It's time to kiss this year goodbye -- on the cheek, not the lips -- and kick it out the door. Possibly without a parachute. Farewell, 2022! Let's hope 2023 is better!
Dear fates, let it be better. Please.
Update
1 year ago
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Friday, December 30, 2022
This Just In?
Did you hear? Netflix is working on a George Santos biopic, to be called Forging A Career!
That's a joke. Unfortunately, the Long Island politician's seemingly unending series of lies describing his education, family, career, employees and personal life is not. Also not a joke: that his political opponent apparently assumed there was no need to do any oppo research, that only one small, local paper reported on the questionable nature of the then-candidate's self-reported history and that exactly zero of the big news organizations, from the New York Time to Fox News, caught the story at the time. Now it's too late and the state of New York is about to ship a particularly bare-faced liar off to the U. S. House of Representatives. He may be hounded out of office by public pressure, but if he digs in, there's little the nearly evenly-divided House can do officially.
Elsewhere, Fox News opinionator Sean Hannity has incurred wrath by admitting when questioned under oath about voting-machine fraud costing then-President Trump's re-election, "I did not believe it for one second." Oops! That's not what he was saying at the time.
One lesson here is that when politicians and news commentators tell you their peers are cynical, serial liars, they're probably describing the ones they know best: themselves. There's a little deception in all of it; pols and talking heads go out there day after day, night after night, happy, sad or so tired they can barely focus, and they hit their marks and say their piece no matter what -- and that's kind of a lie. Public figures burnish their resumes a little bit and we wink at it; J. Random Senator says he spent a college summer doing charity work when instead he was sweeping floors at the Y for beer money or hanging out in the Hamptons, tipping lavishly. But the way over the top stuff, well, they're not supposed to do it. If they're going to cast stones, they'd better be up there with Caesar's wife in the penthouse above reproach, not living in a glass house, or it will all come crashing down.
Me, I'd be happy to see more lies falter and fail, and in coming weeks, they just might. We'll never have perfectly honest politicians (we'd probably loathe them if we did, even more than we do now), and news commentators will forever fall to the temptation of saying what's popular or attention-getting instead of hewing strictly to the true and the real; but the most egregious lies need to be found out and their tellers hauled into the light and laughed at, no matter whose interests they serve.
That's a joke. Unfortunately, the Long Island politician's seemingly unending series of lies describing his education, family, career, employees and personal life is not. Also not a joke: that his political opponent apparently assumed there was no need to do any oppo research, that only one small, local paper reported on the questionable nature of the then-candidate's self-reported history and that exactly zero of the big news organizations, from the New York Time to Fox News, caught the story at the time. Now it's too late and the state of New York is about to ship a particularly bare-faced liar off to the U. S. House of Representatives. He may be hounded out of office by public pressure, but if he digs in, there's little the nearly evenly-divided House can do officially.
Elsewhere, Fox News opinionator Sean Hannity has incurred wrath by admitting when questioned under oath about voting-machine fraud costing then-President Trump's re-election, "I did not believe it for one second." Oops! That's not what he was saying at the time.
One lesson here is that when politicians and news commentators tell you their peers are cynical, serial liars, they're probably describing the ones they know best: themselves. There's a little deception in all of it; pols and talking heads go out there day after day, night after night, happy, sad or so tired they can barely focus, and they hit their marks and say their piece no matter what -- and that's kind of a lie. Public figures burnish their resumes a little bit and we wink at it; J. Random Senator says he spent a college summer doing charity work when instead he was sweeping floors at the Y for beer money or hanging out in the Hamptons, tipping lavishly. But the way over the top stuff, well, they're not supposed to do it. If they're going to cast stones, they'd better be up there with Caesar's wife in the penthouse above reproach, not living in a glass house, or it will all come crashing down.
Me, I'd be happy to see more lies falter and fail, and in coming weeks, they just might. We'll never have perfectly honest politicians (we'd probably loathe them if we did, even more than we do now), and news commentators will forever fall to the temptation of saying what's popular or attention-getting instead of hewing strictly to the true and the real; but the most egregious lies need to be found out and their tellers hauled into the light and laughed at, no matter whose interests they serve.
