tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14595245466623735812024-03-13T08:05:53.115-05:00A Rat's Eye ViewThe Rat's Eye View - A low-level look at a screwed up society, asking the important question, "Why do conservatives hate America?" The Rat's Eye view of the world of business, politics, religion, and other human flaws and fantasies as seen from the rubble rats climb over every day.
As for trying to convince you of anything, I subscribe to Mr. Twain, "Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comBlogger636125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-17271190606016778242024-03-12T19:37:00.003-05:002024-03-13T08:05:22.954-05:00“Democrats have done nothing for . . . “<p><font face="Arial" size="3">A friend recently claimed that “Democrats have done nothing for young people” and I began to question that person’s math skills. “Nothing” means zero, nada, no benefit whatsoever. It pains me to know that someone who should know better is as clueless about the meaning of zero as 3rd Century Mesopotamians. The Biden White House has published a web page explaining all of the things they have done for young people: “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/14/fact-sheet-president-biden-and-vice-president-harris-are-delivering-for-young-americans/">Fact Sheet: President Biden and Vice President Harris Are Delivering For Young Americans</a>.” The list is impressive, but the media (right and left) also appears to be unable to decipher numbers. I’m not going to repeat that data and I’m going to take the wild chance that my readers are curious enough to follow the damn link, but “$117 billion in targeted relief for 3.4 million student loan borrowers, including borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, those cheated by their colleges, those in public service, and more” is a <b><i>LOT</i></b> more than “nothing.” </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this kind of nonsense. A union welder acquaintance recent claimed “Democrats have done nothing for working people.” To be clear, this man was solely concerned that pipelines wouldn’t be built and he wouldn’t be raking in the usual “$36 and $52 an hour” building those infamous pollution systems. However, there are plenty of jobs for welders in infrastructure work and that doesn’t require decimating the nation’s fresh water supplies or contributing to the inhospitality of the planet to current lifeforms. Biden’s “Build Back Framework” could “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/06/fact-sheet-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal/">add an average 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years.</a>” </font></p> <p><img align="left" alt="Photos show bodies piled up and stored in vacant rooms at Detroit hospital | CNN" height="165" src="https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200413134021-01-bodies-detroit-hospital-super-169.jpg" style="display: inline; float: left;" width="293" /><font face="Arial" size="3">If not mismanaging the pandemic so badly that US cities were stacking up bodies in refrigerated trailers isn’t doing something for young and old, skilled and unskilled labor, and all of the rest of us, we’re in a pretty weird state of decline. This kind of faulty and deceptive hyperbola is not adding value to the national dialog. If supposedly educated people are unclear on what “nothing means,” we’re in big trouble; and, of course, we’re in big trouble. </font></p><p><font face="Arial" size="3">Lastly, but most importantly, the current Democratic Party offers something no other entity in the country can provide: a slight chance that the "<a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-oct-08-ca-30228-story.html" target="_blank">great experiment</a>" that the United States of America represents might, somehow, become a democracy. There are no Republicans in office in the federal government who represent any of the ideals of democracy. From the despicable oligarchs hiding in the Federalist Society to the obvious spokesperson for Republicans, Donald Trump, and the deplorable rabble of voters and seditionists, Republicans are the worst of this nation's terrible worst and they represent the nation's decent into fascism and chaos. I challenge you to name a single Republican currently in office who is not in favor of demolishing the democratic structure of this country. There are no counterparts in the Republican Party for Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, John Fetterman, and at least 15 other progressive and liberal Senators who are fighting for all of us, apparently, without much appreciation. In the US House of Representatives, there are a few dozen progressive and liberal Democratic members, apparently, going equally unappreciated. Again, there are no Republican comparables with any sort of claim to democratic values. The choice has not been this clear since the 1860s, you are either working to elect the most democratic Democrats or you are voting fascist. If that isn't "something," fuck you. <br /></font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-59761754604515803552024-02-12T09:13:00.001-06:002024-02-12T09:13:21.171-06:00How It Happens<p><font size="3" face="Arial">When I was a younger man and my father was the age I am now, I wondered how he could be so isolated after the life he’d had. He’d been a high school teacher in the same small town for more than 40 years, a coach (basketball, football, and tennis), had been an active member of the same church for that long, played golf and tennis better than most, and had a fairly active social life up until he retired. Like me, he was introverted and lived a lot of his life inside his head, but unlike me he had his church and friends he’d worked with for more than half of his life and lived in a town full of ex-students. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Like me, he’d retired under less-than-pleasant circumstances. He’d managed to finagle a fair number of math classes without having a math degree, which in the 90’s was a tough hike. Back then, the Kansas education system was still pretending to hold itself to something resembling standards. With new, younger school administration, he no longer had the clout of having “friends in high places” to protect his classes from younger teachers with better credentials. By the time he retired, his class load had been reduced to accounting and “business math” (<a href="https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/" target="_blank">stupid</a> kid math) courses and he was fairly disgusted with both the assignments and the students. So, he retired before he was fired and there weren’t many of the people he’d worked with left in the school at that time. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">My situation was slightly better for me, but about the same for the places where I worked. The only part of my three side-hustles that still had customers and paid consistently well was the “audio forensics” business I’d slid into a decade earlier, but working for lawyers means constantly having to fight to get paid. Like Trump’s fans brag about their Messiah, “You don’t get rich paying bills.” My two teaching gigs were steadily becoming less ethically sustainable: the music college had abandoned its vocational mission for bigger money with less work in academia and the “motorcycle safety” business steadily became more focused on “putting butts on seats” than safety. Both businesses were heading toward obsolescence and fighting it the dumbest way possible. Like my father, I could afford to retire and my personal mission was becoming harder to identify in both of those places. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Like my father, during my working life I had been pretty well ensconced in several “communities,” from education to motorcyclists to music and music technology to audiophiles to professional and amateur acoustics. I knew a lot of people who did a lot of different things. I had one big party to celebrate my 65th birthday (July 2013) and my retirement (<em>I will always be sorry that I was so busy cooking for that party that I didn’t take a single picture of the people who came to wish me well</em>.) and began my fade into black. I didn’t give up the motorcycle stuff until 2018, but I’d dramatically cut-back my course load to no more than a half-dozen classes a summer by 2017. Like my last couple of years at </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNally_Smith_College_of_Music" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">McNally Smith College of Music</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, I had become pretty vocal in my disappointment at the program’s lack of an honest mission and, I suspect, everyone was glad to see me go. I wasn’t unhappy to be leaving, either. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">What I didn’t expect was to have, what I’d imagined to be friendships, vanish with the work. Most (99%) disappeared overnight, a few took a month or three to wander away, and a handful still bother to communicate with me occasionally. In retrospect, I think Ms. Day and I both underestimated and undervalued what we had in the Cities.Our 130-year-old house and 2 1/2 acre lot had become mostly a chore and the <a href="https://savagelake.blogspot.com/2012/10/i-35e-mnpass-noise-wall.html">noise of that location</a> seemed to me to be screaming “Get out while you can still hear the noise!” We made a fairly detailed list of priorities for a new home and, for me, noise levels were high on the list. Due to other considerations, including a price range that we could afford in cash, we mostly ended up looking outside of the Cities and settled in Red Wing. I grossly overestimated the tourist attraction of Red Wing and I have been surprised that so few of our friends have ever visited us here. I also over-estimated my willingness to stay involved in local activities, especially the motorcycle and music stuff with which I expected to fill my retirement time. Not that different from my father’s expectations for golf and tennis. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-70957069681004888652024-02-01T10:23:00.002-06:002024-02-01T10:31:37.541-06:00A Gift to Remember<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZLf7AzsC8iBB7SUyfw8k1rwb5yRPig0HMy00NTorrQ1QHYowKcq13M3Y5aMgxgyBOjD7jiepiwcJUapuEd8f9pLwYQtNIzszbX4xzRxXx6wOz2DT66w1LiPF3WxxBhYg2glSVP_FF0LSgCpUNu9VESzoUnKWBD2E4ZKd82vmOUJTdISMTO2V8SJndZd0/s2827/Nuggets_jacket%201%20(3).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2827" data-original-width="1974" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZLf7AzsC8iBB7SUyfw8k1rwb5yRPig0HMy00NTorrQ1QHYowKcq13M3Y5aMgxgyBOjD7jiepiwcJUapuEd8f9pLwYQtNIzszbX4xzRxXx6wOz2DT66w1LiPF3WxxBhYg2glSVP_FF0LSgCpUNu9VESzoUnKWBD2E4ZKd82vmOUJTdISMTO2V8SJndZd0/s320/Nuggets_jacket%201%20(3).jpg" width="223" /></a></div><font face="Arial" size="3"><font face="Arial" size="3">Back in the early 90s, a work friend and I split a Denver Nuggets’ season pass for the 1992-1995 seasons. The 1993-1994 season was a particular highlight as the team was actually decent for the first time in a lot of years. The Nuggets lineup was deep and included Dikembe Mutombo (center), LaPhonso Ellis (forward), Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (guard, aka Chris Jackson, prior to the season), Rodney Rogers (forward), Reggie Williams (forward), Bryant Stith (guard), Robert, Pack (guard), and Brian Williams (center). I’m sure most of those names are now lost to sports history, but at the time they were up-and-coming young players who set at least one record that year. They were exciting to watch and Denver’s McNichols Auditorium was a fun place to watch a basketball game. </font></font><p></p> <font face="Arial" size="3"></font> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">The ‘93-‘94 Nuggets (42-40) were the youngest team in the league and the last seed in the Western Conference playoffs and the Seattle Sonics (63-19) were the first. After losing the first two games in Seattle, the <a href="https://www.nba.com/nuggets/features/nuggets-made-history-upset-seattle">Nuggets won both of their home games and went back to Seattle and beat the Sonics 98–94 in</a> overtime. I had tickets for the first two home games. In the second round, they almost did the trick again, taking the Utah Jazz to a 7th game before losing that series. </font></p> <font size="3"><font face="Arial"></font><font face="Arial"></font></font> <p><font face="Arial" size="3"><img align="right" alt="Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf" height="171" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/067a4cd5b9b02b88b895f610c5aa3d1b2cd66d34/0_0_3072_2048/master/3072.jpg?width=480&dpr=1&s=none" style="display: inline; float: right;" width="256" />Early in the next (‘94-‘95 season, Abdul-Rauf began to speak out against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US positions in North Africa. He had converted to Islam and made a point of not standing for the anthem because he interpreted that act as worshiping idols and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/15/mahmoud-abdul-rauf-nba-protest-national-anthem">he called the US flag “a symbol of oppression.”</a> He took a public opinion beating from both the fans and the local and national press. Denver, contrary to current fascist delusions, is not a particularly liberal or progressive city and sports fans in general are “conservative” in all of the worst ways. Abdul-Rauf went from being a fan favorite to being his sports generation’s version of Colin Kaepernick overnight and, like Kaepernick was eventually suspended from the NBA and spent the rest of his career in European basketball. Born Chris Jackson in Mississippi, Abdul-Rauf had plenty of experience with US repression and oppression from the start. He was also cursed with Tourette’s Syndrome and it could be “entertaining” to be near the court when he was bringing the ball up, spouting random curses and sound effects. Fans once appreciated his ability to work past that handicap, but they quickly turned into vicious grade school bullies when he demonstrated that he had a conscience. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">Almost immediately, Brian Williams spoke out in support of his teammate’s convictions and in agreement with the fact that the US’s history in the Middle East is nothing to be proud of. Likewise, Brian quickly became a pariah to the city’s basketball fans and a fair number of his teammates. You might guess from reading this blog that I didn’t disagree with either Brian or Mahmoud and felt compelled to say so in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News’ editor, which was published in that paper’s Letters section. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">A couple of days later, I was home, late in the day, and the phone rang. I answered and the deepest voice I have ever heard responded, “Is this Mr. Day? This is Brian Williams. I wanted to thank you for your letter of support.” I, of course, was convinced that some friends were pulling my leg and said so in particularly ungracious terms. Brian was patient, funny, and finally convinced me that he was who he said he was. He was extremely complementary about the things I’d written in my letter, which made me incredibly suspicious that I was still being pranked. We had a fairly long conversation, as much about basketball as politics or music. (Brian’s father, Eugene Williams of the Platters, had sung the national anthem at a game earlier and proved that there was nothing wrong with the McNichols sound system that decent <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwilsd35vZaBAxX-g4kEHcfyBRMQFnoECDAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmic.org%2F&usg=AOvVaw37XvRzoNq-y9Jvmjt2jhcK&opi=89978449" target="_blank">mic</a> technique wouldn’t cure.) As we were wrapping up the call, Brian mentioned that he’d left three floor seats for me at will-call for the next evening’s game. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3">The only time I have had floor seats for a big-boy’s basketball game was at the NJCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship in Hutchinson, Kansas. I have no idea what those Nuggets tickets cost, but it was way out of my league. The team was very popular, games sold out regularly, and the seats my friend and I shared were well into the nose-bleed sections. Still suspecting I was being pranked, I called some friends and asked if anyone wanted to go with me. I was probably a reluctant salesman because of my suspicion, but I couldn’t find any takers. I worked a long way down my list of friends and acquaintances without finding any interest. Without much to lose, other than minimal self-respect, I went to the game alone. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3"> </font></p><p><font face="Arial" size="3">As I was standing in the will-call line, a young man with an adolescent daughter were trying to find scalped tickets, since the game was sold out. I collected my 3 tickets and offered two to him. Since I hadn’t paid anything for them, I thought it would be disrespectful to ask for money and I didn’t. I don’t think he had any idea that they were floor tickets until they found their seats. I’d also been given a coupon at the counter and wandered over to the concession are to see what the coupon was for. It was for this jacket and that was not a cheap item. </font></p><font face="Arial" size="3"> <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiEwJQUaaruuxIIY_oWEYC26mnJk6JLU4SMmRtzAJ82tgee250KVNShElVhToNQkGq61xFr5UP0BbG5gUXzAeIwDugTGPxaURm0U1TFwaD2NfCrRcD5WAoZraeYMl6bv-H_FHHiQplIchoJCgUHn8D42Jtb_HQTrdSWmML05NA4GyvQm4bhFxl5-bRmA/s960/s-l960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="706" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiEwJQUaaruuxIIY_oWEYC26mnJk6JLU4SMmRtzAJ82tgee250KVNShElVhToNQkGq61xFr5UP0BbG5gUXzAeIwDugTGPxaURm0U1TFwaD2NfCrRcD5WAoZraeYMl6bv-H_FHHiQplIchoJCgUHn8D42Jtb_HQTrdSWmML05NA4GyvQm4bhFxl5-bRmA/s320/s-l960.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>When I joined my guests on the floor, I wore the jacket through the game. I suspect, thinking that the two people sitting beside me were old friends, Brian made a point of swinging by our seats several times giving the girl high-fives as he passed. His hand was about the same size as her body, so they were very careful high-fives. Until you’ve watched professional play at close range, you have no idea how different their game is than what you’re used to. Those giant, ripped, fast young men would make Viking berserkers cower under their shields and they could run down wild game or beat down predators with their huge, bare hands. Even though he didn’t love basketball, when he played he played with passion, energy, and an astounding level of skill. <p></p> <p>We stayed in touch, rarely, through email from that Denver game to my first year in Minnesota, in 1996, until he started playing with the Chicago Bulls when the ‘96 season started. After being a Lakers’ fan while I lived in California and a Nuggets fan from ‘91 to ‘96, the Timberwolves were a letdown and I wandered away from my last vestige of sports fandom. Brian was a critical part of the 1996 Chicago Bulls championship team and he almost enjoyed that season. He always wanted to be doing something he enjoyed as much as he imagined his father enjoyed music, though. <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/why-brian-williams-change-name-bison-dele">He’d changed his name to Bison Dele</a> in 1998 and I saved about a half-dozen of the email conversations we had over the years, but the last one came before the 1999-2000 Pistons were going to be in Minneapolis and I’d offered to meet him downtown for coffee or a beer, my treat. His last email said, “Coffee or beer, sounds good.” And I never heard from him again. </p> <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqktbIwl3pnghKBQ2Km3YAm56Qg15GJ0t65FqZ3-96VgclnQmbNlbnwegfC5_gpBo1AhpoaIlE-DLYDP_hj95wHjSysZrGvcitM-zjgaW0O7k9asMEavCwBqJpA0s53sTw9v__B6XusN5o6qf8mqUZ-a90pHYMl4t0O-Z5Oazod8Hf6B6lUbtX2GROH0/s990/Nuggets_jacket%201%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="990" data-original-width="846" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqktbIwl3pnghKBQ2Km3YAm56Qg15GJ0t65FqZ3-96VgclnQmbNlbnwegfC5_gpBo1AhpoaIlE-DLYDP_hj95wHjSysZrGvcitM-zjgaW0O7k9asMEavCwBqJpA0s53sTw9v__B6XusN5o6qf8mqUZ-a90pHYMl4t0O-Z5Oazod8Hf6B6lUbtX2GROH0/s320/Nuggets_jacket%201%20(1).jpg" width="273" /></a></div>When the season ended, the Pistons offered him tens of millions to stay with the team, but he’d had all of basketball he could stand. I’ve read a lot about the last years of his life, but hadn’t kept up with him until his disappearance and, likely, death hit the news. This, “<a href="https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/10/21/the-love-song-of-bison-dele">The Love Song of Bison Dele</a>,” is the best wrap-up of his incredible life that I’ve seen and I’ve come back to read it several times. <p></p> <p>I will remember Brian with his statement, “I always figured there were two ways to go. You can die from living, or you can die from just dying.” I still wear the jacket he gave me when the weather is right and I keep it stored in a cedar closet when it isn’t. Not long ago, I was grocery shopping wearing the jacket and an older man in a wheelchair and what appeared to be his son called me “Old School” and complemented me on my 30-year-old jacket. It reminded me that I have meant to tell this story for years and probably better do it soon or never. Ms. Day wanted a picture of me standing next to a guitar sculpture and that gave me one more reason to tell the story. </p> </font><p></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-25403420480091883952023-12-30T10:17:00.001-06:002023-12-30T10:17:00.792-06:00Freedom of Choice? We’re Being Invaded!<p><font size="3" face="Arial">I had a couple of sobering experiences yesterdays that reminded me of the complications involved in keeping the human species from killing itself and every other major lifeform on the planet. As usual, if life wasn’t so funny it would be terrifying and depressing. