A Random Randomnesses Column
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| Image by 995645 from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.
"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." -Bill Gates
Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),
If you've been waiting with bated breath for Chapter Six of my condensed history of the world, I apologize.
{You know, I've always wondered...}
It's a transitive verb from Middle English that means to reduce the force or intensity of (Merriam-Webster) and has nothing to do with fishing.
If you're new here, this will give you a chance to catch up. If you're a regular reader this will build anticipation... All right, I admit it, I just decided to take a break for no special reason.
- If Bill Gates is so smart, why is my Hotmail account always choked with spam and my Gmail account virtually spam-free? Why can't Willy take Sundar to lunch at one of those fancy places rich people eat, like Olive Garden, and ask for help?
Word on the street is that the Goog is running behind Microsoft in the race to unleash artificial intelligence on those of us who think lunch at Chick-fil-A constitutes a memorable day. Perhaps they could trade info and fix Hotmail for the little people?
After all, Willy fancies himself a philanthropist.
{I'll bite, what's a Sundar?}
Dana, you are, um... What's the opposite of cosmopolitan?
{Parochial? Narrow-minded? Rustic?}
Exactly, and likely racist, and probably some sort of ____phobe as well. He's the chief Googler.
{Huh. I'm surprised you don't call him Sunday, or Sundae. What are you whining about anyway? Hotmail is free, and so is the software you're using, even as we speak, to write what you call a column and what normal people call a blog.}
Free? I think that if more people realized just how minutely and carefully everything they do online is being tracked, recorded, and sold they would realize that there is still no such thing as a free lunch.
{Oh please, everybody knows there's no such thing as privacy anymore. What can you do?}
Click here, then scroll down and follow through.
- Although I hate to admit it, I find that my attention span has slowly but steadily diminished since the worldwide web of all knowledge has become ubiquitous, and I'm not even a social media maniac.
I've entertained thoughts of self-harm while enduring the interminable wait for my toast to pop up.
{Speaking of which, it's the World Wide Web, not the worldwide web and as far as I know, you're the only one that tosses in "of all knowledge."}
Well, as I've long suspected, worldwide web it turns out (I recently got around to finally looking this up) is grammatically correct, world wide web ain't, but that's not my point.
It's just a dash of attention-seeking behavior on my part that also subtly implies that it's a web of contradictory, missing, manipulated, and frequently incorrect knowledge.
Not that knowing this keeps me from indulging in extended periods of web surfing from which I suddenly regain consciousness and ask myself, where have I been?
Look, a squirrel!
- For the record, The Wall Street Journal officially and enthusiastically embraced the ongoing decline of journalistic standards on 01/06/24. Granted, this is a somewhat arbitrary date given that my personal paper of record (for now) has been declining in quality slowly (but steadily) for a while now.
However, Emma Tucker, named editor-in-chief in December of '22 by King Rupert (who has since abdicated the throne to his son, at least officially) published a sleazy, speculation-filled front-page hit piece — A Tony Stark (Elon Musk) takedown.
{Wait-wait-wait. Mr. Musk has no shortage of critics loose in the world.}
Absabalutely, and I'm sure it's a coinkydink that WSJ reporter Tim Higgins, who's been writing almost exclusively about Musk for quite some time, has recently written several articles that read more like editorials than hard news stories.
When Rupert Murdoch folded the WSJ into his media empire he assured the world he wouldn't lower the paper's famously high standards. In fact, he expanded the Op-Ed section, which was/is separated from the news division by a Chinese wall.
{Wait-wait-wait. Isn't Chinese wall a racist term?}
Nah, it's just culturally insensitive, according to Wikipedia anyway. The Wikipedia entry mentions an unintentionally hil-LAR-ious suggested replacement, cone of silence, a technical term that also happens to be the name of a device used in a formerly famous TV show.
This column was sitting in a drawer, as you can tell by the date of the referenced hit piece (1/6), but the Journal has since published another hit piece about Mr. Musk. It's basically the same as the first one: mostly unidentified sources say Elon does, or at least did, a lot of drugs.
I find it interesting that both major articles' comment sections overwhelmingly supported Musk. I'd love to know what the strategery is, perhaps controversy for its own sake?
I refuse to post any links to this blatant purple journalism but in the Journal's defense, they recently published an in-depth piece about the fact Taylor Swift's dad played college football for a year.
The Other Football Player in Taylor Swift's Life
Now that's world-class journalism.
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
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