MINI 036 Why I fired Grammarly

 Grammarly is spyware wrapped in academic stiffness.  When you invite it onto your computer, it tracks your every keystroke and then does two things:

1.  Monitors your every word.

2.  Tries to upsell you an upgrade which means they’re not only watching you, but you’re paying them to do it.

Now those of us with minimalist educations and who have managed to keep the lights on by writing instead of doing work often feel inadequate when putting words to screen.  That’s why we gravitate toward broadcast and away from print.

 

But there are a lot of rules, many of which we don’t follow out of either ignorance or orneriness. 

Each week, the spies send an email that is supposed to answer the question “How’m I doin’?” Then they tell a user “Your optimism” was up or down X percent and your formality changed by Y percent… things like that. 

 

My scores were pretty good, especially in the category “unique but still correct” word use.  But they keep telling me to “insert articles” and supererogatory oxford commas. Nah. Just a click on “ignore” or “disregard” or “dismiss” usually puts them in their place. 

But now, they’ve piled on the last straw.  I use too many ellipses. That’s three dots that separate phrases.  Not that they’re averse to correcting a fourth dot or inserting a third when there are only two.

 But you can have my ellipses when you pry them from my cold… dead… hand.

 I’m wesrichards@gmail.com

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

© WR 2021

 

4763 Who's In Charge Here?

 

Chief Executive Officer. Executive editor. Executive producer. Executive vice president. Executive chef. What do they all do? And who can you turn to for a decision?

 TV EP used to be the top guy. Then they started naming deputies with the same title.  There was a fistful of executive producers.  Then no one knew who was really in charge, so they named a chief executive producer called a “showrunner.” 

When they name deputies -- and they will, eventually -- they’ll also call them showrunners?” Maybe “deputy showrunners.” Then they’ll have to re-name the original showrunner as -- ready for this? -- Executive Show Runner.

In some publications, the top newsperson is called the executive editor and his or her #2 is the managing editor.

 But in some it’s the other way around, Managing first, then executive.

 Whatever happened to plain-old editor?  Now that person is called the editor-in-chief, a title that formerly applied almost exclusively to high school student newspapers and yearbooks.

 The top person in a store used to be called the manager.  But some places had too many, just like the TV shows.  So they invented a new title, Managing Director.  Or sometimes General Manager.  

We’re waiting for someone to become an Executive General Manager, to whom the General Manager reports, and then there will have to be a Colonel Manager. Unless it’s on a cruise ship which no doubt will have to use naval nomenclature in which case the second in command will be called the Commander…. Who will have a Lieutenant Commander. 

A ship can’t have an Executive Commander.  So the top guy will have to be named “Captain” which is not the same as a captain on dry land who is much lower in the pecking order, food chain, chain of command, or evolutionary roll out.

 What does the Executive Chef do?  Well, that job has an actual function. It requires creating recipes, menu items and system designs.  Sometimes they even cook stuff.  But not routinely.

Some chain restaurants have Executive Dish supervisors. Their job is to turn on the machinery that cleans the used dishes and sometimes washing a dish especially when the machine breaks down and the floor is flooded.

 Many of these executive functions could be done remotely during the pandemic.

 Executive Dish supervisors could not.  They tried.  It didn’t work. Of course, at that time it didn’t much matter because dining in a restaurant had become an impossible dream.

 Chief Executive Officers by the carload worked from home.  The one thing they couldn’t do -- and this was an important part of the job back before Covid -- disappear from the office inexplicably and without notice or warning.

 Like everything else including cement, the designation “executive” has been diluted.  Which brings us back to our original question: Who’s in charge here.

 I’m Wes Richards, executive typist. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions?  wesrichards@gmail.com I’ll have an executive get back to you ASAP. And your call is very important to us. 

© WR 2021

 

4762 What's the News?

 Most stuff that happens is news to someone. That major elements don't change is kind of irrelevant. The murdered Gabby Petito, widely covered, could be your girlfriend or daughter or neighbor.  That warehouse full of snow melting crystals could be yours or mine.  That mobster could live down the block.  