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">First, I had a doctor’s appointment to review the analysis of my failing right knee. I particularly like my physician because he has a very international view of medicine, life, and the world around him. As we went thorough my options regarding the beat-to-shit knee, we carried on our usual conversations about the world outside of my old, rotting body. Someone close to me once told me that all of the doctors in the world had conspired to treat Covid as if it were something much worse than the seasonal flu. He complained that he didn’t get “his check” for participating in that grand conspiracy to profit Big Pharma and whoever else supposedly benefitted from the pandemic. From there we had a laugh about the self-important goobers who imagined they were receiving Microsoft tracking chips with their vaccines. Again, no payment for that work to my doctor and I suggested he at least ask for a lifetime subscription for Microsoft Office and not that bullshit 365 crap, but the real thing on a DVD. And that was the funny part of the conversation. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The less funny part, from his perspective, is that <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pathways-experience/202102/doubling-down-why-people-deny-the-facts">when humans are confronted with evidence that their delusions are nothing more than bullshit they double-down on their bullshit</a>. Cognitive dissonance seems to be exclusively a human mental defect, but it is a big one. When I asked if there was a way to get past that, in his experience, his response was, “No, we’re doomed.” I desperately wish I disagreed with him, but I don’t. Since I was a kid. in the 1950s, and first read C.M. Kornbluth’s novelette “<font size="3" face="Arial"><em>The </em><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm" target="_blank"><em>Marching Morons</em></a>” I have had zero faith in the future of human beings as a species and my own best-case-scenario is that we find a clever way to kill ourselves off without taking every other form of life with us. Any reading of US history that isn’t pure conservative newspeak is full of the dullest, most violent, and the dumbest rolling over anything resembling logic and decency as easily as Trump cons his nitwits into sending him their spare change. “We’re doomed,” for sure. At best the 1% of humanity’s best and brightest will be doomed to babysitting the marching morons until the planet is uninhabitable. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Later that day, I limped to the local YMCA to try and reinstate my swimming routine after a couple of months of avoiding the pool until I knew if it was doing good or harm to my knee. When you are 75, a couple of months of low to moderate exercise does a lot of damage to your physical conditioning. My usual lame 1/4 mile routine too much for me and I was pretty discouraged when I gave up on the swim and headed to the sauna before braving this year’s mild December evening. There was one guy in the sauna and I picked the opposite end of the room to stew in my frustration. Within a few minutes, the sauna was almost full of middle-aged men showing off their flabby naked bodies and I should have passed on the experience. Their conversation was as depressing as my swimming failure and I sunk into a steaming funk as I listened to a pair of nitwits babbling about the “border crisis” and other equally obscure-to-Minnesota subjects they know nothing about. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The big takeaway I got from their conversation was that they are major breeders of <a href="https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/" target="_blank">stupid</a>. I wasn’t interested enough to keep an accurate track of their family mobs, but I am fairly certain that everyone in the sauna had at least 5 offspring. All of whom were somewhat-to-seriously involved in mindless school sports. For sure, with all of the preening and bragging not one of those obvious-Trumpers had a kid who was competing in the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwikrO-fxLeDAxUTATQIHWVhBWYQFnoECCYQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaa.org%2Fmath-competitions&usg=AOvVaw3MLJbNSu_uiZNfNwZY_I0p&opi=89978449">USA Mathematical Olympiad</a>, the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiLyv-wxLeDAxWAHDQIHWjmBqAQFnoECBkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fspellingbee.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw1mdQe-U5rpo4dWxxrCqywZ&opi=89978449">Scripps National (or even the city or state) Spelling Bee</a>, the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjg4sOBxLeDAxV3ODQIHbYXCloQFnoECBsQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.speechanddebate.org%2Fnationals%2F&usg=AOvVaw2bIn3suRHkQSQ0FshUsX9O&opi=89978449">National Speech and Debate Tournament</a><em>, </em>or any of the <a href="https://blog.collegevine.com/11-academic-competitions-to-boost-your-high-school-profile">30 national high school academic competitions</a>. (<em>I linked those competitions, just in case you don’t believe there is anything other than sports for your kid to excel in, you fuckin’ idiot shoulda-been-sterilized-at-birth goober.)</em> </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">In this country, practically throughout the nation’s history, we have celebrated the luckiest 1%, not the smartest. The half-wits who stumbled into wealth through inheritance or good fortune or both end up being the idols of millions and those who work hard, take almost every step of accomplishment our species has managed, and make the rest of us look like the the extinct human species we came from are mostly ignored. As I have said more than once, “I’m not worried about AI, but LI is gonna kill us all.” The fourth of the “The 5 basic laws of human stupidity” is “Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals” and the fifth is “A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.” They are everywhere and their population is growing exponentially, even as world population growth slows. In fact, for the most part the only humans who are currently breeding are fools,. So, “we are doomed.” </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-45690165170148079532023-12-29T11:03:00.001-06:002023-12-29T11:03:36.830-06:00Freedom of Choice? How to Make A Cult<p><font size="3" face="Arial">You can’t get very far into this subject without an argument about what a “cult” is. So I’m going to stuck with Webster’s for a definition, because I usually do. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <ol><font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><em>as in audience: a group of people showing intense devotion to a cause, person, or work (as a film) </em></font></li> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <li><font face="Arial"><font size="3"><em>as in religion: a body of beliefs and practices regarding the supernatural and the worship of one or more deities</em> </font></font></li> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font></ol> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Mrs. Day and I were talking about the odd devotion people we know have toward a variety of pop stars: from the Beatles to Taylor Swift or John Wayne to Keano Reeves. We know old-ass men who worship the Beatles with at least as much fervor as teenage girls texting about Taylor Swift. To be honest, we weren’t just academically interested. Mrs. Day and I really wanted to know “What is that about and how do I get my own cult?” Because if you can attract enough members to your cult, you never have to worry about money. </font><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-now-selling-pieces-of-his-georgia-mugshot-suit"><font size="3" face="Arial">Donald Trump sold 2,024 scraps from a cheesy tarp-sized blue suit</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> he wore for his mugshot for $4,654 a scrap. That is more than $4.7M dollars for a suit J.C. Penney’s would have discounted or put in a seconds bin! So, “how do I get my own cult?” is a serious question. Now the two of us have a goal, a definition of what that goal looks like, and a purpose for reaching that goal. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">First, we need that devoted “audience.” If you are really serious about this objective, math is on your side. There are about 320M people in the USA alone and 8.1B in the world, but let’s concentrate on the US and let the ROW cash flow come as it will. If I can get myself or my product (for example: a popular song) in front of a lot of people, say 10% of the bodies in the USA, I will have am uncommitted audience of 3.2M people. If I mostly suck, I might end up with 1% of that group who hear my song and pay attention to the name of the song, they might want to know who the artist is, look up when I might be performing nearby, buy some of that artist’s (my) music, and, if I really get lucky, they “follow” me throughout their lives like Beatles, Rolling Stones, Clapton, Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Springfield, and those really obscure British Invasion band fans. Those followers become members of the “cult of me.” </font></p> <p><font face="Arial"><font size="3">If I’m even a little bit special, 1% of that first group of 10% leaves me with a a fan/cult-base, a “cult group,” of 360,000. And that’s if I suck and/or didn’t get enough exposure to really be a hit. Casinos all over the world are well-stocked with performers who suck, but still collected enough attention to have a modestly lucrative cult following. (I’m talking about you, Teddy “</font><a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-artful-dodger/"><font size="3">Captain Poopypants</font></a><font size="3">” Nugent.) </font><a href="https://americansongwriter.com/survey-finds-more-than-half-of-u-s-adults-are-taylor-swift-fans/"><font size="3">Taylor Swift has at least a 93% saturation rate (256M),</font></a><font size="3"> supposedly 44% of US adults consider themselves Taylor Swift “fans” (258M over 18) and about 40M more between 10 and 18 (~275M total). Supposedly, 16% of that huge first group consider themselves to be “avid” fans and are almost certain to be the minimum size group for the Swiftie cult. That is a cult with 44M members. She’s the either </font><a href="https://www.christianity.com/church/what-are-the-most-popular-denominations-in-the-us.html"><font size="3">the first or the second largest church/cult in the USA</font></a><font size="3"> and she has </font><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/taylor-swift-fandom-spirituality-1.7000176"><font size="3">fans worldwide</font></a><font size="3">. </font></font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">If she was an asshole, I’d be worried. Pop history tells us mostly “what you see is what you get.” </font><a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/music/what-an-asshole-2286354"><font size="3" face="Arial">Ted Nugent was an asshole as a young man and is still one</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. Bruce Springsteen was a pretty cool guy as a young man and is a bit cooler today. Willy Nelson was cool out of the womb. </font><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/donald-trump-and-politics-being-asshole/"><font size="3" face="Arial">Donny Trump was born a turd</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> and just got smellier with age. So, I’m not worried about Swift and the Swifties. She (and her fans) got a pretty serious boost to her cred </font><a href="https://parade.com/news/ted-nugent-sends-harsh-message-about-taylor-swifts-music-swifties-clap-back"><font size="3" face="Arial">when Teddy Nugent publicly whined about her</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. Anything Teddy is afraid of (more likely, jealous of) is good enough for me. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">While Swift certainly sets the high and enviable bar for creating a successful cult, she doesn’t make getting up there seem any easier. She is an incredibly hard working artist and performer. I don’t want to be a hard working anything and it it worked for Trump that means there is a pretty easy-to-achieve low bar for creating a cult, too. <img style="float: right; display: inline;" alt="Donald Trump's personality cult and the erosion of U.S. democracy - The Washington Post" src="https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4RAWOFAUNII63BECA3A4QTHI6I.jpg" width="336" align="right" height="224" />That’s the one I want to aim at, even without the advantage of being handed somewhere around $800M just for being born into the right, cutthroat family. Of course, if I started out with $800M I wouldn’t be wasting my time messing with goobers like the nitwits who belong to Trump’s cult. I don’t want those imbeciles in my country, let alone anywhere near me. I am even nervous about getting anywhere near their money. </font></p> <p align="left"><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Maharishi Mahesh Yogi profile | The Beatles Bible" src="https://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/67_beatles_maharishi-mahesh_yogi_002.jpg" width="293" align="left" height="197" /><font size="3" face="Arial">That is <a href="https://www.psychmechanics.com/characteristics-of-cult-leaders/">a problem with creating a cult</a>, too. It’s not like cult members are anyone’s idea of the “best and brightest.” From <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/how-joseph-smith-and-the-early-mormons-challenged-american-democracy">Joseph Smith’s original Mormons</a> to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5583477/Fifty-years-Beatles-trip-India-far-cosmic.html">the Beatles</a> and their <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/cult-maharishi-mahesh-yogi_uk_5bc5e04de4b0d38b5871a8c3">nitwit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Transcendental Meditation entourage</a>, true believers are kind of gross in a simple-minded, hyper-gullible, sticky-clingy, lay-down-with-dogs-and-get-up-with-fleas way that makes me want to take a shower after looking at them. That is a show-stopping problem for a wannabe cult leader. You have be someone like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/sunday-review/trump-supporters.html">Trump who can loudly and proudly stand in front of people he despises and tell them what they want to hear</a>. Man, if I’d have thought this out earlier I might have passed on the whole idea. Talk about being surrounded by people you don’t want to be near, this is getting totally out of hand. Still, the idea of collecting a few hundred thousand followers who will happily and stupidly empty their pockets and bank accounts for my benefit is tempting. I’m going to have to think about this more. </font></p> <p align="left"><font size="3" face="Arial">I’ll get back to you. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-30676849733300111672023-11-04T13:51:00.001-05:002023-11-04T13:51:57.473-05:00The Death Cult that Wants to Kill Us All<p><font size="3" face="Arial">There was a phase in the early period of Christianity where the clear objective was to die and go to Never-never Land as fast as possible. One of the first Christian sects, the </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatists"><font size="3" face="Arial">Donatists</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, inspired a nutty group of fanatics called the </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcellions"><font size="3" face="Arial">Circumcellions</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> who would initiate spontaneous acts of violence on strangers in the hopes of getting their asses killed and obtaining martyrdom status (sound familiar?). </font><a href="https://onlysky.media/alee/when-christianity-becomes-a-death-cult/"><font size="3" face="Arial">As one author put it</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, “The logic of Christianity leads to the disturbing conclusion that if heaven is better than this life, then death is a good and desirable outcome.” The nutjob Federalist Society even published an article titled “</font><a href="https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/18/for-christians-dying-from-covid-or-anything-else-is-a-good-thing/"><font size="3" face="Arial">For Christians, Dying From COVID (Or Anything Else) Is A Good Thing</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">” where the author wrote, “For one thing, Christians believe that life and death belong entirely to God. There is nothing we can do to make our days on earth one second longer or shorter.” Joy Pullman goes on to pile one nutty superstitious claim on top of many others, but the main point is “For another thing, for Christians, death is good.” Add taking as many non-believers and believers with you as possible to this philosphy is “the Christian thing to do.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The early leaders of the Catholic Church saw that this interpretation of the Bible would lead to an quick disappearance of their source of resources and followers. In the fifth century, Augustine wrote <i>The City of God</i>, which was Christianity’s first condemnation of suicide. In an effort to get some kind of renumeration even from the dead, as described in Wikipedia, “In the 13th century, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas"><font size="3" face="Arial">Thomas Aquinas</font></a><font face="Arial"><font size="3"> denounced suicide as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. Civil and criminal laws were enacted to discourage suicide, and as well as degrading the body rather than permitting a normal burial, the property and possessions of both the person who died by suicide and of their family were confiscated.” <em>[And today’s faux-conservatives bitch about inheritance taxes?]</em></font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Today’s breed of radical Christian “Crack Suicide Squads” are only slightly more subtle. They have no interest in caring for other humans, but they’ve snagged themselves on the crazy idea that their only path to heaven is to commit to having as many humans born as possible. Obviously, once a baby is born, they have no obligation to it in any way because . . . that would cost the idle rich who profit from superstition and foolishness some of their unearned money and . . . money. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">As </font><a href="https://onlysky.media/alee/when-christianity-becomes-a-death-cult/"><font size="3" face="Arial">the author of one analysis of the Christian suicide cult wrote</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, “In fact, belief in heaven makes this life actively <em>undesirable</em>. The longer we live, the more chances we have to encounter temptation, fall into sin, and lose our salvation—the worst catastrophe imaginable. If heaven is the goal, then the younger we die, the better.This idea is taken to an extreme by Christian apologists who say that </font><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2008/03/the-blessed-legion/"><font size="3" face="Arial">fetuses which die before birth go straight to heaven</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, bypassing human existence entirely. In this belief system, that’s the best possible outcome. The second best outcome is children who die before the age of accountability. They may suffer, but they never have a chance to lose their salvation.”</font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Knowing that is their belief certainly diminishes any hope one might have that Christians actually care about anyone but their own imaginary souls and their place at the right hand of an all-powerful vengeful Jehovah who will smite their enemies and grade school bullies and high school cool kids with plagues and lightening bolts. Actually, that sounds kinda Marvel Comics cool. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Now we have a buttload of Christian suicide culters in charge of at least one branch of the federal government, the grossly mis-named House of Representatives: </font></p> <ul> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/26/mike-johnson-house-speaker-55-things-to-know-00123593">Current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson</a> who in his earlier employment was a lawyer for the wall-to-wall Christian crazies </font><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-christian-legal-army-behind-masterpiece-cakeshop/"><font size="3" face="Arial">Alliance Defense Fund</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, a group of radical nutbags who have dedicated themselves to imagining that not being able to discriminate against LGBTQ rights will send the country to Hell. In an earlier moment in his career of failures and corruption, Johnson was the </font><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120117151752/http:/law.lacollege.edu/sites/default/files/michael-johnson-bio.pdf"><font size="3" face="Arial">founding dean</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> of the private Louisiana College Southern Baptist law school, established in 2010, where Johnson claimed would “acknowledge the Judeo-Christian foundation of the legal system.” Gullible sponsors flushed $5 million into Johnson’s mythical university, but it </font><a href="https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2014/04/08/louisiana-college-spent-5-million-on-law-school-that-never-opened/7483493/"><font size="3" face="Arial">never opened its doors</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. Johnson slithered away after two years as an idle, but well-paid, dean.</font></li> <li><a href="https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-blamed-deadly-forest-fire-on-rothschild-inc-657130"><font size="3" face="Arial">Marjorie Taylor Greene</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> whose insanity, treason, insurrection, and stupidity  needs no further introduction. </font></li> <li><a href="https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-10-05/matt-gaetz-the-built-for-battle-trumpist-who-plunged-the-capitol-into-chaos.html"><font size="3" face="Arial">Matt Gaetz</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, yet another whack job who would be happier as a private rural girls’ school Principal in an uneducated conservative southern state. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-jim-jordan-ohio-state-wrestling-sex-abuse-scandal-2023-10">House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan</a> who should have stuck with overseeing pervert Ohio coaches and team doctors.</font> </li> <li><font face="Arial"><font size="3">Rep. Bob Good (R-VA): “We should not fear a government shutdown. Most of what we do up here is bad anyway. Most of what we do up here hurts the American people, when we do stuff to the American people while promising to do things for the American people. Essential operations continue. 