Earlier this week I read yet-another Buzzfeed listicle/quiz for amusement, "There Is No Way Anyone Has Done More Than 25 Of These Things Unless They're Over 65". It's in the same vein as a similar Buzzfeed listicle I read (and wrote about) a few months ago. I suggested Buzzfeed retitle that article as It's Official, Gen Z Thinks Anyone Over 40 Is A ( Read more... )

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #22
Jonas Ridge, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 4:30pm

Upper Creek Falls turned out to be more than we expected- both in terms of the size of the main falls and the length/strenuousness of the trail. At the bottom of the big falls we weren't thinking about the latter, though. Yet.


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I have a habit of clicking on Buzzfeed listicles in my newsfeed. They're generally light, vaguely amusing reading, perfect for browsing when I'm sitting down at lunch. Occasionally they're even very insightful, such as the listicle that inspired me to write The Unwritten Rules of Being Poor. But most of the time they're just vaguely insipid. Today ( Read more... )

I clicked on a BuzzFeed listicle today with a click-bait headline, You're Officially A Boomer If You've Done Half Of These 40 Things (4 Apr 2024). It was pretty amusing... but not in the way I expect the authors thought. It was amusing because of how stupid it was. Most of the things on their list have been done by typical Gen Xers, and quite a few ( Read more... )

We're having great weather here in Silicon Valley this weekend. Yesterday the temperature hit about 70° at my house. Today is almost as warm. It's sunny and clear, too. We enjoyed yesterday's weather by getting out for a really enjoyable hike in the East Bay hills. Today we met a friend for a leisurely lunch outdoors on the patio ( Read more... )

North Cascades Travelog #3
Washtucna, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 1pm.

We got off to a somewhat lazy start this morning from our hotel room at the Spokane airport. We weren't rolling until almost 10, which meant we didn't get to our first real stop of the trip, Palouse Falls, until nearly noon.


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North Cascades Travelog #6
Winthrop, WA - Sun, 3 Sep 2023, 9am.I remarked in my previous blog that this trip to Eastern Washington and the North Cascades is revenge, revenge for things we were not able to do in years past because of car trouble or poor weather. Well, where once poor weather kept us from appreciating Palouse Falls more fully, this ( Read more... )

There's an old joke that people make. "I don't drink 2% milk," they say, trying to make themselves sound smart, "Because what's the other 98%?Yeah, that's amusing if you're a stand-up comic and your audience hasn't heard it before, let alone dozens of times before. But what if it's a real question? Well, as a real question it has a real answer... ( Read more... )

A week ago I wrote What is "Woke"? Ask an Idiot! about a conservative author/speaker who, in moment that went viral, completely choked when a streaming interviewer asked her to define the term, woke. My use of the label "idiot" was ironic. The woman interviewed, Bethany Mandel, is coauthor of a 2022 book all about woke-ism and its supposed perils. ( Read more... )

Several days ago I wrote about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservatives blaming the failure of banks like SVB on them being too "woke". So what is "woke"? you might ask. The term has actually been bandied about quite a bit on the political right. The recent failure of a few banks was hardly the first time conservative political leaders and ( Read more... )