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Yeah? You First
You've got to love the commenter who told me to "Just go bake cookies" if I'd lost the fire of enthusiasm for some parts of my job. (Or go elsewhere, which isn't easy once you're over 60.)
Look, pal, I realize you haven't been paying attention (and why should you?), but the fact that I can't bake cookies right now is one reason why I'm still working. The oven in my ancient gas stove is unreliable and I have been making holiday dinners on the charcoal grill for years now. I need to replace it (the range, not the grill). A nice pilotless range would suit me, so I'll almost certainly have to get a 120V receptacle installed behind it. Since the range sits between two cabinets, I can't cheat with surface-mount the way I did in my last place. It's a tiled wall, too, which makes it a job for a pro. Not because I can't do wiring, but because I can't do a nice, finished job of it. And I don't want to spend weeks cooking with an electric skillet -- I want to get the old stove out and the new one in, all in the same day. That takes money. My fridge is increasingly unhappy these days unless I keep it full, and a size-matched replacement set up the way I prefer (narrow, cabinet-depth, freezer on the bottom; pretty much a UK-standard fridge) leaves very few choices, none cheaper than $1000, American.
The dishwasher's been dead since 2020. I'm really hating that. The water heater is now at least fifteen years old. The washer and dryer were old when I moved in, too. Once I retire and "go bake cookies," there won't be money to replace any of them.
It's a lovely fantasy to think about quitting and spending as much time as I can manage writing, cooking, messing with old radio gear and building furniture. The reality is, it all needs to be paid for -- and before I can spare money for that, I have to get the basic, high-ticket items squared away. I could walk away right now and keep the house and utility payments going until full retirement, while eating regular meals, and maybe save enough back to pay the higher real estate taxes that will kick in once the mortgage is paid off. But there wouldn't be any margin at all.
I worry that there won't be much of me left when I reach retirement. Increasing arthritis is going to slow and limit how much I will be able to do of the things I enjoy. But if I don't get this place squared away first, that will be the least of my worries. At one point in my current job, I spent about a dozen years working for a guy who disliked me, a sentiment I returned. He assigned me crummy tasks whenever he could and never spared a chance to make a wisecrack or criticism at my expense. I got through it. For that matter, so did he, until leaving for other reasons. It's not like I haven't had to bear down and deal with this kind of thing before.
Welcome to the part of middle class where you don't get to just walk away with a golden ticket, where you don't always get to love every part of your job, where you do what you need to do to keep the bills paid, your car running and the basic household appliances working. Isn't it just like that for most people in the middle -- except for the ones working at jobs they simply despise?
Look, pal, I realize you haven't been paying attention (and why should you?), but the fact that I can't bake cookies right now is one reason why I'm still working. The oven in my ancient gas stove is unreliable and I have been making holiday dinners on the charcoal grill for years now. I need to replace it (the range, not the grill). A nice pilotless range would suit me, so I'll almost certainly have to get a 120V receptacle installed behind it. Since the range sits between two cabinets, I can't cheat with surface-mount the way I did in my last place. It's a tiled wall, too, which makes it a job for a pro. Not because I can't do wiring, but because I can't do a nice, finished job of it. And I don't want to spend weeks cooking with an electric skillet -- I want to get the old stove out and the new one in, all in the same day. That takes money. My fridge is increasingly unhappy these days unless I keep it full, and a size-matched replacement set up the way I prefer (narrow, cabinet-depth, freezer on the bottom; pretty much a UK-standard fridge) leaves very few choices, none cheaper than $1000, American.
The dishwasher's been dead since 2020. I'm really hating that. The water heater is now at least fifteen years old. The washer and dryer were old when I moved in, too. Once I retire and "go bake cookies," there won't be money to replace any of them.
It's a lovely fantasy to think about quitting and spending as much time as I can manage writing, cooking, messing with old radio gear and building furniture. The reality is, it all needs to be paid for -- and before I can spare money for that, I have to get the basic, high-ticket items squared away. I could walk away right now and keep the house and utility payments going until full retirement, while eating regular meals, and maybe save enough back to pay the higher real estate taxes that will kick in once the mortgage is paid off. But there wouldn't be any margin at all.
