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Weak XXIV

11 June 2025

No. 4,953 (cartoon)

You’re a maggot-infested piece of weasel shit.

I will not stand for such an insult!

Then please have a seat, I’m just getting warmed up.

12 June 2025

Coexistence Through Extermination and Extinction

Neal Stephenson is one smart guy any way you wanna slice him. He’s the hombre what came up with the idea of avatars interacting in virtual worlds, as well as a name for it: the metaverse.

He’s still at it thirty-some years later with an interesting perspective on artificial intelligence. (That’s something I’m ignoring since it’s mostly smoky hype and smudged mirrors with a few scraps of intelligence here and there.) Stephenson points out that we’ve always coexisted with other intelligences, everything from sharks to viruses, and will probably do the same with electronic “intelligences.”

I appreciate his perspective, but we’ve always dealt with life forms we didn’t get along with by killing them, everything from sharks to viruses. What if it’s the other way around now? I don’t watch many movies, but it’s a common theme in films from 2001 to the Terminator franchise that our creations will kill us. (Think Frankenstein.)

I doubt I’ll live long enough to see if that happens, but in the meantime I’m not taking any chances. Every night I remove my computers’ batteries, just in case.

13 June 2025

The New Cinema Experience

I’ve heard of Martin Scorsese, but I couldn’t name one of his acclaimed films. I was nevertheless chuffed when I read that Marty and I have something in common: neither of us can stand going to the movies, er, cinema. Here’s what Peter Travers had to say about his interview with Scorsese.

“I asked the maestro why he doesn’t see movies in theatres anymore and he went all raging bull about audiences who babble on phones during the movie, leave to order snacks and vats of soda, and keep up a noise level loud enough to drown out the actors.”

He forgot to mention the time and cost of travel and parking, that the temperature is either too hot or too cold, the filthy, sticky, soda-stained seats, overpriced crappy snacks and tickets, and of course the interminable ads. Of course the ads.

Some people nevertheless describe the cinema experience as very rewarding. Some people are masochists.

14 June 2025

Dyslexics Untie!

Michelle is hoity-toity graphic designer who can—and does—spend twenty minutes kerning a paragraph. I never realized the depths of her persnicketeriosity until she asked what typeface I used in one of my pieces.

“Goudy,” I replied.

“Which foundry?” she continued.

She rolled her eyes when I told her that I had no idea who poured the molten ones and zeros to make my fonts, and informed me there were “a hundred different Goudys.”

Now that I’ve established that Michelle gets all snooty-patooty when it comes to typography, it’s finally time to get to The Anecdote.

She got a commission from the American Dyslexia Society with a request that she use Comic Sans, the most ridiculed and reviled typeface since cuneiform. Like any designer worth her or his Himalayan pink salt, she could barely keep the vomit down her throat until ...

The art director explained that Comic Sans is perhaps the most legible option for anyone with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and that she’d been hired to produce straightforward communications, not win design awards. This was one of those rare cases when the client really was right, so Michelle put her ego in the refrigerator and accepted the creative brief.

Dyslexics Untie! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chinas!

15 June 2025

Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day

This is the fifteenth day of June, time to again observe Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day. It’s a joyous celebration of his profound and timeless insight, “Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”

In a world chock full o’ amazing stupidity, I found it difficult to find an example of inane lunacy that towered over the other major league foolishness. And so, I’m settling for a look back at David Dunning and Justin Kruger’s seminal perspective on one of the pillars of stupidity, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

It works like this: stupid people are too stupid to recognize their stupidity, and thus arrogantly imagine that they’re extraordinarily intelligent and accomplished even though they’re incompetent or worse. (The flip side of the Dunning-Kruger matzo is that brilliant people misunderestimate themselves and conclude that, if they can succeed at something, then anyone can.)

Ricky Gervais had a wonderful analogy for understanding the Dunning-Kruger effect. “Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.”

16 June 2025

A Metric Century

Semantic preface: in American cycling parlance, a “century” is a hundred-mile ride.

I occasionally cycle long distances (long distances for me, that is), and keep getting modesty better at it. Today I had my best century ever, a hundred kilometers. I know that’s only sixty-two miles, but a metric century is good enough for me. I don’t compete with anyone including myself when it comes to cycling.

When it comes to art, though, I do compete with one other person: the artist I was yesterday. But that’s another story for another day, and today’s story is now over.

17 June 2025

David Lynch’s Piece of the Berlin Wall

David Lynch’s piece of the Berlin Wall just sold for over nine thousand dollars at his estate auction. I wonder if the buyer knew the provenance.

I do.

A friend of mine who used to work with Lynch—let’s call her Anonymous—bought the chunk of cement complete with a fake “Certificate of Authenticity” from a market stall in Barcelona for five Euros. She gave it to the filmmaker as a birthday present.

I have no idea whether Lynch thought it was a joke or a serious gift or both, but I’m guessing that it didn’t matter to him. I’m certain it doesn’t matter to him now. That’s one of the great things about being dead, no more worries.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart