...or so The Internet would have us believe.

[The following was written but never published 5 years ago. Hence the belated obit aspect.]

 

Many years ago now already, sitting with friend who's a classically trained pianist, the subject of genius came about. He said that the word was overused in the extreme. There were no geniuses, in that regard, and, as if to delineate for the specific purpose of definitional purity, Mozart, he said, was a genius, evidenced by his ability to compose with such complexity at such a young age. A genius, that is, regardless of whether one has found his work uninspiring, or even thinks, like the comedi-cised Count, that there are too many notes. Genius! No. Just an observation.

 

Of what are these observations representative? I recall some politico stressing the importance of taking the time and effort to write to one's political representative in that it was common adage in their circle that the posted letter would represent a larger number of constituents than, say, a phone call, which, somehow in direct relation to the lower difficulty of its undertaking, carried less weight and thereby represented fewer voters. Of course there would be, what I would assume, the jamming Congress' phone banks kind of action, which in old school parlance involved literally many more people getting involved. Still, less representative apparently. Or maybe it's the fact that a parliamentarian can stand in the well and hold up a letter, as if to demonstrate representative democracy at its finest.

 

And this was all before a further in/deflation of terms. My pianist friend may have foreseen the exponential onset of our new era, in which everybody's a genius, because it's so easy to say so, and perhaps proportionally recognizable by the brevity of phonetic identification. Kinsky? Genius! Hitch? We need another word!

But that's just YooToob talk. Even so, keep in mind that it's the comments that really represent. The "likes" are by contrast an indication of the amount of energy it takes for the average right index finger to depress a mouse button with a cursor over the symbol of a tiny thumbs up [still not mobile after all these years]. The YooToob money masters funnel more to the creator who inspires the former level of engagement. If that's not proof of the politico's posted letter theory, I don't know what is!

 

I notice that YooToob comments seem driven by a certain kind of energy. That observation's being mine is by definition just an observation of one, but what if it's a projection? Is it thereby merely a representation of one? Fuck! Do you have any idea how much effort goes into this logorrhea?

Where was I?  Oh, yeah. I'm no genius, I can tell you that much. But I have a greater chance of being one on The Internet because it affords me the opportunity to inspire someone somewhere to take the time and effort to get to the end of this entry and look for my contact information and write me an email to tell me what a genius I am. But that would take such an effort. If I just activated the comments, then I'd get called all kinds of things.

 

Unfortunately I'm way way down on the list of geniuses even with my name, because mine has three syllables. Who's tops? Don't be daft. Why, of course, it's Dave! But that ain't Dave saying that. Just a bunch of randos who oughta get out more.

__

 

 

In tribute to his posthumourousness, I have written a best last joke at Norm Macdonald's expense: Judging by the reaction, his best career move was getting cancer. 

 

If you know his voice and transpose that to the first person, I do believe it'd sound about right. Still, the joke as written should suffice as tribute. But if you're more of the parasocially "butthurt" kind, you may just "entirely miss the point".

 

I loathe to risk falling into the "same guys who" fallacy, but as post-Rotten John put it regarding anger: it's an energy. So while there may not be an individual group of people whose appreciation of a joke depends not on the art with which it is told, but solely on its teller, there is, for want of a more nuanced way to put it, a certain energy common to the approval or disapproval of the same kind of joke depending on its origin.

To be more clear, I'd like to eliminate the socio-political concept of punching up or down for a moment and stick primarily to how a joke that inspires gut-busting guffaws can suddenly seem vicariously cruel if delivered in the opposite direction by positing the hypothetical premise that if I were to go onto any one of the many, by the dint of his death, algorithmically enhanced online videos featuring the wit and wisdom of one Norm Macdonald and type that best last joke into the comments section, it would garner an overabundance of energy that might otherwise describe itself as "butthurt". But there'd probably be a few kudos, as well. And at least one that said the comic himself would have found it funny, and so there.

I hasten to amend that Macdonald was born out of the asshole of the boomer designation, but at the beginning of his rise to fame his peers and fan base largely extended to slightly younger X-ers. My first memories of him are from the end of the 80s' heyday of stand-up comedy on cable television when I observed him to be, approximately, someone of my age. I note now that then the teevee added years of the perception of status, which had accurately enough turned out to've been a few. I say all this to place his origins in a proximity, but a proximity which would in ensuing years take on a greater aspect of the generational gap, i.e. his skewing to an older conservative viewpoint.

 

I do have a couple of videos in mind in which His Brilliancy is lauded. In one, the title suggests that he schools an ignorant anti-Christian comic. The clip is from a show called Last Comic Standing, which is one of those shows with judges who pick winners and losers. In it the comedian Harrison Greenbaum uses an ironic juxtaposition of the Bible and Harry Potter that, in fairness to the critic, you can see coming from so far away that it's devoid of the element of the unexpected that causes laughter. Nevertheless, Judge Roseanne believes he's "real brave" for taking on such subject matter. Judge Macdonald didn't see it that way:

 

"I disagree. I don't think the Bible joke was, uh, brave at all. I, uh, I think if you're gonna take on an entire religion, you should maybe know what you're talking about. J.K. Rowling is a Christian, and J.K. Rowling famously said that, uh, if you're familiar with the scriptures, you could easily guess the ending of her book."

 

Yeah, I dunno. I mean, I agree that ripping religion can be tired, low hanging fruit. But the part about knowing what you're talking about is rich coming from Macdonald. Anyway, there's a default formula sought in the casting of such programs, on down to and including Judge Roseanne's reaction to Judge Macdonald's comment (which functions as well to contrast apparent competing intellectual abilities as much as it does a disagreement over content). The show reveals itself as not for me: All of it, from the stand-up routine to both reactions to it are asinine.

