The Reddit MeIRL crowd produces some of my son’s favorite internet snark — and provides a bridge between 16 y.o. consummate savvy and [mumble mumble mumble] technological cluelessness.
Here’s what he shared with me today:
May your day be one in which all your sneks are garters.
(And no, not that way. This is a family blog).
Here’s a little story to leaven the gloom cast by Nuremberg on the Cuyahoga*…
…I’d guess it’s kind of intuitive, but now we can point to Science! as we divide our fellow Americans into their respective Hogwarts houses.
Trump supporter: Slytherin
Those who recognize Trump’s cousinhood w. he who must not be named, and that Godwin fellow too — off you go. It’s Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffendor, as your particular talents and qualities lead you. [via Lenika Cruz at The Atlantic]:
…a forthcoming study from the journal PS: Political Science and Politicsmakes a better case for how lessons learned from fiction can influence people’s political preferences. The researcher Diana Mutz, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, found that Harry Potter book readers are actually more inclined to dislike Trump. This was the case even after Mutz controlled for variables such as age, education, gender, party identification, evangelical identification, and ideology.
The key question here is the arrow of causality, which is what Mutz’s study attempts to study. As Cruz notes in her write up,
There will always be limits to the usefulness of comparing real people to fictional characters. And so far, there has been only one other empiricalstudy exploring the political impact of reading Harry Potter (unlike Mutz, the researchers didn’t control for important factors such as political ideology.)
But it seems less specious to argue that the bestselling book series of all time could instill values that affected how its readers—especially its younger fans—now think about the world.
I’m not going to depend on my mastery of a Riddikulus! spell to deal with the real and deadly serious menace of the Republican nominee. But perhaps maybe the long-view approach to helping our Trump-dazed Wingnut-American fellow citizens is to hand them a book. (Or even better, the magnificent audio books for those long, dark, nighttime journeys of the soul.)
A boy can dream.
*Stolen from somewhere on the ‘Tubes, but I can’t remember where. Apologies to the author…
Image: poster for a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer, 1884.
Calling all Sokals!
I know this is a case of chasing easy marks, but still, I laughed.
Two teenagers visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and they came away…underwhelmed:
The teenagers, Kevin Nguyen, 16, and TJ Khayatan, 17, both of San Jose, had been left scratching their heads at the simplicity of some of the museum’s exhibits, including two stuffed animals on a blanket.
“Is this really what you call art?” Kevin said in an interview over the weekend.
TJ added, “We looked at it and we were like, ‘This is pretty easy. We could make this ourselves.’ ”
Cue the long-standing first reaction to a Pollack: “My five year old could do better!”
Nguyen and Khayatan, however, did the hard thing: put their ambition to the test. Theirs was no instant success:
Inspired during their visit on May 21, they experimented with putting a jacket on the floor and then a baseball cap, but neither drew attention.
Like any driven artist, the two persisted, until, the breakthrough!
Kevin then placed his Burberry glasses on the floor beneath a placard describing the theme of the gallery. He said neither he nor TJ did anything to influence museum visitors, such as standing around and looking at the glasses.
The linked article has a picture of what came next…;-)
Not that the creators could fully appreciate their success. One does have to sacrifice for art:
Within about three minutes, people appeared to be viewing their handiwork as bona fide art, though Kevin said that without his glasses, he could not see what was happening too well.
Give SFMOMA credit, though, for a sense of humor about the matter:
That would be a reference to this, I believe (as does the NY Times…)
Anyway — good times! And nothing to do with the ferret headed weasel (a sphinx for our times!), the senator from the north country, nor the lady whose nomination must not be acknowledged. So I guess this makes it just fun. Happy Tuesday, all.
*Well. Actually…they are, in exactly the sense that Magritte argued that his pipe was not.
Image: Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, between 1638 and 1639.
I get mail. This one came today, unsought, unanticipated, and unctuous, from some placement/staffing guy who clearly understands the extensive personnel needs of a writing teacher and sometime scribe:
I am representing the below talented professionals passively seeking their next permanent position.
“Passively seeking…”
I’m so using that one as soon and as often as I can. “I’m passively seeking my Nobel Prize in procrastination…”
(Actually, it made me think of Zombie Eyed Granny Starver Paul Ryan’s non-candidacy for president this year, but that’s another story.)
Consider this a safe-zone thread, with nothing to do with anyone whose initials are DT, BS or HC. Just take this as a glimpse of the more comfy* domestic absurdities that attend us every day.
*My fingers sped past my brain in my first attempt at that word: confit. Almost left it that way — I like the idea of confit absurdities.
Image: Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep, c. 1656-1657
This is how you deliver an admission letters:
What makes this even sweeter, from my point of view, is that the video was made by a current student and alum in my department.
Take this as an opportunity to ponder anything but Trump (and the rest of those luzers).
The sprout asked me to post this:
I think I’m raising my boy right, don’t you?
I simply love this:
Nothing like Auntie Beeb making sure we have all the news we can use.
I do not love this:
For comparison sake, here’s Tuesday’s shot (posted yesterday):
This is getting ridiculous. I’ve spent the morning looking at stuff like this, just to remind me that the at least an idea of beach exists:
Yup. I’m reduced to wader-porn. (That was taken at Reid State Park on Georgetown Island in Maine, for those that hang in that part of the world.)
Oh Dear FSM Make It Stop, redux.
Via the indomitable xkcd: 
Have to admit that it was…
beat…
beat…
beat…
before I snorted.
Damn that Heisenberg fella, always dodging about.
Got any good nerd/science jokes in your repertory? Put it in the comments, please.
…Or so it could be, in John Scalzi’s retelling. [h/t PZ Myers]
I want to drink in that bar.
All of which makes this a give Rush Limbaugh a feminazi sad kind of post.
Image: Francis William Edmonds Barking up the Wrong Tree, between 1850 and 1855.
Alternative announcements for the London Tube, voiced by the woman who does the real ones.
My favorite?
Number 6.
Though 10 has its partisans.
Discuss.
Images: Luigi Loir, Underground Railway, 1899
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