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Picard rummages through a trunk, searching for the source of the sound of an Enterprise-D commbadge chirp. He tosses the contents one at a time over his shoulder: Tennis racket, bowling shoes, harmonica, clown nose, groucho glasses, rubber bulb horn (which he squeezes twice: honk! honk!), feather boa. He unscrews the lid from a canister labeled “cocktail peanuts” and rubber snakes spring out…..

On Lake Murray: This metal platform is usually attached to the concrete walkway, and people fish from it. It came loose in the storms this week.

Lake Murray from Baltimore Dr., first clear day after this week’s storms.

A little while back I heard about a conspiracy theory claiming the Roman Empire didn’t exist–that it’s a hoax promulgated by the Spanish Inquisition, which happened in the 15th Century.

I learned that it isn’t really a fully-blown conspiracy theory, which to me implies a movement. It’s just this one popular TikToker, who goes by the handle @momllennial_, and she also has claimed that Alexander the Great was a woman, and Jesus Christ’s name can be translated as “clitoris healer.”

2021: This TikTok Conspiracy Theory Is Infuriating Historians (Daily Dot / Gavia Baker-Whitelaw)

Google’s chatbot panic

Cory Doctorow:

The really remarkable thing isn’t just that Microsoft has decided that the future of search isn’t links to relevant materials, but instead lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a chatbot who happens to be a habitual liar – even more remarkable is that Google agrees.

Also:

Every successful Google product except search and gmail is an acquisition: mobile, ad-tech, videos, server management, docs, calendaring, maps, you name it. The company desperately wants to be a “making things” company, but it’s actually a “buying things” company.

The last time Google went into full-on panic mode, the result was Google+, which was actually a great product that Google bungled spectacularly.

Honestly, I don't need reporting to the Social Media Mental Health Police

I received this message when I logged in to Facebook just now, and I find it sweet (aww, somebody is concerned), ridiculous (I’m fine, aside from the normal amount of stress from living in the 21st Century) and creepy (Facebook, you’re not my Mom).

According to the explainer, the message comes up when someone has flagged one of my posts as concerning, involving self-harm or suicidal thoughts. None of which I am remotely having or sharing.

I received a similar message a few months ago, on Reddit, where I rarely post, though I do read and upvote a lot.

WTF is going on here? Are people misinterpreting my posts? Are Facebook and Reddit algorithms reviewing my activity and finding my interest in memes and vintage photos disturbing? Why am I not getting these messages on Tumblr, micro.blog, or Mastodon—do those platforms not love me?

I went indy three weeks ago and since then I’ve had many discussions about about potential full-time and freelance opportunities.

Pluses:

  • Exciting new opportunities
  • Income means we can buy proper food and not have to eat the dog or cats.
  • Videoconferencing shirt is getting a good workout.

Minus:

  • I have to shave every day.

Teaching generative AI to give factual answers is going to prove as difficult as teaching it to write credible answers has been.

Even human beings have difficulty distinguishing information from bullshit on the Internet. We can’t even agree which is which.

I’m continuing my project of relearning how to read books. Remembering that as a voracious teenage reader, I would discover an author and read everything I could find by him, until I was caught up or had at least read everything by that author in the local mall bookstores and libraries. Asimov. Clarke. Heinlein. Ellison. Niven. Joe Haldeman.

I am adopting that strategy now, starting with Michael Connelly. He’s written about 40 books. I’m now reading his fourth. This is going to be a while.

In 30 years as a journalist, I’ve never been part of a crowd of reporters shouting questions while chasing a public official or other famous person. I’d probably trip and fall down.

J.K. Rowling and “Separating the Art from the Artist."

Charlie Jane Anders discusses how you can’t separate the art from the artist when the artist—Rowling—has spent her career as the public face of her art.

Anders is uniquely positioned to discuss this issue, as she is a trans woman science fiction and fantasy writer with a large public presence. I’m a fan.

How Liberals — Yes, Liberals — Are Hobbling Government (Ezra Klein / NYTimes)

The legal scholar Nicholas Bagley argues that the liberal “procedural fetish” makes it difficult for government to accomplish anything bold.

