For the last couple weeks, I’ve been collecting some remarkable tidbits of wisdom (wisbits?) from of all places, the Internet. Someone said (and I’ll qualify this that it is a reputable somebody and was published somewhere reputable, but I’m comfortable in my chair and don’t feel like searching for the citation, but trust me, it’s a valid point) someone once said only 85% of what’s on the Internet is true, and nearly 100% of that is in legacy news sites, or traceable to same. Which if you’re even just decent at math means most of what we’re exposed to is crap. Or possibly plagiarized crap. But there is some interesting crap out there.

One of the non-cited things I saw, that I’m really tempted to believe, is that in the 1980s, A&W tried to compete with McDonald’s Quarter Pounder by releasing a 1/3 pound burger at a lower price, but it failed because people didn’t want the “smaller” burger, even if it was cheaper.

That might be what led Oxford University Press to declare “brain rot” as its 2024 word of the year. The term is defined as “mental decline caused by trivial material.” See, to me, that in itself is somewhat rotten. The mental decline isn’t caused by trivial material. That’s what we used to call recreation. “Let’s take time off and do something non-consequential, something trivial!” The mental decline we’re experiencing is caused by people accepting what they read as fact. But hold that thought.

A different word was selected word of the year for 2024 by that stalwart of unpublished publications, Dictionary.com. They named demure as this year’s word of the day. Of course demure took off this year when some Tik Tok celebrity (really?) started using it in a way that didn’t match the definition. Sort of like when someone wants to sound “educated” at a cocktail party (youngsters, ask your parents) and explain how the new red light at the corner will assuage traffic. Anyway, we now have a word of the day everyone thinks means very mindful when it means shy, modest often affectedly so, or coy, and its origin is a state of calmness at sea.

Remember that thought we held 2 paragraphs ago. That’s where I wrote that I read OUP selected Brain Rot as its word of the day. Plug in “brain rot” to your favorite search engine and it will say it’s the Oxford University Press 2024 word of the year. Now just for fun and giggles, do the same with “demure.” Yep, it will come back as the Oxford University Press 2024 word of the year. 85% right seems high. By the way, Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is polarization. That sounds right.

Leaving single words behind, here is a string of words from one of the Today Show social sites attributed to Michael J. Fox. “If you don’t think you have anything to be thankful for, keep looking. Because you don‘t just receive optimism. You can’t wait for things to be great then be grateful for that. You have to behave in a way that promotes that.” There’s an 85% chance he actually said that. Personally, I don’t care if that isn’t what he said, that’s a good thought.

I could end it with that but here’s something from a nondescript post that should be on all our walls. “We dream what we wish to become.” I wish we’d all become less brain rotted.

Not everyone can be exceptional and have the word of the year culled from one of your TicToc posts, but everyone can take pride in the exceptional qualities they possess. Even the most average of people have the most remarkable moments.

We took an above average swipe at those who feel being average is no better than having failed in the latest Uplift, Life on the Curve. You can read it on average in about 3 minutes.

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