In the Fry and Laurie series, Laurie nails Bertie in a way I try to emulate. (It seems to have a lot to do with the way he uses rising inflections at the end of statements.)
Jeeves is easier, though I think Fry makes him a bit too extravagantly emotional.
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I'm reading P.G. Wodehouse's /What Ho, Jeeves/ to Dawn. Because I don't subvocalize when I read, I didn't realize until now just how good his prose is. The narrator, Bertie Wooster, is a combination of clueless and confident, and the rhythm/scansion of the narration absolutely requires you to read it in a way that brings that out.
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You know, whenever I read anything by the philosopher John "Chinese Room" Searle, I get supremely annoyed. He always has intellectual opponents. He never seems to treat them fairly. Not for him the motto "before demolishing your opponent's position, take care to state it so well she says 'I wish I'd put it that way.'"
I dislike people who are all about winning.
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The problem with Lakoff et al's theory of conceptual metaphor is that it's based on a mathematical metaphor (mappings between domains and ranges) that doesn't really apply to one kilogram of fat and glial cells and neurons that work via associations and activations.
But I just want to explain it and move on!
Also, Dawn finds my soy wax 921 candles "creepy." (She's right, actually.)
Trying to be a producer sucks. Better to passively consume.
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Remember when Barack Obama ridiculed Trump in a very public way?¹ Trump sure learned his lesson, was not in the slightest motivated to double down and show that .²
(Sorry, a hobbyhorse of mine, along with people who think that pointing out a reactionary's hypocrisy is somehow effectual. It just isn't.)
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B998-9DmecM&t=68s
² https://people.com/politics/chris-christie-on-obamas-2011-roast-of-donald-trump/
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What evidence is there from the last 20 years of US history that "ridicule, mocking, and humor" work in the sense of causing reactionaries to back off on some reactionary proposal or action?
Seems to me it only "works" in the sense of making the reactionary's opponents feel all superior. Might as well masturbate in public and call it a blow for the resistance. https://fediscience.org/@petergleick/113907589558939664
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Neat. Also kudos for "This version of the table [...] shows our current understanding of how each element found on Earth was originally produced." (my emphasis)
Being able to (1) understand that your understanding is limited, and (2) understand that so admitting [ought to] boost your credibility is so, so wonderful. https://mastodon.social/@coreyspowell/113907625463172223
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It seems to me, and I swear I'm not making this up, that over the years, my various shuffle algorithms have pretty much stopped queuing up "No Surrender"...
Well, we made a promise: we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender. ¹
... and are increasingly shoving "Glory Days":
Well, the time slips away
Leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of
Glory days ²
... in my face. Must be keyed off my birthdate.
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txKhQ9cbhgo
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts5tR5oX2b0
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I so love Patti Smith's song "Horses." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSk6jfln84A (headphones recommended).
I follow various people who have better and more educated taste in music than me ( @GeePawHill, @gvwilson @raganwald @richard_littler) I wonder what they think of it.
(It's so much in dialogue, as the academics say, with early rock'n'roll.)
(Will not mind if they think my enthusiasm is juvenile. A lot of mine are after all these years.)
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And I finish with this zinger:
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I am writing (as an example of a larger point) about US urban renewal in the '60s and '70s, as one does, and I am unreasonably proud of a summary sentence that will be meaningful only to people of a Certain Age.
I begin thusly:
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I am irked and miffed. Today's New Yorker crossword had the 21 down clue "Group dealing with moguls," I instantly said "suckups," but it turned out to be "skiteam." My answer was better.
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Trudeau is out of politics soon, so why not? Poke Trump in the eye and make a nice gesture toward the Huron/Wyandot nation.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Michigan%E2%80%93Huron
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Huron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Michigan
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Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are, technically, a single lake because the Straits of Mackinac keep their waters at the same level.¹ Lake Huron is the larger of the two, considered separately,² so Justin Trudeau would be justified in insisting to Google that what is now labeled Michigan should be labeled Huron.
(1/2) https://ohai.social/@MeanwhileinCanada/113906194845347248
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Oops. Typo. The Macbook Air is a 2023 M2 model. Some chargers only work with M1.
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Descriptions of USB hubs are not helping me.
I have before me an old Macbook Air M1 with two USB-C ports and no dedicated charging port. One of the ports is dead, so I can either charge the computer or use USB to transfer data. I wish to do both at the same time.
Is there a USB hub that will let me send power into the computer while at the same time supporting a USB-to-Ethernet dongle so that I can have a fast route from the laptop to my NAS?
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Revisited the early '80s. Had a wonderful time. My computer marked with an X.
https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/45
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Does having no unread messages in your mailbox count as "inbox zero"? If so, I'm only five away!
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"Working toward the Führer" might be an instructive way to think about how the Trump administration will make policy. It doesn't make for efficient or effective government, but who cares?
https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/NaziGermany443/410WorkingTowardstheFuehrer.html
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A handy though incomplete list of Trump administration actions the first week: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/01/week-1
Things are worse than I expected, and I expected them to be bad.
The Democrat Party has, by and large, proved to have no spine at all, or no principles to have a spine about. Barack Obama is dead to me; at least George W. Bush had the decency to cut Trump, not chat and chuckle with Trump like any other member of the Club. But Obama's always happy to scold Black men to their faces.
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text/gemini