 

That dirty politician is someone you might have voted for -- or against.  That new bar or coffee shop or hospital or highway could be anywhere. 

 

Chances are it will be built only after dancing around issues like zoning, eminent domain, removal of relics from an ancient burial ground or the displacing of long-time, long-suffering homeowners or renters. Oh, and there’s the “special character” and “rich history” or “unique heritage” of the area.  (Are there any places that lack “special character,” “rich history” or “unique heritage?”)

 

Names, places and times change. But plots and themes rarely do. 

 

Somewhere today or tomorrow, a white cop will kill or wound an unarmed black man. Someone will kill his or her spouse and bury the remains in the woods or the back yard or stuffed in an oil barrel hidden in the basement. It won't be discovered until tomorrow or next year or 30 years from now when the new police chief of Dogpatch AL, creates a cold case squad.

 

There will be a weather event that disrupts life somewhere.  A tornado. A snowstorm. A hurricane. A heatwave or forest fire.

 

People on a floating city of a cruise ship will catch some dread disease or find that the toilets don’t work or there’s bad bacteria in the buffet trays.  An overloaded ferry boat in a third world country will sink.  Or a plane or train or string of cars on a highway will crash.

 

Some celebrity will face drunk driving or drug charges. Or an overdose. Some “iconic” sports figure will die too young or extremely old after a long illness or a short one. Or he or she will break a record. Or win an Oscar or inappropriately touch a co-worker or an underage young girl or boy.

 

We love to hear about the miseries of people who are worse off than we are.

 

That misery will be the next example of overkill. That almost always happens when a story catches on.  Doesn't matter what the story is. Can be a stickup at a 7-11 or WWIII.

 

Think of stories like Gaby's as you would a carnival barker at in front of a tent where there's going to be a freak show.  You put him in place to lure suckers into the tent. When they get there, you show them the freak they came to see and then you show them, poverty and politicians, climate change and the effectiveness of vaccines, rising prices, unemployment, and bad cops. Or hero cops.

 

Once they have your attention, they’re going to try to keep it at least until the next page of advertising or commercial for the latest snake oil or car insurance.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

MINI 035 Election Fraud

 

They don’t use this flag in Russia anymore.  But little else has changed about their legislative elections.  The Soviet Union was, and the successor Russian Federation is the ultimate red state. Eat your heart out, Mississippi.

 

The Federation could go to court for a name change to Putinistan.  And when it comes to election fraud, they have it all over us. 

 

In cities and towns across the sprawling 24-time-zone geography, agents clearly marked with their “Independent Party” campaign buttons camped out behind curtains and flags in polling places.  And they stood there until they had exhausted their supplies of pre-filled-out ballots to hand to voters approaching a ballot box.

 

No need to diddle the electronic voting machines.  They come Putin Pre-Programmed.

 

Stalin used to win with about 90 percent of the vote. This was generally followed by the disappearance of the ten percent that voted for the opponent, and then the opponent herself.  (Equality of the sexes is an old story going back to the days of Nicholas and Alexandra.)

 

Ninety is not enough for Comrade Vladimir’s “independents.”

 

No need for a Maricopa County-style phony audit.  Everyone knows what happened.  

 

I’m wesrichards@gmail.com 

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

© WR 2021.

 

4761 J-6

 Motivational speaker and discoverer of Jewish Space Lasers Marjorie Taylor Green.

 So, who showed up at the Million Moron March on Washington to protest their lack of freedom and protect their right to violently overthrow the US government?  Answer: fewer than 500. Not enough to notice. 

 

Is that a good thing?  Why yes.  It appears that the trump-bots minus their guru are as lazy as all the rest of us. That’s what leadership is all about.

 

We need constant external stimulation these days. 

 

Wasn’t always this way. You know… we had… um… principles. Self-motivation. We often forget to tie our shoes if our motivational speaker doesn’t remind us that the path to success begins with the first step and the first step doesn’t begin until our shoes are tied.  

 

It makes one wonder if the archangel Lucifer took off for a weekend of golfing in Florida that hell would collapse into chaos or maybe even burn down. Curious. Gotta find out. The first step toward finding out is asking. Now where did I put his phone number?

