There’s a fine line between a dystopia and a utopia. Unfortunately, Dave Eggers chose to draw his line with an extra-thick marker. I’m talking about his fifth novel (fifth or so—but who’s counting?), The Circle. The story focuses on the… Read More ›
Technology
Seventeenth anniversary of my very first blog post!
Exactly 17 years ago today. That was the day when I started this blog. You can still read my very first post, which was originally on Blogger and then transferred to WordPress. I have written 2,194 posts since then, which… Read More ›
Following 22 podcasts…
That’s too many, you say! Maybe so, but I really do follow 22 podcasts. First, though, I should say that I started following a 23rd podcast today. But another one that I followed up through yesterday is no longer producing… Read More ›
More chaos! More CatNet!
The second novel in a series is always worse than the first. Of course that’s not true—unless you replace “always” with “often” or perhaps even “usually.” Or perhaps the wishy-washy “sometimes.” All generalizations are false, as they say. Including this… Read More ›
German is hereby completed!
Well, OK, not exactly. I don’t even know what it would mean for German to be completed. It’s just that I have completed everything that Duolingo can offer me in German. And that is far from “everything.” Basically, I have… Read More ›
Who knew?? Iterating Dorchester takes you to philosophy!
TIL what TIL means. No, wait! I learned that last year. Let’s start again: TIL that an extremely simple iterative process always takes you philosophy. Here’s how you do it: Go to any article in Wikipedia. Click on the first… Read More ›
Being human in the age of algorithms
That’s not the title. It’s actually the subtitle. The book’s title is Hello World. OK, so now that you know the title, you want to know who the author is—right? Well, the author is applied mathematician Hannah Fry, whom I… Read More ›
Netflix cares about the length of a sentence in a given language. You should too.
Here’s the problem. Netflix shows shows in many different languages. Some languages, like English, allow compact phrases like that “shows shows” (which looks confusing); others use circumlocutions that take up more room on the screen. Why does matter? Because it… Read More ›
Whining about Daylight Saving Time
If I were a pedant (which of course I’m not), I would feel compelled to articulate four pet peeves related to Daylight Saving Time: Some people—I’m thinking of you, Ethel—call it Daylight Savings Time! (Apparently it has something to do… Read More ›
Emoji and hand gestures
There’s a lot of misinformation about emoji(s) floating around. Aside from the question of whether the plural is “emojis” or “emoji,” we have plenty of people who think the word is etymologically related to “emoticon” and “emo”—but it’s not! The… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 