Who says there ain't no cure for the summertime blues?

Well, it's summertime.

And, yeah, I do get the summertime blues. 

So this summer,  Pink Slip is taking extra-long weekends, and will be posting on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday, at least through Labor Day. Four glorious day weekends (even if I'm retired and don't work, other than volunteering).

Sometimes I wonder what I'm-a gonna do.

I have promised myself that I will NOT be devoting my newly-freed up time to doomscrolling. I do enough of that already, and I can guarantee you that it is NOT the path to physical or mental wellbeing. Instead, I'll be doing some extra reading. Or going through my junk drawers. Or finishing my novel. Blues-curative actions, all. 

So who says there ain't no cure for the summertime blues? Well, it was early rock 'n roller Eddie Cochran way back in 1958, a couple of years before he was killed, at the age of 21, in a car accident. That's one way to cure the summertime blues that I'm happy I didn't take...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Image Source: EC Growers

Not quite Gwyneth Paltrow nutty, but still...

I had heard of Sydney Sweeney, of course. But I really had no idea who she is. Blonde? Young? Actress? Hotty? 

All of the above, I guess.*

And all of the above is what makes for a new soap from Dr. Squatch, a natural body care brand, that uses Sydney's bathwater in its mix.

Apparently, the soap-consuming public (Male Division) had been clamoring for it, so on June 6, Dr. Squatch brought out a limited edition "Sydney's Bathwater Bliss." 

Nearly a million folks signed up for the opportunity to win a free bar. (One hundred bars available, so your odds weren't great.) And the remainder of the lot - I've seen lot sizes of 5,000 and 8,000 - were available on Dr. Squatch for $8 a bar. Whatever the number available, they sold out instantly. And were instantly available on eBay for $40, $80, $250, $375, $420...

You don't need me to tell you that people are nuts, that's for sure.

It all started last fall when Sweeney did some promo for Dr. Squatch, posing in a bathtub. What to do after the photoshoot? After all, you don't want to throw any bucks out with the bathwater now, do you? 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it, or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” the 27-year-old said in an official press release for the product.

She continued, “It’s weird in the best way, and I love that we created something that’s not just unforgettable, it actually smells incredible and delivers like every other Dr. Squatch product I love. Hopefully, this helps guys wake up to the realities of conventional personal care products and pushes them towards natural.”

Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss is a medium grit exfoliating soap made with sand, pine bark extract and "yes, a touch of Sydney’s real bathwater." As for what it smells like, the soap bar delivers notes of pine, Douglas fir and earthy moss that brings users to the forest, as well as Sweeney's actual bathtub. (Source: People)

From a marketing standpoint, this is all, of course, brill. 

A million people looking to win a free bar? A million emails for the Dr. Squatch mailing list? 

Articles in People, Adweek, Newsweek, and - natch! - Page 6. 

The limited edition selling right out, at a reasonable gag-gift price of $8, and then popping over to eBay for orders of magnitude beyond the gag-gift price. (Not that anyone IRL is going to pay $420 for a bar. It's just that someone is asking that. Which creates mo better buzz.) 

Marketing genius!

Yet still weirdly disturbing.

No, it doesn't quite rise to the nutiness level of Gwyneth Paltrow's selling a candle that smelled like her vagina (sorry), but still.

We are one crazy-arsed culture, that's for sure. 

Unfortunately, I don't see where there's any turning back other than going the Handmaid's Tale route.

Sigh...

--------------------------------------------------------------

*Turns out I kinda/sorta knew (shoulda known) who Sydney Sweeney is, as she was in White Lotus Season One playing the snotty college girl daughter to some rich folks. And I do watch White Lotus. Still, she didn't register with me, other than vaguely.

Image Source: Sydney Sweeney's Insta

Rat People? Hard to blame them...

As they come of age, every generation faces some sort of crisis or another, some worse than others. For my parents, it was the Great Depression and World War II. For Baby Boomers, the less dire but still challenging shift in the economy from boring-but-steady-work-for-the-same-company to globablization that shipped an awful lot of those boring-but-steady jobs overseas. And think of European Jews in the 1930's. Some existential crises actually are existential crises. 

Today's rising generation is Gen Z. Depending on who's calling the imprecise (at best) shot, this cohort covers those born between 1996 and 2010. Or 1997 and 2012. Or something. But most of the focus is on the Gen Zers (or Zoomers) who are in their late teens and twenties - the group who are in school or starting out in their careers.

A large subgroup of Gen Z are categorized as NEETS: "not in employment, education, or training." And a subgroup, centered in China, of the NEETS are the "rat people." 

In China, at least, Gen Zers are proudly calling themselves “rat people”—they’re spending entire days procrastinating in bed, scrolling on their phones, snoozing and ordering take out.

Across Weibo, RedNote, Douyin, you can find videos of the youngest generation of adults waking up, only to go back to bed. (Source: Fortune)

They spend their non-sleeping time - what there is of it - just hanging around, scrolling through their phones, only getting off the sofa or out of the bed to use the toilet or raid the fridge. 

It's not clear from the artice where and how these young folks live. Presumably someone's paying the rent and keeping the larder stocked. (C..f., mom and dad.) The rats are rejecting the Chinese "996" worklife of six days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.  They're doing nothing or the minimum they need to eke out an existence. Some of the "rat people" have, predictably, monetarized their "lying flat" way of life. And the Chinese art people aren't alone.

And it’s exactly what many Gen Zers in the West are doing too: In recent years, the youngest generation of workers has introduced Bare Minimum Mondays and quiet quitting to the working world.

Some have similarly modeled the laid-back lifestyle of another slow animal: Snails.

While I personally don't think that lounging around all day in PJs doomscrolling is the path to mental or physical wellbeing, I can't say that I blame the rats, the snails, or those who are just thumbing their nose at the rat race. 

The job market is softening. And with AI taking over the front end of hiring - and maybe even the middle and backends as well - it's harder to find a good job. Ghosting has always been an issue in the hiring process, but it seems to be getting worse. People make it through multiple interview rounds and don't even get the courtesy of a rejection.

If and when you do get a job, these young folks know that the specter of AI is everywhere. If you're not using AI to do at least part of your job, you'll soon be out of that job. And if you are using AI to "improve productivity and efficiency" or whatever the current bill of goods is, whatever you're doing to fix the errors that AI continues to generate big time is teaching AI to do their job - make that your job - better.

Some are forecasting 20% unemployment in the next five years, largely due to AI replacing entry level white collar professional work. 

And yet we sit here waiting for the tech bro AI tsunami to wash over us without questioning what it is the people are going to do for work once AI punches fully in. Or asking whether we'll guarantee an income to the rat and snail folks. And even if there is a guaranteed income - unlikely, given that we don't want everybody to have healthcare, housing, or food, let alone able-bodied young people, I still don't think it's a good idea to spend your twenties in bed doomscrolling, watching cat videos, and posting nonsense on Insta. 

