Very Good Boy
“Does your dog do any tricks?”
“He published his autobiography last autumn.”
Laura’s brow wrinkled.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He wrote a book on the history of Russian ballet, and he has a novel in the works too—a spy novel set in Berlin. He needed something both to challenge his skills and to regain his crown as the king of the thriller.”
She looked down at the chocolate-colored Labrador, and gave David a look of complete incomprehension.
“He’s the strong, silent type.”
The dog licked its paw.
“Down, boy, down.”
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
—Jez Burrows
—from Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings
—(a book composed entirely of example sentences from various dictionaries)
satisfice. verb. A blend of satisfy and suffice, coined by Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert A. Simon in his 1956 article ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’ to describe the behavior of pursuing the minimum satisfactory outcome. Satisficing is the opposite of maximizing or optimizing. Also, a Northern English/Scottish synonym for satisfy.
“That tendency is known as satisficing, a blend of sufficing and satisfying: a response bias that errs on the egocentric side of plausible answers to a given question. As soon as we find an answer that satisfies, we stop looking, whether or not the answer is ideal or even remotely accurate.” (Maria Konnikova)
“Then there is satisficing, a coping strategy whereby one takes in just enough information to meet a specific need and ignores the rest. This could be considered a practical approach for one who is not aware of the full range of choices.” (David A. Sousa)
“According to [the scholar Herbert] Simon, people can be maximizers and satisficers in different contexts. For example, when it comes to, let’s say, tacos, I’m a maximizer. I’ll do a rigorous amount of research to make sure I’m getting the best taco I can find, because for me there is a huge difference in the taco experience. A satisficer will just get tacos wherever they see a decent taco stand and call it a day. I hate getting tacos with these people. Enjoy your nasty tacos, losers.” (Aziz Ansari)
An amazing thread of grace, borders, trees and hidden treasures that leads to a physical network of Small Pilgrim Places suitable for all of us who are journeying. Thanks, Reader T.
This is perfect. → If the Zuckerberg hearing were the Gutenberg hearing
Google has released some cool experiments: Semantris is Tetris meets word association, powered by machine learning. I might have played a few dozen times already. Talk to Books is a Google Books search trained using human conversations (useful!).
Oh, and the green hair is a mohawk…and it sports fashionable stubble. → Green-haired turtle that breathes through its genitals added to endangered list
“The first step is for each of us to commit unsuicide.” → An Interview with Richard Powers
Cool story about how the “Harvard Sentences” Secretly Shaped the Development of Audio Tech. And those sentences have a kind of poetry of their own.
When algorithms surprise us demonstrates the weird ingenuity demonstrated by AI/neural nets. The tic-tac-toe solution is my favorite || pairs well with neural network-named tomatoes… “sun bungs” or “shart delights” anyone?
I shouldn’t be surprised this is so well written. → Molly Ringwald Revisits “The Breakfast Club” in the Age of #MeToo
Why is American currency so boring? → The year’s most beautiful banknotes
Today is World Art Day, an international day for celebrating the fine arts and promoting creativity. Founded by the International Association of Art (IAA) in 2012 to coincide with Leonardo Da Vinci’s birthday, activities are held around the world to celebrate…but there’s no reason you can’t celebrate on your own. One place to start: Open Culture’s list of 1.8 million free works of art (online) from world-class museums.
Project Revoice uses recordings of earlier speech to give ALS patients their voices back.
Shia LaBeouf “Just Do It” Motivational Speech
Reader B.: "Another brilliant installment… I vow to integrate pinguid into my vocabulary. Thank you again! ¶ The WORK from Cioran (new to me) got me looking through Johnson’s Idler essays for the first time in ages. (“We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves.”) ¶ And reminded me of the concept of SLACK as preached by the Church of the Subgenius. ¶ “The reason They have been so successful these last 10,000 years is that – ironically – at any given time you actually have more Slack than you can possibly appreciate until it is taken away.”
My other favorite Reader B.: “Pinguid: have you seen this? ¶ Cioran sounds very good. He might satisfy my Ligotti cravings.”
Another Reader T.: “E. M. Cioran has obviously never had a cat or a dog.”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
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