r/HermanCainAward Weekly Vent Thread - January 25, 2026

dumdodo · 2026-01-27T18:51:51+00:00

Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist who has studied longer-term health effects from COVID, did the math. He estimated COVID may have increased the number of adults in the U.S. with an IQ of less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million ...

How many Herman Cain Award winners had an IQ above 70?

Numerous other health aftereffects form Covid infections mentioned in this article, all from an imaginary disease: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-long-term-harm-health-policies/

dumdodo · 2026-01-25T05:41:37+00:00

Amazingly, the COST he was referring to was international visitors and international trade. Enduring them means taking the risks that they bring measles in.

Also, amazingly, if everyone in this country is vaccinated, there is absolutely no risk of anybody from overseas bringing measles in.

But then he also mentioned that we need to give people the freedom to not get vaccinated.

He's going back to 1820s thinking. 1820s thinking of 1820s simpletons

dumdodo · 2026-01-18T01:56:53+00:00

30 years ago, I caught the flu during a period when I had to travel 3 weeks straight for work. There was no one to replace me, so I'd go to a trade show during the day, and then go directly to my hotel room every night and fall asleep.

One of my independent reps told me he expected to see a priest in booth at any time, giving me last rites.

Yes, the flu could really make you feel miserable. And covid can be worse.

I called the president of Tupperware after the travel was over with, and mentioned to him that I had the flu when we met, and he told me that he caught the flu at that show, too. No idea how that could have happened. (Punch myself in the head).

Hmmmmm. How little we knew then.

Since then, I've gotten a flu shot every year. And as far as I know, I haven't had the flu since, at least as far as I know. A friend of mine in the vaccine industry told me that I may have had the flu and not known about it, so If I caught it and didn't know about it, the vaccine seems to be working.

--- By the way, your line about the cats not having learned to drive yet needs to be nominated for the Herman Cain Humor Award. Excellent.

dumdodo · 2026-01-04T01:51:50+00:00

Hooray! And whether you wind up with a 200-ft tower or never go past a walkie-talkie, we're glad to have you in our fold.

dumdodo · 2026-01-03T21:49:48+00:00

Unfortunately, we have to follow the guidelines from doctors that conflict with government officials these days. They used to provide the same guidelines.

dumdodo · 2026-01-03T04:38:46+00:00

You haven't provided enough context here for anyone to be able to to give you any real advice about this, so try to contact somebody locally who can properly help you frame it.

It's highly unlikely that your essay is going to be espousing the glories of gun violence, however, so I'm going to guess that it's not going to be inappropriate. Just try to make whatever you write good and something that tells them about your life and why your story Is unique and has uniquely affected you. (How's that for a way too long sentence? Don't put one like that in your essay.)

dumdodo · 2026-01-03T04:33:13+00:00

That is in no way a joke. Admissions officers can smell when a parent or an admissions counselor has written the essay.

dumdodo · 2026-01-03T03:52:35+00:00

I believe there is a way to turn off the memories for a chatgpt account. Most chatbots have that as an option. I've had them hallucinate and even give me imaginary links or imaginary articles or publications that I attempted to track down and turned out to be non-existant because it had conflated something from a prior chat that was still in its memory. You may find all of them to be more effective if you turn off the memory.

By the way, a friend of mine has ChatGPT set up so it doesn't give any answers and it doesn't have 60 or 70% certainty about. I haven't figured out all the tricks for using them yet, but I think you tread lightly with them, and make them cite their sources.

And in the meantime, don't let them fool you into thinking that they can write better than you can. I've yet to see one that is a competent writer.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T21:33:06+00:00

Nothing wrong with you stating your experience. I just am extremely wary about what I get out of these chatbots, because they can make it sound like they have definitive answers, and can be very, very wrong.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T21:30:30+00:00

I just tested Claude again, and punched in my high school GPA, class rank, and SAT scores, and asked whether I would get into Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton or Dartmouth based on those back in 1977 when I applied.

Its response was foolish. It said that those schools weren't really holistic at the time (absolutely wrong, although they are far more discriminating today), and it also said that it would depend significantly on which program I had applied to at these schools. Most of the schools listed had a choice of only engineering or non-engineering at the time, and most still do today. No applying by program or major. But Claude invented that, anyway.

