Telling someone just to “be yourself” might be terrible advice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The F Minus cartoon by Tony Carrillo on February 1, 2026 has a caption that says:

 

“For too long, we’ve ignored the devastating effects that ‘be yourself’ messaging can have on those people who happen to have rotten selves.”

 

Back on March 19, 2010 I blogged about Just be yourself (act naturally)? and I asked:

 

“Well, which self would you like to see: best or worst, relaxed or scared, et cetera?”

 

And there is a LinkedIn Pulse article on April 2, 2024 by Laura Bergells titled The Trouble with ‘Just Be Yourself’: A Deeper Look into Public Speaking Anxiety. A Mathew Hussey blog post on September 22, 2013 titled ‘Be Yourself’ – Bad Advice says:

 

“When someone says ‘be yourself’ all it does is give us validation for staying the same and not taking risks.”

 

My cartoon was adapted from a tee shirt and dragon at OpenClipArt.

 

 

A fraudulent letter asking me to renew a Home Warranty - that I don’t have

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

In today’s mail I received an undated letter titled Final Notice to create urgency. Its heading only says Home Warranty Division, Private & Confidential and does not identify either the organization or their mailing address. (And there was no return address on the envelope, which was mailed from St. Louis, Missouri).

 

The message is:

 

“RESPONSE TO THIS NOTICE REQUESTED

 

Attention: Richard Garber

 

It is important you contact our office at 1-888-413-5452 upon receiving this notice to avoid any unnecessary delays in your coverage before 4/10/2026. This notice is to inform you that the Home Warranty for your property in Boise, ID may be expiring or has already expired. Our records indicate that you have not contacted us yet to get your Home Warranty up to date. Please call immediately as this will be our final attempt to notify you about activating your Home Warranty. 

 

Failure to call and prevent a potential lapse in coverage could result in you being liable for all costs associated with any home repairs. However, you may still have time to activate a warranty on your home before it’s too late. No inspection will be required and final acceptance is subject to your ability to meet eligibility requirements. We reserve the right to revoke your eligibility for service coverage after the Expiration Date of 4/10/2026. Please respond immediately by calling 1-888-413-5452.

 

Sincerely, Vicky Mercer – Program Director”

 

Of course, I did NOT call her and give out any payment information. This message had previously been reported to the BBB [Better Business Bureau] Scam Tracker today, on March 19, 2026, and January 21, 2026, and at least five times in 2025.

 

My red letter cartoon was modifed from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Can jokes liven up scientific conferences?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a serious article by Stefano Mammola et al. in the Royal Society Proceedings B for March 2026 (Volume 293, Number 2067) titled Statistically significant chuckles: who is using humor at scientific conferences? The abstract says that:

 

“We’ve all been there: 11.47, swamped by a long stretch of dense scientific talks at a conference. Six slides into a hyper-technical presentation, the speaker suddenly cracks a joke. The room erupts. Shoulders relax. Minds re-engage. Humour is a powerful but underused tool in scientific communication, often sidelined by academic norms that view levity as unprofessional. Social biases can further shape who feels safe joking without risking credibility. 

 

At 14 biology-related conferences, we collected data on humour use across 531 talks. Jokes clustered at the beginnings and ends of talks, with an extra bump in successful jokes midway through. Most jokes (66%) earned only polite chuckles. Humour success was unrelated to the type of joke or form of delivery; however, male speakers told about 0.35 more jokes per talk, and both male and native speakers had a 10% higher probability of eliciting laughter. 

 

This suggests how social dynamics influence who feels comfortable using humour and whose jokes resonate with the audience. Until academia reckons with these biases, humour will remain a privilege. Still, for those brave enough or granted the social licence, a well-placed zinger can turn a forgettable talk into one people actually remember—and perhaps even enjoy.”

 

There were only 870 unique jokes, with 223 speakers telling none. 367 jokes were about situational hiccups, 161 were about subject matter, only 52 were about popular culture unrelated to academia, and 30 were inside jokes about the academic community or conference. 707 were delivered orally, 133 relied on visuals, and just 30 used physical comedy.

