I just hosted a Zoom meeting with Drama Queen, using my exciting new Zoom account. I'll keep practicing until next Wednesday when I have to host the Spanish Volunteers meeting. Cherisse from the science team said she could do a meeting on Monday, so I'll see if I can get them both at the same time.
I like zoom, but I compare it to MS-DOS in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. But for a quick get together, it's useful.
You can choose to record meetings (pretty easy to do), you can open a white board where people can draw stuff (I use chat instead). A feature I like is both the transcribe and the AI summary.
All of those are just mouse click commands, once you find them they're easy! I do think recording is done when you set up the meeting (you can go back and edit the meeting before it begins to switch it on and off).
I couldn't name a strength or weakness of MS-DOS if my life depended on it. DQ showed me where some of the commands are. Maybe we can try "transcribe" today. That would be helpful, if it works in Spanish.
The real-time captioning can be helpful if some participant doesn't have a good microphone. In those circumstances, the AI tends to detect regular words better than my ears do. The downside is that it will mess up proper names and other things it does not know about. But one can allow for that.
I wouldn't be surprised if it offered a Spanish option. But you may want to second-guess the translation. I wouldn't go for the AI summary. I've been in a Zoom and seen an AI summary of it (which we didn't ask for) later. It was apparent that AI had no idea of the purpose of the meeting or even that we were following an actual formal agenda. For loosey-goosey "meetings" that just kick stuff around it might work. But personally I would not trust it.
Experimenting with various features is probably the right approach to take. Human editorial second-guessing of what is produced may be needed, but I'm sure you can handle that.
I am procrastinating and found this. It made me happy. And having friends likely to appreciate such things, whether in favor or opposition, makes me smile.
I struggle with pronouns - in my spanish practice. I understand the basics, but there is so much nuance when, for example, to use the "se" reflexive pronoun over "me/le/la", and further when to combine it with "me" for example "I dropped the fork" = "se me cayo el tenedor". Why both instead of one of the other. Another confusion - when to use "le" over "lo or la". I'm batting about .700 with a lot of guesses.
"Se me cayo el tenedor," is literally, "The fork went and fell on me," where "on me" doesn't mean the fork hit your foot, but that it "fell" as a personal affront to you. Spanish doesn't really have a straight up transitive verb "to drop". It uses "let fall."
Interesting. But you might consider that all this pronoun talk right out in the open like this could land you on some government anti-woke investigation list, and the next thing you know some Fed tech guy shows up to AI your entire archive for inappropriate pronoun removal. Just sayin'...
I noticed that the WSJ had an article on an influencer who sold weight loss advice, who herself then went on a GLP-1. Thanks to CynthiaW’s column on fiddler crabs yesterday, I thought I’d share my own rapid weight loss story; 30 pounds overnight…I decided to identify as a fiddler crab and cut off my left arm. I’m awaiting it to grow back, so the weight will come back on, but still….
One could use the Borges tactic of writing a review of a mythical blog that is about a guy writing a blog about someone else's blogging about their perceptions.
Or, in the 3rd person. "He felt the need to express himself about matters he barely understood." Like people that write about themselves in the 3rd person...."Marque don't do that."
The author, to my mind, did the best they could given the challenge. We applaud the effort, although it will have the unfortunate effect of making me even more self-conscious about pronouns. BTW, is it acceptable to put (I, me) in one’s bio?
Often omit the "I" on the grounds the subject is implied. Don't care what the grammar police think. Just write as seems right. The eyes see, the ayes have it, and the I's are third.
Depends on if you're trying to get the job. As your financial adviser, I advise never taking a job where you have to think about your pronouns.
I can almost get to Jordan Peterson levels of...I said almost...disdain for the pronoun thing. Jordan...no sensayuma. I can't trust folks that have no apparent sensayuma.
I went to a training where they insisted on pronouns. I caused quite a stir by using "The Friend", "This Friend" and "That Friend". The trainer got condescending about my not taking it serious (and hoping to cause others to avoid my tragic ways), when I explained in my religion that is the norm, and has been for hundreds of years. I then asked "Should I ignore my own cultural values and norms so you feel in better control of the training". A few friends spoke up indicating that yup, I do that regularly, it's not a joke or a slam against pronouns.
One branch of Friends sometimes still uses thee and thou, but the rest updated several generations ago. Probably still 100 years after everyone else.
Friends used to have men and women (plus children) separated by a curtain in the main worship room (the Meetinghouse room). The last of the curtains came down about 1955-ish...that was an 80+ year effort to remove them!
thee and thou would be used outside of Friends meetings, but not inside of meetings. So a plain speech person might use thee and thou while shopping, but "the Friend or this Friend" inside the meetinghouse during a meeting.
