According to the 2023 Christmas gift guide from the New York Times, I should buy either the buttery robe or the buttery wallet. Or both.
It turns out, neither of them contain any butter, so Iʼll stick to my go-to gift: butter cookies.
Can you figure out how to close this error message dialog box? No, itʼs not by clicking on the red circled × that looks exactly like a close window control. You do it by clicking on the ellipses.
Good job, Microsoft.
Todayʼs coffee is Nutty Chocolate from Ampersand Coffee Roasters in Colorado.
Bull shit is good for fertilizing coffee crops. And bullshit is apparently a key ingredient in this coffeeʼs marketing. The package is so crammed full of sanctimonious later-day hipster buzzwords that thereʼs barely room for the trophy case of “look how extra I am!” stickers. The only thing missing is a gold participation star from Mrs. Keaneʼs kindergarten class.
Howʼs the coffee? Itʼs slightly below average. The flavors arenʼt as pronounced as the packaging would have you believe, and thereʼs a bit of a chemical-style aftertaste. It is unkind to say that the coffee doesnʼt live up to the hype, because no coffee could possibly accede to the level of boastful globalist hype cosplay in which this company engages.
Still, those poor coffee beans. The weight of the global order is on their shoulders. The only way to put them under more pressure is to actually put them in an espresso machine.
The package promises they will “[provide] the ultimate holistic coffee experience through quality coffee, womenʼs empowerment, environmental regeneration, and upward spirals.”
Itʼs a bag of coffee beans, not a United Nations resolution.
I find it curious that a company so aggressively engaged in forthrightness as performance art should describe its product as “An insane blend of our nuttiest and most chocolaty-tasting coffees.” I guess Ampersand didnʼt get the Slack message that youʼre not supposed to use the word “insane” anymore, as it offends those who choose to be offended on behalf of imaginary mentally unstable people they donʼt even know.
On a boat, off the coast of the Cayman Islands, there is a sign reading “Maximum passenger: 250.” Next to it is another sign reading “72 adultʼs life jackets.” I can go three ways with this:
I have coined a new idiom:
I havenʼt decided what it means yet, but on the surface is sounds both clever and marginally offensive. Iʼll have to come up with a way to work it into polite conversation.
Not every guy proposes with a 12-foot-tall “Will you marry me?” sign atop a downtown parking garage.
But this one did.
Iʼm always trying to explain to my coworkers the importance of future-proofing what you publish.
Here we see a happy coffee sleeve touting Houston Methodist Hospitalʼs rank as the number 16 hospital in the nation. Except that it isnʼt.
Methodist is actually number 15. Sixteen was last year. But some middle manager thought it was a good idea to order fifty brazillion coffee sleeves flogging the #16 position, and now itʼs stuck under-bragging until they run out.
I know Southwest is trying to be folksy and humorous by having the status sign at the airport gate tell me I have plenty of time to read magazines. But I canʼt help but think, “No kidding. My flight has already been delayed six times tonight.”
This is an example of wayfinding done right.
With a mere glance out the door of a subway train, I can see three signs telling me that this is the Lake station.
The signs are large, clean, and clear, with very high contrast.
Itʼs remarkable how many transit agencies and airports, large and small, forget the importance of wayfinding, communication, and consistent design.
I used to live in a state where prostitution is legal, and even Iʼm not sure what a “ham quicke” is.
When you leave the airside of Midway Airport, this is what greets you. On the surface, itʼs a nice welcome message from the Mayor of Chicago. Sweet.
The cynic in me immediately starts thinking itʼs a shameless promotion, and another way for her to get her face out there, like all those craptastic little towns scattered across America with signs reading “Welcome to Gripplebunk; Population 3,122; Cleetus McFasterberry, Mayor.”
But the more I think about it, thereʼs more to this sign. Itʼs Mayor Lightfoot taking pride in her city. More importantly, itʼs hizzonor putting her neck out there and telling people “If your visit sucks, thatʼs my fault. If the train brakes down, thatʼs my fault. If you get mugged on Wabash, thatʼs my fault.”
It's also saying, “If you have an awesome time at Oak Street Beach, thatʼs my fault, too!” But few people seem to associate good things with the people responsible for them. Itʼs much easier to assign blame when thing go wrong.
Lightfoot is far from my favorite Chicago mayor, especially among this new generation. I disagree with a bunch of the things sheʼs done. But at least sheʼs trying to do things. And in ways big and small, she doesnʼt run from controversy or responsibility. Which makes her an old-style Chicago mayor.
This e-mail from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority reads “You unsubscribed.” It also says “You will receive an email update when new information becomes available.”
So, am I unsubscribed, or am I going to receive e-mail updates?
If your electric company promotes itself with the slogan “Giddy Up!” you might be in Texas.
And if you trust something as important as electricity to a company that promotes itself with the slogan “Giddy Up!” you get what you deserve.
Fortunately, spelling doesnʼt count on yard sale flyers. Perhaps spelling “tchotchkes” as “chotskies" is an indication of quality second-hand goods at low low prices.
If I had an Instagram account, I could tell the supposedly Texas-style Howdy Kolache company that saguaro cacti donʼt grow in Texas. They only grow in southwestern Arizona, hundreds of miles away.