 

Some people took the no-shows at the Capitol as a sign that the movement was fading and would soon disappear. It isn’t. It won’t.  Someone will come along and stir up those country boys and their handful of City Billy cousins… you know… the men and women cast adrift or lost in space when Rush Limbaugh died. 

 

Who ya gonna call? Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene or the ghost of John A. Stormer. Or, to add some diversity, the ghost of Idi Amin.  You know… people the cuckoos want to get close to… people who share their values.

 

Amin would be a good choice to show that not every nutjob is a white supremacist. Just most of them.

 

There’s always an upside to this kind of event. In this case, no one got hurt, a lot of underpaid Capitol cops made a decent day’s overtime and Mike Pence didn’t have to hide.

 

SHRAPNEL:

--Starting today, the AARP switches its “official” credit card from Chase to Barclay’s. Why? Probably because Chase was too honest and upright with a history devoid of major scandals if you don’t count executive pay policies. 

--Let’s hear it for Guramrit Hanspal who’s lived in “his” East Meadow, Long Island house for 23 years and not paid his mortgage since month one. A judge is ready to throw him out when the two repo outfits and a bank have tried practically since move-in day and been warded off in court each time.  About time an errant squatter won one, if only temporarily.

 

--Long Island has become a wonderful place for oddball stories.  Among them Hanspal. But let’s not forget the wandering bull who’s still wandering and a couple of dozen unsolved murders.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

 

Mini 034 Car Show & Sale

 

LaSalle, a GM marque made in the 1930s and 40s. Priced one notch below Cadillac which was an actual luxury brand at the time.

 

If you can buy ghost guns at a gun show, why can’t you buy ghost cars at a car show? Actually, you can. But restrictions apply.  You have to have a license to drive it.  If you do have a license, you had to take lessons and pass two tests. Two! And in most places, you have to have insurance.

 

This is an obvious incursion into your freedom.  After all, at the gun show, you can just put your money down and walk off without a care in the world.  Guns can be dangerous. People get killed when they’re used well or misused. Cars are dangerous.  People get killed in them or when hit by them, too.

 

Come to think of it, if the government’s going to get into the business of what machinery you may use, why doesn’t it build shooting ranges like it builds highways?  It’s just not fair.  Write to Gov. Hochul. Demand she establish a New York Firing Range Authority to go along with the Thruway Authority.  Include cashless entry with your E-ZPass.

 

What’ll they think of next? Licensing investment advisers? Doctors? Barbers and beauticians?  Teachers? After that… TV and radio stations.  Pretty soon, you’ll need a license just to walk down the block.

 

They really ARE after your freedom.

 

I’m wesrichards@gmai.com

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them.

© WR 2021

 

4760 Mr. & Ms. Coffee

 

The two most important liquids in the life of any old school journalist are coffee and booze.  In that order.  The particular form of each is a personal choice and some are choosier than others.  But there’s no doubt about the basics. 

 

Sure, there are news men and women who don’t hang out in bars or down a gallon of caffeine a day. And it’s getting easier to find them.  But the old school is the old school, and it has nothing to do with age.

 

There’s a maxim in the business.  You find a newsroom that’s not in easy staggering distance of a good saloon and you find a newsroom that’s churning out gibberish.  (There are critics who say ALL newsrooms churn out gibberish.  But they’re just jealous.)

 

At the Associated Press, it was Charlie O’s.  At NBC they installed a company extension at Hurley’s on 6th Avenue to call staffers needed back at 30 Rock.  There was nothing worthy at Bloomberg when it was on tony Park Avenue and not much more at not-so-tony Lexington, and that may account for what came off those presses or into that air.

 

Of the two, it’s coffee that’s the more important.  The lifeblood of the news.  And some of it was bad blood, but it didn’t matter.

 

Now comes the era of the latte and the espresso and the K-cup.  And this is a laughingstock in the business.  That stuff’s not coffee.  It’s coffee-esque, maybe. Coffee-ish? But it’s not coffee.  Country club - bridge club nonsense.