Also, a common phrase during discussion was to affirm what others said by stating "This Friend speaks for me". I still use that at UD, so some people think I'm friends with everyone! 😏
It's a weird thing about China in that one addresses everyone, even their best friends, as "Ms. Feng" or "Mr. Wu"..never by the first name. Maybe after decades, but people would wonder why you do that. Nicknames are fine, and have an extremely long and deep history. All the Emperor's had a "nickname" like the Hongwu Emperor whose name was Zhu Yuanzhang.
I am universally called "Uncle" by all my wife's students. "Uncle" or "Auntie" is how one refers to elders that they aren't blood related to. I can call my SIL by her first name, but I call my BIL by his full name. I call my BIL's brother "Er" which is "2". He's the 2nd child. Once you're inside, you're allowed to call him 2.
Also, last name comes first. Deng Xiaoping is Mr. Deng.
In classes, I tell students to call me what they like. Some think it is cool to call a professor by their first name, others like having some formality (especially back when we had Chinese students). So I don't insist. Now the Chinese students are gone, not so much. Another trend is a hybrid name. My friend who has a Greek last name goes by "Dr. Z". So I offer up "Dr. J", but I remind them I cannot dunk.
I'd call a professor "Dr. (name)". There's something about maintaining naming conventions that keeps things in their proper lane. Calling them their first name...too familiar. It's like your dentist wearing shorts. It's just not right.
It's tricky, because I don't want to sound pretentious and expect people to call me "Dr. Janney" or "Professor Janney". Every once in awhile at my youngest son's sports games, parents would ask what to call me. Katie would answer "his name is Jay". If my oldest son was there he'd tell them "I call him "Middle Aged Decrepit".
Among my colleagues, we're all on a first name basis.
But in a formal academic ceremony, using my title seems more appropriate. If I am being introduced to give a talk, the speaker invariably introduces me as "Dr. Jay Janney".
Although some at the mothership affectionately call me "professor", or "the professor". Which doesn't bother me.
I wish Donald Trump had the same reticence to use ‘I’ as does our host. Everything is all about him.
Yesterday he ambushed another foreign visitor/victim during an Oval Office press session, on live TV. This time, the victims was the South African President, with Trump calling out the supposed “genocide” of white South Africans. (The actual facts are disputed).
Another day, another extremely weird interaction. I mean, when did the alleged "genocide of white people" in South Africa become our new national obsession?
Genocide is too strong a term, from what I gather. It depends to some degree on whether or not you would consider what happened in Zimbabwe to be a genocide, and I don’t think most people would.
SA faces serious problems of runaway crime and corruption faced by a lot of third-world countries. And it has been on a very bad path for a long time. When living standards decline for everyone, minorities become easy scapegoats for majoritarian populists to blame everything on.
The knee-jerk reaction here says it’s all bogus because Trump/MAGA think it’s a problem and exaggerate. But looking at it from the American academic lens of “white European people = bad” is just as mindlessly simplistic.
Scott Adams had a riff on that with his Dilbert column, where Trump begins having MAGA sing "Kill the left Bores", while explaining it's not literally about killing anyone.
BTW, Adams announced he has advanced prostate cancer, and expects to die this year from it. Either it's a bizarre PR stunt or no more Dilbert...
CynthiaW caught my Bidenesque moment where I called him Douglas Adams.
Which he put behind a paywall when distributors dropped, him, or so I thought. I fell sorry for his cancellation but not that sorry. He should have known better. As for his cancer, I will pray for him.
The facts seem to be pretty clear that, while there have been some race (and class) based attacks on and killing of white South Africans, including Afrikaners, the numbers are modest, especially in the context of a very murdery country.
Most of what I've read about the situation and the murder of *white* farmers indicate that racial motivation is not the driver of the attacks and that many more *black* farm employees are killed than white farmers, the whole thing amounting more to "poverty vs wealth" crime rather than a "black on white" racial thing, much less a *genocide*.
The infuriating thing to me, beyond the obvious inanity of using terms like genocide for what's happening regarding crimes committed on isolated farms in South Africa, is that words have meanings, and when used improperly often enough for long enough they lose their meaning and their ability to shock the conscience when that is required for people to understand the import of something.
Donald Trump and his cohort of constant liars not only damage our country in very real ways but indeed they damage the very language we use to communicate with each other through their unrelenting improper use of inappropriate words to stoke the emotional reaction and drive the societal and cultural divisions they desire as a key element of their quest to obtain and retain ever more political power.
I could easily use a plethora of four-letter words to expand upon what I think and how I feel about the people involved in this disgrace, but those have all been getting a lot more use that they probably should have of late as well.
