How refreshing to hear Joe Biden say he has benefitted from white privilege.
The Democratic presidential contender told a CNN town hall earlier this month he hadn’t had to “go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through.”
Contrast Biden’s response to Donald Trump’s. The president apparently finds even the discussion of white privilege offensive. He told Bob Woodward earlier this summer that the renowned journalist “drank the Kool-Aid” when Woodward asked about the isolating effects of white privilege and how it blinded recipients to the challenges facing minorities.
The differences in the responses speak volumes about how each man views the advantages typically bestowed on European Americans in this country. One candidate acknowledges such benefits exist, which presupposes he will work to even the playing field, if only by talking about it openly.
The other won’t even entertain the notion.
For those in the cheap seats, which usually means white men — and some women, although most women have seen how bias, intended and unintended, affects them — let me repeat: White privilege is real.
As a result, institutional racism is real, lurking beneath the bylaws and regulations of many organizations and groups that believe they deal fairly with all people.
Racism affects even those people who say they don’t “see” color and “don’t have a racist bone” in their bodies. Maybe it especially affects these people, as they have used their certainty to bar the door on further debate.
It also bears repeating that white privilege does not mean white Americans have not worked hard for what they have or do not deserve what they have earned. They have, and they do.
But white privilege does mean certain aspects of society are stacked against minorities, so when they work equally hard, they encounter additional roadblocks that often do not trouble whites in this country.
Take job searches, for example.
A 2017 article in “Administrative Science Quarterly” presented the results of a study where minority applicants removed references to their race on résumés to see if the change garnered more calls for interviews. The process is called “whitening” résumés.
It worked. Only 11.5% of non-whitened résumés submitted by Asians received calls, compared to 21% of the whitened résumés. Among Black candidates, 10% received calls off the non-whitened résumés, vs. 25% for the whitened versions.
Sadly, the results were the same for businesses that identified as “pro-diversity” and encouraged minorities to apply.
The study is not meant to suggest some chortling gatekeeper is separating applications based on race and intentionally slighting minority candidates. But it does indicate, perhaps at some subconscious level, people are reacting to ethnic-sounding names or activities like black-student unions, or perhaps selecting individuals whose résumés look more similar to their own experiences.
This is why it is so important to have better representation by minorities in the upper echelons of business administration, on various boards of directors, in government, policing, clergy, everywhere.
Again, not because whites are explicitly racist, but because the systems and institutions that have served white America so well over the decades and centuries are still doing so today.
Change starts with acknowledging a problem exists, and one of the best places to start is the highest office in the land.
But when we have a president who refuses such acknowledgement, the chances dwindle for honest dialogue, let alone substantive change.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Assessing the cost of failure
I wasn’t surprised by my students’ reaction to advice about failure.
Late journalist and teacher Donald Murray — and I dislike “late” in this context because Murray was alive when he shared the suggestion and presumably arrived on time for his funeral — urged writers to “seek instructive failure.”
“You try to say what you cannot say,” Murray wrote, “but in the attempt you discover — draft by draft — what you have to say and how you can say it. Failure is essential.”
Most of my students were having none of it. When I polled them recently, the vast majority disagreed with Murray.
Cue the refrain of “kids these days” who cannot process defeat. They have all been given participation ribbons and ice cream even when they lose and are sheltered from the Darwinian dog-eat-dog nature of the world. Tiny helicopter parents perpetually hover around their heads, ready to drop napalm on anybody who comes bearing hardships.
I can picture the stereotypical grandpa, parked in the corner of a wedding reception or wake, grousing about how we’ve created a softer generation, a lesser generation.
Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so.
I believe, instead, that today’s children and young adults are keenly aware of failure. They have experienced it often and will thus go to great lengths to avoid it, not because their supposedly delicate psyches cannot handle it, but because they know all too well its cost.
Failure means moving off the established track that propels them through grade school to middle school, high school to college, a great job to a family, a big house to a secure retirement.
