According to The Onion, you should not attend your office holiday party. But if you choose to ignore that advice, you should under no circumstances give a six-hour lecture on how “Christmas” evolved from pagan winter solstice celebrations. Because “No way you can cover all the relevant material in less than eight. And remember to build in time for questions!”
I say make it a double header and add at least two hours on the pagan origins of Halloween (spoiler: it involves fairies). I can see how this can be annoying, but it is still more interesting than whatever it is that “normal” people jabber on about. Perhaps what we introverts fail to understand is that the jabbering itself is the point, and the content mostly irrelevant.
If I share an article from The Onion, it is usually obviously a joke. But this one go me thinking:
WASHINGTON—In a unique and limited-time offer for residents of the United States only, Janet Yellen announced Tuesday that Americans could use the promo code “THANKS” for 10% off all U.S. goods and services. “This Thanksgiving, the Treasury Department is saying ‘thanks’ with an exclusive promotion just for taxpayers, whether you need a pack of gum or a new car,” said the Treasury Secretary, who urged Americans to redeem the incredible offer today, stating that she herself was a “huge fan” of U.S. goods and services, which she loved and used every day. “To activate the promo code, simply mention it to your Whataburger cashier, or visit treasury.gov/thanks. Remember, this amazing offer won’t last, so now’s the time to book that babysitter or finally get that Instant Pot! Again, that’s T-H-A-N-K-S, thanks.” At press time, Yellen added that the offer was for first-time U.S. consumers only.
So we’ve had this massive economic stimulus – both monetary (low interest rates and “quantitative easing”, which they tell us is printing money but without the paper or coins, just willing it into existence in our computers collective imaginations) and fiscal (the government borrowing money from itself, which is another way of willing it into existence, and giving it back to us as “tax credits”, sometimes by writing numbers in our bank statements each month). A problem with just passing out money is that the poor spend it, but the middle class only spend some of it and the rich just squirrel it away. So you end up with a ton of money sitting around, and then when demand picks up people suddenly start spending it, and the real economy cannot ramp up supply instantly, so prices have to go up to put the brakes on demand and bring it down to what is actually supplied. Gradually, we hope supply will catch up and the rate of price increases will stabilize to something normal. The danger is that people can keep demanding higher wages, companies can raise prices to cover the higher wages, and the system can spiral from there. There are time lags built into the system so while prices can change quickly, the underlying real economy can’t.
So at least part of the root of the problem is people saving rather than spending stimulus money, then spending it unexpectedly. So what if you did have a kind of money that was more like a coupon with an expiration date, and could only be spent in a limited time frame, but not saved long term. Businesses would have to be willing to accept it. This might be accomplished easily if they knew they could use it to pay their taxes. The federal government would have to agree to accept the temporary money as tax payments, and get state and local governments to fall in line. People will speculate on anything given the chance, so the government might have to outlaw complex trading arrangements or derivatives based on the temporary currency.
The Onion has a fun (and obviously made up and satirical, people) “interview” with Dr. Fauci on how he is “planning for the next pandemic”. It turns out he is planning to intentionally create the next pandemic, as he has all pandemics for at least the last few decades. This is some laugh-out-loud, yet dark, humor people.
The Onion: What type of P.P.E. will be needed for this one?
Fauci: Everyone will need oven mitts and a chef’s hat to ward off infection…
The Onion: What are you most excited about the next pandemic?
Now that crosses the line. We can let a million or so people die, especially poor people and babies once they are born and properly baptised, and poor people shouldn’t be having babies to begin with, but don’t mess with our dogs!
If there is any doubt in your mind, that was also satire. I like puppies, and babies, and babies playing with puppies. These are things I hope will continue for some time.
Thank you, Onion, for the laugh out loud moment caused me by the following sentence:
Boston Dynamics representatives also announced the creation of a robot capable of using artificial intelligence to build a robot army without any of the researchers noticing.
I was having kind of a rough morning, and then this made me laugh out loud! Of course, the “panel of presidential historians” is being completely deadpan, if not actually serious. I did not independently verify that this is an actual picture of Joe Biden’s actual dog at the actual White House. If so, it does seem like they could afford to get a dog groomer in there. Then again, maybe it fits the image that an “average Joe” would have an average dog. And the dog looks perfectly happy to me, like it’s lying on a porch looking out over the Smoky Mountains with someone strumming a banjo in the background.
Newsmax guest attacks Biden's dogs for being dirty and "unlike a presidential dog" pic.twitter.com/6yitOlM765
Donald Trump’s lawyers do not make sense. Could this be a strategy?
Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m a lawyer defending a [former President of the United States], and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that [smoky back room in the Capitol] deliberatin’ and conjugatin’ the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed [Senate], it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
This is a little confusing – if I win I get to eat all the M&Ms that everybody else touched with their sweaty germy hands and in some cases had loose in their pockets?
To state the obvious, March 2020 was all about the coronavirus. At the beginning of the month, we here in the U.S. watched with horror as it spread through Europe. We were hearing about a few cases in Seattle and California, and stories about people flying back from Italy and entering the greater New York area and other U.S. cities without medical screening. It was horrible, but still something happening mostly to other people far away on TV. In the middle of the month, schools and offices started to close. By the end of the month, it was a full blown crisis overwhelming hospitals in New York and New Jersey and starting to ramp up in other U.S. cities.
It’s a little hard to follow my usual format this month but I’ll try.
Most frightening and/or depressing story:
Hmm…could it be…THE CORONAVIRUS??? The way the CDC dropped the ball on testing and tracking, after preparing for this for years, might be the single most maddening thing of all. There are big mistakes, there are enormously unfathomable mistakes, and then there are mistakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people (at least) and cost tens of trillions of dollars. I got over-excited about Coronavirusdashboardsandsimulations towards the beginning of month, and kind of tired of looking at them by the end of the month.
Most hopeful story:
Some diabetics are hacking their own insulin pumps. Okay, I don’t know if this is a good thing. But if medical device companies are not meeting their patient/customers’ needs, and some of those customers are savvy enough to write software that meets their needs, maybe the medical device companies could learn something.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
I studied up a little on the emergency powers available to local, state, and the U.S. federal government in a health crisis. Local jurisdictions are generally subordinate to the state, and that is more or less the way it has played out in Pennsylvania. For the most part, the state governor made the policy decisions and Philadelphia added a few details and implemented them. The article I read said that states could choose to put their personnel under CDC direction, but that hasn’t happened. In fact, the CDC seems somewhat absent in all this other than as a provider of public service announcements. The federal government officials we see on TV are from the “Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases”, which most people never heard of, and to a certain extent the surgeon general. I suppose my expectations on this were created mostly by Hollywood, and if this were a movie the CDC would be swooping in with white suits and saving us, or possibly incinerating the few to save the many. If this were a movie, the coronavirus would also be mutating into a fog that would seep into my living room and turn me inside out, so at least there’s that.