…

… to achieve the goals liberals hold most dear, we need a liberalism that builds. A liberalism that builds everything from multifamily housing and mass transit systems to transmission lines and solar farms. And we need a liberalism that can build it all quickly, cheaply and effectively. But even in the places where liberals have governing power, they are often failing to do exactly that. Why?

Conservatives hate big government, and pile on regulations and red tape to cripple agencies. But liberals’ love of procedure and rules, designed to ensure fairness, have the same effect.

The Last Man Without a Cell Phone

Anne Kadet interviews New Yorkers without cell phones. 3% of Americans go without.

I use a computer—a lot! For my work, and reading things online. I do email. But I don’t have any felt need to have it with me all the time. It’s like, I watch TV, but I don’t feel like I need to carry it around with me all day. The cell phone feels like a solution to a non-problem. Before it existed, you didn’t see undergraduates running across campus to get back to their room after class so they could make phone calls. But now you see them walking around, on their phone, all the time. The contrast I’ve sometimes used is, I grew up in the DC area with no central air conditioning. And we knew perfectly well there was a problem. It was hot and stuffy all summer. And we’re laying on the floor reading the paper in front of a fan. Everybody knew there was a problem, and central AC solved it. But in this case, what was the problem? I don’t see the need.

… iPhone users are extraverted, free-spending, narcissist party monsters. The Android users, meanwhile, are all home binge-watching Law & Order with their extended cat families.

Android or iPhone—Who’s the Real Sheeple? (Anne Kadet)

The real sheeple is the person who thinks their choice between Android and iPhone defines them.

Small Government: The ref has to be more powerful than the players (Cory Doctorow)

Companies should never be allowed to grow too big to fail, because they also become too big to regulate. Mega-corporations become more powerful than the governments that regulate them. Government becomes too weak to even enforce contracts, the one function that even extreme libertarians agree that government needs to do.

… even if governments do nothing but enforce contracts, they still have to be bigger and more powerful than the largest companies and cartels. This should be an area where good faith leftists and capitalist trufans can come together: making small government possible by banning big business.

Why did ‘The Last of Us’ Change Pittsburgh to Kansas City? An Investigation (Dais Johnston / Inverse)

It’s easier to make Canada look like Kansas City.

The answer could be found in one of its nicknames: City of Bridges. Any glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline will show plenty of bridges along the three rivers surrounding it. Kansas City is also on a river, but the heart of downtown — the part of the city we see in The Last of Us — is more inland, meaning the grim, dry cityscapes we see in the show are more suitable for Kansas City.

Put plainly, the attack on the dignity of transgender Americans is an attack on the dignity of all Americans. And like the battles for abortion rights and bodily autonomy, the stakes of the fight for the rights and dignity of transgender people are high for all of us. There is no world in which their freedom is suppressed and yours is sustained.

— Jamelle Bouie, There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America

Or, in the words of novelist Michael Connelly: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”

Julie replaced our toaster oven with a convection oven that also makes toast, with a fancy electronic control panel, and I managed to successfully use it to make toast without burning the house down. I knew today was going to be a good day.

Artificial intelligence is not a threat. The threat is that we live in a society that considers ownership as sacred and work as worth very little.

If I ever think about adopting a puppy again, I’m going to first reread my journal entries from late 2013 and early 2014.

So much poop. Poop everywhere.

Microsoft unveiled its AI chatbot-driven Bing search this week, presenting possibly the first challenge to Google’s search dominance in 25 years. In response, Google laced up its clown shoes and immediately stepped on a rake and smacked itself in the face. Google demonstrated its own AI chatbot-driven search which (a) isn’t available to the public and (b) prominently and spectacularly answered a question incorrectly.

I wrote this: Oops! Google’s new AI tool Bard showcases artificial stupidity

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina and plant scientist Cassandra Quave watch “The Last of Us” and discuss the science. (Your Local Epidemiologist)

Cordyceps, the fungus that causes the zombie epidemic, is real, and it is every bit as horrific as portrayed in the show … but it only affects carpenter ants. The fungus hasn’t significantly evolved in hundreds of millions of years, not even to affect other types of ants.

We will not have mushroom heads running at exorbitant speeds trying to kill us any time soon. While not as sexy, real fungal infections are a major health issue and, with climate change and the rise of antimicrobial resistance, will become even more of one in the future. But if you’re worried about a pandemic, focus on viruses. In the meantime, enjoy the show.

