Thursday Things: Holiday Frenzy Edition
12 December 2019. Vol 1 No 18. By Dan McGirt. #18
Welcome to Thursday Things! As the holiday season kicks into high gear, you don’t have to wait until Christmas to unwrap this week’s edition!
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash
Always watching and listening, and knows if you’ve been good or bad. I’m talking about Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant (and similar products / services / creepy preludes to the robot apocalypse from other companies.) Do you have a smart home, powered by the Echo or Google Nest? Good luck with that. I don’t want my home appliances to be smarter than me. I don’t trust Alexa. And, it turns out, children also don’t trust Alexa:
Earlier this year, Silvia Lovato of Northwestern University presented research on how American kids in the same age range Danovitch studied are not only skeptical of voice assistants, but remarkably creative in their attempts to test how reliable the gadgets are.
Lovato says the kids would pepper the assistants with questions. Fantasy creatures were a mainstay—Lovato’s paper is titled “Hey Google, do unicorns exist?” Voice assistants are often programmed to answer “I don’t know” to these sorts of queries (Santa, Easter bunny, and the tooth fairy, etc.), making them appear less trustworthy to children.
Danovitch and Lovato’s work suggests not only that kids are way more sophisticated about technology than we think but also that we, as humans, have an ingrained sense of skepticism about unknown sources that somehow gets fuzzier as we grow older.
The article concludes that kids don’t just blindly believe every answer they’re given. No, you pretty much have to be an adult to do that.
I sometimes get bags of coffee for Christmas. Which is a fine Christmas gift! It’s something I’ll actually use. For me, the shelf life of coffee is rarely a concern. But just in case you have too much coffee sitting around, here is a helpful resource to answer the question: How Long Does Coffee Last?
Source: Eat By Date
While I focused on coffee, the website I pulled this from — EatByDate.com — is an excellent online reference for how long every food you can imagine will last if properly stored, and how fast it will go bad if not properly stored. It might be worth bookmarking as we head into the coming weeks of holiday party leftovers.
Eating pasta 3 times a week won't make you gain weight, according to a new study — and it could even help you lose it. You’re welcome. (Thank you to a Happy Subscriber for this important news.)
I like this story. A fourth-grader in Florida was bullied at school over his homemade University of Tennessee Volunteers t-shirt. The story went viral and Vol fans responded with support:
Sales of a University of Tennessee T-shirt designed by a fourth-grade boy in Florida have raised $952,101 for the non-profit organization STOMP Out Bullying.
The Florida Vol fan created a homemade shirt to show his love for the Vols and his story went viral. The university’s VolShop offered to print the boy’s design for him as a gesture of appreciation.
The response exceeded expectations, selling 112,715 shirts for $14.99 apiece in the three months it was offered, according to a news release from the University of Tennessee.
Folks in these parts take their SEC football rivalries seriously, sometimes too much so. Adults know it is all in fun. Kids may not. It is good to see a happy outcome here.
The holiday are a stressful time for many people. Office parties, family gatherings, travel on overloaded highways and through crowded airports, the pressure of gift shopping, the interminable Christmas music playing everywhere — there are many sources of holiday stress. According to one survey of 2000 Americans:
Shopping for gifts was found to be the most stressful part of the holidays, with 37 percent it causes them stress.
The act of visiting family was also atop the list (36 percent), along with cooking (34 percent), as well as crowds and lines (30 percent).
Even the receiving gifts was found to be a pretty big stressor for nearly one in three respondents (31 percent).
Sadly, two-thirds of Americans say the stress they’re currently experience is actually dampening their holiday spirit.
This survey was sponsored by a company that hawks CBD-infused beverages as a possible tonic to your stress, so I’m not sure how much weight to give it. But it is good to be aware that if you’re feeling stressed by the holidays, you’re not alone. Take a deep breath … and perhaps take a moment to reflect on why we celebrate this season in the first place. That might help.
This, on the other hand, will not help at all: the same survey found that the number one source of stress for American is politics. 78% named politics as their number one stressor, ahead of work (51%), financial issues (51%), or health issues (37%). Politics being at the top of the list, and by such a wide margin, surprised me. Does it surprise you? Is politics your number one source of stress?
My surprise probably comes from the fact I don’t find politics or political disputes stressful at all. But I was a political science major and worked in politics and government for many years. Politics is my idea of fun. (No, really!) I enjoy the give and take of a good political discussion or debate. I always learn more from people I disagree with than from those who simply affirm what I say or believe. I know that when an opponent resorts to name-calling, emotional arguments, and hysterics that I’ve won my point, so that doesn’t stress me at all. But I’m usually more interested in trying to understand why you believe what you believe than in trying to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong. A debate / argument is one way to do that.
That said, even I find the over top constant battle stations “oh my God, the world is ending!” frenzy of the last few years tiring at times. When that happens I just check out and focus on something else for a while. I suggest you do the same.
Trust me, the world is not going to end anytime soon. And CNN/Fox/MSNBCBSABCPBSetc will still be there later if, for some insane reason, you want to turn it back on. (I don’t watch TV news except by accident, like when the TV is on at the airport, gym, etc.)
I make this digression because if that many people are that stressed about politics now, that stress is only going to get worse in 2020, a presidential election year here in the USA. Even our Happy Subscribers in other countries are likely to get caught up in the American election frenzy, never mind your own local politics.
For me, Thursday Things is one of those “other things” I do that isn’t politics. This isn’t a political newsletter. I avoid linking to or discussing overtly political articles, unless they relate to dog mayors. We need more dog mayors. I haven’t decided yet how long I’ll continue Thursday Things, but I will at least carry it into the new year and I will try to continue to seek out and share with you items that are amusing, perplexing, uplifting, inspiring, entertaining, irreverent, and perhaps occasionally scary, but always meant to give you something to think about, laugh at, or smile on.
So fear not! Thursday Things will remain as politics free as I can make it (again, excepting dog mayors) and I hope you’ll look forward to joining me each Thursday.
I leave you with this. If only I had a fireplace! Walmart is selling the KFC fried-chicken scented firelog.
Don’t be tempted to taste Kentucky Fried Chicken’s 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog — or you will most definitely get burnt. For better or worse, the limited-edition KFC Firelog is back by popular demand at Walmart.com, where it’s going for $18.99 a pop.
Unlike the brisk evergreen scent of your nostalgic childhood memories, this fowl hearth warmer smells like a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ legendary deep-fried poultry.
It comes with an important warning label: “Please do not eat.”
Again, if you missed that: “Please do not eat.”
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