Iʼd tell them myself, but like many hobby companies these days, the only way to make contact is via the one random social media app of their choice.
I donʼt drink wine. I havenʼt been to New Jersey since before the internet. No, I didnʼt sign up for your mailing list. I do not want your spam, filthy lying spammers at Renault Winery Resort in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey.
Guess which state wonʼt get my tourism dollars.
Three fails in one word. Pretty impressive.
An additional point should be deducted for putting a dingbat in the middle of a sentence.
Millennials complain that they can't read cursive writing. Does that mean that when they see a California license plate, they don't know what state it's from?
Are they all going to die because they can't find a Walgreens to get their prescriptions?
I think the reason that many people on the internet incorrectly put punctuation outside of closing quotation marks is because they donʼt read books.
If you read, youʼre used to seeing it done correctly, and are familiar with it.
This is correct: “Word.”
This is not correct: “Word”.
Donʼt believe me? Open any book.
Someone doing a survey phoned me today. She asked for my opinion about COVID.
I told her Iʼm against it.
Why do so many Apple programs use five-pixel-tall fonts? Who thinks these are a good idea? Even back in Commodore 64 days, we knew that nobody could read a five pixel font.
You donʼt have to be visually impaired, elderly, or even drunk for these to be completely unreadable on a computer screen.
For all the puffery that comes out of Apple about accessibility and inclusiveness, this has to stop.
How do you keep your customer follow-ups down and your “satisfaction” metrics up? By not giving people a way to contact you!
If people canʼt complain, thereʼs no complaints, right? It works for the U.S. Postal Service.
If Apple canʼt make its programs work, what chance do I… oh, wait. Itʼs iTunes. This is probably an improvement.
If you listen to the chattering masses on the internet, you can be made to believe that the internet is everywhere, data is virtually free, and if youʼre not connected to everyone everywhere all day every day, you must be at room temperature.
As is often the case, reality and the internet are very different from one another.
The reality is that there are millions of people in America with no internet service. Not because of choice, or poverty, or lack of education; but because they are simply beyond the reach of the infrastructure.
People I know in the Silicon Valley bubble cannot fathom that there are places in America without broadband, let alone cell phone service. Yet right now, there are hundreds of thousands in Las Vegas who have no internet service. Even in New York City, there are over a million people who do not have internet access, and have no cellular service in their homes.
Itʼs especially hard for people from Europe to understand. They live in small countries where people are packed close together, so itʼs easy to provide cell phone service. They donʼt grasp how vast places like the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere are and that cell service is not universal around the entire globe.
I ran into a British couple in Monument Valley once who were complaining that their cell phone didnʼt work. They kept saying, “But we bought it in San Francisco!” as if repeating the phrase often enough would cause a cell tower and power lines to sprout from the cracked earth. They couldnʼt be made to understand that they shouldnʼt expect a phone to work in the desert a thousand miles from the Bay Area.
The photograph above is a great example of how many places in America lack basic communications infrastructure (let alone running water and electricity). Itʼs a special pay phone in the town of Shoshone, California. The same California that gave us so much of the high-tech world in which we live also cannot connect all of its towns and cities.
There is no cell service in Shoshone. There is only dialup internet service in Shoshone. There are only a couple of radio signals that reach Shoshone. So the way many people communicate with the outside world is via this payphone.
Itʼs an ordinary payphone that also has special numbers people can dial to connect to essential, and some seemingly sponsored, services for free.
Local calls are currently 50¢, and anywhere else on the planet is $1.00 for two minutes. Which seems pretty reasonable to me, since I remember when calling my high school friends could cost an inflation-adjusted $3.50 for two minutes, and they were only a few miles away.
How much knowledge has been lost thanks to the “information age?”
The entry for “Teletype” in Wikipedia is just 2 paragraphs.
Iʼm not sure that 60° and palm trees is exactly a winter storm, even in Las Vegas.
You know your California town is small when the phone service comes from Nevada.
After a full day without cell phone service, a desperate Darcie resorts to scrounging around phone booths looking for Facebook access.
The more e-mail I get, the less inclined I am to check my e-mail. Funny how that works.
I received this e-mail from my registrar in Austria. You can tell itʼs not an American company, because itʼs not afraid to say “Christmas.”
Target wants to know how Iʼm enjoying the gift I bought. The gift I bought for someone else. That I had shipped directly to someone else.
So, I guess the correct answer is “Iʼm not enjoying it at all.”
160 million years ago, a dinosaur gave you the finger. Here it is.
Outside the supermarket: an entire articulated transit bus wrapped with 12-foot-high letters spelling out “Gonorrhea Alert!”
Inside the supermarket: An announcement on the P.A. system letting me know that I can make child support payments while I shop.
Iʼve got to move to a better neighborhood.
Have you ever wondered what itʼs like to converse with the worldʼs most annoying six-year-old? Just add me to your text message list!
It appears the National Weather Service has added the slogan “Pull aside, stay alive” for sandstorms to its lexicon. It joins “Turn around, donʼt drown” for flash floods.
So… this is a thing.