I worry that there won't be much of me left when I reach retirement. Increasing arthritis is going to slow and limit how much I will be able to do of the things I enjoy. But if I don't get this place squared away first, that will be the least of my worries. At one point in my current job, I spent about a dozen years working for a guy who disliked me, a sentiment I returned. He assigned me crummy tasks whenever he could and never spared a chance to make a wisecrack or criticism at my expense. I got through it. For that matter, so did he, until leaving for other reasons. It's not like I haven't had to bear down and deal with this kind of thing before.
Welcome to the part of middle class where you don't get to just walk away with a golden ticket, where you don't always get to love every part of your job, where you do what you need to do to keep the bills paid, your car running and the basic household appliances working. Isn't it just like that for most people in the middle -- except for the ones working at jobs they simply despise?
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Among The Humans
I worked at the Main Campus yesterday. Since the 26th was Christmas (observed), it wasn't too bad: no adult supervision and most of the suit & tie offices were empty.
Today, not so much, and I am looking forward to it as only an achy, short-tempered sixtiesh person who remembers the old days can. It's not so much that the place is awful; the remaining staff are hardworking, decent folks and the current owners are not deliberately evil. But almost all my peers are gone, as are nearly all my friends and long-term acquaintances. So the whole thing has an air of returning to the little town where you grew up, only to find most of the things you remember are gone and what remains is altered in strange and discomfiting ways. Being away for most of the pandemic hasn't helped; the place I remember is the place I worked at for over thirty years -- and that place was already gone before we dispersed in March of 2020.
It still pays the same, at least -- well, a little more. And the health insurance is good, reason enough to hang on in and of itself. But I sure do miss some of the people, let go when their position was eliminated, retired, moved away or dead. The hallways and rooms are haunted by memories these days.
Today, not so much, and I am looking forward to it as only an achy, short-tempered sixtiesh person who remembers the old days can. It's not so much that the place is awful; the remaining staff are hardworking, decent folks and the current owners are not deliberately evil. But almost all my peers are gone, as are nearly all my friends and long-term acquaintances. So the whole thing has an air of returning to the little town where you grew up, only to find most of the things you remember are gone and what remains is altered in strange and discomfiting ways. Being away for most of the pandemic hasn't helped; the place I remember is the place I worked at for over thirty years -- and that place was already gone before we dispersed in March of 2020.
It still pays the same, at least -- well, a little more. And the health insurance is good, reason enough to hang on in and of itself. But I sure do miss some of the people, let go when their position was eliminated, retired, moved away or dead. The hallways and rooms are haunted by memories these days.
Monday, December 26, 2022
Score: Turducken 1, Roasting Pan 0
It was my fault. Yesterday, the high temperature in Indianapolis was 18°F. I had a leftover turducken. I'd ordered one for Thanksgiving, which arrived frozen as hard as a rock. I put it in the fridge to thaw a day later than I should have. It was still solid when turduckens showed up at our corner grocer the day before Thanksgiving. I put the frozen one back in the freezer and bought a thawed one, which we enjoyed on the holiday.
That left a rock-hard Cajun-style six-pond pound turducken with sausage in the freezer. I decided to make it for Christmas, and gave it a proper three-day thaw. On Day One, our weather went nuts and I resolutely set aside my doubts. It would all work out!
Come the 25th, I did all my prep work indoors, built a nice big charcoal fire in the grill (quickly!), and laid down a layer of chopped apple and turnip in the roasting pan, with the turducken barely fitting on top. The lid wouldn't quite sit all the way down. I made sure there was plenty of charcoal along the edges of the grill, pushed the center clear for indirect heat, and set the roasting pan in place on the grill bars for a three-hour bake. It was 15°F in the back yard when I started.
The grill was nice and hot. I checked at the half-hour mark and the lid had settled. I left my old oven thermometer in the grill then. Thirty minutes later, I had a peek: it was 350°F in the covered grill and the aroma was wonderful.
At ninety minutes, I thought about opening the lid of the roasting pan, but decided not to. At two hours, thinking to add some carrots and a chopped onion, I discovered the lid was stuck. It just lays in place, but it wouldn't budge. I nearly burned my left thumb trying, having only brought along one oven mitt. I got another mitt and tried. Nope. Okay. I let it cook.
