An aggregated ranking of Black Mirror episodes (through season 4)

If:

• You’re working your way through the Black Mirror episodes (as I am)
• You decide you want to watch them from “worst” to “best” or “least great” to “most great” or whatever (as I am)
• You’re kind of geeky and data-driven (as I am)

Then you might not be satisfied with just one list of ranked Black Mirror episodes. In fact, you might go looking and find eight of them. Then you might make a spreadsheet of them. Then you might post it on the Internets:

Since these are lists from least liked to most liked, the top listings, with higher numbers, are less esteemed than the bottom listings, with lower numbers. Specifically, the least-well-thought-of episode is The Waldo Moment (season 2, episode 3) and the most-well-thought-of episode is San Junipero (season 3, episode 4).

I have no idea who wrote any of these lists, which means that I’m trusting the opinions of random people on the Internet, which I know can be quasi- or very ill-advised. However, there’s the idea of the wisdom of crowds, though I haven’t read the book; however, I once read an article in the New Yorker about TED talks in which an audience guessed the weight of an ox within a few pounds, so I figured I’d try it with Black Mirror episodes, even though the sample size is really small.

As you can imagine, my citing any of these lists is not any kind of endorsement, though I do regularly look at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer for news, which is how I saw the Vulture list, which is what prompted me to actually start watching episodes. Also, there are other rankings available, but I only used those that had all four of the first four seasons. And I stopped at eight lists, because that was enough, though my desire for simpler decimals makes me want to have ten, but I’m not going to bother with it.

Here are the sites I used:

• http://collider.com/black-mirror-episodes-ranked/
• http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/black-mirror/feature/a780434/black-mirror-episodes-ranked-charlie-brooker/
• http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a49919/black-mirror-episodes-ranked/
• https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/every-black-mirror-episode-ranked-from-worst-to-be/2900-1667/
• https://www.pcmag.com/feature/358305/every-episode-of-black-mirror-ranked-from-best-to-worst
• https://www.thewrap.com/all-19-black-mirror-episodes-ranked-from-good-to-mind-blowing-photos/
• http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/every-black-mirror-episode-from-worst-to-best.html
• http://whatculture.com/tv/black-mirror-every-episode-ranked-from-worst-to-best

Enjoy!

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• Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

 

Proud or Jealous — I’m Actually Not Sure

I recently learned that my blog is among the “Most Popular Geekiness Websites” according to WebStatsDomain, which is a site that I personally have never heard of but that rates web sites and at least appears not to have infected my computer with malware. That’s something that makes me proud, or at least “proud.” It is, says WebStatsDomain, the tenth most popular geekiness web site in the world — the friggin’ WORLD.

However, the blog of mine that is among these astonishingly popular geekiness web sites IS NOT THIS ONE. It’s my food site, joshlubarrfood.wordpress.com, so now my geekiness blog is jealous of my food blog. My food blog is probably going to start lording it over all the other ones, too. Also, my humor blog will probably get upset that I’m goofing around here and not there. Then they’re all going to start fighting, and I’ll have to separate them. Sad.

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The places to hear from me, if you can stand the infighting:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Places – Good Things around Boston, and Elsewhere
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

Better Than Ghoti?

A lot of people have heard about George Bernard Shaw’s phonetic spelling of ghoti for fish;

• gh is pronounced as in rough.
• o is pronounced as in women.
• ti is pronounced as in nation.

Here’s a more outrageous one that I recently learned about: it’s by Godfrey Dewey in his English Spelling: Roadblock to Reading, and it’s phtheighchound for taken:

• phth is pronounced as in phthisic (also, phthisis, which has its own definition).
• eigh is pronounced as in weigh.
• ch is pronounced as in school.
• ou is pronounced as in glamour.
• nd is pronounced as in handsome.

H/T: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, second edition, by David Crystal (who has been involved with a number of interesting books about Shakespeare and language).

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Places – Good Things around Boston, and Elsewhere
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

The Double Thanks

Not to be confused with double secret probation, of course.

