QotD: It’s A Scam Edition…

From Bobbi:

"Always doubt the motives of a man who's pushing you for a quick emotional reaction; he's reaching for your wallet -- or your fundamental freedoms."

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QotD: Bigger Boxes Still Dressed In Ticky-Tacky Edition...

Jim Grey has penned an excellent essay on the swanky suburban city directly north of Indianapolis:

But walking around the retail district near the Hotel Carmichael that night, something felt too poised, too polished, too perfect. Every surface considered, every business in its right place. Real places have friction — a hardware store next to a wine bar next to a laundromat. Buildings from different eras that don’t quite agree, businesses that are there because someone needed them rather than because they completed a vision.

A couple years later Margaret and I visited Epcot, as our son was proposing to his girlfriend there. Walking around, I recognized exactly what Carmel had been doing. Epcot is a controlled environment engineered to deliver the sensation of place without the inconvenience of actual place. Themed zones connected by optimized infrastructure, every experience crafted, nothing unplanned, nothing that jars.

You should RTWT.

I share his feelings, which is why it makes me ill that they're trying to Carmel-ify my beloved Broad Ripple.

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QotD: Politics Edition...

Bobbi on Tuesday's primaries here in Indiana:

"All that money pouring in, those TV ads ... did bring people to the primary polls in record numbers, but that record still amounts to a 14.9% turnout instead of the usual single digits. Just over eighty-five percent of registered voters are, apparently, okay with whoever the rest of us pick."

One state senate primary contest that had millions of out-of-state dark money advertising dollars spent on it is likely to come down to three votes.
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QotD: Gaucherie Edition

"Now I will not lie, it feels kind of like cheating making fun of this Ready-Player-One-ass car. Can you imagine rolling up to the club in this shit? The wealthy of our era are so jaw-droppingly tasteless they have finally invented a Rolls-Royce that you could not get laid in."
-sometime automotive journalist Victoria Scott on a Bespoke program Rolls-Royce

Just some excellent writing there. Like, John-Phillips-at-the-1990s-height-of-his-powers cackle-out-loud funny. I'm legitimately envious of a few of those turns of phrase.
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QotD: Let There Be Light Edition…

Mike Johnston really explained a complex topic in a simple, understandable nutshell here:

Here's a secret tip for making better photographs—look for great light.

You gotta get used to looking at light rather than at the thingy-ness of the world. It's not those things you're photographing—it's those things in that light. Light is ever-changing, and the same thing or scene will look completely different in different light. Great light helps make great photographs.

That's something of which I've always been dimly aware. but phrasing it like that really threw a switch in my head, almost like turning on a light, if you will...

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QotD: Memetic Selection Edition

The things we now refer to as "memes" are actually things that were originally dubbed "image macros". Some image macros went viral and effectively became memes, however.

A meme is an idea, a behavior, a belief, a bit of information, that replicates itself from mind to mind the way DNA does from generation to generation. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

Just because a meme propagates widely doesn't make it true.

The internet didn’t invent thought contagion. It merely accelerated it. What used to take decades of cultural transmission can now happen in hours. A tweet, a TikTok, a video clip, a slogan. These are the new vectors of cultural evolution.

Algorithms act as artificial selectors. Twitter doesn’t reward nuanced discussion. It rewards engagement. Instagram etc doesn’t surface the most accurate take. It surfaces the one most likely to generate a reaction. This creates a selection pressure on ideas: evolve to provoke, or die.

Memes that succeed online are those that survive this ruthless environment. They’re short, emotionally resonant, and easily shareable. They often include moral judgment or identity cues. They come with built-in calls to action: Retweet. Cancel. Like. Condemn.

Guarding against memetic infection can be tricky and nobody's 100% successful, similar to the way everyone says "Oh, I'd never fall victim to that particular internet scam" and then goes and falls for a different one. Stay vigilant and double check your work frequently.

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QotD: Ghost In The Machine Edition...

On the predilection some people seem to have for getting driven bonkers by extended use of LLMs...

“What does a human slowly going insane look like to a corporation?” Mr. Yudkowsky asked in an interview. “It looks like an additional monthly user.”

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QotD: This Ain't Sportsball Edition

"In the 2024 Presidental election, more people voted for Donald Trump in Los Angeles than voted for him in Arkansas or Oklahoma. This nonsense about "red America" vs. "blue America" ignores the reality that we all live in purple America, a bit redder in some places and bluer in others, and when bad luck falls on Texas or New York, Oregon or Florida, it falls on millions of people who voted the same way you did and hold similar values, no matter how you voted or what policies you favor. We're all in the same box."

Bobbi responding to the "HuRr dUrR LiBrULs R bUrNiNg Up iN kOmMiEfOrNiA"* idiocy percolating around the sewers of the blogosphere.