(A side note on the terror that is AI: as I'm writing this, in early June, there's a provision in the god-awful budget bill that would outlaw state-level regulation of AI. Maybe that provision will get knocked out during reconciliation, but I wouldn't bet on it.)

So, there's AI.

Then there's the cost of housing in so many parts of the country (c.f., Boston) that makes moving out on your own prohibitively expensive. The gives young folks the depressing prospect of having a good job that pays what should be enough to live on. Yet doesn't. Fifty years ago, I had a cute little studio apartment that cost $150 a month - the equivalent of $900 in today's terms. I just googled, and these days, a similar studio in Boston rents for $2K+. That's a lot to pay if you're making $80K/taking home $60K. Especially if, as so many Gen Z (and others) are saddled with school loans that are seemingly impossible to get out from under.

Then there's the existential environmental threat, made worse for Americans as the US seems hell bent on making environmental matters worse. (Breathe in that coal dust, I tell ya!) 

And again for Americans, there's the looming threat of autocracy, the dismantling of the scientific apparatus that made the US economy so innovative and vibrant, the general embarrassment that our government has become. 

No wonder young folks are staying in bed with the covers pulled up over their heads. 

It's hard to blame them. 

But I still hope that the the Gen Zers in hiding do get up and out. For rats, snails, NEETs et a, there's this advice:

“For any Gen Zs stuck in this rut, my advice is to start small, but to start,” Leona Burton, career coach and founder of the professional community, Mums in Business International advises.

“You don’t need to have it all figured out overnight, so reach out to someone you trust, make one positive decision a day, and stop measuring success by someone else’s timeline,” she tells Fortune. “Whether it’s a part-time role, starting a side hustle or simply getting dressed and going for a walk, without your phone, every small step counts.”

“Above all, remember this: you are not behind, you are not broken, and you are not alone, but you do need to do the work and make that change.”

Sure glad I'm not young anymore... 

 

---------------------------------------------------

Image source: South China Post

Ah, the Age of Enlightenment

Admittedly, the world probably didn't need another high school production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. ("I saw Goody Osburn with the devil.") But how interesting that a school in remote, ultra-conservative (80%+ Trump), ultra-white (90%+) Fannin County, Georgia, would decide to put on a play about witchhunts, panics, hysteria, and the persecution/prosecution of the innocent. (The play may have been the idea of the school's drama teacher, who was forced out a few weeks before. In the true spirit of "the show must go on," the kids forged on without their leader.)

Back in May, they had their first of two performances on a Friday night. On Saturday morning, the students were informed that the second performance had been canceled. 

In accounts from multiple students and parents, the Friday evening performance went off without incident. But on Saturday morning, word of the cancelation began filtering out. Angela Grist, a parent with two students in the play, described the Saturday morning in her house as, “The kids all got messages stating that, what the kids were told initially, was that somebody in the audience didn’t like the context of the play and said that it was demonic and disgusting and that it was immediately shut down.” (Source: Howard Sherman)

The president of the school's drama club, senior Abigail Ridings - who was the one directing the play - heard pretty much the same thing:

“I walked into my mom’s bedroom Saturday morning, the night after our first show, and she told me that the show had been canceled, that she just got off the phone with my principal. He said that certain people had to ‘repent after watching the show,’ as a joke, and that it was canceled due to parent complaints.” Asked about the specific nature of the complaints as explained to her mother, Ridings elaborated saying that the play was “too evil and disgusting and things like that.”

Fast forward to Monday, when the school tut-tutted to the world that the play wasn't canceled because of pitch-fork parents. No. Nothing like that: 

After Friday night’s performance of The Crucible, we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play. Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher. The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.

So, not pitch-fork folks, but super-sharp local experts well versed in the ur-text of The Crucible and in copyright law. Is it just me of does this credulity-straining bit of legalese not hold water?

Students weighed in to say that they hadn't changed any of the wording. 

The only possible material in the production that might have given the licensor pause was that the production began with a wordless scene of the young women of Salem dancing in the woods at night, enacting what is described by dialogue in the text, an interpretive choice that was unlikely to have been in violation of the license since it altered not the text, the spirit nor the intention of the show. Would it have been advisable to have checked with the licensor? Yes. Was it flagrantly out of bounds? I think not.

(Howard Sherman, whose post I'm extensively quoting here is "the managing director of the Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College in Manhattan." So I suspect he knows what he's talking about.)

Without saying BS, Sherman calls BS, ticking off a number of reasons why this copyright reasoning doesn't ring true.  "So the timing [of the cancelation] is questionable and the solution draconian."

Angela Grist - the parent with two disappointed kiddos in the play - took the initiative to contact Broadway Licensing. She was told by a staffer there that nothing that the Fannin High drama club had done rose to the level of copyright violation. (You go, Angela Grist!) Another parent also called Broadway Licensing and was informed that they have a process they follow through when they learn there's been a possible copyright infringement. And this ain't it. (You go, second drama mom Amber Cather Herendon!)

Sherman posits that:

...it seems that the school’s administration decided, after content complaints, to use the wordless opening scene, an interpretive choice, as a pretext for shutting the show down, after bowing to complaints about the show’s actual content, namely the words of Arthur Miller and his characters.

The students, by the way, also stood up for themselves. Aiden McBee, a member of the cast, questioned the school's decision to close things down:

“They say they understand and appreciate the arts, but I just don’t believe it, because to appreciate the arts you have to understand. The Crucible is a message of authority and of distrust, which is quite ironic. I just want clear communication.”

Another cast member - Caden Gerald, who played John Proctor (hanged for witchcraft) - said that some locals were on FB and Insta saying they thought the "show was demonic and disgusting."

Channeling the oratory of his character, Gerald said, “John Proctor is being forced to sign away his friends because of one cry against them. To draw parallel to real life, I ask you to ask yourselves, how may you teach us students to walk like men and women in this world when you sell us to lies and opinion, deflecting blame to our good names that we have made...How may we walk in this world when you have forced us to be sat?”

I'd say the kids of the Fannin High drama club are all right!

The ninnies who were terrified by The Crucible, the weaklings in the school administration who buckled under to the complaints of the ninnies and ginned up a nonsense excuse to shut the play down: not so all right. They're all no doubt the sorts of fear-stricken loons who'd be up there on the stand testifying that they saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil.

Ridiculous.

Whatever happened to the Age of Enlightenment? Apparently it never fully made its way to Fannin County, Georgia. That said, the parents and students who spoke up and out - especially in a community where the odds are stacked against them - do give me some hope...And god knows I could use some right about now.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Image source: Genius. 

Extra! Extra! Karen Read all about it!

I was not one of the folks avidly caught up in the details, breathlessly watching every moment of the trials, the pre-trials speculation, the post-trials drama. The documentaries on Netflix, on MAX. The 20/20's, the Datelines. The Boston Globe coverage, the Boston Herald, the Quincy Patriot Ledger. The adjacent hoopla (c.f., Turtleboy). But if you live in the Boston area, you'd have to have been in a coma the last few years NOT to know about the Karen Read trial(s).