These kids have internalized a message adults send, perhaps unwittingly, that missteps are tolerated, but the bill for them will nevertheless come due. The payment could be fewer scholarships, a lower-tier college or a dead-end job.
Are students going to take a chance on failing to communicate a message in an essay, to “discover — draft by draft — what [they] have to say and how [they] can say it” when a grade waits at the end of the process? Or are they instead going to demonstrate audience awareness by writing what the teacher wants the first time, dotting all the compositional i’s and crossing all the rhetorical t’s?
No wonder students beg for rubrics. Just tell me what you want so I can do it right the first time, they think. Cut to the chase.
I teach in a building with a progressive policy about grading. We award formative grades, which are about practice, and summative grades, which are about performance. Many of the summative grades can be redone, giving the students a chance to fix what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. Yes, this means they can take many tests more than once.
It’s a great philosophy for students who embrace the spirit of the policy. Schools should be places where learning is prized above grades. (Despite what grandpa thinks, learning and grades are not interchangeable.)
But one policy is not enough to change how society at large deals with failure. One misstep, one wrong answer in a college interview, one stupid mistake — each is enough for a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion, creating consequences that last for decades.
Or so kids believe, and perception is reality.
So when the economy takes a pandemic-inspired downturn, when thousands of students return home from college or university and begin learning from home, when sports seasons that could make or break athletes’ future chances are canceled, when twenty-somethings are forced to move back in with parents because their recession-proof careers wither … how do we expect they will respond?
Kids and young adults are resilient. They will bounce back. But it won’t be easy — emotionally, socially or financially — especially for those who view the world as a perpetual hamster wheel where one misstep sends them topsy-turvy.
Because this is the world we adults have created for them, one where life’s biggest essays don’t come with redos.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Late journalist and teacher Donald Murray — and I dislike “late” in this context because Murray was alive when he shared the suggestion and presumably arrived on time for his funeral — urged writers to “seek instructive failure.”
“You try to say what you cannot say,” Murray wrote, “but in the attempt you discover — draft by draft — what you have to say and how you can say it. Failure is essential.”
Most of my students were having none of it. When I polled them recently, the vast majority disagreed with Murray.
Cue the refrain of “kids these days” who cannot process defeat. They have all been given participation ribbons and ice cream even when they lose and are sheltered from the Darwinian dog-eat-dog nature of the world. Tiny helicopter parents perpetually hover around their heads, ready to drop napalm on anybody who comes bearing hardships.
I can picture the stereotypical grandpa, parked in the corner of a wedding reception or wake, grousing about how we’ve created a softer generation, a lesser generation.
Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so.
I believe, instead, that today’s children and young adults are keenly aware of failure. They have experienced it often and will thus go to great lengths to avoid it, not because their supposedly delicate psyches cannot handle it, but because they know all too well its cost.
Failure means moving off the established track that propels them through grade school to middle school, high school to college, a great job to a family, a big house to a secure retirement.
These kids have internalized a message adults send, perhaps unwittingly, that missteps are tolerated, but the bill for them will nevertheless come due. The payment could be fewer scholarships, a lower-tier college or a dead-end job.
Are students going to take a chance on failing to communicate a message in an essay, to “discover — draft by draft — what [they] have to say and how [they] can say it” when a grade waits at the end of the process? Or are they instead going to demonstrate audience awareness by writing what the teacher wants the first time, dotting all the compositional i’s and crossing all the rhetorical t’s?
No wonder students beg for rubrics. Just tell me what you want so I can do it right the first time, they think. Cut to the chase.
I teach in a building with a progressive policy about grading. We award formative grades, which are about practice, and summative grades, which are about performance. Many of the summative grades can be redone, giving the students a chance to fix what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. Yes, this means they can take many tests more than once.
It’s a great philosophy for students who embrace the spirit of the policy. Schools should be places where learning is prized above grades. (Despite what grandpa thinks, learning and grades are not interchangeable.)
