Their new slogan.

 

Things with which Google cannot help you.

Sure, Google seems omniscient, and may even think it's omnipotent, but we all know that's not true. 

It acts like it thinks it is.

For example, while you can ask Google what the weather is like in Borneo, who the leader of Prussia was in 1610, or what the most popular TV show in 1981 was, there are many questions with which Google is completely useless. Here are a few to think about. 

💻 Did the ground beef in the back of my fridge go off yet?

💻 Did I leave my keys in the car?

💻 What was that toddler of mine thinking?

💻 What was the name of the kid who called me Pork Face on the beach when I was seven?

💻 If we had continued the Apollo program until now, who would be on the moon today?

💻 How many leaves are on this maple?

💻 What was that dog of mine thinking?

💻 What's the name of that actor in the movie I forget the title of where he plays the guy?

💻 What'd I come into the kitchen for?

💻 What's the name of that squirrel over there?

💻 What are those guys up to across the street?

💻 What was the password on my iMac G3? I want to get something off it.

💻 Is my dry cleaner pressing my gray pants right this second?

💻 What was that wife of mine thinking?

💻 What was the president -- oh, never mind.

💻 💻 💻 

In case you were wondering:

Borneo, as of this writing: Overcast, light rain.

Head of Prussia, most of 1610: John Sigismund

Most popular TV show, 1981: Dallas 

Crushalogs III: The Secret of the Ooze.

They're back, and they're fabulous. 

Every three years on the dot I blog about the load of catalogs I've gotten for Christmas, usually around the middle of November. 

The original Crushalogs piece in 2016 was one of my most read posts ever, as I noted in the sequel in 2019. Since then Google got out of the practice of referring blogs to other blog users on the Blogger platform, and readership across the board has plummeted. I guess Google hasn't figured out a way to get us to buy phony visitors as Twitter has done and TikTok still does. They probably don't care anymore. "Who reads blogs? That's old-man stuff." And so they leave the Blogger upkeep to the the virtually unemployable, the habitually stoned, and the dumdum interns.

But enough complaints. Above you see most of the load of Christmas catalogs I have received since the season started around mid-October. A few got away, I'm sure; for example, I get frequent mailings from the wholesale club, and they sort of ease slowly into the holiday theme before they go all-in on Christmas, so it can be hard to tell when they're nearly Christmas or really most sincerely Christmas. I only want to include the latter in the annual roundup. 

Also, I'm sure a few made it into the recycle bin without any consideration for the importance of this blog. That may be due to my forgetfulness, or to the actions to unnamed others in this home. 

The question remains, however: Have I yet received enough Christmas mailings to outweigh a ream of paper? 

There was a time when you'd ask that about the phonebook. Many things were compared to the size, girth, and weight of the phone book, especially the Manhattan Yellow Pages. But the phonebook has become the phonepamphlet. Geez, I'm old-fashioned and even I ignore the phonebook. So instead I'm comparing the load of catalogs to date against a fresh ream of 20-pound copier paper, the kind where you want the printout to be legible but not necessarily suitable for framing. So, using my handheld luggage scale, let's see which weighs more! 

Ream of paper: 5 pounds

Fred's catalogs to date: 2 pounds 

I think I can safely say that catalog mailings are down from previous years. Could be the lousy economy, or just that more and more people ignore mailings as time marches on. 

I will say this: It's been a couple of years since Restoration Hardware sent me their enormous card-stock catalog set, and that would definitely have tilted the fight to the catalogs. That would have weighed close to the same as the ream of paper all by itself. Hell, if you request the lot, that’s 2,500+ pages right there, and not cheap local coupon-clipper-mailer paper! Looks like RH discovered that I work in publishing, though, and so I don't have two thousand clams to throw around for hairy ottomans. But if you have someone on your list who wants a good doorstop, or a beginner's weightlifting set, request all their catalogs and that's one person off your list for free! 

Well, now it's to the recycling bin with you, catalogs, where after you will join your brethren in the landfill, because no one wants recycling and they won't burn scrap paper for energy like they should. Cheerio!

Sorry!

I was having trouble with Google Docs, because most people have trouble with Google Docs unless they spend a lot of time using Google Docs, but I have avoided that because I hate Google Docs. Nevertheless, it is sometimes the price I pay for working from home. Thing is, I thought I had screwed something up for a client because of my inexperience, and I apologized. The client asked me why I was apologizing, since I had done nothing wrong. 

