Headline of the week, 2021.02.25

A Capitol rioter texted his ex during the insurrection to call her a ‘moron,’ feds say. She turned him in.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/25/capitol-richard-michetti-girlfriend-moron/

Some of the comments are good, or at least amused me:

“Who’s the moron now?”
“Something something a woman scorned.”
“There should be additional charges of felony stupid.”
“He must be a graduate of the Trump school of wooing women.”
“Having worked in a District Attorney’s office (albeit as a secretary), I assure you that if there was a sentencing enhancement for utter stupidity, jails would never have an empty bed.”
“When I saw the forest of cell phones being used to document what they were doing, I said to myself, ‘Here’s your sign.’”
“That’s known as an ‘own goal’.”
“Nothing says I don’t love you anymore than the FBI showing up at your front door.”
“Not exactly a Mensa convention was it?”
“BRB. Experiencing schadenfreude.”

404 page not found

No no, you got here correctly!

“404” is the HTTP error code that a website sends to you (well, to your browser) if you try to read a page that doesn’t exist. Normally it means that you typed the link incorrectly, or that the page has been renamed or deleted. The website can, however, redirect you to a special page to explain the problem. Some of them are funny:

Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/sljdfsdfh (you can type any garbage at the end):

Why wasn’t this page found?

We asked some leading economists.

Stagflation: The cost of pages rose drastically, while the page production rate slowed down.

General economics: There was no market for it.

Liquidity traps: We injected some extra money into the technology team but there was little or no interest so they simply kept it, thus failing to stimulate the page economy. (etc)

Bernie Sanders: https://berniesanders.com/lajsdklajsdlas.

Analog Devices: https://www.analog.com/en/products/xyzad5423.html.

FloatHub: https://floathub.com/foobar.

And more, with some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20489668.

60 funniest pet tweets of 2020

For example, the dogslide: https://twitter.com/KalhanR/status/1342104105158926337.

Or “Today in Find the Cat:” https://twitter.com/katehinds/status/1269697161329082370. Hint: find part of the cat.

Lots more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/funniest-tweets-cats-dogs-2020_n_5fc80db8c5b602f56798a3cf. Note that clicking on a photo will give you a slightly enlarged version, you may find details that were outside the original photo’s margins.

Dave Barry Year in Review 2020

2020 was one long, howling, Category 5 crapstorm.

We sincerely don’t want to relive this year. But our job is to review it. If you would prefer to skip this exercise in masochism, we completely understand.

If, however, you wish, for some sick reason, to re-experience 2020, now is the time to put on your face mask, douse your entire body with hand sanitizer and then — to be safe — don a hazmat suit, as we look back at the unrelenting insanity of this hideous year, starting with …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/12/27/dave-barrys-year-review-2020

Using Pokémon to Detect Scientific Misinformation

There are legitimate scientific journals, and then there are legitimate-sounding ripoff “predatory journals” that will print almost anything for a fee. Matan Shelomi submitted an article to one:

On March 18, 2020, the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research published my paper claiming that eating a bat-like Pokémon sparked the spread of COVID-19. This paper, “Cyllage City COVID-19 outbreak linked to Zubat consumption,” blames a fictional creature for an outbreak in a fictional city, cites fictional references (including one from author Bruce Wayne in Gotham Forensics Quarterly on using bats to fight crime)…

Some would argue that editors cannot recognize Pokémon names, but lines in the text such as “a journal publishing this paper does not practice peer review and must therefore be predatory” or “this invited article is in a predatory journal that likely does not practice peer review” would have tipped off anyone who bothered to read the articles. These papers did not slip in under the radar; they were welcomed in blindly.

https://www.the-scientist.com/critic-at-large/opinion-using-pokmon-to-detect-scientific-misinformation-68098

New holidays

I have observed these new national holidays. The especially bad things about these holidays are that (a) they are unscheduled and can happen on any day; and (b) they can happen multiple times in a year:

National Red Traffic Light Day

When every light you hit is red.

National Slow Driver Day

When every driver in front of you is lost, confused, or incompetent.

A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

I’ve copied the entire contents of https://www.bar.com/bar-jokes/grammar-walks-into-a-bar here just in case that site ever disappears:

A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

A question mark walks into a bar?

A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

A synonym strolls into a tavern.

At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

A dyslexic walks into a bra.

A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.