For those who've been in a coma, or living outside of Boston, in 2022, after a night (a raging snowstorm night) of voracious drinking, the body of Karen Read's boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe was found in the snow outside of the home of friends. Did Karen Read run over John O'Keefe with her Lexus SUV? Accidentally? On purpose? Accidentally on purpose?

This was just the sort of story that fans of this sort of story love to sink their teeth into.

Big, rugged, handsome Boston Irish cop. Girlfriend - an attractive, successful financial services professional - he was maybe dumping. Girlfriend who was maybe dumping him. 

There was a terribly tragic overlay to this saga. A decade before, John O'Keefe's sister had died of quick-hit brain cancer, leaving two kiddos, 3 and 6 years old, motherless. A couple of months later, the brother-in-law died of a heart attack, leaving those two kiddos orphans. John O'Keefe stepped up, moved into the only home the kiddos had known, and pretty much became mom and dad to them. 

So however John O'Keefe died, how incredibly sad for these children, now navigating adolescence, and orphaned once again. Gut wrenching.

In 2024, Karen Read went to trial for John O'Keefe's murder. Hung jury. The defense presented an alternate theory of the case. Something about O'Keefe getting into a fight in the friends' house and/or attacked by a dog in the friends' house. Lots of testimony by people who'd been drunk out of their skulls on the night of. Plenty of instances of sloppy, amateur hour, small town (Canton Mass) police work, including evidence collected in red Solo cups. (Proceed to party...) Expert witnesses contradicting other expert witnesses. A state cop witness who'd been caught out sending also sorts of misogynist, anti-Karen Read texts to his buddies during his investigation. 

I can't remember how the jury charge was structured, but after the trial, some members came forth and said that they had voted to acquit on the most serious charges, but got hung up on the lesser ones.

Nonetheless, the Norfolk County DA decided to give it another whirl, sticking with the murder charge. And this time, they didn't rely on the local prosecutors, but brought in some big gun outsider to act as a special assistant DA. Big gun = big bucks. I read that the Norfolk DA's office may be on the hook for a million bucks for the big gun.

Speaking of big bucks, Karen Read had a squad of crack defense attorneys for both Trial One and Trial Two. Some of the expense for those defense attorneys has been covered through donations to the cause by the thousands of Karen Read supporters who've sprung up. She's raiseed over $1M from her fans, and her fundraising tactics included private dinners with her attorneys. Read's fans come by the hundreds to stand outside the courthouse, wearing pink and sporting signs that read Free Karen Read. Or signs that show a Mass license plate that says FRAMED. I pity the local optician who's had FRAMED as her vanity plate for years. People assume she's part of the FKR movement. Sheesh.

I've seen some of the FKR-ers interviewed, and they're obsessed with the case, and with Read. Karen comes out of court and flashes them the American Sign Language sign for I love you, and the crowd goes wild. They come mainly from New England, but pretty much from all over the place. Seems crazy to me that, when there are so many righteous causes to get passionate about, you'd choose this case. But what do I know about American culture these days. Apparently not much.

Anyway, Trial Two ended last week with Read acquitted of the murder and manslaughter and leaving the scene charges, and found guilty of the misdemeanor charge of DUI, for which she's been sentenced to a year's probation.

After her acquital, Read came out of court claiming that “no one has fought harder for justice for John O'Keefe than I have." Which sounds an awful lot like OJ saying that he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to find the person who'd murdered Nicole Brown. 

While the coverage in these parts has been pretty much non-stop, this story gotten a lot of play nationally.

I heard that Karen Read had been found not guilty through a text from my friend in Dallas. 

And on the night of her acquittal, NBC News (national) led with the Karen Read story. Not the Israel-Iran War. Not the continued ICE raids. Not any real news. The Karen Read story. And within a day or so, a few of the national networks had 1-2 hour specials devoted to the case. Have I already said sheesh?

Me? I'm no Karen Read fan, but the state put on a pretty weak case, riddled with holes, suspicious behavior, and idiocy. Plus overcharging two times backfired. It's often a prosecution strategy to give the jury the opportunity to reject that highest level charge and settle on the lesser one. (This approach has been compared to picking a mid-priced bottle of wine.) 

We'll never know what happened that snowy night - other than the fact that a passel of folks went out and got rip roaring drunk, and wanted to continue the good time by bringing the party back to someone's house - that someone being a fellow Boston cop - and John O'Keefe ended up dead. We'll never know whether Karen Read backed into him, knocked him down, and left him there to become a snow-covered corpse. Or whether he was lying there, passed out but alive, and got run over by a snow plow. Or whether there was a brawl in the house. Or whether the dog did it.

I wish it were entirely over, but there's a wrongful death lawsuit, filed by the O'Keefe family, that's coming up. The suit names Karen Read, and the bars where those involved got rip roaring drunk. And it's impossible not to feel bad for John O'Keefe's family. His parents have now outlived two of their children. Their grief is unfathomable. And John O'Keefe's sister's kids? How heartbreaking have their young lives been? 

Anyway, I'll be happy now that us casual consumers of Karen Read news will no longer be bombarded with said news. And I will remain amazed until the day I die that there are so many people out there who've become obsessed with this terrible story - especially the ones who became such avid members of Read's fan club. Would that we could get people as interested in news that truly matters to them. Or should. 

Can I say 'sheesh' again?

__________________________________________
Image Source: Fox News

Charlie Hustle? No thanks!

First off, I never liked Pete Rose. Actually, make that I always detested Pete Rose. And this has absolutely nothing to do with his being named the MVP of the 1975 World Series, in which Rose's team, the Cincinnati Reds, beat my team, the Boston Red Sox, in what has been characterized as the greatest World Series ever. Greatest World Series ever? Well, yes and no. (There was that thrilling scene of Carlton Fisk waving his home run safe...)

Sure, Rose was a great player/great hitter/great whatever, but I always found him obnoxious, creepy, and moronic. Charlie Hustle? Blech!

And this was before we learned about his gambling on sports, including baseball, apparently including games he was involved in. (And lying about it.) Before we learned he'd been accused of statutory rape - sex with a girl 14 or 15 when Rose was in his 30's. (Rose claimed he thought she was 16. Oh, that makes it all better.) Before Rose went to prison for tax evasion.

Rose's scuz-bucket behavior earned him a lifetime ban from baseball, which meant he wasn't electable to the Baseball Hall of Fame. No plaque for Charlie Hustle in the hallowed ground that is Cooperstown. (And, yes, I love the Hall of Fame, and love the fact that Pete Rose's visage ain't in the Plaque Gallery.)

Throughout the years of his ban, Rose did a lot of denying, a lot of whining, and a lot of showboating - including showing up in Cooperstown during the annual induction ceremonies to sign autographs (for money, of course). 

