Doug Ford tries to out-Trump Trump

It's pretty instructive to see Ontario Premier Doug Ford's contribution to the ongoing debate on American tariffs and their perpetrator, Donald Trump.

Following up on "He can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned", Ford called Trump a "loser", a "dictator", a "bully" and the "king of bankruptcies". Ouch! Then, "I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body". Kapow! 

Predictably, Trump fired back very much in the same vein, calling Ford "the less charismatic, intelligent and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great Rob Ford". Zhang! And, to cap it all, he says he is "giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontatio to Lake America in that we don't expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer". So there!

Ford: "You think an insult from him hurts me? Well, bring it on buddy, I am read ready. Bring it on!" Kraak!

The next day, in a CNN interview, Ford admitted that, "Things got a little heated, it got a little personal yesterday". Yuh think?

They're two of a kind, aren't they? Neither of them have any filters or any off switch. Neither considers consequences or engages brain before speaking. How either of them got to where they are today is a mystery. They are supposed to be leaders of large and important regions, and they continue to talk like naughty schoolkids. I'm embarrassed by the pair of them.

Also like Trump, though, the more daft things he says and does, the more Ford's support increases (although while that was true at one time, Trump has shown that there are limits to this kind of counter-intuitive popularity bump - his popularity is now at an all-time low).

Kash Patel is the archetypical chud

My new favourite word is "chud", although I confess I have never used it IRL (in real life).

The word "chud" supposedly originates from a cult 1980s sci-fi horror movie C.H.U.D., which in that context stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, a group of radioactive post-apocalyptic drop-outs. It gradually became used online to describe basement-dwelling internet trolls, gradually broadening its application to any online nerd, creep or jerk.

It's only recently that it had become even more broadly used to describe any unpleasant, boorish or socially inept (almost always male) person. It is particularly used by left wingers to describe those on the far right, particularly those of the MAGA persuasion. Embattled US FBI director Kash Patel recently sued a blogger for calling him a chud.

It should not be confused with the epithet "chad" (or "Chad"), which refers to an alpha male type, usually a strong, handsome and entitled man who effortlessly attracts women, and who is either admired or scorned for their brazen self-confidence.

Neither should it be confused with the Anglicism "chav", which is used for a binge-drinking, bling-wearing lout or boor, although that might work well for Kash Patel too.

Say "hello" to hello

I heard something on the radio yesterday that shocked me. Well, nothing new there, you might say. But this was a quirk of the English language that I was surprised not to have known about before.

Apparently, "hello" - along with variants like "hallo", "hullo", "hulloa", etc - has not always been the standard English language greeting, used by all and sundry. In fact, "hello"as a greeting is something of a late-comer, and was not popularized until Thomas Edison succeeded in making it the default greeting for phone conversations in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. By the 1870s, it featured in the "How To" section of the new phone books, and gradually became officially recognized. (Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell preferred the rather nautical "ahoy", and apparently continued to use that throughout his life, even on the phone.)

The word "hello" did exist before this, of course, but it was more of an exclamation than a greeting, a word to attract attention or express surprise, closer to today's "Hey!" than anything else.

All of which made me want to go back to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens novels, to see how people greeted each other there. Sure enough, the usual greeting was most often "Good morning/afternoon/evening" or just "Good day", or, alternatively, straight into "How do you do?" 

Going back earlier, say in Shakespearean times, a greeting was more likely to be "hail" or a cheery "what ho!" or "well met!", although "good day" and "good morrow" were also common. No "hellos".

Ha! Who knew?

"Goodbye", on the either hand, has been in common use since at least the 16th century, before which "farewell", "Godspeed " or "adieu" were more common.

Air Canada is being held to language obligations its competitors are not

Canada's language battles continue, this time when the CEO of Air Canada aired a condolence message for the families of the two Air Canada pilots who were killed in an accident at La Guardia airport in New York a couple of days ago. He managed a "bonjour" at the start and a "merci" at the end of his video piece, which did at least have French subtitles. But, given that one of the pilots was a francophone, that the flight originated in Montreal, and that the Air Canada company is based in Montreal, has been lambasted as insufficient, disrespectful and downright outrageous by many. There were renewed calls for his ouster.

