"A judge in Manhattan declared a mistrial on Friday after the jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial was unable to reach a verdict..."

"... on the charge that the disgraced Hollywood producer raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013. It’s the second time a jury has not been able to reach a verdict on this charge."

The NYT reports.

Screen grab from the NYT:

The typo has now been corrected, but I honestly thought for a second that "juros" might be some new slang for "jurors." You know how there's all this cutesy millennial slang like "doggo" and "kiddo." 

"In the early days of online life, there were 'flame wars,' performatively absurd and vitriolic debates among the people who posted messages on various bulletin boards."

"These endless arguments prompted efforts to better moderate discussion. The resulting desire, on the part of posters, to depose the moderators, or 'mods,' has been a constant of the Internet’s existence ever since—on Usenet groups, on Reddit, and on every form of social media. Who are the mods? The big ones are establishment institutions that aim to govern and to regulate, to maintain credentials and decorum. The mainstream press, obviously, which includes me and my employer, is a mod, and we are the target of endless ire, often rightly. The academy—particularly its most élite schools, the Harvards and the Yales—is another mod. But the mods have been weakening for some time.... The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function...."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "Arguing Ourselves to Death/To a degree that we have yet to fully grasp, what rules our age is the ideology of the Internet" (The New Yorker).

The article title "Arguing Ourselves to Death" is a play on the book title, "Amusing Ourselves to Death." The book, by Neil Postman, came out in 1985, and mostly took aim at television.  

The article's subtitle reference to "the ideology of the Internet" is also inspired by "Amusing Ourselves to Death." There's this quote from the book:

"Taking the baton from Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox sang the second portion of the 'In Memoriam' segment..."

"... delivering a stark rendition of 'Nothing Compares 2 U' in tribute to the late Sinéad O’Connor. Flanked by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of Prince’s legendary Revolution, Lennox concluded the balled by raising her fist in solidarity with Gaza: 'Artists for cease-fire!'"

From "Grammys 2024 performances, ranked from best to worst/Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’s duet of ‘Fast Car’ was the highlight of the night, along with Joni Mitchell and Annie Lennox’s moving ballads" (WaPo).

Was that "solidarity with Gaza" or an attempt to resolve the longstanding conflict between O'Connor and Prince? No way for the 2 dead artists to declare a truce, but maybe some will see Lennox and Wendy and Lisa as proxies for the departed disputants.

But if we want to talk about symbolism, how does a raised fist represent a cease fire? Doesn't the fist let slip that a cease fire is wanted so that the struggle can continue?

And look at that typo: "balled" for "ballad."

It's a new year.

What are you going to do about it?

CORRECTION: This post title was originally "It a new year." Yes, I started the new year of blogging with an error. The very first word, too. Glad I got that out of the way. What was your first mistake?

That was your first mistake/You took your lucky break and broke it in two/Now what can be done for you?/You broke it in two....

"X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times."

"Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC...."

From "Twitter appears to throttle New York Times" (Semafor).

We're told this might have something to do with "a broad shift in platforms over the last five years... toward a splintering in which Facebook has largely gotten out of the news business, Twitter has shifted increasingly toward becoming a conservative media company, and Google and Apple are the remaining the platform giants interested in distributing other outlets’ news."

That's so sloppily written I feel insulted putting my time into trying to understand it. There's been a "shift" in which "Twitter has shifted." The double "shift" tells you no one serious is proofreading over there. And what's the "splintering"? It sounds exciting, but the sentence just goes on to make vague, questionable assertions. My impression was that Twitter (AKA X) has stopped censoring conservative speech. If you think it now looks like "a conservative media company," perhaps you're observing how important censorship has been to the dominance of liberal speech in social media.

The next sentence in that Semafor article is: "X recently objected to a California law requiring the disclosure of content moderate, for instance, by citing first amendment protections for its editorial decisions." What is "content moderate"? A typo? 