Rose died last year, unhappily (to him) but happily (to me) unadmitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Not everyone supported the ban. A lot of baseball fans have argued that, given his obvious talent and skill on the field, Rose should be in the HOF. After all, not everyone who's got a plaque there was a saint. (Ty Cobb is usually the poster boy for bad guy baseball players, but his reputation has been rehabbed of late. I don't see Pete Rose's reputation, which is based on verifiable facts and not on perhaps-fictional tales that become truths after decades of retelling, as ever being rehabbed.)

Then last month, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred lifted the lifetime ban on Pete Rose (and others, including Shoeless Joe Jackson of Chicago Black Sox infamy). So Pete Rose is now eligible for election. If it happens, it won't be through the regular channel of election by baseball writers, but rather through election by the Old Timers Committee. Rose's chance will come up in a couple of years. I hope they vote him down.

I also hope to get to Cooperstown one more time. It's not a big bucket list item for me, but I wouldn't mind another trip there. I first went as a kid when we went on an family pilgrimage over a long Columbus Day weekend. My father was a tremendous baseball fan, and he'd also been a very good athlete. He'd played baseball, hockey, and football as a kid, but baseball was his first sporting love. The pilgrimage was for him, but he did raise baseball fans. (Four of the five "Rogers kids" are big baseball fans, and my brother Rich - who, like our father - was an accomplished multi-sport athlete, was an excellent baseball player through high school.) And my mother was also a pretty big baseball fan, having grown up in Chicago a Cubs fan, but also an equal opportunity White Sox fan. Her family were North Siders, but my mother not only went to Wrigley to root for the Cubbies, she also trekked to the South Side to watch the White Sox at Comiskey Park.

I'm pretty sure that neither of my baseball-loving parents would have cared for Pete Rose. My father would have admired his skill, that's for sure. But the gambling, the statutory raping. Nah...

My second trip to Cooperstown was a few years back when my sister Trish and I made our pilgrimage. (Trish was only a toddler the first time around so has little recall of that trek.)

Anyway, one of the reasons why Manfred unbanished Pete Rose was pressure placed on him by Trump who, not surprisingly, was a fan of Pete Rose. Trump not only lobbied Manfred, but has also said that he will pardon Rose for his federal tax evasion.

Here's hoping that the Old Timers won't be pressured by Trump into voting him in when the time comes around.

And speaking of Trump, the best piece I've read on Pete Rose being unbanished was by Will Bunch, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He placed the resurrection of Charlie Hustle within the context of Trump's treatment of a whole slew of pretty awful men. White men, to be exact. 

From a happy hour at the Pentagon for Fox News bad boy-turned-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a U.S. government-approved Miami holiday for the alleged raping and sex trafficking Tate brothers, 2025 has been an all-night coming-out party for the world’s worst white men.

...Roughly 8% of the way into a Trump 47 presidency that already feels like an eternity, the ceaseless drive to rehabilitate the Pete Roses of an America now racing around the basepaths to undo decades of well-deserved cancellations for sexual abuse and misconduct, racism, and homophobia, and just old-fashioned immoral conduct, isn’t some odd subplot. No, the bad (white) boy restoration is central to the entire MAGA project. And the forced redemption of Rose is its spikes-first exclamation point. (Source: The Inquirer - may not be accessible if you're not a subscriber. I'm not, but got access through some outside the paywall special link on Bluesky.)

Anyway, Will Bunch's framing is spot on. But even if there wasn't some Trumpian pressure to bear, even if there isn't the obvious - once you read it - connection to Trump's fondness for bad boys, especially when their bad boy-ness is sexual in nature, I think that making it possible for Pete Rose to slide - spikes up - into the Hall of Fame is a terrible idea. Hope that the Old Timers do the right thing!

I so don't want to see Rose's creepy visage on a plaque. 

Charlie Hustle? No thanks! 

------------------------------------
Image Source: Deadline.

 

Quote-unquote

Although I'm retired now, over the long years of my freelance career as a writer for tech companies, I wrote hundreds of blog posts, 99.99% of which were published under someone else's name. When I quoted or used data from other sources, I was always super- scrupulous about citations. 

And I've done the same over the long years of my Pink Slip blogging "career," during which I've written nearly 5,000 plagiarism-free posts. Over those long years, something may have slipped through uncited, but as a writer, I'm very conscious of not using someone else's words as my own. (I'm embarassed to admit that I haven't been as scrupulous at citing the sources for the images I use to illustrate my posts. I'm getting better at noting the sources, but historically, I've generally just grabbed something off the net assuming it was public domainish.)

Anyway, I don't have a lot of sympathy for plagiarists. 

Yes, I get that people can unintentionally slip up, that people can be careless, and that people - in the business world, in the political world, in the celebrity world - do rely on freelancers to create "their" articles, speeches, social media whatevers, and blog posts. 

So I don't know quite what to make of the CEO of Baystate Health, a large Massachusetts healthcare system, who last month "formally apologized for repeatedly using passages from other writers’ work in the weekly blog he produces for Baystate Health."

Peter Banko e-mailed employees a lengthy apology on Friday evening, the day after the Globe reported that its review of his internal blog found more than 20 posts containing passages identical or nearly identical to those in articles that appeared elsewhere. (Source: Boston Globe)

Banko began posting last June and continued through until mid-May, when he issued his Friday evening mea culpa to Baystate's employees in which he took "both ownership and accountability."

Not clear how or why the Globe got involved, but where there are 13,000 employees, a precarious financial situtation, and lay-offs, there are always disgruntled folks galore. That's the "how;" I guess the "why" is really a "why not," given the thirst for bringing down those in positions of authority. And, of course, the fact that plagiarism is pretty shitty. Not to mention stone stupid in an era when everyone can quickly google your words and figure out whether they're someone else's words.

(One of the most interesting recent plagiarism controversies occurred last year when hedge fund billionaire and Harvard grad Bill Ackman helped force out university president Claudine Gay, in part because of credible accusations against her for plagiarism. Ackman then lost his shit when his wife, a MIT celebrity professor, was credibly accused of plagiarism...And so it goes...) 

One of the weirder aspects of the Banko Affair is that the initial whisteblowing apparently occurred in January. And yet the Banko "something borrowed" posts continued through mid-May. His most recent post, one about Notre Dame's football coach Marcus Freeman, contained a section taken verbatim from a Sports Illustrated article.

Banko characterized the controversy as a “citation issue” and an “isolated incident.” Nevertheless, he wrote in bold type, “I sincerely ask for your forgiveness of my mistake.” He called it “an error in judgment.”

He wrote that his failure to credit other writers — the sources included Forbes, Sports Illustrated, NPR, ESPN, Harvard Business Review, and other websites — first generated a complaint to Baystate’s compliance hotline in January.

So, big "sincere" apology. Takes accountability. Takes ownership. Begs forgiveness. And yet, this hardly looks like an "isolated incident." (BTW, I'm a little cracked up by the sources he ripped off, as I have regularly quoted from Fobes, NPR, and HBR in both my professional and personal blogging.)

