I never know WHO's mind is being read when I dictate a message. (speech to text) It's faster to dictate but then it's slower when you have to re-type the message because you just apologized for using your neighbor's WiFi but spell check changed it to Wife. And you wonder why he's giving you dirty looks.

 

Apparently, a LOT of so-called journalists are using speech to text because when their articles get published there are lots of phonetically similar but improperly used words in the text. The position of copy reader and editor has apparently been eliminated from the publishing trade. I personally find it quite annoying and belittling of the "writer's" education and intelligence. Just my personal peeve... FWIW

 

Apparently, a LOT of so-called journalists are using speech to text because when their articles get published there are lots of phonetically similar but improperly used words in the text. The position of copy reader and editor has apparently been eliminated from the publishing trade. I personally find it quite annoying and belittling of the "writer's" education and intelligence. Just my personal peeve... FWIW

I'm 100% width you on that one ..

 

Apparently, a LOT of so-called journalists are using speech to text because when their articles get published there are lots of phonetically similar but improperly used words in the text. The position of copy reader and editor has apparently been eliminated from the publishing trade. I personally find it quite annoying and belittling of the "writer's" education and intelligence. Just my personal peeve... FWIW

It's a general trend that is seen in so many places -- they simply don't care about quality work anymore.

Simple housekeeping tasks that used to be routine and seldom ever messed up are now messed up so routinely that it is the norm. Just a couple of examples that come to mind:

Out-of-date advertisements. Almost any commercial that is run has a start and end date, as part of the contract. In the old days, this was a multi-step process involving several people to make sure that an ad was not run outside of that window. Now it should be a trivially simple matter of the information being entered into a computer when the ad is uploaded and the computer scheduling program ensuring that it is not aired outside of the window. Yet back when it was a completely manual process, ads where almost never run outside of the window and now, when it should be trivial, ads are routinely run well outside the window. There's an ad on CNN for $50 mammograms that is still running, even though the fine print at the bottom of the ad clearly states that the offer was valid from 01 Oct 2022 to 31 October 2022. It's been running for almost a year after the sale ended.

Another case of sloppiness that used to never happen but is now routine is the inability to properly transition from top of the hour news back to local programming. Many radio stations play a few minutes of national news from one of the big networks at the top of the hour. How many minutes depends on how much of a time window they are paying for. The news segment itself has N stories of which a local station will air the first K of them. Decades ago, it was up to the DJ (or the equivalent at that station) to transition back to local broadcast at the end of the window. This was virtually always done flawlessly -- the listener had no idea that there were additional national stories. Now what you almost always hear is the first several seconds of the next story before the broadcast is switched back over by the computer. Very annoying.

Both of these (and others) are problems that should be pretty easy to fix -- in fact, they are both problems that were solved even in automated systems a long time ago. They just are problems that are in the new software that stations are using now and the bugs have literally been there for decades and they won't fix them. Why not? Because they don't care. Long gone are the days when the people calling the shots on this stuff had the misguided notion that customers wanted quality craftsmanship -- today they are of the firm opinion that serving up crap like this has zero effect on their bottom line, so there is no point in spending the time, effort, or money to do things well. The really sad part is that I can't, in all honesty, claim that they are wrong.

 

Apparently, a LOT of so-called journalists are using speech to text...

Worse: emotion to text. light on facts and logic, and heavy on how they want you to feel.

 

Worse: emotion to text. light on facts and logic, and heavy on how they want you to feel.

I think that's always been the case, pretty much from day one.

 

I think that's always been the case, pretty much from day one.

they're all salespeople, after all ... unfortunately it pays more to behave that way, it's all part of human nature

 

Apparently, a LOT of so-called journalists are using speech to text because when their articles get published there are lots of phonetically similar but improperly used words in the text. The position of copy reader and editor has apparently been eliminated from the publishing trade. I personally find it quite annoying and belittling of the "writer's" education and intelligence. Just my personal peeve... FWIW

I'm all in favor of this trend. It makes spotting potential scammers a whole lot easier. They already don't understand English, so when they screw up - you know it.

 

 

 

 

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That guy on the left ? ? ? I know him.

 

 

 

 

The discovery of a novel body-temperature superconductor.