And that would be. ..?

Popular Mechanics claims Scientists Just Discovered There’s Actually Something Faster than the Speed of Light.

I cheated and looked, and it turns out darkness is faster, as any grammar school teacher could tell you when asking a review question in class.

Puts one in mind of Mark Twain’s saying a lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its boots.

Up next: the thing that’s faster than the thing that’s faster than light.

Poetic justice.

I was surprised at how many choices of pre-formed text for the heading of this section were available.

The quest for the right heading was prompted by this CNN headline: Milo Yiannopoulos, far-right British commentator, detained by ICE. I don't know why anybody even bothered listening to this daft Limey when he started pontificating about how ICE should do its job, especially in California. Anyway, he overstayed his visa, and his welcome, and is now incarcerated, pending removal.

Good riddance, I say. Maybe the powers that be will deport him to a third nation, like Sudan or Haiti.

Update: He's gone.

Strangenesses.

I've commented before on how crappy the spell-check support has become. If you really want to confuse the poor dears, screw up in the first few letters of a word (say, transpose letters). Hours of fun trying to figure out where the heck that suggestion came from.

But I digress. One feature I really enjoy/appreciate is the look up/dictionary feature. I can tap on a word anywhere (text editor, browser, graphics editor), and find the meaning of a word and see it in different languages. Nice.

But I'm afraid the lookup feature has begun hanging out with the spellcheck in seedy dive bars, sharing tequila shots and telling tales of screwing over users.

I have no proof of this, but earlier today, when I wanted to look up 'yore,' it didn't. It had no problem with the word, giving me pronunciation and letting me know that it was a noun, but it had no definitions showing. If I knew French, I could translate d'antan. I found out later that a second tap on the entry would take me to the definition, but that's more (annoying) work than I used to have to do.

One step forward, two steps back.

Cue the hype-churn machine!

Oh, wait, it's already been cued.

A slick Wall Street Journal wrapper from Google proclaims 'A New Era of American Innovation.' There are obligatory pictures of America: small towns, big cities, freeways, government buildings, many sporting American flags. The ad's tagline is colored blue and red.

My second thought upon seeing the ad was 'I'll bet this was generated by A.I.!' It had all the ham-handed cues, including the self-congratulatory air.

My first thought? 'Hey gang, it's time to play 'Parse that sentence fragment!''

a new era. So what are the origins of artificial intelligence, you ask? Well, 1956, by one reckoning. The late 1980s, by another. Or you might like the early 2000s, but probably 'new' here means 2017. Era? We can only hope it's shorter than the Jurassic.
American. Yep. All-American. Nobody else—not China, not Japan, not the E.U.—is working on A.I. None of the big players–Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon–has overseas operations.
innovation. Theft is as old as humanity (you could make a case that Eve (through the serpent) stole the apple from the tree). And cramming stuff down consumers' unwilling throats? How often do you cable subscribers watch C-SPAN, the home shopping channels, or the all-Hitler channel? Not what I'd call innovation, aka something new.

And to the pictures. All the standard A.I. tug at the patriotic meme string slop. Sharp, crisp landscapes. Clear blue skies. No food processing facilities. No smoke-belching industries. No energy-gobbling data farms. No A.I. generated porn. No attack of A.I. driven cabs on a quiet suburb. No lines of workers replaced by A.I. at the unemployment office.

Isn't life going to be wonderful? Nothing to see here. Move along.

Decisions, decisions.

I recently found out I'm supposed to have a metaphor for my life. It's not good enough that I use metaphors in my poetry and writing, I have to possess one, too.

Sounds expensive, I think.

I wonder if I can re-use my mantra. Unlike Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall, I remember my mantra (it's Omaha). It's a little tattered and dusty, but still serviceable. But no, I'm told that won't work. Gotta be a metaphor.

I decide to see if one of the metaphors I used in one of my poems will work. I start reading, and very quickly discover two things:

I've written some really crappy poems
Metaphors are really good at hiding

So that's no help. This is going to require some serious time and thought. So I sit down with a large mug of tea (who am I trying to kid? I'm a writer—a glass of Jamesons on the rocks), to puzzle out my metaphor.

The first part is easy enough. 'Life is....' But then, things bog down, and the whiskey is gone. Is it 'life is' or 'I am?' I'm nothing if not adaptable . and flexible. Maybe I need some distance. Or a nap.

I return refreshed (both me and the Jamesons), and lo, the images and metaphors come pouring out like water from a faucet with a clogged aerator. I find metaphors, and a problem. So life is..., or I am...

a journey: or a trip, or a path, but whatever, it's overdone. Everything seems to be a journey these days. I don't wanna do what everyone else is doing when they go out to fetch the newspaper.
a rock: the Paul Simon song kind, not the wrestler turned politician kind. I'm too mushy, too sensitive, for this to work.
a macho man: OK, this is more of an aspirational (after all, it's 'I wanna be') than an actual metaphor, but we'll keep it on the list for now.
a bar of soap: I'm sure there was a good reason for this being on the list, but the reason is lost (blame the Jamesons?). I'll bet it had something to do with being slowly consumed in the service of something or other.
an idea machine: wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
a trophy: Is life the trophy, or am I the trophy? or yes? Either way, it doesn't do much as a controlling metaphor for me.
puzzle: This is good. Also maze, labyrinth, tangled yarn, or chaotic. 'Web' has too much of a pattern, so it's out.
a bowl of cherries.: Not only is it dated, I doubt its helpfulness and relevance. Plus, I'm not a big fan of cherries.