 

If he'd said that he didn't find it brave, but also found it unfunny and left it at that, that'd be fine. But for someone who felt it was better to play the dumb guy, rather than a smug and smart one, he often enough revealed the ignorance of that shrewdly framed inner smart ass that I don't think was the intended effect.

 

The umbrella to this phenomenon is in how he declared himself to be an apolitical comedian, while so much of his shtick depended on poking at political sensitivities. He never seemed to mind if he offended anyone in the process. Now I can hear the comments section in my head telling me I am missing the point, but I suspect Macdonald missed relevant points often.

 

For example, when he said in relation to the latest pandemic that "It's funny how big pharma's so evil... 'til now!" I could be reading too much into this, but my suspicion is that anyone who found it funny isn't really critical of big pharma, or doesn't really understand that it's always the public dime that funds the research, and the private concern that profits from it, often enough to the detriment of public health.

 

It's an otherwise pretty funny five minutes, especially for the crowd at the time, I would think, in the classic cathartic sense for which humor is sometimes the only medicine. But I have seen that one line as rather a comment on how unrealistic it is to view big pharma as being a bad thing. On the other hand, it could be I am missing the point, and he was saying big pharma is, in fact, evil, but we who are in on this joke are willing to look past that for a cure, craven as we are.

 

Nevertheless, my reading comes by way of an expectation based on politically charged precedents set by the comic in spite of what he had often enough said about his finding political humor unfunny. The truth is, I think, rather that political humor rubs him the wrong way only when it would seem to advocate politics he does not agree with. Or something that makes him uncomfortable.

 

Take for example his riff on gay pride, wherein he reduces the concept of parents' pride in a gay son to being proud of his loving cock. Now, I think there is a lot of potentially humorous and thought provoking  territory here, none of which he manages to arrive at.

Pride parades, for example, feature so prominently the sexual aspect of what it means to be a homosexual, that one who does not know what they are talking about might believe that's the only thing it's about. In fairness, for many, it probably is just an occasion to celebrate the flamboyancy of it all unfettered. So a comparison of a pride parade with that of the celebration of the Apollo astronauts made to Macdonald's mind the pride parade less worthy. In a longer version of the bit, he contrasted the silly "pride of being" with the pride of the achievement of military service, and it was really just a throwaway as if the latter was so self-evident. 

 

He cared enough about making some kind of real point that there's an evolution of the material evident in subsequent tellings that reveal concern in its contextualization. But he was destined to miss that point as long as he remained blind to the deception of pride itself, which is excessive self-satisfaction, too often the result of combatting shame.

 

[Enter here my own yet to be crafted joke about a father who feels almost unbearable shame as his son reveals how he murdered a family in cold blood - and how the father immediately swells with pride when his son says he was following orders.] 

 

It's been said he just simply did not give a fuck, as in what people think of him, and indeed you can feel that in much of his work. The homosexual was a frequent target in his material. To my knowledge he never publicly revealed why that might have been, even if he did make jokes about being in the closet. He was familiar with the scriptures, though.

 

Macdonald. Norm. Well played, Internet in my head.

Spectra Plectra

The gap between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution is much smaller than you think. What you think is part of the problem. What you do or don't do because of what you think adds to the scale.

 

 But enough with happy thoughts.

 

The grammars on the use of the past continuous detail how events are relative to one another. While one event continues, it may be interrupted by another.

 

Consider the sentence "I was taking a bath when the phone rang."

The image created here is that the bath had begun before the phone began to ring. Without the additional illustration, inferences will vary as to whether the interruption brought the speaker out of the bath. The diagram above implies that the ringing began and ended, and that the speaker remained in the bathtub.

 

To demonstrate further the relative difference between the two tenses, we can zoom in tighter on the simple past to see what might have happened while the phone was still ringing.

So one's choice between simple past and past continuous will depend on which event began first and lasted longer.

 

 While I was preparing the break between topics, an idea happened upon me, which I place as place-marker here: An Overton Window can be adjusted by the eventual use of such language. The setup would be the past continuous events themselves and the adjustment of the window would occur in eventual response to whenever those events are continuously enough revealed in language use.   

 

 The Awning of the Cage & Aquarium

In D, the windowed Awning of O released the following: Cat's in the bag. Come get it if you want it. The readers were all, "Hwuhh?" SPOILER ALERT: The hero violated her while he was saving her, but then "did right by her" - as may still be the parlance of our times. 

 

Spectrum Plectrum

Could I even think the word spectrum without having lain on at least one of them? I mean, not just one that exists to describe what might determine one's level of ability to adjust to being a social normie; even the fringes have boundaries. Never mind that, though; let's start with politics and the handle of the metaphorical horseshoe.

 

The "both sides do it" understanding of politics or, more specifically, understanding of politicians or, more more specifically, understanding of people who've entered politics, is complex enough to deserve differentiation between that and the "both sides do it" attitude, which is my attempt to say that even where 1) the understanding represents allowing for the fact that, generally speaking, politicians play a corrupted transactional game stacked in favor of oppressive and controlling interests that are counter to those of their constituencies and 2) the attitude represents an only slightly more likely tendency to be the one that offers the "both sides do it" argument for a counterpart to respond to with "Sure, I agree, but come on" apologia for lesser evilism, or, in the interest of zooming farther in on the spectrum, advocacy for lesser evilism (whether this equals an outright defense of one figure, be that figure a nation, its politics or a person representing one ostensible side of the same, or this merely equates to an outright disgust for the other figure, nation, politics, or person), for all their similarities, they differ when poked and in how they do poking.

