So we have ChatGPT and what's the top-trending use?

Astrology!

"Ms. LaFavers said in an interview that Liam, 8, became familiar with Amazon and other shopping sites during the pandemic..."

"... when she regularly ordered supplies. Since then, she has occasionally let him browse the site if he keeps the items in the cart."

From "Boy Accidentally Orders 70,000 Lollipops on Amazon. Panic Ensues. Holly LaFavers said she was eventually refunded $4,200 for her 8-year-old son’s order of Dum-Dums candy" (NYT).

I haven't seen a story like that in a long time. Seems like an early-internet cautionary tale.

Suffice it to say, the LaFavers got their problem straightened out, and "Spangler Candy Co., the company that has made Dum-Dums since 1924, invited Ms. LaFavers and Liam to visit its factory in Ohio." Everybody wins, especially Dum-Dums, because who cared about Dum-Dums? 

"Every time I see people that disagree with anything that's happening, any gigantic world events, it's one of these retarded shows... There's the word again...."

"We were just talking about that.... The word 'retarded' is back, and it's one of the great culture victories that I think is spurred on, probably, by podcast. But these things are always... you know, where everyone's screaming over each other.... There's never just rational conversations where you discuss things...."

Said Joe Rogan, at the beginning of his new podcast.

I'd been noticing — and not just on Joe Rogan's podcast — that some people seem to want to feel free to say "retarded" again.

You don't really need that word, though, do you? You can always say "stupid." That makes me wonder why "stupid" survived when "retarded" was banished. But the answer is that "stupid" is a very old word that lived in ordinary speech and was applied broadly, and "retarded" was an innovation in the clinical setting that was designed to refer specifically to persons with a disability. It was supposed to be polite. 

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Why is it that when something starts out good and turns bad it seems worse that something that was bad all along?

"C.E.O. Choked Man Who Danced Barefoot on Cruise Ship...."

A NYT headline speaks of the recent trend of throwing your life away for nothing.

The altercation began shortly after Mr. DeGiorgio’s wife had confronted the man about barefoot dancing, telling him, “Look, we are all grown-ups here — can you put your shoes on?” Mr. DeGiorgio’s wife told investigators that the man had made a crude remark to her, and the security video showed him giving her the middle finger, according to the F.B.I...

I looked it up. The "crude remark" was "Shut up, you fucking bitch." 

We're told DeGiorgio's pay package (at First American Financial) is $7.8 million.

What's so bad about taking your shoes off to dance? It can be a way to be quieter, more graceful, or to protect the dance floor — think sock hop. And I've heard the wistful longing: There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance.

"The woman who received 'instant karma' after berating a President Trump supporter on the subway — and then face-planting on the platform after trying to grab his 'Make America Great Again' hat — is..."

"... Alberta Testanero, a 55-year-old dual Italian-American citizen.... A freelance creative director and branding specialist who has worked with posh outfits like Tiffany & Co., Coach, Bergdorf Goodman and Kate Spade, Testanero prides herself on 'maintaining the highest standards,' according to her online profiles."

The NY Post reports.

There are cameras everywhere. You will be identified. 

Space tourism is idiotic... as is the use of the word "historic" to describe non-achievements by women.

But The Daily Mail tells us: "Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King have left fans shocked after it was announced they are heading to space. It was revealed on Thursday that the Jeff Bezos's partner, 55, the pop star, 40, and the news anchor, 70, are part of the Blue Origin's historic all-women crew, which will blast off in the spring."

The fan "shock" is only over the sheer randomness. Katy Perry in space! I wasn't thinking about that.

As for "historic"... I'm reminded of the old Samuel Johnson quote: "Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." That is, calling this non-achievement "historic" is actually a sexist putdown.

To wallow in the idiocy, watch Lauren Sanchez do TikTok:

There is always a dog story on the home page of The NYT and The Washington Post.

Watch. You'll see. And it's some of the most inane material.

For example, today, at The NYT, there's "Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?" and at The Washington Post, there's "This love letter to dogs praises them as 'creatures of commitment.'"

