Socio-political philosophical musings
I love this meme despite its lack of basis in reality – sort of like the ten per cent of the brain myth.
I’m busy writing, but this meme crossed my feed, and I thought, “What better time to share?”
I’ve been reading and re-reading A Sane Society, but reflecting on it here is too much of a commitment, so I’ll delay gratification.
I came across this meme and had to share it. The perils of homophones.
“It was a simoke misunderstanding, but one with harsh consequences.”
This will be hilarious to approximately no one. I meant to ask ChatGPT 03-mini-high to generate a dummy record. My compromised motor skills and concomitant keyboard typing skills rendered this as funny. Except for the redacted bits in bold, this is the code it rendered. Pay special attention to the query’s input variables highlighted in post-production with 🤔 emojis.
Let’s add a bit to write a funny record per the schema.
import mysql.connector
import logging
import uuid
# Configure logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
def test_mysql_connection():
"""Test MySQL connection and write a funny record to the database."""
logger.info("Testing MySQL connection...")
try:
logger.info("Connecting to MySQL...")
connection = mysql.connector.connect(
host='127.0.0.1',
user='[user]',
password='[password]',
database='[database]',
port=3306
)
if connection.is_connected():
db_info = connection.get_server_info()
logger.info(f"Connected to MySQL Server version {db_info}")
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT DATABASE();")
record = cursor.fetchone()
logger.info(f"Connected to database: {record[0]}")
# Insert a funny record into survey_results
funny_survey_data = {
"session_id": str(uuid.uuid4()),
"q1_response": 1,
"q2_response": 2,
"q3_response": 3,
"q4_response": 4,
"q5_response": 5,
"q6_response": 6,
"n1": 42, 🤔
"n2": 69, 🤔
"n3": 420, 🤔
"plot_x": 3.14, 🤔
"plot_y": 2.71, 🤔
"browser": "FunnyBrowser 9000",
"region": "JokeRegion",
"source": "comedy",
"hash_email_session": "f00b4r-hash" 🤔
}
query = """INSERT INTO survey_results
(session_id, q1_response, q2_response, q3_response, q4_response, q5_response, q6_response,
n1, n2, n3, plot_x, plot_y, browser, region, source, hash_email_session)
VALUES (%(session_id)s, %(q1_response)s, %(q2_response)s, %(q3_response)s, %(q4_response)s,
%(q5_response)s, %(q6_response)s, %(n1)s, %(n2)s, %(n3)s,
%(plot_x)s, %(plot_y)s, %(browser)s, %(region)s, %(source)s, %(hash_email_session)s)
"""
logger.info("Inserting funny survey record...")
cursor.execute(query, funny_survey_data)
connection.commit()
logger.info(f"Funny survey record inserted with ID: {cursor.lastrowid}")
except mysql.connector.Error as e:
logger.error(f"Error during MySQL operation: {e}")
finally:
if 'cursor' in locals() and cursor:
cursor.close()
if 'connection' in locals() and connection.is_connected():
connection.close()
logger.info("MySQL connection closed.")
if __name__ == "__main__":
test_mysql_connection()
Been focusing on programming (read: debugging). I’ll leave you with this from Poorly Drawn Lines.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles a couple of times for a sum total of perhaps 15 years. The first time, I loved it. The next time, I was running on fumes. The first time, I was in my twenties – the second time in my forties. What a difference perspective and ageing makes. In my twenties, I was a pretty-boy punk-ass who owned the club scene on the Strip. In my forties, I was a wage slave.
This morning, I heard a country song on Insta with a line claiming ‘there are nines and dimes in all 50’, and it reminded me of a phrase we used when I lived in Los Angeles – ‘LA 7’. This is constructed on the egoist, sexist notion that if you were a 10, you’d have already moved to LA. If you still lived in, say, Iowa and were considered a 10, the exchange rate to LA would be a 7.
Then, I thought about the LA-NYC rivalry and wrote this article with some help from ChatGPT.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Los Angeles and New York City—those bickering siblings of American exceptionalism—believe themselves to be the sun around which the rest of us drearily orbit. Each is utterly convinced of its centrality to the human experience, and neither can fathom that people outside their borders might actually exist without yearning to be them. This is the essence of the ‘Centre of the Universe Complex,’ a condition in which self-importance metastasises into a full-blown cultural identity.
Let us begin with Los Angeles, the influencer of cities. L.A. doesn’t merely think it’s the centre of the universe; it believes it’s the universe, replete with its own atmosphere of smog-filtered sunlight and an economy powered entirely by dreams, green juice, and Botox. For L.A., beauty isn’t just a priority—it’s a moral imperative. Hence the concept of the ‘L.A. 10,’ a stunningly arrogant bit of mathematics whereby physical attractiveness is recalculated based on proximity to the Pacific Coast Highway.
Here’s how it works: a ’10’ in some picturesque-but-hopelessly-provincial state, say Nebraska, is automatically downgraded to a ‘7’ upon arrival in Los Angeles. Why? Because, according to L.A.’s warped ‘arithmetic, if she were a real 10, she’d already be there, lounging by an infinity pool in Malibu and ignoring your DMs. This isn’t just vanity—it’s top-tier delusion. L.A. sees itself as a black hole of good looks, sucking the beautiful people from every corner of the earth while leaving the ‘merely pretty’ to languish in flyover country. The Midwest, then, isn’t so much a place as it is an agricultural waiting room for future Angelenos.