But one policy is not enough to change how society at large deals with failure. One misstep, one wrong answer in a college interview, one stupid mistake — each is enough for a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion, creating consequences that last for decades.
Or so kids believe, and perception is reality.
So when the economy takes a pandemic-inspired downturn, when thousands of students return home from college or university and begin learning from home, when sports seasons that could make or break athletes’ future chances are canceled, when twenty-somethings are forced to move back in with parents because their recession-proof careers wither … how do we expect they will respond?
Kids and young adults are resilient. They will bounce back. But it won’t be easy — emotionally, socially or financially — especially for those who view the world as a perpetual hamster wheel where one misstep sends them topsy-turvy.
Because this is the world we adults have created for them, one where life’s biggest essays don’t come with redos.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sturgis numbers are extreme on both ends
A recent editorial cartoon by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World-Herald shows a bearded motorcyclist and his hog, labeled Sturgis, riding across a map of the United States, spewing Covid clouds in place of exhaust fumes.
The drawing predates a study by the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. It suggests the South Dakota motorcycle rally in August may have spawned more than 260,000 positive coronavirus tests.
Those numbers are at odds with other tallies of the rally’s impact on the Covid pandemic. South Dakota’s own count is that 124 residents became sick with the virus after the event in Sturgis, which had an estimated attendance of 365,979 people over ten days. (Some sources put attendees at over 400,000.)
As a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, a USA Today Network paper, made clear, the discrepancy in the two counts comes from the different methodologies used for each.
The San Diego State study examined areas of the country where the most people traveled to the rally. Statisticians then compared positive test results after those visitors returned home. Cell-phone data was used, in part, to determine who went to Sturgis.
The South Dakota Department of Health reached its much more conservative numbers — pun intended, I suppose — via contact tracing.
The truth likely resides somewhere between 124 and 260,000. It beggars the imagination to think that so many attendees, many of whom appeared to be tooling around sans masks and without social distancing, could generate only ten dozen cases.
But it’s also unfair to suggest that the jump in Covid cases across parts of the Midwest is due exclusively, or even primarily, to one motorcycle rally, no matter the size.
Medical experts quoted in a Washington Post story from Sept. 2 note the Midwest’s apathy for mask-wearing in general, along with residents’ resumption of wedding, funeral and party attendance. Everybody wants to get back to “ordinary,” which is an entirely ordinary reaction, even in extraordinary times.
The same Washington Post story reports one death and 260 cases in 11 states with connections to the Sturgis rally, which health officials dubbed an undercount.
No matter how carefully one discusses such figures, remembering that behind each is a real person with an affected family and livelihood, it is easy to grow numb to the sheer profusion of numbers and the various ways that people spin them.
Covid deniers will split hairs over the CDC’s recent release of the number of Americans who have died solely of Covid, a figure below 10,000, arguing that the other 180,000 (and counting) fatalities are people who have died “with” Covid, not “of” Covid.
Would these people, with comorbidities such as diabetes, asthma and obesity, have died anyway in the last six months, even without contracting coronavirus? Some, undoubtedly. But if not for Covid, many — indeed most — could still be with us, as people with these conditions can live quality lives for decades.
Deniers will also break out arguments similar to the South Dakota ones — people who comply with mask mandates and social-distancing requirements are “sheeples” who should just stay home and let everybody else go about their business, this is a “plandemic” with a Nov. 3 expiration date, etc. etc.
It doesn’t help that the nation is led by a man who, on one hand, mocks masks and does not encourage their use during his rallies, and who, on the other, promises an expedited vaccine on a timeline that even the most optimistic researchers say is unlikely.
Covid believers, meanwhile, will cite ever-higher estimates of 300,000 dead by Dec. 1, fears over the upcoming flu season, and arguments about how putting kids and young adults back in school and on college campuses exacerbates the problem.