I explained that I had just passed a big wedding anniversary, an if I had a secret to being a good husband it would be: Apologize first and ask questions later. 

"Just assume I'm sorry and then tell me what I did!"

There have been times when I've taken a different approach. Early on in our marriage, I usually thought: Well, if it was something important, I'm sure she'll tell me. This only prolongs the agony, at least for me, because she could fume a lot longer than I could ignore. She's of Irish descent, you know, and they can hold a grudge five hundred years after they're dead. 

Later, when I got more used to the things that really triggered this fury, I might think: I know what I did wrong but I feel embarrassed enough without rehashing it, so if I act contrite maybe it will go away. Oh, no, brother -- another rookie mistake. They never forget. They may forgive, but they never forget. (I'm not sure if I'm talking about the Irish or wives here, but it probably applies to both.)

My next tactic, going on the offensive ("What did I do wrong NOW?"), gets it out in the open, but not in a constructive way. It takes much longer for the whole situation to find resolution when you go from 0 to shouting in five seconds.

In the end, I have found that when I encounter The Scowl or the Wall of Cold, it's best to brace myself for whatever and ask what the problem is. Most of the time it's actually not me, but if I don't crack the ice I'll have to wait for the explosion. 

On the other side of the coin, when my wife does something that makes me sore, I usually just suck it up and refuse to talk about it. Never complain, never explain, right? Unless it's a real doozy, in which case I may go do something constructive, like clean up the cellar, in the LOUDEST WAY POSSIBLE.

Maybe my real secret to marriage is that both parties have to be able to put up with each other's BS. It takes two to tango, as they used to say, and everyone is full of BS sometimes. But if one side won't tango, there's not much that can be done. 

Get out the dopes.

I see Google is getting into its usual act, trying to make it easier for people who are too dumb to vote to get out and vote. 

The company would deny that it's trying to get only one particular kind of voter -- Leftist -- just as it would deny that its search results skew toward liberal media sources on any topic. But we know. 

Leftists, who think they are smarter than us idiots, somehow always do things to try to get the least-informed people to notch a ballot, and do it as many times as possible. This has been going on since the big Democrat machines of the Boss Tweed era, but has been institutionalized since Bill Clinton's Motor Voter Act of 1993. The idea then was to latch on to dumdums who wouldn't cross the street to vote but had to go to the Motor Vehicles department in their state, and get them to register to vote. It was opposed at the time by Rightists, but not very strongly, because no one wants to say that people who couldn't care less about voting should be discouraged from doing so. 

Well, I'll say it. 

MTV got on the bandwagon back when its M stood for Music (I think now it stands for Moron). Back in 1990 the station promoted the Rock the Vote nonprofit to get know-nothings off the sofa and into the voting booths. It was nominally nonpartisan, but we all know the way dummies who think the government exists to rob from the rich and give to everyone else will vote -- "Robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul," as Kipling put it. Back then it was assumed that all the rich people were white-shoed Thurston Howell IIIs, who would be made to pony up so college students and dropouts alike could have a cornucopia of free stuff. 

Things look rather different now. The rich people are all into radical chic and the nation is a lot farther in debt -- and the welfare state has expanded far beyond the fever dreams of FDR. 

An uninformed -- or worse, misinformed -- population is not fit for representative government, and this was a key reason public education was accepted nationally. But now we find that public education is becoming a large source of misinformation for youth. Some things voters ought to know but don't include:

✅ How government spending and debt affects the value of money itself;

✅ How rich people hide their money to keep it safe from taxation in ways the middle class cannot do;

✅ How the middle class is the only thing that keeps serfdom at bay, by having the wherewithal to stand up for itself;

✅ How the rotten history of any other country on this earth compares to that of the United States;

✅ How bills really become laws in the current degraded state of Congress (see for example the monstrosity called Obamacare)*;

✅ How much harder life is for the ignorant;

✅ How stable marriage is the best defense against poverty for men and women;

✅ How education has been directed toward frivolous tribalism and away from important facts -- facts of life that continue to operate whether we are aware of them or not.

