Wordle In The 80s


I’m sure there are some sight gags I’m missing here, but I filled that void by unconsciously figuring out the sounds for correct and incorrect letters like I did when I used to do my best to play games as a kid.

And I knew exactly where the share thing was going, but it was no less satisfying when it got there.

By the way, stop whining that the game is too hard. Every word since the NYT takeover has absolutely been a word. Besides, where’s the fun in a game you can always easily win? That it can be difficult is precisely why the ones you crush in 2 or 3 guesses feel so good. If the game is making you think you’re not as smart as you thought you were, that’s not the game’s fault.

Now We Know Why His Brain Isn’t Growing

I’m not sure this is the stupidest media interview I’ve ever seen, but it’s up there. It definitely gets credit for packing a whole lot of dipshit into slightly less than a minute. Holy Christ.

Graham was speaking with Insulate Britain climate activist Cameron Ford, and started the interview by referencing the group’s tactic of glueing themselves to motorways.

He asked Mr Ford: “What are you glued to today?”
To which he replied: “Just your screen today, unfortunately.”
Graham then asked Mr Ford what he does for a living, and he responded that he is a carpenter, working with timber which he called “a much more sustainable material rather than concrete”.
Graham said: “So you work with trees that are being cut down then, don’t you?” and questioned how it was sustainable to be killing trees.
To which Mr Ford calmly explained that trees can be replanted.
Graham then asked: “You can grow all sorts of things can’t you?”
And Mr Ford replied: “Well, you can’t grow concrete.”
Before Graham’s puzzling response: “Yeah, you can.”
Mr Ford shook his head but did not say anything, seemingly waiting for the next question.
After a few seconds Graham simply said “see you Cameron, cheerio” and ended the interview.
He then turned back to the main camera and said: “That was Cameron. He grows trees, then cuts them down and then makes things from them. Brilliant. Marvellous. I don’t think I ever want to talk to any of those people.”

I can’t imagine what the next question might have been.

Silence was definitely the best answer, Cameron. There are levels of dumb that simply cannot be reasoned with and sometimes you’ve got to know when to bow out. I myself had to do that very thing the other day when someone tried to explain to me that there is no such thing as a collective, only individuals that do things in groups. Yes, this person supported the anti-vax truckers that held the country hostage for a month. How did you guess?

More Than The Lights Were Flashing

Investigators say that Terry Majors, 30, called 911 Thursday afternoon seeking medical assistance.
But once inside a Sunstar ambulance, Majors allegedly removed his clothes and began masturbating, according to a misdemeanor criminal complaint.
Majors, who “was wearing a condom” at the time, was “looking at EMTs that were trying to treat him” while he was pleasuring himself.
At some point as the ambulance traveled in St. Petersburg, Majors “asked for an ice pack,” which he then “proceeded to fold…and masturbate with” while en route to the hospital.

It doesn’t say here whether the ambulance wound up taking him to the hospital for treatment or if they just dumped his ass out on the highway or at a police station. But the way police like to stack charges, if I were a betting man I’d say he went. He was only charged with exposure of sexual organs. Nothing about misusing an emergency service.

If You Think Blind People Are Scary now, You’re Really Gonna Hate This


I have not much to offer here in terms of worthwhile comment on this particular device. Maybe these folks will finally be the ones who are able to make canes full of sensors and software into a thing. Open-sourcing the design is at least a good start.

The reason I’ve called you all here today is because of a claim made in the article I read about the attempt.

One of the biggest benefits of the new augmented cane is that it significantly cheaper than smart canes that came before it. Some of the past smart canes were extremely heavy, weighing up to 50 pounds, and cost as much as $6000.
The new augmented cane utilizes state-of-the-art sensors and only weighs three pounds. It could be built at home from freely available parts and open-source software for a price of around $400.

WWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTT!?

$6000, I’ll buy that. Wait. No. Wrong choice of words. You can put that price tag somewhere inappropriate. Let’s try that I’ll believe. Yes, much better. But who in the name of god made a 50 pound cane? The answer is no one, right? Please tell me this is a typo. Unless the goal was to move the obstacles out of your way instead of doing things the other way around.

Hmmm…that might be fun, actually. Anybody have $6000?