Yes! The damage to the language is the most troubling thing to me. Maybe it wasn't intended as "Take out the communication lines before launching the attack," but I feel that is what has. On fact happened when I struggle to articulate a thought both briefly and clearly.
Good morning. 45 degrees here and sunny, with a high maybe reaching 60. Shaping up to be a cool Memorial Day weekend. The mothership is covering the creaky state of our air traffic control system, exemplified by the brief outages affecting Newark Airport.
Ladder Lady arrived home yesterday, dealing with pain and resting up. It’s been exactly two weeks since she fell.
Phil, I hope Ladder Lady makes a full recovery! Sorry to have missed the original posting. That must have been frightening for you both. So glad she's home.
In a no 🪜 story, I did not cover the missing hole after removing the fire escape ladder. Short version, fell through said 🕳 16' to concrete. Was blessed by family, friends and a great orthopedic surgeon. The much younger me took three months to recover. May her rehab be short and productive!
My husband and I were watching "Caribbean Life" last night. A Canadian couple bought a house in Vieques, PR, and their temporary solution to its not having a porch facing the ocean view was a ladder up to the roof.
I told my husband that, in that situation, I would go to church, and in a few days, some men would come and build stairs, and I would pay them. This is also how we often do things here ;-).
I don’t think you live in a convent in New Mexico, where the sisters needed a stairway to the choir loft in their new chapel. 🙂 (I assume you know that story).
Morning. That’s a lot of broken bones to knit for your LL. Hope she recovers full range of motion.
One more day of the southern heat. Traveling back tomorrow. It will take a couple days without excessive rain to get the turf back in shape. Looking forward to the cooler climate, though the subtropical landscape is cheery if you don’t have to work in it.
A few years back, I did a blog on Wordpress that dealt mostly with theater experiences, with occasional diversions into P. G. Wodehouse. I used the royal "we", which gave it a decided tone of pretentiousness.
It would be nifty to sound like Wodehouse. It makes you sound as if you travel as a committee.
Re-learning German as a teenager, I came to appreciate the impersonal form “one” a lot more. You use it a lot in German in polite company. The word is “man”, as distinct from the male adult “Mann”, but pronounced the same.
“Man”/“one” serves variously as first person singular, second person singular, or as a dummy subject when you don’t care to name names or point verbal fingers. For instance, a popular German TV series in the late ‘90s was “Man spricht Deutsch”, which was in reference to a sign German vacationers are glad to see at businesses when abroad, meaning “One speaks German”—we would say “German spoken here” using the passive without even a dummy subject.
German also differentiates “Mann” (an adult male) from “Mensch” (a human person), both of which are rendered “man” in English (and which drive linguistic feminists crazy).
If Mensch in the sense derived from Yiddish (meaning a person of character, integrity, and honor, someone to be emulated) can be applied to women as well as men, that's good enough for me. And probably more than good enough for Edith "Edit" Burton. Both of us have much more time for linguistics than for getting hung up on problems invented by those who let their ideological commitments overtake honest scholarship.
Yes, it’s the general word for “human” or “human being” and “person” or “individual”. It’s also used as an interjection, as we might use “Good grief!” or “Crimony!” as opposed to invoking the Deity.
I think you already know this, but Yiddish is a dialect of, or derived from, German, so it's unsurprising the same word 9albeit with slightly different meanings) shows up in both.
Good morning. Happy Friday! Looks like it's going to be a pretty nice morning here.
F and his friend (and his friend's exciting new driver's license) are planning to go to the zoo tomorrow. If his mom, who did all the driving practice with him, thinks it's okay, I guess I do, too.
It's a scary feeling, especially if you ever watch your children play "Mario Cart" and they enjoy collisions! 😬
One nice thing of living in a small town is that there isn't much traffic, so kids learn to drive. The bad thing is too many people living in a small town like to beat lights, and roll stop signs, so kids see bad role models...🤦♂️
Or as I like to say. If you imagine your work is meaningless, imagine being the person on the auto assembly line installing turn signals...
Ah cognitive failure!! Well let me tell I myself something 🤣
I helped spec the plastics for those turn signals! Sadly, unlike the friendly hillbãlylgendarmé SE of your whereabouts, and NE of one Icognito, we were schooled in the mild, calm era of the 1960s, to
A. Never ever roll a Stop Sign.
B. Always use turn signals.
I worked on the molding floor with nice peeps from the UAW at Guide Lamp (Anderson, Indiana) making lights! Use em!
For your biz class ethics, I offer I a case study on why one should always be compliant with traffic signs and laws.
I was forming a strategic supply agreement with a major important Italian company from the delicious and lovely Piedmont area. My guest, a senior experienced person, I had picked up and was driving early to our facility.