 

I found out about this article from another by Phie Jacobs at Science on March 17, 2026 titled Scientific conferences can be a bore. Can jokes liven them up? Yet another is by Nicola James at Nature on March 18, 2026 titled Knock knock, no one’s there. Study finds scientists’ jokes mostly fall flat.

 

The cartoon audience was modified from a couple and another couple at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a mores specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:   

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

It is discussed an article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on December 30, 2016 titled Quote Origin: Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity. He attributes it to being from 1980 by computer programmer Robert J. Hanlon. But he points to similar statements as far back as 1757 by philosopher David Hume.

 

Jono Hey has a cartoon about it at his Sketchplanations. And there is a serious discussion by Nathan Ballantyne and Peter H. Ditto at Midwest Studies in Philosophy for August 2021 in an article simply titled Hanlon’s Razor.

 

The straight razor in my cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Living in the Present with John Prine is a memoir by Tom Piazza

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 14, 2020 I blogged about Remembering John Prine – a great storyteller. There is an article by Tom Piazza in the Oxford American on October 8, 2018 about that singer-songwriter titled Living in the Present with John Prine. John selected Tom to write a memoir with the same title – a 2025 book Living in the Present with John Prine. Near the end, on pages 157 to 160 his lead guitarist Jason Wilber described John’s combination of abilities:

 

“John loved performing, for sure. He had a really …I want to say he had a natural talent for it, but that, I think, underplays what I’m trying to communicate. I’ve said this before, to other people, but I feel like I stood there with John onstage for twenty-four years, and watched him do a magic trick over and over … and over. It always worked, he pulled it off every time, and I still don’t know how he did it. He had this ability to communicate on an emotional level through his writing. ‘How in hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say?’ I don’t think there was a time I heard him sing that line onstage that at least one person in the audience didn’t cry out, and go ‘Whooo!’ or respond in some way, and usually lots of people. Think about that. That’s not, like, a normal thing. You know what I mean? That line is not asking you to comment in some way. It’s not saying, like, ‘Hey, everybody put your hands in the air…’ It’s a spontaneous reaction to a line that communicates something of such emotional depth and resonance that people are prompted to spontaneously cry out. And I heard that happen over and over. Almost every night.

 

So that’s just the writing part. But he also had the ability to do that as a performer, as a live in-person communicator. He just had this emotional intelligence that was off the charts. He was a genius in his way. And I know that’s not news to you. Or anyone! But that is really what struck me about being onstage with him. It’s not just that he could do a good show, and in fact, if you reduce this to technical execution of music, he was not that ‘good.’ And I mean that with complete respect. But, like, if you just wanted to measure this with scientific instruments, John’s show wasn’t good because his vocal intonation was perfect, or his guitar technique was perfect, or his guitar was perfectly in tune, or because he was making no mistakes … Quite the contrary! But it didn’t matter. Because his ability to deliver the rest of it – the emotional part – was so in the stratosphere that none of that shit mattered.   

 

And for me, as someone who spent their whole life practicing, and trying to learn how to do things exactly the way I was trying to do … It took me a long time to understand that, like, wow, John is actually doing the things that I thought … I thought I was on the path to what he was doing, but now I see he’s doing it with none of those things. It didn’t matter if he made mistakes on the guitar, or he was out of tune. In fact, when he messed up people loved him more. He would make a mistake and people would cheer! Because of a look he would make, or the way he would react to it.

 

But here’s the other part – it wasn’t only onstage. He just had this ability to communicate with people. If you only knew John superficially, you could say, ‘He’s a regular guy. Just a nice guy.’ And he was. But he was also … his emotional intelligence extended into the interpersonal. The same way he could connect with a whole room full of people, he could sit across the table from you – not that he was always connected, because sometimes he would be off in Archie comics land – but when he was there with you he could be really tuned in to you and know a lot about where you were, even maybe more than you knew.

