{"id":45025,"date":"2026-06-25T15:26:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=45025"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:26:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:26:01","slug":"just-a-matter-of-being-cranky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/06\/25\/just-a-matter-of-being-cranky\/","title":{"rendered":"Just A Matter Of Being Cranky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Since I write this blog primarily to blow off steam, let me take a secondary target today and critique some bad writing<\/strong>. Understand, folks, I’m not a stylist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m an obsolete software engineer who still writes a lot of code, and, as most software engineers will affirm, I have a literalism mechanism running in the back of my mind most of the time. It dings when something I’m reading descends into masked gibberish, into contradictory statements which have no value in being contradictory, into cliched expressions that writer-wannabes throw onto the page in the belief that this’ll mark them as writers, but do not advance the story, but even inhibit the story, and a few other types of writing crimes.<\/p>\n

That mechanism was triggered several times today while reading Maddowblog’s<\/strong><\/em> Mini-Report<\/em><\/a> of last night, 24 June. Please note this is not a condemnation of Maddowblog<\/strong><\/em>, because the editor, who’ll remain unnamed for good reason, is merely copying the prose of other writers – uncredited. That latter is somewhat execrable, although they at least leave a link to follow.<\/p>\n

I do this because I feel it helps readers to think more slowly and deeply, which, in today’s data-ridden social environment, is a necessity for those who wish to gain an understanding, rather than mere social standing. We’ll begin with …<\/p>\n

* Sometimes, suppressed truths\u00a0reach the public<\/a>\u00a0anyway: \u201cA study on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness has finally been published after being blocked from a government health journal. The vaccine was found to be about 55% effective against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and reduced COVID-19-related trips to emergency departments and urgent care clinics by 50%, according to the study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A vaccine<\/a> is a preventative, not a cure. On a third reading of the above, I can see the writer was trying to be clever, but they have a horse and wagon problem in their writing, because administering a vaccine does not reduce hospitalizations that have already occurred due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

* The state of the U.S.\u00a0refugee program<\/a>: \u201cUnder Mr. Trump, the program has effectively become a whites-only path to life in the United States, a culmination of the president\u2019s longstanding antipathy toward immigrants and his embrace of the concept of \u2018reverse racism\u2019 as a guiding principle in his administration.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This makes sense only if immigrants cannot be white, which is not true. Perhaps a word or two was inadvertently dropped by the writer or that mythical creature, the copy-editor.<\/p>\n

* The push for a data center moratorium picks up a\u00a0notable advocate<\/a>: \u201cHouse Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey on Wednesday called for Congress to impose a nationwide data center moratorium. Pallone is now the most powerful congressional Democrat with jurisdiction over energy and environment issues to support such a policy in the face of public backlash.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… in the face of public backlash<\/em> usually refers to an opinion opposite to that of the general public on some issue. In this case, the issue is the mass construction of public data centers to support the build out and operation of artificial intelligence (AI) services, in particular generative AI. Public city council meetings on the matter are facing protests here in Minnesota, according to the news, and national news sources report similar protests in some other parts of the country.<\/p>\n

From this, I’d expect Pallone to be on the side of the builders of the data centers, but no: he’s asking for a moratorium.<\/p>\n

And three writing blunders in a single post is way too much when coming from alleged writing, or reporting, professionals, even if their sources isn’t where they appeared here. They’re misleading, jarring, and betray a lack of thought that really can lead to conclusions that are unjustified.<\/p>\n

And now back to your regularly scheduled imprecations, improper allegations, and impulsive accusations. Enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I write this blog primarily to blow off steam, let me take a secondary target today and critique some bad writing. Understand, folks, I’m not a stylist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m an obsolete software engineer who still writes a lot of code, and, as most software \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45028,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45025\/revisions\/45028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}