Obviously, they know there are readers who click for every dog. I am not one of those readers, and I won't even click through to get links. Every day, the story is the same: Dogs continue to be dogs.

And, no, there is no equal treatment for cats. A search for "cat" on the WaPo home page came up with nothing, and on the NYT home page, it got "Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis/President Biden, a Catholic, awarded the medal with distinction to the pontiff, to whom he has turned for personal guidance" and "Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ/A dispute over a project to cure hams in a bell tower underscored the difficulties that churches in France face trying to pay for restorations."

If Althouse were to make a free-access link to one of those articles, which one would you want?

Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?

This love letter to dogs praises them as "creatures of commitment."

Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis

Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ

 

pollcode.com free polls

Calling other people stupid is a dangerous business.

What's going on here? Stupid people who don't realize the Madonna song "Like a Prayer" is about sex?

The answer is no. See "How choir cover of Madonna hit got caught up in America’s culture wars/The version of Like a Prayer is at the centre of an internet storm as American users assume the singers are ignorant Donald Trump-supporting Christians" (London Times):

"I would say it's a bony eared assfish"/"Honestly, I thought this was a joke until I saw more comments saying it."

A discussion at the animal ID subreddit — "I found this fish in my box of frozen shrimp."

Someone links to the article at Wikipedia, which contains the statement, "The bony-eared assfish may have the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of any vertebrate."

And somebody says "The amount of shaming on its Wikipedia page is harsh. They start by implying it’s stupid and go on to refer to it as 'flabby.' Who did it hurt?"

We'll forget how to agonize about money in politics if it keeps getting spent with such ineffective and hilarious profligacy.

"The Harris campaign paid Oprah $1 million to do that interview, and she spent $100,000 building the set of the Call Her Daddy podcast so Kamala Harris wouldn’t have to fly out to LA to film it."

The Harris campaign paid Oprah $1 million to do that interview, and she spent $100,000 building the set of the Call Her Daddy podcast so Kamala Harris wouldn’t have to fly out to LA to film it. pic.twitter.com/rg0dthCR7c

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 9, 2024

ADDED: "How Kamala Harris plowed through $1 billion" (Washington Examiner).

So, um, yeah, astrology.

"You know, um, so I'm a Libra my husband is a Libra, um, and it's so funny, he'll talk, Doug, he'll talk about the fact that that it's the Libra in us where we will sit on the couch in front of the TV with the switcher for like 45 minutes debating which Netflix show should we start streaming, and we weigh the pros and the cons of each, and then by the time we're done, we're ready to go to bed. Right. You missed your window. The window just shut, because we are just sitting there debating like, okay, well, on the one hand, do we want to see comedy or drama. We both love, you know, sci-fi, right, anyway, um, yeah astrology." 

The video seems to be from a podcast last April.

I think believing in astrology is the height of idiocy, but there's also inane, cutesy pretending to believe in astrology in pointless small talk. That's less stupid, but hardly reflective of leadership at the presidential level. 

Do you think Kamala Harris would, like Nancy Reagan, actually use astrology in conducting official business? 

Let's read "Ten World Leaders Who Leaned on Astrology for Guidance." Before you look, do you think you're going to admire these historical characters? Hint: First on the countdown from 10 to 1 is "Adolf Hitler's Underlings."

The Biden campaign is a disaster and this is what The New York Times dredges up?

I'm reading "A Hollywood Heavyweight Is Biden’s Secret Weapon Against Trump/The longtime movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg always sought scary villains for his films. Now he has found what he considers a real-life one in Donald J. Trump."

Trim and wiry, intense but amiable, Mr. Katzenberg at age 73 still exudes a kind of ambitious, animal energy as if he were one of his movie protagonists. He is famous around Hollywood, and now Washington, for rising at 5 a.m. and riding an exercise bicycle for 90 minutes while simultaneously reading four newspapers before taking as many as three breakfast meetings — and waffles or eggs-and-extra-crispy-bacon breakfasts, not the leafy California kind. “The guy eats like a horse and he doesn’t gain any weight,” his close friend Casey Wasserman, the sports, music and entertainment mogul, groused good-naturedly.

