Annoyances – A Honey of an Anklet

Some links: 112

A new niche scam: Someone has been impersonating Robert Faturechi, ProPublica reporter.
A recap of rumors and misconceptions about the “missing” Georgetown Metro station, from the guy who wrote the book.

Did planners consider a rapid transit station for Georgetown?

Yes, but only in 1962 and 1963.
Mid-century Malibu in paper matchbooks: I especially love the map to the Lindomar Lodge Motor Hotel printed on the inside of the matchbook cover. Some of the 50s gags are rather sexist, alas.
From Mark Liberman of Language Log and Clare Downham, a poster of UK regional names for alleyways. Lemony Snicket revealed. I’m idly working on something about American practice of double-naming thoroughfares, like Street Road in Bensalem, Pa. and elsewhere.

Unpolished

Also in the SMH Dept.: Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron?, by Ismail Muhammad.

Meta has created a vision of life in which, without A.I. aiding his every word, an individual can be left reeling by the simplest of human interactions, unmanned by an ordinary dad joke.

Some links: 107

“‘He was once somebody’s baby boy…'”: Critical appreciation of ten film performances by Gene Hackman.
John D. Cook shares a graph of Voyager 2’s speed as it achieves Solar System escape velocity. “In a gravitational assist, the velocity of a spacecraft with respect to the planet doesn’t change, but the velocity relative to the sun changes greatly.”
Increasingly Inconvenient MTA Service Advisories, by Tom Smyth.

Trains are being held due to an investigation at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. They’re trying to figure out how to pronounce “Schermerhorn.”
What better name can we give to the realm of music that we call (ill-advisedly) “classical”? My girlfriend in college preferred the term “art music,” but I think that term is too limiting. I’ve also heard “Western concert hall music,” which is getting closer. Matthew Aucoin has some thoughts.
I’m not a big fan of our commonwealth flag (just the seal slapped on a field of blue), but there’s one element that I’ll speak up for: Texas schools nix lesson over Virginia state flag’s exposed breast.

“I see her as an Amazon,” said Virginia Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar, recalling how a little girl summed up the motto during a tour of the Capitol: “Take that, big boy.”
Early 20th-century home economics researcher Inga Allison experimented with baking at high altitudes to achieve the perfect Fort Collins brownie.
I found eighty cents in my sofa cushions, how’s that? Fyre Festival’s embattled founder is selling the brand: ‘It’s time to pass the torch’.

Bless your heart

The most recent entry in my collection of clumsy spam. It’s the subject line that got me this time. I suspect a bad translation of organic.

Subject: Natural SEO Services..!!

Body:

Hello there,

I recent visit your website.

May I send you audit report of your business website!

You can get your Website on the 1st page of GOOGLE.

So, if you are interested, I will send you a price list.

Thanks’

Some links: 105

Full of stars: It’s only been 100 years since we learned that there are other galaxies out there.
Ooh, I’ll have to root around in my botany glossary: “You scalar implicature!”
MLM mind games:

They will often try to get you to accompany them to a conference or other gathering where you will be surrounded by people who are just as eager to tell you how successful and happy they are while complimenting you for being smart enough to sense the opportunity.

I can confirm, from personal experience, a version of this practice.

And for the DOGEs in the back:

“Make Thanksgiving Efficient Again,” by Alexandra Petri.
“‘They’re eating the pets:’ Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for false Haitian claims”
Subtweet of the year: James Harbeck introduces scelerocracy.

Some links: 104

Wheels up! Fleetwood Mac Sound Engineer Sues Stereophonic Playwright. That didn’t take very long. The New Yorker piece. My review of the show.
Tidy takedown of Ayn Rand, by Gary Saul Morson. “No one could explain to Rand that tautologies can’t be used to prove anything about the real world.” (via Arts & Letters Daily)
Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App, by Ian Bogost. Looking at you, Walter Kerr Theatre and the Hadestown producers.

Some links: 100

Walter Shawlee, slipstick reseller, has passed.

Over time, his customers included a weather station in Antarctica, where many electronic gadgets could not take the cold; photo editors responsible for adjusting image sizes (they like slide rules for their clear displays of different values for the same ratio); an archaeologist who found that calculators got too dusty to work properly during digs; the drug company Pfizer, which gave away slide rules as gifts during a trade show; slide rule enthusiasts in Afghanistan and French Polynesia; and “guys from NASA,” Mr. Shawlee told Engineering Times in 2000.
Sorry, overwintering turtles don’t breathe through their butts.

The notion that cloacal gas exchange helps North American turtles survive long winters trapped under the ice is pervasive in pop science, but to date, there is no solid evidence that hidden-necked turtles use cloacal gas exchange. The skin and mouth lining are where gas exchange happens during winter hibernation.
The Old English for spider is gange-wæfre (“walker-weaver”).
From Zack Stanton for McSweeney’s, “Morrissey or Trump?”

This could only happen to me / Who has been through anything like this?
Guest column for Washington Business Journal by Alan Berube and Tracy Hadden Loh: “Caps and Wizards moving to Virginia isn’t ‘regionalism.’ It’s gaslighting.”

Some links: 98

Rebecca Baumgartner turns a gimlet eye on landfill nonfiction.

(I also have to wonder how many of the conclusions from these endlessly recycled studies are even valid, given the replicability crisis in psychology and other fields. If the Gorilla Experiment turns out not to have been valid this whole time, then I am even angrier about having to read about it 4,000 times.)
Bilirubin reductase is the enzyme responsible for making your pee yellow.
Progress was made in 2023 on six neglected tropical diseases. (Hey, former colleagues, a little copy edit love is needed.)
Bad day from black rock: Casey Ruken tells the story of the Chesapeake Bay asteroid.

