Malcolm Gladwell's out there making sure everyone knows that he sucks in every conceivable way.
Prof of Multilingual Comp @ AWC. Degrees in Creative Writing & Af Am Lit, Scholarship in Black Speculative Fiction. Ex-expat in Bangladesh & Mexico. Dork/weirdo. Nonbinary, any pronouns fine as long as you don't call me "Mr." or "Sir." From the Bay.
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Malcolm Gladwell's out there making sure everyone knows that he sucks in every conceivable way.
I am very, very bad at parallel parking. It is by far the worst of my driving skills. But also, holy shit man.
A miserable pedantic weirdo? Check. Sometimes right, but utterly insufferable when he is? Check. Coasting off something he did more than 15 years ago? Check. Less fun than a bowl full of spoiled cottage cheese/ Check!
The funny thing is that if we're being honest with ourselves, it seems pretty clear that the characteristics that make progressivism unappealing to "normal people," and what embodies all those characteristics, I'm pretty sure Nate Silver would be close to the top of the list.
Every time I see something about Rudy Giuliani, I am aghast once again to remember that this absolute dipshit motherfucker used to be my mayor. Like…what the actual fuck, for real.
We watched Anora last night. I loved Tangerine and The Florida Project, so it's wild – but really cool! – that the guy who made those movies went on to make a movie that won a zillion Oscars, including Best Picture.
Imagine not loving this dog.
Anyone surprised by this doesn’t know Newsom. This is literally how he launched his career and got elected Mayor of San Francisco — by beating up on the homelessness. But hey, that totally solved San Francisco’s homeless problem, right!?
A video of pro wrestling from 1975 came up in my Youtube feed, and I watched some of it because that's not really something I've ever seen. Mostly it's just kinda boring, BUT the tag team champs are two guys with crazy hair called The Mongols who are somehow announced as being from...Croatia.
Some jabroni.
I GET JOKES but also I need to say here that my daughter once recorded me ranting about why I couldn't stand Katy Perry so she could send it to her friends because she thought it was hilarious.
If I were a linguist, I would want to find out why people combine some words into one, but not others. Like...why do people write "highschool" all the time, but not "middleschool"? "Alot" but not "alittle"? "Apart" (which is also a word, but I mean when they really mean "a part" but not "aperson"?
Is he literally the only person who knew that he was there as a favor for Jericho and for no other reason…?
It is POURING in Yuma this afternoon. Been probably a couple of years since I’ve seen it rain like this here. Hell, it’s only rained a couple times in the last year, year and a half or so!
I really enjoy it when his parents are in on the bit. My wife, who sometimes watches wrestling but is very bad with names so remembers her favorites by nicknames or descriptions, calls him “the one whose parents hate him.”
Imagine being scared by…fictional lesbians.
"Swerve's House in the Middle of Our Street" lolololol. #ForbiddenDoor
More obscure than Aubrey Huff, but somewhat similar territory in terms of their awfulness: Mark Dewey.
When I first saw them all lined up in those uniforms, I cried out, "What the fresh British hell is this!?" But like...not in a bad way. If that makes sense.
Aside from everything else, it's "interesting" he's now done this with Pete Rose and Roger Clemens, but not said a word on Barry Bonds. I'm guessing Curt Schilling is probably next, if anyone is.
I was just trying to look up Edge/Cope & Christian – as a tag team – on Cagematch – and it doesn't appear that they have a tag team profile there!? The only tag teams I'm seeing for Edge are Rated RKO and a pre-WWF indie team he had with Sexton Hardcastle. Rarely in my life have I been this baffled.
We adopted a dog today! This is Olivia. She is a 4-year old lab mix, and she is the sweetest goddamned thing you will ever meet in your life.
Favorite albums of the year for the 2020s so far: 2020: Fetch the Bold Cutters, Fiona Apple 2021: Little Oblivions, Julien Baker 2022: Natural Brown Prom Queen, Sudan Archives 2023: Maps, billy woods & Kenny Segal 2024: The Thief Next to Jesus, Ka & The Past is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff
I’m out on an evening walk, and I’ve spent most of it thinking about developing a lesson to teach my Comp students about the difference between correlation and causation. This is the best version of how my brain works. There are some less positive ways it can go too, though.