CEO Michael Rousseau (despite his name) has been called out before by the Quebec language police. He took even more flak for suggesting that his busy schedule just did not allow him to focus on learning a new language, which he said he had not needed in his 14 years of living in Montreal. This time, though, others have involved themselves, including Prime Minister Mark Carney (whose French is not brilliant but he did learn enough to get by for his election campaign), and Rosseau has been summoned before a parluamentary committee to explain his situation.

Poor Mr. Rousseau apologized for his lack of French, which he admits is inadequate "despite many lessons over several years". I can sympathize - some people just don't have the gift. He also apologized that his inability to speak French had "diverted attention" from his message of condolence and grief to the families of the deceased, although, arguably, it was the language hawks in the Bloc Québécois who were doing the diverting. 

While Air Canada is not a federal government agency, it is considered (rightly or wrongly) a federal public corporation, and it is subject to Canada's Official Languages Act. Announcements on board are made in both English and French, and service in both languages is guaranteed. As a high-profile "flag carrier", Air Canada in particular is expected to uphold the myth of Canadian bilingualism and, as CEO, Rousseau is first in the firing line.

In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. Air Canada used to be a fully-fledged Crown corporation, but when it was privatized in 1988, it was specifically subject to various "public interest obligations", enshrined in a whole act of Parliament called the Air Canada Public Participation Act. This included the continued application of the Official Languages Act, although it was not given any additional federal finding to accommodate these onerous requirements.

It's interesting to think, then, that Air Canada's direct competitors, like WestJet and Porter, are not subject to this kind of scrutiny or held to this level of expectations. They are normal private companies, and not subject to the Official Languages Act. Air Canada, though, due to the vagaries of history and the way the company was converted from from a Crown corporation to a piece company nearly forty years ago, IS subject to these additional obligations. Double standards?

Anyone from outside the country watching the howls of outrage going on around the airline's CEO'S French proficiency (or otherwise) would no doubt be dumfounded that we twist ourselves into these kids of knots over something that doesn't seem that important. To a relatively small sub-section of the Canadian population, though, these things are of paramount importance. The country's supposed bilingualism is sometimes touted as one of its strengths; often, though, it is more of an albatross around its neck.

And the biggest losers in all this? The two dead pilots who, as far as we know, did everything in their power to minimize trauma and death among their passengers. Two pilots lost their lives: that should be the story here. They seem to have been all but forgotten amid this squalid, politicized side-show. Good job, Bloc Québécois.

UPDATE

It seems like Rousseau has been successfully pushed out by this "scandal", and he intends to retire by year-end.

Our ethical decisions may depend on the language they are couched in

Here's an interesting thing. You've probably heard of what's usually referred to as the "trolley problem" of ethics and philosophy. So, people have to decide whether to sacrifice one person in order to save five others who are about to be killed by a hypothetical runaway trolley bus (or tram, or train). There are various formulations and variations, like what if it was a fat person or an old person, or what if you had to actually push a person off a bridge in order to save the five rather than just pull a track switch. 

Generally speaking, a sizeable majority think that it is morally permissible to make the utilitarian choice and pull the lever to save the five at the cost of the one. However, much fewer people would push someone off the bridge to save the five, reflecting the increased "emotional resonance" of such an action. 

More recent studies, though, have looked at what difference the language in which the problem is posed makes to people's moral decision-making. The problem was put to people who spoke more than one language, both in their native language and in their second language. By a substantial margin, more people chose to pull the switch to kill the one person in order to save the five if the problem was put to them in their second language, rather than in their native language. The difference was even starker for the more emotive problem of having to push someone off a bridge rather than just pull a rail switch at a distance. Furthermore, the poorer people's mastery of the second language, the more marked the effect.