Unfortunately, the more our stupid citizens (and others), educated in terrible schools, get out there and vote, the more stupid government we are likely to have. The basics of civilized society are not that hard to master, and yet somehow people can get through graduate school and know nothing about them. Alas!

*For example, how Charles Rangel introduced a spending bill in the House (where all spending bills must originate) with the friendly and anodyne title of "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009"; the bill got to the Senate where it was completely stripped of its title and all its innards, stuffed as full of pork and socialism as a Thanksgiving turkey, then reconciled with the House under its new monstrous form -- a Trojan House virus, if you will -- to pretend that the spending bill originated in the people's House as demanded by the Constitution. It should have been thrown out by the Supreme Court just for that. 

Space make deaf.

A friend of mine posted this from Beyond Fest, and it really is a gem. 

If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had any real sense or taste, they would indeed enshrine this film depiction in their Academy Museum.

I showed it to my wife, and she said, "Google Translate would do a better job than this!"

That, of course, got me to thinking: Would it? Let's find out! 

Here in the depiction of the 1979 horror-SF classic Alien from IMDb, with tagline added: 

In the distant future, the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo are on their way home when they pick up a distress call from a distant moon. The crew are under obligation to investigate and the spaceship descends on the moon afterwards. After a rough landing, three crew members leave the spaceship to explore the area on the moon. At the same time as they discover a hive colony of some unknown creature, the ship's computer deciphers the message to be a warning, not a distress call. When one of the eggs is disturbed, the crew realizes that they are not alone on the spaceship and they must deal with the consequences. In space, no one can hear you scream.

 Now we'll put it into Google Translate and turn it into Chinese.

在遙遠的未來，商業宇宙飛船 Nostromo 的船員們在回家的路上接到了來自遙遠月球的求救信號。機組人員有義務進行調查，隨後飛船降落在月球上。粗略著陸後，三名機組人員離開宇宙飛船去探索月球區域。在他們發現一些未知生物的蜂巢群的同時，船上的計算機將消息解讀為警告，而不是求救信號。當其中一個蛋受到干擾時，機組人員意識到他們在宇宙飛船上並不孤單，他們必須處理後果。在太空中，沒有人能聽到你的尖叫聲。

So far, so good. Now we'll turn it back into English and see how it looks. 

In the distant future, the crew of the commercial spacecraft Nostromo receives a distress call from the distant moon on their way home. The crew was obliged to investigate, and the spacecraft landed on the moon. After a rough landing, the three crew members left the spacecraft to explore the lunar region. While they spot a hive of unknown creatures, the ship's computer interprets the message as a warning, not a distress signal. When one of the eggs is disturbed, the crew realizes they are not alone on the spacecraft and they have to deal with the consequences. In space, no one can hear your scream.

That's terrific. A couple of small changes but no problem at all understanding it. Nothing laughable. Is Google really that good? Or is it just really deeply in love with China? 

Let's try the translation with another language, like say Kurdish. 

Di paşerojeke dûr de, ekîba keştiya fezayê ya bazirganî Nostromo li ser rêya malê ne dema ku ji heyvek dûr bangek tengahiyê digirin. Ekîb mecbûr in ku lêkolîn bikin û keştiya fezayê paşê dakeve ser heyvê. Piştî daketineke dijwar, sê endamên ekîban ji keştiya fezayê derdikevin da ku li herêmê li ser heyvê bigerin. Di heman demê de gava ku ew koloniyek hingiv a hin mexlûqên nenas kifş dikin, komputera keştiyê peyamê deşîfre dike ku bibe hişyariyek, ne banga tengahiyê. Dema ku yek ji hêkan teng dibe, ekîb fam dike ku ew li keştiya fezayê ne bi tenê ne û divê ew bi encaman re mijûl bibin. Li fezayê, kes nikare qîrîna te bibihîze.

And back into English: 

In the distant future, the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo are on their way home when they receive a distress call from a distant moon. The crew has to investigate and the spacecraft will then land on the moon. After a rough landing, three crew members leave the spaceship to explore the area on the moon. Also when they discover a bee colony of some unknown creature, the ship's computer decodes the message to be a warning, not a distress call. When one of the eggs goes awry, the crew realizes they are not alone on the spaceship and must deal with the consequences. In space, no one can hear you scream.

Looks darn good! What if we try it in Chinese with a slightly lesser known work, say the description of my book, Larry and the Mascots?

