Bugaboos

Meta Doom

Watching the World Series game, I just saw an ad that I had seen before, but I thought it had been shelved, as it should have been, or at least modified. 

It is a series of people doing all kinds of things, a very lively, update tone, and it ends with something like "we're betting on people".  This ad is of course to address the common conception, recently framed nicely in the new movie "The Social Reckoning", that Meta is a company that has gone over to the robots, as personified by its head. 

The problem for me is the music in the background.  You can hear the lyrics, "all the fat, skinny people, all the tall short people. Never seen so many people" etc. Again, sounds very "Up with People".  

However, that music is David Bowie's "Five Years".  The song is about the announcement of an imminent doom of the human race.  It includes also these lyrics--"We got FIVE YEARS!  Five Years!  That's all we got!"  The focus of the lyrics is on the reaction to the news of a civilization-ending event. Almost something someone could write today about the "singularity" when AI cleans our clocks, if they were scared of such an event.

So, it is too discordant to me, and I wonder if this is a sly joke by their PR on the stupid masses, to include this contradictory message in plain sight.  

The Omnipresent Vibe

There are certain words that I am sick of seeing "all the time", i.e. too often for me. The one I'm talking about now is "vibrant", an adjective that is being applied to all kinds of things these days, often found in the text of smarmy marketing brochures.  I'd say it's pretty much never heard in conversation. 

There are uses when the use is accurate and vivid., I'll grant it might be appropriate to apply to a nightspot, a neighborhood which greets you with a pounding beat, a painting's colors, a gong ten seconds after it's struck, or a molecule (more on that later).  I've run across recently the following uses: "Vibrant text", "vibrant island", "vibrant pottery", 'vibrant argument".   This isn't about the object that is seen to be vibrating, it's about the observer's brain in a tizzy. 

 I'll admit that, technically, and according to what I've been taught in physics, any matter, or any energy, is vibrating, unless it is at absolute zero.  But then that word provides only that the vibrant thing exists. I notice that it is not used to describe a musical instrument--that would be redundant.  It is most important, then, to describe the type of vibration, or as we say in conversation, the "vibe".  I recommend the use of that phrase instead, because then one can add "the kind of" and make a comparison or description.  "Vibrant" itself is not really very descriptive. 

Adhesives

 I am not opposed to new technology, being the fruit of our search for ways to apply our knowledge.  As such, it is presumed OK; it all depends on how it's used and of knowing the full range of results of its use. 

There has been great progress in the capability to make two objects adhere to each other.  Although there remains some use for the peg, nail, screw, rivet and solder, today's glues leave those methods in the sticky muck like that which they employ. They are stronger bonds, less dependent on the nature of the two items being stuck together. The quantity of glue needed is so tiny for plastic packaging that it is undetectable.  So the packaging must tell us how to get any leverage, so not to pull directly against the counterforce holding things tin place, which would be a way to strain a muscle..  It's a struggle.

And then when the thing breaks, when you complete the tear and still cannot open the package. Forget about trying to overpower the adhesive with brute force. What I do, and I recommend its use, cautiously applied, is a tool we acquired in a seasonal package to cut up Halloween pumpkins.  You may know the product; it could easily poke one's eye out, or worse.  The thing is small (handle 3-4 in. and not thick), with a narrow, serrated edge on both sides about as long.  

I call it "The Tearer".  Though one could also easily describe it as "the Terror".  It's little, but plastic fears it, and the glue then has nothing to say. It's the nemesis of many a plastic top.  It, or a pair of sharp-pointed scissors with a serrated edge has become the single most necessary kitchen tool

 The Terror

 

I may add to this post over time.