This suggests that a native language holds much more emotional resonance, while a second language maintains more psychological distance for most people. This makes some intuitive sense, I guess, but it's interesting to see it demonstrated in quite such a stark manner.

You can't buy veggie chicken in Europe any more

The EU comes in for a lot of stick from a lot of folks and for various different reasons. But, for all that, it remains one of the most sensible and civilized blocs in today's world. Yes, it has its problems (Hungary, anyone?) but, for the most part, it does a good job of providing a voice of sobriety and reason in today's increasingly weird and dysfunctional global politics.

Occasionally, though, it missteps. One such misstep is the latest policy decision to ban the use of words like "chicken", "bacon" and "steak" by vegetarian and vegan food producers, even if it is clearly qualified on the label as being vegetarian or vegan. Mysteriously, words like "burger", "nuggets" and "sausage" ARE still allowed, because ... well, I'm really not sure why. Where they stand on the use of "chick'un", "chick'n", etc, I'm also not sure. Incidentally, this ruling also applies to the UK, which - also mysteriously - is still subject to such EU commercial edicts.

Now, it seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone has ever picked up a pack of veggie bacon in a supermarket and been traumatized to find that it contains absolutely no dead animal. The "veggie" part is usually front and centre of their packaging and advertising - it's a positive selling point, after all. (A British survey suggests that 92% of shoppers say they have NEVER mistaken "fake" meat for the "real thing".)

Either way, I think the EU overstepped their brief on this this one. Do they really have nothing better to discuss at the moment, like maybe global security, recession-spawning tariffs, existential changes in the climate?

Un-curling-like language at the Winter Olympics

I couldn't help but smile at the indignation and outrage at the Winter Olympics mens curling competition, as the Canadian team is once again accused of cheating by opponents Sweden.

Curling is still considered, I suppose, a gentleman's game, and has no truck with newfangled ideas like video replays and what have you (although the handles of the stones are now electronic and give a green light when the stone is correctly released before the "hog line"). But Sweden's Oskar Eriksson accused Canada's Marc Kennedy of "double-touching" the stone, i.e. giving it a little tap with a finger after release. 

Most curlers would say that there is little or no way this could actually help the shot - given that it is still 100 feet from the rings - but it is technically illegal if spotted. In this case, it was not spotted, and when the referees did spot-checks after the allegations, no transgressions were identified (surprise!). Canada went on to win 8-6.

As much as the allegations of cheating, though, the outrage was mainly for the "unsportmanlike" language used on the ice sheet. Eriksson's accusations were muscular and vigorous, but Kennedy's defence was events more so, concluding with "just fuck off" and "I don't give a shit". Most un-curling-like language!

Despite Kennedy's vigorous claims that he has never ever done such a thing, video replays do show him doing exactly that thing. The Switzerland team also accuses him of the same in a previous match. Hell, even the Canadian women's team is getting in on the act. Canada is definitely the bad guy here. 

Kennedy has since been given a verbal warning for his language, and umpires are paying special attention to possible cheat moves as the competition approaches its climax. It all seems a bit disingenuous, though. They should hear the language routinely used in the average hockey game!

An embarrassing criticism by Canadian linguistics boffins

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is having his very own "SpellingGate". A group of Canadian linguistics professors and the editor-in-chief of the Canadian English Dictionary, who operate under the moniker Editors Canada, have written an open letter to Carney, taking him to task for his too-English and not-Canadian-enough spelling habits. Like Carney doesn't have enough on his plate right now...

The group takes issue with Carney's tendency to use some English spellings like "catalyse" (instead of the more usual Canadian spelling "catalyze") and "globalisation" (instead of "globalization"). They say it's "a matter of our national history, identity and pride", and that it "could lead to confusion about which spelling is Canadian". Carney spent seven years in the UK, working as the governor of the Bank of England, and "he obviously picked up some pretension while he was there".

"Pretensions"? Are they serious? Do these people have nothing better to do as the world goes to hell in a handbasket? 

