The Daily Parker

Apollo Chorus assistant director Cody Michael Bradley has put out a series of "Quarantunes" to keep us musical through the social distancing phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today's installment was the old Joe Dassin song "Les Champs-Élysées."

New lyrics immediately sprang to mind. Voilà:

Je m'baladais sur l'avenue, le coeur ouvert à l'inconnu
J'avais envie de dire bonjour à n'importe qui
Mais tous les gens, et tous les autres les interdits d'aller dehors
Donc on peut pas dire quelques mots pour deux semaines plus

My 25-year-old co-worker: "Yeah, I'm not much of a 'true believer.'"

Me: Well, I'm a believer. I couldn't leave her if I tried.

Him: O_O

Me: Sorry, just a bit of Monkee business on a Friday afternoon. I just grabbed the Mike and twisted what you said with a lot of Tork.

Him: O_o

Me: You look like you're going to slip me a Mickey and send me down to Davy Jones.

Him: WTF are you talking about?

Me: You have no idea who the Monkees are, do you.

Him: Primates with tails?

Me: (headdesk) (headdesk) (headdesk)

I finally got 7 minutes to watch this. I'm still crying. But in a good way, unlike the people in the room:

Enjoy.

Every year at this time, it's important to talk about language skills. There is a tribe in the remotest part of the Amazon forest who, every December 25th, dance around a large pile of dirt, singing to it and telling it stories. This is because of a tragic mistranslation by a missionary centuries ago, who told them, "On this day the ton of sod was bored."

Remember, remember the 5th of November
Gunpowder and treason and plot.
Now Johnson and Tories will rend and will sunder
What Fawkes in his madness could not.

So much to read, so much eye strain from the fluorescent lights:

• The federal budget deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020, due mainly to the Republican tax cuts and spending increases. Note that Republicans have raised holy hell for smaller deficits during Democratic administrations.
• The 10th Circuit ruled this week that electors can vote for anyone they choose, which could have subtle effects in any presidential election.
• Drew Margary warns that President Trump "is not a cosmic 404 error." Brookings Institution senior fellow Thomas Wright thinks "Trump has defected." And Matt Ford bemoans "Trump's tax on the American psyche."
• The Prime Minister of Denmark finally said out loud what a lot of people have thought about the president's foreign policies.
• Chicago Gourmet has announced its lineup for this year's festival, to be held September 24th through 29th.

And finally, this year's Punderdome competition took on food; the audience ate it up.

Another problem with open-plan office spaces, according to comedian JiJi Lee: it's hard to find a place to sob. She suggests some:

By your C.E.O.’s work station: Flatten hierarchies by sobbing in front of your company leader. Open offices were made to foster communication, so introduce yourself and say, “Hi, I'll never make as much money as you!”

The center of the office: The company doesn’t believe in walls, so why build one around your emotions? Let it go and play the “Frozen” soundtrack while you’re at it. Do a cartwheel that turns into a split and then cry onto Colleen’s emotional support dog. You have the space for it! After all, the company wanted to increase productivity and you’ve never been more efficient with your crying in your life.

The restroom: This is where everyone goes to cry. Anticipate long lines.

At least my office has a coat closet. But it's very small.

Yesterday, the Nielsen Norman Group released groundbreaking research on user interface design for dogs:

There are several key usability guidelines that help dogs to have the most usable experience on modern websites and apps, particularly on mobile, tablet, and other touch-based interfaces:

• Consistency is critical. While consistency in any user experience is important, with dogs, it’s even more so. Experienced dog trainers will tell you that, for dogs to learn proper behavior, consistency in enforcing routines, expectations, and commands is critical. Some common UI culprits that provide extra difficulty for dogs are swipe ambiguity, gestures without signifiers, tap uncertainty for flat UI elements like ghost buttons, and unusual placement of common elements like navigation and search.
• Tap targets must be large. We recommend 1cm² for human tap targets, but paws (whether belonging to cats or dogs) require larger tap sizes (of at least 3-4cm², or even larger for Labradors and Great Danes).
• Gestures must be ergonomic for dog physiology. While many wearable interfaces now involve gestures such as swiping left or right to dismiss notifications or switch apps, these need to be modified for more ergonomic canine movements (such as “shake”). Dogs have a greater ability to move paws with precision up and down, but dogs’ range of motion along the horizontal axis is limited and relatively imprecise, so all gestures must account for this limitation.

They also give special guidance on the risks of using hamburger menus and pie charts.

I am not a parent (apparently). But for my friends who are, there is help:

The first proto-blog post on braverman.org hit the Internet on 13 May 1998. (And it was a joke. Literally.) This is the 6,000th since then.

And every single one of them is here.

(The count of actual blog posts is now 5,804, starting from this site becoming an actual blog on 9 November 2005.)