March 21, 2020
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March 15, 2020
Movies minus a letter
Someone on Twitter asked for movie titles with one letter removed that changes the movie altogether. Fun! And I’d link to the tweet but I’ve only been on Twitter since near its beginning so of course I don’t know how to go back from liked comments to the original. (If you know who came up with this movie challenge, please put in a comment to this post. Thanks.)
Anyway, here are mine:
- Gentlemen Refer Blondes
- Oceans Elven
- Inglorious Basters
- Lose Encounters of the Third Kind
- West Side Tory
- The Ride of Frankenstein
- The Plane of the Apes
- One with the Wind
- Ear Window
- The Evil Dad. Sequel: The Walking Dad.
- And, for the age of social distancing: The Apartmen
November 24, 2019
It’s official
I did an image search on this photo to see whether it’s openly licensed. Google couldn’t find it, but here’s what it told me:
Nailed it.
October 5, 2019
Rebranding Holland
Upset that Holland has become associated with legalized drugs and sex work, the nation has decided to rebrand itself as The Netherlands.
Yet “Netherlands” has a history of bawdy associations that goes back far further than Holland’s.
For example, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (Act III Scene 2), Dromio is comparing an obese woman to a globe, mapping countries to her features.
The comparison ends with:
Antipholus of Syracuse. Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?
Dromio of Syracuse. Oh, sir, I did not look so low.
Oooh, that naughty, naughty Bard!
On the other hand, if Holland had run an Internet contest to come up with its new name, the Olympic teams would probably now be playing for the nation known as Weedy McWeedFace.
August 18, 2019
Http or WWW? Top Ten Reasons
A geeky mailing list I’m the least geeky person on has been discussing whether https://yoursite.com is preferable to www.yoursite.com. I have no pony in this race, and am in fact against pony racing if only because it requires impossibly small jockeys, but here are my:
Top Ten Reasons to prefer www to https://
- Easier to parse than a ragbag of ill-fitting punctuation that exists nowhere else in the language.
- No existential Angst about whether it’s http or https.
- No one [1] knows what “http” stands for.
- Pleasing mountainous silhouette
- Cannot be confused with an Internet abbreviation for “hat tip”
- Wouldn’t you rather locate your site in a place than a protocol?
- Old-timey feel and the aroma of rising bread
- Al Gore is a www sort of guy
- Encourages the use of the charming vocal abbreviation “dub dub dub”
- Gently reminds people that the goddamn World Wide Web still exists
[1] You’re special and do not count
August 17, 2019
Hillary-Trump Debates: The Audition Tapes
This is a re-play of something I wrote during the 2016 election. The premise is that the Clinton campaign is auditioning stand-ins for Trump to rehearse the 2016 debates with.
Note that Louis CK not yet disgraced, and in any case I the last paragraph of that one is really unclear. You see, he’s snapping back to the question, and talking about how Trump treats workers.
Also, the Anthony Wiener reference is, thankfully, dated now.
I have to say that I’m a little proud of the Quentin Tarantino story, though.
Louis CK
Clinton: Mr. Trump, not only have your businesses gone bankrupt, you’ve stiffed honest working people, refusing to pay them for their work. If you scam your own workers out of money, how can Americans trust you?
CK: I do that. I’m a terrible person. Really. I’m a rat bastard. I don’t mean to be. When I’m hiring someone, like a brick layer, I’m thinking: Wow, that guy works so hard. And you know something? He does something I couldn’t do in a million years. Give me a literal million years, and I’d still be laying bricks that looked like they were done by a two-year-old playing with her own poop. Uneven. Tilted. The cement between them would sometimes be the thickness of the chocolate in a Milano cookie, you know, so little it’s really there just so they can put on the package that it’s got chocolate. But it’s really like the fruit juice they add to a children’s drink so they can say “Made with real apples” when really it’s like they use apples in the paste on the labels. You can’t argue: it’s made with real apples. And then right next to that brick, the concrete would be like you split open two double-stuffed Oreos and stuck them together. Never in a million years could I do what a bricklayer does, and I’m in awe of them.
And next thing you know I’ve misjudged how many people want to get on a smelly bus to Atlantic City for four hours, and I’m like, “Hey, sorry, Mr. Bricklayer, but, go home and starve with your kids. But thanks, really.” I’m just such a rat bastard.