Some Good Advice For A Society Living With COVID. Doug Ford Also Chimes In

Here’s a good segment from the Morning Edition on CBC Kitchener Waterloo talking with Dr. Peter Lin about what the phrase “living with COVID” should mean in a world in which we hope to get things right. Spoiler: it doesn’t mean what the anti-vax, COVID minimizing and denying types or Doug Ford are telling us it does. It only runs about eight minutes, but if you need a TLDL summary, it pretty much goes like this:

We can’t wish ourselves back to 2019, no matter how much we’d like to. If we’re going to get normalcy back, it’s going to have to come with some conditions for a while. We don’t have to do largely useless things like obsessively clean every surface, but the masks and some safe distance should probably stick around for a time even when they’re not mandatory if we hope to protect ourselves, each other, and by extension the economy, the health system and life in general.

He says that dropping the vaccine passport system makes sense mostly, since there’s no way to guarantee that the virus doesn’t exist in a vaccinated person who can then spread it to others. But importantly, he still recommends vaccines, because there’s a difference between a virus existing in you and it hospitalizing or killing you. For me, the difference between spread and severe illness is a crucial distinction that we need to make when figuring out the road ahead. Unfortunately it’s also a concept that’s been co-opted by the unvaccinated crowd to argue that vaccines are useless, and I’m not sure how we deal with that since being rational with them doesn’t appear to work.

There’s more, but those were the biggest takeaways for me. You can listen to it here since I can’t embed it.

And from that, we move to Doug fucking Ford, the polar opposite of the calm, reasoned voice you just heard. Christ, this idiot. This tantrumming baby. Just out here giving bad March 2020 advice and torpedoing the entire vaccination effort that still represents our best hope for cautiously getting to where he’s now rushing us because it’s almost election time. There’s a way to voice frustration from a position of power and authority. This is not it.

“We are done with it,” Ford said of limits to public activity. “Let’s just start moving on, cautiously. The world’s done with it, let’s just move forward.”
“We just have to be careful, make sure we wash our hands and move forward.”
He suggested there was little value in further rounds of vaccination, pointing out third doses do not provide ironclad protection from infection with Omicron.
“We also know that it doesn’t matter if you have one shot or 10 shots, you can still catch COVID-19,” he said.
“You see the Prime Minister he has triple shots and I know hundreds of people with three shots, who caught COVID-19, we just need to be careful, always make sure we wash our hands and move forward.”
Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table estimates a third dose is more than 60 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infection.

He said the public needed to respect the beliefs of those who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“There’s rebel rousers, and there are just hard-working people that just don’t believe in it, and that’s their choice. This is about democracy and freedoms and liberties. I hate as a government telling anyone what to do, we just have to get out of this and move forward and protect the jobs.”
He said the vaccination question has ruined personal relationships and divided the province.
“I’ve never seen this province and this country so divided. It’s affected friendships, it’s affected coworkers, it’s affected families.”
He even alluded to divisions inside his own family.
“I can tell you guys, I’ve faced all three of them, and let me tell you something, it’s challenging, especially on the family side.”
Ford’s daughter, Krista Haynes, has repeatedly criticized vaccine mandates and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines on her social media accounts.

Feel The Beams

It’s official. The mind beams are alive and well. Once again, Valentine’s Day came rumbling at me at full steam. But on about February 9, I had an inspiration. I had heard about these boxes of chocolates with a Braille legend, so you can tell what chocolates you’re eating. I snuck off to my computer and checked, and they were back in stock! So I bought a box and felt all proud of myself! Steve had mentioned that he had bought me a something and hopefully it would arrive soon. When it did, I thought “Hmmm, that looks a lot like a box of chocolates!” It turns out we each bought each other one of these boxes, but he was more on the ball than me. The funny part is I was the one who told him about them when they were out of stock!

Two Purdy's Braille Chocolates boxes next to each other
To Carin from Steve
To Steve from Carin

They’re pretty cool. On the outside is Braille down the sides that says “Feel the joy.” Har har that’s cute. Then it says “Chocolatier” across the front, below the Purdy’s logo. Then you open it up, and the Braille legend is so cool! You know which way is up because they made sure the legend is facing the same way as the chocolates, so you have to make sure you put it back the right way. It’s really well done. The braille for each chocolate is surrounded by these little lines, so you can tell what goes where. And, on the other side is a QR code you can scan so that you can read all about the chocolates, in detail that they couldn’t hope to put in the braille sheet.

We tried some of the chocolate today, and man is it ever good! That is the first time I have ever been able to reach into a box of chocolates and know what I’m going to get! I don’t know if I would wind up crying like this girl,

but it is pretty darn awesome. I was thinking about every time I’ve eaten a chocolate and spent the first few seconds figuring out what it was. This time, I instantly knew!