And then there's this bit:

Called “Connect,” Banko‘s blog offers observations on figures as diverse as Martin Luther King Jr., the controversial baseball player Pete Rose, and the late General Electric chief executive Jack Welch. It also dispenses lessons from business, sports and Banko‘s own life, including the importance of telling the truth.

Emphasis mine! (And btw, my post tomorrow is on "the controversial baseball player Pete Rose." Guarantee that there'll be no plagiarism involved.)

Anyway, I can't imagine what was going through Banko's head when he was pretty wantonly palming off someone else's words as his own. Maybe he thought he flew far enough beneath the radar - I mean, Baystate isn't exactly Mass General - that no one would notice. Maybe he had a secret weirdo desire to be caught so he could do this big cnfession thing. Maybe he's protecting a freelancer who screwed up big time. Maybe he's just a jerk. 

I'm the forgiving type, but there really is no excuse.

Quote unquote.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Image Source: Viper Blog.

Gotta give Elizabeth Holmes a bit of credit She sure doesn't lack for chutzpah.

Elizabeth Holmes, the cool-as-a-cucumber, Steve Jobs dress-alike, It Girl genius, and fraudster par excellence who conned a lot of supposedly smart folks into investing in Theranos, her blood testing company, is serving a pretty hefty sentence for her fraudly ways. She's gotten some time off for good behavior, but she's still looking at another 7.5 years for her criming, which largely revolved around faking test results, and using equipment not her own, to falsely support Theranos' positioning as a groundbreaking innovator when it came to blood testing. 

So she's not out of prison for a while. And it doesn't look like she's quite out of the blood testing game, either.

That, or Billy Evans, her partner and the father of her two kids, has independently and coincidentally come up with an earth-shattering new approach to doing diagnostic health testing. And he's looking for investors.

Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”

A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab. The device that Mr. Evans’s company is developing is a rectangular contraption with a door, a digital display screen and what the investor materials describe as tunable lasers inside.(Source: NY Times)

Hmmm. Walks like a duck. Quacks like a duck...

Not that Evans couldn't have decided to get into the diagnostic testing biz all on his lonesome. After all, he's not a science guy, but he does have a degree from MIT (in Econ, the dismal science). He's worked at LinkedIn, and at Luminar, a self-driving car company, so there's that. 

Still....

So far, it looks like a lot of investors are taking a pass. VC James Breyer - a smart enough money guy to have gotten into Facebook early on - isn't opening his pocketbook:

...“for many of the same reasons we passed twice on Theranos.”

“In diagnostics, we’ve long held that the difference between a compelling story and a great company lies in scientific defensibility and clinical utility,” he wrote in an email.

Michael Dell's investment group also decided against.

But Haemanthus is scoring a few investment wins:

The one investor who could be identified in public records is Matthew E. Parkhurst, the part owner of a Mediterranean tapas bar in downtown Austin and other investments. 

Could a tapas bar owner have better investing instincts than Michael Dell? Inquiring minds...

Rather than focus initially on human testing, Haemanthus is going after the pet diagnostic market, possibly because there's less regulation. 

Haemanthus' marketing materials make no mention of Elizabeth Holmes. (Surprise, surprise.) But the idea of her having no involvement here strains credulity, that's for sure.

And however compelling the core idea may be, however valuable it would be to have better and more efficient means to test for disease, who in their right mind is going to invest in a company that's got someone doing time for defrauding investors hovering in the wings?

Gotten give Elizabeth Holmes a bit of credit. She sure doesn't lack for chutzpah. 

Hey, Klarna: karma much?

In April, I posted about a truly dreadful experience I'd had with Eventbrite's AI customer support.  While this was the very worst I've encountered with non-human support, mostly I find it's only good for something pretty straightforward that I could probably have figured out for myself in about the same time. So kinda/sorta served me right. Kinda/sorta.

Anyway, my belief is that while AI is coming, and in some instances is already here, there are plenty of places where it is most decidedly not ready for prime time. 

But Klarna - a fin-tech company that offers "buy now/pay later" consumer financing - was pretty darned convinced that AI was where it's at. To the extent that, in 2024, it announced that it was replacing 700 human customer service reps with AI.

Fast forward a year of living dangerously and:

Klarna Group Plc’s co-founder and CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has admitted the fintech giant’s aggressive use of artificial intelligence in customer service has backfired. “As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” he said at Klarna’s Stockholm headquarters. (Source: LiveMint)

In other words, you get what you don't pay for. So now Klarna is looking to replace AI with flesh-and-blood customer support reps. Of course, it still looks like they're intent on cheaping out, as they're trialing a "new model" in which people aren't actual employees, but Uber-like, log in when they have time and "provide service on demand."

“We also know there are tons of Klarna users that are very passionate about our company and would enjoy working for us,” Siemiatkowski said. He emphasised that from both a “brand perspective” and “company perspective,” it is critical to “always” give customers the option to speak to a human.

Well, better late than never. At least for the time being, as the company is still plenty high on AI. 

“I feel a bit like Elon Musk,” the Klarna CEO quipped, “always wanting to say it’s going to happen tomorrow, when it’s going to take a little bit longer. I think it’s very likely within 12 months.”

Question: who in their right mind these days think feeling "a bit like Elon Musk" is a good thing? Answer: the quipping CEO of a company that's bought the AI bullshit. (Not that AI won't prevail in a lot of sectors, for better or for worse replacing tons of humans. But I call BS because a) AI ain't there yet; and b) a wide-eyed, wholesale "just do it" embrace of AI without being thoughtful and planful about what AI can actually do, and what AI's actually going to mean, is NOT a good thing. 

Meanwhile, Klarna is looking at nearly $100 M in Q1 losses, caused in part by the failure of many of their American "buy now/pay later" customers to repay their loans. Oh. (Source of this info: Futurism)

Looks to me like a double karma whammy: giving a big smooch to AI ain't paying off, and the kind of folks who need to pay off,  $100 purchase, with four payments may not be particularly good credit risks. Go figure. (Maybe Klarna could use AI to figure out the worthiness of their customers.)

--------------------------------------------------------------

Image source: HD Blog. 

Oh, what have they done to the smiley face?

One of my home town of Worcester's many contributions to the greater good is the smiley face. 

It was "invented" by one Harvey Ball, a graphic artist who designed it as a morale-booster for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in 1963. Ball, who never trademarked his creation, was paid $45 for his freelance work, which took him about 10 minutes to come up with. (I just saw on Wikipedia that Harvey Ball was a graduate of South High School, where my father - who was a few years older than Ball - also went to school. Yay, South High!)

Anyway, I started high school - not at South - in 1963, and somewhere during my high school years, the smiley face started becoming a thing. A classmate who likely had a parent who worked at State Mutual got a hold of a bunch of the little tin smiley face pins and gave me one. Which I often wore tacked onto my hunter-green uniform jumper. 

