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The Big Disappointment or Why AI Is an Oxymoron
The lights and outlets in certain rooms would blink on and off. Being an old house in which the previous owner and a few before him had died, I assumed that the place was haunted. Then the blinking became more frequent and lasted longer until the day these “haunted” circuits stayed off. At this point,…
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The Neurodivergent House Painter
When my wife hired a guy to pressure wash the front of our house, she warned me that he was “probably on the spectrum.” She also said that he was a magician. I instantly thought of GOB in Arrested Development and rolled my eyes. “I’ll be at work when he gets here,” she said. “So you’ll have…
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What Is Taste? A Study in a Boy of Ten
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of taste (taste is a function of class) may be true when taste is determined by classist institutions like The New Yorker. But Bourdieu’s reduction of taste to keeper of the social pecking order falls short of defining what taste truly is. This study attempts to determine whether taste can exist outside of class distinction…
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Beyond Useful: The Dreaded Windows Upgrade
For years I feared the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, or should I say, I feared having to fix what the upgrade would break. From past upgrades I knew that my settings, third-party apps and technical familiarity would be replaced by unnecessary “improvements.” That I would fall for another Microsoft ruse to enable Windows…
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Journey to the Center of the Manosphere
A good friend invited me to a local Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the interim UFC Lightweight Championship. He explained that it was going to be a big night. The contestants were Paddy Pimblett and Justin Gaethje, both former champions with nearly untarnished records. One of them, “Paddy the Baddy,” was a celebrity for his…
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From Public Intellectual to Public Persona
When Jordan Peterson was at the peak of his popularity, I made the mistake of bringing up one of his ideas—”Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them”—at a family get-together. We were on the subject of kids’ propensity to do dangerous, destructive and disrespectful things and our role as parents…