Letters from Flyoverland featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.
"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change." -Thomas Hardy
Dear Gentlereaders,
Yes, some of the "boilerplate" that formerly preceded my greeting is gone.
"There are five parts of a friendly letter, and one optional part. The five include a heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature. There's also an optional postscript a writer may decide to include." -Sister Mary McGillicuddy
Yes, Virginia, in the distant past H. sapiens had to compose letters on sheets of unformatted paper, sometimes called stationary, and apply a format they had learned in grade school.
{So it's true, you've disinherited the Stickies!}
Nah, but they're all over 18 now and two have moved out so they've all been promoted to gentlereaders. None have left Canada's version of the Deep South yet (Northern Ohio) and our lives remain closely intertwined. Duuude moved to Tennessee to launch his life now that school's finally behind him but returned two minutes later, burned by some extended family members.
I say finally because to him, as it did to his beloved grandfather, being done with mandatory schooling feels like having completed a prison sentence imposed on an innocent man.
Fortunately, he's an easy-going, well-adjusted young man who doesn't hold grudges (unlike his beloved grandfather who often does despite his best efforts to the contrary) who plans on trying again once he can afford to do so without "help" from anybody.
Like me, he would prefer to live south of the Mason-Dixon line. Unlike me, he doesn't mind hot and humid weather as much as I do.
There's a bit of drama in my life right now (some good, some bad), and given that I've recently obtained Cosmic Geezer perspective, I thought it would be a good time to make some changes. Not just in my column, but in other aspects of my life that I won't bore you with. Now that I've been blessed with CGP much has become clear.
And of course, we all gotta do what we need to do to maintain the illusion of control.
{The illusion of control?}
The subject of a future column, stay tuned. Now, if you're still here, and still awake...
{Wait-wait-wait. What's with the title? What's this got to do with David Bowie?}
Nothing, the title is just clickbait.
{You're gonna make people mad!}
People who are only interested in reading about Mr. Bowie will flee in short order. People who are interested in reading about Mr. Bowie but who are also naturally intelligent, inquisitive sorts who like to read the work of clever columnists will keep reading, at least for a bit.
Perhaps I'll pick up a new fan. Hopefully, no one will try and track me down and kill me. I wouldn't mind an attempted cancelation, all publicity is good publicity if you spin it properly. The Information Age is also the All Show Biz all the Time Age.
{Hmmm... You may be smarter than you look.}
Good thing, right?
The classics never get old. For those of you reading this via the dead trees format: BA DUM TSSS!
{Hi-LAR-ious. Can we hope for some meat on this sandwich?}
The Wall Street Journal, as my millions of regular readers know, is my personal paper of record.
Although the news division now is forced to demean itself by drifting slightly leftwards...
And featuring slightly more in the way of celebrity/fashion/self-help/sensationalist/doom-mongering shtuff that many H. sapiens can't seem to ever get enough of to maintain circulation numbers (or at least I hope that's why they're doing it),
They still also publish the sort of high-quality journalism they're famous for, including stories that are not widely reported on elsewhere but should be.
For example, the Emperor's minions, lackeys, and sneaky students are stealing our chips.
{Frito Lay products are as popular and widely distributed in China as they are here. Personally, I can't get enough Roasted Fish, why do they need to steal our chips?}
I'm talkin' computer chips, specifically Nvidia AI chips. "Nvidia’s chips are highly coveted for their ability to handle the massive computations needed to train AI systems that are critical to China-U.S. tech rivalry." -Raffaele Huang/WSJ
{Just a sec', I'll be right back... Hey, I enjoy reading lengthy articles about the technology sector as much as the next guy person. Still, I think you'd be doing your gentlereaders a public service by providing a summary.}
Easy Peasy, here's another quote from the article.
"The student is part of a barely concealed [widely known, easily accessible] network of buyers, sellers and couriers bypassing the Biden administration’s restrictions aimed at denying China access to Nvidia’s advanced AI chips..."
{Student, what student?}
The article begins by describing how a Chinese student studying in Singapore brought home a half dozen Nvidia AI chips when he flew home to China for a vacation for which he was paid $100 each by a Chinese middlemanperson.
Depending on the particular chip, they will be resold for roughly 20 to 30k — each.
"The Commerce Department, which oversees enforcement of the U.S. restrictions, didn’t respond to requests for comment."
Given that we're fighting Cold War Two, even if The Fedrl Gummit doesn't like to acknowledge it — we shouldn't needlessly risk offending a country that supplies slave labor (and lots of customers) to build us cool sneakers and smartphones — you'd think we'd be all over this.
{Hey, If you would stop ignoring the artificial intelligence built into your spell checker you would know that you should have written you would think that we would be all over this. You'd and we'd are some pretty ugly lookin' contractions...just sayin'.}
On an unrelated note, I'm officially endorsing Camalla Harris and Pete Buttigieg for president and vice president (respectively) this year.
Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, vote for them and we'll all win big! I'm on a fixed income so I wrote a slogan in lieu of a donation.
{AI wants you to write instead of in lieu of in lieu of.}
She's a woman, of a couple of different colors, and he belongs to the LGBT+ club. Between them, that's three (or four, depending on how you count) different historically marginalized minorities. Most importantly, there's no trace of Satan's inadvertent minions, straight white males.
Being a straight white male myself, this is my way of apologizing for being responsible for everything that's wrong with the world.
{Pete who?}
Have an OK day,
Colonel Cranky
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