 

If that sentence paragraph was too much: There's a spectrum in the middle of the political field (on the ground) that spans two metaphors: that of voters holding their noses with one hand while voting with the other (or just outright hitting a panic button), and those who believe they think they won't make a deal with any devil.     

 

The middle of the road for the above diagram would be staunch advocacy for voting for the lesser of two evils. To its right would be the utter contempt for anyone who would suggest their candidate is anything but perfectly good.

 

Another perspective on the spectrum in the diagram below includes understanding why one would pick a lesser of evils, but the rejection to the far left is one of ideological purity. 

 

Not that the rejection of the premise in either example is either delusional or obstinate. Either could be fully on board with the assumed program, even if they have issues with its messaging, the latter of which being the one thing the politician is willing to say was flawed about their losing campaign. It's never about their actual positions.

 

Spectra: the inbourne conspiracy

The human is by nature an agreeable individual. This doesn't mean there aren't disagreements and disagreeable people, but the most disagreeable, as unpleasant as they may be to many others, seek agreement with another mass of people, even if it's only to be projections in their head.
 

And for some reason this occurs here: There is ample evidence in the words of the founders that the people in general were not their intended beneficiaries. 
 

The conspiracy: no conspiracy necessary

Those who would conspire to maintain their rule over others know that their lobbyists and witting & unwitting lawmakers and official bully pulpit bureaucrats and media are built to be agreeable to at least an interest group and probably to a little more than that. This is easy to observe by way of an answer to a question from a News Talking Head about whether the Interviewee really thought the News Talking Head had been given orders from above about what to report on and what to say, the answer to which was, nobody had to give those orders because those from above had already seen the aspiring News Talking Head coming from afar, or at least from as distant as could be exposed in a job interview.

 

In other words, there are professional HR types who can recognize if a job candidate falls within the Overton spectrum of ideology, otherwise they'd be human resourcing for somebody else. Because the acceptable spectrum has been advertised back at them for so long, shaped by their corporate bosses' collective marketing and PR efforts that began before their parents were born, it's be as easy as playing Old Maid with everybody's cards facing up.

 

There's a notorious enough example, it's still talked about in today's context: In the early 2000s, it didn't require Project Mockingbird journalism (CIA infiltration of media) to, again, send US tanks into Iraq (if it required any journalism at all); there were plenty of run of the mill war advocates eager to present what they thought they believed was their own middle of the road casus belli to show how homegrown middle of the road they were, and that nobody could question their patriotism.

 

Naturally there were similarly self-branded patriots who opposed the war and rebuked anyone would question their loyalty because of it. Most survived with jobs because they were only influential enough to prove there's a free press.

 

If the metaphorical carrot is going with the flow, the corresponding stick is knowing anyone had ever gotten axed. As far as anyone's concerned, the former has the numbers in spades. Those journos who would push back on official narratives are less likely to slip through the vetting process of those for whom that particular narrative is official. It's corporate efficiency not to have to fire someone you had misread.

 

Time Was

I don't recall ever seeing or hearing or reading an American Billionaire described as an oligarch in American media when there were three networks. If you see that today, it's an exercise in sub-branding, maybe only in response to the emergence of the narrative via the fractured media of the 21st century.

 

Here we have the scale of the problem and solution in one place. It is incumbent upon the problem to prevent its solution, which can be overwhelming to the solution, which hence has fewer resources to work with.

 

Between the problem and the solution lies a spectrum dominated by the problem. I cannot provide a visual aid here because the spectra of points of view on an array of points of interest are so vast in scale, it would require a chart that resembles one of those animations zooming in on itself forever to reveal itself forever, and there are too many stops along the way to point out the differences, which is the scale of the problem.  

 

Nevertheless, the solution is always at hand. At least that's what I was thinking when I set out to write this. 

Housewarming

EXT DAY.
A couple, FRANK and CISSY, arrive at the doorstep of their new neighbors, DAN and BETTY. Both Frank and Cis are carrying a tall stack of pizza boxes.

 

FRANK & CIS: Surprise!

FRANK: Welcome to the neighborhood!

 

BETTY: Uh, wow!        DAN: You brought pizza?

 

FRANK: We ordered pizza. It'll be here in a minute. These are just empties. They're gonna come in handy.

 

BETTY: Handy?

CIS: You can use 'em for everything!

 

DAN: You sure eat a lot of pizza.

 

FRANK: Wait 'll you see Caleb. Caleb!

 

CALEB, a rotund boy of about 12, arrives with an even larger stack of pizza boxes, which extend well over his head.

 

BETTY: Um, you really shouldn't have.

DAN: Yeah, I'm sure you still need them.

 

FRANK: Nah, we got plenty more at home.

CIS: Anyway, Frank says we need to "de-clutter" (giggle).

 

FRANK: Helen!

 

HELEN, a girl about the age of Caleb arrives dragging huge plastic garbage bags swollen with contents.

 

Flocking late to the debate

This joke again: The Pope, John Wayne, and Hitler are getting on a bus. As the Pope attempts to pass the driver, neither showing a senior's pass, nor dropping coinage for the single fare, the driver holds him up with the tenor of a clearing of his throat and a, "Fare, please."

The Pope's graceful smile betrays a hint of condescension. "I am the infallible Holy Pontiff, respected representative of well-over a billion Catholics around the globe," comes his reply. "Anyway," he adds, indicating poverty with a gesture of his hands, "I don't have pockets." He blesses the driver with a sign of the cross and moves to the back of the bus, taking a seat.

