigate the terrain of central Africa, delivering medicine during an Ebola outbreak. The second candidate is Wanutu, who is a queer Native American with ADHD. She has one conference proceedings published, and her cover letter was an empty page with a large red splotch of what she elsewhere indicated is her period blood. HR pre-approved her application, citing the cover letter as visionary and brave.
Now, everyone in favor of hiring Wanutu for the open position, say `Aye’”
A few Ayes were vocalized across the room.
“OK so that’s four votes for Wanutu, and none for Robert Miller, the matter is settled and we shall proceed with hiring this candidate”
Josef protests “but we didn’t even get to vote for Robert!”
Sandra rolls her eyes and condescendingly mutters “Josef, please refer to Article 2 of the Ethics Guidelines. People’s Democratic Equity supersedes Democratic process.”
“And who decides what this People’s Democratic Equity is?” Josef counters
Sandra slowly leans forward towards Josef, and then exclaims
“Bad question! Question fly away!” and strongly gestures her arms to be as if throwing this topic away to the side”
Josef is befuddled, and proceeds to ask again about the meaning of People’s Democratic Equity. He is met with the same exact response from Sandra. Resigned, Josef rolls his eyes and slinks down in his chair.
“OK, hiring of Wanutu will proceed. Next on the agenda, it has come to attention that it may be necessary revise Section 8 Article 7 Paragraph 4 of the Departmental guidelines regarding printer ink purchases that…”
Then suddenly a radio that Sandra wears on her hip goes off “Mayday! Mayday! Code Red Three!” Sandra exclaims “DOGE!” She frantically locks the door, reaches over to grab some long wooden planks and boards the door shut. The radio chirps “Enemy distracted debating the Betti number of a shape on a poster. Make preparations.” Sandra swiftly reaches over to a locked cupboard, runs the combination on a steel safe and upon unlocking it, takes out an Uzi covered with Antifa bumper stickers.
“Everybody quiet!”
She then shuts the lights.
Everyone is sitting on the floor looking down. Joanna is feverishly whispering in prayer.
Eventually the silence is interrupted by the sound of two men outside.
“They’re in there...doing un-American things...”
“Look, here they have coffee grinds, glue, window cleaner, and a few lead pencils. I have a bit of gunpowder and a lighter with me, I can blow this door wide open.”
“No, Harry, you heard the boss, no explosions.”
“OK ok. See the metal sheet over there? I can attach a hook I have to it, slide it under the door, then use that desk as a fulcrum to pull the door off its hinges.”
“There will be no breaking of doors today, Harry. It’s OK, we’ll come back again another day, we’re bound to catch them.”
And footsteps are heard with increasing faintness, leaving the premises. Eventually the voice from Sandra’s radio says “all clear.”
Sandra mutters “fascist scum!” and locks up her Uzi. Everyone quietly assembles back to their seats.
As soon as everyone settles, Sandra begins “OK, where were we. I believe the next item on the agenda is the power point we will be showing to potential incoming graduate students next week. There were some criticisms regarding the font size on pages 15 to 20… Oh! I almost forgot about the printer ink regulations! Silly me, OK, to return..”
The meeting continues, and proceeds for another three and a half hours.
After the meeting, Josef goes to his office and quickly scarfs down his lunch. He has to teach his lecture soon and has little time to enjoy his salad with salmon pieces he prepared at home, as he will also need to walk to the other side of campus to the lecture hall.
After walking out of the building and turning towards University Way, he sees a young male redhead student walk towards him. He is wearing what appears to be a robe with Arabic scrawled all across it.
The student approaches him and greets Josef with a casual “Allahu Akbar” then asks, pointedly:
“What do you think of the bloodthirsty violent destructive genocide happening in Gaza right now?”
“Oh, I don’t really care for politics, I’m sorry”
The student raises his voice and exclaims “Silence is Violence! As we speak, this university is cooperating on millions with Israel. Your apathy and lack of awareness is facilitating the government’s onslaught of the Palestinian people. How do you feel about the fact that you are murdering countless children?”
“Oh, look I’ll have to get going”
“Here, I have some pictures of dead children, let me show you” and the student lifts a large binder he is carrying, opens it and starts looking for the first picture to show Josef.
“That’s OK, I promise I’ll donate to you guys later. I just really have to go now, OK?”
“Very well. You better donate. If you don’t, I hope you have constant nightmares of swimming in a sea of children’s blood, guts, and organs”
“Yes, yes, dead children, I get it, thanks”
As he continues to head towards University Way, he then sees his friend from the Biochemistry Department, Ivan. He has a suitcase and is carrying a heavy pack on his back.
“Ivan! Hi! What are you doing? Are you going somewhere?”
