It’s only Wednesday but I am already over this week.
Last night my boss took us all to Top Golf. Which I thought was like an inside thing, but it is an outside thing and it is about 97 degrees and humid here on the East Coast.
And, because I work in finance, I was the only woman. 9 dudes and me. Next time I’m going to make them do something I’m really good at and they all suck at. Like baking or reading.
I’ve forgotten about all these people. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Banker convicted of bribery for plot to land Trump administration job
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/banker-convicted-bribery-plot-land-trump-administration-job-n1273866?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
I mean, can Fox News be charged with murder at this point?
What hospitals look like in US Covid-19 hot spots right now
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/us/us-covid-hot-spots-hospitals/index.html
Maybe someone smarter than me can tell us what is going on in Texas. Arrest warrants? Chartered Planes?
Sprots!
After Stephen A. Smith’s rant about Shohei Ohtani, his ESPN co-workers led the pushback
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/07/13/stephen-a-smith-ohtani-jeff-passan/
Dow closes 100 points lower as hot inflation report overshadows strong earnings
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/12/stock-futures-mostly-flat-ahead-of-bank-earnings.html
I definitely had this at one point, guess I shouldn’t have played it like a loser.
A copy of ‘Super Mario 64’ sold for over $1.5 million, the most ever paid for a video game
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/super-mario-auction-video-game-record-scli-intl/index.html
Emmy Noms!
And lastly, TIL: Today I learned about my fellow Deadsplinters!
Have a great day!
Seeing that leader image reminds me of some interesting trivia:
Did you know that printers used to prefer to hire illiterate typesetters? Yes. They would be given handwritten pages of copy (obviously this was a long time ago and they knew enough to copy the letters they were seeing, but they couldn’t read them. They were also taught formatting, heads and subheads, but didn’t understand why you would do something like this. Why? Because that way the typesetters wouldn’t get distracted reading and absorbing what they were working on.
Do you know why letters are referred to as “upper case” and “lower case”? Because literally, that was how the type sets were arranged, with capitals in the drawer above the small letters.
For that matter, do you know why a headline is a “hed”, a paragraph is a “graf”, a lead sentence is a “lede”, and information “to come” is “TK”? It’s because these are such obvious typos that these designations would never make it into print. Ha ha!
In terms of obscure trivia, I bow to you, Cousin Matthew.
I used to think I was the King of Useless Information, but clearly I was only a pretender to the throne.
I prefer to think of my “useless information,” as you so cavalierly dismiss it as, as amusing conversation starters to deploy when confronted with people you don’t know, such as tablemates at a wedding reception, or while mingling with parents at the conclusion of some school function in which a young relative has participated. Then, once ensnared, I pump my interlocutors for valuable intel, such as the groom’s previous two divorces because of “the drinking,” or the fact that the female lead in the high school musical, though only 17, is assumed to be in some kind of romantic relationship with the drama teacher, a fact made all the more remarkable because the whole town “knows” he’s gay. Peyton Place is all around us; we have but to seek it out.
I need you to teach me how to have conversations with people. When I’ve tried that in the past I’ve always come off as a less charming version of Cliff Clavin.
To get into the weeds, I think the perfect transliteration of copy by printers varied by type of print job.
In the days of hot lead linotype, the printers had final say over copy and had to be extremely literate. A big reason is that layouts tended to be fixed but changes would come in at the last second.
If a story was changed at the last second from “guilty on three counts” to “guilty on two counts, one count thrown out on technicality” there wasn’t time to get the reporter to rewrite the copy and get it to fit in the designated columns, so they relied on typesetters to make it work. They were the ones who had to know the rules of hyphenation and abbreviation, because they had to translate last minute copy coming over the phone into the form with hyphens and abbreviations that made it into print, and they tended to be the ones who knew if it was Dupont, Du Pont or du Pont.
I think book publishing, which was slower and more methodical, had less need for this kind of literacy. Final review sat with editors who could go over proofs by themselves.
I was referring more to the days before, say, 1900. The Hearst papers certainly never cared for accuracy like that.
