Here is another opportunity, harvested from the file of tens of thousands of spam comments, to play the game where you look at the product of an article-spinner and try to guess what all the original words were. And if you were worrying about artificial intelligence, Dr. Boli suggests you postpone your worries for a little while longer.

Artificial keenness has started creating images, composition texts, and composing music. What pleasure happen next? Determination robots supersede humans? Is this look-alike created aside concocted intelligence? Cool, isn’t it?

Now here is a somewhat simpler but perhaps more challenging game. All you have to do is read this paragraph:

We bring high-performance innovation and functionality to everyday products that fit seamlessly into your modern life.

And now for the game: if you can find any meaning at all in those words, you win.

This crumbling manse looks as though it is auditioning for a role in a Charles Addams cartoon. It is the abandoned St. James Convent in Sewickley, Pennsylvania—a town stuffed to the gills with millionaires. It is on the grounds of a still-active parish with a school attended by some of those millionaires’ children. Yet it crumbles, and it is now fenced off so that it can crumble without dropping large crumbs on passing pedestrians.

This is the old St. Canice’s school in the Knoxville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It has seen better days.

The entrance to SS. Peter and Paul Church in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh. This picture is not up to date: if it were up to date, it would include the blue CONDEMNATION stickers on the doors.

In many ways, the Roman Catholic Church is the worst slumlord in Pittsburgh, and the same is true in most other large cities in the United States. When a building is no longer useful, the popish church cannot maintain it, because money is limited, and membership is dwindling (in some of our American cities—the papists as a whole are going great guns), and maintenance costs are huge. If only there were some way to keep these buildings up for free! Then they would be available for parishioners’ weddings or birthday parties or Amway presentations or whatever, and they would not be hideous scabs on their neighborhoods.

Well, Dr. Boli is about to explain how the Roman Church could solve this problem, and the idea is so simple it can be explained in one word:

Indulgences.

Think about it for a moment. The Catholic Church used to be fabulously good at selling indulgences. It was so good at it, in fact, that the success of the indulgences business spawned the whole Protestant movement. And what did all that money go to? The building fund! And what did the world get for its money? St. Peter’s Basilica! Any way you look at it, that was a good investment.

So is Dr. Boli really advocating selling indulgences again? By no means. The sale of indulgences created a scandal, and the Roman Catholic Church does not need a scandal. Here is what the good old Catholic Encyclopedia (under Indulgences) says about the matter:

Here, as in so many other matters, the love of money was the chief root of the evil: indulgences were employed by mercenary ecclesiastics as a means of pecuniary gain. Leaving the details concerning this traffic to a subsequent article (see REFORMATION), it may suffice for the present to note that the doctrine itself has no natural or necessary connection with pecuniary profit, as is evident from the fact that the abundant indulgences of the present day are free from this evil association: the only conditions required are the saying of certain prayers or the performance of some good work or some practice of piety.

Some good work! That is what Dr. Boli has in mind. The average Catholic parish in the United States has about three thousand members. Let us say that only a third of them are active in any meaningful way. Among a thousand parishioners, there are bound to be several carpenters, roofers, HVAC contractors, architects, and so forth. And anybody can pick up a paintbrush. As for the materials, it’s surprising how little they cost if a bunch of volunteers who plan to work with them split the cost. Perhaps people could be encouraged to give up Starbucks for Lent and divert their latte money to materials costs.

Parishes struggle to find meaningful activities to get the members involved. Well, here’s a meaningful activity for you: this weekend, let’s all go fix up the old convent! What will you get out of it? Take a look at this indulgence! Dr. Boli’s old copy of the Douay Bible offers an indulgence of three years for spending fifteen minutes a day reading Scripture. Think of the indulgence you could earn by replacing a few joists—and in the process getting to know Jesus better by actually practicing his profession!

Meaningful labor, meaningful piety, genuine good accomplished in the world—that is what this program has to offer, and Dr. Boli hands it over gratis to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, without even demanding an indulgence for himself. The grateful prayers of intercession from the people who live in the neighborhoods where these buildings fester will be enough for him.