“Hi Josef. Yes, unfortunately. The administration flagged my NSF project on the spontaneous formation of trans fatty acids in cooking oils. All my research funding was frozen, and I’ve been furloughed for the time being.”
“Oh my God, that’s horrible! Is there anything you can do?”
“I filed an appeal. The thing is, to get a hearing with the DOGE official, I first have to perform adequately on a Call Of Duty raid with one of his assistants. I haven’t played such games for years, so I’m going to take a few weeks to learn and practice this Call Of Duty.”
“Oh gosh! Good luck, buddy. I hope it works itself out.”
Josef continues, turns on University Way and takes the long promenade down towards his Lecture Hall. He runs into an old student of his, Rohiv, who he hasn’t seen in a while. They stop and begin to catch up on recent events. Suddenly, some man from the side flies towards Rohiv and tackles him, flipping and taking him to the ground. Another man is with him. ICE agents.
“Who are you? What did I do??” Rohiv protests. The tackler releases him and lets Rohiv stand up back to his feet.
“You know what you did, scoundrel. Your 2016 tweets about the President’s hand size were very un-American. You’re going back to Sri Lanka where you belong.”
“What? That’s ridiculous!” and then he is instantly tackled again. This time, an even more technically impressive aerial jiu-jitsu move. The other agent says to the first
“well executed, just you need to drive the hips on the final takedown a bit more”
“OK, let me try this again” and he lets Rohiv rise again and proceeds with the same tackle, now flawlessly executed.
“Why do you keep tackling me??”
“Clearly you’re not going to tackle yourself, wise guy” the agent responds.
The two men proceed to let Rohiv stand back up before tackling him again several times, and then finally lead him away.
Josef arrives to his Lecture and sets himself up at the front of the room. He looks up and sees Wilmur in the front row, looking towards him with excited attentiveness. The rest of the class, about twenty of the two hundred enrolled, are scattered throughout the lecture hall. Most are looking at their phones, and the rest at their laptop screens.
Josef sighs and starts his lecture. “If you recall from last lecture, we introduced the formal definition of Enthalpy and presented its main properties. Today, we will see how it can be applied to model the ensemble of various Statistical Mechanics phenomena.” Josef continues.
In the middle point of the lecture, there is a sudden bustle of noise coming from the back of the lecture hall and Josef sees 8 grown men walk in. ICE agents.
Four of them are heavily armed, with one holding a flamethrower and another is carrying, what appears to be, a rocket launcher, for some reason.
One of them is holding a giant speaker. He raises it above his head and turns it on. It starts blasting Team America’s song “America, Fuck Yeah!”
The team proceeds with an intricate SWAT like operation. The four armed men run towards the corners of the lecture hall. One of the agents, call him Agent A, runs towards the front of the lecture and stands behind Josef. Two others, let’s call them B and C, stand back to back while slowly crab-walking down the center line of the students’ seating area, each facing one of the two halves of the class.
The man with the speaker opens a black bag and a drone flies out. It starts flying around the lecture hall, and then appears to sequentially hover in front of every student in the seating area. It proceeds gradually from the back to the front, appearing to scan every student. Eventually, once it reaches Mariusz, seated in the front right, it starts flashing red. Agent C lifts his radio and says into it “Target Identified!” and then proceeds to run towards Mariusz, who is still seated in his chair. He then tackles him, in yet another technically impressive aerial jiu-jitsu move. The agent slings Mariusz over his shoulder and runs to the right edge of the classroom.
However, rather than running back up towards the exit, he starts running down towards the front of the classroom while Agent A sprints past Josef and towards agent C. As they’re about to cross each other on the right perimeter of the lecture hall, agent C throws Mariusz to the side towards agent A, who catches him and continues running towards the back. Agent C then barrel rolls into a stop, lifts a handgun with one hand and his radio in the other, and says to the radio “target acquired.”
Agent A runs with Mariusz out of the classroom with two of the armed men following. Then everyone remaining proceeds to declare the success of the mission “Alpha in. All clear. Over.” “Bossman in. All clear. Over.” “Cheerio in. All clear. Over” …
After lecture, Josef is done for the day and walks to the parking garage he generally uses. As he enters the garage, he greets the two firefighters hanging around there. They’ve been stationed here full-time since the Environmental Science Department staff like to park at this garage as well, and many of their faculty have/had Teslas.
Josef starts thinking about the implications of Stifflan’s conjecture. His mind now fully occupied by the vexing considerations of Jeremiah’s development, he becomes mentally captured and loses his sense of focus towards walking towards his vehicle. Eventually when he comes to, he finds himself in the basement of the athletics building, on another corner of campus. He starts trying to think about how to retrace his steps back to the parking lot.