 

And this brings us to what we brew first thing in the morning.  The array of coffee makers at the kitchen store or the department store is both overwhelming and confusing.   Timers, built-in grinders, fancy looking machinery the operation of which requires an engineering degree.  And what comes out of most of them isn’t worth the effort.

 

When your old machine breaks down, and it inevitably will, replace it with a simple brewer with an on-off switch and no bells or whistles, timers, strength estimators or “on” texts to your cellphone.  It costs around 20 bucks, there’s nothing to figure out. it cleans up easily if you’re inclined to cleaning it, which most are not.  And it makes a decent cup -- which means if you like your brew so dark you can’t see the bottom of the spoon through it, no problem. 

 

Hint:  don’t buy the extended warranty.  Hint: stay away from the fancy name brand coffees.  There’s no real difference between Tim Horton’s in the can at 93 cents an ounce and plain old Maxwell house at 28 cents.

 

As for saloons...  Before you start a new job, look for the joint that has only three or four beers on tap, not 25.  And if you see those little measuring stoppers on the tops of the bottles of hard stuff, walk out and find somewhere else to swill.

 

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4759 Game of the Weak

 It looks like the box the rest of the buildings came in. But it's really a monument to the real reason its hometown exists.

(NewRoses, PA) -- The stadium wasn’t exactly full. There were about 105-thousand people crammed in.  So, not a sellout. At least not in capacity.  But there was a sellout of another kind, a sellout to virus deniers and superspreaders.

 

College football is the engine of this otherwise listless region and there was plenty of pent-up demand for action this past weekend.  They had to mostly close that stadium down last season.  Terrible news for the beer concession. Worse news for the people who live to see bunches of fit young men try to inflict pain on other bunches of fit young men while plausibly denying that’s what they do.

 

The school itself is a lumbering giant, famous for being well-known and with the country’s largest chunk of living alumni, also known as potential donors.  A lot of wills to want to be a part of.

 

One hundred five thousand seems like an awfully big crowd to watch what was essentially a nothing game no one expected the home team to lose -- which it didn’t.  In a normal season, with this kind of opponent, the street scalpers would be paying you to take the leftover tickets.

 

So… the swooning, cheering masses came from all over.  They came to yell, to fill up empty hotel rooms and empty pitchers and glasses in the region’s second most important and industry, bars.

 

That’s why a game gets scheduled to start in late afternoon.  Can’t go home afterward. Maybe also you have to buy breakfast. The Athletic Department would like you to think TV broadcasters determine game time.  Not true. It’s the inn keepers.

 

The first home game of the season is generally a warmup.  And this was that.  But what was warmed besides stadium seats was the Coronavirus.  You get that many people that close for that long a time, you get what the pundits and medics call superspreaders.

 

It wasn’t as big as the motorcycle fest in Sturgis.  But it wasn’t the Bridge Club, either.  Or the Saturday night poker game.

 

Covid 19 is airborne. One precaution no one seems to have taken was disinfecting the back of every neck in all but the last row… and even those if there were standees.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4758 9/11

 Everyone wants a piece of 9/11.  If you weren’t there, you don’t get it.  If you were, you already have it and don’t need anyone else’s.

 

The closer you were to the Trade Center or the Pentagon or that farm field in Pennsylvania, the better you understand.  And the farther from it you were, the less likely are to assign it real meaning, the kind that claws your heart and knots your stomach and turns on your autopilot long enough to get through the day or the year.

 

If you were there, you have PTSD even if you don’t know it or don’t think so, or deny it, or say you’ve recovered from it.  You haven’t and you can’t.  

 

Now, it’s 20 years in the past and also it was yesterday.  And we’re past the war in Afghanistan a mentally and morally defective president started in a feeble way to prevent a repeat… a second 9/11 and who was followed by two presidents one who saw it as a class project and one who announced its end and then did all he could to make sure the current president would take the blame.

 

Need we still fear Al Qaida, the Islamic State, and all the puny bombers and machete wielders of the Middle East?

