Month: August 2021

Work is crazy busy.

I still need to figure out how to take some time off.

Thinking about the state of the world, I reached a disturbing realization the other day — that the COVID-19 remediations will work as well as the solutions to fight climate change.

There is no accountability for politicians whose solutions don’t work. It used to be assumed that they’d just lose at the ballot box, then go away.

Now, they’re absolutely destroying people’s lives.

It’s not enough to just end cops’ qualified immunity; end sovereign immunity.

If you do something that hurts someone else, you’re responsible. Even if there’s a fancy title in front of your name.

Is groupthink dangerous?

At one time, I probably would have said, “yes,” but I wonder if it matters at this point.

Whatever you think, whether it’s groupthink or not, doesn’t matter to matter to most people.

If you adhere to the “correct” groupthink, you’re okay. If you subscribe to the wrong ideas, whether or not there’s a lot of people who agree with you, you’ve made yourself a target.

Senator Paul is one of the few people who’s challenging the wisdom of various measures, and the totes-doesn’t-do-evil company’s video site suspends his site..

He’s a Senator.

For him, adhering to the popular opinion, groupthink, he wouldn’t have been suspended.

So it doesn’t matter. See: CloudFlare.

Today’s supposed to be a free-write day. Incredibly busy with work today. I’m tried, but moving along.

Two-thirds of the way finished with this streak; end is definitely in sight.

The big news of the day is that the Senate’s slim infrastructure bill passed, and Cuomo resigned.

I am still worried about the second part coming out of the House, especially this part.

Who knows.

Still reminiscing about the comedy show this weekend. That was a lot of fun.

The show last night was great. Not necessarily all that I thought it’d be, but a fun time. It was ungodly hot in there, unfortunately

A few good chats with Robbie “The Fire” out front of the club.

Looking for the correct superlative to describe Chris From Brooklyn‘s opener.. His stalwart producer might have something appropriate.

Robbie should have brought his Hunter Biden artwork; would have sold well in his adopted hometown.

I liked Dave’s set. The live podcast session kinda turned me off. I understand why he’s miffed, and it’s tough to placate the Asperger’s crowd, but they’re really not stupid, and there’s probably something you can do to get them on board intently-focused on an area where you’re not the strongest.

They do have a lot good to offer on Chicago School economics. And, in the unlikely event of an electoral win, maybe there’s a chance they can keep you off the airplane that’s being used to cleanse society of the Marxists and Keynesians. Paul Krugman would do well to stay in New Jersey unless he’s on Amtrak….

On to the prompt…

Finish this statement. It was a different kind of day because I… (T2K)

I’m not working this morning. Sort of. I will call in to a mid-morning meeting, and do system work tonight, but I’m basically off work.

I’m still wondering what it’d be like to really some time off where I can go and do kind of whatever suits my whim at the moment.

Being at the show last night would have been even more entertaining if I’d been able to get out, and get home more quickly.

I should do more writing now, but I really don’t have the impetus.

I also should be giving ideas on shopping. Maybe one of these. I also kinda want a rablet, and a burner Android phone for my NYC trip….

But I’m falling in to the same thing I always do, where there’s no single thing that’d absolutely fascinate me.

Oh well.

Writing early as I prime up for the show I’m going to see in DC tonight.

I am incredibly excited.

I’m trying to get myself up, physically, to really enjoy myself. *fingers crossed*

Do you ever feel conflicted when someone you admire comes under controversy?

This is one where I’ve found myself needing to do some re-analysis.

I used to look with strong condemnation towards those who had emotional or substance abuse issues. This can be traced to my upbringing, my admiration of stoicism, and the wonderful messaging of the various anti-drug programs of my Gen X youth.

If you smoke crack, you might die the first time you did it. Look at Len Bias.

If you have any sort of sexual contact with another person, you will probably get AIDS die. Look at Magic Johnson.

Yeah, about those….

The government lies. Almost all the time.

The corporate press, too, often falls into that sort of mindset.

One of the things I learned in broadcast, however, is that you’ll never be successful if you think your audience is foolish.

Your job is to make them stick around long enough to listen to a commercial. The nobler ideas of artistry, holding the powerful to account, whatever….are all irrelevant if you turn them off to the point at which they turn you off.

You can leave. You can always tune things out, and choose something different.

On the broadcast side, consider the BBC. In the UK, the consumer pays a tax on every single receiver to pay for the BBC.

So that means that there is no broadcast other than that which is blessed by the British government.

Then somebody launches a satellite. Oops.

Technology can overcome pretty much anything.

Can see the end of the road on this stretch now.

No prompt for today, however. I hadn’t put on in, so I’m just going to go with whatever’s on my mind.

1. Incredibly excited about seeing Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein, Dave Smith, and Chris from BKLYN in DC tomorrow night. Chris’s addition was unexpected; heard it listening to Dave and Robbie on “Part of the Problem” earlier in the week. Even when I was young and healthy, I rarely got excited about much. I am very excited about this one. I’m taking part of the day off on Monday to give me some time to recover.
2. Similar to the first point, I’m excited to go to NYC to see the Soho Forum Debate in October. There was quite a bit of discussion this week about the app. This morning, I’ve been researching the very-fascist Key To NYC passport for the vaccine. The mayor was pretty emphatic that there’s no location tracking, etc.. I went over and have looked at some of the technical details. I’m a little more comfortable with it, but I’m still not going to install it on my personal phone. I’m still looking hard at buying a “burner” phone, Baltimore-style, for the trip. Just get things as far away from prying eyes as possible. But when I’m there, with the exception of the debate, itself, where they said that the venue is forcing it, if I’m asked to show my papers, I will politely wish a nice day, and leave. No, I’m not showing you anything to buy your products. Sorry. And that’s something where the restaurants just choose not to participate, they can have my business. If all of them take a similar tack, they’ll immediately hurt their waitstaff. If you’re intentionally narrowing your clientele, that’s something your waitstaff should know. Following that, you hurt their bottom line by buying from the delivery apps. You Can Leave
3. I only watched parts of the Hall Of Fame game. I’m still trying to figure out the fantasy league. If you’re interested, let me know. @757sean on Twitter, or sean@control-h.org.

