Grammar for grownups

Scatalogical ditties for those with a fondness for grammar…or those who need an attention getting device to help move their minds along!!

Start at this Youtube link. For example, You Don’t Need a F***ing Apostrophe There, WTF is That?, I’m Dreaming of a Strunk and White Christmas.

And good news from Fix the News:

America’s radical experiment in emptying youth prisons worked
In 2000, over 100,000 young Americans were locked up in juvenile detention facilities. By 2022, that number had plummeted by 75%, with 29 states experiencing even greater declines. The reduction came alongside major drops in youth crime – arrests for serious violent crimes by juveniles have fallen 78% from their peak in the 90s. New York Times

Millionaires for more taxes

After the best year in history to be among the super-rich, one of America’s 745 billionaires wonders: “What’s enough? What’s the answer?”

(From 2022 but ever more urgent.)

“Tax us, the rich, and tax us now,” said the letter. Otherwise, there will be “pitchforks” over the injustice, they warned.

Article in the Huffington Post: 100 Millionaires And Billionaires Sign Open Letter Pleading For Higher Taxes: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/patriotic-millionaires-more-taxes-injustice-letter_n_61ecbfb2e4b03216750b98a6; Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/30/moral-calculations-billionaire. And the website with the open letter: https://intaxwetrust.org:

History paints a pretty bleak picture of what the endgame of extremely unequal societies looks like. For all our well-being – rich and poor alike – it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich. Show the people of the world that you deserve their trust. 

If you don’t, then all the private talks won’t change what’s coming – it’s taxes or pitchforks. Let’s listen to history and choose wisely.

Aristotle’s rules for a good life

Summary from the article:

  1. Name your fears and face them.
  2. Know your appetites and control them.
  3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift.
  4. Give as generously as you can.
  5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial.
  6. True strength is a controlled temper.
  7. Never lie, especially to yourself.
  8. Stop struggling for your fair share.
  9. Forgive others, and forbear their weaknesses.
  10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/aristotle-10-rules-happy-life/674905/. (If you can’t access that, send me a note and I’ll post a PDF.)

And good news from Fix the News:

Nine countries eliminated a devastating disease in 2024 
Chad got rid of one form of sleeping sickness. Cape Verde and Egypt became malaria-free. Jordan became the first country to eliminate leprosy. Brazil and Timor Leste eliminated elephantiasis, and Vietnam, India, and Pakistan eradicated trachoma, the latter after a 20-year battle: “I can’t explain the jubilation on their faces…Many had tears in their eyes to see this moment in their life.” NPR

The Cyber Sleuth: IRS

Let me pause here for a moment. I am a novelist; I make things up for a living. In my trade, it would be considered malpractice to make up Jarod Koopman. You just do not give your protagonist a set of attributes that includes black belts, vintage trucks, sommelier certificates, tattooed biceps, a wholesome, all-American rural family and a deeply consequential yet uncelebrated and under-remunerated career in global cybercrime. But as Mark Twain said: “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

 One example of his work:

In November 2021, they traced another stash of bitcoin that had been stolen from Silk Road nine years earlier. The key to the digital wallet was found on a circuit board in a popcorn tin stored in the bathroom closet of a house in Gainesville, Ga. Because of the steep rise in the value of bitcoin, that find delivered $3.36 billion to U.S. taxpayers.

Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/cyber-sleuth/ (about 5,600 words and worth it).

Dave Barry Year in Review 2024

Excerpts (it’s worth reading the entire 6,000 words):

January
In a troubling aviation incident, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 flying at 16,000 feet suddenly develops a refrigerator-size hole in the fuselage when an improperly attached panel blows off, terrifying passengers who have reason to wonder whether the airline crew, instead of making a big deal about the position of everybody’s tray table, should maybe be checking to see whether the plane has been correctly bolted together. As a safety precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration grounds all Max 9s and advises passengers on other Boeing aircraft to “avoid sitting near windows.” For its part, Boeing states that “at least the plane didn’t lose a really important part, like one of the whaddycallits, wings.”
February
Tucker Carlson conducts a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, offering Westerners a rare opportunity to find out what the Russian leader really thinks. It turns out he thinks Carlson is a useful idiot.
April
… the nation is enthralled by a total eclipse, a rare celestial occurrence in which the Earth, sun and moon align in such a way as to cause a large number of people to deliberately travel to Indianapolis. Huge crowds in the path of the totality watch excitedly as the sky gradually turns completely dark — a spectacular sight that most people will never witness again in their lifetimes, unless they’re still around at sunset.
December
…While we’re hoping, let’s hope that 2025 will be a better year. How could it be worse?

Try not to think about it.

https://archive.ph/20250102205458/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/30/dave-barry-2024-year-review/. Send me a note if you can’t access this.

Ukraine using AI to train war robots

I saw this headline and immediately said to myself, We are now officially living in the future.

AI has been deployed by both sides on the battlefield during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to identify targets, scanning images far quicker than a human can….

Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at Wadhwani AI centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the size of the data set and the image quality were important, as AI models learned to recognise targets based on shapes and colours.

