Wondered, Wandered

Another pair of words often confused with each other.

To wonder is to think about something uncertainly.  I wonder whether it will rain today?  It also means to be filled with the possibilities of something; that's the branch of meanings that lead to wonderful. 

To wander is to move around with no definite destination.  Frank has been wandering around Florida for ten years.

I wish I knew the etymology of these two words; they may have common origins for all I know.  In these times there's no excuse for remaining ignorant; I leave it to you to look up the origins of each of these words.  If this was a regular podcast, I could give you a week, and then supply the etymologies next week!

A New Story I Just Read

I have just finished reading the first installment of a series of several books.  It's really one long adventure, but there are advantages of breaking up the story into installments.  For one thing, if you split the story into, say, three chunks, and the same 20 readers read all three books, at least you can claim that you sold sixty books!

Anyway, the story is about a dragon, that can shape-shift into a girl.  It's complicated; when she's in girl form, she can change just one arm into dragon limb form, and so on. 

This first volume was really fun to read, but I had felt that it should take place in medieval times, wherever it is set, and (in my mind) it doesn't make sense for the people to say things like: "Okay."  In any case, this first volume 'The Dragon's Squire' is fun to read.  Modern English is nothing like medieval English; the dialog of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, for instance—which would have been very satisfying to read in Dragon's Squire—would be actually fake, scholastically.

It is so disconcerting to find that my expectations of dialog in fiction are in fact anachronistic.  So I would be sad if the author (Jada Fisher) hated me for what looks like a big fat black mark against their book, and they would be justified.  But read it; it is a well-written book.  Lots of clichés, but that makes it easier to read. 

Confession: I have written period fantasy stories, too.  The dialog I wrote was a little stilted; it only avoided modern contractions,  like 'won't', instead of 'would not' (or will not). 

I'm also reading another stir: Starchild, by J Washburn.  It's too much action for me; most of you guys would like it. 

Kay

Hi, Y'all!!

For some reason, I'm getting lots of clips in my Fb feed of people talking with southern drawls!  One of them is by a woman called Shae Haesics—I'm not sure whether the name is a joke or for real—and another was by a tiny little girl saying something about "Vaycayshn Bahbul Skewl".  They're both too cute for words, so I haven't made a fuss about them, but I have to wonder: what makes the algorithm think that I'm a good prospect for a long-term commercial relationship?  I mean, I don't buy anything!

Anyhoo, the MAGA movement (I mean the  former MAGA movement; it's difficult to know what each splinter of it thinks these days) was based on opposition to various things, most importantly, Federal Bureaucracy.

When MAGA got rich backers, though, Maga had to fine-tune their agenda so that it appealed to those business interests.  So, of course MAGA is opposed to environmental legislation; they support gasoline-powered machinery.  They probably get a lot of financial support from the petroleum industry. 

But they need votes, and they need moral support.  Fox News has supported them for years; and the MAGA philosophy generally attracts

• Bikers, motorcycle gangs, people who own enormous muscle cars.  Those sorts of people see anyone driving hybrid cars, cyclists, and Nerds, generally, as their natural enemies. 
• Guys, thugs, and abusers of women.  This is not because trump goes out of his way to be mean to women, (though we know that in his old teen pageant days, he used to ogle young women, and was in the fringes—or even in the thick—of the teen grooming business); but nowadays he probably doesn't have a lot of testosterone to waste.  So these kinds of guys are recruited into ICE, and directed towards bullying immigrants. 
• Anyone who finds it difficult to follow long, complicated arguments.  The arguments for Global Warming, and the argument for the Greenhouse Effect are of this kind; they're multiple effects chained one after the other.  Of course, the most convenient thing for MAGA types is to go on the warpath against Nerds, generally.  My computer friends tell me that Nerds are different from Geeks.  Geeks are specialists in any field that requires study.  So Musk, who made his money by wrangling geeks, was punching a little over his head by getting into the game of US electoral politics, and actually getting his hands dirty with destroying the government databases for the social service administrations.  It didn't go according to plan, as far as I can see, so he did a quick fade as soon as he could, leaving the president and his geniuses—like Hegseth—to pick up the pieces. 

Trump really dislikes trans people, which is not a surprise, because I'm a little suspicious of them, too.  But for the rest of the LGBTQ rainbow, it's a little baffling to us post-boomer generations as to why these people are so up in arms against them.

But now Gavin Newsom has gleefully flung the gauntlet at the prez, and has resorted to tweeting the same sort of unhinged tweets that used to be Trump's exclusive province!  I would have thought trump is delighted to read them, and he probably is, but for the sake of the Bros, he's gotta pretend he hates them. 

TikTok-ization of Teen Culture

First of all, I have to confess that, as far as Fb is concerned, I’m a teenager.  Or maybe a twenty- something.  I strongly believe that my posts are very adult —in the sense of grown-up, and nothing in my Fb transcript would indicate a tendency toward teeny-ness.

But the random crap that they throw at me in my ‘feed’ is very teen-oriented!

