#muphry's law

[pigeonflavouredcake]

Miscellaneous Laws and Philosophies

This is another grimoire extract featuring a compiled list of philosophies, paradoxes, laws of life and physics.

Some of these might be particularly helpful to your practice if you wish to apply them, for example the philosophy of similarity or Newton's laws of motion. Or perhaps you’re like me and just find them interesting to list -some of these, I will admit, I chose to include for a bit of a giggle.

-Absurdism: The philosophical theory that life is absurd with no meaning or higher purpose and can not be understood by reason.

-Acton’s Dictum: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

-Backwards Law: The harder you try the less likely you are to succeed. In psychology, this is also called the ironic process theory.

-Brandolini's Law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than the amount it took to produce it.

-Buttered Cat Paradox: Cats always land on their feet. Buttered toast always lands butter side down. If you tape a slice of buttered toast to a cat what will happen when you drop them?

-Catch-22: A situation in which someone is in need of something that can only be had by not being in need of it.

-Clarke's Laws:

The Old Scientist: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they say that something is impossible they are very probably wrong.

Possibility: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little ways past them into the impossible.

Magic: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-Finagle's Law: An addition to Murphy’s law “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” will at the worst possible moment.

-Gibson's Law: For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.

-Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or, do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence.

-Hedonism: A group of philosophical theories centred around pursuing and defining pleasure, referring to both large activities like sex or recreational drugs and small activities like reading a good book or watching a sunset.

-Humphrey’s Law: Conscious attention to a task normally performed automatically can hinder its performance.

-Ironic Process Theory: The psychological process whereby an individual’s deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts makes those thoughts more persistent.

-Lem’s Law: No one reads; if someone does read, they do not understand, if they do understand, they immediately forget.

-Muphry’s Law: If you write anything criticising, editing, or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written (the name is a purposeful misspelling of Murphy's law).

-Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

-Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword: What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.

-Newton’s Laws of Motion:

Law of Inertia: Objects will stay in rest or in motion unless an outside force causes a change.

F = ma: Force = mass x acceleration meaning the acceleration of an object depends on the object's mass and the force acting upon it.

Action and Reaction: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction meaning when two objects meet each other they apply force to one another that are equal in magnitude but in the opposite direction.

-Nihilism: Based on the rejection of religious and moral principles and the belief that life is meaningless. Many people see nihilism as depressing and nihilistic people as miserable and annoying, that may be true for some but nihilism also provides the freedom to create and express yourself without social boundaries. There are two types of nihilists: those who say “life is meaningless so why bother?” and those who say “life is meaningless so why not?”.

-Occam's Razor: The philosophical principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. When presented with two competing hypotheses that have the same prediction, one should choose the hypothesis with the least variables and assumptions.

-Papert’s Principle: Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring news skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.

-Paradox of Hedonism: When one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but, when one pursues something else, one achieves happiness.

-Philosophy of Similarity: Based on the degree of resemblance objects have to one another using their shared properties. This is built on recognising certain patterns like colour or taste and then comparing them to others.

-Rothbard’s Law: Everyone specialises in their own area of weakness.

-Sagan Standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

-Solipsism: The philosophical view that the self or the mind is the only thing that is known to exist and anything outside of that is unsure and undefined.

-Stein's Law: If something can not go on forever, it will stop. If a trend can not go on forever, there is no need to make it stop, much less make it stop immediately; it will stop of its own accord.

[macwantspeace]

Muphry's Law - "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." Editing perhaps covers it, but the Crowdstrike vouchers did not cover it. "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack {via Uber eats} is on us!" About the Uber voucher: But some people who said they had received a voucher also took to social media to say it did not work. "Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates," CrowdStrike admitted. Well, sigh. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning!  I hope you slept well and feel rested?  Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. 

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

Lobsters taste with their feet.

Music helps keep your memories alive.

Intelligent men tend to be more faithful.

Ecstasy was patented in 1913 as a diet pill.

Cuddling before bed helps the brain to relax.

The average person swears 80-90 times a day.

Chubby girls in Japan are called 'marshmallows'.

A day in the life of a dinosaur was 23 hours long.

Some people will ignore you until they need you.

The left side of the face is slightly more expressive.

The phrase “I don’t give a f*ck” originated in the 1790s.

If you travel across Russia, you will cross seven time zones.

The poorest Americans are still richer than 80% of the world.

Casanova’s euphemism for condoms was ‘English riding coats’.

Sleep makes you more creative and makes your memories stronger.

Jackie Chan's mother was an opium smuggler and his father was a spy.