The double thanks occurs primarily in corporate settings. Consider the following scenario: Sally approaches Bob for some assistance, such as answering a question. Bob answers the question. Once they complete their exchange and she is ready to depart, Sally expresses her gratitude and says “thanks” to Bob.

We are now approaching the significant moment.

Bob replies. However, he does not, as would be expected, say “you’re welcome” or “any time” or “no problem” or any other such answer that acknowledges that he has helped Sally. No. Rather, he falls into what I hypothesize is the (frequently corporate) trap of wanting to make sure that he has been polite to Sally and gives off the appearance of gratitude (even if he lacks the feeling of gratitude), so he replies her “thanks” by saying to her: “thanks.”

This is the double thanks or, as it is sometimes known, the corporate double thanks.

Here it is in action:

Sally: Can you help me with blah blah blah?
Bob: Sure.
Sally: Blah blah blah question?
Bob: Blah blah blah answer.
Sally: Blah blah blah. Great! Thanks.
Bob: Thanks.
(Exeunt severally Sally and Bob.)

As you can see, there is some insincere thanking going on here — which is why I wanted to point this out. I first noticed this activity in the mid-to-late ‘nineties (’95 – ’97); unfortunately, it was not a passing phenomenon. Perhaps together we can stop this scourge — and by “scourge,” I mean something that is not actually a scourge.

Thanks.

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

My 2014 Nerd Bona Fides

A while back, FiveThirtyEight* published some raw data and I noticed something in it that was goofy enough for them to mention it in More Data Analysts Went Looking For the South And Midwest, And Here’s What They Found. Thanks to Walt Hickey for all that.

Now you know I’m a nerd, as if the content of this web site were insufficient data for you.

*I was going to spell it as “Five-Thirty Eight,” but I conform to their style, even though some might take issue with that, because it’s Nate Silver — and he kept me sane through President Obama’s re-election campaign.

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

The “No” of Affirmation

Have you ever heard anyone, including yourself, begin an affirmative response to a statement with the word “no”? For example:

Person 1: I think Idiocracy is hilarious.

Person 2: No, I do, too.

I promise you — you have. It’s an interesting phenomenon, since the statement is one of agreement or affirmation, yet it begins with a term of disagreement or negation. Why, you may ask? I have asked as well. Habits of speech? I would say so.

In any case, now that you’ve heard about it, you can start listening for it. You may be surprised at how often you hear it — I was (especially from myself).

(Cross-posted at Le Repository du Silliness.)

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

my nerd bona fides

Just ran across this and thought I’d brag about it: being acknowledged in one of the earliest Kerberos papers: ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/kerberos/doc/usenix.txt I helped with the editing, not the technical stuff.

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon
Me generally – Josh Lubarr’s web site extraordinaire
Also also – Josh’s Part of lubarr.com

dweeby baseball fun

For some of us (including me), there is a particular pleasure near the end of the baseball season watching the magic numbers and wild card races and so on. (It’s much easier, of course, when your team has clinched the division and is likely to have the best record in either league.) The fun, also of course, lies in all the math, so that something like this:

NL Central	W	L	PCT	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	DIFF	STRK	L10	POFF
St. Louis	90	64	.584	-	48-27	42-37	745	582	+163	Won 1	6-4	99.9
Cincinnati	88	66	.571	2	48-26	40-40	674	559	+115	Won 4	6-4	99.6
Pittsburgh	88	66	.571	2	49-30	39-36	599	551	+48	Lost 1	5-5	99.0
Milwaukee	68	85	.444	21.5	36-43	32-42	607	664	-57	Lost 2	6-4	0.0
Chicago Cubs	64	90	.416	26	29-47	35-43	588	654	-66	Lost 1	2-8	0.0

is very intriguing. (These are the NL Central standings as of the morning of 9/21/13.*)

First of all, this is the perfect explanation of why it’s good to have two wildcard teams. Now, in ye olden days (i.e., 2011), if the Reds and the Pirates had ended up tied for the season, they would have had their one-game playoff, and that would have been fine, but, given the current state of affairs, what if they have slightly different records? Then, look at the whole league (again, as of this morning):