 

He had a pretty good read on almost everybody and every situation. I think that allowed him to trust people … He could read people quickly. He had an idea of who you were and what you were about. He wouldn’t say it, he didn’t talk about it, but he knew. He was super, super smart, in his own way. Not like he knew the atomic weight of water, or whatever, but he was smart in all these other ways that really mattered. I think his talent was in some ways a mystery to him as well. He knew that he had this talent, that he was off-the-charts good at this one thing, but he didn’t necessarily understand why he was. But he knew it. And he knew he could trust it. 

 

I used to think if you work hard at something you can get as good as anybody else. But those things I just talked about, about John – writing, performing, communicating, reading people – communicating with people based on his reading of what’s happening – I could work on them until the end of time and never be nearly as good as him.”

 

A good way to get to know John is to watch ten Youtube videos of his live performances from Sessions at West 54th:

 

Sam Stone

Hello In There

Spanish Pipedream

Lake Marie

Souvenirs

All the Best

Far From Me

Six O’Clock News

In Spite of Ourselves (duet with Iris Dement)

The Jet Set (duet with Iris Dement)

 

There is another article at Country and Midwestern titled John Prine Explains the Origin of “Lake Marie”. And still another article by Clayton Edwards at American Songwriter on October 28, 2024 titled “Midwestern Mindtrips”; Why Bob Dylan Names John Prine Among His Favorite Songwriters Ever said Bob liked Lake Marie best.

 

The 2016 image of John Prine is from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Mayor of Nampa, Idaho dies while speaking in public

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Michael Davis at Medium on January 4, 2023 titled Why Public Speaking ISN’T Your Number One Fear claimed:

 

“No one has ever died from giving a speech.”

 

But on May 31, 2017 I blogged about thirty examples in a post titled Spouting Nonsense – Nobody ever died from public speaking. Sadly, we just had another local example.

 

There is another article by Chris Bradford at the New York Post on March 19, 2026 titled Newly elected Idaho mayor Rick Hogaboam, 47, dies after collapsing mid-speech during town hall. And there is yet another article by Becca Longmire at People also on March 19, 2026 titled Idaho Mayor Rick Hogaboam, 47, Dies After Experiencing Medical Emergency While Speaking at Town Hall Meeting. There is a brief biography of Rick at the Office of the Mayor.

 

 

A thoughtful book by Ellen Hendriksen on How to Be Enough

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a thoughtful 2024 book by Ellen Hendriksen titled How to Be Enough: Self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists. At Google Books there is a preview through the end of Chapter 2 on page 34.

 

She divides the book into two parts, with fifteen chapters and an epilogue:

 

Part I: Introducing Perfectionism

 1] How We See Ourselves

 2] The Many Salads of Perfectionism

 3] The Beginning of Things

 

Part II: The Seven Shifts

 Shift 1: From (Self-) Criticism to Kindness

  4] Beyond the Inner Critic

 5] The Outer Critic: Us and Them

Shift 2: Coming Home to Your Life

 6] From Labels to Values

 7] Our Forgotten Baskets

Shift 3: From Rules to Flexibility

 8] Rewriting the Inner Rulebook

 9] Why We Turn Fun into a Chore

Shift 4: Mistakes: From Holding On to Letting Go

10] From ‘Failure’ to the Human Condition: Releasing Past Mistakes

11] From Exam to Experiment: Compassion for Future Mistakes

Shift 5: From Procrastination to Productivity

12] It’s Not About Time Management

Shift 6: From Comparison to Contentment

13] Hardwired but Not Haywire

Shift 7: From Control to Authenticity

14] Rolling Back Emotional Perfectionism: Being Real on the Inside

15] Rolling Back Perfectionistic Self-Preservation: Being Real on the Outside

 

Epilogue: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On page 29 there is a flowchart describing self-evaluation by a perfectionist, which I have redone in color as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on page 88 in Chapter 5 on The Outer Critics there is a table contrasting what we say, what we really mean, and what they hear, – which I have rearranged in a color version, as is shown above.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Chapter 11 there are two tables showing Heart to Head Experiments, which I have shown above in color.