An aside on State Mutual: A decade later, home from my long European travel adventure and not yet moved back into Boston, I had a Kelly Girl job there. My task was to sit at a rotary typewriter and type the letter B on a multi-carbon form. All day, everyday. I worked with a handful of other "girls" in a little pod that was separated out with file cabinets from the huge open-concept office floor, one of a number of similar pods, chocked full of "girls," that here and there broke up the giant floor. The only men on the floor worked in offices off to the side.

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, our boss announced that we were in for a treat. Mr. Big - the company president - and a few of his minions, were going to be stopping by.

When she spotted them nearing, she hissed "Sit up straight, girls." 

Mr. Big stuck his head into our little pod and, without making eye contact, waved his hand vaguely our way and said "Merry Christmas, girls."

After he left our boss sighed and said, "Wasn't that wonderful? He doesn't have to do that for us."

In case you were wondering why morale at State Mutual Life Assurance needed any boosting. 

We were not, however, issued smiley face buttons. He may have left us some of those nasty red and green sprinkled sugar cookies. 

Over the years, the smiley face has become ubiquitous.

I was neither a lover nor a hater. It did make me smile, so more of a love, I guess. And I was tickled that it came from Worcester. And really tickled when, a few years ago, the city's new AAA Red Sox team, the Woo Sox, adopted Smiley as a mascot. (Of course I have a smiley-face Woo Sox cap.)

And, of course, once the smiley face (in all of its manifestations) became an emoji thing to add emphasis and color to your texts, I became a pretty regular user, frequently punctuating my texts with some smiley face variant. 

Turns out the OG image doesn't necessarily spread tidings of comfort and joy. Not to everyone out there, anyway. When it comes to the young folks, Gen Z:

Instead of conveying happiness, the grinning yellow face is now seen as dismissive, passive-aggressive, or straight-up sarcastic.

And if you’re sending it to younger colleagues or friends, it could be rubbing them the wrong way.

Hafeezat Bishi, a 21-year-old intern, recently told the Wall Street Journal that she was taken aback when her older co-workers used the smiley emoji in emails and texts.

“I had to remember they are older, because I use it sarcastically,” Bishi said, explaining that she often views the emoji as conveying a “side-eye smile” rather than genuine enthusiasm. (Source: NY Post)

Who knew? Not I. 

When it comes to communications, every generation does its own thing. And Gen Z is certainly welcome to theirs. (Oh, you kids!) But I kinda sorta feel a bit sad that they're changing the meaning of Worcester's own smiley face. 

Personally, I will continue to use it to convey happiness. Let others interpret it as they may.

--------------------------------------------------

Image source: Wikipedia.

The Pencil Mine

I see that among the other daffy things he wants to do, the current occupant of the Oval Office wants to bring back coal mining. Which is interesting, because there haven't been all that many coal miners since, like, forever. It's almost like wanting to bring back buggy-whip makers, overlooking the fact that buggy-whip makers don't die of lung disease or get crushed in cave-ins. And buggies and whips don't cause all sorts of nasty old pollution, so there's that.

Anyway, at its peak a bit over 100 years ago, there were nearly 900,000 coal minors in the US. As natural gas and oil became more prevalent, and as mining became more efficient, there were fewer and fewer coal miners. By 1950, there were fewer than 500,000; these days, there aren't even 50,000. 

I understand that coal dying out as the fuel of choice did mean the loss of good paying jobs (albeit miserable and dangerous ones) and the hollowing out of communities. But bringing back coal mining and the handful of jobs that come with - however you position coal as "clean" - isn't the answer to restoring economic health to struggling areas.

But reading about Trump's desire for more manly, tough-guy coal-mining jobs got me thinking about other forms of mining. 

And while I was thinking about other forms of mining, what to my wondering eyes did appear but a story about a graphite mine in my home turf of Worcester County, in the town of Sturbridge. 

The mine has all sorts of history embedded in it. 

Originaly, the Nipmuc tribe had used graphite to make paints. But in 1644, John Winthrop Junior, son of Massachusetts's first governor, bought the mine. I guess this made him the first nepo baby in American history, but, alas, Junior didn't quite make the fortune he anticipated - "the mine's supply dwindled," and in 1784 the Winthrop family sold their stake. 

It's not clear who took the mine off of the House of Winthrop's hands, but in 1928, Frederick Tudor of Boston bought the mine. And here's where it gets a bit more interesting.

A fellow named Joseph Dixon worked for Tudor at the time. Dixon went on to found the J.D. Crucible Company. Maybe the word "crucible" was not great branding - who knows what a "crucible" is? So J.D. changed the company's name to Dixon Ticonderoga. As in the Dixon Ticonderoga yellow pencil, an item which we've all had in our possession at some point of another, what with college boards and Sudoku. 

Dixon's timing was good:

With the start of the Civil War, the pencil quickly began replacing ink and quills on the battlefield, as soldiers wrote to their family and friends at home. By the end of the war Dixon's company was making some 86,000 pencils a day. (Source: Worcester Telegram)

The mine in Sturbridge was not yet played out, but it's not clear how much graphite they contributed to the lead in the Dixon Ticonderogas. But there are ties to Dixon and the mine through Tudor. 

Tudor, by the way, employed men who "were direct descendants from slaves and Indigenous peoples," including the mine's foreman, Guy Scott. Not the main part of the story, but worth penciling in. 

As is the fact that the revival of the Dexter series - Dexter: New Blood - was filmed in part around and about the Sturbridge lead mine. 

The mine makes several appearances in the 10-episode series, including as a potential place to dispose of a body and home to a hibernating bear, unhappy to have been woken from slumber.

Quite a history for a little Worcester County mine. Wonder if they'll start trying to revive the lead mining industry here. Sure, we're a blue state, so Trump's not that interested in reviving squat for our ilk, but most of the lead in Dixon Ticonderoga pencils comes from Sri Lanka. Can't let those guys keep showing us up! Let's slap a 200% tariff on them and see how we can get back in the penicl mining game. 

Laid Off

I've been laid off three times.

None of them were classic "here's your pink slip" layoffs, but still...

In retrospect, the first time I was laid off, I was actually fired. I was the VP of Marketing for a small company. (Did we even have 100 people?) We weren't hitting our numbers, and we were going to let ten or twelve people go. I'd been with this outfit, through many ups and downs, for about ten years, weathering many lay-offs, but this was the one I was most deeply involved with.

The company's president and I were discussing how we were going to position the lay-offs to the survivors, and got into a pretty heated argument about it. It ended with me telling him, "You say what you're going to say. I'll say what I'm going to say. We'll see who they believe." Well, one look at his face and I

realized I was a goner. Sure enough, I had made my way onto the list. But I was prepared. Within hours of our meeting - after trying to reach him by phone (he'd fled after our convo) to confirm my suspicion - I'd gotten confirmation that I'd made the list. This was a Friday. On Sunday, I came in and cleared out my desk. I walked in on Monday and just told my now former boss that I'd just come in so he could get rid of me in person.

Turns out it was actually a good thing for my career and for me personally, but at the time I was pretty much in shock.

