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It’s usually personal
My dad told me this back in the 60s when “communists” were the big bugaboo. When a professor is fired for communism, you can be pretty sure the real reason was personal. The dean can’t put “I don’t like him” on an official form. This applies in all areas of life, not just hiring and…
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Full moon reported
Another weird crime case. At first it sounded like a serious situation requiring lots of hardass police action. After it was over, only one thing was clear. These people enjoy fighting and enjoy using the cops and courts as weapons in their perpetual fights. Most likely the car wasn’t stolen and there was no reason…
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Newsie Pops
Thinking about Cherry Mash and Tootsie Pops along with newspapers…. Newspapers used to understand the Tootsie Pop rule, which is also the way nature works. Give the kids a hard outer shell that needs chewing to reach the sweet inside. Give the bees a dose of nectar AND a flower that takes work to penetrate.…
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Why so much British?
Random puzzlement. Why is so much of my online world British as opposed to US? The absence of other languages needs no explanation. English has been the international language of commerce and technology since around 1920. Looking at my presumably algo-selected view of Substack, it’s heavily British or Canadian as measured by spellings. This was…
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Happy 150th, Cherry Mash!
Chase Candy was founded in 1876 in St Joe, and it’s still there, still producing Cherry Mash. I loved the stuff when I was a kid, and didn’t realize it was made in a nearby and familiar place. Here’s the Chase mansion: For some reason candy is resistant to offshoring and LBOs. The Mars family…
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Deed better than word
I’m mainly praising the Spokane newspaper for staying FIRMLY AND RIGOROUSLY non-partisan. There’s apparently some turmoil in their management, reporters disliking the new boss and new nonprofit setup. I was afraid this would lead to a return of their old haughty aristocratic contempt, but so far it hasn’t. They are remaining strictly professional, Fairness Doctrine…
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Why didn’t we see these?
Recently my social media feed has presented some GOOD art by Van Gogh. Massively surprising. I’d never seen these pictures before. In school and media we were force-fed the OFFICIAL INTERPRETATIONS of his blotchy smears. I couldn’t understand the interpretations then, and I still don’t know why blotchy smears should count as art. In fact…
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Diversionary tactic
Scary headline: AI writing assistants shrink linguistic diversity and blur personal identity Alarming! We’re limiting our language! Judging by the non-paywalled abstract, the article is just dumb, not alarming. The study wasn’t looking at all human writing, it was looking at the output of people who were USING CHATGPT. Constant: When you use a machine…
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Reprint on unexpected combinations
Truth is stranger than logic! I’ve always been fascinated by the name Daniel of St Thomas Jenifer, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I always ass-u-me-d that the of was an indicator of nobility, like French de or German von or Irish o or Scottish mac. I further ass-u-me-d there was a…
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Little pleasures
The best pleasures in life are “after all” moments. It still works after all, I have enough after all, I can still do the task after all. On Wednesday I deinstalled the air conditioner, part of annual winterizing. It’s a complicated task with a heavy lift that has to be done fast, so I focus…
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Y no salesmen?
Saw this silly headline in the reddit pro-bitcoin area: The Silent Mutiny Against the Dollar: Why 61% of Americans Are Ready for Bitcoin (And Why We Are Explaining It All Wrong). My question: Why have nearly all parts of life forgotten the basic rules of selling? It’s not new. Read the New Testament or Dale…
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Grammar under the surface
Language is a mix of genes, habits, visible structures and hidden structures. Hidden structures probably deserve more attention. My favorite example is adjectives and nouns ‘agreeing’ or adopting parallel endings for number and gender. English is the only Indo-European language that lost this parallelism. BUT: We retain number-harmony on exactly two words, this and that.…
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Not alone!
Clothing disobeys physics. It sticks when it should slide, slides when it should stick, drops when it should stay up, stays up when gravity should pull it down. When I try to arrange sheets and blankets at night, they twist into a topologically impossible Mobius strip or Klein bottle. I’m not alone! This frustration is…
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Y beaches and mountains?
Just figured something out. The COOL people only like mountains and oceans. When COOL people show pictures of places, it’s always grand vistas of rocks or blank beach and ocean. I’ve never understood why these things are interesting. There’s nothing to see, no plants or animals or houses or creeks. Beach is plain white, ocean…
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You asked for it
Via Nieman, another survey on the loss of newspapers, both print and digital. As usual it misses the reasons. Here’s the REAL danger signal: = = = = = START DANGER: The price of newsprint rose nearly 18% over the past year, Dudley reported, as U.S. mills closed or stopped production of newsprint. That’s about…
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