*Los Angeles County cast 1,189,862 votes for the Trump/Vance ticket last November, compared to 759,241 from Arkansas and 1,036,213 from Oklahoma. More people voted for Trump in the five boroughs of NYC than in the entire states of Kansas or Mississippi.

QotD: If Everybody's Special Edition...

From Bobbi's post about Emergency Alerts:

"As a practical matter, all that is needed are alerts for "lost child" and "lost adult." Details should go in the accompanying text message, to tell you and me if we should be looking for a four-year-old Native American child or a 60 year old law enforcement officer: it's supposed to be way to help out, not an overloaded "thin blue line" flag with a special stripe for each and every sliver of the population who might be at risk."

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The First Rule of Dunning-Kruger Club...

ZCQOTD: "This man has built an impregnable stone house with lovely west-facing balconies on the summit of Mount Stupid."

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That’s a helluva dunk!

The Indiana governor’s office is about to be vacated vis term limits and the junior Hoosier senator is campaigning for it on a platform of being an “outsider”, because that’s a buzzword that plays well with the low-info GOP voter.

Bobbi is not impressed…

[S]top tryin' to buffalo me, buster -- if a Senator is on the outside, there's no inside left.

She’s got him dead to rights on that bit of goofery.

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QotD: Misanthropy Edition

From a web discussion elsewhere:

”Morons are nature’s original renewable resource.”

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QotD: Politics Is Showbiz For Ugly People Edition...

"In the age of social media, one need only be right for a moment—for one pithy putdown or quick comeback. That kind of superficial politics inevitably leads to figures such as Santos." -Kevin D. Williamson

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QotD: Skilled Trades Edition...

"The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -John Gardner

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QotD: Filters Edition...

From Ben Dreyfuss's Substack, "Calm Down Ben" (which is paywalled but has a free seven-day trial):

"If you have a thought that you would share in person at a party to casual acquaintances, and you have the time and cell reception, you should share it online. Don’t worry about it. Just go. Chase it down a hole. Riff in public and evolve in public. Do not worry about the fact that some of these thoughts will be stupid because everyone has stupid thoughts.

(If you have evil thoughts—like, say Osama bin Laden is good—you probably shouldn’t share them for your own career, but I think the world is better if you share them. At least we know! People who have strong filters and only share what they think “the room wants” could be thinking anything! They could be cannibals. They could be witches. Hate me or love me, but I have no thoughts that I think are Too Hot For Twitter. My worst thoughts are out there.)"

I tend to agree. I do prefer it when unsavory jackholes and complete lunatics skyline themselves right up front, rather than keeping their whackitude under a lid and only let it leak out at an uncomfortable moment.

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QotD: Attention Economy Edition...

"Whether something is true—or, again, even plausible—is an afterthought. What matters is what will boost engagement, traffic, eyeballs. It’s the Ka-Ching theory of Truth.

Because truth and falsehood look equal in two-dimensional space, the incentive structure is all screwed up. Repeating boring truths doesn’t pay. Spewing transgressive, shocking, attention-grabbing falsehoods that get people riled up and confirm their angriest or darkest passions is where it’s at." -Jonah Goldberg

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QotD: Pot Of Message Edition...

From an article by George Packer at The Atlantic:

"Art that tries to give political satisfaction is unlikely to be very good as either politics or art."

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QotD: The Hottest Of Takes Edition...

Alas, it's behind a paywall, but this bit from Nick Catoggio is too good to not pass along:

"In many cultures, holidays are celebrated in tandem, on consecutive days. Halloween is followed by the Day of the Dead; Christmas is followed by Boxing Day; Thanksgiving is followed by Black Friday; New Year’s Eve is followed by, uh, New Year’s Day.

There’s a special pairing for pundits: Election Day is followed by The Feast of Hot Takes.

On The Feast of Hot Takes, you gather piecemeal results spread across different regions from the previous evening and arrange them to form a mosaic that perfectly matches your priors."

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QotD: Poly-Ticks Edition...

Bobbi watched most of the GOP debate last night. I'm getting the vibe she's not feeling the Vivekmentum...

"I watched some of the Republican runners-up debate last night, the Island of Misfit Toys, and even in that group, Vivek Ramaswamy stands out as a jerk. Yes, in a profession of largely jerks, in a party that has embraced boorish jerkness, amid a collection of alpha jerks, he was still an outstanding jerk."

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QotD: Unforgiving Edition...

In a post about a Texas man injuring his grandson with a homemade .45 Colt blank, Claude Werner writes:

Firearms are relentlessly unforgiving of the slightest lapse in attention or competence. The shooter has probably been ‘shooting for years.’ Unfortunately, as is sometimes said of the law enforcement profession: “Some people have 20 years of experience and some people have one year of experience 20 times.”

Go and RTWT.
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