When Larry gets thrown from the roof of his dormitory, little does he realize that his troubles are just beginning. Surviving this encounter due to the help of an advertising character—Whitewall, a pitchman for tires who is actually made of tires—Larry discovers that a group of advertising mascots have come to life. There’s Mitts, a flying oven mitt; Captain Freshy, a homicidal pirate who sells canned tuna; Sweety the Sugar Fairy, who glazes children’s cereal; Mushy MacClown, a sad clown on packages of marshmallows; and others—some of whom are up to something sinister. Who are they? What do they want? And why did one of them steal his crummy laptop? What Larry discovers is a conspiracy that springs from the actions of one of the school’s greatest patrons—one that ultimately threatens the lives of the students on campus, and perhaps even the entire nation. Larry and the Mascots is an intriguing adventure, full of action, heart, interesting characters, and cartoon characters, and is part of a complete breakfast.

We'll run it back and forth through the Chinese translation and then:

Little did he realize that his troubles had only just begun when Larry was thrown from the dormitory roof. Surviving with the help of advertising character Whitewall, a salesman for tires that are actually made of tires, Larry discovers a group of advertising mascots have come to life. There are gloves, flying oven mitts; Captain Freshy, a murderous pirate who sells canned tuna; Sugar Fairy Sweetheart glazed on children's cereal; Mushy MacClown, the sad clown on marshmallow wrappers; and others -- some of whom are making some sinister things. who are they? What do they want? Why did one of them steal his tattered laptop? The conspiracy uncovered by Larry stems from the actions of one of the school's biggest patrons -- ultimately threatening the lives of students on campus, and possibly an entire nation. Larry and the Mascot is a fun adventure full of action, heart, funny characters and cartoon characters that is part of a complete breakfast.

I mean, it's not awful. A little confusing, but roughly understandable. "Tattered laptop" is amusing. But a far cry from that Hong Kong description of Alien.

So what have we learned? That Google Translate has gotten scary good, and that movie pirates ought to use it rather than rely on their cousin who claims he speaks English unto like native total. 

The pokey.

So I got it yesterday. The jab, the poke, the stick, the needle, the vax, the Bill Gates chip, the stab, the Warp Speed, the shot in the dark, the shot in the arm. I got #1 on the Pfizer hit parade. I go back for #2 on May 2. Good job, Pfizer!

Or should I say, good jab!

It was actually a bit inconvenient to go on Sunday, but when Governor Corleone started to allow people who are not elderly whom he didn't kill, people who didn't have preexisting relevant medical conditions (a bad back doesn't count), people who aren't healthcare workers, and people who aren't in prison or group houses or schools (six of one...) to get the shot, I signed right up and grabbed the first available date, which was April 11. They were going fast. 

The pokers were giving out the jab at the community college twenty miles from home. The US Army was directing traffic, herding thousands of people through in orderly fashion from one checkpoint to another. It was incredibly efficient, completely contrary to the image of military screwups that pop culture has portrayed over the decades. The military and healthcare personnel were unfailingly polite. The shot didn't even hurt. Afterward I felt a little tired, a little cold-like symptoms, but that was as likely from the cold and rainy walk from the far lot to the college and the miserable drive as from the shot itself. The injection point hurts today like young Foreman gave me a friendly punch on the arm. 

Of course, the clever public health people are still sharing horrible headlines about how COVID-19 variants or anti-vaxxers will keep us in deadly danger forever anyway. I do worry about those who fear the vaccine, but I don't blame them. After all, in 2020 prominent Democrats said they wouldn't trust the vaccines because they didn't want the president to get any credit, but now they expect everyone to get in line. It's a pity no one ever pays a price for such public malfeasance, but here we are. (Google has memory-holed this news story, but it's an easy find through DuckDuckGo.) I do encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, just to stop the madness. 

God knows when things will get back to normal, but I and the rest of the public are more sick of these living conditions than we are of the Chinese Death Virus. We're also pretty goddamn sick of public health weasels (sorry, that's an insult to weasels) and politicians (who are an insult to humanity) making this much more difficult than it needs to be. I am getting vaccinated not because I fear the virus, but just to take myself out of the pool of possible spreaders, and help inch us a little closer to the day that the Communist Chinese's gift to the world is behind us. Put the Wu Flu in the rearview.