I’m not familiar with storygraph, but I’ll take a look when I get the chance!
So Christian Cage was betrayed by his proteges, who are heels, but he's still a heel, but he's reunited with Adam Copeland, who's a babyface, and now Christian's proteges have allied with Luchasaurus, who got a big babyface pop on his return. I'm not even complaining, just curious where this goes.
I just saw a post on Reddit saying that Limp Bizkit is one of the best bands of all time. If you’re ever feeling down on yourself, just remember: you could be the person who not only had that opinion, but also felt the need to share it with the world.
Is it because places like IMDB list the episode number? But they also list the titles, so I still don't know.
One minor thing social media now for me that's SO WEIRD to me is how, with tv, people always use the ep# instead of title. Like, "In TNG season 4 episode 18...." I have clue wtf you're talking about. But if you said, "In the TNG episode Identity Crisis..." I would know. So like...Why? WHY!?
The Giants are hot garbage right now, but Jung Hoo Lee is still awesome.
I mean technically it's not the WORST because there's Xitter, but y'know.
To be clear: Juan Marichal is not dead. He's still alive at age 87. But especially after Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda's death last year, it's been upsetting to see – Marichal is pretty much the last legend left from that whole generation. Basically, fuck the entirety of Facebook. Just the worst.
Twice this season, shitty Facebook pages have posted that Juan Marichal (Hall of Fame ex-Giants pitcher) has died. And then Facebook's shitty algorithms have pushed them into my feed, even though I don't follow them and have never even HEARD of them.
Tomorrow marks the start of my 16th year teaching, by 8th year teaching on the community college level, and my 6th year teaching at AWC. All of these numbers totally baffle me, because most of the time I still feel like I've just started.
Have Gavin Newsom and Gul Dukat ever been in the same place at the same time?
Now reading — Paule Marshall’s last novel.
You love to see it. Fuck John Fisher forever.
It's constantly remarkable to me how much of conservative identity is based on being so fucking scared of made-up shit that they've talked themselves into believing somehow.
An exceptionally specific "we can't be friends if" that I hold very dear: we can't be friends if you dislike the book Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid.
Now reading. Jamaica Kincaid is the opposite of prolific, but every (very short) book I’ve read by her has been an experience…in a good way.
My summer break is officially over as of today. No classes til next Monday, and I don't have to be on campus until tomorrow afternoon...but still.
Now reading.
I was reminded of the Mercedes Mone / Hazuki match from Long Beach last year, and how awesome it was, so I went back and watched it again. It’s still awesome, and as a bonus in at least one shot you can see the back of my bald head…which is obviously very important.
It’s 117 degrees right now and that’s not my favorite thing.
I read more than half of this today. In part because this is my last week of summer break – but also because I couldn't put it down once I started reading. Ward is one of my favorite novelists – Sing Unburied Sing is a top 5 all-time novel for me – and this is just as good as her fiction.
Oh man. Intense memories of buying Boys for Pele from Amoeba (when there was only one of those) as soon as school got out the day it was released, playing it the first second I could, and being down its rabbit hole for…quite a while afterwards.
If you don't love Speedball as a wrestler and as a human being, I don't know what to say to you, man.
Now reading. I’ve had this book for years and wanted to read it for years…and Jesmyn Ward is one of my favorite novelists. Legit no idea why it took me this long.
12th round pick, too. Not a guy who was supposed to make it, but here he is, having a really nice rookie season at 27.
Christian Koss always seems like he’s having SO much fun on the field. You love to see it for a guy who spent 6 years in the minors out of college.
Lots of people, understandably, focused on the admittedly hilarious fact that the immediate first use case that tech guys go for is treating their spouses like an annoyance But I'd like to zoom out a little from the 'tell my bitch wife to shut up but don't make it sound like I hate her' angle
Now reading. It won’t take long, as it’s just one short story (plus an introduction by Zadie Smith that’s actually slightly longer than the story itself). But I want to revisit everything Morrison wrote.