Are Biden supporters in such deep delusion that they would take comfort from this "secret weapon"? This inane filler says: Time to panic! 

Katzenberg once ran Disney, so...

Mother wants to share her ridiculous dream with her gay son.

I laughed out loud at this letter to the New York Times advice columnist:

My gay son and his partner are getting married. They plan to wear themed outfits. I support their union and their choices. They identify as male and wear traditional male garb. But secretly, I’ve dreamed that one of them, preferably my son, would wear the traditional white wedding gown that I wore. Its elegance contrasts sharply with their planned outfits. Should I share my desire?

The way she framed the question — "Should I share my desire?" — makes it sound creepily Oedipal. The fact that it's her old wedding dress makes it sound like she's inserting herself as the bride. The fact that she thinks gay men want to be — or seem like — women is presumptuous (and stupid). The idea that someone else's wedding is a place to act out your dreams is mundane but lamentable.

And why are we not told the theme of the "themed outfits"? We're told her old dress, by its elegance, is a sharp contrast, so what could this "theme" be? Is it just "traditional male garb"? Maybe this lady has drunk so deeply of the current cultural brew, that she thinks everything is a gender performance and so when 2 gay men go to their wedding they are only going "as" 2 men. They are 2 men in the guise of guys. And they might alternatively go as a man and a woman or a man and a man in drag.

Or maybe the lady is really, underneath it all, quite old fashioned, and her dream betrays the traditionalist's belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

"Four years ago, months before Trump launched his stolen-election conspiracy, Lessig and Seligman devised a class at Harvard law school: Wargaming 2020."

"They looked at whether it would be possible to hack the presidential election and send the losing candidate to the White House. Their conclusion was that American democracy had dodged a bullet. 'We discovered that Trump didn’t really understand what he could have done,' Lessig says. 'There were obvious moves he and his team could have made, but they didn’t take them.' The insurrection on 6 January 2021 was tragic in its loss of life, but as a method of overturning the election it was the 'dumbest thing they could have possibly done. No court would ever allow the election to be decided by force of bayonets.'..."

From "How to steal a US election: Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig on Trump’s new threat/Law professor’s new book offers a stark warning about loopholes that could let Republicans overturn the election" (The Guardian).

1. If physically taking over the building is an incredibly dumb way to try to steal the election, that's a reason to infer that there was no intent to steal. It would make more sense to say that Trump thought that a big demonstration would motivate Congress to undertake some additional process that would determine whether the votes had been accurately counted and that might legitimately change the outcome.

2. If it's obvious that different moves can be made to steal the election, why is it supposed to be so outlandish for Trump to have questioned whether the Democrats stole the election? Maybe they made some of those "obvious moves."

3. Is it too much to ask for some nonpartisan assurance that American elections are not stolen? I like the idea of a book called "How to Steal a Presidential Election" (commission-earned link), but is it just about how Trump might steal the election or does it take threats from all sides seriously? I can't believe that only Trump is tempted to cheat and that only his stupidity saved us last time. Surely, some cheating has gone on throughout American history, and democracy is always under attack, whether the orange man is afoot or finally, at long last, out of our hair.

4. It's not anti-democratic to be suspicious that what purports to be the result of a democratic process could be wrong. Lessig himself is expressing that suspicion. 

ADDED: There's an old saying: It takes a thief to catch a thief. That's why they have to teach theft at Harvard Law School.

"The fact that a 'none of the above' option could overpower any enthusiasm from the supporters of Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is another blow..."

"... to her slim chances of winning the nomination over Mr. Trump, who maintains a commanding lead in polls. It also blunts any effort of hers to demonstrate momentum or score at least a symbolic victory. Mark Reynolds, 56, had planned to vote for Mr. Trump in Thursday’s caucuses. But he stopped by a polling place briefly on Tuesday morning to cast a vote for 'None of These Candidates.' 'It’s just to send a message,' Mr. Reynolds said, noting that the primary itself was a 'waste of time.'"