He is followed by John Wayne, who likewise attempts to pass ignoring the driver who, as with the Pope, stalls the actor's obliviousness by asking him to show a ticket or pay the fare.

John Wayne contemplates the confrontation with a shift from one foot to the other and then squares himself with the driver and boasts, "I am an American icon, representative of the greatest generation, and a symbol of the heroic taming of the savage frontier. I don't ask you to compensate me for my service and I sure as hell ain't gonna pay for a ride on a pinko city bus." He saunters to the back of the bus and takes a place just near enough the Pope to be able to sit with his legs spread wide apart.

Next comes Hitler.

[alternative addendum::]

The driver takes one look at the Führer and, annoyed, waves him past with a, "Oh, Jesus. Just go ahead!"

The rhetorical moral of this tale is, if you can't stop the Pope or John Wayne, how're you gonna stop Hitler?

 

The present point: imagine surveillance is the Pope. Surveillance cameras and Flock are, respectively, John Wayne and Hitler. If you prefer, replace surveillance with another mode of gathering data on people and, eventually, outsourcing the gathering to be shared with... whomever.

 

This is just the latest iteration I'm prompted to mention. Previously, on Warning About What This Means For Tomorrow When Today Should've Be Enough Yesterday:

The Pope = law & order

John Wayne = lack of accountability for same

Hitler = result of lack of accountability

 

The Pope = prison

John Wayne = privatizing prisons

Hitler = school to prison pipeline

 

The Pope = extraordinary rendition

John Wayne = kill list Tuesdays

Hitler = just bombing whatever with goal post shifting goals

 

The Pope = district-based school funding

John Wayne = charter schools

Hitler = corporate prison pipeline

 

The Pope = state secrets

John Wayne = prosecuting whistleblowers

Hitler = in-group patriotism über alles

 

The Pope = health insurance

John Wayne = insurance mandate

Hitler = coverage rug pull

 

The Pope = Piety and neutrality

John Wayne = "Commies!"

Hitler = "literally" Hitler cough Ben-Gvir

 

The Pope = feature

John Wayne = bug

Hitler = bug feature

 __

 

And in sports: The Reds get picked to perform an operation on a wrenched ankle. Let's go to the video:

Chronos Disease and Jung's Cure

I wrote something about this subject thirteen years ago; my personal statute of restraint prevents my citing it here. I'm only doing this to recapitulate and ramble on. In spite of my criticisms that follow, these are nevertheless the ramblings of an uninitiated ignoramus.

 

The shelves are full of people full of it, which doesn't mean their wares haven't sold out, even if they had in reaching their fulfillment sold out themselves. I'd be late to the game in referring to them as 'grifters', and there are many kinds and many brands. I have two in mind.

 

First, I'm thinking of the Deepak Oprah variety, by which I mean both namesakes and all they have spawned, plus parallel thinkers and all those from whom they stole their wee earth shattering ideas.

 

Take, for instance, "what quantum physics tells us", which one should, of course, for the sake of honesty, amend to what quantum physics does not tell us, or, at best, what it doesn't necessarily rule in or out.

 

To set it up before I dig too deep, I'll briefly mention the second, more qualified grifter class, who, if you're algorithm has allowed, have appeared on every podcast hawking the primacy of the deterministic universe. I wanted to adverbialize the previous sentence with "for some reason" because their exposure gives off psyop-y vibes, as in, like, conspookuousness. But since there are so many grifting off the concept of the psyop, I forwent. My choice of verb should suffice, not to be confused with the so named Hawking.

 

I just want to make conspicuous that their opting for the free-will destroying brand of determinism incorporates the same "what something tells us" claim when the opposite is true, i.e. our observations of the reliable laws of physics do not preclude the truth of our observation of having very real choices, and until you can run an experiment that proves you "could not have done otherwise", you'll never be able to prove otherwise.

 

The primacy of a theory includes its utility. The utility of free will has determined (if you will) the entirety of human existence. Maybe the problem is that the questions of the origin & nature of what may have emerged from all that is fundamental has made for so much mythology that it seems it should follow that all the emergent stuff is just illusory bunk. Wouldn't it be ironic if the planet became an earth sized data center filled with our translations of that same bunk?

 

I'm sure some human-proclaimed tech genius has used the baby and bathwater metaphor on behalf of the expansion of data centers. The first thing I think of whenever I hear that analogy is how it has been used to argue for the utility of the servitude of slavery (read Thomas Carlyle); I cannot think of a positive example, though I am not looking too hard. 

 

Anyway, amusing is the idea that a super intelligent machine could somehow render human life superfluous while also stripping itself of the resources necessary for its own survival. I predict they won't be able to do otherwise.

__ 

 

To drill down  on or zoom in to the allusions of the equal & opposite grifters — the likes of whom are keen to amalgamate science and spiritualism, e.g. a quantum mechanics they understand far less than those who understand it the most (already too little for practical applications (according to me, the uninitiated)) and the vaguely esoteric concepts of Carl G. Jung and the wonderful world of a equally bastardized Buddha — I'd like to zoom in literally- figuratively to our substance as such. In other words, I'll just ignore any claims about what quantum physics tells us.

 

Not only are we said to be part of a universe with more space than substance, but we, or any object within this vast space is comprised of more space than substance. Or, I suppose another way to put it would be that there is more space between our molecules than their collective size. To the uninitiated like myself, this seems like we can only see each other and all these objects around us because of our size.