They of all people should know that Canadian spelling is an illogical hybrid mishmash of British and American spelling, not some pure monolithic thing. We use some English spellings like "colour", and some American spellings like "analyze". It even varies across the country, with the East tending towards more English spellings and the West more American. 

And these esteemed professors are insisting that Carney - who, I'm pretty sure, is not the person who actually types out the budget document and PMO news releases - take the more American and less English route with words like "globalization" and "catalyze". How do they see that as "taking an 'elbows up' stance" in the face of American imperialism and trade disputes, as they claim?

The whole thing seems pretty poorly-conceived and badly-timed to me. They should be embarrassed.

African names

We are currently on a swing through Botswana and Zimbabwe - safaris, guided walks dug-out canoe trips, that kind of thing - and, amid all the other delights, one thing that has struck me is some of the names that people luxuriate in here.

In among Ronald, Sisa, Mia and Jonathan, our guides, helpers and drvers have rocked names like Precious, Gift, Blessing, Peace, Law, Talent and Forget.

At first, I thought these were Christianity-derived names, along the lines of common female names from Victorian England and America like Faith, Hope and Charity, Grace and Joy, Chastity and Mercy., Constance and Prudence. But these are strapping guys, from twenty-somethings to middle-aged. And apparently, religion doesn't come into it. 

The names are inspired by events, situations and stories occurring around their births or before, or the circumstances of the family. There are southern Africans with names like Lovemore, Enough, Smile, Honour, Energy, Godknows, Wind, Passion - even Hatred and Funeral - and many more. And, arguably, they are better, and more appropriate, names than choosing something from a "1,001 Baby Names" book.

"6-7" is just so, well, 6-7

I don't believe I've ever actually heard it myself, but apparently "6-7" is the meaningless phrase du jour. In fact, it was just voted Word of the Year for 2025 by Dictionary.com.

For some time now, kids have been shouting out "6-7" whenever it seems appropriate (e.g. page 67 in a book, a basketball player who is 6'7", 6 minutes to 7 o'clock) or, increasingly, for no reason whatsoever. Because that's kind of the point of it: it has no point.

According to legend, it started from a tune by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla called "Doot Doot (6 7)", which may or may not be a reference to the police code 10-67, which is used to report a death. Rather than "Doot doot" becoming a catchphrase, which it might well have done, the "6 7" part caught the imaginations of a bunch of young people, and gradually became amplified through TikTok and other social media, as these things do (c.f. "skibidi", "rizz", etc, etc)

Teachers report hearing it hundreds of times each day, often accompanied by a specific hand gesture. It just seems to have tickled the funny bone of young people, and established itself as a kind of shorthand for "cool" and "in", despite, or maybe because of, its complete lack of logic or meaning. It is an example of what linguists call "semantic bleaching", where a word or phrase become completely divorced from its original meaning.

Some teachers have even started using (or deliberately misusing) it themselves, in the full knowledge that it is not supposed to be used by "grown-ups", as a way of defusing and de-legitimizing it, hoping it will just go away as a result.

The outcome of that particular ploy remains inconclusive, but there are rumours that the next craze phrase may be "4-1", again for absolutely no reason.

Gavin Newsom's parodies of Trump passing most Republicans by

I've not been following it particularly closely, but I was aware that California Governor (and potential Democrat presidential candidate for 2028) Gavin Newsom has been running a series of Trump parodies on Twitter.

Posting with idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization (or, often, all caps), scattering nasty nicknames, and dealing with some rather bizarre and random subject matter - all hallmarks of Trump's social media presence on Truth Social - Newsom is pursuing a rather high-risk strategy, and risks alienating some of his own supporters in the process. But then we are not in an election race just yet, so maybe it doesn't really matter.

The way I see it, which I think is probably close to the way Mr. Newsom sees it, is that he is trying to show Republicans the kind of thing that Trump puts out on a daily basis on Truth Social, but divorced from the personality and the mythos that Trump carries with him, in an attempt to convey just how ridiculous and puerile many of Trump's utterances really are.