To Helen gone!

I'm not one to go tooting my own horn, as you know. I'd much rather bribe someone to toot my horn for me, and then act all embarrassed about the tootage. Oh, please, you make me blush!

Nevertheless, I wanted to put up a post today about Helen's Page, upon which I have signed for a trial basis.

Dr. Helen Smith, author of Men on Strike and, in her spare time, Mrs. Instapundit, has decided to take the cultural challenge of canceling to heart -- and fight back. Since prominent Internet platforms are deleting books and events and even persons that might get in the way of El Narrativo (in Mikeski's term), she has begun her own media page -- Helen's Page, "A Happy Place for Liberty-Minded People to Meet." 

So I created an account there. It's not much yet, mostly a means of displaying my novels and a link to come here, to this marvelous blog, whereupon one might click on those links to the right and peruse the wares. I'd like to support the page and help get people more interested in it, even if they don't want to buy my books.

We know that approximately half the known universe follows Instapundit, or should, so that's a lot of people who might check out Helen's Page. I hope more people join up, and we can make this bigger than Etsy, Craig's List, Angie's List, Huffington's Post, Drudge's Report, and Stiiv's Bunk! (Yeah, I know I got them wrong and one of them doesn't even exist. "Drudge Report" -- ha.)

Wish me luck, but mostly wish Dr. Helen luck -- this is her "Build Your Own Platform" moment, and with the other platforms becoming cancel culture mouthpieces for monothink, or being canceled themselves, we need more platforms "for Liberty-Minded People." 

There's a report on NBC that quotes a senior Department of Homeland Security official saying that "DHS plans to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence" (you know which companies those might be). "'The idea is to identify people who may through their social media behavior be prone to influence by toxic messaging spread by foreign governments, terrorists and domestic extremists,' the official said. 'We want to Identify the narratives that are emerging, assess which narratives are likely to incite violence, figure out what targets are likely and then take steps to mitigate the risk.'" 

The ostensible cause for this plan is not the rioting last year that killed 25 people, injured hundreds, destroyed livelihoods and caused millions (if not billions) in damages; it's a handful of unarmed knuckleheads who got into the Capitol on January 6. The idea is that the government, which knew Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Colorado was a problem and did nothing to stop him before he murdered ten innocents, is going to put people on a no-fly list (among other things) for Liking the wrong things on Facebook. I think it's safe to say that if this had been a Trump administration initiative, you'd have heard the screaming on cable news in the Kuiper Belt.

In other words, Helen’s Page is about more than getting some books in front of eyeballs. This is about creating space on the Internet for a free citizenry to enjoy basic freedom of political expression without fear of reprisal. We need a lot more of that. 

Gab grab bag.

Parler is fighting for its life now after being cut off at the knees by Google, Apple, and Amazon, fearing that the president of the United States (for two more days) will flee to that platform. So I've established a profile with my handsome Vitamin Fred icon on Gab's site now. 

As I wrote when I joined Parler back in October, "I always entertain hopes that my blog might entertain others, and maybe even entice them to try one of my novels," and I thought that the site might help me do that without enduring the firehose of horror that is Twitter.  

Now it's become more than that, though. For years I desired to keep this blog free from political content beyond some light satire. I never intended to write fiction for political purposes, hoping to entertain any reader. I would prefer to write funny stuff about food and dogs and middle-class life and post goofy cartoons every day. But I was raised by libertarians and conservatives and liberals to love free speech, even when I don't like the content, and the cancel culture that's gripping the West is an abomination to everything for which our nation stands. Books are being forced out of publisher's lists or literally out of stores; persons are not only attacked but their families and livelihoods threatened. The only law these victims have broken is the law in some dillweed's imagination that says YOU CAN'T SAY THAT, although everything in our culture and history is meant to say we can. Meanwhile, our totalitarian enemies around the world smile.

The weird thing is, the Left used to garb all kinds of things as political speech -- comedy, obscene music, getting naked in public -- as political speech to prevent its being banned. Now the very speech they most seek to ban is political speech, and of course everything is political when you look at it through blood-colored glasses. The kind of speech that conservatives are apt to censor is very narrowly defined -- obscenity, threats, slander and libel (especially of private citizens) -- but if you remove all that I think half of the world's Tweets would disappear.