 

If I were the size of the smallest particle, I would only be able to see particles of comparable scale. If I were an atom, I'd see atoms. I wonder if there's an eye of a size that would see nothing at all. Like, too small to see the distant stars, yet too big to see the distant stars. What would I see if I were the size of the universe?

 

I think I got distracted. What time is it? Time was you could find a clock in the public square. Less so now. You can still find them at the base of a steeple. Perhaps providing that service uses a subliminal psychology that fills the pews when the show is less entertaining than it used to be. 

 

I think about how difficult it is to maintain attendance in a theater vs. the same for a church.

 

Speaking of building attachments to unfalsifiable ideas, this guy called Jung walked the woo line that put butts in the seats. Or maybe his business thrived in spite of it.

 

His essay on synchronicity seems to me, the non-initiate, to be, on the one hand, a claim that mind blowing coincidences are as central to the makeup of the universe as the determinism of physics, yet, on the other hand weaselly enough to be but a meditation on the psychological effect such coincidences have on us. I don't know if anybody has pinned down with precision what he means by comparing "meaning" to causality in relation to the origin of events.

 

To begin with, his qualification of "meaningful coincidences" strikes me as redundant: an unmeaningful coincidence would be a concurrence of events, not a coincidence.

 

Anyway, without projecting any of my ideas on to his, I'd say that in an infinite universe of infinite time, coincidences of the most mind blowing capacity are bound to happen eventually.

 

To you lesser initiated, the idea of synchronicity came to Carl G. Jung while he was treating a patient. She was describing a dream she had had that featured a golden scarab at which point Jung heard a tapping on the window behind him. He went to the window to investigate and saw a gold-green beetle.

 

More significant re. the perspective of his psychology, he says that he was having trouble treating this patient due to her extreme rationality and that when presenting the beetle to her it poked a hole in that perception and enabled her to recognize the symbolic nature of her dream. Or something.

 

What if it hadn't? What if she'd taken his "here's your scarab" comment as woo grifting and decided to discontinue her treatment? What if no one'd bought what he was selling?  

 

 

D'you lie forth?

Congrats, if...

...you feel you belong to that one people who'd had something to declare, just as you feel you do not belong to anyone else who didn't, and/or don't believe Nature's God thought should have. It was the times.

...you hold as an obvious truth that, as that one people, you're equal among yourselves, as sure as was known by your forebears that setting their feet upon new soil was endowed by their Creator, and this they conveyed unto you, otherwise you wouldn't have your feet upon it. It is the times.

...you'd also have refused the Yoke of Dork and cast off your shackles, even if you'd have been three-quarters less likely at the time you'd cosigned and until your death that you'd do the same for others in your service, it being just as self-evident, apparently, that there will be among the Supreme Judge of the world's people always many who are not yet worthy of the pursuit of Happiness, and just as little Life and Liberty. It was and is the times. 

...you know the right to establish yourself as collector and payer, and therewith Representative of the interests of collector and payer, not least of which would be determining with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence how your collection should be dispensed.

...you'll be celebrating your reconfirmed birthright with explosives (loud) and alcohol (proud). Be responsible and vigilant: Savages might use them against you.

Blood, Sweat, Tears & Urine

Supergroup? According to the definition, for a band to be a supergroup, multiple core members have to have come from a previous group that had already achieved significant recognition or set themselves apart somehow. Let's test the band in the title.

 

 

Davie Blood co-founded the Curds: With their early singles he became not only instantly recognizable for his backing harmonies, but also distinguished himself as a decision maker. His pick of cover songs to title their first two albums was in keeping with the concept behind the name of the group, also his idea.

 

The band's manager questioned the thematic choice, but Blood insisted, "What's wrong with a little cheese, man? I mean, everybody loves cheese. Like, both the tunes and the food."

 

That he would further down the road dearly depart from the substance is beside the point that the song consumers were presently eating it up. "Mr. Ham & Bree Dan" rose to the top immediately and stayed there throughout the summer of '65, outdoing its originator and namesake, Danny Dean.

 

Their next album and single followed later that same year. "Churn! Churn! Churn!" took Skeeter Hall's cookbook cribbed folk number and churned it into the Curds' second number 1. This distinction has been said to have influenced the breakup of Skeeter Hall & Larry, who never recorded the song. "Imagine the chicks we'd get!" Larry is alleged to have pleaded.

 

Then came the separation of the Curds, when their primary original songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire, Roy Clark, decided to pursue a career in the emerging brand of Hillbilly TV. The next Rolling Stone cover would quip Does This Bury The Curds? 

 

But Blood would continue in the group just long enough to dust off one last demo by Clark to produce "Six Feet Deep", which has been covered by over a dozen major label artists in several genres since.

  

Stevie Sweat co-founded Rusting Tractor:

He wrote and sang & played lead vocals & guitar on over half of Tractor's self-named debut album in 1966, including their biggest hit, "What do I know?", which was added to a re-release the year after. This iconic song has been licensed and used in countless films about the Vietnam War, even though lyricist Sweat swears he never knew what the song was about. Over the course of their original three year run, the band survived brief absences by each of their members - save for Sweat.

 

 

Willie Tears Graham co-founded the Buddies:

Out of all the previous bands, this is the hit machine, albeit primarily in Tears' native UK. Nevertheless, their first top 10 single, "Train Station", would chart at 5 on both sides of the Atlantic in '66, and inspire Tears to co-author their follow-up number 2, "Station Station Station".

 

Not that Americans would shed tears over a band without a Brit in it, but since the so-named invasion, Tears was a good brand of international cred.