85% continues. Most of the American people won’t even miss if the government is shutdown temporarily.”</font></font> </li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3736687-five-things-to-know-about-andy-biggs/">Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)</a> “I love Andy Biggs. I know some people think he’s crazy, but that’s just because they don’t know him,” Krysten Sinema</font></li> <li><a href="https://thecurrentga.org/2022/10/24/fact-check-buddy-carter-wade-herring-debates/">Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA)</a> a classical fact-free-zone of Republican insanity. </li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/25/2054436/-Crazy-Stupid-Republican-of-the-Day-Matt-Rosendale-2021-Update">Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT)</a> is one of two Representatives from a state that doesn’t have a large enough population to warrant any representation, Rosendale is a special case for reforming the structure of the US Constitution. “Rosendale touts his background as a real estate investor from Maryland who pretends he’s a rancher out on the range from almost all the way across the country, but all public records show, though, that Rosendale is a ‘rancher’ by way of just renting real estate out to others who actually do the ranching on that land.” In other words, Rosendale is just another Eastern millionaire taking advantage of gullible Montana rubes. </font></li> <li><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/ryan-zinke-montana-interior-career-1070944"><font size="3" face="Arial">Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT)</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> is just like his <a href="https://montanabudget.org/post/montana-and-federal-budget">Montana welfare state</a> cohort, Rosendale, in his disrespect for the fools who vote for him. After running away from his Trump cabinet position in the wake of a collection of ethics violations, Zinke pretended to be an outsider looking out for his fellow Montana rubes in his House campaign. Wearing his ponyboy cowboy hat, he claims that “Despite the deep state's attempts to repeatedly stop me I stand before you as a duly elected member of the congress and tell you that a deep state exists… They want to wipe out the American cowboy.” Little fella, the cowboy barely existed for 20 years after the Civil War and that job is long gone and couldn’t even pretend to exist today without buttloads of federal farm assistance. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial">There are at least a half-dozen more Republican nutjobs in the House and as many equally suicidal characters in the Senate, but their names are hardly worth mentioning and their stories are too miserably despicable to research. </font></li> </ul> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">As another Christian critic wrote, “For the religious right, every war is a sign of the return of Jesus Christ, and the chance they’ll get to say, “I told you so. I was right. I was right all along.” Even if they have to burn down the world to prove it.” Sadly, “even” is the wrong word to chose in regard to the American Christian Taliban. They desperately want to take the whole world with them to prove they are right, but what they will prove to nobody (when no one is here to see it) is that we all get one life to live and that’s it. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-13203294351408918512023-10-13T10:51:00.002-05:002023-11-01T10:57:16.132-05:00Or This Guy (these guys?)<p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">The previous essay, “ID’ing A Trumper” needed this additional character stereotype. The headline below his picture was: </font></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><font>Princeton, MN </font></i><a href="https://krocnews.com/"><i><font>(KROC-AM News</font></i></a><i><font>) - Five Minnesota law officers are recovering today from gunshot wounds suffered in an apparent exchange of gunfire with a 64-year-old man at a rural residence in central Minnesota this morning.</font></i></span></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">You know this doofus is a Trumper. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3"><img alt="64 Year Old Suspect Surrender After 5 Minnesota Law Officers Shot" height="382" src="https://townsquare.media/site/67/files/2023/10/attachment-c10127.jpg?w=1600&q=75" width="573" /> </font></p><p><font face="Arial" size="3">Or all of these guys: </font></p><p><img alt="Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022 | ADL" aria-hidden="false" class="sFlh5c pT0Scc iPVvYb" src="https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/images/2023-02/Murder%20and%20Extremism%20in%20the%20United%20States%20in%202022-TABLE6.jpg" style="height: 333px; margin: 0px; max-width: 1200px; width: 634px;" /><font face="Arial" size="3"> </font></p><p><img alt="Mass Shooters' Most Common Trait—Their Gender—Gets Little Press Attention - FAIR" aria-hidden="false" class="sFlh5c pT0Scc iPVvYb" src="https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Mass-Shooters-Featured.jpg" style="height: 330px; margin: 0px; max-width: 1000px; width: 634px;" /><font face="Arial" size="3"> </font></p><p><img alt="US Counter-Terrorism and Right-Wing Fundamentalism" aria-hidden="false" class="sFlh5c pT0Scc iPVvYb" height="263" src="https://www.e-ir.info/wp-content/uploads/fly-images/87169/1024px-Charlottesville_22Unite_the_Right22_Rally_35780274914-807x455-c.jpg" style="height: 357px; margin: 0px; max-width: 807px; width: 633px;" width="465" /><font face="Arial" size="3"> </font></p><p><img alt="Assessing the right-wing terror threat in the United States a year after the January 6 insurrection | Brookings" class="sFlh5c pT0Scc" data-iml="24762" 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" style="height: 300px; margin: 0px; max-width: 3400px; width: 450px;" /><font face="Arial" size="3"> <br /></font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="3"></font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-48739137176791551682023-10-12T13:12:00.002-05:002023-10-13T15:43:52.601-05:00ID’ing A Trumper<p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">After 7 years of this nonsense, Trumpers have become a “group” of their own. Like Republicans, they are a minority but also like Republicans they are grossly and powerfully overrepresented in society. As Wikipedia notes, “The label <i>Trumpism</i> has been applied to </font><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-conservative"><font>national-conservative</font></a><font> and national-populist movements in other democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro"><font>Jair Bolsonaro</font></a><font>, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan"><font>Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</font></a><font>, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Orb%C3%A1n"><font>Viktor Orbán</font></a><font>, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma"><font>Jacob Zuma</font></a><font>, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe"><font>Shinzo Abe</font></a><font>, </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Milei"><font>Javier Milei</font></a><font>, and </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoon_Suk-yeol"><font>Yoon Suk-yeol</font></a><font>.” So, Trump’s brand of racist fascism has spread (or was already there and Trump allowed them to crawl out of their rat holes) to assholes around the world. Trumpism has become sort of a culture with some pretty obvious trademarks. As one source explained, “MAGA idealism which includes white supremacy, xenophobia, control over women’s bodies, capitalistic values and a lack of morality.”</font></span></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><img align="left" alt="Trump superfans dream of a run again, and of JFK Jr. on the ticket - POLITICO" height="176" src="https://static.politico.com/e5/15/ddd3ec154502a11e7adab308e5e7/trump.Rally.PetersonSecondary3.jpeg" style="display: inline; float: left;" width="264" /><font>Characters like this guy don’t need the hat or the disrespectful shirt to be identified. You know by the expression on his face and the rest of his body language that he is uneducated, entitled, racist, ignorant, and proud of all of that. Likewise, this bunch of shouting, inbred, arrogant fools are easily identified as Trumpers. <img align="right" alt="Opinion | How Never Trumpers Fell in Line - The New York Times" height="169" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/02/07/opinion/07Israel1/merlin_166900461_ad300e99-b9fc-4473-b56c-4917b99db236-superJumbo.jpg" style="display: inline; float: right;" width="253" />If they weren’t Trumpers they’d be <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/knights-ku-klux-klan">Knights of the Ku Klux Klan</a>, Hell’s Angels or Outlaw biker gangbangers, Blood & Honour America Division neofascists, Aryan Nation skinheads, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/jewish-defense-league">Jewish Defense League</a> terrorists, and nothing keeps these characters from belonging to all of the above clans of nutjobs and the many more “organizations” where white people join in mutual hatred of anyone who isn’t “like us.” The fact that there are so many young Trumpers proves that Kornbluth was on the money with “<i>The </i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm" target="_blank"><i>Marching Morons</i></a>” and the saying “stupidity kills, just not fast enough” is sadly true. </font></font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">However, my inspiration for this essay came at my local YMCA. An old white guy (surprise!) is often wrapping up whatever routine he has when I arrive at the gym. He shaves at the Y and while there is nothing special about his face it takes him about 10 minutes to get the job done. All the while, he has the water running full force as he scrapes the dead skin and scraggly hair from his face. That kind of arrogant, entitled, wasteful, anti-environmental attitude just screams “Trumper!” and it got me thinking about the other identifying behaviors of Trumpers. </font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><img align="left" alt="Deadline Detroit | Lapointe: Trump's Selfish Mask Resisters in Michigan Reflect an Abnormal Election" height="198" src="https://d2nyfqh3g1stw3.cloudfront.net/photos/featured_trump_truck2_44827.jpeg" style="display: inline; float: left;" width="277" />Arrogance and entitlement are the primary hallmarks. Mostly, we’re talking about middle-aged to old white people, sadly not just men. Even more sadly, not just old men. When you see some one blasting down the freeway at 20+mph over the speed limit, weaving between cars like a video game, you likely automatically think “asshole” and “Trumper.” When someone tries to push their grocery cart in front of a long line of socially distanced shoppers, you know this is another Trumper. When someone is yelling at a cashier for some imagined slight or, back in the masking days of COVID, for asking the customer to either back off or wear the required mask, we think “Trumper.” An illegally loud vehicle--motorcycle, pickup, car, or semi--90% certainly a Trumper. Obviously, swastika or Confederate flag tats and patches and hats are Trumper ID marks. When someone takes an assault rifle into a business, school, church, or concert crowd and kills the usual mass murder quantity of innocent people, you think “Trumper.” When someone is commenting on science, technology, medicine, religion (especially Christianity), or economics and it is beyond obvious that they know nothing about that subject, you should probably think “Trumper” and 99% of the time you’ll be right. </font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">You can always find an exception and, especially in this case, “the exception proves the rule.” You will be wrong in assuming any form of assholery to be Trumpism so rarely it will be of no consequence. That is one hell of a hallmark for a political/social movement: always wrong, never learns from mistakes, and so deep into the wingnut echo chamber that no new information ever seeps in. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-22333434290923949842023-10-10T13:02:00.001-05:002023-10-10T13:02:27.412-05:00AI and LI, or HI? That Is the Question<p><font size="3" face="Arial">This month’s (September 2023) </font><a href="https://www.wired.com/magazine/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Wired Magazine</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> is sub-titled “Dear AI Overlord’s, Don’t Fuck This Up.” Obviously, the bulk of the magazine is devoted to opinions of how bad or good Artificial Intelligence is going to be for near and long-term humanity. Mostly, as usual, the Wired opinions are from liberal arts majors who have no idea what they are talking about as far as AI’s technology. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">In the month’s “Dear Cloud Support” essay, the opening question is “</font><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/failed-captcha-test-am-i-still-human/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">’I failed two captcha tests this week. Am I still human Bot or not?’</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">” The second I read that statement I realized the question missed the real problem. It is not a yes-no problem, it is a 1-out-of-three problem, at the least. It isn’t just AIBots who are the threat, it is equally or more </font><a href="https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">stupid</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> humans (Low Intelligence) and badly designed AI systems that are the threat. The battle for survival is between the LI&AIBots vs High Intelligence (HI). In the short term, the stupid people will cause the most harm. Long term? Who knows?</font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">There are a couple of articles that delude to the idea that engineers and computer programmers aren’t up to the job of keeping AI reasonably moral. They, clearly a pack of liberal arts dweebs, imagine that, finally, the world will need the kinds of “skills” that a liberal arts degree supposedly promotes. No evidence of that appears to exist in the modern world and lots of contradicting data would argue to the contrary. For example, Steve Jobs, a liberal arts scumbag who learned from his philosophy classes which kinds of decisions are moral and which are not. So, he focused his life on always picking the amoral “what will profit Steve the most” options. There is no shortage of executives, politicians, and entertainers who disprove the idea that anything about a liberal arts education creates any sort of “better” citizen. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Not that a STEM education produces any sort of predictable outcome, either. The amoral academic environment is probably the culprit. Between the cut-throat publish-or-perish competition, the corporate shills who crank out drugs, processes, and products for companies at the expense of the taxpayers who support marginal “education” facilities, and the low bar academia sets for educator standards and skills it doesn’t matter much what a kid majors in, exposure to this environment is probably doing to do at least as much damage as it provides useful education. </font></p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=16oM9ibe_L8fIVSiT-ATVko062vD_-NrM"><font size="3" face="Arial"><img title="right skewed" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="right skewed" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Zc5bZtADMjX0aQI4_yoINstY1ncQgYx-" width="244" align="right" height="143" /></font></a> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">As Law 2 in the “</font><a href="https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Five Laws of Stupidity</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">” clearly explains, “The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.” And that includes education credentials or professional standing and accomplishment. Law 1 states “Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation” and Law 4 explains “Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals.” At the least, 50% of every population is “below average” and that is assuming the distribution is “normal,” not heavily skewed-right with a really long tail as I suspect. The existence, abundance, and persistence of the Trump Cult is serious evidence that, at least in the USA, some serious down-breeding is causing our average IQ to drop dramatically. So, assuming that “average IQ of 100” might be optimistic. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">If I had to put my fate in the hands of an AI system that was Open Sourced and monitored by the smartest people in the world or the random-number-generator that is, optimistically, what the Low Intelligence crowd represents at best, I’ll take AIBots and HI over anything the LI crowd can produce. </font></p></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-37081159566790070452023-09-13T13:00:00.001-05:002023-09-13T13:00:58.763-05:00Going Amazon-free<p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="BAM, Indigo Join Amazon Publishing Ban | Shelf Awareness" src="https://media.shelf-awareness.com/theshelf/2012Content/no_amazon013112.jpg" align="left" /><font size="3" face="Arial">About eight months ago, I received a notice from the Amazon cop-bot that, somehow, I’d “repeatedly posted content that violates our Community Guidelines” (“repeatedly” means twice in Amazon-bot-speak) and “You received an initial warning and because of your repeated violation of our Community Guidelines we've removed your ability to participate in Community features” (the “initial warning” was a bot-email with no reference to what the warning referred to). However, when I send emails to a variety of Amazon’s automated “customer service” locations including one to a Jeff Bezo’s email I found from searching other confused and pissed-off banned Amazon customers, I got a snarky note from “Ayesha of Amazon.com's Communities Escalation Team” finally telling me where I’d violated their weird, poorly-explained, and inconsistent “guidelines.” Here are the condemned reviews, so you can be the judge.</font> </p> <p><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS">#1 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Watch-Joe-Pickett-Novel/dp/059333132X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16U85UVFSSMCZ&keywords=storm+watch+a+joe+pickett+novel+book+23+paperback&qid=1692749259&sprefix=Storm+Watch%3A+Joe+Pickett%2C+Book+23%2Caps%2C1142&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Storm Watch: Joe Pickett, Book 23</a><strong><em></em></strong> <br /><strong>Review Title:</strong> Deep State goober nonsense <br /><strong>Text:</strong> Probably the worst edited novel from a major publisher in years. If it weren't a library book, I'd have probably red-lined at least 50 pages out of the book in an editing fit. <br />Box has, apparently, joined a majority of westerners in the belief that letting oil and mining companies rape and pillage the mountains at will has no consequences. And, even more cluelessly, imagines that selling those resources does not require the cooperation and financial assistance of the taxpaying states. I couldn't read this silly fantasy novel without remember the first time I drove through Montana in the 60s and was stunned at the filthy, mining-tailing contaminated rivers and streams and the pollution billowing uncontrolled from processing plants in practically every small town I passed through. It actually made Kansas, my home state, look responsible. <br />Pickett is still, mostly, a sympathetic "hero," but almost every other person in the novel approaches the cowardice and foolishness of the Proud Boys. Even after Trump, these goofy, entitled goobers imagine that anyone with a college education working for the government is "Deep State" and out to repress white "working men," the same men you always see leaning on shovels at construction sites.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS">#2 </font><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-News-Exposing-Establishment-Corruption/dp/1982160748/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2320KJIYHE24&keywords=breaking+the+news&qid=1692748765&sprefix=brea%2Caps%2C1137&sr=8-1" target="_blank"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS">Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media's Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption</font></a><strong><em></em></strong> <br /><font face="Comic Sans MS"><font size="2"><strong>Review Title:</strong> Paranoid and laughable <br /><strong>Text:</strong> If this were written by Andy Borowitz it would have been spectacularly funny. I had to re-calibrate often while I read "Breaking the News" to remind myself this nutjob is serious. Which kind of makes it even funnier.</font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that some wingnut objected to my disrespecting the Faux News worldview and hit the “Report” button at the bottom of my reviews. Since Amazon doesn’t post reviews immediately, under the false claim that they check reviews for those mythical “community standards” before putting a review online, it’s tough to know what happened, but both reviews were up for several months before causing my entire 15 year history of reviews to be discarded. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I have, honestly, hated almost everything about Amazon since </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Bookstore_Cooperative" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Bezos and his gang of lawyers steamrolled the original Amazon books in Minneapolis in 2008.</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> I have been buying stuff from Amazon since 2008 to the tune of well over $9,000 up until early this year. I figured if they don’t like my business, I shouldn’t give it to them. So, after getting the first notice, I started looking for alternatives to the demon Amazon. Turns out, laziness is primarily what fueled my buying decisions because Amazon is a long ways from either a primary or a quality supplier. For years, local and national retailers have complained that Amazon shoppers browse their inventory and order the products from Amazon. The reverse is also possible and downright handy. Assuming you know <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GQUXAMY73JFRVJHE" target="_blank">how misleadingly-weighted Amazon’s rating system</a> is you can learn almost as much from a product’s Amazon page as you can from seeing the thing in person. If you’re really devious, you could even order the thing from Amazon, play with it, return it, and buy it again from a decent vendor. Just as Amazon makes it clear to you that it does not owe you a microsecond of loyalty, you don’t owe Amazon anything either. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Currently, the only “business” I do with Amazon is via my Kindle and my local library. I haven’t bought anything from Amazon since January and the credit card information Amazon has for me expired in March. <a href="https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/kindle-alternatives" target="_blank">I’m currently doing the research to see how I can get away from even that bit of business</a>. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">This past few months, I researched, priced, and ordered several products that are listed on Amazon.com. I just didn’t buy them from Amazon. I bought some expensive bicycle handlebars from the manufacturer in Idaho, some bike repair parts and a flat kit from my local bicycle shop, and some bike accessories for my new electric mountain bike on eBay. I looked them all up, initially, with Amazon’s search engine, then tracked down the actual vendors and bought from them unless I could source the stuff locally. As for the cheap Chinese-made stuff, the best sources I know of are Temu.com and AliExpress.com and, of course, eBay. I bought a pair of 3-bearing, all metal mountain bike pedals for $23 shipped, after finding the company and product description on Amazon for $88-140.  </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Here are some of the resources I’ve found to substitute for my default Amazon buying habit: </font></p> <ul> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><em><a href="http://ebay.com" target="_blank">eBay</a></em>.com, of course, is and always has been a go-to location for all things. Like several other online vendors listed below, the “convenience” of Amazon (plus my dislike of Paypal, plus Musk and his fascist cofounding buddy Theil) had put eBay on the backburner of my online shopping options. After dumping Amazon, I was “forced” to look to eBay for some odd car bits that my local auto parts house couldn’t supply. I found them on eBay and they arrived in two days. Since I last dealt with eBay vendors, at least a decade ago, they have really upped their shipping and customer service game. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="http://newegg.com" target="_blank">Newegg.com</a> I’ve been buying electronics from Newegg for years, far longer than Amazon, and Newegg’s electronic selection, quality, buyers’ review usefulness, and customer service blows Amazon out of the water. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="http://Nashbar.com" target="_blank">Nashbar.com</a> Another online vendor that I’ve dealt with almost since the beginning of the WWW. My accounting history records a set of mountain bike wheels purchased from Nashbar in 1999. Again, great service, terrific products, incredible sales (hence those sealed bearing wheels in 1999), and knowledgeable customer service. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="http://petsmart.com" target="_blank">PetSmart</a> is the hands-down best online place to go for all things pet-related. I’d forgotten how customer-friendly this company was until my Amazon spat. As I was cancelling some of my Amazon subscriptions, I discovered a couple of them were with Petsmart. I easily moved those subscriptions to Petsmart’s website and saved a little money as a result. When our amazing little cat, Diva, died unexpectedly this fall, Petsmart refunded my money for a shipment in process and sent a beautiful sympathy letter. Not only was that beyond comprehension from Amazon, it was more than our local vet offered. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="http://temu.com" target="_blank">Temu.com</a> Is a <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-temu-legit-what-to-know-about-this-wildly-popular-shopping-app/" target="_blank">Chinese-owned digital marketplace</a> that is the number one shopping megastore worldwide, regularly whipping Amazon’s butt in price, selection, and quality (at least with Chinese-made products, which is <a href="https://www.sourcingallies.com/blog/china-supply-chain-amazon-sellers" target="_blank">70% of Amazon’s selection</a>). I’ve tried some of Temu’s dirt-cheap ($3 for 512GB) MicroSD cards and while they are often defective, Temu gives me instant credit for those defective cards without requiring a return. Otherwise, I’ve bought electronics, bicycle parts and accessories, motorcycle accessories, gifts for my wife and family, shoes and clothing, tools, and assorted weird stuff. Shipping is kinda slow, usually a week to two, but Temu provides tracking information and, unlike Amazon or AliExpress, that information is accurate. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="http://AliExpress.com" target="_blank">AliExpress</a> is <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-aliexpress-4174570" target="_blank">another Chinese-owned outlet</a>, owned by AliBaba, that under-sells Amazon by a good bit and, usually, with better quality. Delivery is even longer and a lot less reliable than Temu and often untrackable. However, after getting two <em><strong>used</strong></em> induction-compatible high end frying pans from Amazon (returned at Amazon’s expense), I bought the exact same pans from AliBaba and they came new, for 1/4 of Amazon’s price, and included “gifts” from the vendor (a smaller pan and some non-stick friendly utensils). As best I can tell, AliExpress has little-to-no customer protection for lost shipping and you are absolutely gambling buying expensive stuff from AliExpress. I ordered a $120 microphone from AliExpress that never arrived and AliExpress kept insisting that I provide “shipping information” to claim a refund. Since I did not receive any shipping information, tracking links, or any evidence the package had ever been shipped, I was out of luck. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="walmart.com" target="_blank">Walmart.com</a> and <a href="target.com" target="_blank">Target.com</a> have really stepped up their online games. Plus, I can get stuff delivered to my local store for free and pickup along with groceries. I started using Walmart’s store pickup service early in the COVID pandemic and have used it often since. Now that COVID is making a comeback, I’ll be back in the parking lot waiting for a Walmart associate to load my groceries into the back of the Honda. Our local Target just increased the size of their grocery department and is building a parking area for pickup only. I am looking forward to trying it out. </font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial">My local library, especially for book reviews. The same reviews that got me banned from Amazon are still standing on the Hennepin County Library webpage. When I retired, I sold several bookshelves full of books as part of my downsizing routine and I bought an Amazon Kindle where I restored some of my old book collection. I also found a ton of ePUBs of my older stuff, which lives on my computers and Android tablets. I am about to replace the Kindle, though, since everything my library has in eBook and Audiobook format is also available via Libby (Adobe) plus a few that aren’t on Kindle. And I can access the library’s whole catalog via <a href="www.libby.com" target="_blank">Libby</a>. Supposedly, <a href="https://www.epubor.com/transfer-kindle-books-to-kobo.html" target="_blank">Epubor Ultimate</a> is capable of converting Kindle books from the Amazon format to ePUBs which eliminates any reason why I can’t move from Kindle to Kobo, where I could directly check out books from my libraries. I haven’t bought a Kobo, yet, but I am shopping for one everywhere but Amazon.com.</font></li> <li><font size="3" face="Arial">Speaking of local, when I first dropped out of Amazon, I began to look, first, for local sources for the stuff I buy. For example, my local bike shop is grossly high priced for some stuff, but for many things they are as reasonable as online retail and you can’t beat the delivery time. That goes for hardware, office supplies, groceries, music equipment and repairs, and at least 75% of the stuff for which might have once defaulted to Amazon. </font></li> </ul> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">After 3/4 of a year of avoiding Amazon, I literally have no regrets or reason to return to that evil monopoly. I am solidly disgusted with our bought-and-paid-for-congresscritters for not only <a href="https://observer.com/2019/07/jeff-bezos-amazon-usps-delivery-exploitation/" target="_blank">allowing Amazon to abuse the USPS</a> but for <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/11/10/amazon-amendment-ndaa-congress/" target="_blank">giving them piles of taxpayer money</a> for services the federal government should be managing itself. I do like using Amazon’s website like the old Sears’ catalog, pawing through the options for a purchase, reading the 1, 2, and 3-star reviews (the 4 and 5 stars are rarely honest buyers), noting the sellers so I can go to their websites for better prices and service, and, for now, checking out my library books. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-44058529272811976542023-08-27T16:15:00.001-05:002023-08-27T16:15:53.253-05:00“You need to have an open mind!”<p><font size="3" face="Arial">I bumped into a local acquaintance at the Farmer’s Market this weekend. His latest frenzy (he’s gone through several dozen in the 8 years I’ve known him) is <a href="https://www.fearof.net/fear-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-phobia/" target="_blank">AI terror</a>. Technophobia is not as new thing. Old people and uneducated people and unskilled people have been afraid of “progress” almost as long as we’ve been banging the rocks together. After he failed to create any sort of panic in his audience (me), he quickly walked away, shouting over his shoulder, “Tom, you need to have an open mind.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">There are “open minds” and there are open minds. Being open to emotional content is the path to becoming a mindless cult member. At this point in my life, I may not be able to take much of any even slightly emotional argument seriously. That “lack of charisma” problem that many Democratic candidates are curse with is nothing more than a refusal to resort to appealing to their listeners’ amygdala and aiming, instead, for their frontal cortex. One of Richard Nixon’s media advisors, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2011/01/21/roger_ailes_fehrman/" target="_blank">Roger Ailes, wrote “Voters are basically lazy. Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we…seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”</a> Ailes described exactly the tactics he’d use in running Fox News a couple of decades later. Screw reason, poke ‘em in the emotions and they’ll never even think about thinking for themselves. Or, as Rick Santorum once blatantly honestly said, "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." Nope, but they can count on most of the characters on the below-average side of the IQ curve and that will consistently be half of any population. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I have read <a href="https://youarenotsosmart.com/" target="_blank">You Are Not So Smart</a><em></em> and listened to the audiobook and <a href="https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/" target="_blank">Podcast</a> so often that I bought both versions of the book, along with <em><a href="https://youarenotsosmart.com/the-book/" target="_blank">You Are Now Less Dumb</a></em>. I usually read a book once a decade and my library resources are more than adequate for my purposes, but not when it comes to how badly our brains work, especially under emotional impulse. When I was a young man, I fell victim to practically every sucker-the-rube scam known to humans, but I’ve tried to make a personal policy out of “Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me.” I’ve been burned more than a few times failing to heed that advice, but I’ve avoided disaster for most of my life believing that when it comes to con artists “forgiveness is for suckers.” I didn’t call my motorcycle column and blog “<a href="www.geezerwithagrudge.com" target="_blank">Geezer with A Grudge</a>” for nothing. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">An “open mind” is the kind of mindset that allowed <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/neville-chamberlain" target="_blank">Hitler to con all of the British politicians who met him into believing he was benign</a>, in fact the ONLY important British leader who distrusted Hitler was <a href="https://www.historyonthenet.com/winston-churchill-and-hitler-what-did-churchill-think" target="_blank">Winston Churchill</a>, who was also the only one who didn’t speak face-to-face with the Nazi bastard. Likewise, I prefer to obtain my own information on important subjects through <em><strong>READING</strong></em> about and studying those topics. I don’t know a lot of stuff, but the stuff I do know is regularly and largely misrepresented in the media, YouTube (especially), advertising, and in most person-to-person “communications.” That means I don’t listen to sales routines over the phone or in person; “Just give me the literature and I’ll get back to you if I’m interested” is usually enough to kill a sales pitch in the bud. I’m not real bright and it takes me time to absorb the information that usually has to be extracted from sales literature with as much effort as taking a college physics or chemistry exam. They don’t make information easy or even available, more often than not. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I’m a big believer and observe in track records, too. If you’ve been wrong almost always (Talkin’ to you Republicans.) and don’t show any evidence that you realize you were regularly on the wrong side of reality, history, morality, and decent behavior (Still talkin’ to you Republicans.) I have no interest in your opinions and doubt your ability to acquire and assemble facts that are coherent or even honest. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-551186102856087882023-08-25T14:14:00.001-05:002023-08-25T14:14:37.419-05:00American Lawlessness<p><font size="3" face="Arial"><em>I can't run no more, <br />With that lawless crowd. <br />While the killers in high places <br />Say their prayers out loud. <br />But they've summoned, they've summoned up <br />A thundercloud. <br />They're going to hear from me. </em><font size="3" face="Arial">Leonard Cohen – Anthem</font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">But they likely won’t hear from enough of us, will they? Usually, in American history, the “thunderclouds” that get summoned are in service of the 1%, the planet killers, the real “baby killers” who do their work in quantity not quality, and outright criminals who belong either behind bars or standing in front of a firing squad convicted of treason. But the United States are no longer united and at least half of the voting public (those allowed to vote) are “that lawless crowd.” </font></p> <p><img style="float: right; display: inline;" alt="Trump to police: 'Please don't be too nice' to suspects - ABC News" src="https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/GTY-trump-01-as-170728_16x9_1600.jpg" width="283" align="right" height="159" /><font size="3" face="Arial">You see their distain for law and order, peace and quiet, the public spaces, and decency practically everywhere you go. You hear them flaunt laws and polite behavior all night long in practically every town in the nation. They do it for both fun and profit and they do it knowing the police are, mostly, on their side. The country is rapidly becoming half-“that lawless crowd.” And they are clearly proud of their ability to repeatedly commit crimes against the “public good” and national security without consequences. How will this play out on both the world stage and locally? Probably, badly. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I’m going to work from the bottom up in describing the symptoms of an empire in rapid decline. At the dead bottom—where local, state, and federal laws are broken and flaunted on a moment-by-moment basis—are vehicle noise laws. Here is one of many places where you can see that rural areas are in a state of far more deterioration than their urban cousins. On mild spring-thru-fall days, you can hear the sounds of blatantly illegal vehicle exhaust systems coming from every direction. While it is clearly and obviously illegal to alter any EPA/DOT-approved vehicle’s intake and exhaust system, local and state cops ignore those criminals because of . . . money. Irrationally powerful special interest groups like the IAPO (International Association of Professional Bar Owners) spent buttloads of cash putting up obstacles to prevent the weak attempts of “law enforcement” from patrolling the obvious sources of a substantial number of vehicle deaths and serious injuries: bar “closing time.” That same pack of gangsters and the amazingly powerful (and totally lame) MIC (Motorcycle Industry Council) put up all sorts of political noise when the noise their customers make destroys the peace and quiet and citizens begin to demand actual law enforcement (instead of minority harassment.).  And cops?  They are both terrified of biker gangs reprisals and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-clubs-and-biker-gangs-blur-lines-drawing-concern/" target="_blank">too often the gang members</a>. The same goes for the characters with illegal exhaust systems on their pickups, Honda Civics, and other assorted law-breaking vehicles. </font></p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Trump Supporters Storm U.S. Capitol, Clash With Police : Capitol Insurrection Updates : NPR" src="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/01/06/gettyimages-1230454991_slide-da4b03ef3af357f3a9ac0776c9fa119316d5d62d.jpg" width="261" align="left" height="174" /><font size="3" face="Arial">That’s one of many examples of lawlessness at the lowest levels of society. At the national level, we had a violent insurrection that attempted to cancel the votes of tens of millions of Americans in an effort to install a egotistic, foolish reality show actor and his 3<sup>rd</sup>-tier élite handlers as a permanent dictatorship. <a href="https://theratseyeblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/100-falling-top-down-2004.html" target="_blank">Everything works top-down</a> and our culture is infested with lawless 1%ers who imagine themselves to be above the law and, worse, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html" target="_blank">the law itself</a>. When those at the top of society or business consider themselves to be ungoverned by law and order, that attitude showers across the nation with all of the worst people imagining themselves to be “special.” No only are they not special, but they are capable of destroying anything that is special within their reach. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-5810629128266757882023-08-17T11:12:00.001-05:002023-08-17T11:12:17.762-05:00The Incredible Power of Luck and Finding Suckers<p><font size="3" face="Arial">I recently read two automotive industry books, first was </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludicrous:_The_Unvarnished_Story_of_Tesla_Motors" target="_blank"><em><font size="3" face="Arial">Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors</font></em></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, and the second was </font><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20608005" target="_blank"><em><font size="3" face="Arial">Driving Honda, Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company</font></em></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. Those two companies could not be more unlike wile still being in the same industry. One company (Tesla, if you’re clueless)  is driven by a narcistic megalomaniac and the other is driven by a company philosophy. The cars produced by the two companies are equally different: Teslas are all about status and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/behind-online-behavior/202109/tesla-cult-psychology" target="_blank">“belonging” to a cult</a> and Hondas are primarily reliable, flexible transportation. One company exists to promote the fame and fortune of its owner, man-boy Elon Musk, and Honda exists “<a href="https://global.honda/about/vision.html?from=navi_drawer" target="_blank">to provide products and services that expand people's dreams and potential.”</a><em> </em>The difference is apparent, even obvious, in the products, the employees, and the customers. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I committed a fair portion of my working career to manufacturing and, even, a substantial portion of my early audio engineering experience to producing products of my own design . In fact, from my perspective it was hard to beat the best moments I experienced in manufacturing products I cared about. Likewise, I would have rather died in a motorcycle crash at 30 than having gone through my worst half-dozen moments in manufacturing (which all occurred during my 10 years in medical devices). Manufacturing <u><strong><em>anything</em></strong></u> is a team effort and that includes designing the equipment necessary for manufacturing. Anyone who claims to have designed a product that was mass produced is a lying sack of crap. From the original concept to the finished product, there are dozens if not hundreds of hands and minds that shape and finish a product into something that is useful, safe, and cost-effective. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Weirdly, there has never been a shortage of people who are willing to do the hard work that is necessary to make and improve a product or service. Usually, those people go unnoticed not just by the public but by the people who have the most to gain from their hard work. Every rich asshole from Henry Ford to Elon Musk has lucked into a few hundred dedicated, talented, hard-working people who foolishly bought into the rich guys’ bullshit and made the lucky idiot rich in spite of himself. I’ve had a ringside seat for a half-dozen of those rags-to-riches lucky business histories. In only one of the lot was the “founder” a critical (or even useful) component in the companies’ success. In most, the founder/founders was/were an impediment that employees had to work around to keep the business alive. In <em><strong>none</strong></em> of the second group of mismanagers were the people who had the most to gain even mildly aware of their good fortune. In that one instance where the founder was a critical component, he was also very aware of his own shortcomings and consistently grateful for the contributions of the people who carried his ass from rags to riches (although he started out pretty rich). </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2021/09/27/talent-effort-or-luck-which-matters-more-for-career-success/?sh=1a232e3a5172" target="_blank">Luck usually has more to do with success</a> than does brilliance, talent, strategy, or even hard work. But yiou’d never get that story from the lucky few who are successful, or at least <a href="https://jamesclear.com/luck-vs-hard-work" target="_blank">rarely is that kind of self-critical honesty present</a>. Most “founders” do everything they can to purge their institutions of evidence of their mindless luck as quickly as possible. Some do it ruthlessly and fairly successfully, like Musk and Tesla or Jobs and Apple, and many more do it ham-handedly often killing the golden goose before it is fully hatched. But they all depend nearly totally on being lucky enough to con the right people into committing to what is presented as a “mission” early in the business’ history and doing all of the hard, boring, detail work that is necessary to actual success. Some, like Trump, not only misunderstand how little he contributed to the success of his one-and-only public corporate meltdown but <a href="https://www.nj.com/politics/2016/08/watch_did_trump_blame_ac_casino_failures_on_dead_e.html" target="_blank">blame the people who did the work for dying on him</a>. Most are like Henry Ford who carefully scraped away all of the evidence of his own good fortune so ruthlessly that <a href="https://fornology.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-tragedy-of-edsel-ford-death-by.html" target="_blank">he “destroyed” his only son, Edsel,</a> to keep his own competence myth alive. Without the fatal consequences, the same went for <a href="https://www.wired.com/2009/06/eberhard/" target="_blank">Musk</a> and <a href="https://executiveheadlines.com/startup-insights/facts-about-steve-jobs" target="_blank">Jobs</a>. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The next time you hear some half-wit babble about his self-made zillionaire status, try to imagine what it would be like to have built something spectacular,—believing your hard work and contributions would result in some kind of recognition and reward—having to listen to a non-contributor brag who ended up on top of the corporate turd-pile purely out of luck and conniving viciousness. It happens more often than not, but the public perception is one more example that “history is written (and advertised) by the winners.” </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-1394935801346112222023-06-26T10:31:00.001-05:002023-06-26T10:31:05.706-05:00What to Do, Where to Live?<p><font size="3" face="Arial">In 1971, around the time my daughter Holly was born, I was working in Hereford, Texas for a small company mismanaged by a total nitwit as a division of a larger company that was headed for corporate oblivion. However, the upside was that I worked for one of the best supervisors would ever experience, although it was an industry for which I had absolutely no interest at all, and all of that was at the very beginning of what would become my career. One of the people I worked closely with was a WWII-generation machinist born and raised in west Texas, but who had spent a bit of his life sampling other parts of the country; especially during WWII. His name was Carl [<em>forgot his last name</em>] and he was a source of a lot of wisdom at a time when that was a rare commodity in my life. Late in my time in that job, he and I were talking about the difficulty of figuring out life’s big questions: like where do I want to live and what should I be doing to make a living? His simple-sounding advice was “If you want to live a happy life, figure out where you want to live and live there. Figure out what you want to do and do that.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">It might sound easy and it was for Carl. He’d grown up in a small farmhouse between Hereford and Amarillo in the early 20th Century. His brothers and he rode Indian motorcycles between the two towns when there were no roads, paved or otherwise. They fixed what they rode and anything else that needed fixing. Carl told me that when he was a kid there were no flies or many other flying insects in West Texas and they would hang a butchered steer from their windmill and carve off what they needed, leaving the sun to “cure” the open wound till the next time they needed some beef. When the WWII draft came along, Carl was told to apply his mechanical skills to the military-industrial complex and he moved to San Diego to do just that. He built machine and airplane parts for Consolidated Aircraft Corporation and when the war ended, he modified his Ford to be able to run on naphtha, since gas was in short supply and rationed, filled up the tank and put a 55 gallon barrel of the stuff in his trunk, and drove back to Texas. He got married, worked at a few different manufacturing companies in the area, and ended up in the ag industry company where I worked for a few years before he retired. That was what he wanted to do and where he wanted to do it. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">For most of us, those two questions are not so simple, but it’s mostly because we overcomplicate our expectations. We’re either looking for the impossibly perfect place or a totally-fulfilling forever job, neither of which is likely to ever occur. A good rule for most everything is “pretty good is good enough.” Perfect, on the other hand, is highly unlikely. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Carl was pretty clear in his instructions, though. The first step is “where.” Finding a great job in a rotten place will never be satisfying. In fact, a mediocre job in a great place (assuming it pays enough to enjoy the place) isn’t a terrible situation. Most of us have some idea about what kind of place we’d like to live. Some of us know exactly where we’d like to live because we’ve spent our lives in that place, our friends and family are there, and we are comfortable with the climate, culture, and opportunities. Some folks are so set on the place that they are willing to sacrifice everything else about their lives to live there. <font size="3" face="Arial">No matter how you picked the place, what to do comes next. If you never settle on a place, I think the odds are good that you’ll never be happy with what you’re doing with your life. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">One thing many of us neglect or outright screw-up in our early lives is not taking some kind of career planning seriously early enough. All of the smart people I have ever known came up with career goals fairly early in life, at least by high school, and they let those goals drive their first 4-10 years of adulthood. They usually changed those targets several times over their lives, but when they did they set new goals and aimed for them. Some of us take half of our lives to figure that out, some never figure it out and just wander through their lives wondering “why nothing wonderful ever happens to me?” The only thing that is likely to ever happen to you is life, which will happen whether you make plans or don’t but making the attempt to obtain some kind of control and to maintain self-direction is pretty much the same as driving a car vs letting go of the wheel on a mountain road to see what will happen. You might get lucky, but you probably won’t. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">You can catch up, if you don’t get started sensibly, but it’s a lot harder. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Vonnegut" target="_blank">Mark Vonnegut</a>, Kurt Vonnegut's son, is my overwhelming favorite role model for late starters. He started off his adult life as a hippy commune holdout, after being diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and having been committed to Vancouver mental hospital for a time. After providing on his own cure (for what he later decided was bipolar disorder), he graduated from Harvard Medical School at 32 years old and started his pediatric Internship and Residency. That was a lot of territory to cover after being a non-starter in his prime learning years. Your mileage will most definitely vary from Mark Vonnegut’s. Still, my own experience might demonstrate that if you keep at it you might end up doing work you care about with people you love and respect, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNally_Smith_College_of_Music" target="_blank">even if the business is run by self-destructive, selfish and narcissistic idiots</a>. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial"> The trick, as I see it, is to get started on deciding where you want to live, including the kind of home/apartment/tent/cabin it will be. That might include who you want to live with, but that is not critical. While you’re sorting that out, find some kind of mission for yourself because if you don’t someone will find one for you and you probably won’t like it. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-51237205187189324332023-06-13T14:17:00.001-05:002023-06-13T14:17:08.768-05:00An Age of Dying Expertise<p><font size="3"><font face="Arial">Recently, a friend described an incredibly expensive series of visits to his Volvo dealership in which he had to explain the problem (surging at low speeds), leave his vehicle at the dealership for a day or two, pay around $1,000 per visit, take the car home and discover the same problem still existed. And he had to do this a half-dozen times before he finally “resolved” the problem by disabling the car’s oxygen sensors. He’d had several such problems with his two early 2000’s Volvos and at least one of those malfunctions was solved by a Boomer parts manager who had been a mechanic before being promoted to management who knew something about </font><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwidocC3wcD_AhUXHTQIHRewCO4QFnoECA8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fautomotivetechinfo.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F06%2FVolvo-Fuel-Injectors.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1WNF_tD0eCl_hSOtjsk4o9" target="_blank"><font face="Arial">the history of Volvo’s many fuel system problems</font></a><font face="Arial">. Without that insight, his car might be in a salvage yard today. </font></font></p> <font face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3"><font face="Arial">I’ve had a couple similar experiences. In 2011, on a motorcycle trip with my grandson through the Rockies, my Suzuki blew a fork seal about 50 miles north of Laramie, WY. First, I assumed that there wouldn’t be a Suzuki dealer in that backwater and I was wrong. </font><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjfhPTM5sD_AhXAIzQIHbiCA50Q_Bd6BAhIEAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiercyclesinc.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw0VJeSWvL-Sp_MCmG7qw61O" target="_blank"><font face="Arial">Frontier Cycles</font></a><font face="Arial"> not only serviced and sold Suzuki bikes, but I lucked into a 60-something parts guy who knew that Suzuki only use 3 sizes of seals, regardless of their hundreds of part numbers for fork seals. Thanks to his long-term knowledge of Suzuki motorcycles, I was back on the road a day later. Left up to the young mechanic who did the work in a perfectly competent manner, I’d have been stuck in a motel for a week waiting for a part from Denver. I’ve documented </font><a href="https://theratseyeblog.blogspot.com/search?q=rialta" target="_blank"><font face="Arial">my Volkswagen experience</font></a><font face="Arial"> here long and loud, but along with discovering that two Albuquerque <font size="3">VW dealers and one VW specialty independent service station were totally incapable of doing anything their highly flawed computer analysis equipment didn’t describe for them, I lucked into one very clever and curious 50-60-something technician at <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.gmotorwerke.com/&ved=2ahUKEwj3_8Os6MD_AhUotQAAHZESDBYQ_Bd6BQgAEN8B&cd&psig=AOvVaw1gvx-BVLAhv-hkKwBaW9aH&ust=1686765247685000" target="_blank">German Motorwerke</a> who discovered the Eurovan’s Transmission Control Unit (TCU) couldn’t make up its mind as to the source of the problem. Where the VW dealer “mechanics” read “replace the transmission,” <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.gmotorwerke.com/&ved=2ahUKEwj3_8Os6MD_AhUotQAAHZESDBYQ_Bd6BQgAEN8B&cd&psig=AOvVaw1gvx-BVLAhv-hkKwBaW9aH&ust=1686765247685000" target="_blank">Motorwerke’s</a> tech tracked the faults though the analysis down to the point that every time he ran the analysis, the computer pointed to a different component of the transmission. That convinced him that the TCU was the problem, not the transmission that obviously managed to get the camper from eastern New Mexico to Albuquerque without frying itself, although a good bit of that trip was done in “limp home mode.” Later, I found another mechanic, Victor Cano-Linson at Big Victor’s Automotive in Elephant Butte, NM who patiently hacked his way through the mostly-erroneous mess of “service information” VW supplies for $400/month to independent shops and got us back on the road. Victor has a couple of grown kids, regardless of the fact that he looks about 30 <em><strong>max</strong></em>, so he’s going to be heading into retirement soon, too. </font></font></font></p> <font face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3"><font face="Arial">Currently, significantly more than 50% of America’s skilled-trade workers are retiring in the next 10 years, almost a third in the next five. That skilled labor shortage includes automotive and heavy equipment mechanics, plumbers, electricians, electronic technicians  construction workers, water system treatment technicians, building maintenance technicians, HVAC technicians, welders, masons, and heavy equipment operators. <font size="3">The same is true for high-skill, jobs like electrical and electronic engineers, mechanical engineers, doctors, and other hyper-skilled, education dependent jobs. <font size="3">There was a brief window when the important details of many of those skills would have been passed on, but that opportunity was missed during the multiple recessions, down-sizing, huge and incompetent conglomerate monopolies sucking up businesses and trashing them, and the massive transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% the country suffered between 1970 and 2020. While the owners of those skills are leaving the workforce, their replacements are having to fend for themselves in an unstable labor market with a shaky national  economic future. We often hear the shrill cry of “why don’t people want to work anymore,” but those asking don’t want to hear the complicated answer. </font></font></font></font></p> <font face="Arial"></font> <p><font face="Arial"><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Cartoon: Trickle-down economics - oregonlive.com" src="https://media.oregonlive.com/ohman_impact/photo/ohman121511jpg-bcfd2ebf7aecc2be.jpg" width="311" align="left" height="225" /><font size="3">In a country that has fallen hook-line-and-sinker for the repeatedly-failed economic fallacy that dribble-down will save the economy and culture if we just cut taxes on the rich, working hard to earn a middle class living has lost its appeal. White people especially have been convinced if they just bow and scrape low enough they will be rewarded with the luxurious life they are entitled to be living. Mostly that proves that you can fool enough of the people all of the time. </font></font></p> <font face="Arial"></font> <p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">From my own experience, a big reason the traditional generational skill-transfer didn’t and isn’t happening is that since the 70’s few of us had even considered staying with an employer long enough to be part of that. Most of us didn’t have the opportunity due to downsizing layoffs, recessionary layoffs, and local economic factors that put many of us in the technical migrant category. During the 70s through most of my career, the average engineer stayed at one company for an average of 3 years. Supposedly, that is up to <a href="https://www.perceptionpredict.ai/blog/how-long-does-the-average-person-stay-at-a-job" target="_blank">5.1 years today</a>, but only one or two people (or at least a dozen) I know who are working in engineering would reflect that stat. Still, after 5.1 years an engineer has barely mastered the basics of a typical job in manufacturing, design, or customer support. Through most of the past 40 years, companies have devalued technical experience by laying off higher paid, experienced employees first often followed by employing those ex-employees at a much higher rate as contractors. There is literally no reason why a contractor would make the slightest effort to pass on valuable information to a company employee. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">My last medical devices employer only hired degreed (mostly MS and PhD) engineers from well-regarded schools like MIT and CalTech. They were usually wonderful manipulators of computer-assisted software (CAD/CAM) and could wring solutions from auto-routing PCB layout software that totally baffled me. Their understanding of semiconductor electronics and reliability engineering was embarrassing at best and too often tragic for the end users. And every year there were fewer experienced engineers at that company to act as guardrails against the kind of mistakes young engineers make without knowing any history of the product, customers, or applications. Many of those experienced engineers were paid early-out bonuses to leave, because the company mismanagement had no idea how complicated the products had become. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Years ago, a young man who was trying to get started in the field I had introduced him to through the school where I worked and he had attended complained that “It’s not what you know but who you know in this business.” He was mostly complaining about the fact that service information on the products he most often was asked to repair was only available from other technicians. The companies who made the equipment were mostly dead-and-gone, but their equipment lived on and stayed in demand for at least another decade. The “who” he was complaining about were experienced technicians who had collected service manuals, schematics, and troubleshooting techniques over the previous 20-30 years. I offered to level the playing field for him by ignoring his calls when he needed help and he declined; understanding that it might take a while to become well-regarded enough to collect more useful resources. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Company and industry history are poorly-regarded today. “Experienced workers” are considered to be expensive workers and the first to go when mismanagement wants to give itself a giant pay increase or a huge golden parachute. Because they have no financial motivation to do anything to improve the life of the companies they mismanage, they see no downside in killing off company history resources. Like their heroes—Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and the rest of that ilk—they imagine that their media-manipulations are the important stuff in a company’s activities and the wreckage they leave behind will be for future generations to clean up . . . or not. </font></p></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-77221199380224560782023-06-04T18:50:00.001-05:002023-06-04T18:50:49.804-05:00Your Tax Dollars at Play<p><font size="3" face="Arial">One of the many hilarious Republican talking points is that the private sector spends money more effectively than the government. Every corporation on the New York Stock Exchange disproves that argument on a minutely basis. [If you want a dramatic example, read William Cohen’s <a href="https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_and_culture/books/book-review-power-failure-ge-general-electric-jack-walsh/article_c228c7ba-6133-11ed-8569-d391db80ae29.html" target="_blank"><em>Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon</em></a>.] If you can find a single CEO whose salary makes a lick of sense, you’re probably trying to bullshit yourself and me. No government office is arrogant enough to pay anyone millions of dollars for squatting in a corner office making foolish decisions. In fact, the biggest abuses of government funds are consistently when the government farms out work to the private sector. Private business can’t seem to do anything without doing it badly, other than cobbling together harmless or harmful and unnecessary widgets and toys; like assault weapons. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Idle billionaire playboy Jeff Bezos just </font><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1nUJM7PwXPTdMAJaB1jpuXpBr22yhm4hg"><font size="3" face="Arial"><img title="Koru" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="Koru" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1YkVu9GSIKYdcjKxdJ5e0p_gpErH1DaDa" width="244" align="left" height="149" /></font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">launched his latest toy, </font><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/style/bezos-yacht-koru.html" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">a roughly half-billion-dollar megayacht</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> that pretty much flaunts how much excess cash the boy has to flaunt. It is a “sailing yacht,” which means he has the time to let the wind blow him to his luxury destinations. At 417 feet/127m, Bezos’ “Koru” is the world’s largest sailing yacht equipped with three masts, an on-deck pool and a mermaid on the bow that looks like his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez. </font></p> <font size="3"><font face="Arial"></font><font face="Arial"></font></font> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=12VLkIhawyr8CM1ChlnJTw_vRy0PKkIT6"><font size="3" face="Arial"><img title="Abeona" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="Abeona" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1xi2Nt5wOjXNjBTQofUgTP2I2ALqVTVEX" width="244" align="right" height="164" /></font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">Bezos isn’t risking his precious time to the winds of fate, though. He also has a $75M Damen Yachting “butler boat,” the Abeona, a 246-foot support vessel toting the “toys” — the ATVs, supercars, seaplanes, motorcycles, smaller boats, scuba gear, personal submarines, and a helicopter hangar—and a 45 person crew to make sure Jeffy and his bimbo don’t have to lift a finger or sully their presence sleeping in the vicinity of minions. The $75M Abeona is a motorized yacht and has the range to go anywhere Bezos might want to travel on a single “tank” of gas.        </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">At the moment, the world seems to be gorging on mindless and useless billionaires. As of April, </font><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwii2fi0tIz_AhXIlIkEHdTbA7IQFnoECD0QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fchasewithorn%2F2023%2F04%2F04%2Fforbes-37th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2023%2F&usg=AOvVaw1sRB93QUrUo4QN578DCSft" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Forbes Magazine says there are 2,640 billionaires in the world</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> and they have hoarded at least $12.2 trillion and the </font><a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-billionaires-by-state" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">USA has spewed 735</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> of those useless, money-grubbing, corporate-welfare morons across the planet. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Check out the comments on the NYT link above. Nitwits and asskissers said servile things like “Amazon is akin to the automobile. He deserves it. The fact that it drives the less accomplished to deep green envy is just an added bonus.” What could a person do to “earn” $125 billion dollars? What did Bezos do to “deserve” even a few million, let alone billions? What kind of work could possibly be worth that hourly wage? People who save lives for a living aren’t even in that economic territory. The President of the United States receives a $400,000 annual salary. Bezos, like every other rich asshole on the planet, was simply lucky, took advantage of the national infrastructure (transportation, digital and physical communications systems, business regulations, Republican income tax protection, and other semi-legal systems) that he in no way paid for, and put his money to work with Trump to reduce his tax obligations to near-zero. You might call that “smart” (Trump does.), but I’d call it treasonous and good reason to nationalize Amazon and put Bezos on that damn boat for life as an international criminal. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Yeah, lucky. Like Musk, Gates, and 99% of the billionaire élite, Bezos was </font><a href="https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3188951/meet-jeff-bezos-billionaire-parents-jacklyn-and-miguel" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">a rich kid, spoiled and sent to the best schools anyone could afford</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, and had his success handed to him on a platter that even fool couldn’t miss picking up. Reagan trashing “unearned income” made it so that goobers like Bezos could hide his income through stock that he bestowed on himself as CEO and Chairman of the Amazon board of directors. If you don’t think Bezos’ parents were rich, explain how they were able to loan him US$245,000 in 1995 (equivalent to $477,134.28 in 2023) for an on-line bookstore? Who had a family that could cough up that kind of money in 1995, especially after putting him through a pair of degrees at Princeton? While he can make a bullshit claim to growing up with a single parent, his maternal grandparents had money and they generously handed it down to his step-father and mother. He couldn’t even find an original name for his company and </font><a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/amazon-com-versus-amazon-bookstore-the-1999-legal-tussle-was-rancorous.html" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">stole “Amazon” from a Minneapolis lesbian-owned bookstore</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The Nixon/Reagan/Bush I & II/Trump “elections” (two of which were anointments, not elections, since Bush II and Trump lost the popular vote) proved that you can fool almost half of the voters all of the time. None of the “tax cuts” enacted by any Republican have made a nickel’s difference to working people, but they keep hoping it might. Dribble-down has been all negative for us, though. </font><a href="https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/20/2/539/6500315" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Political economists David Hope and Julian Limberg studied the effects of “tax cuts for the rich</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">” and summarized their study with “We find that major tax cuts for the rich push up income inequality, as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The size of the effect is substantial: on average, each major tax cut results in a rise of over 0.7 percentage points in top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect holds in both the short and medium term. Turning our attention to economic performance, we find no significant effects of major tax cuts for the rich. More specifically, the trajectories of real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate are unaffected by significant reductions in taxes on the rich in both the short- and medium-term.” Since the rich get that way from extracting value and resources from labor and national treasure (including natural resources), worrying about their luxury and opulence makes no sense from the perspective of the 99%. But that is exactly what Republicans are selling to The </font><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Marching Morons</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Trump’s acting budget director (talk about ultimate oxymorons) Russ Vought, said “It’s not that Americans are taxed too little, it’s that Washington spends too much.”  The world is awash in billionaires buying half-billion dollar yachts, building mansions all over the planet, and hoarding more money than most national budgets and these goobers think they need more? </font><a href="https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-23-2023?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNjY5NDAwOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTIzNDU2MTM2LCJpYXQiOjE2ODQ5MTU3OTEsImV4cCI6MTY4NzUwNzc5MSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTIwNTMzIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.uB7DeGHbRhSPmP1SvThEKktn8DmGYLyFWA4mf2G_OxA&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Heather Cox Richards, who provides a consistently brilliant analysis of the current political nonsense</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">, wrote, “A 2020 study by Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards of the RAND Corporation showed that the changing economic distribution systems of the past forty years have moved a staggering $50 trillion upward, out of the hands of the bottom 90% of Americans. (The national debt is currently about $31.5 trillion.)” So much for rational spending from the “private sector.” </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">If you suspect that I harbor nothing but ill-will toward Jeffy and billionaires and multi-millionaires in general, you are not particularly perceptive. I am a firm believer in the thought behind Aerosmith’s “Eat the Rich” and one of my favorite dreams is driving to work one morning seeing assholes in custom tailored suits hanging from every telephone pole the whole way to downtown St. Paul. The first thing I thought of when I read about Bezos’ boat was hoping for a spontaneous hurricane to sink him and everyone he knows in the deepest part of the ocean and the second was wondering if we could take up a collection to pay China to torpedo the damn thing. Maybe he could invite his butt-buddies Musk and DeSantis to do their interview on the boat during hurricane season? </font></p> <iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o-0lAhnoDlU" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-41100068667842680342023-06-04T18:28:00.001-05:002023-06-04T18:28:25.068-05:00It’s Not My Problem/Business<p><font size="3" face="Arial">A friend on Facebook recently asked about the relevance of Yelp (and other user-style volunteer) reviews. He said, “To me the content feels like collated, anonymous hearsay.<strong>” </strong>Of course, the alternative would be the paid </font><a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2018/03/my-product-review-philosophy.html" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">professional/political-announcement style reviews</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> we should all be taking with a block of salt in magazines, blogs, television, the internet, and newspapers. Having read and written product and performance reviews since I was 13, when I submitted a whiny little-kid letter to Downbeat Magazine that the editor mistook for a “review” and published it as such, I usually apply more weight to end-user reviews than to “professional” opinions, unless there is technical content involved. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Opinions are, as everyone knows, like assholes. On a weirdly-weighted site like Amazon, I look at the negative reviews first to get the “bad news” over with, then the middle-weighted reviews for the whole picture, and, rarely, scan the paid 5-star reviews to see what the company line might be. I still get misled occasionally, but not as often as I would if I just looked at the overall star-count or read the pointless 5-star reviews. </font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Lots of <a href="http://cyneats.com/why-business-owners-hate-yelp-and-consumers-love-it/" target="_blank">people and businesses don’t like the end-user review system</a>, from </font><a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/04/student-evaluations-of-college-professors-are-biased-and-worthless.html" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">academics</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> to </font><a href="https://chair10marketing.com/reputation-management/why-small-business-owners-hate-yelp/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">small business</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> and services to </font><a href="https://hbr.org/2007/06/companies-and-the-customers-who-hate-them" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">giant monopolies like Amazon</font></a><font face="Arial"><font size="3">. That, of course, doesn’t mean that these reviews are wrong or even particularly effective in affecting business behavioral change. The thinner the skin and the more aggrieved the business response, most likely, the more accurate a negative review probably is. </font></font></p> <p><font face="Arial"><font size="3">For example, an acquaintance of my friend wrote, "As a restaurant/bar owner I believe there really isn't a reason for these type of sites. If you are a decent, strong human being, if there is a problem you will always speak in person, in private, to the manager or owner, because you care about the business and you care about its employees that need jobs and you want to see the business do well. If everything is great you can always give a good review on your own social media platforms. . .” </font></font></p> <p><font face="Arial"><font size="3">This reminds me of a similar experience I had in a vocational class a few years ago and I wrote about that in “<a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-quality-feedback-really-works.html" target="_blank">How Quality Feedback Really Works</a>” </font><font size="3">and I kept beating that horse with <font size="3">"<a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2015/10/quality-in-disposable-world.html" target="_blank">Quality in the Disposable World.</a></font><font size="3">" </font>I summarized my take on customer feedback, “Small quantity (boutique) production and service businesses don’t have access to actual numbers and formal inspection procedures and if they rely on customer complaints for feedback they are committing business suicide. In fact, the only way a small business can get any kind of information about customer satisfaction is to hunt for it. When someone cares enough about the product or its performance to complain, a conscious customer service tech should take that complaint seriously and to heart. The 1% of your customer base who care enough about your product or their expectations to complain are rare and valuable. If you choose to ignore them, don’t complain when your customer base makes its buying decisions solely on price and delivery. You have informed them through your actions that you don’t give a shit about their expectations and the result is that they won’t care about you or your company’s survival.” But that requires the owner of the business to actually care about something other than convenience and income and that is rare as hens’ retirement plans. </font></font></p> <font size="3" face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">After working for a half-dozen small companies during the first 20 years of my career, I decided to actively pursue Intel CEO Andy Grove’s advice, "<em>Each individual must build the kind of career strength that makes him or her marketable. No matter where you work, you are not an employee. You are in a business with one employer - yourself, in competition with millions of similar businesses worldwide. . . Nobody owes you a career - you own it as a sole proprietor. And the key to survival is to learn to add more value everyday</em>.“ An addition I tacked to that advice was a tactic I ended up needing to pay attention to way too often, “I have no reason to care more about this business that the people who have the most to gain from its survival.” I augmented that rule with “I am not going to make another nitwit into a millionaire.” (In those first 20 years, I rescued three circling-the-toilet companies from their owners’ worst instincts and two of them were sold for a substantial profit soon after I left and one went back to old habits and soon vanished from corporate history. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">A slight, but very helpful (to me) variation on that 2nd rule is “I will not be a manager in a dysfunctional business.” My <a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2017/09/another-brick-falls-out-of-wall.html" target="_blank">30-day stint as manufacturing and engineering manager for a trainwreck of a company in Indiana</a> put the nail into that rule that has stuck since. Not volunteering for a “promotion” into middle management freed my energy and time so that, eventually, I was able to put my whole self into three one-man service businesses that I ran between 2000 and 2015 (when I retired the last of those companies) and my paid hobby as a Minnesota State Motorcycle Safety Instructor (from which I retired in 2018). </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">So, not only do I believe there is some value in end-user goods and services reviews, I think they are a business’ best (and sometimes only) chance to know what your customers really think of you. Ignore them at your own risk. Many have and many have died as a result. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-77220631043647670302023-05-15T11:37:00.001-05:002023-05-15T11:37:26.390-05:00I Most Likely Will Back Down (and so will you)<p><font size="3" face="Arial">A friend’s comment about Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” came at an interesting time for me. A few weeks ago, I was describing to some acquaintances how roughly 60-years ago I had decided to quit being a punching bag for every bully in western Kansas who’d flunked one of my father’s math classes. Petty’s song came up in that discussion.</font></p> <font face="Arial"></font> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I am a high school math teacher’s oldest kid. Every half-wit who failed one of my father’s tests and classes went hunting for someone to pay back for that insult and I was usually that someone. By the time I was 12 I’d learned how to straighten my own broken nose after some high school bastard had bent it for me. In my 40s, living in Colorado, breathing through my mouth became a problem due to the dry air and I signed up for nasal reconstruction surgery. After the surgery was done, my doc dropped in to the recovery room to see how I was doing and she said, “If I’d known how many times you nose had been broken, I’d have booked the surgical theater for a couple more hours.” I wish she had, too, because a few days later one of her patches hemorrhaged and a lot of her work was ruined by the inflatable Foley catheter that was inserted to stop the bleeding. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">When I was somewhere between 16 and 17, I made the personal decision to never be in another “fight.” If I was forced to fight, it would be a war. And the war wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead or completely incapacitated to the point the fight could <strong><em>not ever</em></strong> be restarted. I had been picked on and pounded so many times that I was at the point that I no longer cared if I lived or died during the next assault. I just wanted to know that fight would never occur again and to make it clear that I wouldn’t quit until either I or the other guy was incapacitated. I didn’t mean at that moment, either. I planned on going back repeatedly until there was a final resolution. Picture the Monty Python Black Knight from <em>The Holy Grail </em>as an example of my 60-years-ago decision. </font></p> <iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2eMkth8FWno" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Almost immediately after coming to that decision, I was assaulted by some asshole railroad worker on my way home from work. I had to cross Dodge’s railroad tracks on my way from school or work to where I lived at the time, a trailer in south Dodge. Pretty much every day, I had to put up with some redneck asshole shouting “Is that a boy or a girl?” or worse. This time, I was out of patience and in a bad mood and I shouted back, “Why don’t you find out, asshole?” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">An oversized human beach ball dropped down from one of the flat cars and started waddling toward me. He was probably 40-something, about my height and about wide as he was tall. Due to his weight and character, the man stomped toward me as bow-legged as a real cowboy. When he got within punting range, I drop kicked his nuts most of the way to his throat. I left him squealing and writhing on the tracks between north and south Dodge. I never saw him again and never again heard the usual catcalls when I walked home. For the next 30 years, every squabble I was ever in ended without fists or dropkicks. Some were close to violence, but none went that far. <font size="3" face="Arial">But I’m old now and don’t have whatever it was that created that kind of resolve to win or die. Today, I’d likely back down and/or look for an escape route. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">In a similar story, my friend Scott Jarrett has been “a musician” his whole life, from 15 to now, when he is 70. His life-long commitment to be a musician at all costs is no longer something he can manage. For some years, he’s complained that his ex-students were getting the gigs he used to almost automatically get. Now, they aren’t even asking him to try out and that is partially because he is no longer all-in-competing for every paying job. It’s not that he doesn’t need the income, he just can’t find whatever motivation that is required to go balls-out trying to win those gigs/fights. Life is competitive and most of the competition is won by the young, simply because they have less to lose and way more resources to commit to winning. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial"><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1_ukKIhk_uzPZRWOqMUoJjkqlR5CFNmgL"><img title="fat militia" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="fat militia" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1PIKWqbBIfw3elJPFpcpPBm6k7isgBLX0" width="274" align="left" height="156" /></a> <p>That “Won’t Back Down” thing is only credible as a young man’s declaration. First, as an old fart the odds that I will survive any sort of physical confrontation vanishes rapidly into my ancient history. Which is why it is so funny to watch all of the decrepit Trumpers thump their chubby chests in faux-defiance of “the system” from which they are so dependent. Most of those lilly-white entitled toddlers are as far from being fighters as they are from being intellectuals. Take away their Social Security or disability checks and they are homeless and begging for spare change. But they won’t know who they are until they pass the moment-of-truth when it is too late to turn back. </p> </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-86945759615514817832023-04-14T14:21:00.001-05:002023-04-14T14:21:28.534-05:00Work vs Jobs vs Mission<p><font size="3" face="Arial">A lot of young people in tech jobs have recently discovered how little loyalty their previous employers held for their employees. As usual, a lot of millennials think they are the first group to experience this horror. Kiddies, you aren’t. I doubt there has ever been a generation who was happily surprised to discover their masters were willing to make sacrifices to keep the minions fed. Modern government jobs are probably the closest thing to that kind of situation, but that is only because in a socialist system everyone in the system shares in the funding of the system. In a public education system pension, for example, if the retired teachers don’t get paid the retired bureaucrats don’t get paid. In business, except the CEO and a few other C’s who will always get their golden parachutes, there is no such thing as “us” or “them”; it’s just “me” and everyone else. When you work for a corporation, it is a gross mistake to imagine “we’re all in this together.” Corporations, by design, are everyman and woman for themselves. