Daily Mail:

Microsoft has included a new function in the latest version of its Word software that acts as a checker for inclusivity and offers PC alternatives to phrases which could upset others.

Traditionally, Microsoft Word has offered tools to its 250million users such as checking software for spelling, punctuation and grammar.

But now, the tech giant has added an additional feature which reads through a user’s work and examines whether the language used may offend an individual.

The Sun reports it does this by highlighting phrases focusing on gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity of ‘socioeconomic status’.

The function, which produces a purple line beneath words or phrases it deems to be potentially problematic, can be turned on and off in Word’s settings.

Microsoft Word also used red lines to point out spelling mistakes and green lines for grammatical errors.

After highlighting the inclusivity issue, Word’s new functionality will suggest more acceptable alternatives – which includes changing Postman Pat to ‘mail carrier’ or ‘postal worker’.

The software also suggested altering astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous quote from ‘one giant leap for mankind’, to ‘humankind’ or ‘humanity’ instead.

Back in 2020, Microsoft also released an update for Word which highlighted a double space as an error.

Current versions of the software highlights the mistaken double space with a blue line, highlighting a grammatical error.

RTWT

What’s the point of going to elite schools like Eton and Balliol? Boris Johnson loses his speech notes and demonstrates the special ability to ex tempore BS that only graduates of those kinds of schools acquire, spinning entirely off-the-cuff several plausibly coherent paragraphs on the connection between Peppa Pig and Britain’s national advantages and happy future.

Finalist – Nature inFocus Photography Contest, 2021
Sebastian Di Domenico, Casanare, Colombia

A rare encounter caught on camera. The Jaguarundi is one of the rarest cat species in the Americas and it is never easy to see one in the wild. The animal resides in a range of habitats, including forests, mangroves and savannas. The photographer found a few pugmarks on his trip to the Llanos, when the felid suddenly emerged from the forest cover to access a creek. Not only was this a rare encounter, the felid also exhibited a rare colour morph. Jaguarundis are mostly black or dark brown in colour. In a few seconds, the animal vanished into the woods again, leaving the photographer with this memorable image.

From Facebook:

I am immensely pleased to share this performance of my 2021 composition, Allegro Risoluto, Op. 91, by pianist Julian Zalla, a.k.a. Gamma1734, who has a splendid YouTube channel dedicated to performances of solo piano pieces by mostly lesser-known composers.

Julian’s channel is the place to go for hidden gems of classical music, including contemporary classical music. You will be astonished by how much tonal, melodic, absolutely beautiful music is composed *in our era* and needs to be heard. Julian is making this possible. I am one of his donors, and I would recommend that to everyone.

Also, my Allegro Risoluto is not easy to perform, and Julian has done an impressive job; I know that he exhibited much persistence in learning it, and he gave me great feedback as well. In the past decade I essentially composed for machines, and it actually takes a bit of effort to consider how (and whether) the human hand would be able to approach a particular passage – and those who know my music know that I like powerful chords, successions of octaves, occasional rapid accompaniment (with octaves and powerful chords worked in). But there is actually a decent fraction of my compositions which *could* be performed by humans, and I will try to make more scores available for that purpose – because the results could be absolutely outstanding.

Also, I will challenge myself this year to compose more human-playable works for solo piano this year. In our era we especially need beautiful music to uplift and inspire, to get us beyond the predicament of the current moment in history. While many of the latter half of my compositions have attempted to test the boundaries of what can be appealing to the human ear while being out of the reach of the human hand, it is also indisputable that writing a playable work is a great way to get exposure for it and get the ideas and sense of life that one wishes to convey communicated to a broader audience. I already have over 1200 listeners who heard the Allegro Risoluto because of Julian’s performance. They speak Spanish, German, Russian, and many other languages besides – for music is a universal language, and the project of uplifting humanity is also a universal one for me.

Everywhere you look the Left appears to have won the culture wars and owns the Establishment. The universities are full-on bastions of Marxism and Critical Studies. Even Science and Math are being “de-colonized.” The NFL and NASCAR piously preach the Black Lives Matter Party Line. Corporate America is on totally board, too. Amazon bans books questioning the Transgender Movement. Big consumer brands have purged Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and the Land of Lakes Indian maiden. The Social Media giants routinely enforce Politically Correct Speech, “fact checking” and even banning dissenters. Even the US Military is adding indoctrination against “extremism” to its basic training.

But Joel Kotkin notes that the Progressives’ triumph remains limited to the Institutions, and their conversion is visibly costing them in terms of prestige and credibility.

Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.

But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.

RTWT

Carmel Richardson was moved by the snowstorm stopping traffic on Interstate 95 in Virginia trapping motorists in the cars, in some cases for over 24 hours, while the soon-to-be-outgoing Northam Administration did nothing to help to comment wittily in the manner of the late Robert Frost:

Whose road this is I think I know.
His house is in the city though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch the road fill up with snow.

My little car must think it queer
To stop without an exit near
Between Glenn Ruther and Dumfries
The whitest evening of the year.

I give my weary head a shake
And ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the beep
Of countless cars stuck next to me.

They say the sun has melting powers
But I have waited hours and hours,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

RTWT

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Who says that Joe Biden has accomplished nothing in his presidency? Why, he got the Marine Corps Band to compose a brand-new entering-the-room tune, equivalent to “Hail to the Chief,” for his wife Jill.

Will it stick and become a tradition? Who knows? The Republican-minded, like Mr. Jefferson, would think this sort of thing smacks of Monarchy, sounding like the sort of thing that would be played when Louis XVI’s platter of roast peacock was ceremoniously delivered.

Weather difference between two sides of the mountain
byu/pussysergeant ininterestingasfuck

HT: Vanderleun.

Shenandoah, PA’s Bernie Sanders (no relation to the communist) posts:

OMG! THE SENATE & CONGRESS JUST HAD A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR THE JAN.6 ATTACK. IN MEMORIAM FOR THE 3 DOORS & 5 WINDOWS THAT WERE KILLED.

“Arms attributed to the Magi”, The Heraldic King’s Beasts, 2022.