When I brought the pan in after three hours, I was able to pry the lid up. The turnips and apples had caramelized and gone a little beyond that. Perhaps more than a little beyond. The turducken was fine, moist and tender, the skin golden-brown -- but the outermost layer of vegetables was charred. Worried about the outside air temperature, I had built my fire too hot and left the turducken in too long.
We had our holiday dinner, with baked potatoes and a little of this and that, and I got the remaining turducken out and had a look at the pan, scraping out all the loose stuff. Kind of a thick layer left, so I filled the pan and lid with hot water to soak while I did the rest of the dishes.
A half hour later, water drained, the sludge in the pan was not coming out. Just not. Even digging with a bamboo skewer wasn't helping.
Those pans aren't very expensive and that one had served for two years. I pitched it and will buy another before Spring.
I will try the apples and turnips thing again, perhaps with a pork roast. It smelled wonderful and I think it added to the flavor.
That left a rock-hard Cajun-style six-
Come the 25th, I did all my prep work indoors, built a nice big charcoal fire in the grill (quickly!), and laid down a layer of chopped apple and turnip in the roasting pan, with the turducken barely fitting on top. The lid wouldn't quite sit all the way down. I made sure there was plenty of charcoal along the edges of the grill, pushed the center clear for indirect heat, and set the roasting pan in place on the grill bars for a three-hour bake. It was 15°F in the back yard when I started.
The grill was nice and hot. I checked at the half-hour mark and the lid had settled. I left my old oven thermometer in the grill then. Thirty minutes later, I had a peek: it was 350°F in the covered grill and the aroma was wonderful.
At ninety minutes, I thought about opening the lid of the roasting pan, but decided not to. At two hours, thinking to add some carrots and a chopped onion, I discovered the lid was stuck. It just lays in place, but it wouldn't budge. I nearly burned my left thumb trying, having only brought along one oven mitt. I got another mitt and tried. Nope. Okay. I let it cook.
When I brought the pan in after three hours, I was able to pry the lid up. The turnips and apples had caramelized and gone a little beyond that. Perhaps more than a little beyond. The turducken was fine, moist and tender, the skin golden-brown -- but the outermost layer of vegetables was charred. Worried about the outside air temperature, I had built my fire too hot and left the turducken in too long.
We had our holiday dinner, with baked potatoes and a little of this and that, and I got the remaining turducken out and had a look at the pan, scraping out all the loose stuff. Kind of a thick layer left, so I filled the pan and lid with hot water to soak while I did the rest of the dishes.
A half hour later, water drained, the sludge in the pan was not coming out. Just not. Even digging with a bamboo skewer wasn't helping.
Those pans aren't very expensive and that one had served for two years. I pitched it and will buy another before Spring.
I will try the apples and turnips thing again, perhaps with a pork roast. It smelled wonderful and I think it added to the flavor.
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Merry Christmas!
Here's the happiest and best of Christmas -- and other holiday -- wishes to you and yours,
As ever, I will gratefully accept (and return) whatever sort of seasonal good wishes you are comfortable sharing. Practically every religion and culture has some kind of holiday on or about the longest night of the year (or shortest, for those of you on the other side of the Equator). Parts of the planet that get serious winter weather have well-established traditions and rituals. Nearly all of them include sharing hopes for a pleasant winter and year to follow, and only the meanest of souls would reject such an offering.
Happy holidays is among the most inclusive sentiments, for all that some people get grumpy about it. I don't care where, how or if you worship; I just want to wish you well.
As ever, I will gratefully accept (and return) whatever sort of seasonal good wishes you are comfortable sharing. Practically every religion and culture has some kind of holiday on or about the longest night of the year (or shortest, for those of you on the other side of the Equator). Parts of the planet that get serious winter weather have well-established traditions and rituals. Nearly all of them include sharing hopes for a pleasant winter and year to follow, and only the meanest of souls would reject such an offering.
Happy holidays is among the most inclusive sentiments, for all that some people get grumpy about it. I don't care where, how or if you worship; I just want to wish you well.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Well, That's Better
It's -9°F in Indianapolis right now and TV says the wind chill makes it feel like -37°. -37°??? That's too low. I asked the robot, and she said, "RIGHT NOW, THE WIND CHILL IS MINUS 28 DEGREES."