This all makes it sound like I'm using Gab for firebrand purposes, but no -- I just want to help support a free-speech centered company that believes in the user's privacy and doesn't support the Leftist mobs. A lot of people feel that way, and the Gab servers are being somewhat overwhelmed as I write this. I'm sure it will all settle down soon, and when Gab becomes popular enough to pose a threat to Facebook, the tech oligarchs will come after it as well.

Meanwhile, should you decide to join up, look for your friendly Fred Key on the site and let's have a gabfest. Hey, talk is not only cheap -- it's free.

Just doodling.

If you were on Google yesterday you may have noticed that they've started the Google Doodle contest again. I immediately decided to enter. Unfortunately it is only open to kids up through grade 12, and whatever else I may identify as, a teenager is right out. ("How do you do, fellow doodlers?")

It's a shame, because the topic is right up my alley. 

This year's theme is:

I am strong because...

Hey, I'm all over that. Me manly man! Super strong! Walk giant dogs! Eat massive cookies! Break bottle of Man Lotion, me so manly! 

So I figured I would at least do a doodle for the benefit of you, my friendly visitors. Actually I had a couple of ideas on the topic, and here they are. 

Pretty good, huh? I'll bet I can work yesterday's Big Brother into this as well. Maybe Google will start a competition for adults as well! 

Parler games.

Their quarry cornered, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and even Pinterest have decided to make Donald Trump a nonperson by refusing him access to their platforms. 

And just in case, they are delisting Parler, expecting Trump to flee to the same free-speech app that I joined a couple of months ago. 

I noticed that on Sunday Parler had refused Apple's ultimatum to knuckle under to their enforced censorship codes, and thus the Parler app was removed from the App Store.

Little pipsqueak of a nobody that I am, I sent Apple a note suggesting they develop an A.I. soul to replace the one they lost when they betrayed the founding principles of the nation. I also suggested that they have made their tyrannical friends in China very happy. 

Apple can be awfully stubborn. Last August the wildly popular Fortnite game decided to try to cut Apple out of their in-game purchase money by using an independent system. Apple promptly bumped their app off the store as well. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, promptly released a parody of the famous Apple 1984 commercial, showing Apple to be the tyrant it now is. Epic is suing Apple, and also Google, but they have Facebook on their side. In the meantime, the Epic app is still off the store.

Parler has got to sue its opponents on Constitutional grounds and hurry. If they don't, they will be destroyed before they've even begun. If they give in to pressure, they will be nothing but Twitter Junior, and who needs that? 

Like it or not, Parler is a test case going forward for whether our tech oligarchs will get to decide who can say what in this modern era. I hope they give it to their opponents good and hard and fast, or we'll be living under a censorship as fully as any Chinese mainlander does. Fortunately, it sounds like Parler is planning on a fight, and God bless them if they are.  

In an era where our speech is considered violence and their violence is considered speech, we have no choice but to fight this battle. Personally, I'm too old to learn Newspeak and I'm not going to now.

UPDATE! As noted in Comments, Amazon has thrown Parler off its AWS, so the app and the Web sire are not working. Pardon my francais, but this is a shit thing to do by any measure, and I can only pray for a Republican blitz in 2022 that will lead to a Congress that will start busting these trusts to bits in a way that would make Teddy Roosevelt flinch.

Your vote is important to us.

 

In old New York.

Hat tip to Jon, fellow Bleatnik on the Great Lileks's site, for this amazing time suck for all of us who grew up in New York City, or the nearby area, or just like New York:

Street View of 1940s New York

Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.

As Jon pointed out, what this essentially does is turn a map of New York City c. 1940 into a Google Street View. I found it to be a delightful time suck on a busy week. (There's also a 1980s version available, but I didn't find it to be as complete.)

Here are some photos of New York locations found through this "Street View," to give you a taste. The watermarks are unavoidable; the signs in front were some location or tax code used by the photographers and not a clear indicator to the streets.

Columbus Circle. The Majestic Theatre had become the Park in 1911.

Near the Lincoln Tunnel (less than five years old at the time)

West side downtown, near what would be the World Trade Center . Streets downtown were paved
with ballast stones from ships, some of which are still visible at the South Street Seaport.  