Bondar said that the dataset was valuable in the context of training to fight Russia. However, she said U.S. officials and drone makers prefer a dataset that trains AI systems to operate in the Pacific against a potential Chinese adversary.

Full article: https://www.reuters.com/technology/ukraine-collects-vast-war-data-trove-train-ai-models-2024-12-20/, about 625 words, or https://gizmodo.com/ukraine-is-using-millions-of-hours-of-drone-footage-to-train-ai-for-warfare-2000541633.

32 of the smartest animals in the world

Well, six of these species are apes / monkeys / humans… but some of the others may not be what you expect. Dolphins, of course, and elephants, octopuses, cats and dogs… but pigeons? Squirrels? Monitor lizards?

In 2020, researchers tested the memories of two species of monitor lizard and found they could learn to solve puzzles and remember the solutions 20 months later.

https://www.livescience.com/animals/32-of-the-smartest-animals-in-the-world. About 5,000 words, easy reading.

Oops! Almost forgot: 86 Stories of Progress from 2024: https://fixthenews.com/86-stories-progress-2024/. Global health, conservation, living standards, energy, human rights, and science and technology. Long but encouraging!

1933 and the definition of fascism

I’m not going to comment on this article, except to say I wish it had been published six months ago (actually posted October 25, 2024):

I want to be clear what we’re doing here. I am not asking if the Republican Party is fascist (I think, broadly speaking, it isn’t) and certainly not if you are fascist (I certainly hope not). But I want to employ the concept of fascism as an ideology with more precision than its normal use (‘thing I don’t like’) and in that context ask if Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist based on his own statements and if so, what does that mean. And I want to do it in a long-form context where we can get beyond slogans or tweet-length arguments and into some detail.

https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/. A long read, 7,500 words, but easy reading… or in some ways, very difficult reading.

And good news from Fix the News:

Christian institutions divest from fossil fuels 
Religious institutions with $3 trillion in assets have led the way in divesting from fossil fuels. At COP29, an international coalition of Christian organisations announced that 27 religious groups, including dioceses, have divested from fossil fuel investments. This decision is rooted in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, which calls for environmental stewardship. Amen to that? La Croix

Surprising solution to gun violence

Techniques other than prison can make a big difference (bolding is mine):

A second, complementary approach that has historically not been part of the public debate is to help young people navigate the difficult situations that our past policies have failed to fix.

Consider an exercise practiced in one of Chicago’s most effective violence intervention programs, Becoming a Man (BAM). Teens are paired up; one is given a rubber ball, and the other is given 30 seconds to get the ball out of his partner’s fist. Inevitably, the two teens end up on the ground, wrestling and fighting to get – or keep – the ball.

After the teens switch roles and the same struggle occurs, the BAM counselor asks why no one just asked their partner for the ball. They usually look surprised and say something along the lines of, “The other guy would have thought I’m a wuss.” The counselor asks the partner if that’s true. The usual answer: “No, I would have given it to him. It’s just a stupid ball.”

This exercise, called “the fist,” doesn’t teach participants to be better people. Instead, it gives them the tools they need to address the actual problem: the situation. By teaching young people to slow down during stressful situations, it helps them navigate in-the-moment decisions that could otherwise lead to violence.

About 2,200 words: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/23/opinions/surprising-solution-to-gun-violence-ludwig/index.html.

And good news from Fix the News:

The global energy transition will cost a lot less than we think 
With estimates ranging from $3 trillion to $12 trillion, the cost to green the world’s economy can seem inconceivable but The Economist argues the cost will actually be closer to $1 trillion annually – or 1% of global GDP. Most analysts overestimate energy demand and underestimate technological advances.

An archived copy of The Economist‘s article is here. Important paragraph:

First, the scenarios being costed tend to involve absurdly speedy (and therefore expensive) emissions cuts.

Second, they assume that the population and economy of the world, and especially of developing countries, will grow implausibly rapidly, spurring pell-mell energy consumption.

Third, such models also have a record of severely underestimating how quickly the cost of crucial low-carbon technologies such as solar power will fall.

Fourth and finally, the estimates disgorged by such modelling tend not to account for the fact that, no matter what, the world will need to invest heavily to expand energy production, be it clean or sooty. Thus the capital expenditure needed to meet the main goal set by the Paris agreement—to keep global warming “well below” 2°C—should not be considered in isolation, but compared with alternative scenarios in which rising demand for energy is met by dirtier fuels.

Boat trails and Dam Busters

Just found this funny item. Why are the media not reporting on boat trails??? Must be a conspiracy!!!

Also, I ran across this somewhere: the famous “attack the Death Star” scene in Star Wars was deliberately a close copy of a similar scene in the movie The Dam Busters from 1955: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M (2 min 37 sec).

And good news from a recent Fix the News:

Deaths from air pollution falling worldwide
The Lancet has found that the number of people killed by air pollution from fossil fuels fell by almost 7% between 2016 and 2021, from 2.25 million to 2.09 million people. Researchers have attributed this to the closure of coal-fired power stations; $1.8 trillion went into clean energy last year, versus $1.1 trillion into fossil fuels. The Times

Despite world population increasing over that time period!