Such an improvement! Whatever it is, even short exposure gives me blinding sinus headaches and my fingers stop working very well. This is the kind of weather that destroys garage door springs, so if I need to drive anywhere, I'll have to struggle with the gate or walk around the block to get to my car. So I'm hoping to avoid it. Tomorrow will be twenty degrees warmer and 11 above sounds much less offputting.
Such an improvement! Whatever it is, even short exposure gives me blinding sinus headaches and my fingers stop working very well. This is the kind of weather that destroys garage door springs, so if I need to drive anywhere, I'll have to struggle with the gate or walk around the block to get to my car. So I'm hoping to avoid it. Tomorrow will be twenty degrees warmer and 11 above sounds much less offputting.
Thursday, December 22, 2022
Weather Alert
You don't need me to tell you that there's horrible weather coming to most of the contiguous U.S., if it hasn't already arrived where you are.
I hope the forecasters have erred on the side of caution and it will fizzle out, leaving us feeling a little silly. But you can't count on that, so stock up, batten down and we'll see how it goes.
I hope the forecasters have erred on the side of caution and it will fizzle out, leaving us feeling a little silly. But you can't count on that, so stock up, batten down and we'll see how it goes.
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Audits, The Deep State And Least-Bad Options
Congress will be releasing Mr. Trump's tax returns from during his original campaign and Presidency. Most modern Presidents have just made them public as a matter of routine; he refused, saying he was under audit.
But it is apparently mandatory for IRS to audit the tax returns of a sitting President. That was news to me this morning and I'm in favor of it. If any President used the complimentary shampoo at the hotel in Far-off Foreignistan, or the High Panjadrum there slipped him a diamond necklace, I want to know about it. Whatever spare change he earned selling copies of Grit or hawking his autobiography, I want to know about it. If he's given a huge wheel of cheese, lets it sit in the entrance hall of the White House for a year and then invites the public to drop by and eat it up? I want an accounting of it -- and if he charges them a dime a nibble, he'd damned well better report that income.
Here's the punchline: until 2019, none of Mr. Trump's Presidential-time tax returns were under audit. That year, IRS apparently began to take a look at his 2015 (or 2016; reports vary) return, in a manner far more desultory than they did the year they decided losses on some rental property I owned weren't deductible but the income from it was, threw out my return and stuck me with a huge tax bill that took a decade to pay off. --But of course, I wasn't their boss. The good news is that if you've been fretting over a Federal "Deep State" gunning for poor old innocent Donald Trump, you can unclench: IRS is one of the biggest hammers in the Federal toolbox, and they deferred to the Chief Executive so abjectly that they didn't even do the auditing they are required by law to do.
Meanwhile, their boss lied about being audited as an excuse not to make his tax returns public, even though there's nothing in the IRS audit process that demands secrecy. The IRS knew his claim was untrue -- but said nothing, presumably unwilling to contradict the big man. That's not a Deep State, it's a state of spinelessness.
Elsewhere, the pundits are chewing away at the January 6 Committee's referrals to the Department of Justice, which include criminal charges for Mr. Trump's role in various phases of the insurrection and attempted autogolpe. DOJ already had a Special Prosecutor on the job and their own list of possible charges (which as far as I know, they haven't shared), so it's impossible to know how all that's going to play out until it happens. It's an ugly example of a very old principle: "If you strike at a king, don't miss." Over at The Bulwark+,* Jonathan V. Last lays out the three possibilities and they're all bad:
1. Do nothing: "Boys will be boys," which will show there's no downside to trying to grab the government by stealth or force other than some bad press. In that case, it will happen again and again. Eventually, someone's going to succeed and it's not going to matter much what flavor of authoritarian we get, it'll suck. It'll be way worse, way sooner for some people than for others but in the not-so-long run, we'll all lose. Even a cursory glance at 20th Century history makes that obvious.