From "Haley Outvoted in Nevada Primary by ‘None of These Candidates,’ Without Trump on the Ballot/Ms. Haley ran essentially unopposed in the primary, which awards no delegates. The former president will compete in Thursday’s caucuses" (NYT).

1. Even writing this post feels like a waste of time.

2. Nevada has an idiotic system. I resent even having to put effort into understanding it. 

3. "Slim chances"... give me a break.

4. Why is it surprising that "none of the above" did well? I think "none of the above" is just about everybody's preference in any election. But, of course, here, "None of These Candidates" was literally on the ballot, and everyone understood that "None of These Candidates" meant Trump.

5. Elsewhere, people are trying to get "Trump" off all of the ballots. If they succeed, watch for the raging response from the "none of the above" supporters.

"At least Hanlon's razor... has something witty and memorable and real-life-applicable about it..."

Writes Rex Parker about today's NYT crossword, where the 18-across clue is "'Never attribute to ___ that which is adequately explained by stupidity' (Hanlon's razor)."

The answer to on that clue is... spoiler alert...

"Some users suggest that Grok 'sounds way more intelligent' than other chatbots as a result of its edgy 'personality.'"

"As for this writer, I'm not so sure. Cutesy prose and crassness -- however entertaining or inflammatory -- don't equate with cleverness, necessarily."

From "X begins rolling out Grok, its 'rebellious' chatbot, to subscribers" (Yahoo Life).

I wanted to check out Grok, which required me to sign up for X Premium+ and locate "Grok" in the left sidebar at the X website. (I use X on my browser.) Here's the shocking conversation I had:

"In view of many extremely online, spiritually unwell conservatives, [Ryan] Carson’s brutal death was a form of karmic justice."

"You see, the young man had advocated for safe injection sites after losing friends to opioid overdoses. And he dedicated his adult life to working on various left-wing causes, above all the promotion of recycling and environmentally friendly approaches to dealing with solid waste. And his girlfriend had advocated for police abolition. Therefore, Carson had reaped what he’d sowed. The far-right provocateur Mike Cernovich disseminated a surveillance video of Carson’s death, beneath the caption, 'Hey bro just like chill out bro I’m on your side bro go attack the magats bro bro bro noooooo.' Other conservatives turned photos of Carson’s dead body into memes about the perils of wokeness.... [S]adistically mocking a victim of violent crime whose politics they did not like... is... morally grotesque.... Gloating over the violent deaths of people you disagree with is... vile and ineffective.... You will not persuade anyone...."

 
Writes Eric Levitz, in "Don’t Celebrate When People You Disagree With Get Murdered" (New York Magazine).

"In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color."

"Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, 'Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,' and remarked that Joni Mitchell 'was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.' His answer about artists of color was less direct. 'Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?' he said. 'I suppose when you use a word as broad as "masters," the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.'"

From "Jann Wenner Removed From Rock Hall Board After Times Interview/The Rolling Stone co-founder’s exit comes a day after The New York Times published an interview in which he made widely criticized comments" (NYT).

Wenner's book, called "The Masters," collects various Rolling Stone interviews, and every single one is with a white male. Good and obvious choices like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. But, come on, how could Wenner not have known he'd be challenged for omitting all women and all black musicians?!

Why wasn't he prepared with a response — and by that I mean an articulate response?

"What utter nonsense. If this many men were thinking about the Roman Empire every day, they would not be voting for Republicans..."

"... who are working hard to cause the collapse of the American Empire. They're thinking about Rome as depicted in Marvel movies and other pop culture fluff. They think the NLF [sic] are gladiators and so are they as they watch from their couches or tailgates. They don't know beans about the Roman Empire because that would require reading and studying and learning to look at the world with a contextual perspective. The internet makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. And dumber. And dumber."

That's the top-rated comment — from someone named Paula — on the NYT article, "Are Men Obsessed With the Roman Empire? Yes, Say Men. Women are asking the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome. Their responses, posted online, can be startling in their frequency."

This post continues a discussion begun yesterday, about a trend on TikTok of women asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire and expressing amazement at the answer.