I'd been there a long time, and invested a lot of myself in trying to help that goofy little company make it. I was hurt and bereft for a good long time, even though I had a very good package and a ton of support, including from the much larger company which had recently acquired Goofy Inc. (Within a week after I got my pink slip, they sent me down to their user group to meet their marketing team to see if there was any opportunity there. There wasn't, but it still felt good.)

For lay-off Number Two, I had volunteered for separation. It was a large company that was having quarterly layoffs on its way to bankruptcy. There were rumors that the coming layoff was the last one where the packages would be any good. I'd had it and wanted out. The problem was that I had just been one of the chosen mid-level managers who'd taken part in a ridiculous week-long offsite at Babson College, where we took skinnied down business classes and tried to figure out how to save the company. Trouble was, no one who'd participated in this event was allowed on the layoff list. Well, I went to every more senior personage I knew and asked them to help me get on this list. The night before the big layoff, my boss told me I'd succeeded. 

I came in the next day to a bloodbath, but there were so many heads rolling, my boss didn't want to bother rolling mine. I finally figured out how to surrender my laptop and Palm Pilot and grab my severance package (as promised, pretty good!), but it was sort of weird laying myself off. (Fired? I quit!) My biggest memory of the day is seeing all those (including a handful who'd been part of my group, some my direct reports) carrying their boxes out in tears, and saying my goodbyes to them. That and the fact that someone stole the Palm Pilot off my desk before I'd had the chance to turn it in.

The third time, the company I was working for was undergoing a pitched battle between the short guys in senior management and the tall guys in senior management. My boss was part of the tall guys, and they were about to lose. They were about to sail him out the door, but wanted to get rid of his pet direct reports first. The three of us knew we were going, but weren't sure of the timing. Anyway, on layoff day, the three of us were on instant messaging when I (working from home) texted the group "Incoming from Andover." I was getting the call. A few minutes after I was canned, my friend Sean texted "Ditto." Followed by John. 

I worked at HQ, but Sean and John were elsewhere. (The company was an agglommeration of multiple quasi-related small tech companies located throughout the country.)

As it turned out, both Sean and John had non-refundable flights into HQ the following week, so we decided that our last act in office would be to invite everyone we worked with to a going away party the next week. After all, they were all going to be in town for the offsite we were no longer invited to, so why not? The party was a blast, and two of the still-standing tall guy execs picked up the tab.

By this point in my career, I'd had it with corporate and had long planned to start freelancing (which soon I was doing with Sean and John, as it turned out). So I was more than happy to get the hell out of that place, even though the package was crap.

I worked with Sean and John for a few years, and then we went our separate days, but I had a pretty successful freelance business doing marketing writing for tech companies for many years. (I finally retired last December, once I hit 75.)

A few times when I was freelancing, I was let go - quasi-laid off - by a company where I'd been getting regular work for years. It was mostly due to a change in management and/or budget contraction. But oddly, I found it more wounding than when I'd really been laid off. 

Anyway, even when I was happy to lose full-time or freelance work, there is something unsettling about being without work.

There's the worry about money, of course. Will I ever work again? There's the loss companionship, the loss of purpose. Self doubt can creep in. Is it me? (Nah!) Why me? (Why not?)

My career was in high tech, and I know precious few people who weren't laid off at some point or another. It just came with the territory. 

For all of them - including myself - it all worked out for the better. Seriously, if you're working for a place where they're having layoffs, you're generally better off moving on. (Even if the next place is going to eventually have layoffs as well.) The tension of working in a place with repeated layoffs - and in my experiene, layoffs are seldom one-offs - can be agonizing. Better off gone!

Anyway, I hadn't thought about layoffs in a while, but then I saw an article about a young woman who decided to build a community of layoff-ees. 

Melanie Ehrenkranz, 35, started [her newsletter] Laid Off last August, about a year after she lost her job at a financial technology company that has since closed. After being laid off, she said, “I didn’t really feel like I had access to a community or to stories of layoffs outside of a group chat with two of my former colleagues.” By the time she introduced the newsletter, Ms. Ehrenkranz, who lives in Los Angeles, had started working for Business Class, an online entrepreneurship course created by the “#Girlboss” author Sophia Amoruso, where Ms. Ehrenkranz is still employed. (Source: NY Times)

She now has 9,000 subscribers, and provides a forum for those who've lost their jobs. 

Good for you, Melanie Ehrenkranz! 

Back in the pre- early-social media days, I guess I created my own platform and started blogging with Pink Slip, often about layoffs. But it was mostly an outlet for me to write stuff every day, and I've stuck with it now for nearly 20 years because, well, I like to write stuff every day. 

Laid Off’s Q&A interviews touch on topics people sometimes avoid when talking about unemployment. Ms. Ehrenkranz’s go-to questions for subjects include “What were the reasons given for your layoff?” and “What was the first thing you did after getting laid off?” She said the newsletter’s tone was meant to be edgy and fun; a tagline on its website reads: “The coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off.”

Maybe I'll head over there at some point and see what they have to say. For old time(r)'s sake. 

-------------------------------------------------

Image source:  Mondo

With friends like these...

As if Trump destroying the economy and democracy weren't enough, coming along for the ride to help things along is AI, which Musk and the other multi-billionaire boys club tech bros (Thiel, Andreessen, Zuck, Bezos et al.) just dying to replace any and all way, shapes, and forms of human endeavor with AI. 

Which is going to be oh, so great for those who own the AI engines and/or are exploiters of the technology, busy figuring out how they're going to switch from having to pay living, breathing sentient employees - who bitch, and procrastinate, and make demands, and take paternity leave - to deploying AI and robotics to write the code, write the proposals, generate the copy, whip up the meal, serve the diners, make the engineering plans, run the numbers, sue the bastards, design the products, manage the projects, haul the shipments, drive the Ubers, make the diagnoses, treat the patients, and everything else that humans presently do. 

So AI ain't going to be so great for the millions of people who actually need jobs. Oh, there's some vague promise of having all that free time. But all that free time compensated for how? Billionaire boy tech bros don't seem all that keen on paying taxes to keep a bunch of loafers in clover. And, assuming that we're paid so that we can keep consuming and become the me's we were meant to be, what are we supposed to do with all that glorious free time? Have ChatGPT write poems for us? Have a robot walk the dog? (Why not just get a robot dog, while you're at it? Nothing to pick up after.) 

Anyone who's seen anything written by bot knows from the wooden prose that results that AI ain't quite there yet. (Not that plenty of people haven't written wooden prose on their own.) Anyone's who's lazily relied on Google AI Search for their first pass at finding some info out can attest to the fact that plenty of times what comes up is erroeneous. And we've all read about autonomous vehicles that haven't quite figured out how to make a left turn getting into an accident.

But when AI comes - and "they" (the billionaire boy tech bros) want it to come big, come now, and come unregulated - won't it be grand? 

I sure wish "they'd" spend more time worrying about the practical and ethical implications of AI rather than just fool rush into it. (And destroying the planet while they're at it. AI is an amazingly greedy consumer of energy.)