Between the no-problem and Grand Canyon-sized problem people — just as between the Sturgis counts of 124 and 260,000 — exists a middle ground of health experts who say that we can mostly rejoin our previous lives, already in progress (as the old TV disclaimer goes), as long as we wear masks, wash our hands often, limit large gatherings and stay home when sick.
This means compromise — life back to mostly normal, yet with changes that pinch a little socially and financially. But we don't compromise very well in this country these days, unfortunately.
Instead, we all like to be on our metaphorical hogs, tearing around and making a lot of noise about either ignoring all precautions or shutting it all down again.
Both extremes are roads that lead to failure.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
The drawing predates a study by the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. It suggests the South Dakota motorcycle rally in August may have spawned more than 260,000 positive coronavirus tests.
Those numbers are at odds with other tallies of the rally’s impact on the Covid pandemic. South Dakota’s own count is that 124 residents became sick with the virus after the event in Sturgis, which had an estimated attendance of 365,979 people over ten days. (Some sources put attendees at over 400,000.)
As a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, a USA Today Network paper, made clear, the discrepancy in the two counts comes from the different methodologies used for each.
The San Diego State study examined areas of the country where the most people traveled to the rally. Statisticians then compared positive test results after those visitors returned home. Cell-phone data was used, in part, to determine who went to Sturgis.
The South Dakota Department of Health reached its much more conservative numbers — pun intended, I suppose — via contact tracing.
The truth likely resides somewhere between 124 and 260,000. It beggars the imagination to think that so many attendees, many of whom appeared to be tooling around sans masks and without social distancing, could generate only ten dozen cases.
But it’s also unfair to suggest that the jump in Covid cases across parts of the Midwest is due exclusively, or even primarily, to one motorcycle rally, no matter the size.
Medical experts quoted in a Washington Post story from Sept. 2 note the Midwest’s apathy for mask-wearing in general, along with residents’ resumption of wedding, funeral and party attendance. Everybody wants to get back to “ordinary,” which is an entirely ordinary reaction, even in extraordinary times.
The same Washington Post story reports one death and 260 cases in 11 states with connections to the Sturgis rally, which health officials dubbed an undercount.
No matter how carefully one discusses such figures, remembering that behind each is a real person with an affected family and livelihood, it is easy to grow numb to the sheer profusion of numbers and the various ways that people spin them.
Covid deniers will split hairs over the CDC’s recent release of the number of Americans who have died solely of Covid, a figure below 10,000, arguing that the other 180,000 (and counting) fatalities are people who have died “with” Covid, not “of” Covid.
Would these people, with comorbidities such as diabetes, asthma and obesity, have died anyway in the last six months, even without contracting coronavirus? Some, undoubtedly. But if not for Covid, many — indeed most — could still be with us, as people with these conditions can live quality lives for decades.
Deniers will also break out arguments similar to the South Dakota ones — people who comply with mask mandates and social-distancing requirements are “sheeples” who should just stay home and let everybody else go about their business, this is a “plandemic” with a Nov. 3 expiration date, etc. etc.
It doesn’t help that the nation is led by a man who, on one hand, mocks masks and does not encourage their use during his rallies, and who, on the other, promises an expedited vaccine on a timeline that even the most optimistic researchers say is unlikely.
Covid believers, meanwhile, will cite ever-higher estimates of 300,000 dead by Dec. 1, fears over the upcoming flu season, and arguments about how putting kids and young adults back in school and on college campuses exacerbates the problem.
Between the no-problem and Grand Canyon-sized problem people — just as between the Sturgis counts of 124 and 260,000 — exists a middle ground of health experts who say that we can mostly rejoin our previous lives, already in progress (as the old TV disclaimer goes), as long as we wear masks, wash our hands often, limit large gatherings and stay home when sick.
This means compromise — life back to mostly normal, yet with changes that pinch a little socially and financially. But we don't compromise very well in this country these days, unfortunately.
