Dingus of the week

Happy Friday,

A newsletter I subscribe to has a feature called Dingus of the Week.

God, I don’t know how you’d pick.

This week, she was talking about the book banning in Texas. Most of the banned books are LGBT, with a heaping helping of racism, prejudice and bigotry. Here’s the irony. One of the banned books is about not banning books. lol.

I read a really stupid post on Medium.

Some guy said he discovered the “secret” to succeeding on the platform. He’s been pumping out 2-3 articles a day for a few months now and he’s almost up to $20, so clearly volume is the secret. He’s just happily “sharing” his success tip.

Ugh. I was mad at myself for reading it.

I wanted to tell him if he had to write over 100 articles to make $20, maybe that’s not sustainable? But even more so, dare I say maybe quality is worth a visit?

Here’s another idiot.

A man decided he was tired of Covid mandates, so he decided to join the protests. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. So he parked his truck across a highway. Didn’t drive to join any protests. Just parked across a highway. Then he was devastated when it was towed. Know what the kicker is? There’s no mask mandate where he lives.

Sir, you can’t just park across a highway. That’s what the cops told him when they told him to move the truck or they’d tow it. He told them yes he can, because it’s allowed if you’re protesting. They said no, it’s not. He said yes, it is. So they towed him.

How would you even pick a dingus of the week?

There’s too much choice.

Here’s my thought. We like to think of the dinguses of the world as a person who is just plain stupid. As if “dingus” is an on/off switch. We are one—or we aren’t.

But that’s not how it actually works. Smart people doing professional jobs can be dinguses. It comes down to what we know versus what we think we know.

Psychologists have a name for that.

It’s called the illusion of explanatory depth. It means we think you understand something that we actually don’t. They call it “a significant cognitive barrier.”

lol. You think?

Seems to me “significant cognitive barrier” is a fancy phrase to acknowledge that there are times when reasonable conversation is literally impossible. Even if the person is smart in other areas.

You can’t communicate with someone who is dead certain they know what they’re taking about when they don’t.

When I read that, know what my kneejerk thought was?

Lordy, I never want that to be me.

God grant me the wisdom to know when to shut my mouth.

My Medium homepage has been full of dinguses this week. Stupid tips by newbies, too much “how to make money” crap and we all have the same 24 hours, don’t you know? I keep hitting “show less like this” but it doesn’t.

God, I wish my vacuum sucked as much as the homepage. I wouldn’t have to go over the dust bunnies from three different directions.

That’s my pet peeve this week. What’s yours?

:)

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More reading… (These links bypass the pay wall)

• 5 Things “Some” Writers Need To Stop Doing. Like, Now.

• She Was An Philanthropist, Not A Sideshow Freak

• How To Write Titles That Don’t Suck And People Actually Click

• A Thank You, A Promise And Some Blunt Truths I Need To Say

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Did you know you earn stars when you heart or comment? You don’t get to see them, but I do. I see “5 star readers” in my admin. It feels real nice, so thank you. :)

xo,
Linda