What's interesting, though, is that many in the MAGA world are taking them quite seriously, calling on Newsom to grow up and be more serious, with no apparent sense of irony. Trump junky Sean Hannity from Fox News bemoans Newsom's "performative confrontational style", adding that "maybe it wins you points with the loony radical base in your party", the pastiche element  apparently passing him by completely. Another Fox commentator begs, " You are making a fool of yourself. Stop it!" VP JD Vance complains that Newsom's efforts "ignores the fundamental genius of President Trump's political success, which is that he's authentic".

Mr. Newsom must be wetting himself when he reads these responses. Subtlety and irony are clearly not Republican attributes. As the Atlantic article author notes: "MAGA World is so close to getting it". But they're not quite there yet.

Are women who fish still fishermen?

On reading an article about lobster fishermen in Atlantic Canada, I was a little taken aback by the passing assertion that the preferred term for both men and women in the fishing industry is in fact ... "fishermen".

Not that this is such a revolutionary idea, and not that there are actually that many women in the fishing industry anyway. But it's certainly something I had never thought about. And apparently it's true.

If we're being politically correct, we say "humanity" instead of "mankind", "staff" for "manpower", "chair" for "chairman", and "firefighter" for 'fireman". But we still say "fisherman", mainly because there just aren't any good or obvious substitutes. 

"Fish harvester" is a bit of an awkward mouthful, even if Fisheries and Oceans Canada has officially adopted it. And "fisher" is a forest-dwelling carnivorous mammal found in the wilds of Canada, and anyway sounds just weird except in the biblical phrase "fisher of men". "Fish industry worker"? I said GOOD substitutes! "Fishwives"? Don't even go there!

And, anyway, as it turns out, if you ask any female person who fishes on either coast of Canada - and people have done just that - they will respond, to a man [sic], that they prefer to be called "fishermen", thank you very much. In fact they take strong exception to any attempts at political correctness. These are not bleeding-heart liberals or holier-than-thou intellectuals.

So, until the female fishermen themselves change their minds, we are probably stuck with "fisherman". Which begs the question: has anyone asked female board chairs what they would like to be called?

A nod's a good as a wink (but why?)

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse" is one of those good old English phrases whose origins are murky,  and whose meaning is generally well understood but perhaps not all it seems.

It is usually assumed to mean that a subtle signal is usually sufficient for someone who is open and ready to understand or undertake something. Thus, you can nod or wink or make any other small gesture: I will still understand your meaning.

To me, that doesn't really make any sense, although it does seem to be the most likely meaning of the earliest-known use of the phrase, dating back to William Goodall's 1740 ballad opera The False Guardians Outwitted. 

It seems to me that perhaps that would make sense for the commonly-used shortened version of the phrase, "a nod's as good as a wink", but not when the "blind horse" is added in (or "blind bat", as Monty Python would have it). A blind horse can see neither the nod nor the wink, so each gesture is equally useless. So, to me, a better meaning would be: it doesn't matter how you present it, a person who is not ready or willing to understand will never take your meaning.

A Quora response by someone with a PhD in applied linguistics suggests that either meaning may be true, but the first meaning is probably more true (or more English, she suggests). Now, I'm no linguist, but I still disagree. Because, after all, a nod's as good as .... well, you know.

Spelling bees may have jumped rhe shark

Maybe you always thought that spelling bees were kind of geeky and ridiculous. I actually used to think they were pretty cool, but in recent years they may have got out of hand and jumped the shark.

The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee - the big one - was won by the correct spelling of the word "éclaircissement". The previous word, which almost caught the contestant out, was "commelina". So, kudos to 13-year old Faizan Zaki for getting these right. But these are not English words.

"Éclaircissement" is obviously French, and with a bit of basic French you can figure out what it means. "Commelina" is the Latin name for a flower, but most English-speaking people would just say "dayflower" should they ever need to reference it.