Instead, we all like to be on our metaphorical hogs, tearing around and making a lot of noise about either ignoring all precautions or shutting it all down again.
Both extremes are roads that lead to failure.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
More issues than packages with delivery gig
I was walking out of a stranger’s garage near Warren — or maybe it was Boardman or Niles — when the owner caught me.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice equal parts indignation and fright.
I froze, just as taken aback as she was. Pointing to my blue vest and then to a box on the floor, I said, “Amazon delivery. It says to leave the package in your garage.”
Her relief was palpable.
It was just another odd encounter in a job filled with them. For the past five months, I’ve been an Amazon Flex driver, delivering across northeast Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The gig started as a coronavirus lark, a way to get out of the house when there weren’t any other places to go. Quarancheating with a purpose.
As a Flex employee, I drive to a distribution center in North Jackson (in Mahoning County), pick up 12 to 40packages, and use my own car and gas to deliver. Shifts last three or four hours. Twice a week, like magic, money appears in my bank account.
I’ve driven through flash floods, down streets that have no name — with apologies to U2 — and across communities of every socioeconomic status, following an app that leads me by the nose from one stop to the next.
Sometimes, though, the app is wrong. On one occasion, it tried to send me off the Ohio Turnpike and onto a maintenance-truck-only access road secured with a gate. On another, the street it suggested ended a mile from the destination. I had to park and hoof it through the woods, smacking my head on a tree branch to complete the delivery. (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator has nothing on me.)
Since we are in the middle of a pandemic, no matter what your clueless neighbors with their hundreds of Labor Day guests might believe, customer reactions to Amazon drivers are varied. Some greet me like a conquering hero, showering me with accolades and offers of food and drink. Others view me as one of the four horsemen, carrying disease.
One customer sent her toddler down the drive to take a package straight from my hands. Another shouted at me to leave it on her porch, and as I drove away, I saw her soaking down the box with Lysol.
It’s almost impossible to screw up. I scan each box or envelope with the app, which alerts me if I’ve selected the wrong one or if I’m too far away from the delivery site. Packages are numbered in delivery order, so if I can count higher than three dozen, I’m good to go on most days.
To deliver is to see the myriad ways that people live, from hardscrabble existence on one side of town — or even one side of the street — to sprawling McMansions on the other.
If this weren’t Labor Day weekend, I might work harder to make a point about materialism and the American Dream; wax poetic about that bedrock of the economy, the hourly worker; or question the viability of the gig economy, where employee protections are shrinking almost as quickly as giant, soul-sucking corporations are growing.
But since it’s a holiday, I’m dispensing with all the heavy-thought stuff and leaving you with a few practical takeaways.
One, home delivery is convenient, but it comes at a price. That two-dollar item that arrives on Sunday night costs considerably more to the environment. Bundle it with a few other products for the planet’s sake, not to mention the mental well-being of the poor sap trying to keep body and soul together by hauling it to your door.
Two, delivery people love dogs — when they’re tied up and not gnawing our legs.
Three, it costs nothing to say thank you, or to smile and wave.
Four, if you live in a gated community or a secure apartment building, don’t have packages sent to a guardhouse or leasing office that closes at 5 p.m. Many deliveries arrive later than that.
Finally, make sure your house has the address displayed somewhere in big, bold numbers that glow in the dark. Not just for delivery drivers, but for ambulance services and police protection. You know, the important stuff.
These days, I’m semi-retired from the Flex business. The wear and tear on my vehicle was considerable, and other responsibilities have taken precedence.
Still, every once in a while, it’s fun to load up the trunk with packages and deliver smiles, to borrow a corporate catchphrase.
And even if I never do it again, I’m keeping the blue vest. It’ll make a great Halloween costume, or at least a convenient excuse if I ever decide to explore a neighbor’s garage.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice equal parts indignation and fright.
