CSotD: Humpday is Welcome as Always
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It’s either cuddle the dog or shut off the alarm clock, and waking up to an inquisitive nose is better than waking up to an obnoxious buzzing. In my nine-to-five days, I woke up to NPR, but sometimes I just stayed asleep and dreamt about the news.
The dog knows when it’s time to get up, but then she just goes out to pee and goes back to bed. However, the fact that she needs to pee is a pretty good motivator for me to get up, too.
(It’s traditional here to insert a joke about inventing an alarm clock that sounds like a dog retching.)
Back when Amazon began as a mail-order bookstore, I was about 40 miles and a ferry ride away from a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. Then I was 40 miles and a ferry ride away from a bricks-and-mortar bookstore and a Borders and a Barnes & Noble, and then the nice big independent bookstore went out of business because that’s what happens when the chains move in.
The chains are more about marketing than about reading. They’re good at that, but they could be selling clothing or toys and nothing much would change. I suppose the successful promotion of “beach books” and so forth keeps the medium alive, but the idea that you need a new bathing suit every summer keeps the clothing industry humming and it’s still nonsense.
The Guardian had an article the other day about books that made a difference to their staffers, but they were all new titles and I was struck that nobody mentioned a classic until I saw a note at the end that said the the newspaper would get a commission if we bought one of those books through their gateway.
They’ve also got an article about how to market books, which is interesting and could probably be adapted to tell how to market cream cheese or insulated water bottles. One of my favorite assignments from my business reporting days came when I took a hard-hat tour of a new grocery store and the manager explained how the layout functioned practically and persuasively, and also about the J-curve that other stores feel when a competitor comes to town.
But that ain’t literature.
I’m waiting for someone to explain how to market artificial intelligence, because I don’t think the current approach is working terribly well, though it seems to be impressing people who stand to make money from it, since they’re cramming it into everything and building data centers to produce more.
But I’m not sure Dear Leader’s on the right track by warning that people who don’t like data centers in their neighborhoods want to be poor and backwards. But what do I know? His renaming of Lake Ontario has a whopping 7% support rate.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Britain has had a respite from the drought, and here’s proof that great minds work somewhat alike. We’re in a drought here, though nothing like Europe has seen, and, true enough, when it does rain, someone remarks that it’s good for the lawns and the farmers, though data centers aren’t terribly popular hereabouts.
The winter here looks warm and dry, thanks to El Niño, which means we need to straighten things out with Canada, because the maple producers in Vermont and New Hampshire may not be able to fill the gap. And, yes, when it rains, we cite the maple producers. And the lawns.
I would never tell this to my kids, but I’ve got to admit there was a part of me that was proud when they were able to pull the wool over my eyes, even if I was furious at the moment.
But this guy needs to wait another 20 years or so, until his little girl is grown and comes home for Thanksgiving. That’s when the stories come out and you discover how much you missed back when you thought you were the perfect parent and on top of everything.
This, by the way, is why everyone should have at least two kids, so they can swap memories and laugh while you get a very late dose of humility. It makes you a much mellower grandparent, as you watch your kids deal with the things you had once thought you were handling so well.
Joe Martin picks up on an annoying bit of jargon and gets it right: As near as I can tell, when they say something has been “weaponized,” they just mean they are at least vulnerable if not completely wrong about it. And, as in this example, it basically means they’re not getting their way.
The great thing about this cartoon is that we expect childish reasoning from children because hence the term. It’s not as amusing when it comes from grown-ups, who ought to realize that nobody gets their way all the time. But when you hear the term “weaponized,” just assume it means you’re talking to a six-year-old.
There are all sorts of things that are true not because they’re factual but because everyone accepts them in the same way. The joke is that it won’t work for arithmetic, but it certainly works for grammar and history.
Look at poor “literally,” which once had a specific meaning and now means what it means and also its opposite.
And Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” but enough people think she did that she might as well have. It’s more harmful in present tense, as when people believe that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet or the JD Vance had a thing about couches or, certainly, that vaccines are bad for you.
In a real classroom, if two kids thought that 4+4=7, that would be their problem, but if the whole class believed it, that’s the teacher’s fault.
She could take four items, add four more, and get the kids to count them. About half the kids would realize that 4+4=8, and the other half would conclude that their teacher was a tricky liar and probably a communist.
It’s a little late to sort out Marie Antoinette, just as we’ll never convince people that Washington never cut down a cherry tree. Or that Donald Trump did.
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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