 

Well, yes. They aren't gone, they aren't stupid. They're just hiding in the dunes awaiting darkness and a clouded-over moon. But there are worse in plain sight. 

 

Domestic terrorists. 

 

They're plotting to take over the country. And they make no bones about it.

 

They are not mad geniuses like the Unabomber Kaczynski or mad media cuckoos like Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh. They're not even the meth and moonshine sodden farm boys like Timothy "Deliverance" McVey with truckloads of flammable fertilizer. 

No. They are men and women in business attire with titles before their names like "Senator" or "Governor" or "The Honorable."  "Reverend."

 

They talk in bumper stickers. They scare the rationality out of you. They cause forest fires of fear in your hearts and burgle your ability to think without leaving evidence of forced entry or blunt force trauma.

 

They focus you on trivia. Movie stars, computer games and video streaming, and ball games and freedom to infect and be infected while their tailors and dressmaker sew straitjackets.

 

Sure, we have that in your size. Anything from petite xx small to 6XL. You want a red one, or blue?

 

So… now we remember the good old days when our enemies didn’t look like us… or act as we did then. 

 

You want a piece of 9/11? Help yourself. There’s plenty to go around.  But remember, there’s a new front, and you’re in the front lines. Don’t screw up.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

MINI 033 The Record Keepers

 Early IBM Card Sorter. Good for record-keeping, but now outmoded and replaced first by tapes, then by hard drives and now digital means with no moving parts.

You may recall a news story from some years back about how the Nazis of Germany used American made computer punch card systems to keep track of people.  They knew everything about everyone and that made it relatively easy to spot “enemies of the state,” gather them up and ship them to death camps.  You just can’t beat the combination of American inventiveness and German efficiency.

 

Well… it’s happened again.  This time in Afghanistan.  American computer systems’ triumph of the Reich.  We may have gotten our troops out, those still breathing.  But we left behind a computer system that would have made Hitler beam.

 

Computing has come a long way since the dark days of World War II.  Those US-built data systems are bringing new darkness to the Taliban.  They contain the same kind of records that the Axis kept -- and no trees were killed to make punch cards.

 

Pages and pages of ages and wages.  All the good men and women who helped America in its longest war are right there on thumb drives and hard drives and the internet.  All they have to do is hack the system.

 

Oh, you might say, aren’t those machines restricted to “authorized users?”  Why, yes. They certainly are. And oh, you might say, haven’t all the authorized users left the building?  Why, yes, if not all, then certainly most are gone and their secret passwords, fingerprints, eye-prints, DNA and such went with them?  So, no worries, right? 

 

Wrong. 

 

The safeguards are weak.  And surely, there are 18-year-old boys living in mom’s basement among the Taliban who can break into this system.

 

When they hack the database, what fun they’ll have rounding up enemies of the state and shipping them off to gas chambers or sword singing practice centers.  

 

The Afghans probably aren’t as efficient now as the Germans were then.  But they’re just as enthusiastic.  And even more brutal.  

 

I’m wesrichards@gmail.com

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
© WR 2021

 

4757 Labor Day

 

It used to take hours.  Now, it goes by so fast you hardly notice it.  The Labor Day parade is as anemic as the labor unions themselves.

 And some of it’s their own fault.  Grown fat in the industrial economy, miners, factory workers, electricians, carpenters, stone masons, telephone and power linemen and the AFL itself have allowed themselves to be shrunk.

 

Sure, some of that’s the fault of all those trade agreements and the moving of production to far eastern slave states.  Sure there are corrupt leaders (aren’t there in any large organization?) and wimps in high union office.  But mostly the problem is self-inflicted.

 

Once a major union abandons the option of an effective strike, it’s history.

 

Executive compensation has skyrocketed in recent decades. That’s largely because there’s so much corporate profit kicking around the boardroom.  It’s spent on two or ten individuals who don’t need it rather than the 2,000 or 10,000 workers who do.

 

Staffing minimums? Gone. Defined benefit pensions? Gone.  Sane working hours? Gone.  And safety? Well, everyone pledges that.  But we still get more than our share of factory fires and nuclear power plant meltdowns.

