Three-Fer Friday.

 
PART 1.

It's your job, if you're a functioning human, to be present.

Present at home.

Present when you're at work.

Present with your loved ones.

Present with your friends. And your puppy.

It's your job, if you're a functioning human, to be present and to notice the linguistic corruption all around us. A corruption that would make George Orwell look like a Hallmark card smothered in saccharin.

I just saw, of all things, a small caption on the digital front-page of Thursday's Wall Street Journal. If you subscribe, or care, you can find it here.

The three word phrase, the chilling three word phrase that got me was "select layoff events."

What a horrid sterilization of pain. 

To turn the systemic firing of thousands of people--the shit-canning, the axing, the eliminating, the schmising--into a "layoff event."

Almost 90 years ago, as murderous governments were killing millions and were bent on taking over the world, Hitler's Nazis euphemized "liquidate," as a synonym for murder. That was picked up in a kids' movie, The Wizard of Oz.

If you're, like me, a denizen of the ad industry, you've probably been fired a few times. Even if you despised the job you were fired from, getting fired is no joy.

I'd bet not a single person in the history of the world has ever come home and said to their significant other, "Honey, I've been subject to a 'layoff event.'"

Along with linguistic canoodling like layoff events, goes our Iran war which as of this writing isn't any longer allowed to be called a war, though people are shooting at people, bombs are dropping, people are dying and ships are sinking.

There's so much nonsense happening in the world, between layoff events and international skirmishes.

I can only say, pay attention.

Be aware.

And try to fight.

----------------------

 PART 2.

Not too many years ago I read a book called "Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts." You can amazon it here, so bezos gets even more money he pays no taxes on, so concomitantly, your tax bill rises.

In "Craeft," Alexander Langlands abjures modern technology and goes back to the old way--the "craeft" way of doing things. He does this to see if the "modern" ways are really better. 

I think about this as every day, I see about 32,000 paeans to the amazingness of AI. I wonder with all the hot air, and all the people saying, "I made this in two-seconds for two-cents," and all the energy-gobbling and real-estate subsuming-ness of "data centers," if we're really, when all is said and done, saving anything with AI--either money or time.

The example from Craeft that I can't shake comes from Langlands front lawn. He decides to use a scythe to cut the grass rather than his old Toro lawn-mower. 

Which, really, saves time.

Yes, using his Toro he can do the job in about 30 minutes. 
Using the scythe takes him four hours.

But, using the scythe, Langlands no longer has to spend an hour a day at the gym. He gets his exercise "organically."

But, using the scythe, Langlands no longer has to drive to the gas station for gas to fill the Toro. He no longer noises up the neighborhood and fills the air with CO2. He no longer has to maintain the lawnmower.

Instead, he goes out in the sunshine and gets the kind of workout people pay a fortune for. He also gets the sweaty satisfaction of a job he did himself, with his sinew and muscle. A sense of satisfaction modern humans no little about.

I think we should think about costs more and "savings" less. That is we might think more about our human-ness rather than the splendors of modernity.

--

 PART 3.

In the 1940s, the news scene in New York City was dominated by right-wing, retrograde forces like the Hearst syndicate and Henry Luce's Time/Life conglomerate. Their publications were by and large isolationist--against fighting the nazis, and they were often anti-semetic.

A man called Ralph Ingersoll, financed by millionaire Marshall Field, III, in June of 1940, launched a left-leaning daily called PM. It lasted until 1948.

Below was their code, their belief, their declaration of principles.

We could use a little PM this AM. Every AM.