Many Bets, Won

Today marks the official end of a variety of bets made 4 years ago, which mostly continued from a rather larger batch of bets made 4 years before that.

To wit: Obama has survived his terms, uninjured by anyone wishing to harm his semi-black skin.

I should make some more bets today. People deliberately ingesting pretty transparent propaganda, and freaking out all over as a result, need to be taken advantage of.

Come on. Tell me what horrible things are about to happen. Put up or shut up.

Trolling For Trolls

If you ever wonder what "concern troll" means, post something like this:

New Year: Whee.

Normally I don't do New Year's resolutions. If I attempt to set goals of that sort it's usually based on my birthday, which admittedly is only a 2 week shift from there, but the feel of it is different and less arbitrary-feeling. Yes, I know it's still arbitrary, if more tied to my actual being. You have to start somewhere.

I'm not a bad person, really.

Look, I'm not trying to say that I'm more intelligent than most people, just that it's really hard to explain things, no matter how simple I make them, far far too much of the time. I swear, it's like an armor of preconceived dumbth covers most brains, and if you even try to make headway, the pre-programming nabs the idea on the way in and runs off with it.

It's like this:

Ok, I am a bad person.

I'm also getting pretty pissy about having to explain not only that 2+2=4, and why, with several examples, but that it always has and always will because reality doesn't bend to feelz, math is not subjective, emotional investment does not produce either truth or reliability, and deliberately missing the point is not remotely clever.

It would appear that I may be a much worse person by the time I'm done.

Super Annoying

It happens way too often: I'll be thinking about something on the (long) road to work, and have a nicely-crafted article ready to go in my head, but once I've got the initial rush of stuff out of the way, I can't even remember what the topic was.

 Ngngngngng

Why Genius Is Misunderstood

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer

An Ode to Hyperbole, Mistress of the Season

O hyperbole! How thou dost my laughter
Ring from lo, thy many invocations!
How indeed hast thou such deft and graceful
Might to, with a mere few syllables of
Unthought blatheration, sever any
Prospect of respect from e'er accruing
To thy loyal servants and disciples?
Such a rare and wondrous gift thou givest,
Op'ning mouths and closing intellects and
Eyes (though whether brain was e'er engaged, I
Dare not make presumption, oh, not ever),
Yielding such hilarity as ever
Made a villain roar in cruel amusement.
Yea, thou hast a conundrum contriv'ed:
I, a heterodox yet no villain,
Forecasting the truth's inevitable
Vindication, deeply wish thy solid
Grasp upon so many were the lesser;
Little would give pleasure more than yet to
Separate the comic'ly absurd from
Those whose happiness I wish to see, yet
Slav'ry to thy bitter thirst addicted.
Carry on, hyperbole, until through
Surfeit of thine own inane outrages
Merriment give way to gentler respite,
Once again, lucidity arriving.

Sperg, indeed.

For reasons I've no intention of going into right now, I am very aware of what a fit of Asperger's-spawned verbarrhea looks like. Pretty distinctive, to the experienced observer. It always amuses me when people accuse a pretty basic logical premise as "sperging out" while they themselves are in the midst of actually doing so.

I try to be nice.

Generation X is tired.

I swear, it's like I wrote this and then forgot I had. Except that its writer somehow thinks that the self-impressed coffeehouse marxist in the White House could possibly represent us if he was a bit younger. Nobody's perfect.

Look, I'm going to save the entire thing here, just in case, because things on the Web disappear sometimes and I don't want to lose this; but you should absolutely go read its originating post because it's the right thing to do and I'm pretty sure Mat has other things you'll enjoy.

Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.
Generation X is tired.

It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up.

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. 

Yeah.

Feerth. Rowr.

Just a friendly recommendation:

Avoid using the word "fierce" to describe humans, unless you're able to do so without meaning "hilariously arrogant; as self-impressed yet harmless as a kitten with delusions of grandeur."

Answer The Damned Question

No one who needs to see this is likely to, in this most obscure corner of the Web. But here it is, just in case.

If you have a blog that gives advice, if you are perhaps even an expert in a particular area, and someone leaves a comment with a request to clarify some point or another, it might behoove you to respond. Even if your blog has a modest following and generally few comments to the articles, odds are that someone else has had the same question. And honestly, if your readership isn't overwhelming you with hundreds of comments there's no good excuse not to improve your relationship, and many reasons to make that connection.

I know of several blogs who do have what I'd consider daunting numbers of commenters who nonetheless make sure all is well in a visible and friendly way, daily. Yes, I'm slow to respond to comments sometimes, but in my defense (a) I'm not usually giving advice, and (b) I know I suck at this. Plus, I am very rarely asked anything like follow-on clarifications. All 3 of those items are scheduled to change. Those who have been doing it for some time, and on a professional level, should really have that very easy part of things figured out by now.