 

And, yes, if the chicken workers unionize, there will be slightly fewer chickens for sale at slightly higher prices. But worker shoppers also will have more to spend.

 

Too much money is made shuffling papers around and calling that “finance.” Too much money is made inserting level after level of middle managers who come out of MBA schools indoctrinated with the myth that management is management, and it doesn’t matter whether the company sells insurance or oranges or TV shows.

 

The Great Universal MBA in its present form is nonsense.

 

(Digression:  Do you know why Shakespeare said to kill all the lawyers?  It’s because the MBA had not yet been invented.)

 

But as Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” If you need examples, check out the way Covid has struck confederate states where no one believes in masking or vaccination.  Or unions. And check out the pro-death politicians pushing that version of the Southern Strategy.

 

Labor contracts are not only about wages and benefits. They are about work rules. And work rules have more of an effect on the average worker than money and pensions.  

 

Organized labor has been attacked on many levels for many decades.  That’s because ownership (even hedge funds and other mystical financial types) realize that workers want some -- just some -- control over their lives for 40 or more hours a week.  

 

And the sad part of it all is the working stiff has been conditioned to believe the claptrap flung at them by companies that want “...to be personally in touch with their ‘associates.’” (No one is an employee anymore. We’re “associates,” a word that once meant little more than low level organized crime figures and was used primarily in court.)

 

What they want is the right to send you home after a half shift, to change your hours at random, things that keep you at their whimsical mercy.

 

And the “associates” have no say in that. Unless they’re organized.  So what are you waiting for?

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions?  wesrichards@gmail.com

 © WR 2021 (SAG-AFTRA, NABET, WGA, Wire Service Guild [ret] but I still have my green eyeshade and copy of the AP Stylebook and the one I slipped into my briefcase while touring what used to be UPI.)

 

4756 You Are the Meds You Take

 

We all want to be healthy, right?  So we ingest stuff. Some of it works.  Covid vaccines, for example. Some of it has side effects to die for … or of.  Some of it is just baloney.  And what you swallow defines you.

 

You all know that Big Pharma advertises heavily.  Its ads are filled with smiling happy people doing smiley happy things.  Especially in the part of the ad where they high-speed mumble the side effects.  Nonetheless, these meds undergo what passes for scrutiny by federal overseers and are prescribed by doctors.

 

Then there are the supplements.  They’re unregulated, dispensed by aging hippies in natural food stores and on line.  There’s no denying eating beets can be good for you. But do you really need a magic powder to kill the awful taste while you get an unregulated and unmeasured amount of whatever is supposed to benefit you?

 

Where do you find these ads?  On the internet and on the programs of radio and television right wing wackos.  Why are they placed there?  Because the ads work even if the substances do nothing but fatten the wallets of the companies that make them.

 

Is that a coincidence?  Not according to some. Like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times.  Not according to Consumer Reports Magazine which recently spent a big effort debunking so-called brain supplements.

 

If you could have a private conversation with Anthony Fauci, would you ask him if beet powder could make you healthy?  He’d look at you like you just grew a third ear.  It would be like asking Drs. Salk or Sabin whether you could cure polio with Niacin or asking Christiaan Barnard whether eating oatmeal was a reasonable alternative to a heart transplant.

 

So, why do the righties think taking stuff made to prevent worms in dogs or horses will ward off covid, when a vaccine won’t?  Probably it’s because their fairytales of choice tell them to believe in magic instead of science.

 

Magic thinking kills.

 

SHRAPNEL:

--Have you noticed that pet meds now come with the same kind of warnings as people meds?  They do.  Deworming drugs are not only no-no’s for anti-vaccine folks. They may cause your dog to have digestive problems or seizures.

 

--It’s not just brain supplements that are under the microscope these days.  Even multivitamins are suspect. Not that they’ll hurt you… just that they may not do you much good.

 

Wessays (™) are not for everyone.  They can cause thinking and occasional laughter, grammatical corrections and spelling errors. Before reading, ask your mentor, your fortuneteller, your English teacher, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, or your clergyperson whether Wessays are right for you.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021