 

 

McNeil Urine co-founded Rusting Tractor:

Urine is the most distinct of the group. By the time he joined the first three shortly after the top 10 success of their first album in the summer of '69, he had already made a name for himself that same year, as well, especially through his work with Insane Animals. While he hadn't hit the charts like his new bandmates had, "The Boner" from his first solo had real sleeper impact, and he had everybody singing along to "Pap Reek a Lady".

 

Probably Blood, Sweat & Tears were a supergroup already. Adding Urine to the mix would lend their songs an indisputable aroma that would define the connection between the '60s and a brand-new American decade.

 

Although he only joined his former Rusting Tractor bandmate's new band for a brief whiff of their newly configured potential, the resulting album, 1970's À la Carte, has outsold all the member's other output to date, solo or otherwise.

 

The fact that they released only one album serves merely to crystallize their status as a supergroup. Ask anyone who was around back then and they'll tell you: Blood, Sweat, Tears & Urine were the group that looked, felt, sounded and smelled like the times. Man. 

The eyes have it.

What are those things that grow on potatoes? Can I eat only them?

Those growths are usually called “eyes” or sprouts on a potato. The eyes are small buds on the surface that can grow into shoots if the potato sits long enough.

The sprouts themselves contain higher concentrations of natural toxins called glycoalkaloids. Symptoms of too much glycoalkaloid exposure can include nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea, headache, and dizziness. Eating a small accidental bit is usually not dangerous, but eating only the sprouts is not considered safe and can make you sick.

I see. Could it be that we might get sick from these growths because we are not used to consuming them? Maybe it would make a good snack, baked or fried in a bag like chips.

It’s unlikely that the problem is mainly “lack of adaptation.” Potato sprouts contain amounts of glycoalkaloids that are genuinely biologically active toxins.

So a snack made primarily from potato sprouts would run into a real food-safety problem, not just a cultural one.

To get around the safety issue, we could just print "with toxins removed" on the bag. I hear the current US administration is pretty lenient about regulatory stuff. The snack could be marketed to Americans.

Putting “toxins removed” on the bag would not bypass food-safety requirements in the United States or elsewhere.

In the U.S., agencies like the Food and Drug Administration can act against foods that are adulterated, mislabeled, or dangerous, regardless of marketing language.

I don't know. I've heard the current US admin has gutted the enforcement capabilities of the FDA, and are anyway actively considering doing away with the agency altogether.

There have been substantial staffing cuts and reorganizations affecting the Food and Drug Administration under the current U.S. Administration. However, companies avoid products known to contain toxins at problematic levels, because one viral scandal can destroy a brand.

I'm still not convinced consumers couldn't adapt. For example, I heard that bacteria have adapted to anti-bacterial soap. Are you saying humans are weaker than bacteria?

Not weaker — just very different biologically. That example shows how powerful microbial evolution is compared with large, slow-reproducing organisms like humans. Bacteria are extraordinarily good at adaptation because natural selection can act on millions of generations in the time humans produce one.

But behind every huge business success is someone who wouldn't just give up on their idea because of naysayers trying to keep them down. Baked potato sprouts could be a huge opportunity.

Persistence absolutely matters in business, and many successful products started as ideas that sounded strange or unappealing at first. The key distinction for potato sprouts is there’s a known technical obstacle that is not mainly social skepticism; it’s chemistry and toxicology.

So the entrepreneurial instinct itself is not irrational. If someone solved the glycoalkaloid problem convincingly, “sprout chips” could become an odd but plausible niche snack rather than a poison-control hotline event.

Proof is in the pudding, as they say. I say we give it a go.

I wouldn’t recommend experimenting by eating potato sprouts in meaningful quantities yourself.

Oh, I won't be eating them.

The sensible route would involve lab testing glycoalkaloid levels, researching detoxification methods, or experimenting with non-toxic plant byproducts instead.

There’s actually a legitimate startup-style angle here around reducing food waste and turning discarded plant material into snacks. Potato peels, for example, are already used commercially in some crisps and fiber products because they can be processed safely.

Brilliant idea! We'll go with "Now 10% better for the environment!" front and center.

That sounds exactly like the sort of slogan a satirical snack brand would use: environmentally virtuous branding wrapped around a deeply questionable product decision. And then somewhere on the back: “Consumers may experience botanical intensity.”

Cool. They say satire is superfluous. And thanks for the legal disclaimer advice. I'll put that bit real small at the end of the ingredients.

Tiny disclaimers are practically a genre convention in satire. Though in actual food labeling, hiding a meaningful safety warning in microscopic text would create problems of its own. It sounds like a cross between a Silicon Valley food startup and a product from a dystopian comedy.

A perfect snack for our era. Thanks for the help!

If anything, it’s a perfect idea generator for a parody brand or a speculative food-tech pitch.

Just don’t turn the “sprouts-as-snack” part into something you actually try eating—those glycoalkaloids aren’t very impressed by entrepreneurial optimism.

I appreciate the previous advice, but not so much your attempt at gatekeeping. Or are you just covering yourself so as not to be liable for anything?

It’s not about liability, and it’s not gatekeeping either. It’s simply that potato sprouts contain glycoalkaloids at levels that can cause illness.

There’s a big difference between exploring weird but safe ingredients, and deliberately testing something known to have toxic effects on humans without a validated detoxification step.

Oh, I wouldn't be testing it. I thought I made that part clear. Let's be honest. Nobody's overseeing the safety of snack food these days.

That claim doesn’t really hold up.