A study found that chocolate milk performs better than energy drinks.

Just because someone doesn’t react, it doesn’t mean they don’t notice.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Eating bananas is a natural aid to reduce the effects of stress and anxiety.

Nearly 60% of terrorists graduated school with degrees in engineering.

The Samaritans set up a helpline to help fans deal with the breakup of Take That.

There are more phone calls placed on Mother's Day than any other day of the year.

‘V’ is the only letter that can’t be used to make an acceptable two-letter word in Scrabble.

Your body is the weakest during 3.00 a.m. – 4 a.m.  This is the time most people die in their sleep.

According to research, siblings may be more influential shapers of who we become than parents.

In Europe, countries led by queens have been more likely to go to war than countries led by kings.

Muphry’s Law is when you make a spelling or grammar mistake while trying to correct someone else's.

Research shows that some people may delay their deaths if it means their family pays less inheritance tax.

The unhappiest people in this world tend to be the people who care the most about what everyone else thinks.

Don't marry/get in a serious relationship with someone unless you'd be proud to have a child exactly like them.

Psychology says, friendship is not about who you spend the most time with, it’s about who you have the best time with.

Studies have shown that the average person believes he or she will live a longer and healthier life than the average person.

There's a cafe located in France which charges €7 a coffee to rude customers and €1.40 to people who talk politely to staff.

Studies have found that one of the most crucial factors in a relationship is how you celebrate your partner's good news.

In 1850, a cult gave 600 acres in Pennsylvania to God.  It was later repossessed by the state because God did not pay his taxes.

According to a study, people don't listen to the smartest person in the room, they listen to whoever acts as if they know what's right.

Your height is generally determined by your father.  Intelligence, emotional strength and body shape are determined by the mother.

Broccoli, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts all contain a little bit of cyanide.  Eating them primes your liver to deal better with other poisons.

According to psychologists, exposure to nature allows us to remember and value important things like relationships, sharing and community.

There is a horse that is born black but turns white as it ages. The Lipizzan can be found in European countries such as Austria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia.

Death rates drop during economic downturns.  People drive less and get into fewer accidents, leading to cleaner air.  People also have less money to spend on cigarettes and alcohol.

According to a recent Russian law, it’s only ‘champagne’ if it is produced in Russia.  Otherwise, and even if it comes from the Champagne region of France, it’s just ‘sparkling wine’.

In 1871, lawyer Clement Vallandigham was defending a client accused of murder.  In demonstrating how the victim might have accidentally shot himself, he accidentally shot himself.  He died.  His client was acquitted.

Before calling his 1929 novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’, Ernest Hemingway considered such alternatives as ‘Carnal Education’, ‘Death Once Dead’ and ‘I Have Committed Fornication But That Was in Another Country And Besides The Wench Is Dead’.

After Harry Secombe sang at Peter Sellers’s funeral in 1980, Spike Milligan said, “I hope you die before me because I don't want you singing at my funeral.”  Secombe died in 2001, but a recording of his singing was played at Milligan’s memorial in 2002.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day.  Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday!  I love you all.

[darklordreasonable]

i'm really sorry you had to go through this op

wanna see exactly HOW bad tumblr is at math so tell me

[sasquapossum]

When someone created this shirt (on Redbubble) they obviously forgot to add some spelling.

[aikainkauna]

If it’s worth saying, say it clearly

Maybe I would have reblogged your post if you had actually taken the time to punctuate and to capitalise it properly, so that I could actually make out what the fuck you even meant the first time? Instead of having to go back and re-parse every single lowercased proper name (to realise it was a Field and not a field you were talking about), and having to mentally insert commas everywhere to separate the different statements and thoughts involved? Maybe I don’t like the fact that you’re demanding all this work of me as a reader, the fact that I have to de-code your every message simply because you were being lazy and/or trying to be hip?

There are reasons why capitalisation and punctuation rules exist. They’re there to make your text intelligible. And if that word’s too oppressive and difficult for you to understand, it means “understandable.”

like

ur

gettable lol

Just because we’re scatterbrained creatures, it doesn’t mean everyone’s textual output has to be like that. Written language and spoken/thought language are vastly different, and wonderfully so because text allows you to be far more coherent than your thoughts or spoken words might ever be. Few people are eloquent speakers, but it’s *much* easier to get your point across in textual form, because it allows you time to think and to compose what you’re saying. But when you’re just throwing yourself to the mercies of scatterbrained, panicked, insecure and immature text-messagey typing, that’s how you come across: young and dumb and insecure, and at worst, really relishing that and wallowing in that.