I froze, just as taken aback as she was. Pointing to my blue vest and then to a box on the floor, I said, “Amazon delivery. It says to leave the package in your garage.”
Her relief was palpable.
It was just another odd encounter in a job filled with them. For the past five months, I’ve been an Amazon Flex driver, delivering across northeast Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The gig started as a coronavirus lark, a way to get out of the house when there weren’t any other places to go. Quarancheating with a purpose.
As a Flex employee, I drive to a distribution center in North Jackson (in Mahoning County), pick up 12 to 40packages, and use my own car and gas to deliver. Shifts last three or four hours. Twice a week, like magic, money appears in my bank account.
I’ve driven through flash floods, down streets that have no name — with apologies to U2 — and across communities of every socioeconomic status, following an app that leads me by the nose from one stop to the next.
Sometimes, though, the app is wrong. On one occasion, it tried to send me off the Ohio Turnpike and onto a maintenance-truck-only access road secured with a gate. On another, the street it suggested ended a mile from the destination. I had to park and hoof it through the woods, smacking my head on a tree branch to complete the delivery. (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator has nothing on me.)
Since we are in the middle of a pandemic, no matter what your clueless neighbors with their hundreds of Labor Day guests might believe, customer reactions to Amazon drivers are varied. Some greet me like a conquering hero, showering me with accolades and offers of food and drink. Others view me as one of the four horsemen, carrying disease.
One customer sent her toddler down the drive to take a package straight from my hands. Another shouted at me to leave it on her porch, and as I drove away, I saw her soaking down the box with Lysol.
It’s almost impossible to screw up. I scan each box or envelope with the app, which alerts me if I’ve selected the wrong one or if I’m too far away from the delivery site. Packages are numbered in delivery order, so if I can count higher than three dozen, I’m good to go on most days.
To deliver is to see the myriad ways that people live, from hardscrabble existence on one side of town — or even one side of the street — to sprawling McMansions on the other.
If this weren’t Labor Day weekend, I might work harder to make a point about materialism and the American Dream; wax poetic about that bedrock of the economy, the hourly worker; or question the viability of the gig economy, where employee protections are shrinking almost as quickly as giant, soul-sucking corporations are growing.
But since it’s a holiday, I’m dispensing with all the heavy-thought stuff and leaving you with a few practical takeaways.
One, home delivery is convenient, but it comes at a price. That two-dollar item that arrives on Sunday night costs considerably more to the environment. Bundle it with a few other products for the planet’s sake, not to mention the mental well-being of the poor sap trying to keep body and soul together by hauling it to your door.
Two, delivery people love dogs — when they’re tied up and not gnawing our legs.
Three, it costs nothing to say thank you, or to smile and wave.
Four, if you live in a gated community or a secure apartment building, don’t have packages sent to a guardhouse or leasing office that closes at 5 p.m. Many deliveries arrive later than that.
Finally, make sure your house has the address displayed somewhere in big, bold numbers that glow in the dark. Not just for delivery drivers, but for ambulance services and police protection. You know, the important stuff.
These days, I’m semi-retired from the Flex business. The wear and tear on my vehicle was considerable, and other responsibilities have taken precedence.
Still, every once in a while, it’s fun to load up the trunk with packages and deliver smiles, to borrow a corporate catchphrase.
And even if I never do it again, I’m keeping the blue vest. It’ll make a great Halloween costume, or at least a convenient excuse if I ever decide to explore a neighbor’s garage.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Smart Reply isn't so intelligent
A student sent me an email the other day because he couldn’t find a writing assignment on the class website.
My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.
Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”
Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.
Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”
In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.
For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.
“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?
Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.
Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?
Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?
I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.
The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!
I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.
I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.
Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)
“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!
“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?
“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.
Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”
The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?
Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?
Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.
Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”
Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.
Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”
In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.
For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.
“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?
Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.
Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?
Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?
I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.
The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!
I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.
I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.
Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)
“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!
“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?
“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.
Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”
The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?
Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?
Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
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