And that’s about it for now. Enjoying this.

Chugging along. So much mindless training this week.

But I feel like I’ve gotten a lot accomplished ahead of the deadlines.

Two billionaires have each taken a trip to the edge of outer space  what significance does their actions have on the future of space travel (T2K)

First, this shows the Austrian view of economics is true — products should get cheaper over time. Yes, that seriously fucks with the never-ending price inflation that the Keynesians on. Tech advances make things cheaper over time.

One of the common things is Friedman’s Pencil example. How much does a run-of-the-mill pencil cost? A few cents. How much would it cost you to produce one, yourself? A lot more than a few cents.

I used to have a boss who was really big on the do-it-all-yourself mantra. We were doing some wiring for a network product that used CAT-5e breakout blocks. Wiring up a single unit was probably $10 in product, but it took probably three hours to do all the connections. What I figured out how to do was take pre-fabricated cables, cut them in half, and punch down the cut ends of the cables. The cables to cut in half were cheaper than the $10 in products, and the labor to do the punches on the pre-made cables probably only took about 25% of the time.

When it comes to going to space, from a purely research and economic perspective, that, as the price drops, this falls into private industry is not at all surprising.

What’s really prevented it is law/government. Nice launchpad you’ve got there. Do you have a permit? No? Okay, well, I’ll take that, then.

How much would production of something equivalent of the Mercury capsules cost using off-the-shelf products today?

Probably a lot less than what it cost to initially-create them in the 1950s.

The billionaires, however, are producing more vehicles even more advanced than the Mercury capsule. The rockets are reusable. The vehicles are reusable. They have landing options better than an ocean spashdown.

Private industry does all of this without stealing money from people to pay for it.

Government can help most by doing nothing. If there’s something the state would like to buy, great. See: SpaceX’s missions to/from the ISS.

As for the future, costs will continue to decline.

The production costs of the vehicles will get cheaper.

Even if fuel increases in price, the vehicles will require less of it to get where they’re going.

If someone wants to make it too difficult to pursue in the US, they’ll go somewhere else.

Oh well.

Maybe they can still do that. If there’s nowhere on land where they’re allowed, they’ll move to a floating platform in the oceans. You can leave.

Do you prefer to be an educated opinionated person, or just an opinionated person? 

I’m really not sure how to deal with this one. Wouldn’t education preclude firmly-entrenched opinion in most cases?

It does kind of speak to part of what I’ve been struggling with recently, however.

Everybody knows that wearing a mask reduces infection.

I’ll accept that stipulation. The question is by how much? Quantify it.

With the pandemic response, too, I’m seeing eerie similarities to climate change.

We have to do X. We think it’ll prevent A, B, and C.

Okay. How are you measuring the effectiveness of whatever measures you’ve put in place?

With the climate measures, the quantification of cost are a lot simpler

How much does it cost to put everybody in a mask? For the masks, themselves, not a ton. But how much will it cost for young people who never learn to identify facial expressions?

What of any other negative medical effects?

My family’s partial-origin city of New Orleans is below sea level. So, too, is a good chunk of the Netherlands.

Those places aerated having issues with sea levels long before THE SCIENCE said the problems are due to human-caused climate change. So we need to attempt reversion to the climate when those places were initially-settled?

Humans have this nasty ability to figure out how to adapt to changes. Bad us.

But I’d imagine it’ll be the same with COVID. We’ll develop treatments, and people will die in far fewer numbers from it.

So, maybe, stop trying to roll back to a time before it? Maybe?

I had this set aside for free writing. I guess I’ll stick to that, even though I don’t really feel up to it.

Again, there’s a lot of the just doing something to do it that goes into this at some point.

Things seem to be trying to slide back to things that didn’t work in 2021 to fight the pandemic.

That attempt is over. Your prescription didn’t work; you failed. Move onto something different.

It’s not a problem to admit that your solution didn’t work. It’s almost like not having the right solution is, you know, part of following THE SCIENCE.

With that, too, I think people are getting too bound up in levels of evidence, even when they don’t understand burdens of proof.

There’s certainly a preponderance of the evidence, if not clear and convincing evidence, that this is directly attributable to things that were happening at the lab in Wuhan.

How do you get “justice” for that?

Not by making two year-olds wear masks, and avoid human contact for another year.

No. You just reach agreement with other countries harmed by the mistake, and stop paying sovereign depts.

Think of it as reverse reparations. The Federal Republic of Germany didn’t finish paying its World War I debts until something like 2010.

No, this has been paid. We’re square. We don’t owe you anything for all you lent prior to the virus, and what we spent dealing with the virus you caused, and you don’t owe us anything for the trillions of dollars in damage, and millions of lives lost.

Okay?