64 Comments
RemovedDec 5, 2022·edited Dec 5, 2022
Comment removed
Expand full comment
author

They're losing their jobs as we speak.

Expand full comment

See my thoughts above about the coming NYT writers strike. And I finally quit reading that blog (was it?) from 10 years ago with all the whining about "journos" losing their jobs. They weren't doing the job expected by their readers, so the readers quit reading, and there then were no jobs. Unlike state and county highway jobs, newspapers can't really retain too many "shovel-leaners."

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Letterkenny is legitimately some of the funniest stuff out there. I think you can stream it now on Hulu.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

New episodes are due out Dec 26 aka the day after Christmas.

Expand full comment

As sure as God's got sandals, it's a good show.

Expand full comment

Lot of it on youtube, too. funny stuff.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

State's Rights? Are you crazy?

You know we had a Civil War over that crap once before...

Expand full comment

Something like 8 states (I think. I haven't counted them lately) allow "assisted suicide". I used to have my State and Local Government classes write short papers on the issue.) To date there has been no big rush to use it, and no real push for euthanasia that I am aware of.

Generally, those contemplating using it are seen by two separate doctors, an RN, and frequently a psychiatrist. If they're certain, they are provided enough meds to do the job themselves it they are mentally competent and want to go ahead. (I think it is mostly kept to those with diagnoses that they will die anyway withing 6 months to a year.)

Oddly enough, the large majority then do not kill themselves. It really seems to be a matter of being in control rather than desiring death.

But I haven't examined the issue since my retirement.

Expand full comment

Vonnegut's short story, "Welcome to the Monkey House" suggests an interesting spin on the idea of voluntary self-euthanasia.

Expand full comment

"In fact, one could argue that society is a made-up construct."

It is. And the fact that society has made it this far is evidence that we've largely made good decisions about which rules worked and which should be jettisoned.

I don't always do Optimist but I would like to think that, before we Dumb Rule ourselves into extinction, someone would have the nerve and standing to step in and say, "That's a dumb rule. We should pick a new one that works better."

"Brawndo has electrolytes!"

OK, so it could be Touch and Go for a while.

Expand full comment

We will never confuse you with AI. “The Joker and Batman are shown sitting on the couch in the Joker’s new apartment, drinking tea and talking” is funnier than anything you’ve ever written…

I kid! I kid because I love!

Actually, “Her new rules are also made up. The difference is that, unlike the people who made up the rules she hates, she is a moron” *is* funnier. I sit corrected.

Here’s the thing about “white supremacy.” Yes, whites created “the language of power” and “the language of respectability.” But we let anybody use them! Anybody, of any color, can project respectability and/or power, simply by using the tools that we provide them, for free! Whites are amazingly generous people.

Expand full comment

"But we let anybody use them! Anybody, of any color, can project respectability and/or power, simply by using the tools that we provide them, for free!"

^THIS.

In fact, it's encouraged. Almost as though White People generally want _everyone_ to succeed.

Those bastards.

Expand full comment

The rules of Good English (or any other language) are/were designed to make actual communication work as well as possible. Communication being defined as you putting your ideas/thoughts into someone else's head so that they can examine and possibly understand them.

This English teacher is pushing rules specifically designed to impede communication and understanding among people. It's a direct outgrowth of the Marxist French philosophers in the late 1940s.

Expand full comment

"[R]ules specifically designed to impede communication and understanding among people."

Pretty much the definition of post-modernism...

Expand full comment

Exactly. The Vanguard of the Revolution keeps changing the meanings of words in order to control the sheep following them (and others).

Expand full comment

"I teach high school English..." Do you? Do, tho? You might do a lot of things, but "teaching" is not one of them.

Most of you don't know, but I work in "The Schools." I work in support, I'm not a "teacher" or an "administrator." And here is what I do know; every teacher has to be evaluated, and there are many things they are evaluated on. The Principal has to sit in, watch a class be taught. So, this "teacher" has to explain why they "teach" in a manner that, you know, isn't actually "teaching." And that Principal has to sign off on this. Then that Principal need to explain to higher executives why they let this "Teacher" get away with this shit. Then the school board, if they do their job, needs to explain to the parents why their kids talk all whack, and can't read worth a lick.

