Q: Where do you research how not to cock things up with a typo?
A: At the pubic library.

They can't all be good. ("Was this building designed by Frank Lloyd Wrong?" seems like a pretty fun insult but I couldn't conveniently make it a Q&A joke.) Indeed, in spite of my efforts, attentiveness, experience, etc., humor is something I do not get right all the time. And I'm much worse at most everything else than humor (such like with grammar!), so it should come as no surprise that I get a lot of other things wrong too (to wrong too, with love)(to wrong too, canada?)(two to wrong toos don't make a to right too)(that was a two to too twain)(no actual twain; i beg clemens-y)(although I've certainly derailed my train of thought).

The topic was raised earlier this week when I commented on a friend's Facebook post to disagree with him, and quickly received a kind and reasonable reply explaining that I had overlooked the entire point of the post due to misreading something. Thus enlightened, I realized that my friend had been entirely correct in the first place, which I commented to acknowledge.

Another commenter chimed in to note the rarity of this on the Internets, where for whatever reason people are loath to acknowledge that they could ever make an error. I do have the advantage of living with Debbie who is right almost unreasonably often, to the point where I'm just used to going back to the thing I was arguing an hour ago and admitting that the results bear out that she was correct again - not that this will stop me from disagreeing with her next time.

THE PAIN SCALE OF WRONG

While there are many people who seem constitutionally incapable of admitting any error (or unconstitutionally incapable of admitting any error, see current president and his sharpie-enhanced maps and vengeance campaigns against anyone mistakenly targeted), for most of us the amount of pain that comes from admitting a belief is in error is tied to how closely we hold the belief.

As someone with a wide range of knowledge and a much wider range of ignorance, my past is filled with blatant factual errors, such as the time I was on stage and sang an entire improvised song about the island of Peru. It was a great song marred only by the fact that Peru is in fact a mountainous South American nation bordering Ecuador and Colombia. And Brazil and Bolivia. And also Chile. It's roughly as un-island-like as you can get while still having a long coastline.

It did not hurt me to admit I got that wrong, because improv songs are not noted for their factual rigor, because I do not pretend I know anything about geography, and because my worldview suffers no harm for Peru's island or non-island status. (although there's a lovely Peruvian restaurant in Lee called Alpamayo, if you're ever passing through the Southern Berkshires; I recommend the Lomo Saltado). Likewise, my being proved wrong yet again about the best way to deal with something in the kitchen, or admitting I misread a chart, does not threaten my worldview.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANG ERROR

The other week I was wrong about something that hurt a little more. I should stress (like we're not all stressed enough) that I was right about most of it, I just prognosticated incorrectly. I had a client who I was writing some LinkedIn posts for ask me to run them through AI to make them more viral. I pointed out that doing that sort of removes the point of hiring a person to write things, if you're just going to end up with AI-generated text that reads like all the other AI-generated text -- and people won't bother reading it because why should anyone bother reading something a person couldn't be bothered to write?

Well, I was mostly right. I was right that it's pointless to hire a writer and then just have
AI write your text, and I was right that the resultant copy is obviously AI and not worth reading. But I was wrong that people wouldn't read it. In fact, I regret to say that in spite of the fact that it was obvious AI slop that looks like much of the other AI slop on LinkedIn, the post performed perfectly well.

Which, in retrospect, I should have guessed from Facebook, where people persist in reposting AI-generated garbage all the time. I still see it frequently even though for a while now every time I see someone share AI slop, I tell Facebook not to show me posts from that person for a month. Yet people keep sharing AI-generated videos. And compared to not knowing geography or cooking, it hurts my worldview a little more to admit that actually many people can't distinguish between human-created content and AI slop and/or just don't care. (I feel like "and/or just don't care" is an early favorite for problem of the year.) And maybe the world deserves social media sites continually overrun with fake videos and auto-generated promo posts. (as opposed to insights from Dr. Octopus, which are Otto-generated promo posts)(you can always find Spiderman villains on the web)

ONE HERTZ DONUT WITH SPRINKLES

And then way at the top of the scale, you have the existential hurt. For the past few years I’ve been reckoning with the fact that two of my more strongly (and longly)(and bound to get the friction on-ly) held beliefs about the way one ought to exist in the world (non-violently, championing free speech) led me to argue with friends some years ago for a position (no punchline) that now seems wrong, even though at the time it 100% felt to me like an inescapable conclusion from sound moral principles. Admitting I was wrong about that means admitting a big chunk of my core beliefs somehow led me to a bad conclusion, and that kind of painful reflection is gonna have to wait for another newsletter because it's time to get boring.

LET'S GET BORING!

As an honorary member of the Dull Men's Club, it's my pleasure to bring you this week's column:

* The Good Old Boring Days

Like many Americans, I am nostalgic for the boring days gone by. When people talk about "the good old days", that's what they mean, which is why it's really boring whenever you listen to your parents talk about the good old days. They're actually the boring old days. In fact, if you've watched old documentaries, you'll know that America used to be so boring that the whole country was in black and white.

People were so bored in those days, even their songs were just about imagining more exciting lives. Frank Sinatra sang a whole song about what it would be like to be different animals and became the most popular entertainer in the country, thus earning his nickname "Chairman of the Bored". Leo Tolstoy once wrote "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That's because contentment is boring, and unhappiness is interesting. Hence the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".

We are living in interesting times. The times are far too interesting!

This may come as a shock to our younger reader, but government used to be considered very boring. It was almost stereotypically the most boring thing you could think of, because it was a bunch of policy nerds focused on the boring minutia necessary to keep the country running properly and within Constitutional guidelines. You could turn on C-SPAN to go to sleep and generally expected politicians to be very boring to listen to. I'd argue that government should be boring.

Meanwhile, our government for the past year has been exciting to an unprecedented degree... and frankly, it's exhausting.

I yearn for the days when the president addressed Congress and you would ignore it because of course whatever boring political nonsense was going on, it wasn't going to ruin your life. Now you have to keep up with political news because you might want to know things like, "Surprise, you no longer have healthcare! Children will no longer be vaccinated and measles is back! We've suspended the First Amendment and you're not allowed to protest the murder and harassment of your neighbors!"

IF CONCLUDING THIS ISSUE NOW IS WRONG, I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT

I have stayed up far too late again and so I'd better send this before collapsing. As always, I thank you for reading, will be back in two weeks with another column, and I hope you enjoy the six more weeks of winter that the Weather Rodent has given us. Tonight’s menu is Chinese takeout for dinner, so maybe I'll get some pork stir-fry.

Happy Ground Hog Day,
Seth