There's a link to a Bloomberg article. I'm not able to read the whole thing, but it begins: "Elon Musk’s X Corp. sued California to undo the state’s law aimed at exposing sources of hate speech and disinformation by requiring social media companies to explain how they moderate their content."

So Semafor wrote "disclosure of content moderate" to mean disclosure of how content is moderated! I'd like Semafor to disclose how it goes about slapping articles together. 

"The video, which is embedded below, begins with the officer casually talking to a woman and her two children about seatbelt safety."

"Moments later, the sound of rapid gunfire erupts in the distance. The woman quickly lowers her head and moves her children out of the way as the officer reaches inside his patrol vehicle for a rifle and notifies dispatchers he's heard gunshots. The officer runs toward the stores, tracking the sounds of gunfire as they grew louder and louder the closer he gets. As he continues moving toward the blasts, shooting at people to leave the area and take cover...."

From "Body cam video shows Allen officer tracking down mall gunman; Officer cleared by grand jury/After hearing the first shots, a police officer at the Allen Premium Outlets tracked the sounds of gunfire and took down a man targeting shoppers" (5 NBCDFW).

I chose this article to blog after I saw the video on Twitter, but I considered switching to a different source when I noticed the terrible typo, but I'll keep this as a lesson in finding the typos the spellchecker doesn't catch.

In any case, I'm glad this police officer was not indicted for what was an impressive demonstration of courage.

15% of Maryland's license plates display the URL of a Philippines gambling site (instead of a War of 1812 site).

WaPo reports. 

These plates have been around since 2010 (and obviously the bicentennial of the war was in 2012), but we're just noticing now, as somebody at Reddit is calling attention to the typo.

Here's a screenshot of what you might see if you go to the URL on the license plate:

"... No cultural moment lasts forever. Yesterday's fanatics realise they joined the wrong mob. ..."

You lie and smear, assuming you'll live out your days as a hanging judge and never find yourself in the dock. No cultural moment lasts forever. Yesterday's fanatics realise they joined the wrong mob. Populist movements shrivel and fall apart. Robespierre ended on the guillotine. pic.twitter.com/mlQhd22s2i

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 30, 2023

Face it, being called a Nazi by this crowd is like being called a lizard mutant from the plant Zorb. Let's both be careful to keep hiding our imaginary tails from those who're onto us.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 30, 2023

I think we can assume that J.K. Rowling will live out her days as a brilliant writer.

Though she might still do typos: "plant Zorb"? Probably, planet Zorb.

"What would be the point of hedonism?" — the automatic transcription mistranscribes. He said "heganism."

 

(Yes, 2 David Sedaris posts (almost) in a row. It just happens sometimes. I don't artificially separate posts from other posts.)

At the Monday Night Café…

... you can write about whatever you are.

ADDED, the next morning: I wrote this post on my iPad, which may have autocorrected or merely made my mistake hard for me to see. But it's funny now. And you know you always can "write about whatever you are." It could be an interesting topic! I hope it is. But I didn't mean to inject new weirdness to my classic format for a photo-less open thread. It was just supposed to be "write about whatever you want." But what the hell are you, anyway? I hope you know.

"The brothers estimate that the $22 million wall of remembrance... contains 1,015 spelling errors."

"It also incorrectly includes 245 names of service members who died in circumstances totally unrelated to the war, they say, including a man killed in a motorcycle accident in Hawaii and another who drank antifreeze thinking it was alcohol. And it includes one Marine who lived for 60 years after the war and had eight grandchildren. Beyond that, there are about 500 names that should be listed but are not, according to the Barkers. They say that the official roster used for the wall was so slapdash that they cannot find much rhyme or reason to who was included and who was left out."

From "A Korean War Wall of Remembrance Set Hundreds of Errors in Stone/Many names of American service members who died in the conflict are misspelled or missing from the new memorial wall in Washington, relatives and researchers say" (NYT).

"AI utopians believe humanity will find more of life’s meaning elsewhere, because while the machines are busy doing the drudgery..."