So, in my schools (I work at a number of schools and interact with a number of teachers and administrators) I never see this shit. I have no idea how these schools explain and rationalize teachers like this.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that this sort of crap is either very rare, my district is somehow immune from these sort of teachers, or those teachers who are all justice-warriory just can not wait to get it out there. I don't know. I do know that you can't ignore loser ass "teachers" like this, because as soon as you do, they're everywhere.

Eh ... what do I know. I'm a duck who rides a bike, and I'm not doing a lot of bike riding lately since it's been Cold AF, and there is a ton of snow on the ground. Been riding the trainer, which sucks. But it's better than getting fat. Because everyone loves a fat duck, especially with a nice orange sauce and a side of garlic mashed potatoes.

Expand full comment

"You might do a lot of things, but "teaching" is not one of them."

That's a BINGO!

"The Principal has to sit in, watch a class be taught."

Teachers get good at "teaching to the audience" and mentors can help a struggling teacher survive a couple observations a year. What they do the other 178 class meetings goes largely unobserved.

"Because everyone loves a fat duck, especially with a nice orange sauce and a side of garlic mashed potatoes."

You sound delicious but I swear our relationship is strictly platonic.

Expand full comment

Duck, I have worked in public and private schools as teacher, sub, support, and briefly administration. I would say the breakdown is like this 90% of the teachers there are there to teach. Of that 90%, 60% are told they have to use this new curriculum and they cope, 40% think the new curriculum will be helpful and don't evaluate it super closely or think about long term implications. The remaining 10% are there to "mold young minds" and be activists with crayons. Their administrators roll over because they don't like confrontation or agree with the activist.

When school counselors stopped being there to plan how to get kids through high school, and prompt them to think about there future and when school nurses stopped be able to give tylenol or actively give on site medical care to students, then the real job went away and all they have left is to talk about feelings.

Having sat on a playground and listened to children talk about their feelings I can tell you that the appropriate response in 90% of their feelings is: "Yup, growing up and learning how to deal with other people is rough, but you have people that love you and you will get through it. Life isn't fair." I have yet to meet a school counselor that said that.

Expand full comment

"The remaining 10% are there to "mold young minds" "

If you've ever seen the impact a single disruptive student can wreak on one classroom, just imagine the "molding" that 5 or 7 teachers, in positions of relative authority and respect, can make on an entire school community.

Expand full comment

Good to see "wreak" used appropriately. Perhaps you had good English teachers.

Pop quiz. Without looking it up, what is the past participle of wreak? ;-)

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

That's the past tense. I want the past participle. ;-)

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Dec 5, 2022·edited Dec 5, 2022

Socialism, like many Satan inspired ideologies, has only one goal: the orderly transition of existing people into non-existence. Socialism views people not as a resource, but a drain on resources that need to be managed, reduced and ultimately destroyed. With abortion and euthanasia it's all very orderly, but with Hitler and Holocausts it gets messy - but the end is the same, remove human beings. I wonder when the robots write about Trudeau and Western Civ in general if it with think about it in the same way it described Hitler.

As for the AI chat prompts and art, we are moving into that artificial general intelligence (AGI) phase of the Anthropocene where the public at large hands the keys of creation, decision making, and other "dull mind work" over to the machines. Like in Dune, it may be several millennia before a crusade against the machines forces mankind to take back what it gave away, at the cost of much sacrifice... assuming we're all still here and we didn't program the machines to be Socialists (spoiler: we will) and they just view humanity as a vestigial left over of their own civilization to be cast out and removed.

Expand full comment

"it may be *several millennia* before a crusade against the machines forces mankind to take back what it gave away" [emphasis Pi's}

Damn. I guess I'm going to need to put up more canned beans.

Expand full comment

LOL! Please, something besides canned beans!

Expand full comment

I was going to write Hamburger Helper but I recognized that no one can help Hamburger until it first admits that it has a problem. *shrug*

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

"I like it better than the Tuna Helper myself."

