I saw this car going westward on Waters, just west of 275. I saw some small bumper stickers while we were stopped at the red light and inched closer to get a better look.
Smiths sticker? Okay, maybe they have mopey tendencies.
Unabomber sticker? Okay, I’m putting an additional car length between you and me.
Severed head of Yukio Mishima sticker? Okay — I’m putting at least eight car lengths between you and me next chance I get.
The people who use “woke” as a term of derision are the same as those who used (or still use) the term “politically correct” for the same reason:
I think Mike Godwin — yes, the Godwin after whom “Godwin’s Law” is named — is right when he says this:
Or, to quote Neil Gaiman on “woke’s” predecessor, political correctness:
I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”
Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.
You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening.
I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!”
Isn’t that how the rhyme goes? “Thirty days hath February…”
Attention newly-arrived Floridians! The weather may be sunny and pleasant right now (today it’s a mix of sun and clouds, with temperatures going up to 30°C / 86°F), but this will come in handy in a few months when hurricane season returns.
Also: I feel a Taco Warning coming on.
I have just one question: He brought the inflatable mattress and fluffy slippers — why no blanket? That’s very clearly the Orlando airport, which is overly air conditioned.
Also: Kudos to the Orlando airport’s social media team for this response:
John Stuart Mill was right: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are Conservatives.”
I volunteered to help out at Masterminds Tampa Bay’s booth at the Synapse Summit 2023 conference yesterday, where Masterminds team moderator Vadim Davydov worked his photographic magic creating professional headshots for a long line of VIPs. It was my job to help get them registered and lined up for their sessions.
Masterminds Tampa Bay is “The Other Bay Area’s” Mastermind group, a peer mentoring group aimed at entrepreneurs and techies looking for connections, support, advice, assistance, resources, and so on. Many metro areas have Mastermind groups, whose name comes from The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, a book that’s nearly 100 years old, where he defined the Mastermind Principle as:
“The coordination of knowledge and effort between two or more people who work towards a definite purpose in a spirit of harmony…
No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.”
If you’re interested in the rest of Napoleon Hill’s definition of the Mastermind Principle, it’s summarized pretty well in this article. If you want to hear it in Hill’s own voice, watch this video:
Vadim’s lighting setup is a key part of why his headshots look so good…
…but more important are the instructions he gives you as you pose:
The instructions may sound nonsensical and hilarious, and he gets you into poses that you’d never do naturally, but they work. I kept telling people to just do what he says and to trust the process. And he kept cranking out gorgeous result after gorgeous result.
At 4:27 p.m. after nearly 8 hours of shooting, the last person in line had come and gone. That’s when I asked Vadim “Can you do one more — namely, me?”
He smiled and obliged. The official photo isn’t done yet, but every photo he took was displayed on a couple of screens in the booth. I took a couple of shots of these screens, and even these previews are great:
I can’t wait for the official shot! In the meantime, these are my new profile pics.
Thanks, Vadim, and thanks, Tampa Bay Masterminds for taking me on as a booth volunteer!
And once again: if you need to look great in a headshot, you want Vadim Davydov!