Malcolm Gladwell
Moderator: Mr. Trump, independent economists have estimated that your tax plan would cost the country as much as ten trillion dollars
in lost revenues. How would you pay for your ambitious new programs?
Gladwell: The best economists are with me. 100%. All of them support me. They’ve looked at my plan and they compare it to FDR. Franklin Delaney brought us out of the Great Depression. He was a cripple, you know? Still a great guy, though. Lot of brain. The world’s best economists look at my plan and what that tell me is that it’s like in 1875 when a peanut roaster by the name of Samuel Bridewell made a surprising discovery: the plants harvested from the western edge of his 30-acre farm in Virginia were slightly darker in color, slightly larger, and – this was the true revelation – when mashed at a temperature between 140 and 150 Fahrenheit, formed a glutinous mass that when cooled would hold whatever shape it was formed into. Bridewell began a lively, but local, business selling mashed peanuts in the form of farm animals, then Fathers of the Constitution, and then, as a wave of Irish immigrants spread the through the area, saints.
Bridewell’s Legume Figurines would today be forgotten if the nephews of a chemist named Robert Michelson had not been traveling through Virginia and came upon a box of the faded Figurines at a farm stand along a country path in Pebble Corners, eight miles south of Richmond. They opened one of the packages, but the youngest of the nephews, Chad Hemmings …
Moderator: Time is up, Mr. Trump.
Gladwell: … chipped a tooth on a desiccated miniature statue of St. Sebastian. He threw the statue down, where, by chance, it landed in a bowl of “lemon invigorator,” a punch being offered at the price of two drinks for a penny.
Moderator: Time, Mr. Trump.
Gladwell: The reaction of the peanut compound to the acidity of the lemons was immediate and startling …”
John Podesta: Thank you.
Bryan Cranston
Moderator: Mr. Trump, you have said that you would consider withdrawing support for our NATO allies unless they made larger contributions to the financial cost of the treaty. Doesn’t that send a signal to Russia that it can invade countries with impunity?
Cranston: You’re worrying about Russia invading? You don’t understand. When invaders knock on the door of Crimea, I’m not Crimea and I’m sure as hell not its allies cowering in the dark. I am the one who knocks.
Clinton: I’m sorry, you’re now threatening to invade Crimea? I think we need to take this down a notch…
Cranston: Hey, lady, the screw only turns in one direction, and it you’re either the one doing the screwing or you’re on the pointy end…
John Podesta: Thank you Mr. Cranston. We’ll get back to you.
Terry Gross
Moderator: Mr. Trump, the next president may have the opportunity to fill up to three Supreme Court seats. Are there any litmus tests you would apply to candidates?
Gross: A litmus test? They’re completely unreliable. A hoax. Total hoax. You know who wants us to believe in litmus tests? The Chinese. [To the moderator] You should know that. Your father was a chemist, and your mother taught biology, right? And when you were fourteen, your father announced that he was gay. So how has growing up in a house full of scientists, one of who was a closeted gay man, influenced your sense of how reliable answers to any question can be, and the sort of follow-up you…
John Podesta: Thank you for your time, Ms. Gross.
Quentin Tarantino
Clinton: Politifact, the non-partisan fact checking site, says that you tell more untruths per hour than any candidate they’ve ever seen.
How can you lead the country when you have no problem knowingly telling outright lies?
Tarantino: You know who’s a liar? The biggest liar? God. I call him Lyin’ Jehovah. Lyin’ Jehovah. And you know the biggest lie Lyin’ Jehovah ever told, which makes it the the hugest lie in history? Huge. Really incredible.
You know Job, right? From the Old Testament. That Job. And it says right there that he’s the most righteous of his generation. He’s the guy. He does everything right. He prays. He sacrifices goats or whatever it says he has to sacrifice. He does it right. And it’s not easy. One little screw-up and you’re elbow deep in goat guts and it doesn’t count for anything. In fact, it shows God, who’s sitting there watching every detail just because He can, it shows God that you didn’t really mean it. If you meant it, you’d get it right. And Job gets it right. He totally does. God says so, flat out. And God rewards him with wives and children and goats and land. So Job is honoring God, all day, honoring, honoring, honoring.
And how does God respond? He basically gets into a drunken bet with Satan. Satan! Satan barely exists in the Old Testament, but he shows up just so God can have someone to bet with. Because who else is going to bet with God? God is always going to win. You know why? Because He’s God! The Creator. So, God bets the only schmuck arrogant enough to bet against Him that Job isn’t in it just for the wives and the goats. No, Job is righteous because he loves God. So what’s the test? Take away everything Job owns. Wives, children, land, goats. Give him boils, take away his HBO Go. Everything. Boom. Now instead of being the most righteous, he might as well be the town loser who takes a dump in the public swimming pool, you know what I mean? Job’s got nothing not because he was bad but because he was the most righteous. That’s why God picked on him.
So, Job asks God why this is happening to him, it’s so unfair. And asking God takes some Satan-size cojones because Job has seen what God can do. So, God replies with the greatest lie in the history of mankind. God — Jehovah, — to Job out of a freaking whirlwind and says, “Who are you to question me?” And God really rubs Job’s nose in it. Do you know about every freaking sparrow that falls? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t explain it to you if I wanted to, God says. And that’s it. That’s the lie. How do we know this? Because the Old Testament tells us exactly why it happened to Job: It was a bet. There’s nothing to understand except that God is being a total dick. But God can’t say that. So He lies. He lies!
But, I gotta say, Lyin’ Jehovah won the bet. He’s the ultimate winner.
John Podesta: Thank you, Mr. Tarantino.
Anthony Wiener
John Podesta: Next!
July 5, 2019
In the form of a joke
I’m not sure why I bothered to write a joke that is in the form of a joke but is not funny. I am further bothered by the fact that I am posting it.
It was in response to a news item that a Ford dealership in Chatom, Alabama, was offering a free Bible, flag, and hunting rifle with each car purchased.
Here goes, and remember that this won’t actually be funny.
So, a Jew, a Canadian, and an eco-activist walk into a car dealership. The salesperson says, “We’re having a special sale. If you buy a car, you get three special gifts: A bible, a flag, and a rifle.”
The Jew asks “What type of bible?”
“King James,” says the salesperson.
“That’s not my type of bible,” the Jew says, and walks out.
The Canadian says, “I’m ok with the bible, but what type of flag?”
“American.”
“That’s not my type of flag,” the Canadian says, and walks out.
The eco-hippie pacifist seems not to notice and asks to be shown the most powerful, least eco-friendly car.
“Sure,” says the salesperson, slightly worried. “It’s this one. But don’t you want to know what type of rifle it is?”
“Is it high powered?”
“It would take down a moose.”
“That’s all I need to know” says the eco-activist
“But aren’t you going to say that it’s not your type of rifle and leave?”
“Nope, it’s exactly my type of rifle.” says the eco-activist as she turns and puts a slug through the engine block of the car.
“But that’s definitely not my type of car.”
YES THAT IS THE END OF THE “JOKE.”
November 25, 2018
Using the Perma.cc API to check links
My new book (Everyday Chaos, HBR Press, May 2019) has a few hundred footnotes with links to online sources. Because Web sites change and links rot, I decided to link to Perma.cc‘s pages instead . Perma.cc is a product of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I used to co-direct with Kim Dulin, but Perma is a Jonathan Zittrain project from after I left.
When you give Perma.cc a link to a page on the Web, it comes back with a link to a page on the Perma.cc site. That page has an archive copy of the original page exactly as it was when you supplied the link. It also makes a screen capture of that original page. And of course it includes a link to the original. It also promises to maintain the Perma.cc copy and screen capture in perpetuity — a promise backed by the Harvard Law Library and dozens of other libraries. So, when you give a reader a Perma link, they are taken to the Perma.cc page where they’ll always find the archived copy and the screen capture, no matter what happens to the original site. Also, the service is free for everyone, for real. Plus, the site doesn’t require users to supply any information about themselves. Also, there are no ads.
So that’s why my book’s references are to Perma.cc.
But, over the course of the six years I spent writing this book, my references suffered some link rot on my side. Before I got around to creating the Perma links, I managed to make all the obvious errors and some not so obvious. As a result, now that I’m at the copyediting stage, I wanted to check all the Perma links.