Expand full comment

Areyou channeling an old Bonanza episode? The one where Hoss and an old miner and his dog are under siege from a gang trying to steal the miner's stash?

Hoss is wondering how long they can hold out, and the old miner says that he has a spring or well inside the house or mine, and "enough food for 6 months" because he only goes to town to buy food a couple of times a year.

Hoss asks where the food is (it's a one room cabin) and the old miner pulls a piece of the wall and there's a pantry behind it. The pantry is full of cans of beans.

Hoss is incredulous and ask "All you have for 6 months is beans?" And the miner responds, "Yep. Since it's just me and the dog, we decide we could have whatever we liked."

That scene and line have stuck with me for over 50 years. I LOLed.

Expand full comment

"Socialism, like many Satan inspired ideologies, has only one goal: the orderly transition of existing people into non-existence"

I have to tell ya, Hoot - this sentence has been rattling about in my head.

You have to dig a layer or two deep but this is the real central theme of Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_: "The role of a man's mind in existence."

IF you do not _think_ THEN you do not _am_. Or something.

Expand full comment

"so Canada offered to move her into a coffin"

*vet looking at brochure* "I don't see any Round Trip pricing on here."

Expand full comment

"ChatGPT can also write sonnets"

Iambic Pentameter FTW!

#ShakespeareWasWrite

Expand full comment
founding

And the rhyme scheme is also wrong, but at least the AI knows that sonnets have fourteen lines. But it's probably programmed to learn. By next week it may be writing perfect terza rimas.

Expand full comment

Get back to me when it's writing hybrid Limerick Haiku material.

---

There once was a man

From Cork who got Limericks

and Haikus confused

Expand full comment

I laughed out loud again! How did you come up with that?

Expand full comment

I heard it a long time ago. You have no idea the sorts of things a mind will choose to retain.

As a general rule, if it's useless, I definitely know it.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

"it's The Moors – not The Moops"

*Alex Trebek voice* "ooh, I'm sorry, Bubble Boy. That's incorrect."

+

Paging Julinthecrown. Julinthecrown to the White Courtesy Phone.

Expand full comment

I once had, and maybe still have somewhere, a book of 1500 Dirty Jokes. Among them was a series of about 50 limericks about a man trying to "deflower" his virgin wife on their wedding night. That was funny enough, but later I ran across them again.

I was being a summer Research Assistant for one of my profs and he wanted to know more about Deconstructionism (In Poli Sci and Int'l Relations, not English -- long story), and I discovered (and have lost) a Master's Thesis by a female French student who claimed the series of limericks was a cry against the falseness of canned food. Honest to God, that was her claim. I showed it to my prof, who rarely laughed, and he like to died. Said it was possibly the funniest thing he had ever read.

Stupid Frenchies. I don't think you can even write limericks in Frank.

Expand full comment

"No, seriously, I’m the one who wrote the words you’re reading right now. Honest. I am a human being!"

Sure, whatever.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1506515-im-not-a-robot

Expand full comment

"I swear I haven’t been replaced by a robot."

That's exactly what a robot would say.

Expand full comment

"These are all made-up rules. They’re arbitrary. They were created by Westerners in power."

"Being fluent in English is racist."

"I teach high school English,..."

See, here's the thing: The only reason you expect to be seen - nay, respected you plebes!- as an ostensible "expert" in the field of English is that you went to school and studied, presumably, the rules of English.

If the rules are made up and your education and certifications are meaningless then your experience, wisdom, and advice are no more useful than those of any other Internet Rando.

Did I already mention that #ShakespeareWasWrite ?

Expand full comment

"I’m scared, y’all. I don’t think AI is quite there yet, but there will come a day when it can compose compelling prose better than most humans can. Then what happens to people like… well, me?"

Thomas Friedman has been spitting out columns like this for decades and he's practically on the NYT Masthead.

And he's not funny. Nor smart. Nor quite like a Real Boy, but I digress...

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/create-your-own-thomas-friedman-op-ed-column

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Yes?

Expand full comment

I expect the "journalists" at the NYT to go out on strike next week, and get replaced by AI that is cheaper, requires less office space, gets no salary or benefits, can write as well the the NYT staff, and can write 24/7.