No cars anywhere. I came up to a stop sign. And as usual, even with no cars anywhere, I came to my usual full, and complete stop. I looked again and the proceed.
My Northern Italian guest said to me, what you just did was important to me. It showed my your integrity, even as no cars.were around, to obey the law. We made a great deal. But hey no judgment towards rolling stop signers!! This is just how I !! Don't roll!!
Today is doggie #6; rescue #, pickup day! Ms Pinki is so happy. Zuben today.
To share her happiness, I offer one of her childhood favorite songs, from 1953, Patti Page. "How much is that Doggie in the Window?"
"No cars anywhere. I came up to a stop sign. And as usual, even with no cars anywhere, I came to my usual full, and complete stop. I looked again and the proceed."
Good habits save lives. If you always come to a full stop, always use your turn signal, instead of evaluating each situation as a new event, you will not make the wrong decision when it really matters. I repeat this repeatedly when I'm teaching shooting sports, too. Every time you open up a situation to a new decision, you open up the possibility of making the wrong, perhaps catastrophically wrong, choice.
How far is F removed from his own license? My niece will be eligible for her learner’s in just over a month here in the Sunshine state when she turns 15.
I've got a lot of friends and acquaintances that are in their 50's that still don't know how to drive. It's interesting...cars are still a relatively new phenomenon. 15 years ago was when the first expressways starting to knit the country together. I'd drive on an expressway in a city of 20 million and be one of maybe a half dozen cars on an 8 lane highway. It's not like that now.
F is a long way from his license, because he failed driver's ed and can't take it again through the school system. Now we'll have to pay for private driver's ed. He is currently researching options, because I told him that if he wouldn't do the legwork - that is, using Google and maybe the telephone - why should I believe he would make the effort to pass this time?
I just hosted a Zoom meeting with Drama Queen, using my exciting new Zoom account. I'll keep practicing until next Wednesday when I have to host the Spanish Volunteers meeting. Cherisse from the science team said she could do a meeting on Monday, so I'll see if I can get them both at the same time.
I like zoom, but I compare it to MS-DOS in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. But for a quick get together, it's useful.
You can choose to record meetings (pretty easy to do), you can open a white board where people can draw stuff (I use chat instead). A feature I like is both the transcribe and the AI summary.
All of those are just mouse click commands, once you find them they're easy! I do think recording is done when you set up the meeting (you can go back and edit the meeting before it begins to switch it on and off).
I couldn't name a strength or weakness of MS-DOS if my life depended on it. DQ showed me where some of the commands are. Maybe we can try "transcribe" today. That would be helpful, if it works in Spanish.
The real-time captioning can be helpful if some participant doesn't have a good microphone. In those circumstances, the AI tends to detect regular words better than my ears do. The downside is that it will mess up proper names and other things it does not know about. But one can allow for that.
I wouldn't be surprised if it offered a Spanish option. But you may want to second-guess the translation. I wouldn't go for the AI summary. I've been in a Zoom and seen an AI summary of it (which we didn't ask for) later. It was apparent that AI had no idea of the purpose of the meeting or even that we were following an actual formal agenda. For loosey-goosey "meetings" that just kick stuff around it might work. But personally I would not trust it.
Thanks, that's useful. I think the recording will be helpful, because I can't always take notes in Spanish fast enough to catch everything important.
Experimenting with various features is probably the right approach to take. Human editorial second-guessing of what is produced may be needed, but I'm sure you can handle that.
MS-DOS was good when it first came out; it was just...limited.
I am procrastinating and found this. It made me happy. And having friends likely to appreciate such things, whether in favor or opposition, makes me smile.
https://theconversation.com/semicolons-are-becoming-increasingly-rare-their-disappearance-should-be-resisted-257019
Back to work, right after I get my feet off the stool...
I support semicolons; they're a great alternative to comma splices.
That was fun.
;-)
;-)
;-)
I see what you did there.
If any of you want to learn about the history of Ph.D. qualifying exams, this paragraph is pretty insightful.
https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2/status/1925875963679703178
Ok.....
I struggle with pronouns - in my spanish practice. I understand the basics, but there is so much nuance when, for example, to use the "se" reflexive pronoun over "me/le/la", and further when to combine it with "me" for example "I dropped the fork" = "se me cayo el tenedor". Why both instead of one of the other. Another confusion - when to use "le" over "lo or la". I'm batting about .700 with a lot of guesses.
I scramble that stuff, too.
"Se me cayo el tenedor," is literally, "The fork went and fell on me," where "on me" doesn't mean the fork hit your foot, but that it "fell" as a personal affront to you. Spanish doesn't really have a straight up transitive verb "to drop". It uses "let fall."
