Weeknote 42, 2023

§1 Autumn in New York

Allison Young and Josh Turner perform a delightful rendition of one of my favorite American Standards songs.

§2 Typists (Part 1)

A lesson I learned during Usenet days is that some people think before they write and some people just type. An exchange with a typist is ultimately unsatisfying because it lacks human engagement; it's just one deflection after another.

§3 Typists (Part 2)

Because typing is so much quicker and easier than thinking, most content in an open discussion group consists of typing.

§4 Typists (Part 3)

A narcissist who destroyed a Usenet group by posting his banalities into it 50-60 times per day wrote as he did so that "this group was always 90% crap anyway".

If a Usenet group is 90% crap, then a reader has to skim through nine crap posts to get to one good post. If a Usenet group becomes 98% crap, then the reader gets 49 crap posts for each one good one.

A threshold for the reader kicks in somewhere along the way.

§5 Odyssey

xkcd's brand of whimsy makes my day yet again.

§6 Misreading the Other

I love The New Yorker, but skip anything it publishes about Republicans because…what would most writers for The New Yorker know about Republicans? Seriously.