CSotD: Friday Follies
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Everybody talks about Friday the 13th, but nobody does anything about it. Except Toby. Toby is cool.
Best part of his plan is that, while snow is unpredictable, you can know ahead of time when it will be Friday the 13th and build the school calendar around it. Some people might say that giving kids the day off for Friday the 13th just reinforces and perpetuates an unscientific, irrational myth. These people have never been in a Texas school. (Yes, I know – they’re working on it.)
And today’s Fortuitous Timing Award goes to the Lockhorns.
I’m trying to make today’s chuckles a break from all the politics, but politics keep drifting over into humor, and I don’t disagree with Toro’s suggestion that Dear Leader appears to be entering the Slim Pickens segment of his presidency.
Of course, in Dr. Strangelove, Pickens’ character knew he was going to his death. It probably didn’t seem suicidal to Trump to sell about $1 million worth of Nvidia stock around August 21, just before the revelations of Huang’s affair broke and the stock dropped in value 29%.
After all, he couldn’t foresee the results of the Nov 3 elections from there. His ability to predict the future isn’t perfect.
Just a little better than it’s supposed to be.
Misdea addresses the “What did Huang know and when did he know it?” aspect of this mess, but I’m willing to believe he knew nothing until all hell broke loose. One of the things I learned in college was that A students can be pretty clueless about life beyond their textbooks.
There are more timing factors in this than just the intriguing question of why Trump chose that date to dump his stock. It seems that the affair may have been in progress before she was recruited by Beijing, which raises questions of why she cooperated. Was she already a faithful follower or did they hold something over her head?
But most cheated lovers can be divided between “I kind of knew something was up” and “I had no idea,” and I’d bet that Huang falls under #2. This cloak-and-dagger affair may not have required a Mata Hari.
Somebody is going to get one helluva book out of all this.
Okay, enough politics.
Nice palate cleanser from First Dog, and I like the way he builds from a happy little story to the “wait a minute” mood at the end. Granted, Pino seems like a cheerful fellow, but so does Muse, and that little dude can get way, way the hell over the line by design.
My first Alexa died after quite a few years, and her replacement has much more AI capability. However, I’ve always limited what she is instructed to do, so the main difference I see is her ability to interpret plain language. I wanted her to let me know each morning when I was approaching deadline for posting, since I tend to get into a groove when I write. My original unit would have required me to go to a web page and do such-and-such, but now I just said, “Alexa, could you say ‘Hurry up please; it’s time’ each morning at 8:40?” and she said she could and so far she has.
She doesn’t sound much like T.S. Eliot, but she does the job.
All of which is to say that there may be a GIGO factor in this, such that you shouldn’t give your AI too much responsibility, but, then again, what if it just takes it without asking?
Exactimundo. All I use Alexa for is an alarm clock, a weather gauge and a radio, or to answer very simple questions I don’t want to look up, like the country’s median age (39.4).
I also have a standard transmission in my car. I’m not a Luddite. I just like to think and I like to drive. I realize that’s beginning to make me seem like a freak, but gobble gobble, I’m one of us, one of us.
Rina Piccolo’s new feature is up at GoComics today, and while it only comes out once a week, it’s packed with a week’s worth of material. It’s like a cross of Carol Lay with Who Needs Donuts?, a mix of thoughtful stories and surrealistic bonus materials. Fascinating stuff!
The first Christmas stuff has begun appearing, and yesterday I saw wreaths for sale, which is not only early because Christmas shouldn’t begin until Santa arrives at the end of the Thanksgiving Day Parade, but also because one of my boys was a firefighter and so I’m doubly aware of what can happen when evergreens dry out.
Fortunately, my streaming service offers about 150 channels, so I can watch schmaltzy Hallmark drek every day all day and don’t have to wait for Christmas, or I can not watch it at all, even at Christmas, just like I used to.
I also saw ribbon candy in the store yesterday. In our school, once you got to seventh grade, you had a fundraiser each year, which eventually paid for your senior trip to DC. Seventh grade was ribbon candy, and selling that sorry crap from door to door was a real test of charity, because who would buy it for any reason except to support the school?
How I learned an important academic lesson: In a ninth grade report, I referred to Ethan Frome as “Victorian melodrama,” and that was the nice, polite part. Jump forward 35 years, and my GF was taking a cinema class at Smith in which she absolutely despised one of the films and intended writing a paper saying so.
I warned her, “He didn’t assign it to find out if you’d notice that it sucks.” But she went ahead with the paper, pulled no punches and thus learned that same important lesson:
Always assume that the instructor likes and admires the assigned material.
Though I’d love to take a class from somebody who would mix in an occasional dog.
Speaking of hard-learned lessons, this song goes out to Alice Huang and anyone else who hooked up with the rich guy instead of the gardener:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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