Well by golly... that's actually very helpful, thanks! The part about the personal affront.
You're welcome. That "se me" phrasing occurs in a lot of contexts.
"Mi hermano se me murio." "My brother went and died on me."
thus dispriving the old song "he ain't heavy, he's my brother". 😬
Wondering why "I hurt my leg" = "Me lastimé la pierna", without the "se". It seems similar in context to the fork thing.
I don't know.
I'm thinking you have it with the affront thing. Something that happens that affects one rather than something that happens to one.
Interesting. But you might consider that all this pronoun talk right out in the open like this could land you on some government anti-woke investigation list, and the next thing you know some Fed tech guy shows up to AI your entire archive for inappropriate pronoun removal. Just sayin'...
Happy today we get our 6th doggie Zuben; Friday to all.
Special happy day to my friends Angie and JohnM!
I noticed that the WSJ had an article on an influencer who sold weight loss advice, who herself then went on a GLP-1. Thanks to CynthiaW’s column on fiddler crabs yesterday, I thought I’d share my own rapid weight loss story; 30 pounds overnight…I decided to identify as a fiddler crab and cut off my left arm. I’m awaiting it to grow back, so the weight will come back on, but still….
That's good. I didn't see it coming.
One could use the Borges tactic of writing a review of a mythical blog that is about a guy writing a blog about someone else's blogging about their perceptions.
Or, in the 3rd person. "He felt the need to express himself about matters he barely understood." Like people that write about themselves in the 3rd person...."Marque don't do that."
"Or you might use the second-person variation on the impersonal “one” as a dummy stand-in for “I”"
Is the word dummy serving two purposes there? I do, or is it one does, have familiarity with the awkwardness of this.
Hmmm
Possibly just sloppiness on the part of the author, who lost the plot of his own gag. One should distance oneself from such a poor wight!
The author, to my mind, did the best they could given the challenge. We applaud the effort, although it will have the unfortunate effect of making me even more self-conscious about pronouns. BTW, is it acceptable to put (I, me) in one’s bio?
Often omit the "I" on the grounds the subject is implied. Don't care what the grammar police think. Just write as seems right. The eyes see, the ayes have it, and the I's are third.
The real grammar police recognize that there's such a thing as informal writing, to which the formal rules don't all apply.
So long as your ayes are cross and your teas are dotty.
Is it possible to be one’s own ghost 👻 writer? ✍️ 🤔🤓🤯
Depends on if you're trying to get the job. As your financial adviser, I advise never taking a job where you have to think about your pronouns.
I can almost get to Jordan Peterson levels of...I said almost...disdain for the pronoun thing. Jordan...no sensayuma. I can't trust folks that have no apparent sensayuma.
One of about 100 reasons I am grateful not to be in the job market. For now.
I’m just glad you are an “I” and not a “they.” Wait, “they” can be an “I” just not a “she” or “he.” 😵💫
My pronoun is “PRONOUN” in all caps. But my verb tense is pluperfect.
I went to a training where they insisted on pronouns. I caused quite a stir by using "The Friend", "This Friend" and "That Friend". The trainer got condescending about my not taking it serious (and hoping to cause others to avoid my tragic ways), when I explained in my religion that is the norm, and has been for hundreds of years. I then asked "Should I ignore my own cultural values and norms so you feel in better control of the training". A few friends spoke up indicating that yup, I do that regularly, it's not a joke or a slam against pronouns.
The training went downhill from there.
I love this so much.
Did you demonstrate the archaic second person singular as part of your cultural norms?
I don't think Friends recognize "this friend" is archaic? They're still unsure on music and paid pastors! 🤦♂️
I was thinking of "thee." In the novel I'm reading, set in the times of the American Revolution, some of the characters are Friends.
One branch of Friends sometimes still uses thee and thou, but the rest updated several generations ago. Probably still 100 years after everyone else.
Friends used to have men and women (plus children) separated by a curtain in the main worship room (the Meetinghouse room). The last of the curtains came down about 1955-ish...that was an 80+ year effort to remove them!
thee and thou would be used outside of Friends meetings, but not inside of meetings. So a plain speech person might use thee and thou while shopping, but "the Friend or this Friend" inside the meetinghouse during a meeting.
Also, a common phrase during discussion was to affirm what others said by stating "This Friend speaks for me". I still use that at UD, so some people think I'm friends with everyone! 😏
Go Jay!
"Should I ignore my own cultural values and norms so you feel in better control of the training?"
Oh, snap! But quite accurate in terms of what the pretense of "cultural sensitivity" is actually about.
"Should I ignore my own cultural values and norms so you feel in better control of the training?"
Awesome.