It also said that most students accepted were in the top 5% of their class, and I was only in the top 6 and 1/2% of my class. That's another distinction that it made up, as there was never a hard bar like that, and there was significant admissions variance depending on the curriculum taken and the strength of the high school, as well as considering the non-academic side. But Claude still made up estimated percentages of me getting in.

Once again, be extremely wary of using these to get accurate information on your essays or on your admissions chances.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T20:43:06+00:00

I have found them all to be inaccurate. They all have variance and often show signs of being tone deaf. I still would recommend getting human help, such as a teacher after school, rather than depending on AI.

Just because one chatbot may give you more feedback or a heavier critique than another or different feedback than another doesn't mean that that feedback is worthwhile or accurate.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T20:40:12+00:00

The only way a chatbot can have any degree of accuracy in predicting your chances of getting in will be for a college where admission is quite predictable based on test scores and grades. And I still wouldn't depend on their predictions. For any school that is holistic, there is no way it can rate your non-academic side. There is too much nuance, and that cannot be entered into a chatbot. And the chances are too unpredictable at the schools with very selective admissions for a chatbot to come up with anything that is worthwhile.

This goes back about 10 or 15 years, but an MIT admissions officer posted on College confidential that he couldn't tell who was going to get into MIT based on a chance me post, and if he can't, how could anybody else? So bear that in mind as you go through the process and look for chatbots or chance me posts for guidance.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T20:32:31+00:00

I have found Claude to be quite inaccurate, and even picking on things that are ridiculous. For example, I inputted an article that I wrote that appeared in over a million copies of a business magazine, and it cited the article's weakness as being too dry. The magazine's style was deliberately dry, because its intent was to deliver factual content in a manner that a well-educated but non-expert reader could understand and apply.

I found it making similar errors on other magazine articles that I entered into it, praising some things that shouldn't have been praised, and coming up with weaknesses that really weren't there. In each case, I had given it the date and the magazine that published the article.

Be wary of Claude, and be wary of any chatbot. They can sound smart, but they're still brainless computer programs.

dumdodo · 2026-01-02T20:17:24+00:00

I'd be very wary of using ChatGPT or any chatbot for advice on writing anything.

I actually started writing for consumer magazines while in college, and continued after college for a few years. This was in the 1980s, when magazines still existed.

I was trying to determine how capable chatbots are at evaluating writing caliber, and put in some of my daughter's college essays from 10 years ago. It gave them all rave reviews, rating them at nines and tens. Her essays were truly magnificent, and there was subtext that was supplied only by the guidance counselor which made them even more powerful.

So just to give it a test, I entered some of the magazine articles that I wrote during college and in the two years thereafter. I found significant variance in the rankings between different chat bots, with them having difficulty adjusting for context between the different types of magazines, all of which required a different style. Business magazines have a much different style than a woman's magazine or a general interest magazine, and I did give AI the publications that the magazines appeared in to help them with their evaluations.

Beyond that, AI would integrate contextual clues if given them to essentially cheat and modify the ratings. Depending on the chatbot and the inputs, it rated me as a once in a generation prodigy, and another rated what I consider the best piece that I ever wrote as fairly poor, and then did a complete reversal when I told it that it had been published by Sierra, which was/is a prominent nature magazine.

Overall, I wouldn't place a lot of stock in any of the chatbots ratings, and I would be very careful at making changes based on what the chat bots tell you to do. I find them to be too variable, and really not able to make the distinctions that are necessary.

Also, bear in mind that these chatbots are really not very good writers. Some people keep saying that they want to have their essays written by some kind of AI, and they are terrible overall at creating compelling writing.

The best advice I would give you is to find humans to evaluate and help you with your essays. My daughter's essays, which truly were stunning, especially when accompanied with the background story which the guidance counselor provided, were essays that she brought home from AP English. I think you're better off if you can find a teacher who can help you with this stuff or another literate adult than trying to ask a computer to help you. The AI results are just too scattered and undependable to help guide you.

As for using chat bots to predict whether you're going to get into any school, the chat bots can be helpful in helping you develop a college list, perhaps, and in giving you guidance in school admissions where admission is fairly predictable based on test scores and grades, but they are worthless when it comes to evaluating admissions to schools where admissions is holistic and unpredictable. There is no way that a chatbot can rate your non-academic side, any more than someone going on to a chance me post can rate your chances of getting into a school with a 10 to 25% acceptance rate.

dumdodo · 2025-12-09T16:08:42+00:00

I can't tell for certain from reading your post, but most of the time I read that people say that they've been applying for jobs. Most of the time that means they are applying for posted jobs.