It’s crazy how people don’t realise just how much you can tell about someone on the basis of their typing. For a generation that’s so obsessed with identifying as anything except girls and going on so much about how to combat anxiety and how to be strong, Tumblr sure types like a bunch of giggling, nervous, scatterbrained, anxious girls. When you could look much more confident and grown-up and sensible--and, moreover, and *feel* more confident and less anxious--if you formatted your output in a more coherent way. Every “lol” used as punctuation just casts off 20 IQ points and, at worst, signals to a sociopath that this person can be used, walked over, exploited. That they’re not secure in themselves and their opinions because they express them in this floaty, scattered, nervously laughing way.

And it’s as characteristic of female socialisation as can be, the entire Tumblr style of typing--don’t be “threatening” by using capital letters and therefore sounding like a teacher! Leave in plenty of gaps (omitted full stops, excessive paragraph breaks) so someone can interrupt you! Don’t be selfish! Always self-sacrifice, never stand up for yourself, always placate, always give in! It’s the language of giving in and of weakness, like a dog rolling over to expose its belly. “Look! I’m harmless!”, the typing style is screaming even if the message is about something serious and making a point that really *should* be listened to. But it’s formatted as something that can be easily dismissed, because, hey, it’s in a squeaky lowercase voice and said breathlessly with a nervous giggle at the end.

I’ve literally seen a woman say “i found my husband dead in the hallway LOL.” Seriously. What the fuck?!?

And conversely, the whole trend needlessly casts those of us who still give a shit about grammar and capitalisation and punctuation as some authoritarian monsters because shitty spelling is apparently “woke” (ok, if you really do want to create yet more pointless division and to turn even more sensible/moderate people into conservatives). No, it’s not “woke” to send out a garbled message. It just broadcasts a scattered confusion. To be really effective, you have to say things straight and to the point. And that’s why right-wing populists are so popular--because they formulate their statements in a way that seem to make sense, while liberals start to meander away and get stuck wanking over whatever the latest politically correct terms are, while the audience’s already turned to the Nazis because they understand “lower taxes” but don’t know what the fuck [term du jour] means. Clarity has nothing whatsoever to do with pretentiousness, but it has everything to do with getting your message across.

TL;DR You have a huge amount of power over how you come across in text. Enormous power. And with it, you can also *exercise* power. Coherent spelling and writing is empowerment; trying to sound all casual and hip and laughing is literally giving up that power for the sake of assumed friendliness. But it’s no longer friendliness or casualness when it becomes enforced like that, and just perpetuates a general culture of that rolling over. If you’re *genuinely* worried you’re going to sound stuck-up or pompous by observing proper spelling and punctuation, you need to take a long hard look at yourself and ask who you’re giving that confidence up for. Who are you afraid of when you put in that ‘lol’? Who are you *placating* by going along with the stream-of-consciousness style, and why are you placating them? Why do you need to do that in text, when there’s literally no need to give away the fact that you’re nervous or scatterbrained? When you can be a *better* version of yourself? And happier for it?

Who the hell are you oppressing with simple readability? No one. 

[kc-anathema]

Sorry--is this what they mean by “hiding in the comments”? I had to scroll through quite a bit of adult content on your blog before I finally found where this had been buried. I mean, I’m glad you made mention so I could see it, but not even a reblog for my responses on the original post? I, at least, had that much courtesy.

Maybe if I was in sexy lingerie, you would have reblogged. Ah well. I’ll cite myself in case you want to try again with more effort. I’ll just reiterate the one major point--I have one colleague dead of covid from my own department. He left behind a wife and children. Seeing someone not return does make my weak little heart a little more afraid.

Now as for your post...I’m sorry, I just have to do this. It’s in my blood.

Now I’m sorry you clearly had deficient teachers. Sad to say, there are lemons in every job. My principal did a very good job of rousting ours out, but maybe your district(s?) didn’t.

Now, note 1: yes, I’m afraid of contracting a disease that strikes asthmatics (me), those deficient in vitamin D (again, me), and those with underlying health conditions (again me me me). Blame my genetics.

I also don’t like using children as guinea pigs, but that’s just me, and I suppose that’s incidental to the conversation when there’s so much vitriol aimed at teachers. Perhaps, when you love the kids more than you hate us, you may feel differently.

On your next point, “time to take a pay cut” implies that we haven’t already.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/01/29/what-industry-has-seen-pay-fall-below-average-most-states-public-schools/

Now I don’t want to dive into the math and averages inherent in the “high schools get paid close to 6 figures” ridiculousness, but I do want to note two points:

1. Those are in big blue states with some of the largest cities, where the cost of living is much higher. In your own Illinois, it’s--oh, but the average pay in Illinois is not nearly triple digits. Your math teacher was as good as your English teacher. No wonder you’re so irate.