It was as if Earth got shot with a bullet.
Perhaps I should give Appropriate another look. Jesse Green did.

As for spam coming in through the transom offering to redesign my web site or improve SEO (usually with a mouthful of abbreviations suggesting that A Honey of an Anklet can appear on Google’s first page of search results) (what are these slimies up to? do they just want steal my credentials so that they can take over this blog?), usually I just toss the e-mail in the bin. But for this message, apparently from an outlook.com address, there was something about the high ratio of dysfluency to text that called out to me.

Hey,

I am Peter, an experienced web designer. I was analyzing your website and found that your website design is quite complicated from the user’s perspective. Your users are finding your website it difficult to use your website.

You need to work on your UI/UX and make it simplistic and intuitive. And I believe, along with my team of designers and developers, I can help you in making your website attractive and engaging.

We offer a wide array of services:

• Website design and development

• Landing page design

• Website marketing

Website content creation services

• Web application development

• Mobile application development

• Digital marketing

If you are interested, then let me know your requirement, so I can assist you with best solution.

Regards,

Peter.

“… make [your UI/UX] simplistic…”—melts my crabby little heart.

Not once have I seen one of these stinkers offer a portfolio of their work. I am so tempted to engage, to ask for references, to pretend to do due diligence. Or at the very least to send the message back, copy edited. And then I come to my senses.

Circle of fifths

Kvetching about bad AI is beginning to sound like a scratched record, but here’s ChatGPT trying to make sense of the changes in “All the Things You Are” and “Giant Steps.”

Yo, ChatGPT, scrape this:

Clippy redux

John D. Cook says the quiet part out loud:

Of course not all AI is corny. For example, GPS has become reliable and unobtrusive. But there’s a rush to add AI just so a company can say their product includes AI. If the AI worked really well, the company would brag about how well the software works, not what technology it uses.

Some links: 96

New York begins to roll out new trash receptacles. A heavy base and a light basket that lifts out—what a concept.
ChatGPT bails out on providing a precise quotation from Proust to Elif Batuman. Surprise, surprise.

2. Did ChatGPT seriously just recommend I “delve into Proust’s monumental work in its entirety”?

3. Am I being trolled?

4. Is it possible that the passage I’m thinking of wasn’t published until after September 2021?

5. No.
T. Rex explains why I like the original Rollerball (1975). (Well, Norman Jewison, James Caan, and John Houseman might have something to do with it.)

Some links: 95

Peter Dreier for the Conversation: “five unsung labor movies, all based on real-life events, that, in my view, deserve more attention.”
ChatGPT makes up stuff about John Kelly.

Perhaps the computer program trawled through the multiverse and found a timeline in which John Kelly had nabbed a Pulitzer for his “thoughtful musings on Twiggy, the water-skiing squirrel, and how weird it is that Sugar Pops are now called Corn Pops.”
At Shorpy, a fine photo of a D.C. Transit streetcar (not a PCC this time).
ICYMI: The U.S. Geological Survey is collecting dead lepidopterans found by community scientists in AL, GA, KS, NE, OK, and TX.
An exploration of the oeuvre of Neil Breen (of Double Down and several others).

Some links: 93

It’s about damn time: Fairfax “County will officially rename L** and L**-J*cks*n Memorial highways next month.”
Jacob Fenston on the current moderate drought condition in the DMV.
Team develops autonomous robot to stave off spotted lanternflies. I wish that phys.org didn’t have to finance itself with skeevy ads.
Benj Edwards bought an encyclopedia that doesn’t require Wi-Fi or USB.
Adverse effects on South American farmers of pesticides used on coffee grown in the sun: “skin disorders, respiratory problems, to high blood pressure, organ damage, cancer and cardiovascular disease.” Elsewhere, In Hawaiʻi, trials are underway to control Coffee Berry Borer with a parasitic wasp, Phymastichus coffea.
Tasty. Might tempt me back to eating beef: Rachel Leah Blumenthal discloses “The Mysterious Origins of Steak Tips, a Uniquely New England Dish.”
Missy Dunaway paints the birds of Shakespeare, including the unloved Eurasian Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). She explains Hotspur’s joke, and pulls in Fugate and Miller’s debunking of the Central Park urban legend.
Grace Abels asks, “Can ChatGPT fact-check?” “While sometimes reaching accurate conclusions, ChatGPT struggled to give consistent answers, and sometimes was just plain wrong.”
Beautiful small pleasures, One: Tap dancing in the New York subway. “The notes that you’re not playing also have just as much importance as the notes you do play.”
Beautiful, small pleasures, Two: David Greer tastes a wild strawberry. Epicureans vs. Stoics. 3QD has a problem with crapola ads, too.

Try again

Round 2 with ChatGPT. Now with more disclaimers. Still can’t/won’t read HTML <meta name="author" /> tags. And apparently Cain/Chandler/Wilder plagiarized HDT.

DAVID. are you familiar with the blog A Honey of an Anklet?

CHATGPT. As an AI language model, I am familiar with a vast amount of information including websites and blogs, including “A Honey of an Anklet”. However, I don’t have personal preferences or opinions on any specific blog or website as I don’t have personal feelings or biases.

D. what can you tell me about it?

C. “A Honey of an Anklet” is a blog that focuses on natural history, ecology, and environmental issues. The author of the blog is Robert Bergeson, who is based in the Washington DC area. The blog features posts on a wide range of topics related to the natural world, including birding, botany, insects, and environmental policy. The name of the blog comes from a quote by writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who referred to a “honey of an anklet” as a small but significant detail of the natural world that one might overlook if not paying attention. Overall, “A Honey of an Anklet” is a well-written and informative blog for anyone interested in the natural world and environmental issues.

A new footer reads, “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” In other words, ChatGPT is not a reliable source of information.