Pun Salad

An egregious copyright violation on my part, probably. You can get the book containing that cartoon and many more at Amazon.

Also of note:

• The difference between "radical left" and "fundamentally conservative"? It's the difference between the worldviews of Donald Trump and Jacob Sullum. Here's Jacob: The federal circuit's 'radical left' tariff decision is fundamentally conservative.

  After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against his tariffs last week, President Donald Trump repeatedly condemned the decision, which he preposterously warned will ruin the country unless it is overturned by the Supreme Court. "It would be a total disaster for the Country," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday. "If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America." He reiterated that claim on Sunday: "Our Country would be completely destroyed, and our military power would be instantly obliterated," he said, adding that "we would become a Third World Nation, with no hope of GREATNESS again."

  Trump's prophecies of doom were not the only implausible aspect of his comments. He described the appeals court as "Highly Partisan," implying that its reasoning was driven by political affiliation, and said the majority was "a Radical Left group of judges," implying that the result was dictated by ideology rather than a careful consideration of the facts and the law. Trump reflexively criticizes judges who rule against him in language like this, to the point that he has stripped ideological labels of all meaning. In this case, his complaints are especially hard to take seriously.

  Not for the first time, probably not the last, here's a summary of Harry Frankfurt's theory of bullshit:

  Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false.

  If you look up "bullshitter" in the dictionary, it's illustrated with a picture of… oh, gosh, you can guess, can't you?

• We gotta find this guy, Theo Ligarchy, and lock him up! Noah Rothman detects False Bravery (NR gifted link) in a Senate candidate just across the river:

  On paper, Maine Democrat Graham Platner is the answer to all that ails his party.

  His gruff demeanor and everyman vestiary convey easy and authentic masculinity — a plus in a party that has struggled with that and is shedding male voters as a result. He’s an oyster farmer and a Marine Corps veteran, which could help court the working-class voters who have abandoned the Democrats in the Trump years. And with his pledge not to support Chuck Schumer’s Senate leadership and the liberty with which he criticizes Democrats as well as Republicans, he’s sufficiently anti-establishment in a populist age. It’s no wonder he’s already raised a boatload of cash in his bid to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in the fall.

  Beyond the aesthetic trappings that thrill the Democratic consultant class, however, Platner also clearly wants to be recognized for his bravery. He postures as a dauntless truth-teller, one of the few willing to name the forces of domestic subversion standing in the way of progress. “I am not afraid to name the enemy,” Platner said to a packed auditorium over the weekend while campaigning alongside self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. “The enemy is the oligarchy.”

  What are the chances Graham and Bernie (et al) are copying their rhetoric from last century's "liquidation of the kulaks as a class?"

• Beware: level-headed calm sanity ahead. I mean, that's the impression I get from Marty Makary's (U.S. commissioner of food and drugs) WSJ op-ed: Why the FDA Doesn’t Support Covid Boosters Forever. (WSJ gifted link)

  The Food and Drug Administration last week approved Covid-19 vaccines for adults over 65 and for people 6 months and older who have one or more risk factors that put them at high risk of severe Covid. This regulatory framework brings the U.S. in line with peer nations—in France such vaccines are recommended for people over 80 and in the U.K, for people over 75. Although the world has moved on to a risk-tiered approach, some in the American medical establishment are maintaining their blind faith in a strategy of boosters for all in perpetuity. They should consider these six points:

  First, the FDA can approve products only if we believe there is substantial certainty that the benefits outweigh the risks. Currently, we don’t have that confidence for, say, a seventh Covid shot for healthy 12-year-old girl who recently recovered from Covid.

  You'll have to click over for the remaining five points. Marty's argument could be flawed, but his opponents seem to resort to hyperventilating fearmongering pretty quickly.

  Disclaimer: I'm (well) over 65, so I'll voluntarily get vaxed at some point soon.

• You would need a heart of stone not to laugh. TechDirt is degenerating pretty quickly into a reflexive Trump-bashing site, even for issues that seem not remotely tech-involved. But every so often, there's a ray of sunshine, and here's one from Karl Bode: Wired, Business Insider Editors Duped By Completely Bogus ‘AI’ Using ‘Journalist’ Who Made Up Towns, People That Don’t Exist.

  The rushed integration of half-cooked automation into the already broken U.S. journalism industry simply isn’t going very well. There have been just countless examples where affluent media owners rushed to embrace automation and LLMs (usually to cut corners and undermine labor) with disastrous impact, resulting in lots of plagiarism, completely false headlines, and a giant, completely avoidable mess.

  As U.S. news outlets fire staffers and editors, cut corners, and endlessly compromise integrity and standards, they’re also apparently being increasingly duped by people using AI to generate bogus stories and reporting. Like this freelancer for Business Insider and Wired, who apparently tricked editors at both publications into publishing several completely fabricated stories written mostly by LLMs.

  Karl bemoans journalists "being duped by AI", but … geez … it's been over twenty years since a "respected" news organization was completely duped by a Microsoft Word forgery.

• Good advice. And it's from Jeff Maurer, whose "Komedy Klass" suggests to the wannabe-funny: Let the Universe Do the Hard Work. Specifically, to write accessible funny stuff, work from the likely shared experience of your audience, and tweak it just a tad. His example is "Please Complete This Brief Survey About Your Recent Elevator Ride" from Rob Black:

  What was the main purpose of your elevator trip?

  ⚪ Business
  ⚪ Pleasure
  ⚪ Just taking a test drive
  ⚪ Get away from my spouse/roommate

  Which answer best describes your experience riding this and other elevators?

  ⚪ This was my first time riding any elevator.
  ⚪ I have ridden elevators in the past, but this was my first ride in this elevator.
  ⚪ I have ridden this elevator a few times before.
  ⚪ I live or work in the building and have a season subscription to the elevator.
  ⚪ I live in this elevator.

  Rob also parodies something that irritates me no end:

  How likely are you to recommend this elevator to a friend or coworker?

  ⚪ Very unlikely
  ⚪ Unlikely
  ⚪ Whatever
  ⚪ Likely
  ⚪ Very likely

  I always answer "very unlikely". Who recommends stuff to friends and coworkers? Let them find out on their own!

Recently on the book blog:

This is the third book in Mick Herron's "Slow Horses" series, detailing the continuing misadventures of the disgraced-but-still-technically-MI5 spies headquartered at Slough House. Headed up by the semi-dissolute (and also disgraced) Jackson Lamb. I got a chuckle out of this description:

It's said of Churchill that he'd catnap in an armchair with a teacup in his hand, and when he dropped off the noise of the cup hitting the floor would wake him. He claimed this was all the rest he needed. Jackson Lamb was much the same, the difference being he used a shot glass rather than a teacup, and didn't wake when it fell.

Season Three of the TV show was based on this book, and there were some differences, but they got pretty close. The main plot driver: one of the Slow Horses, probably the one with the fewest character flaws, Catherine, gets kidnapped off a London street. Why? Her kidnappers demand that River Cartwright (another S.H.) invade MI5 headquarters and filch a revealing file from their archives.

Things don't go well for River, but as it turns out, that file is not what the bad guys wanted anyway. Nothing is quite what it seems at first. Or even second.

I plan to keep reading the book series in order, even it it means that I'll read the books before they make shows out of them. As a consumer note, I recommend reading books one and two before this one.