Oh, I’m here for this.
Ichiro always used an interpreter, too, and he could speak english, he didn’t want to inadvertently say the wrong thing in an interview because english be tricky. Smith could use an interpreter.
This shows how disconnected sports media is from sports themselves. They think that interviews and press conferences — even Tweets — are more interesting than the sports themselves.
Given the choice between broadcasting action or broadcasting a reporter-coach exchange, they will always choose “Coach, are you happy with the level of effort? Well, Joe, I think the scoreboard reflects the effort, and we have to give 110% if we want to win.”
Fans love Ohtani because he’s an exciting player. Most sports media is unable to understand what he does and/or incapable of communicating it, so they get hung up on all of the stuff outside of games.
That’s why Erik Bedard’s press conferences were funny:
“Erik, you pitched 7 innings, stuck out 10, walked 1, and gave up 3 hits. Are you happy with your performance tonight?”
“Stupid question. Next?”
Rasheed Wallace once went through an entire press conference answering every question “it was a great game both tems played hard” over and over.
Rasheed Wallace is a great subject to interview because he is extremely smart and insightful, but reporters would fall on their faces with dumb questions like “do you think you guys played hard enough to win?” You don’t get good answers if you don’t ask good questions.
And reporters tend to ask dumb questions when they don’t understand what they’ve seen. When they think only in terms of cliches, and can’t even recognize cliches, that’s what emerges.
Rasheed Wallace was one of the funnest college players to watch, and though I don’t follow the NBA I have seen some hilarious videos of him just yelling random shit on the court.
I can translate for Stephan A (hole), “hey, look at me, I’m a pompous asshole with some hot takes I will now yell at you at ungodly decibels!”
Personal bitching: I absolutely despise it when anybody throws out the phrase “learn English” like it’s something you can pick up in a four-week course. People who say it are invariably assholes who have no knowledge of any foreign language, and who are so fucking self-centered they think everybody on the planet should cater to their narrow viewpoint.
I know nothing of this Smith imbecile, but I’d bet my next three mortgage payments he doesn’t even have a passing familiarity with any other language. Y’know what, motherfucker? You first. Demonstrate fluency in any other language, and THEN you can bitch about somebody “learning English.”
When I lived in TN, I heard this shit all the time from those redneck fuckers. Of course, none of them could actually speak English either, so when they would howl about “those damned imgrunts naid tuh spake Anglish”, I would likewise say, “you first.”
TN is really trying to tell Texas & Florida, “hold my beer!”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/newsus/tennessee-fires-top-vaccination-official-amid-pandemic/vi-AAM7G2d
Yeah, I read that. The worst part is that they’re also now making it illegal to vaccinate minors. TN has always been the psychopathic state that doesn’t get nearly as much press as TX or FL but has way more crazy than either of them.
Alabama has a version of the Rocky Top fightsong that they play during games, but with an important change to the lyrics.
“Tennessee will never be, home sweet home to me. Fuck you Rocky Top, go to hell Tennessee.”
…maybe I’m reading too much into it…but based on that last bit…I’m guessing they’d be well advised to be on their best behaviour today lest that understated burn translates to a full-blown conflagration?
One of my coworkers and I always bemoan the company golf outing. Yeah, way to be inclusive, assholes. You can’t help but wonder how many promotions not playing golf costs.
How about a nice outing to the yarn shop?
The only guy in management who gave a hoot about team building got fired so there you go.
Someone wrote a letter to Ask A Manager about this exact topic, though y don’t remember her response, but it isn’t uncommon in your type of field :/
Both of my forays into team building turned into a disaster.
1. Laser Tag. I ended up zapping my boss many many many many times because he was the best player on the other team and pissed him off. Bruised egos and all that.
2. This was just personal shame as it was bowling. I suck at it.
The worst one I heard about was my friends company played paint ball with their hated manager. Worst case of fragging ever.