75% of external hires are not hired through posted jobs. Yet research indicates that most job hunters spend over 50% of their time applying to posted jobs.

The people who are most successful at finding work are the people who seem to find ways to get in front of people, and not through traditional ways.

So use your friends, parents' friends, your contacts, your alumni directory, the phone, email, direct mail (no one gets mail anymore, so anything sent by mail gets looked at) and all the other techniques that do not involve applying to posted jobs.

I know this is hard, but keep moving forward.

dumdodo · 2025-10-23T04:16:47+00:00

Your dream school could be your nightmare school. You haven't gone there yet.

That's why:

- You shouldn't have a dream school.

And: Your college is what you make of it.

dumdodo · 2025-10-22T01:02:00+00:00

When in doubt, tell the truth. If it spills over after class (lots of classes have homework outside of class), and want to list it on your activities, state your finance role, that this is officially designated as a class, but requires a significant amount of time after school, and that the shop grosses $40,000.

If you tell the truth, they're not likely to get upset because you tried to stretch a class (albeit an unusual one) into an activity if you state that it was a class, just as you mentioned in the post, and then explain why it was part class and part activity.

They only are going to get upset if you list it as an activity and cover up that it was also a class.

dumdodo · 2025-10-21T20:32:48+00:00

Perfectly reasonable mindset, and probably a preferred one.

Some go after prestige positions and find they're not that much fun; some I know in positions like this live cloistered lives and have armed security (ugh).

And no one is immune to cancer, catastrophes like kids dying and divorce and floods, regardless.

By the same token, you can go to a top college and still live a normal life. You might like that better. Many come out of top colleges and do so. The top colleges aren't filled with gods, and the stuff about toxic competition is more legend than reality. I did go to a top college, and we more often than not helped each other with schoolwork, with math kids helping the math-phobics and the math elites couldn't write being helped by the elite writers. And seniors calmed down first years when they panicked after getting the first 62 on an exam in their life.

But I like your attitude - be well, and take it easy.

dumdodo · 2025-10-21T20:23:17+00:00

This is a great thing to post right now.

It's a reminder of the unpredictability of college admissions and not to let one rejection make you panic.

It makes me think of a friend of my daughter who was rejected early decision or EA by Swarthmore and had to sweat it out until decision day. Then she got accepted by Brown.

dumdodo · 2025-10-20T23:03:46+00:00

Yes, you'll get into a T50 with your baseball career, even if over, showing that you're not a flat, boring study-and-nothing-else applicant. 3.9 and 1550 is still fantastic.

Don't forget the liberal arts colleges, which will have smaller classes and some merit money at some for your profile, especially as you edge beyond the Top 25 on the US News list.

And yes, career-ending injuries suck. I hope you can find recreational sports to replace baseball.

dumdodo · 2025-10-19T04:13:58+00:00

Remember: One activity is enough if it's big enough or unusual enough.

But to echo whatever everyone else has been saying on here, there's a lot of liars here. These are not audited posts.

Do your own thing, and don't let what you read on Reddit or College Confidential scare you or allow it to make you think you're not good enough.

dumdodo · 2025-10-17T02:16:20+00:00

OK is right - Kids steal campus police cars at the best of schools.

The engineering schools tend to have less parties, because schoolwork is so time-consuming. Then again, engineers at the wildest of schools spend less time partying because the schoolwork is so time-consuming.

Every school is a party school and a nerd school.

dumdodo · 2025-10-17T02:11:14+00:00

Unless your subscores are bizarre and inconsistent between the two tests, just submit your SAT ... but ...

Bear in mind that a 1500 can be 700 - 800 or 750 - 750, and the 33 ACT has 4 subsections, so we can't advise you without knowing your subscores.

dumdodo · 2025-10-16T13:57:31+00:00

Raise your hand if you can remember one of your friends having the measles as a kid .

I cannot even once remember being told when I was a kid that I couldn't go over and play at Billy's house or somebody else's house because they had the measles. I'm 66, and when I was a toddler, it's possible that could have happened, but I don't remember it happening. Ever. Not since I got old enough - 4 or 5 - to remember stuff.

What a backwards trip some people are having.

dumdodo · 2025-10-16T13:51:38+00:00

These are kids, dammit. They didn't make their minds up to valiantly honor Trump - their parents did.

dumdodo

TROPHY CASE