I also expect that none of the readers/subscribers of the NYT will notice the changeover.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

I expect it because they've said they will if they don't get what they want, and I don't think the NYT will give it to them, and they are mostly a pretty stupid bunch.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment
founding

My biggest pet peeve with the education systems nationwide is the neglect in teaching proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, and not correcting people when they use the wrong homonym.

I work for an extremely large privately owned conglomerate. I run the legal department. Do you want to take a stab at how many people there are in this corporate office that can write a proper business letter - or a letter of any type that would be acceptable anywhere outside the flying thumbs community? Other than me, about two, and that is pushing it. I get resumes that I know are professionally done because once I have the person on the phone and I start speaking with them, they clearly do not have the speaking skills so I KNOW that there is no way in Hell that they have the writing skills.

People are being graduated with false hope. That is the saddest part. High school - all of the public school experience - is the one and only time where you really and truly have the opportunity to level the playing field - FOR FREE. All you have to do is the work, if you have the teachers willing to do right by you. If they and their principals fail, we are doomed.

Stop lowering standards. Children will learn if if you treat them with respect knowing that they are going to learn, not thinking that that they won't. That's how we are operating in NYC now. It's all pretense and happy chat. Meanwhile less than 50% of kids are at grade level in every subject. It's a disgrace. But by all means, let's keep teachers like this boob who thinks correcting grammar and spelling is white supremacy.

Expand full comment

"and not correcting people when they use the wrong homonym"

Your not wrong.

"All you have to do is the work"

Ah - there's the rub.

My favorite quote from Kurt Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_, when Castle is appraising Little Newt's painting, he asks, "Self educated?" Newt replies, "Isn't everybody?"

"Children will learn if if you treat them with respect"

Modus Tollens would like to have a private word.

Expand full comment
founding

LMAO @ your not wrong.

I much prefer Modus Ponens.

Expand full comment

We'd all prefer Modus Ponens.

Don't settle for a lesser syllogism.

Expand full comment

One of my undergraduate majors was Philosophy. How in the world are you familiar with Logic?!

Expand full comment

I took Discrete Math and also a Digital Electronics class so I wasn't completely uninitiated but argumentation is really interesting in it's own right.

A two-column Geometry Proof like many of us probably did ... a while back follows that same structure. Throw in some fallacies and it got really interesting!

Expand full comment
founding

I used to get straight As in geometry. I loved that class. Had a test every week. After a while the professor said I didn’t have to take them because I always got 100. I took them anyway because I loved logic puzzles.

Expand full comment

A good logic proof is a beautiful thing.

Expand full comment

Hell yeah

Expand full comment

I've found you also need to push a little. Well, maybe push a lot.

Expand full comment

My most current unhappiness with homonyms (and I see it everywhere) is to confuse "free reign" with "free rein." I suppose it's because so few are familiar with horses anymore.

And they are NOT homonyms, but I hate using cache when the proper word is cachet.

Expand full comment

You know, as creative as ChatGPT is, your ideas were insanely clever! Batman helping the Joker move into an apartment? Einstein and Beach Babes?! "I can't even get my maid to do the windows, much less a contract killing." I laughed out loud. Then I realized how f***** up Canada is. Thank you for the picture of worst haircut of the week.

Are you SURE you're not AI? How do you know? Did the machine tell you?

Expand full comment

Of course you're not a robot. They don't have Furnace Funds.

Expand full comment
founding

I'm, thinking that if rules of grammar and rhetoric are made-up tools of White Oppression, WHY IS SHE AN ENGLISH TEACHER? It's obvious that she receives some kind of thrill encouraging children to break rules and be "transgressive." Does she have a goal to her grooming? Is she picturing their faces as she touches herself in the lady's room? Ugh.

Expand full comment

"Does she have a goal to her grooming?"

Pfffft... yeaaAH.

Expand full comment

"In case you’re worried, I give you the Jim Treacher Promise: I will never use AI-generated text in this newsletter without clearly labeling it as such for the purposes of demonstration and/or humor. I won’t try to pass off the work of a mindless machine as my own mindless work. "

That just what AI would want you to say.

Expand full comment