I had already compiled a bibliography as a spreadsheet. (The book will point to the Perma.cc page for that spreadsheet.) So, I selected the Title and Perma Link columns, copied the content, and stuck it into a text document. Each line contains the page’s headline and then the Perma link.
Perma.cc has an API that made it simple to write a script that looks up each Perma link and prints out the title it’s recorded next to the title of the page that I intend to be linked. If there’s a problem with Perma link, such as a double “https://https://” (a mistake I managed to introduce about a dozen times), or if the Perma link is private and not accessible to the public, it notes the problem. The human brain is good at scanning this sort of info, looking for inconsistencies.
Here’s the script. I used PHP because I happen to know it better than a less embarrassing choice such as Python and because I have no shame.
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<?php |
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// This is a basic program for checking a list of page titles and perma.cc links |
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// It’s done badly because I am a terrible hobbyist programmer. |
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// I offer it under whatever open source license is most permissive. I’m really not |
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// going to care about anything you do with it. Except please note I’m a |
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// terrible hobbyist programmer who makes no claims about how well this works. |
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// |
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// David Weinberger |
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// Nov. 23, 2018 |
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// Perma.cc API documentation is here: https://perma.cc/docs/developer |
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// This program assumes there’s a file with the page title and one perma link per line. |
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// E.g. The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America https://perma.cc/B5LR-88CF |
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// Read that text file into an array |
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$lines = file(‘links-and-titles.txt’); |
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for ($i = 0; $i < count($lines); $i++){ |
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$line = $lines[$i]; |
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// divide into title and permalink |
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$p1 = strpos($line, “https”); // find the beginning of the perma link |
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$fullperma = substr($line, $p1); // get the full perma link |
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$origtitle = substr($line, 0,$p1); // get the title |
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$origtitle = rtrim($origtitle); // trim the spaces from the end of the title |
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// get the distinctive part of the perma link: the stuff after https://perma.cc/ |
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$permacode = strrchr($fullperma,”/”); // find the last forward slash |
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$permacode = substr($permacode,1,strlen($permacode)); // get what’s after that slash |
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$permacode = rtrim($permacode); // trim any spaces from the end |
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// create the url that will fetch this perma link |
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$apiurl = “https://api.perma.cc/v1/public/archives/” . $permacode . “/”; |
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// fetch the data about this perma link |
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$onelink = file_get_contents($apiurl); |
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// echo $onelink; // this would print the full json |
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// decode the json |
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$j = json_decode($onelink, true); |
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// Did you get any json, or just null? |
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if ($j == null){ |
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// hmm. This might be a private perma link. Or some other error |
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echo “<p>– $permacode failed. Private? $permaccode</p>”; |
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} |
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// otherwise, you got something, so write some of the data into the page |
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else { |
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echo “<b>” . $j[“guid”] . ‘</b><blockquote>’ . $j[“title”] . ‘<br>’ . $origtitle . “<br>” . $j[“url”] . “</blockquote>”; |
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} |
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} |
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// finish by noting how many files have been read |
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echo “<h2>Read ” . count($lines) . “</h2>”; |
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?> |
Run this script in a browser and it will create a page with the results. (The script is available at GitHub.)
Thanks, Perma.cc!
By the way, and mainly because I keep losing track of this info, the table of code was created by a little service cleverly called Convert JS to Table.
Categories: free-making software, humor, tech Tagged with: api • open platform • perma • utilities
June 10, 2018
North Korean Bingo!
February 15, 2018
Here comes a new round of "I think, therefore I am" philosophical Dad jokes
An earlier draft of Descartes’ Meditations has been discovered, which will inevitably lead to a new round of unfunny jokes under the rubric of “Descartes’ First Draft.” I can’t wait :(
The draft is a big discovery. Camilla Shumaker at Research Frontiers reports that Jeremy Hyman, a philosophy instructor at the University of Arkansas, came across a reference to the manuscript and hied off to a municipal library in Toulouse … a gamble, but he apparently felt he had nothing left Toulouse.
And so it begins…
Categories: humor, philosophy Tagged with: humor • I stink therefore I fan • philosophy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
TL;DR: Share this post freely, but attribute it to me (name (David Weinberger) and link to it), and don't use it commercially without my permission.
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