"... of daily living, they’ll be set free to explore. Maybe they’ll discover poetry they never had time to read, or go on more hikes. Maybe they’ll be able to spend their days in profound discussion with cherished friends, rather than in front of screens — or maybe they’ll spend all day in front of screens after all, having conversations with robots."

Writes the Washington Post Editorial Board in "We asked an AI bot hundreds of questions. Here’s what we learned."

I've already read enough machine-written text to want to avoid it whenever I can, but unfortunately, much human-written text resembles the work product of ChatGPT... including what I just quoted above. There's a positive side to that, though. Sensitized to the the loathsomeness of machine-written text, I can defend more vigorously against the mechanical writings of the human being.

IN THE COMMENTS: Stephen wrote: "A machine would never have written that phrase…or is that what a machine would like me to believe?"

It's like the — or should I say "the the"? — way Rand McNally would add a nonexistent town to each map or the ancient Persians would weave a mistake into each carpet. 

What does the NYT know about me?

I was scanning the front page of the NYT, looking for headlines to click, and I noticed that the Times had picked out a set of things recommended for me. I was pleased for an instant and genuinely ready to to share Penn Jillett's love for hot baths and cold watermelon, but...

 

... I don't like the implications of the rest of it. The kiosk and the toilet are okay — lowly and functional — but don't push Jeffrey Dahmer at me, and don't juxtapose him with a person with a mysteriously drooping face.

I go to read the Penn Jillette article and the word editing slows me way down:

When I wrote "can" for "can't," it was a homophone typo.

You might have noticed that for a couple minutes, the previous post had a miswritten first sentence: "I was commenting in off-blog life, so I can prove to you that I'd noticed the absence of this particular thing." 

Obviously, "can" was supposed to be "can't," but I realize that it was an example of the kind of typo I find very easy to make because write by transcribing what feels like speech in my head. 

That's why I, like many people, am forever writing "to" for "too" and "your" for "you're" and "their" for "there." The only problem is that you look slightly dumb until you correct it. But no one is confused. 

"Can" for "can't" is another matter! I wrote the opposite of what I meant and forced readers to waste time puzzling over whether I was saying something counterintuitive or just making a mistake. But now I want to waste your time even more by asking you to look at something strange: We Americans — many of us — pronounce "can" and "can't" almost identically:

 

Why doesn't this cause more problems? You're saying "I can't" and it sounds like "I can." Maybe we're constantly verifying: Did you say you can or you can't?

Fortunately, I will and I do don't present the same problem. We have the irregular "n't" contraction for will. What woes were there before there was won't?

And for some reason, we pronounce the "do" in do and don't completely differently. Do gets an ooh and don't gets an oh. And do is often left out in expressions that use don't — like I understand and I don't understand.

Grammarphobia has some discussion of how the word "won't" came to be:

“Won’t was shortened from early wonnot, which in turn was formed from woll (or wol), a variant form of will, and not.”...

So etymologically, there’s a case to be made for contracting “will” and “not” as “won’t.” Nevertheless, some language commentators have grumbled about the usage.

Joseph Addison, for example, complained in a 1711 issue of the Spectator that “won’t” and other contractions had “untuned our language, and clogged it with consonants.”

“Won’t,” in particular, “seems to have been under something of a cloud, as far as the right-thinkers were concerned, for more than a century afterward,” Merriam-Webster’s says.

“This did not, of course, interfere with its employment,” the usage guide adds.

It was popular enough, M-W says, “to enjoy the distinction of being damned in the same breadth as ain’t in an address delivered before Newburyport (Mass.) Female High School in December 1846.”

Both “won’t” and “ain’t” were condemned by the Newburyport speaker as “absolutely vulgar.”

“How won’t eventually escaped the odium that still clings to ain’t is a mystery,” M-W Usage says....

Ain't it though?

"A writer friend shared with me the bound galley of his latest book-to-be, and I pointed out to him that his passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs at a picnic..."

