#482

It's kind of weird to put words into this text field. I don't only mean that it's a weird thing for a weird person to do, which is true and the whole reason I do it. Nor blogging itself, that's not weird; running this type of blog, not monetized, not designed to angle for the lead in a brutal algorithmic world-race, one which openly critiques its host and its platform and the very environment in which they are set--that is weird. Weird, and indeed, pointless. 

Also it is weird--still not the main weirdness!--because who reads it? No one, basically. And I know this because it is functionally impossible to find. In fact, searching for my blog, rendered on a Google service, using the Google search engine on another person's computing device gave me no results, and the more specific and correct I made my query, the results grew sparser and lesss coherent until I gave the mechanism no choice but to show my blog, and it showed nothing instead. To be fair, it said that it "seems as though few web pages match your search". 

And that's weird too, right? First of all, I am not looking for a bunch of websites like the one I am looking for--I am fucking looking for a specific website, one which I was extremely clear about seeking. Also, even if few websites matched my search, you would think they would want you to see it, since some things are usually more desirable than no things, and being told that there 

• are some things, but
• I won't actually show them to you

is not only weird, but actively needling, perhaps even infuriating. Since...why? Because it is their own engine looking for their own website hosted on their own service, I damn well know they know what I'm asking about even if they're not making money from it. But steering people away from shit they can see for free seems weird, even if I can understand why you would prefer that people look at ads. So are you saying they can't--that people should not look at free content on your service, or that my writing is so objectionable that you need to bury it where no right-thinking person could even look for it where I would think to tell them to?

Guess another reason I can think they might want to bury my blog is that it is excellent food for their large language models, a vast and varied collection of word arrangements, and they wish to camouflage my uniqueness as their own as effectively as possible. But when I criticize AI, and their approach to AI, they flag the post, and never unflag it, despite my humble entreaty. So, is this the clammy hand of a shadowban?

Why flag what you won't let anyone see? That's some...I dunno. That's really something to digest.

No--at last--I mean it's weird because it's a stupid and exposing thing to do. Trying to say real shit about the world and your opinions and ideas about it could seriously get you killed out here. In this sense, perhaps my overlords and masters at Alphabet are doing me a kind of favor.

Well, guess all that is the cost of doing business. I am compelled to do it, and the fact that it might be seen as dangerous must mean that it's not useless, even if it's pointless.

Or they fucking broke their own service. Who can say.

--JL

#189

Big day with big changes in it. Rather than type the post this morning I had a wide-ranging, semi-contentious discussion over what essentially boils down to ontology and semiotics with my dad, the sort of sparring that leaves both parties feeling that they have learned from one another without giving ground. Our debate is volatile and can be explosive, and today we each at times felt quite unheard by the other, but we kept it tight and were rewarded with that incredibly pregnant, joyfully expanding silence that signals the end of fruitful dialogue. We slapped five hard and laughed from our bellies, got up, and went about our respective days.

See, I like internet, but I talk to my father. It's one of those key buffers between a young male and a spastic fucking little troll. Fresh air and acquiring hands-based or otherwise physically applicable skills is also important. 

*

If you can get a kid to read even a single one of the books that Rick and Morty cannibalizes before some twitching maniac peer at their elementary school makes them watch an episode on their tablet during recess, then you have done a tremendous job as a parent. Aesop's Fables by the artists formerly known as Aesop (if I understand the modern stance correctly), The Wind In The Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne, and Animal Farm by George Orwell are all most instructive, and feature anthropomorphized animals or stuffed animals. You can pretty much cut kids loose and let them read whatever after that, but I'd leave the books that make up a basic introductory philosophy course lying around, as well as a dictionary and perhaps the latest edition of Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History. Nice.*

As an aside, in my humble opinion, there is no finer book for children anywhere than The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster.

If you think these books are too hard or explicit for little kids I gotta tell ya, you're not ready for this century. The human brain is changing fast. Pretty soon a kid is gonna have a science fair project where they 3D-print a liver with a salvaged 3D-printer that they modded themselves that is forty-five percent more efficient than an analog liver and can be held and transported at room temperature while retaining transplant viability. A few years after that, a kid that pulls something like that will scrape a C. 

*

How does Google's own Blogger text editor not know the word anthropomorphized? Or the word Blogger, for that matter? Get with it, people. You are too big for this. Shit like this, man. Shit like this is why Google+ fails and nobody thinks you're as smart as you are anymore. You put yourselves on such thin ice with your logo shenanigans from the get-go (sorry to jump on such a creaky old bandwagon, but honestly, you deserve every stroke of the whip for as long as people have eyes to see) and it's like it doesn't even matter anymore that you are a company with such vast resources and ambitious projects that people forget that you are the only game at your level, they stop seeing you like they forget how vast the sky is. Why do you play below the level when no one can even get on your level? Why do you let a Vince Vaughn movie happen to you? That was grim, a grim moment for me, to see that.

Stop playing around, Google. You are too old. There is no excuse but that your text editors should know every word there is to know, period. You have disappointed me enough, Google. Don't even know the word petrichor, or the word materiel, or the word hornswoggle. Do your homework!

(I can never thank you enough for your search engine, Google. I remember trying to ask Jeeves shit. I remember being at Yahoo's tender mercies. I remember the debt, and I remember your crazy aircraft carrier and your deep-space projects. I just want you to fulfill your potential, Google. Bring me home. Unless there is some kind of endgame to having people think you're a company where people play Quidditch and sit in beanbag chairs. Unless you really are that company, and you don't care that your game makes boiled cabbage look like a young Sean Connery. Yeah, don't be evil, I love you for saying that [lmao I know you fuckers are a little bit, maybe a lot a bit, but who's keeping track, right? You think people will continue to not care** about what you do with their private stuff on the basis of how silly you appear? It's your gamble, y'all], but don't be dorks either.)

*

Good night. Internet fun probably continues...tomorrow!

Peace and love and a puff of the sweet stuff, tender hearts

--JL

*ok on balance that is a lot of British dudes to recommend but hey, I had the childhood I had

**I don't really care