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“IT AIN’T WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW…”

“…that gets you into trouble.” As Mark Twain said: “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

This can mean anything from “My drinking isn’t hurting anyone,” and “The pain in my chest will go away on its own,” to “In Springfield they’re eating the pets of the people who live there,” and “America is run by childless cat ladies.”

But even denial and lies have fallen on hard times in this great age of untruth. Until now, lies needed at least a sideways glance to the reality that they aren’t true. The liar had to care, not so much about the truth of what they said, but about how their opponents felt about the lie.

But last month, even that went out the window.

First, in the U.S. vice-presidential debate, JD Vance chastised the moderator by saying: “The rules were, you weren’t going to fact-check and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

In other words, fact-checking is cheating.

Then in a later CNN interview he admitted that some of his more sensational claims were designed to draw media attention, even if they weren’t true.

Said Vance: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

This new dimension to political campaign lies will soon find a new phrase attached to it. “Fakest News”? “Little Big Lies?”

There is a word to describe ‘making stuff up just to make stuff up.’

That word is ‘confabulation’ and it means “filling in of gaps in memory by fabrication.” It’s not a political term, but a medical one. Chronic alcoholics confabulate. So do schizophrenics and Alzheimer’s patients. In all cases, they involve false memories and are symptomatic of brain disorders.

What’s also characteristic of confabulators, aside from fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about themselves or the world, is the high degree of confidence they have in their accuracy.

In other words, “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Meanwhile…

1. Maybe counterintuition works best. Because true love doesn’t have to last forever.And humility isn’t always a virtue. And couples today rarely meet through friends or family. Chaos is a calming influence. And stupidity is not a lack of intelligence. It’s much worse.

2. They used to be equals. Long ago Detroit was the auto capital of the world. Toronto was a fussy old lady. Then Detroit died. Now Toronto is bigger than Chicago. But Detroit is being reborn.

3. Launches that don’t. Landings that do. Elon Musk launched his new cybertaxi last week, pummelling its stock price by 8.8% in a single day and wiping $67 billion from its valuation.

Then again, Musk’s SpaceX scored a gigantic win when the giant Starship rocket booster was safely grabbed in mid-air using massive robotic arms. The era of reusable rockets has begun.

4. You cannot hide. Getting your picture taken against an anonymous or blurred out background doesn’t mean they won’t find you. Even a shadow can pinpoint exactly where you are.

5. Risk management. An old view from the movies. A new one from death cafes. Plus The death of deliverism, the idea that delivering on big government promises will move voters to vote for the party in power.

6. I’m 65% Scottish. I know this because I got my DNA analyzed by 23andMe back in 2018. It seemed a good idea at the time. Maybe not now. Especially since 23andMe was hacked last year, exposing DNA information on 6.9 million customers and sending the company into the financial abyss. Here’s how to delete your data.

7. Quick quizzes, quicker thrills. Andy Borowitz reviews Melania’s autobiography. Britain creates a geography quiz Canada needs. Plus a cultural history of cocaine.

8. A list worth reading. The Baillie Gifford Prize goes to the best non-fiction book in the English language. Three Canadian writers have won since the Award began in 1998: Wade Davis, Margaret MacMillan and John Vaillant. Here’s this year’s shortlist. The winner will be announced November 19.

9. Speaking of talking robots. Like so much in the AI and robotic world, they’re already among us. Here’s Disney’s latest, whose eye contact is frighteningly real. But not as intrusive as this. Plus space tourism, which could be a trillion dollar industry in six years.

10. RIP for reading. To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school. But reading books (unlike snippets of them) is a dying skill. “It’s not that [students] don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.”

11. What I’m liking. I’m a sucker for spy stories and the last author I stumbled on during the pandemic was a little-known British writer, Mick HerronNot any more. I have a new find. James Wolff, who wrote The Man in the Corduroy Suit. Best interrogation scenes ever!

What I’m not. Disclaimer, the hot new series on Apple+. I mean, it stars Kevin Kline and Cate Blanchett. But I spent an hour I’ll never get back to learn what The Guardian already knew: “Sadly, it’s slow, turgid and so bad…it needs to be pureed into mush.”

_________________

WHY LIMIT NEXT SUMMER TO ONE ADVENTURE HOLIDAY WHEN YOU CAN HAVE TWO?

If you’re looking for true adventure next summer, Jean and I highly recommend karibu adventures who we went kayaking with off Vancouver Island and then hiking in the Alta Valsesia in the Italian Alps.

Five thumbs up!

On Wednesday, October 30, we’re  hosting an information webinar on these trips and more with karibu’s Andrea Mandel-Campbell from 6:00-6:45 p.m.ET.

Register here to attend the webinar.

Onward,

Bob

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