At the New Year's Eve Café...

... you can share your new year thoughts.

(That's not this morning's sunrise, just one of my favorite sunrises of the past year. It happened on October 6th.)

"The lightest batting-away of videos you don’t like in favor of ones you do goes on to influence the algorithm’s future range of offerings..."

"... in a way seemingly more sophisticated than the rudimentary logic of, say, YouTube rabbit holes. This has delivered a decisive blow to the centralized feeds of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al.... The days of manually choosing whom to follow and what Netflix genres you’re interested in will be rendered quaint; soon we’ll simply be escorted down the internet burrow supposedly of our choice, and quite happily so. The rapid deterioration of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership signals the incoming death of at least one centralized feed, particularly when no one can agree on a worthy alternative.... There’s a part of us that senses all of this and is seeking a less fleeting connection elsewhere. We reach for one another in Discord servers, shady Close Friends allusions, invite-only newsletters, and meme accounts...."

Writes Delia Cai in "The Year TikTok Made the Multiverse Real (And Murdered the Newsfeed in the Process)/As TikTok and its cunningly customized rabbit holes subsume culture, the rest of the internet will splinter further into algorithmic isolation" (Variety).

".... the final nail in his coffin...."

A bunch of links about Trump's newly dumped tax forms — beginning with the screwiest one:

Yeah, thanks. I'll try not to let "cynics" dissuade me from pounding nails into coffins. What had stood out to me was that no one seemed to see any crimes, so it's certainly cheerful to have The Daily Beast come along and declare — who needs crimes? — that there's never been a better reason to throw Trump in prison.

"I thought it was a matter of record."

Norm MacDonald on the View with Barbara Walters in 2000 when he repeatedly called Bill Clinton a murderer pic.twitter.com/obFvQd0T90

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 31, 2022

Norm and Barbara are probably still arguing about this in the afterlife.

"Where I'm from, Thanksgiving is just another long weekend, not some return-to-ancestral-home urge on a par with salmon swimming upstream at the cost of their lives."

"I'm a Canadian living in the US.... In a perfect world, I'd see my extended family at Christmas, but for the last few years I've tried to schedule 'Christmas adjacent' visits. My mom and extended family already have lots of distractions over the holidays and the quality of my time with them is better if I come before or after. The main reason for that scheduling, however, are the frustrations described in this article. And let's not even start in on the Southwest debacle. Commenters point out that good rail service would often be a great option -- but it will never, ever happen here. The author, as a New Yorker, is understandably not a car owner. But most Americans who can afford to fly also own cars. I am increasingly open to replacing plane trips with car rides. What with crowded airports, angry TSA agents, 28" seat pitch, etc, almost any air travel amounts to a wasted day, so if I can drive it -- even if it takes an entire day -- that's now my choice."

Writes Mark Gardiner, of Lawrence KS, in the comments section to the NYT article "The Airlines Know They Are Scamming Us." The article is written by Elizabeth Spiers.

I've long preferred the car ride — even if takes all day — to dealing with airlines and airports and airplanes. As for trains, it's just absurd the fantasizing about trains going on in the comments over there. The top comment is: "Trains. High speed, comfortable, trains on non-cargo hauling tracks, like we have in Europe. Lace the USA with those instead of citizen-funded highways built to benefit the auto industry." 

That commenter is from Paris, France. To that person, I say:

 

Lace... indeed.

"If you’re allowing people to bake cookies and muffins and breads, why should they not be allowed to make cocoa bombs?"

"The first case said that the government can’t ban the sales of perfectly safe homemade baked goods. And so, since we already had that victory regarding baked goods, it definitely made things easier the second time around.... People shouldn’t need to buy or rent a commercial kitchen in order to sell fudge or candies...."

Said Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice, which brought the 2 cases discussed in "Wisconsin residents can sell more than baked goods from home, judge rules" (Wisconsin State Journal).

Pearson asserted "the 49 other states... have better cottage food laws than Wisconsin."

I'd never noticed the expression "cottage food," though of course I know "cottage industry." "Cottage" makes the particular home sound unusually cozy and quaint. If you look back into the history of the word "cottage," you'll see that that originally it meant a small home for a poor laborer. The oldest use of "cottage industry," according to the OED, came from was in the Freeman's Journal (Dublin) in 1849: "Do you wish to make your labourers comfortable? Teach their children the use of the loom, and every kind of cottage industry."

 

That's "Children On A Path Outside A Thatched Cottage, West Horsley, Surrey" (late 1800s) by Helen Allingham. I found that at the Wikipedia article "Cottagecore." Did you know that some kids today romanticize the cottage and the styles and activities they imagine in and around it?

Annual nonsense.

That's a tag of mine. Possibly useful on this last day of the year. Do you have any annual nonsense?

Things I've labeled "annual nonsense" over the years: Time's Person of the Year, lists of best posts of the year, Valentine's Day, the Met Gala, the Super Bowl half-time show, the anniversary of the day I started blogging, New Year's resolutions, New Year's predictions, the Oscars, setting the clocks forward/back (and critiquing the practice), Groundhog Day (and citing the movie), Thanksgiving (and pardoning turkeys), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame "inductions," April Fool's Day, Drynuary, the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Mummers Parade (controversial in 2016), adults doing Halloween, No Pants Subway Ride....

Here's something I counted as "annual nonsense" a decade ago that I haven't noticed happening anymore: the "war on Christmas."