“By continuing, you agree to Snapchat’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.” The only button on the screen is “Continue.”

Dr. Boli has mentioned before how these agreements, which run to thousands of words, are not agreements at all. They are conditions imposed at will upon people who have no real option of refusing them, which is to say they are articles of enslavement.

But you don’t have to agree, right? Some online services are necessary, but Snapchat filters for your phone camera are not. You can simply back out.

But the back button is disabled. It does nothing.

All right, you can force-stop the app.

But when you start it again, it’s on the same screen, with the “Continue” button waiting to be pressed.

Well, then, you can uninstall the app.

No, you can’t, because it’s the phone’s default camera app, and it can’t be uninstalled.

You have two choices: you destroy the phone now, or you have agreed to the Terms and Conditions. To put it another way, since destroying the phone is not a realistic choice for most people, by the time you read the notice telling you that you agree, you have already “agreed.”

It may be possible to refine these “agreements” to be even more unambiguously slavery. But an “agreement” where the possibility of refusing agreement has been deliberately removed for every user who does not have access to a time machine will be hard to improve on.

Here is a little marketing blurb, and your challenge is to determine, without resorting to a search engine, what the blurb is trying to sell you. The answer will be below the metaphorical fold.

Attainable opulence

Stand out with a sleek design crafted from high-quality materials like vegan leather, without the premium price.

The answer:

(more…)

From: The President
To: All Employees
Re: 996

All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co., Inc., have been worrying about the future lately. Some of those worries, I must candidly admit, have come from decisions that, while they seemed eminently reasonable at the time, were not as profitable as your executive team had hoped. You have doubtless guessed that I am referring in particular to our ill-fated venture in the Orient. We were very excited to be introducing our first line of processed snack foods specifically made for that market, and our Chinese manufacturing partners had set up a production line that was a model of efficiency. Yet for some reason our Flute Fries brand tubular potato snacks were not a success in the East Asian market, and we were forced to write the whole project off as a loss.

Still, as my father always used to say to my mother whenever he looked in my direction, every clod has a silver lining. We were impressed by the work ethic of our Chinese partners, and when we asked them about it, they explained that it was a management principle that’s becoming very popular in China. It’s called 996. The way it works is this: you work from nine to nine six days a week. That’s all there is to it! Simple, isn’t it? But think of all the work you can get done with all those extra hours!

Now, as I’ve been talking enthusiastically about this new idea with people here and there in the company, some of them have brought up some very good questions, like “Is this legal under the Thirteenth Amendment?” Good question! In answer, I want to make it clear that, as we implement this new program here in Schenectady, it will be strictly voluntary. No one will be forced to work the new schedule. You can choose to be first in line for promotions and pay raises, or you can choose to be first in line for the next round of layoffs. It’s completely up to you!

Another question somebody asked was, “Will I be paid overtime?” In answer, I want to assure you that our overtime policies have not changed. All hourly employees will be paid overtime for any extra hours worked. Salaried employees, of course, will continue to receive their regular salaries. And in a related bit of good news, it is my pleasure to announce that all hourly employees have been upgraded to salaried status backdated to the beginning of the year! If you have already been paid overtime at any point this year, you may refund it by check at the Human Resources front desk.

Another question that came up was a very good one: “Will the executives be working on the 996 system?” Yes! I’m already doing better than that, in fact. I have been in my office twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, since my wife changed the locks on our house.

Finally, we think we have made an improvement on the Chinese plan. One employee objected that the 996 Plan did not leave much time to do anything at home after work, and we could see the wisdom of his objection. So we have decided to move the starting time forward by three hours. Beginning Monday, we will be voluntarily working on the 666 Plan. Isn’t this exciting?

With Warmest Regards,
J. Rutherford Pinckney,
President

Are we becoming our devices? More and more it seems as though we perceive the world, not through our senses, but as it is presented to us on a screen. This observation suggests a useful principle for people whose business it is to communicate with the denizens of the twenty-first century.

But don’t stand too close when it goes off.

From an advertisement in the Engineering News Record, August 25, 1949.