2. Go to court and lose: the same outcome as the first option, only now hard-core Trumpists (a subset of Republicans but a good-sized one) are even angrier than they were. Expect more couping, now with extra revenge! At least he will have had his day in court and with diligent attorneys on both sides, we can reasonably expect that a lot more of the facts will come to light. And it does raise the stakes for any future coup attempts.
3. Go to court and win: This is still not a happy reconciliation and a return to the halcyon days of yore; Mr. Trump's supporters will be madder yet, he'll be able to point to the trial as even more evidence for his claims of being persecuted and we'll still be short one functioning, normal political party. On the other hand, we have the same benefit as option 2: the lawyers are going to be able to do some serious digging, witnesses will have to testify under oath and they will have far fewer excuses for keeping secrets.
These are all lousy outcomes -- and they're all the result of a President who treated losing an election like he was having trouble getting a zoning exemption or attempting a hostile corporate takeover, resorting to guile and threats when a straightforward effort failed. But our Federal government isn't a zoning board or a business enterprise, and you can't do things that way. Career politicians know this; you can say a lot bad about them, lazy, feckless, slippery or even stupid, but nearly all of them know where the bottom is and why you don't try to dig through it. Donald Trump did not share that awareness and he still doesn't.
_________________________________
* The bulk of the article is paywalled, so don't ask me about his insightful conclusion; but as a nation, we'd already jumped out of the airplane by the end of the day on 6 January 2021 and from there down, the question is what we're going to use for a parachute and how hard we're going to hit when we inevitably reach the ground.
But it is apparently mandatory for IRS to audit the tax returns of a sitting President. That was news to me this morning and I'm in favor of it. If any President used the complimentary shampoo at the hotel in Far-off Foreignistan, or the High Panjadrum there slipped him a diamond necklace, I want to know about it. Whatever spare change he earned selling copies of Grit or hawking his autobiography, I want to know about it. If he's given a huge wheel of cheese, lets it sit in the entrance hall of the White House for a year and then invites the public to drop by and eat it up? I want an accounting of it -- and if he charges them a dime a nibble, he'd damned well better report that income.
Here's the punchline: until 2019, none of Mr. Trump's Presidential-time tax returns were under audit. That year, IRS apparently began to take a look at his 2015 (or 2016; reports vary) return, in a manner far more desultory than they did the year they decided losses on some rental property I owned weren't deductible but the income from it was, threw out my return and stuck me with a huge tax bill that took a decade to pay off. --But of course, I wasn't their boss. The good news is that if you've been fretting over a Federal "Deep State" gunning for poor old innocent Donald Trump, you can unclench: IRS is one of the biggest hammers in the Federal toolbox, and they deferred to the Chief Executive so abjectly that they didn't even do the auditing they are required by law to do.
Meanwhile, their boss lied about being audited as an excuse not to make his tax returns public, even though there's nothing in the IRS audit process that demands secrecy. The IRS knew his claim was untrue -- but said nothing, presumably unwilling to contradict the big man. That's not a Deep State, it's a state of spinelessness.
Elsewhere, the pundits are chewing away at the January 6 Committee's referrals to the Department of Justice, which include criminal charges for Mr. Trump's role in various phases of the insurrection and attempted autogolpe. DOJ already had a Special Prosecutor on the job and their own list of possible charges (which as far as I know, they haven't shared), so it's impossible to know how all that's going to play out until it happens. It's an ugly example of a very old principle: "If you strike at a king, don't miss." Over at The Bulwark+,* Jonathan V. Last lays out the three possibilities and they're all bad:
1. Do nothing: "Boys will be boys," which will show there's no downside to trying to grab the government by stealth or force other than some bad press. In that case, it will happen again and again. Eventually, someone's going to succeed and it's not going to matter much what flavor of authoritarian we get, it'll suck. It'll be way worse, way sooner for some people than for others but in the not-so-long run, we'll all lose. Even a cursory glance at 20th Century history makes that obvious.
2. Go to court and lose: the same outcome as the first option, only now hard-core Trumpists (a subset of Republicans but a good-sized one) are even angrier than they were. Expect more couping, now with extra revenge! At least he will have had his day in court and with diligent attorneys on both sides, we can reasonably expect that a lot more of the facts will come to light. And it does raise the stakes for any future coup attempts.