Now, I understand about loanwords, and how they have immeasurably enriched and broadened - made unweildy, you might say - the English language. But I would argue that these are not loanwords at all. These are foreign words, not in general usage. Sure, they may appear in one or two of the more comprehensive dictionaries, but they are not words that even the most erudite speakers would use in an actual conversation.

Their spellings are being asked in the Scripps Spelling Bee because modern contestants - principally Indian-Americans, as far as I can tell, obsessively coached by over-achieving fathers and dragon mothers - are so good, having spent years of their childhoods poring over dictionaries, that regular English words are just too easy.

So, what is a self-respecting national spelling competition to do? If they were to stick to regular English words, the competition would go on forever (or until one contestants fell asleep from exhaustion). There is, then, no real alternative to including all manner of foreign and technical words.

In the process, though, it has become a test of rote memorization of dictionaries, and it loses any human element an amateur spelling bee might once have had. And I hate to think what kinds of lives these young kids live en route to their brief stardom in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Trump's grand retort to Democrats' "weird" label

Donald Trump finally, after more than two weeks, came up with a riposte to the viral description of himself and running mate Vance. 

A couple of weeks ago, Tim Walz aptly described Trump and Vance as "weird", a simple but effective little sound bite that may turn out to be his greatest contribution to the Harris-Walz Democratic campaign. 

You could argue that, in resorting to the next best thing to name-calling, the Democrats have sunk to Trump's level. But the Dems would probably argue that they are merely taking a page out of Trump's playbook, while avoiding the lies, conspiracy theories and the actual name-calling. (They are already straying perilously close to conspiracy theory territory with their continued pursuit of the spurious JD Vance sofa sex meme). At least they are doing it with what seems to be genuine joy, rather than the snide nastiness we usually get from Trump (and now Vance).

After the jibe, though, Trump went uncharacteristically quiet. Dis-quiet-ed, you might say. At a rally in Montana last night, though, he finally came up with the ultimate come-back: "No, we're not weird ... I think we're the opposite of weird. They're weird." Er, okay. Is that it?

True to form, he then went off on a fairy tale about how the American press had conspired with the Democrats to spread this calumnious slander. But he had finally made his great retort. Good job, Donny.

Laughing Kamala? Sounds like a compliment to me

Donald Trump, who is known for the childish, politically incorrect nicknames he gives to his rivals, seems to be scraping the barrel. After Sleepy Joe Biden, Lyin' Ted Cruz, Sloppy Chris Christie, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, etc, he was under some pressure to come up with something hard-hitting for his new rival, Kamala Harris.

His solution? Laughing Kamala. Wait, what? He explains: "I call her Laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts." Er, OK. That seems to be the best he can do.

I don't know about the laughing, but Ms. Harris does always seem to have a broad grin on her face when meeting the public. She seems like a genuinely nice, happy person, and that in itself would almost be enough for me to vote for her. Compared to the dour, cynical, angry, grey old men she faces, she is a breath of fresh air. Luckily, she's also whip-smart and strong, but don't write off the positive vibes of a smile.

What's with those "strange" Black names?

If you've ever wondered about all those unusual Black names - often referred to as "strange" or "weird", and often the butt of off-colour jokes by the less politically correct white comedians - I don't think you need to be afraid to ask. Most Black people will happily oblige with an answer.

Black sports personalities, actors and entertainers, and just regular folks from suburbia, glory in names like Tayshaun, Raynell, Chaunte, RaMell, Jamal, Latasha, Rau'shee, D'Andre, Latonya, DeMar, Trevell, LaKiesha, Sha'Carri, Tayvon, Shaday, Kareem, Michandra, JohnTae, D'Quell, Lakasia, Tavondra, DeShaun, Dremiel, Shanequa. Comprised of apparently random blended syllables, often with random capitalization and random punctuation, they are nevertheless distinctively Black.

And that is (part of) the point. Such invented - and inventive - names have a double purpose: they are asserting individuality, but they are also deliberately - and assertively - identifying themselves as Black.