Well, optimistically/naively assuming that "they'll" figure out how to take care of the huddled masses, will it really grant us more quality time to spend with friends and family?

Fuggedaboudit!

At least if it comes to spending quality time with friends of the blood, sweat, and tears variety. 

Mark Zuckerberg does want us to lave loads of friends. But there's a slight catch:

He sees a world where Americans will use AI chatbots across the Meta universe to build these AI friendships.

"I think as the personalization loop kicks in, and the AI just starts to get to know you better and better, I think that will just be really compelling," Zuckerberg said on Dwarkeh Patel's podcast. "One thing, just from working in social media for a long time, is the average American has fewer than three friends, [people] they consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's like 15 friends."

Zuckerberg insists that the average person wants "more connectivity," a more meaningful connection than they have. (Source: Yahoo Tech)

I know I've written about it in the past, and I really can't come up with any novel ways to express it - maybe I should try ChatGPT? - but I really don't think that someone can have a meaningful connection with an AI. And if they do, well, that's just plain sucky and sad. 

That being said, Zuckerberg is cognizant of the fact that the idea of AI companionship is still super green in society.

"Is this going to replace in-person connections or real life connections, and my default is that the answer to that is probably no," he says. "I think there are all these things that are better about physical connections when you can have them. But the reality is people don't have the connection and they feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like."

In my human experience, whoever and wherever you are, however intro- or extraverted you may be - the majority of people hunger for human connection. We may not want or need 15 friends, but most of us want someone to grab lunch and a good old-fashioned gossip with, someone who smiles when they see us, someone who'll give us a hug. We want the occasional catch-up phone call. The no-talk walk with someone at our side. The colleague who knows just what that eye-roll means. 

We get these connections from our families and friends, from school, from work, from church, from where we live. And I know that some people don't have all that much connection, and really want more.

But JFC, there are lots of ways to make connections without resorting to AI ones. If you don't have family and friends, no school, no work, no church, no neighbors, there are still things you can do. Like volunteer. Or go to a concert or lecture and start chatting (not ChatGPT-ing) with the solo person you're sitting next to. Join a book club. Play softball. Stroll around someplace where there are people. Stuff envelopes for a campaign. Get out and play Pokemon Go, for chrissakes. 

Take an online course. Play an online game. Join an online bookclub. 

One of the beauties of the Internet is that you can make connections (and reconnections) with human beings anywhere. Someone who shares your interests, your viewpoint, your whatever. 

Sure, there are pitfalls: exploiters, bad guys, sick puppies who'll take advantage of the lonely. 

But I really hate the thought of people relying on non-people for connection. It is just so sad. 

Zuckerberg says there's a stigma around AI companionship, and his hope is that, over time, people will "find the vocabulary as a society to articulate why it is valuable and why the people that are doing these things are rational about doing it and how it's adding value to their lives."

Sure, it's "adding value," but I think most people would be a lot happier if they tried a little human-ness first. 

Maybe I'm just too old for this stuff, but I really don't want to live in this world where most everyone has 15 "friends" who aren't really human.

Dance floor rage? People are so unhinged!

I'm sure that being a CEO is exceedingly stressful. There's keeping your company solvent in an uncertain economy, the uncertainty exacerbated by an erratic POTUS you likely voted for. If your company is publicly traded, there's watching the performance of your stock price, in an uncertain market, etc. There's making sure you're doing as well as your fellow CEO's compensation-wise, which means making sure that your haul is at least at the average of 200 times what the average worker is paid. And if you're the CEO of an insurance company, you're likely worried that some mad-as-hell person with a grudge and a gun is going to come after you - even if your company insures titles, rather than health.

Yep indeed. Although the pay tends to be pretty darned good, CEO-ing sure can be exceedingly stressful.

So you can't blame Kenneth DeGiorgio from wanting to get away from it all and take his wife Nichol on a Caribbean cruise.

And there he was, enjoying it all on Virgin Voyages' good ship Resilient Lady, boogying up a storm on the dance floor of On the Rocks, an onboard bar, when all hell broke loose.

Seems that Nichol DeGiorgio is not familiar with the concepts of MYOB and 'no skin off my nose.'

Observing another passenger dancing with his shoes off, she went over to the man - referred to by his initials only, and said:

“Look, we are all grown-ups here, can you put your shoes on?” Nichol told law enforcement she asked M.A.

M.A. didn’t respond well to the request, allegedly putting up his middle finger and stating, “Shut up, you fucking bitch.” (Source: Vice) 

Well, I'm not going to say that M.A. (Make America? Major A-hole?) exactly covered himself with glory here. Surely, he could have said something a bit more anodyne. Something like, "Look lady, I'm just trying to have fun," or "What's it to you?"

So I can't really blame Kenneth DeGiorgio for being a bit ticked off. But this degree of dance floor rage?

Hearing M.A.’s response, Kenneth was seen on surveillance footage crossing the room to confront him. He allegedly grabbed him by the throat and threw him to the floor.

M.A. alleged to authorities that Kenneth “used a lot of force” during the altercation. He additionally claimed that he felt as if his “throat was going to be ripped out.”

Additionally, M.A. claimed that Kenneth said, “I am going to fucking kill you.” 

Well, yikes to the yikes. Yes, M.A. was crude and vulgar, and he did utter fighting words of a sort. But since when is crude and vulgar deserving of death?

DeGiorgio was ordered to get back to and stay in his stateroom until the ship reached its next port of call, where the FBI was waiting for him.

Seems that "'violent crimes commited aborad cruise ships fall under federal jurisdiction.'" (Source: NY Times)

On reaching shore, Kenneth DeGiorgio clammed up (wouldn't talk to the FBI) and lawyered up. His legal eagles countered the allegations, stating that DeGiorgio was just protecting his wife, who felt intimidated. Well, I'm sure that I would have felt a bit intimidated if a big barefoot guy (no doubt drunk) called me a fucking bitch and told me to shut up. But I'd probably have just rolled my eyes, grabbed my husband, and said 'That guy is out of control. Let's get out of here." And, yeah, I probably would have said something to management on my way out the door.

The lawyeres further stated that, even though the charge is only that of a misdemeanor, DeGiorgio wants to be fully absolved of even this minor level of crime. And with good reason. I don't imagine it would ever come to that - espeically given that DeGiorgio is a well-heeled white guy. But he could face a year in prison if the assault is proven. 

Although maybe not all that amicably, I'm sure that this will all be settled. (And I'm guessing that alcohol played a considerable role on both sides here.)

But, day-um. Dance floor rage? I guess it happens. I seem to remember that the late (but not lamented) Patriots' star Aaron Hernandez was implicated in a pair of murders precipitated by someone nudging/dissing Hernandez on the dance floor of some club. 

Still, it's just crazy cray. 

I thought cruises were supposed to be relaxing, not death traps.

People are so unhinged these days. And that apparently includes those stressed-out CEOs.