NL - combined	W	L	PCT	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	DIFF	STRK	L10	POFF
Atlanta		91	62	.595	-	52-22	39-40	655	521	+134	Won 2	5-5	99.9
St. Louis	90	64	.584	1.5	48-27	42-37	745	582	+163	Won 1	6-4	99.9
x-LA Dodgers	88	66	.571	3.5	46-32	42-34	624	569	+55	Lost 1	3-7	100.0
Cincinnati	88	66	.571	3.5	48-26	40-40	674	559	+115	Won 4	6-4	99.6
Pittsburgh	88	66	.571	3.5	49-30	39-36	599	551	+48	Lost 1	5-5	99.0
Washington	83	71	.539	8.5	46-33	37-38	633	601	+32	Won 2	8-2	1.4

(BTW, all these layouts are from ESPN, mostly because those are the easiest to mess with and then post. I wish I could claim it was because Nate Silver‘s going to have his new site there, but, alas, no.)

I am only including teams whose POFF (percent chance of making the playoffs) is above 0%. Now, let’s assume that the Nationals don’t do anything miraculous, so we have the top five teams in the league. Now, what if the Dodgers lose the rest of their games while both the Pirates and the Reds have some wins. We could easily end up with something like:

NL - combined	W	L	
Atlanta		97	65	
St. Louis	95	67
Cincinnati	93	69
Pittsburgh	92	70
x-LA Dodgers    88      74
Washington	88	74

And here’s the point: that little X next to the Dodgers is because they’ve clinched their division. That means, as we all know, that they’re in the playoffs, period, regardless of what happens with them or anyone else for the rest of the season. This means, that, in this scenario, which — aside from the Dodgers’ final record — is entirely plausible, then, with the old system, the Pirates aren’t in the playoffs. And, just to say it explicitly, if they had been in the same division as the Dodgers, they’d have been up by four games. So, in spite of my quasi-political grousing that the second wildcard is just an excuse to extend the playoffs, sell more tickets, and televise more games, I’m happy that it will give the Reds and the Pirates a chance.

Second, this is extra fun (for my version of fun) because the two wildcards are very likely to be in the same division (see also the sad 1.4% likelihood of the Nationals making the playoffs). Partly this is nice because it does something to rectify the famous situation where some good teams are punished for splitting their games and a weaker team ends up with a better record. However, I really just like it because it could lead to my ideal scenario, in which there’s a three-way tie for NL central. Then I get to read the explanations of why, say, the Cardinals are still considered the divisional winners for playoff seeding.

Finally, speaking of the Nationals, their logo calls the wrong kind of attention to itself. It’s almost like something from Idiocracy.

*9/21/13 as an equation is 9 = (2+1)*1*3

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr
Favorite movies – The Pantheon

Where technology and politics meet, courtesy of Kevin Roose

This is a really interesting article in light of everything going on with the NSA: The Surveillance-Free Day (Part I) in today’s New York Magazine. BTW, I enjoy this magazine more and more, especially because of Jonathan Chait and Frank Rich.

Cross-posted on Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr).

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The places to hear from me:
Food – josh lubarr food stuff
Geekiness – geekiness(josh lubarr)
Movies – Old Movies and New with Josh Lubarr
Politics – Progressive Politics (per Josh Lubarr)
Silliness and comedy – Le Repository du Silliness, avec Josh Lubarr

the sad tale of my not posting equations for months

First, let us happily acknowledge that others now are using their minds for this activity. We (that’s the royal we, of course) hope they enjoy themselves.

Second, to return to the title: Yes, I haven’t posted for months, and now it has been pointed out. Actually, it’s not a sad tale, though some might find it lame. Here’s a fresh start, in honor of tomorrow’s palindromic date:

3 + 1 = 1 + 3

And here’s one with some fancier stuff than usual:

3! = 3 * (1+1)

And, since it’s still 2/28/13, we have the pleasure of:

2 + 2 = 8 – 1 – 3

which is in order, and makes me realize that the factorial equation above should have been

3! = (1 + 1) * 3

to get those “leaving the numbers in the order in which they were already” bonus points.*

 

 

 

*Bonus points have absolutely no value. They cannot be redeemed anywhere, under any circumstances. All rights reserved.