While the current trend can be said to have begun with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s (and the later Afrocentrism cultural movement of the 1980s and 90s), the history of distinctively Black names goes much further back. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, names like Booker and Perlie were almost exclusively used by Black people, and many Biblical names like Elijah, Isaac, Moses and Abraham were as likely as not to be associated with Black people. Names designating empowerment, like Prince, King, Caesar and Freeman, were also very popular. 

In fact, the trend of distinctively Black naming became much more pronounced during the antebellum slavery period, and that is no coincidence. (At the same time, White people started deliberately avoiding these names.) This was partly a reaction to a time when White overlords would deliberately change the names of Black slaves to more standard names like Ruth, Mary, James and Joseph. The chosen names were not actually African, just ... different and individualistic.

So, don't think of these names as strange or weird, think of them as creative, affirmatory and assertive.

UPDATE

Incidentally, the report that has been circulating of a US judge railing against the "ridiculous names" Black women are giving their kids these days is in fact spurious. 

It was a spoof or satire, in deliberately poor taste "to make you think", according to the outfit in question ("The Peoples [sic] News").

The simple problems that AI can't handle

It's interesting to hear that AI can have problems answering some pretty simple logic problems, problems that humans typically have no problems with.

The problems in question are often referred to as Alice In Wonderland (AIW) problems, and are usually stated as follows: "Alice has four sisters, and she also has a brother. How many sisters does Alice's brother have?" Humans, even relatively young humans, typically have no difficulty in figuring out that the brother has four sisters plus Alice herself, i.e. five.

As often as not, though, AI applications like ChatGPT, Opera's Claude 3, and Meta's Llama 3 get this wrong, often offering confident and detailed step-by-step workings and explanations of its erroneous thinking (one even with a drum roll!) 

OpenAI's new GPT4o model had the highest success rate, but even that only achieved about 65% success. Claude 3 only managed a 43% success rate, while the best version of Llama languished at just 30%. Google's Gemini Pro only got it right 0.8% of the time, so the less said about that the better.

It's not quite clear why they have such difficulty with these apparently simple tasks. The AI systems' official ratings for problem-solving ability is 88%, 87%, 64% and 72% respectively, but that does not seem to be reflected with these particular problems. Maybe the problem-solving evaluation needs to be re-evaluated?

National Spelling Bee rapid elimination round

Well, this is ridiculous. It seems that the Scripps National Spelling Bee has a rapid-fire elimination round these days. You can watch video of 12-year old winner Bruhat Soma spelling words I have never heard of like "aposiopesis", "caixinha" and "sciniph" in ultra-fast mode. 29 such words in 90 seconds, in fact.

It makes you wonder if the poor guy does anything else other than read the dictionary, but you can't help but be immensely impressed.

Trump's problem with language(s)

It has been pointed out many times how Donald Trump's language is changing of late, and how he is openly espousing more White Nationalist ideology, such as his Hitler-esque talk about immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country", and his vow to proceed with "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history". Plus, he has been having some cozy chats at Mar-a-Lago with a bunch of very suspect characters, including Kanye West, Nick Fuentes and Victor Orban.

Most recently, he has been waxing most unlyrically about foreign languages, and how "we have languages coming into our country". So, immigrants are not just bringing drugs and crime to America, they are bringing ... languages. "These are languages - it's the craziest thing - they have languages that nobody in this country had ever heard of. It's a very horrible thing." (That, right there, was English, in case you were wondering.)

So, to be clear, Mr. Trump elaborated further. These are "truly foreign languages", and "nobody speaks them". Well, presumably the people that speak them do, but leaving that aside, Trump worries about "pupils from foreign countries, from countries where they don't even know what the language is". Because, after all, "these are languages that no-one ever heard of". Finally, for ultimate clarification: "There are migrants invading from countries that we know nothing about, which is the point". Riiiight... Clearer now.

If that is how the English language is butchered in America, God help the poor benighted souls who are moving there.