But don’t be fooled—New York City is no better. Where L.A. is obsessed with beauty, NYC worships hustle. The city doesn’t just believe it’s important; it believes it’s the only place on earth where anything important happens. While L.A. is out perfecting its tan, NYC is busy perfecting its reputation as the cultural and intellectual capital of the world—or, at least, its part of the world, which conveniently ends somewhere in Connecticut.
This mindset is best summed up by that sanctimonious mantra, If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Translation: if you survive the daily humiliation of paying $4,000 a month for a shoebox apartment while dodging both rats and an existential crisis, you’ve unlocked the secret to life itself. New York isn’t about looking good; it’s about enduring bad conditions and then boasting about it as if suffering were an Olympic sport. In this worldview, the rest of the world is simply an unworthy understudy in NYC’s perpetual Broadway production.
And here’s the thing: neither city can resist taking cheap shots at the other. L.A. dismisses NYC as a grim, grey treadmill where fun goes to die, while NYC scoffs at L.A. as a vapid bubble of avocado toast and Instagram filters. It’s brains versus beauty, grit versus glamour, black turtlenecks versus Lululemon. And yet, in their relentless need to outshine one another, they reveal a shared truth: both are equally narcissistic.
This mutual self-obsession is as exhausting as it is entertaining. While L.A. and NYC bicker over who wears the crown, the rest of the world is quietly rolling its eyes and enjoying a life unencumbered by astronomical rent or the constant pressure to appear important. The people of Iowa, for example, couldn’t care less if they’re an ‘LA 7’ or if they’ve “made it” in New York. They’re too busy living comfortably, surrounded by affordable housing and neighbours who might actually help them move a sofa.
But let’s give credit where it’s due. For all their flaws, these two cities do keep the rest of us entertained. Their constant self-aggrandisement fuels the cultural zeitgeist: without L.A., we’d have no Kardashians; without NYC, no Broadway. Their rivalry is the stuff of legend, a never-ending soap opera in which both cities play the lead role.
So, let them have their delusions of grandeur. After all, the world needs a little drama—and nobody does it better than the cities that think they’re the centre of it.
To whom it might concern…
Ever get in one of those moods?
You ever get in one of those moods?
Do you ever get in one of those moods?
I do. I am tired of the object pronoun, whom.
I started a petition to eliminate whom from the English language.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have fond memories of the word—a couple anyway.
For Whom the Bell Tolls — Hemingway or Metallica
Even if we retain it in a written form, perhaps we can agree to relinquish the M to silence. We’ve already seeded the ground. When M precedes N at the start of a word, it’s silent, so that gives me hope. Although to be fair, most of these words are silent in general. Save for mnemonic, I can’t say I’ve used any—and how often have I written mnemonic save for now? just to show off. Nobody ever seems to notice the silent M in pterodactyl.
But verbally, aurally, in speech, perhaps we can all agree to drop to M—a sort of silent protest. Sure, there are other solutions. Take ‘With whom am I speaking?’ as an example. When is the last time you said or heard this?
I mean, Who am I speaking to? only shifts the problem to be defended by other language guardians. And it’s really a grammar challenge of two fronts, as—misplaced, split infinitive aside—it should rather read Whom am I speaking to? That limits the battle to a single front. But if we drop the M-sound—making it silent—, we can slide this one by. And who would have the occasion to write ‘Whom am I speaking to?‘ This is something that is a spontaneous speech act.
Of course, we could simplify it further to SMS-speak: who dis? or who dat? This might create as many problems as it solves. Some people seem especially interested in the SMS-driven decline of the English language.
If you are tired of pretentious, dusty old words, help me to usher this one into retirement.
If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
As much as I love Wittgenstein’s quote on language, I find it vastly more amusing aside the lion of Gripsholm Castle in Sweden. Because as talking lions come, this one is certainly more unintelligible than most.
I also appreciate Daniel Dennett’s retort that if we could manage to communicate with this one talking lion—not, of course, this lion in particular—that it could not speak for the rest of lionity. (Just what is the equivalent of humanity for lions?)
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” ( [Philosophical Investigations] 1958, p. 223) That’s one possibility, no doubt, but it diverts our attention from another possibility: if a lion could talk, we could understand him just fine—with the usual sorts of effort required for translation between different languages—but our conversations with him would tell us next to nothing about the minds of ordinary lions, since his language-equipped mind would be so different. It might be that adding language to a lion’s “mind” would be giving him a mind for the first time! Or it might not. In either case, we should investigate the prospect and not just assume, with tradition, that the minds of nonspeaking animals are really rather like ours.
Daniel Dennet — Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (p.18)
Busy, but not too busy to post another trolly challenge. Why make it a dilemma?
Honeybadger don’t care either.
Why so serious?
Why is it that one can only justify reason through reason?
Yellow card infraction.
Within Critical Thinking, we have a useful definition: Grounds, for example, for making a claim to knowledge or holding a belief. (Black et al., 2012, p. 100.) In fleshing out this particular definition, let’s consider what grounds means within a critical thinking context. It means, “a reason or reasons for a claim or belief,” (Black […]
Justification
Tom Guald wants us to imagine a different trolly dilemma but with a different pair of options. Or is that the telephone game?
This image speaks for itself, so I won’t editorialise at the moment, save to mention that I find the scenario to be hilarious. If you like eating cooked lobster, I suppose that the elephant path makes the most sense—and of course, the elephant is already on fire.
What would you do?
Philosophics 