I’ve never had a “team building” experience which wasn’t just an attempt at legislated fun. If managers want to “build” their team, then the best way to do it is to treat them like human beings and not cogs in a wheel. When I learned how to do that, suddenly the groups that I managed became much closer and more trusting of each other. I’m guessing because the cutthroat atmosphere was no longer there.
True confession, I loved his team building activities, we went to a Trenton Thunder minor league baseball game.
I can see things like that being fun. Everything I was roped into by my old bosses was always some kind of competition, which clearly didn’t help matters.
Howdy neighbor
Luckily, when I worked at a large tech company, our team building was running up a huge bar tab at the local pub. He called it a “morale event” but we all appreciated it.
We used to go to Dave and Buster’s and get the contractor firms to cover the tabs for the first few hours.
Watching your managers drunkenly play games is always entertaining!
Much to my (delighted) surprise, I live in an 18th-century English village:
https://www.westsiderag.com/2021/07/13/public-running-of-the-goats-returns-to-riverside-park-wednesday-then-they-feast
The comments might be the best part.
The Upper West Side has a mommy blog with restricted access. Every so often someone in the group will pass along something particularly unmoored from reality and the entire city will read with rapt attention. Use your imagination.
Most of the time, I need an interpreter to tell me what the fuck Steven A Smith is even talking about. I loathe him even more than Jim Rome.
The only person worst than Stephen A is Skip Bayless and the fact they used to have both of them together on one show yelling at each other shows that ESPN hates it’s viewers.
One of the things that amazes me about sports broadcasting (and the media in general) is what happens when someone like Tony Romo comes along who is both knowledgeable and a good communicator.
He gets a ton of public approval, and the response of execs is to keep on throwing uninsightful bad communicators on broadcasts. Nobody wants a mushmouthed person on the air just because they are an ex-jock or ex-politician, but execs insist on throwing Tim McCarver or Chris Christie at us.
I don’t watch ESPN and I know who Stephen A. Smith is.
The intial A is for Asshole, right?
At least there’s booze and food at Top golf. Next time tell em you can’t swing a club because of your old football injury .
Next time I’m going to make them do something I’m really good at and they all suck at. Like baking or reading. YES!!! This is why I love you!!!
How did Bridgerton make it onto that list??? #teamLovecraftCountry
This is a disturbing article in the NY Times about Facebook’s smothering of unflattering data (paywalled, unfortunately):
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html
In short, the CrowdTangle tool which reported details on FB’s audience and engagement has been neutered and its employees dispersed. Top Facebook execs, including Nick Clegg (the idiot former UK Liberal Democrats leader who was rolled by David Cameron and oversaw a collapse of his party) and chief marketing office Andy Schultz led a successful effort to crush CrowdTangle because it was revealing how much FB enables the extreme right.
I’ve bashed NY Times reporters and editors in the past, but this article highlights what is good and what is rotten at the Times. Many reporters, like Kevin Roose here, are writing smart, informative articles. Roose reports in impressive detail how much FB is a part of the right wing political machine, and how execs bend over backwards to enable it.
The dark side of the Times is on the Politics and National desks, which perform a similar function as FB execs. Factual reporting like Roose’s article never penetrate the bubbles of those desks. Every article written out of DC on social media fights blatantly ignores the proven perspective of fellow Times reporters and gives undue weight to GOP claims of big tech bias.
There is no doubt the right is screaming in bad faith, but Politics and National desks pretend it’s an unanswerable question like a dispute over the Nicean Creed. The good reporters at the Times have every reason to resent how the stars ignore and minimize them.
welp…the neighbours and the south are having a little bit of weather today
ive got…a little bit of drizzle……the fun weather always misses us 🙁
(well..almost always)
oh also…found a music and decided its one for @Elliecoo
@farscythe Thank you! Very much so…
anytime 😀
i like to think my guesses for who likes what are reasonably accurate
but i also imagine my music spamming is irritating to some…cant help myself…i have a compelling need to find and share music constantly
probably should have gone into the music biz as a promoter or some shit….
and on that note…found a new local
seems americana is in over here at mo