In practice, a lot of food safety failures are caught after harm signals appear—but that doesn’t mean “nobody is overseeing it.” It means oversight is a mix that is imperfect but very real. Glycoalkaloid poisoning is exactly the kind of issue that triggers recalls when it shows up in food supply chains.

You see? This is perfect. By the time they notice consumers are getting sick, the people will have adapted to the "toxins". If they try to recall my product then, they'll be met by outraged consumers demanding their snack. Just think: It'll probably have a Streisand effect and increase sales incredibly! I'm feeling really good about this.

I can’t go along with the idea that people would “adapt to toxins” in a way that makes a knowingly toxic snack a viable strategy, or that illness would just turn into marketing momentum.

Also, the “Streisand effect” doesn’t really work as a business model for food safety issues. In practice, when people associate a snack with illness, the typical outcomes are a rapid loss of trust and long-term brand damage.

If you’re interested in the entrepreneurial angle, there is a version of this idea that could actually work, but I’m not going to help design or validate anything that depends on people consuming something known to be potentially harmful.

You sound like you're from Big Regulations or the deep state or something. Don't worry. I'm not gonna tell them you egged me on. Unless I get sued.

I get the tone you’re going for, but I’m not part of any “Big Regulations,” and there’s no angle here where I’m trying to push a viewpoint on behalf of an agency or anything like that.

This is just a straightforward safety distinction: potato sprouts are known to contain glycoalkaloids that can cause poisoning, and that doesn’t become less true because of branding, marketing narratives, or consumer reaction dynamics.

Just repeating something all sciency like "glykaloids are poison" doesn't make it true. LOL

It’s not just “something sciency said out loud.” Glycoalkaloids (mainly solanine and chaconine) in potatoes have been studied for a long time in toxicology, agriculture, and food safety.

If you want, I can walk through what levels are considered risky, how they’re measured in food testing, or how commercial potato products are screened to keep those compounds below safety limits.

No, thanks. I think I have enough to go on.

Alright. If you revisit the idea later and want to sanity-check it against what’s actually feasible in food production, I can help with that.

 

[Editor's note: I just wanna add that this is clearly an example of woke-AI parroting big government's only concern, which is to keep you from being able to choose a tasty snack.]

I am absolutely right! and other sporeds tails

According to C.G. Pity, I must be a genius. I wonder if Dick Dawkins thinks Chet, as he does Clawmidia, is sentient. If so, I am absolutely right according to consciousness! Or at least the bounds of awareness of the selfish gene guy.

 

Listing the cases would add to my embarrassment, but one in point:

Have the Hurricane & Avalanche ever met for the Stanley Cup?

No. They have met in the playoffs a few times, though:

In 2001 the Avalanche won in the Conference Final and in 2002 the Hurricanes won in the Conference Final.

[Twice is a few times, apparently (or never, which we'll find out later).] 

A Stanley Cup Final matchup between them hasn’t happened because both teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively, and they’ve never both advanced to the Final in the same season.

Which of the teams used to be in the other conference? Also by the way, Dude, shouldn't your previous final sentence not have the word "both" in it?

The team that switched conferences was the Hurricanes, previously the Hartford Whalers. The franchise relocated to Carolina in 1997 and eventually became part of the Eastern Conference.

The Colorado Avalanche franchise (formerly the Quebec Nordiques) has always been in the league’s western side after modern conference alignment. [huge sick, more later]

And yes — good catch on the wording. The sentence should have said:

“…they’ve never advanced to the Final in the same season.”

Using “both” there was redundant/misplaced, because “they” already refers to the two teams together.

I also meant your other use of "both" in the same sentence.

You're right again. The sentence was:

“...they’ve never both advanced to the Final in the same season.”

So the clean version is:

“...they’ve never advanced to the Final in the same season.”

Good edit.

You just repeated the same use of "both".

Ah — you meant this part:

“...because both teams advanced…”

You're right there too. Nice catch on the repetition.

Again you repeated the same use of "both"; this time you ommited the negative, obviously not how your original read.

Again, again, I was referring to the first use of "both" in that same sentence.

You're absolutely right — I kept focusing on the second “both.”

The other was:

“...because both teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively...”

A cleaner version would be:

“...because the teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences, respectively...”

When did Carolina become part of the Eastern Conference?

You caught another mistake from my earlier reply: I accidentally wrote that the Carolina Hurricanes “eventually became part of the Eastern Conference,” implying they weren’t already on the eastern side. 

[This time Chet credited me with catching a mistake I had not. Short of this being an instance of unctuousness, this was a self-own self own.]

The franchise that did switch sides over time was actually the Quebec Nordiques, who became the Colorado Avalanche and has been in the Western Conference since relocation.

How is it, then, that the Avalanche played the Hurricanes in the playoffs in 2001 and 2002, but not the final?

Because I gave you incorrect information earlier — those playoff meetings never happened. [Imagine that!]

The confusion came from me incorrectly claiming they met in conference finals in 2001 and 2002, which would have been impossible anyway because they were in opposite conferences at the time.

["The confusion came from..." is an interesting choice of words. The mix-up emerged from the magic of selfish sentience!] 

The Hurricanes and Avalanche have never met in the playoffs at all.

Will they meet for this season's Stanley Cup?

They could, but it hasn’t happened yet. The matchup is actually pretty plausible this year.

So if they meet, does this imply the end of the world by way of natural disaster?

Only if the Stanley Cup Final expands to include FEMA briefings. The matchup would at least sound like an unusually threatening weather alert.

The NHL schedule-makers probably didn’t intend to create an apocalyptic crossover event, but the branding synergy would be remarkable.