"The training went downhill from there."
Even better.
My direct address is "Mrs. W," and my 3rd-person reference is "this great lady" or "that old bat," depending on context.
It's a weird thing about China in that one addresses everyone, even their best friends, as "Ms. Feng" or "Mr. Wu"..never by the first name. Maybe after decades, but people would wonder why you do that. Nicknames are fine, and have an extremely long and deep history. All the Emperor's had a "nickname" like the Hongwu Emperor whose name was Zhu Yuanzhang.
I am universally called "Uncle" by all my wife's students. "Uncle" or "Auntie" is how one refers to elders that they aren't blood related to. I can call my SIL by her first name, but I call my BIL by his full name. I call my BIL's brother "Er" which is "2". He's the 2nd child. Once you're inside, you're allowed to call him 2.
Also, last name comes first. Deng Xiaoping is Mr. Deng.
You would be Ms. W. Mrs. doesn't mean anything.
That would be fine, too.
In classes, I tell students to call me what they like. Some think it is cool to call a professor by their first name, others like having some formality (especially back when we had Chinese students). So I don't insist. Now the Chinese students are gone, not so much. Another trend is a hybrid name. My friend who has a Greek last name goes by "Dr. Z". So I offer up "Dr. J", but I remind them I cannot dunk.
I'd call a professor "Dr. (name)". There's something about maintaining naming conventions that keeps things in their proper lane. Calling them their first name...too familiar. It's like your dentist wearing shorts. It's just not right.
It's tricky, because I don't want to sound pretentious and expect people to call me "Dr. Janney" or "Professor Janney". Every once in awhile at my youngest son's sports games, parents would ask what to call me. Katie would answer "his name is Jay". If my oldest son was there he'd tell them "I call him "Middle Aged Decrepit".
Among my colleagues, we're all on a first name basis.
But in a formal academic ceremony, using my title seems more appropriate. If I am being introduced to give a talk, the speaker invariably introduces me as "Dr. Jay Janney".
Although some at the mothership affectionately call me "professor", or "the professor". Which doesn't bother me.
I wish Donald Trump had the same reticence to use ‘I’ as does our host. Everything is all about him.
Yesterday he ambushed another foreign visitor/victim during an Oval Office press session, on live TV. This time, the victims was the South African President, with Trump calling out the supposed “genocide” of white South Africans. (The actual facts are disputed).
Doesn't he sometimes avoid Marque's whole pronoun dilemma by referring to himself as "Trump"?
Another day, another extremely weird interaction. I mean, when did the alleged "genocide of white people" in South Africa become our new national obsession?
When it became Trump’s obsession.
yeah....sigh....
Genocide is too strong a term, from what I gather. It depends to some degree on whether or not you would consider what happened in Zimbabwe to be a genocide, and I don’t think most people would.
SA faces serious problems of runaway crime and corruption faced by a lot of third-world countries. And it has been on a very bad path for a long time. When living standards decline for everyone, minorities become easy scapegoats for majoritarian populists to blame everything on.
The knee-jerk reaction here says it’s all bogus because Trump/MAGA think it’s a problem and exaggerate. But looking at it from the American academic lens of “white European people = bad” is just as mindlessly simplistic.
Scott Adams had a riff on that with his Dilbert column, where Trump begins having MAGA sing "Kill the left Bores", while explaining it's not literally about killing anyone.
BTW, Adams announced he has advanced prostate cancer, and expects to die this year from it. Either it's a bizarre PR stunt or no more Dilbert...
CynthiaW caught my Bidenesque moment where I called him Douglas Adams.
I’m afraid it’s no stunt — the man is dying. I miss his comic strips.
Sorry to hear about Adams. I still like Dilbert, which is a good comic strip no matter what you might think of Adams’s politics…
Which he put behind a paywall when distributors dropped, him, or so I thought. I fell sorry for his cancellation but not that sorry. He should have known better. As for his cancer, I will pray for him.
Scott Adams. Douglas Adams is "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
The facts seem to be pretty clear that, while there have been some race (and class) based attacks on and killing of white South Africans, including Afrikaners, the numbers are modest, especially in the context of a very murdery country.
Most of what I've read about the situation and the murder of *white* farmers indicate that racial motivation is not the driver of the attacks and that many more *black* farm employees are killed than white farmers, the whole thing amounting more to "poverty vs wealth" crime rather than a "black on white" racial thing, much less a *genocide*.
The infuriating thing to me, beyond the obvious inanity of using terms like genocide for what's happening regarding crimes committed on isolated farms in South Africa, is that words have meanings, and when used improperly often enough for long enough they lose their meaning and their ability to shock the conscience when that is required for people to understand the import of something.