3. Go to court and win: This is still not a happy reconciliation and a return to the halcyon days of yore; Mr. Trump's supporters will be madder yet, he'll be able to point to the trial as even more evidence for his claims of being persecuted and we'll still be short one functioning, normal political party. On the other hand, we have the same benefit as option 2: the lawyers are going to be able to do some serious digging, witnesses will have to testify under oath and they will have far fewer excuses for keeping secrets.
These are all lousy outcomes -- and they're all the result of a President who treated losing an election like he was having trouble getting a zoning exemption or attempting a hostile corporate takeover, resorting to guile and threats when a straightforward effort failed. But our Federal government isn't a zoning board or a business enterprise, and you can't do things that way. Career politicians know this; you can say a lot bad about them, lazy, feckless, slippery or even stupid, but nearly all of them know where the bottom is and why you don't try to dig through it. Donald Trump did not share that awareness and he still doesn't.
_________________________________
* The bulk of the article is paywalled, so don't ask me about his insightful conclusion; but as a nation, we'd already jumped out of the airplane by the end of the day on 6 January 2021 and from there down, the question is what we're going to use for a parachute and how hard we're going to hit when we inevitably reach the ground.
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
I'd Love To Post Something
But mostly I just look at the news and wonder, "What next?"
Yeah, I have opinions about a lot of it, but so does everyone else.
Yeah, I have opinions about a lot of it, but so does everyone else.
Sunday, December 18, 2022
Acute Tactics
Yesterday, I noticed the little box-of-stuff-a-month subscription I have to a service that keeps nudging anyone who signs up to write more had sent a deck of cards with various starting points for writing.
This type of thing owes a debt to Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies," a collection of cards with highly lateral notions, for use by anyone who gets stuck while doing a creative endeavor. You grab one at random and give it a try. It's not a bad method; even when the card suggestion is no help, it provides a short break that can help you get out of a rut.
Imitations are not always up to the level of the original and the whole thing is just asking to be parodied. And so, I give you my contribution to the field:
Acute Tactics
Write down a bunch of random stuff on cards. Have copies printed up and sell them for inflated prices.
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Vagueness will make you sound deep. Connecting unrelated things will appear insightful.
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Never admit this is something you dreamed up to pass time while waiting for the bus.
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Browbeat all of your creative friends to endorse this as a remarkable idea. Get them so involved that they'll lean on their friends to say similar things, too.
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Never forget that nearly all who strive, fail. The quicker you fleece them, the sooner they'll get back to their useful and dull little jobs. If you don't, someone else will!
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Philosophy is for suckers. Money talks.
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Art is whatever the people who buy art will pay you for.
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Failure is always an option, but it's best if the other guy fails.
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"Intellectual property" is the stuff others only thought they owned.
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There are only two plots, but every check is unique, different and wonderful
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Think of a number, any number. Got it? Hold it firmly in your mind. You're wrong.
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The expression on people's faces when they have just had a great insight is exactly the same as the expression they make when they suddenly have to crap. This is not a coincidence.
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The bigger they are, the more easily they can crush you. Practice flattery and plan your escape routes in advance.
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Always be humble. You have to give the rubes something for their money and if you're modest about it, they can't claim they were cheated.
This type of thing owes a debt to Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies," a collection of cards with highly lateral notions, for use by anyone who gets stuck while doing a creative endeavor. You grab one at random and give it a try. It's not a bad method; even when the card suggestion is no help, it provides a short break that can help you get out of a rut.
Imitations are not always up to the level of the original and the whole thing is just asking to be parodied. And so, I give you my contribution to the field:
Write down a bunch of random stuff on cards. Have copies printed up and sell them for inflated prices.
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Vagueness will make you sound deep. Connecting unrelated things will appear insightful.
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Never admit this is something you dreamed up to pass time while waiting for the bus.
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Browbeat all of your creative friends to endorse this as a remarkable idea. Get them so involved that they'll lean on their friends to say similar things, too.
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Never forget that nearly all who strive, fail. The quicker you fleece them, the sooner they'll get back to their useful and dull little jobs. If you don't, someone else will!
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Philosophy is for suckers. Money talks.
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Art is whatever the people who buy art will pay you for.