"... was surely meant to be barbecued chicken wings. Not (entirely) displeased with my catch, he introduced me to his production editor — the person in a publishing house in charge of hiring copy editors and proofreaders.... In my early days, I would sulk in my office with the door closed if I found out that one of my books included a typo. A sentence referring to 'geneology' once sent me into a blue funk for hours.... I’m occasionally asked whether I can make my way through the world without shivering under the constant bombardment of typos.... [O]nce, watching the movie 'My Week With Marilyn,' I elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs over a prescription bottle, visible on a night table for approximately a second and a half, whose label read 'Tunial' instead of 'Tuinal.' 'I think it must hurt sometimes to live in your brain,' my husband has said on occasion, not unkindly. But, as he also notes, in a kind of nursery rhyme mantra, 'Your strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are your strengths.'"

From "My Life in Error/A copy editor recounts his obsession with perfection" by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Random House (NYT).

I don't want to send Dreyer into a blue funk, but if I were writing an essay that had the line "passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs," I would not also have "elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs." It's a repetition of a distinctive image — ribs — for no recognizable reason. That's a language mistake. Make it your husband's arm. You're in a movie theater. It was more likely his arm that you elbowed anyway, wasn't it? You just liked "ribs," but your feeling of liking it came, I'll bet, from having seen it so recently.

And here's the Wikipedia entry for Tuinal, a Eli Lilly sleeping pill introduced in the late 1940s and now discontinued:

"Metallica Faces Being Canceled by Many Young Fans Who Just Discovered Them."

Newsweek reports.

We're told that "a new generation of music fans discovered them when Netflix's Stranger Things used their 1986 song 'Master of Puppets' during a pivotal scene."

This is another case of mainstream media reporting what's in social media. So just go straight to the social media. Here's Serena Trueblood on TikTok ticking off the sins of Metallica.

Or I'll just quote the hastily typed caption to the video: "I find it intersting that they only cared about gatekeeping in their fandom when they started getting big agaib from Stranger Things. Thy only care about what lines theor pockets."

Rouge droplet?

I'm trying to read "Astronauts should not masturbate in zero gravity, NASA scientist says" (NY Post):

Astronauts have been warned against masturbating in space over fears female astronauts could get impregnated by stray fluids. There are strict guidelines over “alone-time” onboard in zero gravity. 

Scientists have warned even the slightest rouge droplet could cause chaos on board.

Rouge droplet? In space, is semen red? No, it's just the kind of typo spell-checkers don't catch, the funniest ones, the ones that are other words, like "rouge" for "rogue."

Conan O’Brien was interviewing a NASA engineer, who said, “Three female astronauts can be impregnated by the same man on the same session … it finds its way.” 

There's already enough paranoia about bugging out and hunkering down — must we add prions?!

I'm reading this advice about "go bags" and "stay bins" in The New York Times:

No matter where you live, every home should have a “go bag” and a “stay bin.” The go bag is what you grab when you have to leave the house in a hurry, whether to get to the emergency room or to evacuate because of a fire or a hurricane. The stay bin is a two-week stash of essentials to be used in case you have to hunker down at home without power, water or heat. In the event that you need to stay put instead of flee, keep a stay bin in your home. Use a large plastic bin or a similar container to set aside the essential items for a two-week prion....

Prion?!

Fun with Scott.

pic.twitter.com/BR1D21nVEA

— Professor Trestrial (@Trestrial) April 25, 2022

"Biden Afghanistan policy counts on war weary Americans to lose interest."

A disturbing headline at Reuters.

President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials....

"The public opinion is pretty damn clear that Americans wanted out of the ongoing war and don't want to get back in. It's true today and it's going to be true in six months," said one Biden ally. "It isn't about not caring or being empathetic about what's going on over there, but worrying about what's happening in America."

ADDED: I came back into this post to edit something about the formatting and accidentally lopped the "P" off "President," leaving "resident Biden." 

Resident Biden... doesn't that seem about right? He's the man living in the White House.