2. At my district, we cap at around 65,000...after thirty years.The teachers making big bucks are probably in their seventies. A third of teachers tend to bail in their third or fourth year because of all the issues in education. So the vast majority of us don’t see that kind of pay.

Now, let me try to explain something here...

You obviously hate my ilk--completely understandable as I don’t like many teachers. I and my handful of friends in my school tend to assign metric tons of writing--to the point that I am grading essays and paragraphs and sentences every day. I’d say most of my colleagues in my school teach a lot of writing, too. I see them at PLC and we note who’s loaded with grading and resubmissions, and who just talks a good game. Many teachers stick to multiple choice and other easily graded assignments. There are teachers who play guitar to their students and don’t teach anything.

I’m sure you’ve met a couple in your time. In short, those teachers do indeed suck.

But rather than attacking a population of roughly 3.2 million adults in the US, wouldn’t it make more sense to sway this dense block of registered voters over to the right? I mean, you already have many, many conservatives in this  demographic. We exist--right wing libertarian in the English classroom at your service! But instead you attack, and belittle, and threaten our pay. You use the bludgeon of punitive group testing instead of helping us push out our worst colleagues sitting at their desk to suck up a paycheck.

Don’t come at me with merit pay. I have heard that argument from people who have proven they only understand this problem as it has been framed by the media. I don’t want merit pay. I should--I had the second highest scores in my district. But its fool’s gold. A few bad teachers below me and I’m sunk.

There are ways to fire or push out bad teachers. I’m not going to go into the arguments of how to do it, but the route exists. The issue is not that.

The issue is the hate, anger, and ignorance about this work by people willing to think they know enough without much more research than a lazy English teacher would accept for a sourced essay. You would probably know about that more than I would. The issue is the hubris, the inaccuracies, the unwillingness to educate oneself and the willingness to accept data that should be very clearly inaccurate.

I still vote conservative often, despite the best efforts of your own ilk. It’s a shame that this issue tends to push me away from my preferred party. And I wish you would realize that.

Then again...having scrolled through your blog, between the butts and breasts and the calling of banning religion whole cloth, I noticed you reblogged this image:

A little more self-awareness, old sport?

[airyairyaucontraire]

I’m guessing “the American Revolution” above was an error (maybe for the Civil War?) because I don’t think the US had a rail network in the 1770s.

A fine case of Muphry’s Law.

[flange5]

@squeeful replied to your post: @squeeful replied to your post “That’s...

if you reply to a post on your dash, the person who reblogged it and the original poster get notification so maybe that’s it

The weird thing is that no one has actually commented on it or replied according to xkit. This was an inbox message to me. I think the post came on Anon's dash from a reblog and the reblog had the wrong character tagged, so they ... decided to tell me because somehow they thought I'd mistagged? I mean.

[misentropy]

Muphry’s Law

Muphry’s Law is the editorial application of the better-known Murphy’s Law. Muphry’s Law dictates that (a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written; (b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; © the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; (d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

// Source

[memehumor]

Muphry’s Law strikes again. Twice.

[ginbenci]

This is known as Muphry’s Law!

When you take it upon yourself to correct someone’s spelling, grammar, or usage, your correction will contain an error just as bad (if not worse)

[irregularwebcomic]

[Irregular Webcomic! #2230 Rerun](https://ift.tt/31FPZC9)

Muphry's Law.

2021-12-11 Rerun commentary: The real problem is that there are infinite universes with Serron in them. ... That's all. No more need be said. Just imagine an infinite number of universes with Serron in them. Yeah.

[theyuniversity]

5 Simple Ways to Avoid Spelling and Grammar Errors

💁🏻 This article was originally published on Medium.

One of my English professors at UC Berkeley (most likely Prof. Breitwieser) once told me that turning in a first essay that is rife with spelling and grammar errors will leave a permanent bad impression with him or a GSI (graduate-student instructor) who reads it. That admonition, unlike its source, has found a permanent home in the back of my mind, and it comes to the fore whenever I come across an image like this:

Because I have neither personally met nor spoken to 99.99% of all people I “know” on the Internet, my first impression about a person is formed on the basis of their spelling and grammar on their Twitter bio, tweet, Tumblr post, or article on Medium. My YUNiversity colleagues and I are staunch supporters of the idea that how you write says a lot about you. (But we say that as a matter of fact, not as a condemnation.)

