I think whoever was assembling the “lower third” for CNN’s news segment on the late great Jimmy Buffett (RIP, you magnificent bastard and musical role model of mine) was trying to choose between saying that he’d played for over 50 years or 5 decades, settled on “50 years”, and forgot to change the final word.
Consider this another reminder to use processes and tools to double-check your work before you put it out into the world, especially if it’s a rush job.
This might be a testament to the power of the Oppenheimer movie trailer, because getting someone to go see the movie without knowing about Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and all that sounds like it would be a hard sell.
There’s this “Bill Gates at a restaurant” meme that’s been making the rounds again among acquaintances of mine who are a little too deep into “hustle culture,” and I’m here to tell you that the story it tells is 100% fake.
The story changes slightly with each retelling, but it generally goes like this:
BILL GATES in a restaurant.
After eating, he gave $5 to the waiter as a tip. The waiter had a strange look on his face after the tip, Gates realized, and asked the waiter what had happened.
The waiter replied, “I’m just amazed because on the same table your son gave a tip of $500, but you, his father, the richest man in the world, only gave me $5.”
Gates smiled and replied with meaningful words: “He is Son of the world’s richest man, but I am the son of a wood cutter…”
(Never Forget Your Past. It’s Your Best Teacher)
The problem with this story is that Bill Gates’ tale isn’t one of rags to riches, but of riches to even more riches. After all, Bill’s foray into tech was greatly assisted by the fact that in 1968, he was at an expensive prep school — one of the few that had a computer:
As for Bill’s dad, William Henry Gates II, he was not a wood cutter, but a founding partner of the law firm Shidler McBroom & Gates, which would grow to become K&L Gates, which boasts over 1,000 employees. It’s no Microsoft, but neither is it small potatoes.
I suspect that the meme’s popularity with my “hustle bro” acquaintances is that it justifies their tendency to underpay people to fatten their own wallets, a fact that many of them often boast about (along with other shady behavior). That’s one of the reasons they’re acquaintances, not friends.
In many English words that can be both nouns and verbs:
In case you don’t remember 1992 or were too young to remember it, this is — if you’ll pardon the pun — a very inside joke.
(You can see a dramatized version of the story in the Netflix series The Crown, in season 5, episode 5, titled The Way Ahead.)
To be fair, it’s a terrible thing to have one’s private conversation with one’s lover broadcast to the world at large. But if it had to happen to two people, why not two terribly unpleasant people — who were both married, and not to each other — who now lead a luxurious life on taxpayer money?
And in case you were wondering, Charles III and Camilla will be crowned as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms this Saturday, May 6th at Westminster Abbey. I suspect I will have better things to do than catch it on TV, but expect any English-themed pubs to be unbearable this weekend.
Is “extra heavy duty” mayonnaise thicker? Tangier? Eggier? Oilier? I need to know.