I said so, so, so many times that the people of Bangladesh deserved SO much more than they were given. I hope they can finally get it. Joy Bangla. The country and people of Bangladesh are forever in my heart, and I hope so much that I'll be able to visit that beautiful country again.
I am grateful my family got to spend two years in Bangladesh. It is such a special place, and full of special people. Never in my life have I been to a place where I was greeted with such hospitality and kindness.
In writing this, I'm reminded of a line from N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy that I think of often: "Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don't lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place."
This year, I'm seeing many more posts from my Bangladeshi Facebook friends, this time commemorating the fall of Sheikh Hasina. Again, seeing these posts is so uplifting, because I see so much hope, and so much gratitude that he old dictator is gone, finally, for good. That alone gives me hope.
I'm hopeful that this election will be free and fair, and produce a truly democratic result. I don't know what that result will be. For the most part, the options available don't look that great, from myperspective as an outsider – but then again, I'm not Bangladeshi and the election is not for me.
There haven't been elections in Bangladesh yet, but they're scheduled for February of next year. If all goes well, they will be the first free and fair elections held in Bangladesh since Hasina's party, Awami League, won in a landslide in 2008.
But I was also deeply worried, because the thing about revolutions is that once they've won, you never know what comes next. A year later, I still feel the same way – still glad, still worried.
That all happened a year ago today (more or less, with the time zone shenanigans). When the government fell, I was glad, because it falling was a necessary precondition for any chance at a better, freer, more democratic future for Bangladesh.
This time, it felt like the dictator would finally fall. The first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was to check my phone, and I saw immediately that Sheikh Hasina had fled the country to India.
But those posts also expressed hope I had never seen before. There had been unrest, protests, calls for justice, calls for the government to step down before in Bangladesh, including in the time when we were there – but I saw so many people posting about how this time felt DIFFERENT.
They expressed worry and outrage, because, when the protest movement demanding justice and for Hasina to step down, many people were killed in retaliation – I've seen estimates of around 1,500 – and later reports confirmed that Hasina herself had ordered the use of deadly force against protestors.
From my perspective in Arizona, this all happened in the middle of the night. I went to bed the night before worried. I had been reading news reports, but also seeing posts on Facebook from former students back in Dhaka, as well as Bangladeshi expats I know living in the West.
Well, last year on August 5, Sheikh Hasina, then-Prime Minister of Bangladesh, fled the country to India, marking the fall of her government and the end of around 15 years of consecutive rule, following a popular uprising led by students across the capital and the country.
It's just after midnight in Bangladesh, so it's no longer August 5 there, but it still is here. Why does this matter?
LONG-ASS thread incoming – about Bangladesh, a country where I was lucky enough to spend two years, and which I love dearly.
I will never trust anyone who has seen Jung Hoo Lee and does not immediately love him.
...and what did Hulk Hogan think of immigrants?
I expected it to be heartbreaking from the subject matter, but man...I've got about 100 pages left, and a few chapters ago it just ripped me to shreds.
Apparently I forgot to post this when I started it about about a week ago. So: now reading (still). It’s really good. It’s also incredibly gutting and heartbreaking.
Another very cogent and helpful Google AI Overview I got today. God bless this wonderful and helpful technology.
Weird shit I find fascinating: The Giants' backup catcher is named Knizner, pronounced "kiz-ner." In 2005, they had a backup catcher named Knoedler, pronounced kuh-naid-ler. Two 21st century backup catchers with a kn- surname where the k isn't silent. Only I could possibly find this interesting.
For many years, I wouldn't watch or engage with WWE because of Vince. When he was finally out, I thought about giving it a shot. I didn't, mostly because I just don't have the time for that much MORE wrestling. But so many things have happened this year that have made me really glad I didn't.
When the Giants didn't re-sign Kris Bryant after trading for him at the deadline, a lot of Giants fans were furious. It was the best choice they ever made, though. He got 7 years, $182 million. In the first 3.5 years, he's only been healthy for 170 games, and in those he's got a -1.6 WAR. OUCH.