South Ferry area, where a man in a hat is immortalized unawares 80 years later, along with a few palookas

The Porto Rico line sailed between Manhattan and Puerto Rico for 75 years; more at this link if you're curious

These are not pictures of all the great, well known structures, the Penn Stations and Ebbets Fields. These are the places where people lived and worked, from a time when New York had just started replacing so many old walk-ups with the glass towers that line its streets today.

And yet so many things look familiar to me, even though they were gone long before I came on the scene. It may have been shorter, but it was still the New York I once loved.

Googthink.

I am risking my blog here, as it is hosted by Google, but Google has done something that the phrase "chilling effect" was designed to describe.

Here's a mandatory alert:

And do I need to say it? Language alert.

Maybe you saw this Tuesday:

"See how machine learning is helping us tackle gender bias in movies." I thought this had to be one of their jolly April 1 gags, running a little late, but no, Googs is serious. Why is this terrifying to a people brought up in a society where free speech is not just an enshrined right, but one granted by our Creator? Let's see.

--The fact that Google whipped up a Bias Nanny algorithm tells me that they feel we cannot be trusted to recognize bias on our own. In other words, like the poisonous snowflake culture in our universities, Google thinks we're too dumb to know bias and hatred when we see it. So they will help us be better. That's even assuming that the damn thing works, despite the fact that it's predicated on what has to be opinion; there's no mathematical "science" that can prove bias in film, hard as people keep trying. Why would filmmakers not fight back against this? A statement like "Your film shows female characters 16.56% less than males, with passive dialogue 36.98% more often than males..." Etc. etc. data data data. As a director, screenwriter, are you going to let Google tell you your artistry must be "adjusted" to be in line with proper thinking?

--And that's the point: Google is here to turn our badthink into goodthink. You dopes in the audience, you dummies making movies! How dare you sit there and think your movie is not full of gender bias? (Next up: race bias, Islamic bias, LGBTQRSTU bias....) We can scientifically prove that you, director, are a chauvinist pig, and we can make sure the whole world knows it. Guess what that'll do to your career? Guess what'll happen when our search engines show your home address...?

--I say, so what if there is bias in some movies? There's probably biases all over the place in every work of art. SO WHAT? We're free to think as we like, are we not? Uh, no, actually, you're not anymore... the reason we need this is to teach you not to think bad, otherwise the machines will correct you -- movies now, books later, online conversation next, actual conversation next...

--What's the endgame in all this, Googs? It's a rabbit hole with no bottom. Now University of Michigan students are feeling oppressed by fucking wood paneling. So you add that to your little algorithm and now every film that shows wood paneling is a nightmare of oppression. Then what? "Vinyl flooring is an affront to my people!" Well, the victim has absolute moral authority to dictate the terms, right? But where does it end? (Hint: Hell.)

--Well, fuck your machines, Google, and to hell with your newthink. If I wanted to play in that sandbox of insanity I'd go back to school. I say our right to think and speak as we want is granted to us by our Creator, not you, not the government, not even by others who might be offended, and by fighting against that right you are acting as an enemy of freedom and the God who created it. You know what that makes you?

People who hadn't noticed when you quietly dropped your "don't be evil" motto, presumably in exchange for an "evil is okay" one, might start to notice when you start policing them. Stop "training" us, Google. You can have all the money in the world, but it's still above your pay grade.

Very big in France.

I'm not quite sure that the Google metrics for this blog are correct.

I don't really get hung up on readership data. I'm here to get the thoughts out of my head that get stuck in there, to try out ideas, to keep disciplined as a writer, to promote my books (hint!), even to be a voice crying in the wilderness. Not that I'm not thrilled to have readers. I appreciate everybody who stops by my humble demesnes more than words can say. Especially 💖you💖.

But Google is telling me that I've been getting the bulk of my traffic from France.

Since I do not write in French, and most of the people who live in France read in French, I wouldn't expect there to be a lot of appeal for my stuff in France. I took French in junior high and high school, but I've resisted the temptation to try my hand at it. I occasionally may say, «I must punctuate my quotations in the French style!» but it's a passing thing.

I can only think of three reasons why so much traffic for this site appears to be coming from France:

1) Something about my work appeals to the elan, the sacre bleu, the plume da ma tante of la belle Francais.

2) French hackers are using my site to smuggle malware or secrets or other bad things by piggybacking on my URL.