Of course, they put these so-called ‘reels’ in my feed.  Somehow, they know I’m more into seeing random girls than random boys.  But all the girls behave as though some boyfriend is videotaping them for YouTube.  They all preen the same way, they flip their hair the same way, when they’re done, they signal to their photographer the same way!  And they’re all delicate and feminine the same way—except for the ones who’re shuffle-dancing, or doing gymnastics, who’re usually muscular.

I’m sad to see that the vast majority of girls are determinedly girly.  Even the ones with nice muscles, and a solid set of six-pack abs, are girly.  So sad.

But I saw an awesome painting, though. 

Kay

Earning off Popular Media

Nobody is surprised that those whom we call "influencers" earn money from the various Meta websites, e.g. Facebook and Instagram.  (The owners—Meta—probably makes more.)

I get a lot of posts from a 'Sophie Cunningham' site.  I love Sophie C to bits, but the content on the site has somewhat questionable grammar, so I'm fairly sure that Sophie does not really own the site; if she does, she has outsourced the maintaining of it to someone else.  Probably someone she has only met on the Internet.  They may give Sophie some of the money they make off the Fb posts; they actually may not; maybe Sophie has a media manager who handles all that. 

Some celebrity accounts sound suspiciously like they're from abroad.  You 'like' one of their posts about some athlete you admire, and they immediately shoot back: "Send me a direct mail, dear. <3  I will answer, for sure."

Regardless of the provenance (the genuine-ness) of the Fb accounts of star athletes, I really find it difficult to deal with sports fans.  Some of them are OK; they make reasonable comments about the players, about specific games, about the statistics.  But the vast majority of fans commenting on posts about celebrity players are, well, really hard to stomach.  Abusive.  Illogical.  Racist.  Ignorant.  Uncalled for.

Maybe, in about 10 years from now, once I get to understand the game—maybe with the help of my little basketball-playing cousin!—I might be able to tolerate these ignorant comments.  But, my goodness; they're on a par with the off-the-wall comments from MAGA types.  Incidentally, there are highly racist comments made against Caitlin Clark, denigrating all aspects of her game, many of which I cannot understand, being as much of a basketball atheist as I am.  But there are numerous comments insulting black athletes!  Of course, they could be posted by foreign trouble makers inciting racist feelings.  

A Pic from Fb

 

The caption was:  This looks like a gang I don’t mind joining!!

Complexity, and The GOP

There are two things that people dislike: Complication, and Complexity.

Make it simple!

This is the plea of those of my students who don't like to think too hard!  I understand; these are the kids who think of Literature as just stories!  Of course they are.  And a movie is just a videoclip.

Complication:  These are the things that students—and people, generally—believe that have been needlessly thrown in, just to make life difficult for them. 

Like: divorce.   OK, it's not working out; it's splitsville.  Does the couple share a bank account?  <Ohh, why did you have to bring that up?>  Are there children?  <So what; cut them in half!>  Does the woman have the ability to support herself?  < Oh.> Is there a house?  A car?  How to divide those up?

Complexity.  This is when all the processes that make something work are themselves complex.  In the end, there really isn't a huge difference—from the point of view of a student who hates complication.  From my point of view, complexity is when there are wheels within wheels.  A complication is just an extra wheel!

Simplifying Government

Maga—and the Tea Party—have historically (that is, for a long time) held the view that government is needlessly complicated.  They have never liked all the complications of *Federal Income Tax returns; * Food and Drug regulations; * The Legal System; * Elections, including the much-hated Electoral College; *Higher Education; and so on.  So the GOP has promised to simplify government. 

Half of them don't care how it works.   The other half doesn't know,  and doesn't want to know.  This means that, if they take a chainsaw to, say, Welfare, they don't know what is going to result.

The same with Tariffs.  These are expensive customs rates tagged on to anything that's imported.  Most of what we buy—at Walmart, or on Amazon—are imported.  This is obviously going to make life more expensive for everybody who shops at those places.  So why did Trump do it?

His theory was that once imported things got too expensive, people would buy US-made goods.  Unfortunately, US-made goods are also expensive.  Our workers make $7.50 an hour, while Chinese and Indian workers make much less. 

By now, most of my readers have probably gotten bored to tears!  This boring subject describes some of the most complex processes in trade and government: it's called Economics.  I don't know much about it; but Trump has got someone to give him a summary of what he needed to know.  

But Trump is easily bored, so I bet it was a super, super, soooper simplified course in Economics.

To cut a long story short, it (the Tariff adventure) didn't go as expected.  The US made a lot of enemies; we wriggled out of a lot of obligations; and we've arranged (supposedly) to depend on Coal and Gasoline for our energy needs.  And now, we wait.

Trump is a Big Picture kind of guy.  Other fellows must now step in, and make these dreams happen.  (If trump decides to do it himself, it could be very messy.)  But unfortunately, guys who know the finer points of energy production, etc, are unlikely to want to work for trump. 

Kay

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