I posted a photo here this evening that I took at the park this afternoon. It was a photo of a woman that I thought was a bride. But some friends here pointed out that she’s almost certainly a quinceañera. Now I feel weird about it, so I deleted the photo. Here’s a photo of a duck instead.

It’s way too early to start nailing the coffin shut on Mastodon

The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump (Wired). “Active users have fallen by more than 1 million since the exodus from Elon Musk’s Twitter, suggesting the decentralized platform is not a direct replacement.”

My $0.02: No, it’s not a direct replacement. Mastodon is similar to Twitter, but different, and the differences will become more pronounced over time.

The article notes that traffic went from 380,000 users late last year to 1.4 million by late January. That’s insanely rapid growth!

Two steps forward, one step back still gets you a step ahead of where you were before.

AI is going to make it a lot harder for journalists, as CNET and other publishers turn to machines to generate copy.

[Many publishers] no longer have audiences in real sense; what they have instead is traffic — a huge stream of drive-by readers, delivered by search engines, that they can monetize primarily by getting them to make attributable purchases.

Casey Newton writes on Platformer about the emerging wave of AI and how it will disrupt search and publishing.

Many publishers already operate like spam operations and the time may be running out for them to be able to convert human journalists’ output into Google search results and then sales, Newton says.

Some of this is probably fine, or at least inevitable. If you run a men’s health site, there are only so many ways to tell your readers to eat right and get regular exercise.

…

… with digital publishers’ businesses already hugely dependent on search traffic, and traffic toward news sites declining precipitously, the incentives are for almost any publisher to transform into an AI-powered, SEO-driven content farm as quickly as they can.

I used to think I had become unplugged from pop culture. Now I think pop culture might not exist anymore.

For an example of my ignorance today: I only have a vague idea who “Drake” is. I gather he’s a rapper? And super-famous? Other than that, I can’t tell you a single thing about him.

It’s not just Drake. I routinely don’t recognize the names of popular actors, other musicians, movies, and even many TV shows.

This intrigues me, because in the 70s and 80s I was pretty plugged in.

For the years this has been going on, I’ve just assumed it’s because I’m middle-aged, don’t have kids, and pop culture is not for me anymore.

However, this SNL skit suggests the phenomenon goes much deeper. The skit suggests that famous people and movies just aren’t actually famous anymore.

I recognize the guy with the mustache, though. He’s Pedro Pascal, star of “Last of Us” and (the exact same role, only with a helmet) “The Mandalorian.”

The last question in the skit is spot on. Just like Pedro, I would have been totally stumped.

“Procrastination is not a result of laziness or poor time management. Scientific studies suggest procrastination is due to poor mood management."

This makes sense if we consider that people are more likely to put off starting or completing tasks that they feel aversion towards. If just thinking about the task makes you anxious or threatens your sense of self-worth, you will be more likely to put it off.

Research has found that regions of the brain linked to threat detection and emotion regulation are different in people who chronically procrastinate compared to those who don’t procrastinate frequently.

When we avoid the unpleasant task, we also avoid the negative emotions associated with it. This is rewarding and conditions us to use procrastination to repair our mood. If we engage in more enjoyable tasks instead, we get another mood boost.

…

But:

In the long run, procrastination isn’t an effective way of managing emotions. The mood repair you experience is temporary. Afterwards, people tend to engage in self-critical ruminations that not only increase their negative mood, but also reinforce their tendency to procrastinate.”

— Fuschia Sirois, Professor in Social & Health Psychology, Durham University, writing on The Conversation:

And procrastination is linked with health problems.

I recently had this insight about myself and why I procrastinate: I put tasks off that stress me out. I found the insight itself to be life-changing—just knowing why procrastination happens went a long way to correcting the problem, though I still have a long way to go.

I am grateful for the insight—and I wish I’d had it fifty years ago. Sigh.

Eleven years ago today I deposited $21.45 in cans to the recycle center. I drank a lot of club soda and Diet Dr Pepper then.

I saw this in the sidewalk while walking the dog. Someone was trying to send a complex message to Tom and Sharon.

Strangely, this is the second house I’ve seen with a dinosaur in front of it.

We have now watched episode two of The Last of Us. The special effects just get more and more disturbing.

Taking a break and on to episode three. I’m sure this one will be relaxing.