Getting Their Outrage Fix

A lot of people match this pattern exactly:

1. They always, always, always vote for the same party.
2. The only question is in their own primary.
3. They watch the opposing party's convention - often more than a couple hours of it
4. ...going straight to the pundits who give them their talking points
5. ...so that they can fluff their feathers and How Dare They to the rest of their own echo chamber.
6. They are certain this makes some sort of difference, somewhere.

I find this crew to be deeply, abjectly pathetic.

The stupidity usually manifests in other areas of their lives, too. Once you see the pattern listed above, it becomes hard to miss.

Right Side of the Vocab Curve

It's kind of nice to find a quiz that isn't all obvious stuff, and won't end up with results far, far too heavily loaded up on the 100% correct side. In fact, something where 100% is dang near impossible is the only way to make any quiz worthwhile.



Not sure about that Shakespeare thing, but I do have a love for my language, as you know.

I made the image a link. Have a go.

Realignment

Some days I wonder where I'd fall in the venerable AD&D alignment chart. Usually I like to think of myself as NG with some Chaotic tendencies. (Self-flattery is fun, really, if untoward.)

Then there's today, when I'm pretty sure I'm straight-up Chaotic Neutral.

Speaking of which, and speaking of Hamilton, this song came on my Pandora earlier, and I've been laughing since.

Hamilton

There was a lot of Hamilton at the Tony's this year. A LOT of Hamilton. Between that and having several friends listening to the soundtrack nearly nonstop for weeks, I've come to a few conclusions:

1. Looks like a good, fun show.
2. At this rate, I might get tired of it before I even see it.
3. I'm amazed that the stories kids have forgotten almost instantly after hearing them in History class will now be remembered well.
4. I don't want to hear a goddamned peep about "cultural appropriation" ever again.

It's worth noting that "cultural appropriation" is culture, and also that shredding self-righteous morons with that fact, and its many, many examples, is quite a lot of fun.

Grammys

How much do I pay attention to big stars' intramural spats? I had no idea Taylor Swift was specifically talking about professional lunatic Kanye West in her Grammy acceptance speech warning against people who would try to take credit for your work.

I liked the idea of Lady Gaga's tribute to David Bowie, but it seemed like it had been reduced from something three times as long, keeping at least a bit of every cut item.

The B.B. King tribute was really excellent, though.

That reminds me of a few name items:

• The B.B. in B.B. King is for Blues Boy.
• The L.L. in L.L. Cool J. is for Ladies Love. The J is for James.
• David Bowie's real last name is Jones. He took a stage name because when he got going, there was this crazy popular band, The Monkees, whose lead singer was also Davie Jones. He opted for clarity of distinction. That may have been the only time anyone thought those two could have been confused for each other.

Why Villains Laugh

It's a staple of most genres, really. Villains have their Evil Laugh, which they use a little too often for any sort of sense-making, but having one is more or less required. As Dr. Horrible said, having a quality Evil Laugh is an important thing.

A lot of guys ignore the laugh, and that's about standards. I mean, if you're gonna get into the Evil League of Evil, you have to have a memorable laugh.

He's right, of course, from a literary/entertainment point of view, but it prompts the question: Why? Specifically, why do they need a laugh, and in what way is it nefarious? Aside from the obvious (and perhaps circular) reason that for a character to be memorable it needs memorable traits, it does seem odd that villains have such a jolly time.

Firstly, it's not always about humor. There are a lot of reasons people laugh, and sometimes it has little to do with funniness. This is more article seed than article proper, so I'll just say this: One big reason villains laugh so much is that the hero-types do the obvious, play into the villains' plans, and are generally irrational and self-impressed. Even when the result (and often, cause) is awful, the blind insistence on doing what obviously won't work sparks the sense of absurd, and laughter follows. It just may not be the laugh of merriment.

Yes, I've been laughing a lot, lately. Why do you ask?

Temptations To Troll

I've been learning things, as usual. Recently I happened upon a group of resources that are teaching me how influence happens, and why, and it's not so much like peeking behind a curtain as like someone turned a light on. You suddenly see why things happen as they do, when no normal explanation adds up or when there are many explanations that don't ring true. Or, as Scott Adams (expert in such matters) put it, it's like seeing things with an extra dimension: when everyone's playing regular chess, the one who is actually playing 3D chess will do things that look crazy but somehow work.

Naturally, I want to have a go at using this new knowledge. Once some theory is well in hand, trying things out is one of the best ways to really understand. My entire history is evidence of this.

The problem, in this case, is that trying out influence on a small scale, just as harmless amusement, is pretty much trolling, even if the motives are different. It's also hilariously fun. Using such knowledge only for good, or at least in continued harmlessness, is not as easy as I thought it'd be.

In other words, there may come a day in which I stop baiting people who think they're terribly smart; but today is not that day.

Tomorrow isn't looking likely, either.

The Sound of Silence

A new rendition that gets it exactly.

Quoth the Master

Scott Adams said, "Experiment until you find out what you do well, then do it loudly. That's my system. The universe takes care of the rest."

That is exactly my plan, and has been my plan, and is the explanation of why I dive into so many things. I'm honing in.