So yeah. The beams are alive and well. And we should each get to try all the kinds because we have two boxes! Soooo cool!

The Words Aren’t The Problem. You Are

Words and phrases you may want to think twice about using
I’ve said this many times in many different places, but one more time with feeling, I guess. I wish we would put more energy into focusing on intent rather than language. I’m not going to say that there aren’t any decent points to be found in that article, because I’m not fully qualified to say that. But I can say with a fair degree of confidence that most disabled people aren’t so delicate that we’re going to shatter when someone uses a word as intended. We’ll go with the blindness part as an example, because nobody can argue my bona fides in that area.

Brainstorm, blindsided and blind-spot
The prefix blind is often used in metaphorical terms like blindsided, blind spot and blind leading the blind, to describe the limitation of sight.
“I can see that being offensive to people who can’t see,” said Julie Cashman, a member of the disability community and co-chair of Consumer Action Committee, which advocates for individuals with disabilities. 
Using the term brainstorm could also be insensitive to those who have brain injuries or are neurodiverse, added Cashman.
“More important is the stigma that it will effectuate about …  disorders [like] epilepsy for example,” said Kalra.

Wait a minute. Why is the stuff about blindness lumped in with brain injuries? What kind of assumptions are you making here? I should probably be offended. I think that’s how they’re telling me this works.

But anyway…

Maybe I’ll give you blind leading the blind. I never cared one way or the other, but if you want to argue that it implies incompetence, knock yourself out. But blind spot? It literally describes an area a person can’t see. In that sense I think of it more as a driving term than anything else. Blindsided is pretty much the same thing. Something you could not see coming takes you by surprise. Literal or metaphorical, those are ok. They’re descriptive and generally pretty accurate. You have to be pretty insecure with who you are to be offended by those, in my opinion.

I don’t have time to get caught up in right or wrong words. I’m too busy living my life. Please, by all means, call me blind. That’s what I am. In fact, if you would just get over this business of trying to force me to be visually impaired it would save us all a lot of time. My vision is not impaired. It doesn’t fuckin’ work. If it were impaired I would be able to see colours or lights or shadows or maybe read signs with some effort. I can do none of those things. So just let me be blind and let people understand what that means without fear that they’re somehow insulting me with reality and facts.

By the way, if you do want to insult me, tell me how I’m expected to self-identify. That works every time.

Which brings us back to intent. Someone calling me blind is fine. That person equating my blindness with being incapable of existing while knowing nothing about me is not. Passing me over for a job even though I’m clearly the most qualified applicant because your garbage company is lazy and doesn’t feel like making simple accommodations…also not ok. But language has nothing to do with that. Attitude does. If someone is intent on being closed-minded, that’s what they’re going to be. You could call me mahogany or chandelier instead of blind and it wouldn’t change a thing. You can’t outrun attitude with language. Change is not that easy. The association is always going to be there. It is what it is, no matter what you call it.

Quibbling over words doesn’t do anything but make people nervous. I’ve seen it a million times.

“What am I supposed to call you?”

“Steve is fine.”

“No no, what am I supposed to call you? Like…you know…that way.””

It starts everything off on the wrong foot and then I, the very one you’re trying to help with all these damn words, have to work even harder to right the ship.

If we ever hope to get anywhere meaningful, we have to stop scaring people with this crap.

Creepy. Gross. Inaccurate

Today in mangled headlines: Illinois Mom Accused of Shooting Dead Man Who Refused to Kiss Her

Is necrophilia still illegal there?

Seriously, what would have been wrong with “Illinois Mom Accused of Killing Man Who Refused to Kiss Her”?

Prosecutors in Cook County said that the trio were having a drink together when Resendiz-Florez allegedly asked Jones for a kiss. Jones declined because he had a girlfriend who was sitting right next to him. He then kissed his girlfriend in front of Resendiz-Florez, prompting an envious Resendiz-Florez to ask the girlfriend for a kiss, prosecutors said during a bond hearing. She declined, too.
When Jones once again refused to kiss her, an enraged Resendiz-Florez grabbed his gun that he had tucked between two couch cushions and aimed it at him, prosecutors said.

Jones tried to push Resendiz-Florez’s arm down as she pulled the safety off and put her finger on the trigger but the gun went off, striking Jones once in the chest.