Asking "how."

Google put out a glossy video based on the Google searches beginning with "how" that people did in 2017:



I watched it this morning because there was a Metafilter post about it, here, where people said things like:

When I type "how" into Google, the first auto-complete which comes up that I know isn't mine is, "how to hard boil eggs".

Thanks, Google. I know that some of my other searches may put me into "can't tie his own shoes" categories, but I do know how to hard boil eggs. I'm slightly less useless than that.

But there are fine points to hard-boiling an egg. You might want to check unless you already know whether to put the egg in at the beginning or only after the water boils. Do you really know the exact number of minutes to go after the water boils and is that with the water continuing to boil or with the heat turned off? Now that I think about it, I bet if you Google, you'll find your method of tying your shoes called into question.

Speaking of which... "how to tie a tie" — along with "how to make slime" — is one of the most common search completions on Google. Another Metafilter commenter said:

Top three "how" autocompletes for me are:

"how to tie a tie"
"how to lose weight"
"how to kiss"

I think Google has a misapprehension about me. I bloody hope so.

I blame the fact that I'm on the Internet connection at my parents' new vicarage where they've only just moved in, so maybe this is a picture of the single vicar who was here before?

So I did my own "how to..." search, and Google gave me:

how to tie a tie
how to make slime
how to buy ripple

How to buy Ripple?! You mean how to stumble into a low-rent liquor store?



I prefer this song about Ripple:



And for you "Sanford and Son" fans, here's a full glass.

Ah, but I'm living in the 1970s. Google is right now, kicking 2017 to the curb and moving on to 2018. And Ripple, I learn this morning, is another cryptocurrency, that is, another subject that fails to convince me to ground myself in the present.

"Ripple is huge in Japan and Japanese interest in crypto currencies in general has skyrocketed (based on trading volume) over the past six months... Ripple has been one of the first cryptos to really recover from the Christmas doldrums... Ripple is still a buy-and-hold.... Disclosure: I own some Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ether."

Ether... to get back to the 70s....

This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel ... total loss of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue – severence of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally ... you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.

Dead comedians on tour: Andy Kaufman and Redd Foxx, the holograms.

Alki David, the billionaire behind Hologram USA made the announcement and said his company is "working with other estates of famous funny guys and funny girls, these just happened to be amenable estates who see the vision."

Mr. David said that the hologram shows... say, Andy Kaufman lip-syncing the “Mighty Mouse” theme on... “Saturday Night Live”....

Noting that Malcolm X had known Foxx before his stand-up fame and described him as “the funniest dishwasher on this earth,” Mr. David said, “We’re going to have a scene with Malcolm X. We’re going to have various notable names featuring in his story.”...

The company is preparing holographic versions of Billie Holiday to perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and of Whitney Houston for a worldwide concert tour next year..... “There are an awful lot of dead celebrities,” [David] said. “There are an awful lot of dead people with a lot of followers. The fresher the memory, the bigger the star.”...

Bonus red meat for pedants: The director of the licensing agency said that the dead celebrities "literally come back from the dead."

I'm hesitating to publish this because it's pretty obvious that David wants to provoke those who find this kind of entertainment disgusting. It's a virality strategy, and it gets out the word for the kind of people who do think it's cool to have the illusion of somebody they love come back from the dead (and don't give a damn about the right and wrong uses of "literally").

So I'm going to distance myself. Oh, the absurdity of "amenable estates who see the vision" and the sad comic deafness of the phrase "famous funny guys and funny girls." They're dead. They're not funny at all. And Malcolm X isn't funny dead or alive.