Donald Trump and his cohort of constant liars not only damage our country in very real ways but indeed they damage the very language we use to communicate with each other through their unrelenting improper use of inappropriate words to stoke the emotional reaction and drive the societal and cultural divisions they desire as a key element of their quest to obtain and retain ever more political power.
I could easily use a plethora of four-letter words to expand upon what I think and how I feel about the people involved in this disgrace, but those have all been getting a lot more use that they probably should have of late as well.
Yes! The damage to the language is the most troubling thing to me. Maybe it wasn't intended as "Take out the communication lines before launching the attack," but I feel that is what has. On fact happened when I struggle to articulate a thought both briefly and clearly.
Yes. I'm hitting that overload language thing where the constant onslaught of imperatives and exaggerations is numbing my response.
The correct grammar would be "a very murdery TYPE" country.
Ah, thanks. These nuances give communication its vim!
Vim, from the Latin Vis for strength... I had to look that up. I never knew.
Me either.
Good morning. 45 degrees here and sunny, with a high maybe reaching 60. Shaping up to be a cool Memorial Day weekend. The mothership is covering the creaky state of our air traffic control system, exemplified by the brief outages affecting Newark Airport.
Ladder Lady arrived home yesterday, dealing with pain and resting up. It’s been exactly two weeks since she fell.
Phil, I hope Ladder Lady makes a full recovery! Sorry to have missed the original posting. That must have been frightening for you both. So glad she's home.
In a no 🪜 story, I did not cover the missing hole after removing the fire escape ladder. Short version, fell through said 🕳 16' to concrete. Was blessed by family, friends and a great orthopedic surgeon. The much younger me took three months to recover. May her rehab be short and productive!
Oh, dear.
Ladders. I can talk for a long time about ladder safety. Hope she continues to improve.
I’ve had family and friends ask “What was she thinking?” With an unspoken followup, “What were you thinking, to let her on that ladder?”
I hope you save that spiel for dinner parties. You'd be very popular! 😀
My husband and I were watching "Caribbean Life" last night. A Canadian couple bought a house in Vieques, PR, and their temporary solution to its not having a porch facing the ocean view was a ladder up to the roof.
I told my husband that, in that situation, I would go to church, and in a few days, some men would come and build stairs, and I would pay them. This is also how we often do things here ;-).
I don’t think you live in a convent in New Mexico, where the sisters needed a stairway to the choir loft in their new chapel. 🙂 (I assume you know that story).
I do know the story, and also, we have regular indoor stairs in our house.
Morning. That’s a lot of broken bones to knit for your LL. Hope she recovers full range of motion.
One more day of the southern heat. Traveling back tomorrow. It will take a couple days without excessive rain to get the turf back in shape. Looking forward to the cooler climate, though the subtropical landscape is cheery if you don’t have to work in it.
A few years back, I did a blog on Wordpress that dealt mostly with theater experiences, with occasional diversions into P. G. Wodehouse. I used the royal "we", which gave it a decided tone of pretentiousness.
It would be nifty to sound like Wodehouse. It makes you sound as if you travel as a committee.
Re-learning German as a teenager, I came to appreciate the impersonal form “one” a lot more. You use it a lot in German in polite company. The word is “man”, as distinct from the male adult “Mann”, but pronounced the same.
“Man”/“one” serves variously as first person singular, second person singular, or as a dummy subject when you don’t care to name names or point verbal fingers. For instance, a popular German TV series in the late ‘90s was “Man spricht Deutsch”, which was in reference to a sign German vacationers are glad to see at businesses when abroad, meaning “One speaks German”—we would say “German spoken here” using the passive without even a dummy subject.
German also differentiates “Mann” (an adult male) from “Mensch” (a human person), both of which are rendered “man” in English (and which drive linguistic feminists crazy).
If Mensch in the sense derived from Yiddish (meaning a person of character, integrity, and honor, someone to be emulated) can be applied to women as well as men, that's good enough for me. And probably more than good enough for Edith "Edit" Burton. Both of us have much more time for linguistics than for getting hung up on problems invented by those who let their ideological commitments overtake honest scholarship.
Yes, it’s the general word for “human” or “human being” and “person” or “individual”. It’s also used as an interjection, as we might use “Good grief!” or “Crimony!” as opposed to invoking the Deity.
Was not aware of the interjection use. In English we have "man, oh, man!"
I think you already know this, but Yiddish is a dialect of, or derived from, German, so it's unsurprising the same word 9albeit with slightly different meanings) shows up in both.
I only wish I could write like Wodehouse!
#MeToo
I learned "mangelwurzel" from Wodehouse.
I'm surprised that "mangelwurzel" is a real thing, a cultivated variety of beet.