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Failure is always an option, but it's best if the other guy fails.
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"Intellectual property" is the stuff others only thought they owned.
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There are only two plots, but every check is unique, different and wonderful
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Think of a number, any number. Got it? Hold it firmly in your mind. You're wrong.
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The expression on people's faces when they have just had a great insight is exactly the same as the expression they make when they suddenly have to crap. This is not a coincidence.
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The bigger they are, the more easily they can crush you. Practice flattery and plan your escape routes in advance.
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Always be humble. You have to give the rubes something for their money and if you're modest about it, they can't claim they were cheated.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
In A Better World
In a better world, Elon Musk would have never bought Twitter. Not because he's "ruining" it; Twitter always was and remains a private company and whoever owns and controls it can do just about anything they like with it, banning or admitting whoever they prefer. Nope, the problem is that owning Twitter magnifies him and up close, he's got the same feet of clay as anyone else.
From a distance, you've got the super-genius financier revolutionizing cars, digging tunnels, making space travel cheap and frequent and planning to settle Mars. That's impressive stuff, even if he makes the occasional misstep in his personal life, in an interview or in a tweet. Up close, you've got a man whose main difference from everyone else is that he's got a lot more money. He's pretty typical of the financial-type techbro. We wanted Moses dressed as Tony Stark; owning Twitter dropped the veil and we saw Just Some Guy with SF dreams and a wallet fat enough to make progress towards them.
Power may not reliably corrupt but it inevitably brings out the jerk in everyone -- and we're all jerks. Count on it. We can be certain that George Washington's White House staff and the secretaries and domestics serving Cincinnatus when he served Rome occasionally remarked about their boss, "What an asshole."
Twitter was arbitrary and capricious by committee under previous ownership. Now it's arbitrary and capricious by one man's whim. Either way, the medium amplifies every decision. This can be bad for business. One of the few virtues of committees is that they generally move quite slowly and often predictably. Advertisers, investors and users like that An individual owner can move quickly, in surprising directions. And even his smallest jerk moves cast an enormous shadow.
Social media these days offers a staggeringly wide array of choices, from Right to Left to mixed to apolitical, with varying degrees of anonymity. While you might (or might not) decry the tendency to form "silos" of similar outlook and attitude, it's certainly disconcerting to have one's silo repainted after you've become comfortable inside it, and that's what a lot of the angst over Twitter's changes is about.
Maybe the Great Wizard is always smoke and mirrors and it's the little man behind the curtain who gets things done, frantically working the controls, looking frazzled and improvising as he goes. I'm okay with that.
From a distance, you've got the super-genius financier revolutionizing cars, digging tunnels, making space travel cheap and frequent and planning to settle Mars. That's impressive stuff, even if he makes the occasional misstep in his personal life, in an interview or in a tweet. Up close, you've got a man whose main difference from everyone else is that he's got a lot more money. He's pretty typical of the financial-type techbro. We wanted Moses dressed as Tony Stark; owning Twitter dropped the veil and we saw Just Some Guy with SF dreams and a wallet fat enough to make progress towards them.
Power may not reliably corrupt but it inevitably brings out the jerk in everyone -- and we're all jerks. Count on it. We can be certain that George Washington's White House staff and the secretaries and domestics serving Cincinnatus when he served Rome occasionally remarked about their boss, "What an asshole."
Twitter was arbitrary and capricious by committee under previous ownership. Now it's arbitrary and capricious by one man's whim. Either way, the medium amplifies every decision. This can be bad for business. One of the few virtues of committees is that they generally move quite slowly and often predictably. Advertisers, investors and users like that An individual owner can move quickly, in surprising directions. And even his smallest jerk moves cast an enormous shadow.
Social media these days offers a staggeringly wide array of choices, from Right to Left to mixed to apolitical, with varying degrees of anonymity. While you might (or might not) decry the tendency to form "silos" of similar outlook and attitude, it's certainly disconcerting to have one's silo repainted after you've become comfortable inside it, and that's what a lot of the angst over Twitter's changes is about.
Maybe the Great Wizard is always smoke and mirrors and it's the little man behind the curtain who gets things done, frantically working the controls, looking frazzled and improvising as he goes. I'm okay with that.
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