2020 Word of the year

Excoriate.

you can't get away from this word, in 2020. Seems like hardly a day goes by that I don't see it in some piece of brand-new writing that day.

So you can bet on it taking the prize.

I haven't seen it getting mis-used, yet, but it's getting OVER-used.

Oil prices.

Well, they're scary.

Bad scary. Yesterday (April 20) WTI went to zero. ZERO. Think about that. If the price is zero it means NO ONE is buying.

I used to live in TX, where the "awl bidness" drives the economy. You know folks there are freakin out.

I've found this nifty little javascript widget that shows you what WTI is. There's another for Brent. I'm guessing that the negative means futures contracts being cancelled.


WTI stands for West Texas Intermediate, fwiw.

Concerts I've been to

This is a newly created list, so it's incomplete, and incorrect, but covers a bunch of them:


There are of course other things...seen Brave Combo at least a couple more times that didn't involve tickets, so I can't list them properly...once was Lewisville TX, outside at some amphitheater, another time was outside at the Kennedy Center, DC.

At some point soon I will photograph the concert tickets and add them to the shows.
Click here
Later: OK, I'm missing like 3 tickets. There's a concert I've remembered and forgotten, no ticket there, and there were several shows that were free and didn't HAVE tickets. So this is pretty complete.

July 5 2021. And now the viewer is broken. As amazing as the Internet actually is, this sorta shit bugs THE CRAP outta me.

Interesting internet goings on

I own/run an ISP.

We finally reached the situation where I needed some IP addresses of our own, so now I have 16 of them.

Not actually that hard to acquire, interestingly enough. Not trivial, but not hard. And not too expensive. But now they're mine. Mine, I tell you!

Will be putting some things online a little closer to my own control. That's going to be interesting. Will be able to do my own actual web-hosting, as opposed to using someone else's service.

New things to learn, that's for sure.

Books and awards and humor...

This morning I read this in WaPo. Apparently "romance writing" and the "writers association" and its annual awards have somewhat the same "diversity" problem as movies and Oscars.

And this early comment:

"Riff on idea by J Jencks- Romance writer’s convention. Murder most foul. A Scottish vampire (inspired by Nora Roberts comment), and a Chinese woman who is a world famous detective, team up to disaggregate the formulaic romances churned out at an increasingly rapid (and vapid), rate. They discover the great publishing houses of romance writing have harnessed AI robots to gobble all romantic scenarios ever engaged in by humans since they climbed out of the trees; and even before. (Many deaths and injuries there but that’s another tale.) a disgruntled writer, about to disclose, is killed and our two heroes must discover why. Meanwhile, the robots start falling in love with each other. Another subset of romance lit is born. Robot Romance. Future idea: “Like a Machine; When Humans and Robots Cross Over” Wow..."

I'd read that book. Needs a better title than "Murder Most Foul"

But hmm...robot porn? Discrimination against cyborgs?


Chinese detective: Judge DeeDee? Charlene Chan (or Number One Daughter)? Mrs Wong?

--

The Nora Roberts comment is in the article: “Jesus, it’s fine to have a character fall in love with a freaking vampire, but not someone of the same sex?”

(no idea who "J Jencks" is, maybe some other commenter?)