Once you've assimilated "mangelwurzel," you can use it as a noun, an adjective, or a verb.
Lots of root vegetables in Northern European cuisine.
Some time I'll tell you about my theory regarding carrots and the northern European Renaissance.
I learned about cow creamers from Wodehouse.
The trains that ran by my house had those cow creamers on the front of the locomotive. I never saw one actually hit a cow.
http://cow-creamers.net/index.html
It is because of Wodehouse that I look for cow creamers in art museums.
And do they have any?
Reminds me of the Fraser episode where Niles says he’s writing a book about a narcissistic opera singer. The book would be titled, “Me. Me. Me.”
That was an excellent comedy series.
One of those shows where as you watch, even years later, you realize the actors are having a lot of fun.
So good. David Hyde pierce as Niles was spectacular.
David Hyde Pierce did an audio version of Gulliver's Travels. I got through the whole thing and it was delightful.
He is an extraordinarily good actor
Yes.
Good morning. Happy Friday! Looks like it's going to be a pretty nice morning here.
F and his friend (and his friend's exciting new driver's license) are planning to go to the zoo tomorrow. If his mom, who did all the driving practice with him, thinks it's okay, I guess I do, too.
That first release of the kid into the other kid's driving is a stressor.
His friend drove F home from his house the other evening, after we dropped off the mower, which is now repaired as far as we know, and that went okay.
It's a scary feeling, especially if you ever watch your children play "Mario Cart" and they enjoy collisions! 😬
One nice thing of living in a small town is that there isn't much traffic, so kids learn to drive. The bad thing is too many people living in a small town like to beat lights, and roll stop signs, so kids see bad role models...🤦♂️
Or as I like to say. If you imagine your work is meaningless, imagine being the person on the auto assembly line installing turn signals...
Ah cognitive failure!! Well let me tell I myself something 🤣
I helped spec the plastics for those turn signals! Sadly, unlike the friendly hillbãlylgendarmé SE of your whereabouts, and NE of one Icognito, we were schooled in the mild, calm era of the 1960s, to
A. Never ever roll a Stop Sign.
B. Always use turn signals.
I worked on the molding floor with nice peeps from the UAW at Guide Lamp (Anderson, Indiana) making lights! Use em!
For your biz class ethics, I offer I a case study on why one should always be compliant with traffic signs and laws.
I was forming a strategic supply agreement with a major important Italian company from the delicious and lovely Piedmont area. My guest, a senior experienced person, I had picked up and was driving early to our facility.
No cars anywhere. I came up to a stop sign. And as usual, even with no cars anywhere, I came to my usual full, and complete stop. I looked again and the proceed.
My Northern Italian guest said to me, what you just did was important to me. It showed my your integrity, even as no cars.were around, to obey the law. We made a great deal. But hey no judgment towards rolling stop signers!! This is just how I !! Don't roll!!
Today is doggie #6; rescue #, pickup day! Ms Pinki is so happy. Zuben today.
To share her happiness, I offer one of her childhood favorite songs, from 1953, Patti Page. "How much is that Doggie in the Window?"
https://youtu.be/Gs-cxEzFFiM?si=evLtsAvykQN69yfU
That is commendable (even though I may be known to slow roll stop signs).
Absolutely. Although, I am an inveterate jaywalker.
Everywhere I go I am a jay walker!
I assume 100% of pedestrians are distracted by their phone jaywalkers! And I prep accordingly.
"No cars anywhere. I came up to a stop sign. And as usual, even with no cars anywhere, I came to my usual full, and complete stop. I looked again and the proceed."
Good habits save lives. If you always come to a full stop, always use your turn signal, instead of evaluating each situation as a new event, you will not make the wrong decision when it really matters. I repeat this repeatedly when I'm teaching shooting sports, too. Every time you open up a situation to a new decision, you open up the possibility of making the wrong, perhaps catastrophically wrong, choice.
Yes indeedy. Safety for a reason !!
Morning.
How far is F removed from his own license? My niece will be eligible for her learner’s in just over a month here in the Sunshine state when she turns 15.
I've got a lot of friends and acquaintances that are in their 50's that still don't know how to drive. It's interesting...cars are still a relatively new phenomenon. 15 years ago was when the first expressways starting to knit the country together. I'd drive on an expressway in a city of 20 million and be one of maybe a half dozen cars on an 8 lane highway. It's not like that now.
F is a long way from his license, because he failed driver's ed and can't take it again through the school system. Now we'll have to pay for private driver's ed. He is currently researching options, because I told him that if he wouldn't do the legwork - that is, using Google and maybe the telephone - why should I believe he would make the effort to pass this time?
He'll be 16 next week.