Hey Josh what were you like as a kid?
Watching the Giants play the Mets in Queens makes me miss New York so fucking much. It’s been 22 years since I moved away. About a decade since I visited. That makes me sad.
I’ve long irrationally liked him too. I just really enjoy his breaking pitches.
Catching up on Collision, and I was amused to see the Moxley/Darby fight spill out next to the L tracks with a train passing by. That's the Lawrence stop, which was just one away from our stop (Argyle). Used the Lawrence stop many times too. Am I famous!? I'm famous, right?
As a baseball nerd and a neurodivergent weirdo, I live for this shit. (Also I fucking love Tyler Rogers and will miss the crap out of him)
With the Giants trading Mike Yastrzemski and Tyler Rogers, I wondered who was now the longest tenured player on the team. Googled it. Check out the amazing job Google AI did answering. Thank god for this very useful and not at all comically inept technology.
Oh yeah, and he was also a stooge who betrayed a friend to stop an attempt at unionizing wrestling in the 80s. That too.
Oh no. All he did was be an awful person, lie constantly and be a hard-r racist who worried out loud that his family might be reincarnated as Black due to bad karma. I feel so badly for him for people disliking him because of his objectively terrible words and actions.
The first thing I'm thinking of these was that awful, pointless feud with Ogogo, which especially sticks out for me because I was at the show where that match happened, and man was that painful. But yeah it's very much not the only thing.
So if I'm reading this right, he's basically saying it would be okay to be disrespected in WWE, because that's "the Yankees," but not in AEW? That's....a take, I guess. I'm glad he's had so much success back in AEW, but I'm also glad he's gone from AEW cause a lot of what he did in AEW just sucked.
Some pictures from my walk tonight. The sunset was especially spectacular.
We finally got rid of them like a year ago but the other service in town isn't available at our new house and it's the fucking worrrrrrrst.
There is nothing more painful than having to call fucking Spectrum customer service.
One of the weirder things about Yuma: the oldest high school in town is Yuma High, home of….the Criminals. Really, that’s the team name. (There’s a story behind it, involving the school many years ago having to hold classes at the old Territorial Prison and being mocked for it. Still weird though.)
Hot tip: if you’re backing up, maybe look behind you because maybe someone’s there. Not that I pulled to the side of the road to park and the guy in front of me promptly backed right into me…that definitely didn’t just happen.
I thought this was the last week until our fall semester started. Just now, I realized that’s because I was looking at last week’s calendar. WE HAVE TWO MORE WEEKS. This is the greatest gift I could ever receive. 😂
Today in “man, that’s fucking wild” news: today is my parents’ 50th anniversary.
Actually, I'll say that this remains a fun bit of complete batshittery that was clearly the result of a lot of drugs, in the sense of "how the fuck did this actually get made and released!?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=pret...
Hulk Hogan was an entertaining weirdo whose work I enjoyed as a kid and teenager who also turned out to be a spectacularly horrible person. Now he's dead. Not much else to say.
One thing about our new house: we have a LOT less space to hang stuff on the walls. So I went a little nuts with the wall space around our bed. I like it, though! Some of the stuff is a little crooked, I know. Please don’t judge. It’s a work in progress. :)
I am so grateful for this because it means there is still a Major Leaguer older than me (by 12 days).
I haven't even used ChatGPT much, but when I have I've pointed out when it's wrong and when it did something shady, and it always is pretty much like yeah, you're right, I shouldn't have done that. And then it never fucking changes and it keeps doing the same shit. That's not "self reflection."
The good news: we moved into a new house today! The bad news: moving fucking sucks, oh my god! The good news: our oldest moved out a year ago so we didn't nee das much space, and this place will save us ridiculous amounts of money! The bad news: so much unpacking...and cleaning the old place. Oof!
I basically always think of this quote when I hear "Human Resources."
I've always hated the term "Human Resources" (being compared to iron ore does not make me feel warm and tingly), but somehow "Chief People Officer" is even worse.