We enjoyed the first episode of “Last of Us.” But I’m disappointed that’s apparently all the John Hannah we get.

Everything needs more John Hannah.

We watched the first episode of “The Last of Us.” Can I expect to unclench anytime soon?

The grass at Lake Murray is tall after all the rain we’ve had, and yesterday I saw a golden retriever enjoying the grass so much–creeping through on its belly, and then rolling over on its back and writhing with its legs waving in the air.

At first, I thought the dog was enjoying the feel and smell of the grass, but it seems equally likely it found a carcass or a nice pile of poop to roll around in and cover itself with the smell.

LinkedIn just showed me a suggestion that I should follow Dr. Bronner’s for opportunities–the company is based here in San Diego.

What do you think–should I do marketing for organic soap? Maybe I could rewrite their label copy?

We took a break for a few months after watching the end of season one of “Succession,” because the story seemed complete. But now we have watched episode one of season two.

Those poor raccoons.

I’m going to say “don’t forget to like and subscribe!” instead of “good-bye.” When leaving social dinners, ending meetings, before hanging up the phone, at funerals. It’ll be my “thing.”

Discord and I disagree about when it’s appropriate to send me notifications, and about how to customize notifications.

I’m learning to use Midjourney for a work assignment. This is my professional headshot, modified with the prompt “sitting at the counter of a diner drinking coffee with a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray in the style of Edward Hopper.”

That was fast. I started a new job in September and was let go about 10 days ago.

You know the business cliches: “It was a bad fit” and “it was a mutual decision”? I used to think those cliches were bullshit. Now I see those two brief statements are the best way to sum up my experience on that job.

I’ve already got a couple of promising leads on full-time jobs, one ongoing freelance assignment, and am looking for more.

I posted the following to LinkedIn this morning:

I’m available for writing and editing work in marketing and journalism, specializing in enterprise and telco cloud infrastructure, networking and applications. I’m available for both full-time and freelance work.

My focus is on showcasing the intersection of technology and business—how organizations can use technology to deliver business value, using tech to find new revenue, reduce cost, and eliminate the hassles of keeping their technology infrastructure running (or, translated into marketing language: innovation, digital transformation, and reducing CAPEX and OPEX for overall reduced TCO).

I have more than 30 years of experience. Contact me at mitch@mitchwagner.com and let’s talk about how I can bring that rich expertise to your business.

View my writing portfolio: <authory.com/mitchwagn…>

The best possible use for a mini-USB cable

From my journal, this day in 2014:

A group of teenagers rang the doorbell last night. I went down the stairs to answer. The leader, a girl about 15, explained they were a group from the Baptist church down the street. They were playing a kind of scavenger hunt. The object was to go door-to-door looking to trade an object for another object. Did we have anything better than a keychain?

I thought about it. Nothing came to mind. Hold on I’ll check, I said. I went back up the stairs.

I looked in the basket by the front door. A tube of suntan lotion? No, Julie said that was some kind of boutique suntan lotion. A reflector armband that did not actually reflect? No.

I looked on the coffee table. There was a mini-USB cable from a recent electronics purchase, still neatly bundled. I have a million of those from various gadgets. They’re nearly worthless. To me. Maybe a non-geek wouldn’t think so?

I went out the front door and called down the front stairs. “Is a mini-USB cable better than a keychain?”

“Yes!” said the girl. I went down the stairs and made the trade.

I asked them if they’d heard about the guy who played a similar game and ended up eventually trading from a paperclip to a house. The girl said no. I asked how I would find out how everything came out. The girl said, well, if I heard shrieks of delight coming from the church I’d know they won.

I never did find out how it came out.

I'm relearning how to read books

I’m in the process of relearning how to read books, particularly novels. I’ve gotten so accustomed to reading articles and essays online that my skill at reading books has atrophied.

Yesterday I found myself effortlessly reading a novel for a few hours, and it was a breakthrough. That’s how I would often spend a day as a teenager, but I’ve lost the knack for it.

The novel, by the way, was “Concrete Blonde,” the third Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. I loved the TV series and hear the actors' voices in my head when I’m reading.

Young woman at the supermarket checkout a packet of flowers, a bottle of wine, and nothing else. Seems like there was a story there. None of my business so I didn’t say anything.

Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death

— Nelson Mandela

We watched the first episode of the new series “Poker Face.” Big “Columbo” vibe.

My review of “Black Ice,” a Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly

I finished reading “Black Ice,” the second Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. Good at the beginning and end, drags a bit in the middle. I did not find the action set-piece at the climax compelling, though the attack on the helicopter was cool. The characters and dialogue are well done, as are the LA locations.

I would have liked the book more if I’d cared about the murder victims. But I didn’t, and neither did any of the characters. I find that essential in a crime story—do I actually care whether the murderer is caught? Are there any emotional stakes?

In the first Bosch novel, Connelly seems to be finding the character, but now Harry Bosch is fully formed, and very much like the character in the tv show, which we love.

Read another? Sure, why not? Connelly has written 37 crime novels, all in the same universe, so that will keep me busy a little while.

We only have 37 more episodes of Yellowstone to watch, plus eight episodes of 1923, plus ten episodes of 1883.

After watching the first season of “Yellowstone,” I have concluded we need a helicopter.

Tiktok’s enshittification.

How platforms—like Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and now Tiktok—turn to shit. By Cory Doctorow:

“ … first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Will the sun ever set on the British empire?.

This article by Randall Munro, author of the xkcd comic, just keeps getting better and better.

The exact day when the sun stopped setting on the [British] empire was probably sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when the first Australian territories were added….

Every night, around midnight GMT, the sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean territory until after 1am. For that hour, the little Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific are the only British territory in the sun.

The Pitcairn Islands have a population of a few dozen people, the descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty.

Fort Walgreens The recent spike in shoplifting is both overblown and real. And almost everyone is profiting from it (including you)..

James D. Walsh, Intelligencer staff writer:

“They’re professional and self-employed,” said David Rey, who, after years overseeing security teams in New York department stores, published Larceny on 34th Street: An In-Depth Look at Professional Shoplifting in One of the World’s Largest Stores. “Just like what we do for a living — going to work — they pay their bills and rent and raise their children off the proceeds that they get from shoplifting.”

None of the boosters interviewed for this story could name someone who shoplifted for any other reason than to support a drug habit.

Eggflation is just more price-gouging. Cory Doctorow: One company controls the US egg industry, Cal-Maine Food, and it’s making record profits—up 65% net year-over-year.

In its communications to investors, Cal-Maine’s eminently guillotineable CFO Max Bowman attributed the monopolist’s good fortune to “significantly higher selling prices” and “our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures.”

Dumb and shameful until it’s not

Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day says Web 3.0 is here. It’s not “the blockchain-backed cyberlibertarian free-for-all, where internet access is predicated on using crypto wallets to buy and sell digital assets” or the metaverse. It’s AI.

Now, you might say, “Ryan, A.I. is completely overhyped. Generative-A.I. art tools can’t even figure out how many fingers people have. There are all kinds of legal and ethical problems around this technology. It’s exploitative. It’s wildly insecure. We don’t even fully understand what it will do to our brains, yet. And there is a new dumb company every day hawking worthless A.I. fixes to problems no one actually needs to solve.” Well, fun fact: That was true of Web 2.0 too! In 2013, I used an app called Foursquare to check-in to a dive bar in Greenpoint every weekend via the geotargeting on my phone so I could get free tater tots. Everything on the internet is dumb and shameful until it’s not.

Also: " … the internet is giant machine that turns harassment against women into advertising revenue."

And Mutekimaru, a Japanese YouTuber, “created a system that lets his fish play Pokémon.”

Well, last week, the fish were playing the newest Pokémon release Pokémon Scarlet. The problem is the game is very buggy and during the playthrough it glitched out and the game crashed, but the fish continued controlling the Nintendo Switch’s buttons. The fish opened up the Nintendo Store, bought a game, and, for a brief moment, flashed their owner’s credit card number on the screen. Whoops!

The Reality of Being a Parent With a Controversial Past

Lily Burana wrote a bestselling memoir about her life as a stripper. Now she’s the mother of a four-year-old.

Our cultural fondness for outlaws is context-specific: Everyone loves a badass, but no one loves a bad parent.

…

we Parents with Pasts plead for the clemency of kindness, for assumptions of our inherent normalcy. After all, we wrestle our kids’ pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.