Mollifying America

I'm in the middle of something important here -- drinking coffee and making graphs -- but I have to interrupt myself because Old Mother Google is at it again. "It’s almost Drug Take Back Day":

They offer social insights like that, far too often. If they're gonna do that, they need a button on their search page so you can send them a message: WHAT ARE YOU, MY MOTHER? And if it's so damned important, why do we have to wait four days to take the stuff back? It's all nonsense and gibberish dressed up like little red riding hood.

They seem to want to play the Walter Cronkite role, mollifying America with their little one-liners.

I'm not mollified. I'm horrified. And I think it's creepy.

You'll probably focus on today's creepy message and say It's good they're concerned about drugs. Sure. Whatever. But shouldn't it be "It’s almost Drug Take-Back Day", with a hyphen in there? You know, a dash...?

I'm not complaining that they're concerned about drugs. I'm complaining that they are wearing it on their sleeve. Uh, excuse me a moment, I have to check something...

Yeah, that. "On the sleeve".

And yes, it was google I checked with, the one I'm complaining about, about the "on the sleeve" thing. That's part of the irony of what's going on here.

The other part of the irony is that the google search page DOES NOT HAVE beliefs, values, emotions, or sentiments. I'm just dealing with the search page, not with the people who work at google. Yes, I'm sure the people who work there have beliefs and values and emotions and all that shit. That's not the point.

I'm sure there is a whole department at google where it's their job to deal with Beliefs and Emotions and Values and Sentiments -- the BEVS department.  But what that means is, it's their job. The shit we see on our screen, those one-line BEVS, it's not from the heart. It's just their job.

Sure: Lots of those people care about lots of those issues. But not ALL of them care about ALL of those issues. So why do they expect ME to care about all of those issues? And why do you object so strongly when I happen to complain about one of their one-liners?

Me? I don't even use the word "issues". STOP PUTTING THAT SHIT ON MY SCREEN. Go to church and pray about it. Or donate money. Or volunteer your time. Do what the fuck you want, but stop putting that shit on my screen.

//

See? It wasn't about drugs, was it.

The internet is sometimes very satisfying

I happened to be looking at Understanding the Hardness of Metals at DesignNews. They talk a bit about "what hardness is not." Then they say

What is hardness, then? To provide a somewhat circular and not very helpful definition, it's a measure of how a material performs in a hardness test.

There's more to their story, of course, but that part was good with my morning coffee.

A poem, sort of

The Earthworm

The earthworm crawls onto the blacktop.
He has no eyes; he cannot see;
He cannot know he is already
beyond the point of no return.

Briefly,

If I wrote my autobiography, the title would be There's No Money In It.


That line started as a joke. Then I thought: That's pretty funny for a guy whose primary activity is writing about the economy.


Then I thought: That's why I'm good at it. My personal involvement interferes little with the analysis.

Oops!

From a blurb Google added to my blog editor stats page:

Following the announcement of Google+ API deprecation scheduled for March 2019, a number of changes will be made to Blogger’s Google+ integration on 4 February 2019.
...
Google+ Comments: Support for Google+ comments will be turned down, and all blogs using Google+ comments will be reverted back to using Blogger comments. Unfortunately, comments posted as Google+ comments cannot be migrated to Blogger and will no longer appear on your blog.

"public health prevention" programs

From Economic Policy as Health Policy at PublicHealthPost.org. The opening sentence:

In the policy debate over how improve Americans’ health, we typically hear ... calls for greater investment in public health prevention programs.

Yeh, the first sentence. I got my money's worth already.

The difference between people and dogs

By chance, I open the door just as the dogs are running toward it The one keeps running to me and is happy to come in. The other, seeing me, stops dead in her tracks.

"Do you want to come in?" I ask. She pretends she didn't hear.

"Okay," I say, and close the door. She can't speak the words "No thanks, Dad." I know that. And she's not allowed to growl at me, any more than I'm allowed to growl at the wife. So if I ask the dog a question and her answer is "no", she just ignores me. We both know how it works.

Then I look, and she's still there. So I open the door and ask again.

She ignores me again. I get the message. She'll let me know when she wants in.

//

It doesn't work like that with people. If somebody asks if I want something I didn't ask for, or if they ask if I'd mind that they do something (which obviously they think I would mind or they wouldn't have asked) my typical response is the cold, blank stare. Something like what I got from the dog this morning, but more obvious what I'm thinking.

But people don't take the cold stare from me the way I take it from the dog. If I don't object in words, they pretend to think I don't object. They go ahead and do.

I wonder if they treat their dogs the same way. Probably.

Oh! She just barked to come in. Gotta run.