And here's some "annual nonsense" that I used to notice that hadn't come to my attention in years but is still around, "The List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness." Back in 2008, I blogged about being told to quit saying "maverick," "from Wall Street to Main Street," "desperate search," "monkey" (the suffix), "game-changing," "carbon footprint," "winner of five nominations," "green," "going green," "first dude," "staycation." 

But look, here's a new list of "banished words" for 2023. I'm surprised they're just getting around to "amazing," "irregardless," "absolutely," and "It is what it is." I've got to agree strongly about "GOAT," "inflection point," and "Does that make sense?" I'd say "quiet quitting" and "gaslighting" are too useful to let go of, not yet. And I don't see a problem with "moving forward" (because, despite the explanation given, there are other directions to move (unless you're talking about moving forward in time)). 

Also, I haven't checked other recent years of banished words, but the one that's driving me up the wall is "obsessed." The claims of obsession are beyond ridiculous to pathetic these days. Somebody likes something — a food, a lipstick, and TV show — and they'll say with giddy emphasis: "I'm obsessed."

I remember when "obsession" was reserved for unwise love affairs, but that tipped over into a winking joke around 1985...

 

... and it's been downhill from there.

"the dogs were good again this year"

Pope Benedict and Barbara Walters join the Pelé death triad.

This is one of the greatest death triads I have ever seen. Perhaps the greatest.

Goodbye to 3 greats, in 3 different fields — religion, journalism, and sports. All 3 died after a long, productive life — Pelé, a little young, at 82, Walters at 93, and the Pope at 95.

Sunrise — 7:41.

"Russian soldiers called up to fight in Ukraine will have the chance to store frozen sperm in a cryobank for free, according to a leading Russian lawyer."

 BBC reports.

"[T]his solution meant that if a man died - or lost the ability to reproduce - then he would still be able to have children."

"Her brother, Gordon, brought a 19-year-old, fellow art student round to her flat in Harrow. He had red hair and a face whitened with talcum powder."

"His name was Malcolm McLaren: self-declared genius and godfather of punk. So began one of Britain's great creative partnerships... His mother was a sex worker and he had been brought up by his eccentric grandmother, who lived by the motto 'to be bad is to be good and to be good is just boring.'... He took six days to visit her in hospital after the birth of their son, refused to be called 'Dad' and threatened to cart the child to Barnardo's when asked to pitch in. Westwood retreated to a caravan in Wales; hunting for wild vegetables while he ran riot in London and married another art student. But attraction overcame everything.... Westwood rekindled the partnership, blossomed artistically and simply ignored the abuse."

From the BBC obituary for Vivian Westwood.

"Then came the Sex Pistols, snarling at the 1970s. McLaren embraced them as an angry pot-shot at the hippy movement he hated. Westwood opened a shop on the King's Road, conjuring the look the Pistols made famous. A bewildered world gasped and named it Punk. She called the shop, 'Let It Rock', then changed the name to 'Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die.' Finally, it was re-branded simply as 'SEX' - the huge pink sign above the door meant only the brave went in...."

Lots more at the link, and the BBC has a nice photo collection here. 

"Rumours had swirled online that police had been tipped off to [Andrew] Tate's presence in the country after he posted a video taking aim at the environmental activist Greta Thunberg."

"However, this is not believed to be the case. In the footage he posted, he was handed a pizza box from a local restaurant, which some users suggested had inadvertently revealed his location to officers. The row with Ms Thunberg began earlier this week when Mr Tate tagged the 19-year-old activist in a post boasting about the 'enormous emissions' produced by his fleet of cars. Following the arrest, Ms Thunberg tweeted 'this is what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes,' referring to the online rumour...."

From "Andrew Tate detained in Romania over rape and human trafficking case" (BBC).

A strange story, strange enough to overcome my previous resistance to participating in the notoriety of this person. He's "from social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok — for hate speech (in the form of misogyny). He was banned from Twitter too, but he's one of Elon Musk's restorations.

"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. 

"Before Canadian musicians like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen, there was Ian Tyson."

"Mr. Tyson... began his music career as half of the folk-era duo Ian and Sylvia and went on to become a revered figure in his home country.... [His] song 'Four Strong Winds' in 2005 was voted the most essential Canadian piece of music by the listeners of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation public radio network...." 

From "Ian Tyson, Revered Canadian Folk Singer, Dies at 89/A rancher for most of his life, he began his music career as half of the folk-era duo Ian and Sylvia and was also celebrated for his commitment to the culture of Canada’s ranch country" (NYT).

 

"In 1962, they moved to New York and became mainstays in the emergent American folk scene, and friends with Bob Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who described Mr. Tyson as 'movie-star handsome' and 'the best looking of all the cowboy dudes in Greenwich Village' in her 2008 memoir, 'A Freewheelin’ Time.'... 

"A 2008 profile in The Globe and Mail when he was nearing 75 captured some of the details of it at his T-Bar-Y ranch: The 6 a.m.-to-6 p.m. work schedule. The Monday washing (five pairs of Wranglers to get him through the week). The 'mean, garlicky' buffalo he cooked... 'I became a historian, a chronicler of this way of life... and this way of life is just about over. The cowboys are all gone.'  It was a theme he often came back to. 'People tell me, Tyson, you’re always longing for the old days... And they’re right, that’s true — I live in the past. And it was way better.'"

Sunrise.