3) Google has made some weird error, mistaking France for another entire nation.

4) There is an Internet rumor that "Fred Key" is an alias for "Jerry Lewis."

Lacking any further information to the contrary, I'm going to go with #1. Yes, I'm choosing to believe that I'm very big in France. Who knew?

Liberty and Fred Leading the People

So, French people, let me just say how long I have admired your novelists, your scientists, your chefs de cuisine, your... Well, I'm sure there's a lot of other things. I'm sorry if I ever said anything mean about France in this space. I don't blame you for the metric system. You were only trying to help.

Let us continue to enrich our friendship, shall we? Or as we said in seventh grade, Le papillon est rouge et bleu et blanc et vert!

Birdie update!

Google celebrated Phoebe Snetsinger yesterday, in their continuing desire to celebrate people who are smart, hardworking, and often overlooked, as long as they are not white males. (See the Google Doodle Decision Tree here.)

Despite Google's prejudice, I don't mind when Google does quirky little celebrations like that. And there's no reason not to be impressed by the dedication of Snetsinger to our fine feathered friends.

Also, it gives me an opportunity to present the latest update on the birdies that have hatched under my deck:

Holy Moses! It's a bumper crop!

Those little birds---and I think there are four altogether---have doubled in size in a week, I think. I don't want to disturb them or get my eyes pecked out by Mom, so I haven't gotten out the ladder for a closer look. But they fill up that nest now. When Mom's away and they're sleeping, they're just this heaving feathery lump. Interestingly, Mom still sits on their heads at night; she barely touches the nest. It's interesting to me, anyway; I've never followed the progress of birds from nest-building to adulthood. Phoebe Snetsinger would shake her head and laugh at me.

I'm expecting it's almost graduation time at this rate, close to time to throw the kids out of the nest. Birds, unlike humans, are not going to stand for a 33 percent unemployment rate in the adult children. No, birds are much more along the lines of: You're grown, you're gone.

My wife has cautioned me to be careful next time I run the mower down there. Just in case there are four dazed chicks sitting on the grass, wondering what the hell happened, while Mom is watching HGTV and redecorating the nest.

Just a prelim screening, actually.

In case you were wondering. Looks bad for me.

Science!

I was excited to see that it's Google Science Fair time again. I've been waiting for this for months.

"It's Your Turn to Change the World," they say. Okay! I think we're agreed that if there's one thing this world needs, it's changing. I'll start by firing every lobbyist in the country.

No, JK! I know, this has to be all Sciencey. And I've worked that out. At the risk of tipping my hand, I'm going to reveal my blueprints for my entry for the Google Science Fair:

Pretty freakin' awesome, non?

I'll explain what it is for the sake of you less-sciencey types: It's an exploding stick of butter. I know, right? It combines two of the things guys love most:

1. Butter
2. Exploding things

This is a clear winner, obviously. My concern is that I haven't been 18 years old in a long, long time, and this competition is supposedly for the sub-adult population. I think I can slip in, though, based on the fact that I'm so young at heart. Anyone who looked at my blueprints would agree. "This has to be the work of a child!" they would say.

Then I would step forward, hand out, and say, "Thanks! And instead of the fifty-grand scholarship, just slip me 25 large and we'll call it square."

It's all for the love of Science!

Google Fred!

I'm happy to say that my novels are now available on Google Play. For a limited time they may be acquired for the low low price of $1.99 each, but my publisher is fighting to raise that soon. Hey, I can't hold him back for long; he's a wild man!

Take pity on my publisher; his team has been working hard to get Fred out to the world, and the ePub options just keep proliferating. Of course, you could always find me on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but now we're helping make Google even richer too. And who wouldn't want that?

When I was just a little kid, people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said "I want to be a content provider!" And now I am.

(Actually, I would tell them I wanted to be Batman. Imagine how disappointed I was when I became an adult and that Wayne guy wouldn't retire.)

There will be what I think is an even bigger announcement about book distribution tomorrow, so hold on to your pants. In the meanwhile, enjoy the links for my novels:

Faster & Closer

MacFinster

Cobalt Agonistes

Larry and the Mascots

Thanks for listening to the pitch! If you do decide to check out the books, let me know what you think. If you enjoy them, let everyone know what you think!