Remember how when we were kids it was all “I’m Thumbody!” and Saturday morning cartoon interstitials about being kind. And it seemed so corny and over the top. And then we grew up, had kids, and sent them to school and holy cow it seems like all that corny stuff actually worked.
Archive Posts (Page 3)
Just your occasional reminder that America now puts children in cages to punish their parents. #maga
Me: "Hey Siri, play some good music"
Siri: "Ok, here are some popular hits"
Siri: [plays some hip hop stuff with lots of "n" words and commentary on female anatomy, which immediately makes me uncomfortable in my private office.]
Me: "Hey Siri, can you … um … play something different?"
Siri: "How about some Counting Crows"
AI, everybody.
TIL that English “black” comes from the proto-indo-European root “bhel” with the sense of “burnt”.
“Bhel” also has the sense of “burn” or “shine” and is the origin of Spanish “blanco” and French “blanc”.
Which is to say, this same root gave English its “black” and Romance languages their “white”.
Apparently in the old old old days of English black may have meant “colorless” and could be light or dark.
ALMOST TIME TO GO PICK UP ISABEL I MAY DIE.
If I owned a scuba diving company I’d definitely have a sign up that says “Please sit to be weighted.”
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I’ve chosen my path and I’ve followed it. Now I have no ambition. A life of simplicity, of quality. My family makes me happy and satisfied. I sleep well at night because I give the best of what I can do to those that come and taste what we make. Corrado Assenza, Italian pastry chef
Bacteria don’t really age. Each one is essentially two billion years old. When you take your antibiotic you’re killing off billions of little lives that have managed to eek out an existence for two billion years before finally coming face to face with your enmity.
I’m at a mall on a Saturday. Please send an assassin to administer relief.
The Great State of California put their best minds on it and managed to invent an intersection where you have to wait for three signals to cross the street. Clever!
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My family is scattered to the winds and I fret. I’ll relax when everyone is ensconced and companioned.
I have been personally attacked by an online bully. [ed: I’m the pink one in case it isn’t clear.]
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Sometimes I’m in the Notes app writing a note and I want to refer to another note. Then I go looking all over my computer screen trying to find my notes app so I can look up that other note. Then I remember I’m actually already in the notes app and feel a little dumb.
America, know thyself.
America the beautiful
God turn his back from thee
And crown thy blind and fearful heart
With hateful bigotry
I hate that this headline style is leaking more and more into even the majors newspapers.
It’s not true at all that authorities “have no idea what it is.”
Corrected: “A wolflike creature was stalking livestock in Montana. Authorities have not yet conclusively confirmed what it is.”
(And I’m sure it’ll turn out to be some kind of dog.)
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All the online noise about GDPR email overload is reaffirming my long-standing lifestyle choice of almost never giving my personal info to a web site. I’ve only gotten four of these emails that are apparently flooding people’s inboxes.
Hot take: graham crackers, toasted marshmallows, and chocolate are each individually way better than s’mores.
“We’re not competent to dedup a database table but you should trust us with backdoor access to every secure device in America.” — The FBI
Today’s “suddenly something you’ve heard all your life sounds strange and you get curious” was this: Where’s old Zealand? I had no idea.
Sophia showed me one of those silly Internet things that said your super hero name is based on your greatest fear. She asked me what her name would be and I said “Upstaged by my Sister Woman.”
She denied it, then made this very adorable face and said, “little bit.”
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I finally figured out what a FaceBook Story is. It’s a thing where people accidentally tap a button and post a random photo.
Yesterday we learned that this boy in Texas killed ten people after a girl turned him down because he felt angrily entitled to her affections. At the same time the President of the United States, literally the most powerful man in the world, went on a spittle-speckled twitter tirade complete with lies and threats of harm because he thinks he is being persecuted and deserves our adoration.
Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
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Sophia: Do you think [famous person] is nice?
Me: They always seem nice and I have no reason to doubt that. But never forget famous people have PR departments.
(I’m not sure if I should be encouraging her innate cynicism…)
Days like this really put my dislike of opulent displays of unearned self importance in conflict with my love of people joyously sharing what makes them happy.
[ed: If I had to guess, this was about the Met Gala.]
Me delivering my motivational speech at the department store checkout: “You have pants. I have money. I would like to trade. Humans have been doing this for millennia without email addresses, phone numbers, or loyalty programs. We can do it old school. I believe in you.”
The definition of bittersweet is when your wife leaves for two weeks and you’re super excited she gets to go on a trip but…she’s gone…
Oceans are rising because the tide goes in and the tide goes out. And you can’t explain that. So checkmate scientists.
I’m like 90% sure the secret FBI informant is Melania.
Sophia after seeing A Quiet Place: “I wouldn’t do very well in that world.”
Not wrong.
The man in the big yellow hat is, let’s be honest, a menace to his community.
Sometimes I report a Facebook ad as offensive because I’m offended by how bad it is. Misspellings. Obvious fake celebrity photoshops. Lousy products. These can be offensive right?
I use the ‘Siri’ face on my watch, which sort of automatically shows whatever is most important right now. Usually that means upcoming calendar events and breaking news. But it showed this pretty much all day yesterday.
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Ok google, you’re in a desert. You’re walking along in the sand when you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling towards you. You reach down and flip the tortoise on its back…
I’m honestly not comfortable with normalizing AI impersonating a human without being up front about it.
I’m all for my digital assistant making phone calls for me but it should say right up front that it’s a machine.
Donald Trump would like you all to know that bullying people online is bad.
He would also like you to know you’re a stupid, fat, sleepy-eyed loser. #bebest
Same.
I’ve become hopelessly addicted to those “Mail you meal ingredients and a recipe” services except that it’s too hot in phoenix in the summer and their boxes can’t stay cold. So I have to turn them off until September or October.
And now I have no idea what to make for dinner. How did this used to work? Do you find a recipe first and then find ingredients? Or do you do it the other way?
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The worst version of me is the one that doesn’t push “archive” after he’s finished dealing with an email.
This is a remarkable and moving thing.