Don’t get me wrong: we admins at The YUNiversity are far from perfect ourselves. We’ve made our share of embarrassing mistakes, so much so that we made this image:

That confession notwithstanding, here are our five tips for avoiding common spelling and grammar errors:

1. DON’T COUNT ON SPELL CHECK (AND DISABLE GRAMMAR CHECK)

Technology is great, and spell check can be helpful at times, but we all know that it doesn’t catch everything. To make matters worse, it isn’t even always right. And don’t even get me started on Microsoft Word’s so-called grammar checker. I’m sure you’ve seen a few pictures like the following that attest to its “usefulness”:

Instead of letting a program catch (more like miss) your mistakes, either proofread your writing yourself or …

2. HAVE SOMEONE YOU TRUST LOOK IT OVER

Before hitting Send or turning it in by hand, have someone you trust read over your essay, letter, or résumé to see if there are any errors you might have overlooked. If you stare at the same piece of writing for hours, it’s easy to miss typos, awkward phrases, and other mistakes. A fresh set of eyes will catch them immediately. (We wrote about the advantages of having extra sets of eyes examine your writing in a previous article called “Want to Write Better?”) As a bonus, they might even give you suggestions on how to improve your writing.

3. DON’T PROOFREAD RIGHT AFTER YOU’VE FINISHED WRITING

Speaking of having a fresh set of eyes, the worst thing you could do is proofread your writing immediately after finishing it. Because you are so familiar with what you had just written, either your eyes won’t catch the mistakes or your brain will instantly autocorrect your errors and convince your eyes that they aren’t there. The simplest way to avoid this problem is to take a break. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Turn on the television and watch three episodes of your favorite TV show. You’ve earned a break.

Do anything that will take your eyes off the computer screen long enough to wipe the writing from your memory, so the next time you look at it, it will be with fresh eyes. For some people, an hour is sufficient; for others, it’s better to start proofreading the next morning. Find out what works best for you (and plan accordingly, i.e., start on your writing early enough to give yourself the necessary time to proofread).

4. PROOFREAD YOUR ESSAY “BACKWARDS”—FROM FINISH TO START

Those of you who don’t have the luxury of time to implement tip #3 will appreciate this method. You might have procrastinated or underestimated how long the writing was going to take, so you have no time to go for a walk or take a shower … because the writing is due in five minutes. What to do? Instead of living dangerously and turning it in as-is, read your essay “backward.” Read the last sentence of the essay, then read the one above it, and so on. The weirdness of this exercise, combined with how strange each sentence now feels, will make your writing seem “new.” It might not be the most comfortable method, but it is highly effective. Give it a try and see how you like it.

5. USE A DICTIONARY

Some of you who read our article on the usefulness of reading books may remember that one of our staff members has actually been “reading” the dictionary this year. His motive was to learn obscure yet interesting words that he had never seen before, e.g., abapical. When it comes to checking a word’s spelling, there is nothing better than consulting a dictionary. The Internet abounds with dictionaries:

Pick your favorite (or favourite, if that’s how it’s spelled/spelt where you live); just make sure that you don’t misspell any words.

I followed #1 and #3 while proofreading this, but according to Muphry’s Law (which is not a typo), there will be an error somewhere in this article. If you find a spelling or grammar mistake, feel free to point it out. 👀🔍

Website | Twitter |  Instagram | Medium

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#5yrsago Literacy privilege, or, why grammar nazis are dicks

Chandra, a "recovering grammar snob" who works as an English teacher, has a smashing trio of essays on Literacy Privilege -- the invisible privilege that accrues to people who have the facility to write well and clearly, and who have absorbed the "correct" conventions of English. I know I've been guilty of dismissing people because of their grammar/spelling errors (I'm sure I'll make several in this post, BTW, thanks to Muphry's Law), and I've also posted regrettable grammar-mockery in place of rebuttal at times. Even when I was doing it, I knew that it wasn't quite fair or rigorous but Chandra's critique is a good frame for understanding precisely what's wrong with the practice.

One important issue that Chandra doesn't touch on in her essays is the way that this works in languages where an official academy defines formal correctness -- French and German, for example. English is very much up for grabs, thanks to the absence of any final authority over its rules. In other cases, there is a technically correct way of doing things, and an incorrect way -- presumably, this exacerbates the problem.

https://boingboing.net/2012/12/13/literacy-privilege-or-why-gr.html

[darael]

Classic example of Muphry's Law

I’ll cause you to accidentally make a type on a post where you mention bad writing causing people to accuse you of being 13