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stats don't lie

Now with 10% less hate speech!

My grandpa had a joke about being a worker in a world that cared only about business people. He would ask you, “How’s the business?” and then reach out his hand to shake yours. If you reached to shake it, he would take his own hand, and shake it, laughing at you.

I had to laugh reading the social network everyone hates’ report on how well it’s shaking its own hand. Actually, I laughed reading a digest reporting, “The tech giant says 88.8% of all the hate speech it removed this quarter was detected by AI, up from 80.2% in the previous quarter.”

What does this report, exactly?

“Of all of the sandwiches I hate this quarter, 88.8% were delicious, up from 80.2% in the previous quarter.”

Do you get a strong sense, in the grand scheme of my life how many sandwiches I ate between Jan 1 and Mar 31 2020?

What about the total number of things I ate?

Is it very helpful to note my definition of “sandwich” includes hot dogs?

How about if I tell you the number of hot dogs I ate was zero?

We’re doing great on delicious!

By Marx Marvelous

“When I decided to take an alias, I wanted more than to apply a crust to the worn surface of my real identity. I wanted to make a statement, to express something through the unexploited medium of nom de plume. Being in a defiant frame of mind, I asked myself what it is that my fellows at the Institute—that, indeed, the average American males of my age and economic stratum—hate most. What do they most loathe? The answer I arrived at was Communism and homosexuality. Communists and homosexuals are the targets of the majority of the normal male's fear-honed barbs. Thus you can see how I in my rebellion selected the given name of 'Marx.' The surname was more difficult. Obviously, I couldn't call myself Marx Homosexual or Marx Queer or even Marx Fag. But I remembered having read in a syndicated newspaper column that the one word no red-blooded he-man would ever ever utter was 'marvelous.' 'Marvelous' is an expression reserved for interior decorators and choreographers and is as taboo in the bleachers, the sales meeting or the pool hall as a rose behind the ear or a velvet snood. “So, I embraced that maligned term as if it were a victimized ancestor. And here I am: Marx Marvelous.”