The Colorado wall Now with the spin I imagined.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
The Colorado wall
How will the White House spin Donald Trump’s assertion that he’s building a wall in Colorado?
Easy: “In building a wall in New Mexico, President Trump is also protecting Coloradans from,” &c., &c.
It’s frightening to me that this sort of after-the-fact pseudo-logic is so easy to dream up.
*
October 24: Here’s what Trump tweeted later last night:
(Kiddingly) We’re building a Wall in Colorado”(then stated, “we’re not building a Wall in Kansas but they get the benefit of the Wall we’re building on the Border”) refered to people in the very packed auditorium, from Colorado & Kansas, getting the benefit of the Border Wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2019
[He was speaking in Pittsburgh.]
Kinja Deals ad fail
A Kinja Deals ad mixed in with editorial content at Lifehacker announces a low Amazon price on CRKT’s AR multi-tool. The Kinja ad shows the tool with blade open and mentions a bottle opener and three hex wrenches. I like seeing multitools in all their spidery glory, so I clicked through to the Amazon page. And I thought the tool looked a little odd, a little specialized, with small projections that had nothing to do with opening bottles or tightening hex nuts. I looked at Amazon’s list of features, which begins with “AR Cleaning Tools.” Oh. And I scrolled down to read this description:
Maintenance is the mark of a master. Designer Joe Wu knows that there’s a world of difference between the recreational shooter and the one that’s spent years honing his skill. One notable difference: proper maintenance. Joe has given the AR Tool both a compact, highly useful blade on a slip joint as well as a nine-in-one scraper tool. Built to quickly clean 12 critical surfaces of bolt components, it’s equipped to restore an AR to working order at the range or in the field. The precision-cut tool is ideal for cleaning the bolt, firing pin, carrier, and cam pin so your favorite range companion never slows down.So the marketing arm of A.V. Club, Clickhole, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, The Onion, The Root, and The Takeout is pushing a multi-tool made for cleaning semi-automatic weapons as “a perfect everyday carry.” Imagine being the sap who buys a CRKT AR, perhaps as a gift, without understanding its purpose: “Why, thank you, Uncle Ned. Thank you, Aunt Jean. You’ve gifted me with the perfect tool for — for — cleaning an AR-15??”
That the primary use of this multi-tool is missing from the Kinja ad might be a matter of carelessness. Or it might be a matter of coyness. Either way, Kinja Deals is doing Lifehacker readers a grotesque disservice.
[There’s a tweet as well, showing only the blade. All comments on the Kinja ad are marked “pending,” including mine.]
Analog strong
“Never underestimate the power of a State Department guy with a pad and pen”: Anne Gearan, Washington Post reporter, speaking on MSNBC last night.
As many news outlets have reported, William Taylor, the American diplomat who gave testimony yesterday to the House impeachment inquiry, was a careful taker of notes.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
“Tape Here”
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Teaching Thomas Wolfe
I was teaching a work by Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel. Or maybe it was Of Time and the River. It was the second class of the semester. I wasn’t especially familiar with the novel under discussion and tried to get the students to talk their way through the class, one responding to another. When the class ended, a student came up to tell me that he could not find the books for the class. I suggested — helpfully, not snarkily — that he try the library. And then I wondered why I had assigned a novel I hadn’t read.
This is the sixteenth teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. It’s far less complicated than some of the others. The others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.
Monday, October 21, 2019
How to improve writing (no. 84)
From a post I wrote yesterday morning:
MacUpdater checks on updates for non-App Store apps. The app is free to use for checking (after which you can update on your own). Buy the app and it will update for you whatever apps you choose. I use MacUpdater as a free app — it’s an ultra-convenient way to see all at once what needs updated.When I looked more carefully at those sentences, I saw two problems: the awkward “non-App Store apps,” and too many instances of app and apps. What was I supposed to do about “non-App Store apps” anyway? I looked at Garner’s Modern English Usage:
When a name is used attributively as a phrasal adjective, it ordinarily remains unhyphenated. E.g.: “The Terry Maher strategy put immediate pressure on rival bookshop chains.” Raymond Snoddy, “Book Price War Looms in Britain,” Fin. Times, 28-29 Sept.1991, at 1. This becomes quite awkward, though, when the two words in a proper noun are part of a longer phrasal adjective <the King County-owned stadium> <a New York-doctor-owned building>. The only reasonable thing to do is rewrite <the stadium owned by King County> <a building owned by a New York doctor>.So I rewrote. Here again is the original paragraph, which by now may have scrolled out of sight:
MacUpdater checks on updates for non-App Store apps. The app is free to use for checking (after which you can update on your own). Buy the app and it will update for you whatever apps you choose. I use MacUpdater as a free app — it’s an ultra-convenient way to see all at once what needs updated.And the revised version:
MacUpdater checks on updates for apps not from the App Store. MacUpdater is free to use for checking (after which you can update apps on your own). Buy MacUpdater and it will update for you whatever apps you choose. I use MacUpdater just for checking — it’s an ultra-convenient way to see all at once what needs updated.Before, four instances of app and two apps. After, one app and three apps. I’m not keen on the repetition of the name MacUpdater, but it beats the repetition of app. And please note: “needs updated” is a Illinoism for comic effect, not a typo.
*
Fresca wondered in a comment if it’s obvious that MacUpdater is itself an app. It’s not. (And if it were a web service examining what’s on your computer, that might seem sketchy.) I don’t want to clarify by writing “The MacUpdater app checks on updates for apps not from the App Store.” Instead:
A useful download: MacUpdater checks on updates for apps not from the App Store. MacUpdater is free to use for checking (after which you can update apps on your own). Buy MacUpdater and it will update for you whatever apps you choose. I use MacUpdater just for checking — it’s an ultra-convenient way to see what needs updated.I took out “all at once” too.
Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)
[This post is no. 84 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]
Hi and Lois watch
[Hi and Lois, October 21, 2019. Click for a larger view.]
Anything can happen in a Hi and Lois interstice. Take today’s strip: the window has moved behind Ditto after losing its glass and strangely placed muntin. (I think that’s a muntin.) Or Ditto has moved to the empty chair, which would seem to require that the table has added a fifth side to accommodate Chip. A pepper shaker has appeared on the table. The burgers have gone from “Tasty” to “Ug.” Properly spelled ugh. But Hi still isn’t home from work.
Other things I notice: Ditto’s chair curves at the top, which means that the chairs are not a matching set. Unless Lois “clears” by first removing cutlery, the meal has been eaten without forks and knives, and perhaps without napkins. Which makes me wonder what might have been served from that bowl.
Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)
Sunday, October 20, 2019
“Esperanto”
Mark Esperanto, Secretary of Defense, “The ceasefire is holding up very nicely. There are some minor skirmishes that have ended quickly. New areas being resettled with the Kurds.” USA soldiers are not in combat or ceasefire zones. We have secured the Oil. Bringing soldiers home!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2019
His name, of course, is Esper.
*
The tweet has been deleted. But its ghost walks, at least for now. And if the ghost disappears, I have a screenshot saved.
[Resettlement is a word with a dark history. “We have secured the Oil”: meaning?]
MacUpdater
It’s another [need + past participle] day.
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