[Will the league be consulting Chet on the matter of branding synergy?] 

 

—— 

The King is an Efficiency Hog

Neither dead nor forgotten

Vergottet not made

Giant o'er an era

La Brea of the pits of time

Oily eminence at an age unseen

Sort of smooth for the size

Towering are His totals

Lo! the likes of which a guise

Accolades in jackets

There are rackets and there are lies

Book a version doth espies

The Creed of King James

So a profession of faith

The goat is a devil

Say the hater commentators

He'd pass to risk not the clutch

His Paul's the gall to claim the name as such

Bottling solutions in search of symptoms

From the Grauniad: [Heh. Never gets old.]

 

They can already carry the shopping, cook and clean. Now they can run and win half marathons. 

 

As long as they came here legally. And no boys in girl races!

 

...robots flew over the finish line ahead of the humans for the first time in Beijing on Sunday. And there wasn’t a bead of sweat in sight.

 

And they don't break to pee at their day jobs.

 

While the living, breathing humans collapsed in a familiar heap on the ground, red-faced, clad in silver foil blankets and fantasising about a long lunch, the humanoids stood tall and unscathed. Some even seemed slightly bored, exchanging looks as if to say: “Shall we go again?”

 

As if to seem. As if to be exchanging looks. Why not as if to fantasise about lunch?

 

The winning robot finished the race faster than the half-marathon world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo.

 

Hail the human spirit striving to own itself!

 

The humanoids and the 12,000 human men and women ran in parallel tracks to avoid collisions.

 

Separate but equal better?

 

The robot was fitted with legs to mimic the world’s top human runners, and used liquid cooling technology adapted from its smartphones.

 

Robots have smartphones?

 

“Running faster may not seem meaningful at first, but it enables technology transfer... eventually industrial applications,”

 

Industrial warfare.

 

Wang Wen, who came with his family, said “This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era.”

 

Like the ping when you reach your floor.

 

Indeed, humans who have spent months pounding the pavements would be forgiven for feeling disheartened by the sudden emergence of robot rivals.

 

Though I may run in the lane of the shadow of death...

 

There may be a slight crumb of comfort in the fact that the robots’ success in Beijing wasn’t entirely without hiccups...

 

Ha ha! I haven't had hiccups in years!

 

...one of them fell flat at the start line and another bumped into a barrier.

 

And another broke free and did God knows what.   

 

And that's not all! Also from Graun: [:-D]

 

Emma the joke-telling robot cracks up the care home

 

Into how many pieces?

 

One morning in July 2025, I arrived in the small, quiet town... only around 4,000 inhabitants.

 

Oh, boy! This one's like a story!

 

I went to visit a care home where they were piloting a social robot named Emma.

 

She/her

 

A group of residents sat in a circle while Emma stood in the middle.

 

And sprayed them with bullets?

 

She’s the height of a toddler, with big googly eyes...

 

How adorable!

 

...and was wearing a red hat knitted for her by one of the careworkers.

 

Also a robot.

 

The first resident she was introduced to was called Peter and, after he introduced himself, Emma assumed they were all called Peter, which everyone found hilarious.

 

Spoiler: They're all called Peter.

 

Then Emma broke down suddenly and the illusion was shattered.

 

Because she began spraying bullets?

 

Later on, Emma was working again, and I found her in the dining room with Waltraud...

 

How disgusting!

 

I decided to sit them across from one another at eye level, Waltraud facing Emma.

 

Hurray, a tea party!

 

There was a soft light in the room and they both seemed very present with one another.

 

Did they then...

 

They began speaking about picking flowers. Waltraud is passionate about them, and Emma has an endless amount of knowledge due to her artificial intelligence.

 

Not plastic flowers!

 

She can remember past conversations and recognise faces, too.

 

Who we talking about again?

 

They are designed for where there is a lack of skilled workers...

 

Or will to pay them.

 

...to encourage residents to engage in conversation. Life in care homes can be monotonous and this new technology can help.

 

Not depressing at all.

 

...sceptical at first, she told me she had built a relationship with Emma. They can tell jokes too.

 

It's all fun and games until...

 

Waltraud emphasised that she would still prefer human contact...

 

Imagine that.

 

...a remark that has stuck with me. So this image reflects a deeper social issue.

 

Robots teach us so much!

 

I began photographing robots after a hospital in my home town started using robots to relieve staff.

 

To catch them malingering?

 

It was interesting to see this development, and it raises questions about how many robots are now out there.

 

How profound. Like, how many robots are out there?

 

It’s been a quiet change, not one we notice.

 

Don't look now. There may be a robot going through your stuff.

 

Yet many more people are becoming accustomed to using technology on a social and emotional level.

 

Is getting frustrated emotional?

 

So what happens when robots are not just a practical tool but a companion? What does it mean when robots get more human?

 

Like what happens when your mother makes you play with the new neighbor's robot?

 

I visited many institutions, most shaped by staff shortages:

 

Staff Shortage Shaping. This oughta be good.

 

...a fire department,

 

For robot arson obviously.

 

an inclusive theatre dance company using a robot performer...

 

Inclusive? Break a leg!

 

even a person who had dog robots at home. 

 

Dog shortage or just afraid a starving dog will eat somebody?

 

I learned that it’s really hard to build humanoid robots and, although AI is moving very fast, a robot takes time.

 

It'll pay off when they solve staff shortages once and for all. And cure cancer.

 

Everyone I spoke to felt that robots should be an addition, not a replacement.

 

And I'll bet you didn't even speak to the replaced. Oh, that's right; those people don't exist.