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I do have sympathy for all of the young people recently dumped from their “dream jobs.” Been there, done that, and worse. The “worse” was being middle-management and being told to layoff my employees. The firs time in my life I was drunk was when I was in my early 30s, in the late 1970s, and I had just finished the slow painful dissolution of my test engineering department at <a href="https://www.valmont.com/" target="_blank">Valmont Industries</a>. For three months, the company mismanagement kept telling us “this will be the last layoff” and, a week later, we were handed another list of employees to get rid of. For me, this was the first of a fairly long list of engineering jobs but for several of my friends and coworkers it was the end of the brief rise in their career paths. A couple of weeks later, my boss laid me off and, later that day, he was handed his notice. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I had no “mission” at Valmont. It was just a reasonably well-paying job near a reasonable tolerable Nebraska small city where my wife had picked our next house. The economy in Nebraska and all of the country’s agricultural areas was in rapid decline and our small city, Fremont, was especially hard-hit when Valmont laid off 1,600 employees, Campbell Soup closed their canning facility, two packing plants shutdown and moved to non-union states, and the city practically closed down for the duration of the recession (well into the 90s). There was no Reagan “economic miracle” or any other kind of miracle to save us. We managed to “sell” our house for a substantial loss, including giving the “buyers” $5,000 under-the-table for their down-payment. I took another awful tech job in Omaha, which lasted until my new employer asked me to layoff my best employees because the were “overqualified.” I quit, instead, and wrote this song the night I decided to leave that job, “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1WXgHybLZtxj6Kb9VxQRXj" target="_blank">I’m Gonna Quit</a>.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Over the next 40 years, I went through 11 employers and discovered whatever “mission” my life was going to have in the process. Like soldiers in battle, there is no such thing as patriotism or fealty to king and country, there is only loyalty among peers and “the unit” within the organization. Having any kind of emotional attachment to any larger entity is foolish and in most organizations (using that term loosely) you have to watch your back even around your peers. Functioning teams are a rarity. Most departments are organized around defending management from responsibility and unnecessary (anytime the buck can be passed) effort. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I think mostly by accident, I have been blessed to be part of a half-dozen teams, probably amounting to a total of 15 years out of my 50-year career. The other 35 years were spent earning a living in a “job.” In many ways, I learned more useful lessons in the jobs than in the functioning work situations: sometimes seeing how not to do a job is more valuable than examples of excellence. I believe the key to that whole “mission” thing is to have one for yourself, totally separate and even isolated from your job. I have always advocated “The best time to start looking for a new job is when you start a new job.” Your “career” and your “mission” are to constantly be updating, improving, and fine-tuning your skills and taking care of yourself. Your employer almost certainly holds no loyalty to you other than the expectation that assigned work will be completed as expected. You should also expect fair and reasonable treatment, but you should not be surprised if that ends suddenly, unsentimentally, and without notice. Corporations, contrary to foolish assertions by our Extreme Court, are not people although they may be psychopathic and sociopathic. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-40858568481838778732023-04-10T11:59:00.006-05:002023-04-23T09:41:57.396-05:00Banned by Amazon’s Robocops<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3A4CWfVQWk1DDn3JO1y6i4Uta8iOK4u3TmNLGt4tXaUY5hnCvDwHx_LN06yVMm1rwkoLEVmn9cd3w_T9q-Ro4EUOFWpMhzammTvFq9AiaNW5X79MauZclaAi1yMzHdHUD0r7H1r646T6l8r9yGdiLIL8KxYruo3LT5hQdpKW8wFeC88Idgb_cH1H/s1200/amazon_bot.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1200" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3A4CWfVQWk1DDn3JO1y6i4Uta8iOK4u3TmNLGt4tXaUY5hnCvDwHx_LN06yVMm1rwkoLEVmn9cd3w_T9q-Ro4EUOFWpMhzammTvFq9AiaNW5X79MauZclaAi1yMzHdHUD0r7H1r646T6l8r9yGdiLIL8KxYruo3LT5hQdpKW8wFeC88Idgb_cH1H/w404-h202/amazon_bot.jpg" width="404" /></a></div><p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><b><i>April 10, 2023</i></b> This past Friday I received an email from Amazon titled “Unusual Reviewing Behavior.” The message inside was, <font><font>“<i>We apologize but Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a result, all reviews submitted by this account have been removed and this account will no longer be able to contribute reviews and other content on Amazon. If you would like to learn more, please see our </i></font></font><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201929730"><i><font>community guidelines</font></i></a><i><font>. To contact us about this decision, please email </font></i><a href="mailto:community-help@amazon.com"><i><font>community-help@amazon.com</font></i></a><font><font><i>.” </i>If you’re bored enough to follow that “community guidelines” link you’ll discover it is almost as helpful as FEMA under a Republican administration. That description applies to all of the communications I’ve ever seen from Amazon, too. The company is so big that it no longer feels any need to communicate with its customers. </font></font></font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font><font><font>In the past twelve months, I’d received two notices from Amazon’s “bot algorithm” claiming that “You have repeatedly posted content that violates our Community Guidelines (available at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines">http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines</a>) or Conditions of Use ( <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088)">https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088)</a>.” There was no indication of where I had “repeatedly” violated anything and since I used to regularly review music, books, and occasional products I was in the dark. I responded to their “community-help” robot with “If you don’t have a system to help identify what you call a violation for users, how do you expect anyone to self-correct?” And that has been the end of our “communications.” Of course, in the lazy-robo-programmer tradition, there was no way for me to identify what review Amazon’s robot was objecting to, so examining what it was that the bot objected to was impossible. . However, as an obvious “libtard” I suspect the actual objection came when some wingnut “reported” one of my book or movie reviews and inappropriate or some other typical snowflake objection. </font></font></font></font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">For a fact, I know that Amazon’s ‘bot wasn’t activated by an excessive number of positive reviews. I almost never give anything a 5-star review and <a href="https://theratseyeblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/when-liars-use-numbers.html" target="_blank">I almost never think anything, product-person-or-organization rates an “excellent” rating</a>. Likewise, I rarely give 1-star ratings. Again, not many things are outright awful. I do review a fair number of books that I’ve checked out of my local libraries through Kindle. So my “verified buyer” numbers do not correlate to my book reviews. But after the first Amazon threat of banning, I have contained my book and movie reviews to the Minneapolis Public Library system. </font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font><font><font>Amazon is obviously overwhelmed by the outcome of their AI review “analysis” and banishing pogrom. It seems that there should be a substantial backlash to the company’s actions and I suspect there has been. <font>There has been a sudden rash of complaints about this robocop-crap and you’ll find an almost unlimited number of people wondering what is going on at Amazon on diverse sites from the <a href="https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00006zKG0xSAG/wont-let-me-leave-customer-reviews" target="_blank">amazonforum.com</a> to <a href="https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/anyone-else-banned-from-leaving-amazon-reviews.2333895/" target="_blank">forums.macrumors.com</a> to <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Amazon-say-We-apologize-but-Amazon-has-noticed-some-unusual-reviewing-activity-on-this-account" target="_blank">quora.com</a> to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/v5ejq6/banned_from_reviewing/">reddit.com</a> to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-banned-thousands-reviewer-accounts-data-2018-10">businessinsider.com</a> to <a href="https://landingcube.com/amazon-deleting-reviews/">Amazon’s own vendors</a> who complain about informative reviews disappearing. </font></font></font></font></font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">For me, this forced a self-admission that I have been lazy and this has been a wake-up call. A little on-line searching and I found all sorts of substitutes for Amazon’s dismal service including <a href="http://rakuten.com">Rakuten.com</a>, <a href="http://walmart.com" target="_blank">Walmart.com</a>, <a href="http://AliExpress." target="_blank">AliExpress.</a>com, and for a few extra pennies I started going direct to some of the vendors I’d bought from through Amazon in the past, especially my subscription services. <font>This wake-up call comes at a pretty interesting time for me, too. Looking back at my last year of Amazon purchases I discovered that I’ve returned about 1/4 of the semi-major purchases I’ve made with the monolith due to defects, obviously previous use, and gross mislabeling either by Amazon or the vendor. Electronics from Amazon is almost consistently a bad bet.I have had far better results with electronics from <a href="http://NewEgg.com">NewEgg.com</a>. NewEgg's customer service is terrific and the people who do customer reviews on NewEgg are technically competent. <br /></font></font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font></font></font></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpOjldUm8rwuMvDdhRaZINs_TlYdQYAgat8K8Wf3JDedf-Qy9sD2bPLw0G1T6ni0r-uwIaN3r8h3R6s2CLqsQ7fv3HdelJvDazNck3h7obnYJk00SlNAKS7K8iI4YhmsdBXaQcJPnqL6A5i5_CDgAKM4YWGZaXj91MB6fR4knNZSETblF5kEuDImj/s663/Pan.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="663" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpOjldUm8rwuMvDdhRaZINs_TlYdQYAgat8K8Wf3JDedf-Qy9sD2bPLw0G1T6ni0r-uwIaN3r8h3R6s2CLqsQ7fv3HdelJvDazNck3h7obnYJk00SlNAKS7K8iI4YhmsdBXaQcJPnqL6A5i5_CDgAKM4YWGZaXj91MB6fR4knNZSETblF5kEuDImj/s320/Pan.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is an example of damaged or <br />used stuff Amazon's Chinese vendors<br />ship to US customers. I had to cancel<br />payment through my bank to get <br />Amazon to refund this purchase. <br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font>I’d suspect that a lot of Asian vendors are dumping their junk inventory on Amazon <a href="https://theratseyeblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/stpthe-canaries-in-coal-mine.html" target="_blank">under the safe assumption that Americans who are lazy enough to buy online are also too lazy to complain</a> when their purchases are defective or damaged or even “previously owned.” 25% defects is a terrible batting average and a friend who gave up on Amazon a few years ago swears that the stuff he gets from <a href="http://aliexpress./" target="_blank">AliExpress</a> is consistently better quality and far cheaper than any similar products coming from Amazon. It makes sense, since almost everything Amazon sells is made in China and the things that aren’t made in China are available directly from those companies. </font></font><p></p><p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font>Again, why wouldn’t Chinese companies dump their junk through Amazon and sell their good stuff directly through their own outlets? That is how the long, sad history of vanishing American manufacturing has gone since the 70s and, now, we may be seeing the same thing happen to American retail. If I were in their shoes, that’s what I’d be doing. I makes no sense to be building a brand for another country or business. Remember <a href="https://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/ManufacturersSony3.html">Superscope </a>from the 1960s? I didn't think so. </font></font></p><p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><font><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/style/amazon-abstainers.html">Living without Amazon</a> is a lot easier than I suspected. I <a href="https://www.honestlymodern.com/quit-amazon-prime/">gave up on Prime </a>a couple of years ago because their video selection was pitiful and I almost never got anything in less than 3-4 days, regardless of their 2-day shipping promise. There are all sorts of articles about <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90678885/what-its-really-like-to-quit-amazon">ditching Prime</a>: "<a href="https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/boycott-amazon-prime/">How to Officially Break Up with Amazon</a>" is a terrific primer on how to wean yourself from Amazon's clickbait. Buying from Amazon is bad for your local economy and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390">the company treats its employees like crap</a>, so everything about Amazon is bad karma. Like dumping Twitter and Facebook, the longer I stay away from Amazon the better I feel about that decision. I think this is going to be a beautiful non-relationship. <br /></font></font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-23791712510332349392023-03-04T19:49:00.001-06:002023-03-04T19:49:14.634-06:00CEO Salaries vs Value and Competence<p><font size="3" face="Arial">A few weeks ago, I stumbled into a bizarre discussion about Apple CEO Tim Cook’s 2023 salary “cut” (from $83 million in stock awards, $12 million in incentives and $3 million in salary to $49 million in total compensation for 2023). I argued that it would be impossible for one person to be worth anything near Cook’s 2023 income, let alone the insane compensation he received in 2022. A couple of “CEOs” (“Chief Extortion Officers”) argued that Cook should be compensated based on Apple’s performance (Since “Cook took over as CEO in 2011, Apple stock has returned 1,212% versus 290% for the S&P 500”). </font><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickskrepetos/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">One self-described CEO</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> wrote, “When you look at how much his salary is compared to the worth of the company, he's being paid a small % of the worth of the company he's leading and his guidance and decisions are what drives the company and shares.”</font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Cook has been compensated with well over a billion dollars since 2011. I would argue that, mostly, the company’s performance represents how repressed the engineers and designers had been under Jobs’ deranged “leadership” and general megalomania. As for stock value, Apple stock is valued at 10X it’s 2011 price which is impressive but not anything close to exceptional for tech companies during that period. I’ve known and “worked with” (in quotes, because none of the CEOs I know ever did a moment of productive work) a solid dozen CEOs from $20-50M/year to $500,000,000/year corporations and I have yet to see any of them do anything that would positively effect the company’s bottom line. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I am entertained by the idea a CEO’s compensation should be based on the company’s performance or value. It’s pretty obvious that the flotsam and jetsam that bobs to the top in the sewers of corporate politics <strong><em>never</em></strong> make that argument when their companies’ stock tanks. This is just more of the Harvard MBA “pull credit up and push blame down” tactic. If there were a financial connection between CEO performance and income, there would be a bunch of ex-CEOs littering the nation’s homeless camps. </font></p> <p><a href="https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/john-carreyrou-joins-the-new-york-times,242570" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">John Carreyrou’s</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> <em>Bad Blood: Secrets and Lines in a Silicon Valley Startup </em>tells a different kind of story about the kind of halfwit who floats to the top of corporate toilet bowls. Assuming you don’t believe that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes" target="_blank">Elizabeth Holmes</a> exerted some kind of magical witchcraft on the susceptible minds of executives from Safeway, Walgreens, the US Army’s General James Mattis, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Jim Mattis, Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, the DeVos family including Betsy DeVos, the Cox family of Cox Enterprises, Carlos Slim Helú, Larry Ellison and several dozen tech-venture capitalists, a passel of idle rich wannabes, and way too many technical employees who should have known better, it’s pretty obvious that most rich people got that way through luck. Holmes only “qualification” as a biotech entrepreneur was her physical attractiveness and some pretty shaky presentation skills. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">50 years ago, I was a young, gullible electronics tech who fell for the promises of an employer who eventually ripped me off for several tens of thousands of dollars. For a couple of years I worked closely with this character, following him to trade shows, county and state fairs, and on-site watching him con all sorts of customers (all rich farmers and ranchers) into equipment they didn’t need and would never figure out how to use. Often, at the fairs, my boss would wander around the other vendor booths and he’d buy the dumbest shit. In the end, I realized that (like most salespeople) he believed his own bullshit and when he heard the same lines from someone else he’d fall for it every time. His main “skill” was being in the right place at the right time with a big pile of cash his father had handed him in hopes that he’d find his idle way in the world. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">As I read <em>Bad Blood</em>, I saw my small town boss over and over again. Except now he was wearing handmade Italian suits, driving overpriced cars, and taking meetings where he’d hear presentations from people who didn’t know what they were talking about, but that wasn’t a problem for him because he never knew what he was talking about either. Hundreds of millions of dollars flowed out of the hands of these rich farmboys (and girls) into the hands of a couple of con artists pretending to be sophisticated biotech engineers. Worse, they weren’t even doing a good job of pretending to be engineers or biologists. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">George Santos is another example of how easily the so-called “sophisticated” crowd can be fooled. It wasn’t just the usual bimbo Republicans who fell for that bumbling con artist. The so-called, self-styled sophisticates of New York’s Long Island were easily duped by a dude who couldn’t sell watches in a Midwestern shopping mall. So if you are intelligent enough to realize that you were conned by Ronnie Reagan, G.W. Bush & Co, or Maralardo, don’t feel bad. You’re in the “good” company of the nation’s oldest, richest, and most educated “talent.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">An un-surprising postscript about the Theranos scam is that neither Holmes or her chubby Indian co-conspirator, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, have spent a day in jail, as yet. Supposedly, Holmes will surrender to prison authorities sometime in April for an 11 year sentence. In the meantime, she’s puking out her 2nd baby and living the high life at her $135 million Silicon Valley estate. She supposedly married William "Billy" Evans, an idle rich heir to the Evans Hotel Group, and they’ve spawned two pups. She used her 2nd spawning to put off her trip to prison after she and Evans failed to pull of a one-way trip to Mexico before sentencing. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-57521659348513076472023-03-02T11:49:00.001-06:002023-03-02T11:49:58.258-06:00Republicans–The Cult of the Unremarkable Boys<p><font size="3" face="Arial">In an excellent Atlantic Magazine article titled “</font><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/lost-boys-violent-narcissism-angry-young-men/672886/?ref=peacefield" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">," lays out a pretty good description of the kind of sour-grapes losers who have been overpopulating the planet and coalesced around the Republican Party since Goldwater was electorally slaughtered by L.B.J. The Karl Roves, Fox Views talking-heads, Dick Cheneys, Rush Limbaughs, Jerry Falwells, Jack Kemps, and Oliver Norths grew up to become the spoiled boys’ elder-faux-statesmen. Those angry old men spawned the current crop of non-achieving boys who chant “you won’t replace us” at least 25 years after their ilk was replaced by everything from educated working women and immigrants to robots <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1X0RD788bLlk182Hul1DDG2NVRb1L1aIR"><img title="female impersonator" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="female impersonator" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1reVT1SSKejR8LPoQlG-PF0GZlWmzaeuw" width="133" align="right" height="140" /></a>to ditch-digging and farm equipment. There has never been much of a need for excess quantities of Y-chromosomes but the over-populated, high-technological world of today has less need of cannon fodder than ever before in human history. <font size="3" face="Arial">And cannon fodder is all this kind of male (and some females and female impersonators, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=crazy+georgia+representative" target="_blank">Marjorie Taylor Greene</a> for example) are capable of being at the "best." Anyone dumb enough to think a mask is supposed to be worn like a gag is clearly on the far left side of the IQ distribution curve. </font></font></p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Who Are the Proud Boys? Canada Names Far-Right Group a Terrorist Organization - WSJ" src="https://images.wsj.net/im-281099?width=1280&size=1.33333333" width="365" align="left" height="274" /></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">If these uneducated, unskilled goobers aren’t being mindlessly thrown at an opposing hoard of equally useless characters they are causing destruction, instability, and pointless violence against people who do have a purpose. Of course, they don’t need and shouldn’t have anything more dangerous than sharp weapons and a flag to wave as they mow each other down. This pack of mommas’-basement-dwelling goobers are littering up the landscape and causing infinitely more trouble than they could possibly be worth. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Sadly for the country and, likely, the world, these spoiled children found their leader in an equally childish Toddler-in-Chief Trump and he has become the role model for losers, whiners, failures, and angry children everywhere. It’s hard to see a way back from this over-population derivative without some serious assistance from nature or an engineered pandemic and the goober-resistance to medical and scientific advice. Their infestation is beyond politics and rational behavior is just wishful thinking. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-61480118014167228332023-01-25T15:58:00.001-06:002023-01-25T15:58:37.155-06:00STP–The Canaries in the Coal Mine<p><font size="3" face="Arial">Back in 2014, when we first moved to Red Wing, we joined the local YMCA. It’s a fairly nice facility for a small town and it seemed to be welcoming. That was typical of my experience with Minnesota Twin Cities (</font><a href="https://www.ymcanorth.org/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">YMCA of the North</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial">) organizations. I had been a downtown St. Paul YMCA member, transferred to the Roseville facility, since we moved to Minnesota in 1996 and, as of 2013, my </font><a href="https://tools.silversneakers.com/" target="_blank"><font size="3" face="Arial">Medicare health insurance Silver Sneakers benefit</font></a><font size="3" face="Arial"> began to pay for my membership. So, it seemed logical to transfer my membership to my new residence. The paperwork went smoothly and in late November we began to enjoy our new facility . . . for about a month. In late December, the Red Wing YMCA quietly announced (louder for those of us who were effected) that it would no longer accept Silver Sneakers payments and even acknowledged that it was the only YMCA in the state to make that move. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">At least in our situation, the only real benefit to the Red Wing YMCA was the swimming pool. We have a small gym in our basement, complete with an excellent treadmill, stationary bicycle, weights, and resistance bands. We have no reason to leave our home for those things, which I discovered by transferring my Silver Sneakers membership to the local Anytime Fitness where I used it a couple of times and let it lapse. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">For a bit, I attempted to carry on a dialog with the Y’s management (Tom Burke, Martha Harris, and Mike Melstad) and a member of the board (Barb Haley) who all claimed to have a solid, demonstrable financial reason for the Silver Sneakers decision, but were all completely unable or unwilling to produce any of it. I suspect when they learned I have a background in manufacturing accounting, ROI justification, and quality management they decided to keep their “secret calculations” secret. I was supposed to believe they’d done a thorough financial analysis which had provided justification for their decision. I am rarely inclined to trust any kind of management decision logic, based on my long history with incompetent, lazy, uninformed, overpaid, and mostly-useless management types. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">This past December, the Red Wing YMCA management decided to re-evaluate and reverse their Silver Sneakers decision. They were pretty quiet about it, but I lucked into the inspiration to ask on January 1, 2023 and discovered they’d be allowing Silver Sneakers compensation starting the next day. While I was either getting registered, watching my wife get re-enrolled, or watching a half-dozen other old farts get signed up under the new policy, I heard the same pool-schedule spiel fed to each of us: the best time to swim and to avoid crowds was between 2PM and 4PM. So, I’ve been taking advantage of my new membership fairly regularly for the last 3 weeks. Yesterday, I showed for for my routine and discovered, thanks to a tiny sign printed on the door to the pool (after changing and showering) that the pool hours would be limited 4:15 to 8:30PM. I wasn’t the only surprised bait-and-switch victim, as there were two other new members in the dressing room who were at least as pissed as me. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I thought about bitching about yet another snow-job experience from the Red Wing YMCA, but I decided it is no longer worth it to me. Mrs. Day and I have been discussing the pros and cons of staying in Red Wing and Minnesota for the last couple of winters and I’m just going to put the local YMCA in the “cons” category and let someone else worry about it. “Fixing” systems, organizations, and processes was my career for 50+ years. I’m retired and don’t care enough to fix much of anything now. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">This all reminded me of a conversation I had with the <a href="https://reverb.com/news/guitar-brands-that-came-back-from-the-dead" target="_blank">Washburn</a> quality manager in 1991, during my 30-day moment of unhappy employment with that company. I wrote about this in a 2015 essay titled “<a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2015/10/quality-in-disposable-world.html" target="_blank">Quality in A Disposable World</a>” after a similar conversation with a Red Wing Southeast Technical College instructor. In that essay, I wrote, “Like a lot of small business people, my instructor was under the delusion that customers will naturally complain if they are disappointed with service or product quality. Many larger companies are equally happy to pretend that they are getting 100% ‘compliance’ from dissatisfied customers. The fact is that most customers simply log their dissatisfaction and tell themselves they will remember to never buy that particular company’s product or service again. Most company executives are perfectly happy with that outcome.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The Washburn service manager explained to me that the company’s complaints system dealt with customers fairly ruthlessly (efficiently?). He said, “the company shipped product with a known 50% defect rate, based off of the internal random inspection data from a few years back (<em>Since they quit inspections after a few months, product quality had probably gotten worse.).</em> From a suspected 50% defect rate, about 1% of the company’s customers complained, expecting some sort of warranty response. If they stonewalled that first complaint, about 1% of the first 1% would come back for more abuse. No special inspection was done for warranty replacement instruments, so at least 50% of the replacements were also defective out-of-the-box. According to the manager, that 1%-of-1% routine applied to warranty replacement complaints.” So, with <strong>a known 50% defect rate</strong>, Washburn only provided some kind of warranty service (the first time) on <strong>0.5%</strong> of shipped product. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">In a similar vein, someone who was once involved in Red Wing’s city management explained how the city’s civil service bureaucracy blew off citizen comments and complaints with an acronym, "STP = same three people.”  The arrogant, simple-minded idea was that the few members of the public who contested or complained about the top-down city management decisions could be dismissed with this delusion. Red Wing is a very small town, 16,000 people and steadily shrinking (especially in average incomes), with a huge budget and a voracious appetite for insane growth through mindless annexation (41.41 square miles, so far). Minneapolis, with 425,000 residents, is contained in 57.51 square miles. Red Wing city management also has an outsized view of the “value” of city employees, based solely on what the city employees can get away with (often by ignoring the STP). <a href="https://sahanjournal.com/climate-environment/prairie-island-indian-community-nuclear-concern-powers-new-emissions-plan/" target="_blank">Xcel’s Prairie Island Power Plants</a> are the city’s main property tax contributor and those plants are likely to be phased out in the next decade. Eventually, that unrestrained spending will result in exorbitant local taxes and a <a href="https://www.nj.com/politics/2022/07/a-tale-of-2-cities.html" target="_blank">rapid Atlantic City-style evacuation of the area</a> by everyone who can afford to take a loss to find a more secure place to live. (<a href="https://theratseyeblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/getting-out-while-you-can-call-yourself.html" target="_blank">Remember the rule, the first rats to leave the ship are the ones who can swim</a>.)</font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Like the Washburn quality manager and the Red Wing YMCA management, the Red Wing city bureaucrats labor under the delusion that the 3 or 4 citizens who regularly comment and/or complain about the city’s services, expenses, or decisions only represent themselves. In fact, that small group is very likely representative of at least half of the local residents. They are consistently the “canaries in the coal mine.” The poor treatment they receive from the bureaucrats likely keeps the rest of the locals from voicing their opinions, until they vote with their feet and give up on the city. Red Wing’s growth has been anemic, at best, for the entire 163 year life of the city, falling far behind the national population growth and that of the state’s major cities. That failure isn’t for lack of natural resources,opportunity, or even representation in state and federal government.</font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-74927392336117145902023-01-20T13:19:00.001-06:002023-01-20T13:19:20.654-06:00Going Outdoors<p><font size="3" face="Arial">A few day ago I disposed of some of my 50-year-old camping gear (all still in excellent condition, if well-worn) as a gift to a friend. While we were sorting through the gear he asked, “When did you start camping?” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The answer depends on what you call “camping.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">His definition was “Sleeping outside, overnight, in a tent or on the ground.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">That would be my answer, too, but that puts my solo camping age at about 13. My parents were fairly fundamentalist Methodists and insisted that their motley hoard of kids and step-kids to go church every Sunday for a minimum of 3 painful, pointless, irrational hours. I was functionally an atheist from about 9 on, after my mother died painfully and terribly from liver cancer at 34. I particularly disliked my parents’ church because the members were absolutely cynical about the contradiction between the “money-changers in the temple” and the cars, appliances, houses, and other crap that was being bought-and-sold before,during, and after the services. Kansas Christians are, at best, a confusing lot. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Not long after my family moved to a new development in the north end of town (the far north at the time), I discovered that the two “adults” in our family were what I would later learn are “classic Republicans.” They had, literally, no sense of proportion; especially when it came to punishment. From being beaten to being grounded to losing various privileges (of which there were few-to-none), the punishment was pretty much uniform relative to the crime. Leave a sock on the laundry room floor, get smacked, screamed at, and banished to your room. Skip school for a day, get smacked, screamed at, and banished to your room. Run away to Kansas City for a long weekend to watch jazz bands on 13th Street until the cops caught me, called my parents, and put me on a bus back home,get smacked, screamed at, and banished to my room. I learned fairly early, might as well go big if I’m going at all. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">There were a collection of the remnants of abandoned and demolished buildings, from the Saint Mary of the Plains College that was destroyed by a tornado in 1942, across the highway from our development. One side of the highway was a bunch of middle class houses and the other was a field with some scrubby cottonwoods and lots of weeds and a scattering of exposed basements from whatever building was there before a tornado ripped it down to ground level. Once I discovered those hiding places, it was only a matter of time before I decided to risk the uniform-punishment-treatment for a peaceful evening and a day without religious nonsense. My room was in the basement and I could easily scramble out my bedroom window late Saturday night, shut the window from the outside, sneak into the garage and snag my Boy Scout sleeping bag, my binoculars, a flashlight, and a canvas tarp/ground cloth, and run down the street and across the highway where I hopped the fence and headed for one of the basements that I’d previously made ready for habitation. Earlier in the week, I’d scavenged a short wooden ladder and an end table from a neighbor’s trash and a bunch of candles from our garage and had set out a pile of comic books for entertainment. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I’d spend the night reading comics until I fell asleep in my bag. The sun or cold would wake me up in the morning and I’d watch the street in front of our house until the family station wagon rolled out of the driveway and headed south to church. After a safe margin of time, I’d sneak back home, put away my gear, have breakfast, mess around for a couple of hours, and go to bed and pretend to be asleep when the crowd came home. When one of the “adults” wandered down to look in my room, I’d get smacked, screamed at, and banished to my room. Sometimes there would be an additional chore added to my long list of tasks. No matter what the punishment, it was never as bad as going to church would have been. Over the years it turned into a game, but I could usually outwait my father; and my step-mother didn’t really care if I ever came back. Eventually, they gave up, allowing me to stay home if I cooked Sunday dinner; usually fried chicken. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">The summer I turned 15, I had found a farm job that gave me a whole summer’s cover and a place to stay for the first few weeks of spring. I’d be at the farm for winter wheat harvest and spring planting and guys from the band I was in could come by around mid-May and pick me up for the summer’s tour. During my senior high school year, I stayed in a collection of places from my step-grandparents’ basement to the 20’ trailer I rented when I was working road construction, to a lean-to I built about 5 miles west of Dodge on the Arkansas River. Being underage, I was occasionally hauled back to my father’s home by the cops, but I wandered off fairly quickly and found a new place to hide out during the brief hours the cops would bother looking for me. After my senior year, everyone quit worrying about me and I was on my own from then on. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1459524546662373581.post-30024979764919216512023-01-20T12:59:00.001-06:002023-01-20T12:59:03.952-06:00“You can fix it.”<p><font size="3" face="Arial">This morning in a conversation with an old friend, he brought up a question, “How many people do you think affected through your life?” L.A. “Arnold” Stevenson<sup>1</sup> was my first real employer and, probably, a mentor of sorts. He would have hated that label and I’m not particularly fond of it. Before Arnold, I had held several jobs from age 13 to 23, but my employers and bosses made no more of a mark on me than would have assorted drunks I might have met in a bar. Most of the people I worked for, before Arnold, knew no more about the organizations (loosely using that word) they led (laughably using that word) than anyone on the street at any given moment. Not only would I have not considered them mentors, they were mostly just obstacles to be gotten around in the process of doing my various jobs. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">After about 5 months in a mediocre Dodge City Community College technology program, I realized that the instructor was out of things to teach me and, supposedly, there were 1 1/2 more years of classes that I needed to take for my associates degree. About the time I came to that realization, my wife announced that she was unexpectedly (to me) pregnant. She’d been listening to an unholy collection of Kansas idiot-relatives, both on her side and mine, and decided that having a baby would solve the problem of having to make adult decisions about what to do with her life. Of course, since someone had to take up that slack my own adult decision process went into overdrive. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I’d been working as a part-time electronics technician for a small manufacturing company in Dodge while I went to school and as soon as that employer discovered that I was sending resumes to competitors they offered me a slight salary bump and a large increase in responsibility and increase in hours. While I’d only been at that job for a few months, I was already the department’s “expert,” which was scary on multiple levels. The first level would be that I didn’t know squat about much of anything. I ignored that offer as long as possible and, eventually, my resume landed on the desk of the manager at Oswalt Industries in Hereford, Texas. He passed it on to Arnold, who was running the division’s electronic scales department and who was looking for a technician to handle the office and shop duties while he performed the field service responsibilities. After a brief interview, I was hired and we spent a day locating a place to live and went back home to gather our meager belongings, quit my job, say “goodbye” to our relatives and friends, rent a small U-Haul van, and move ourselves to Texas. I was barely 23 years old and had been on my own for 8 years and the sole support of our family-of-two for 4 years. And life was about to become incredibly complicated. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">For starters, while my new employer had made a big deal out of their benefits, including health insurance, they didn’t bother to point out the fact that my wife’s pregnancy was “a pre-existing condition” that wouldn’t be covered. That would be a several-thousand dollar debt which I’d be paying off with my $2.35/hour salary; which meant a short work-week would be at least 60 hours and more often 80 to 90. Secondly, while I was a “star” with my previous employer I was a rank beginner with Arnold. About a week into my new job, he told me, <font size="3" face="Arial"><font size="3" face="Arial">“If I’d have known how little you knew when I hired you, I’d have never hired you.” I really didn’t know much, either. My previous employer had no service information for the products I’d been repairing and installing. I’d made one attempt to convince our prime supplier that I needed schematics and calibration information which had gotten me a reprimand from both my employer and the supplier’s CEOs. Arnold, on the other hand, had everything I’d asked for and a lot more for every electronic device we serviced. I’d hand-traced schematics for most of the circuit boards and while my drawings were better than nothing, they weren’t absolutely correct and some of my troubleshooting assumptions were wrong as a result. After a rough start, during which I expected to be fired practically every time Arnold came near me, I began to be useful and even got a small raise. </font></font></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Once he decided that I wouldn’t be a waste of his time, Arnold became a constant education. His mantra was something like “Anything any engineer can design, I can improve on.” `That applied to everything from the components we used in circuit repair work to the processes we used in rebuilding electro-mechanical devices to the cable and wire routing on the equipment we installed and repaired. Arnold got his electronics training in the 1950s Air Force, where state-of-the-art electronics met mission-critical applications and at least one technician, Arnold, who never wanted a pilot to die because of something Arnold could have prevented. My on-the-job training with Arnold ended after about a year, because our idiot division manager had made Arnold’s life miserable by scheduling him in several places at the same time, often hundreds of miles apart, and by cluelessly undermining his decisions and authority. Arnold quit and started his own business and after a short pause, hired me to do his in-house repairs in my spare time. Almost immediately, my “spare time” began to produce a lot more income than my day-job. I started to avoid the telephone on weekends, so I could concentrate on the work Arnold gave me instead of the low paid work from my “real job.” </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">On occasion, I’d even do a field job with Arnold, even taking fake “sick days” to free up the time. One of those occasions was when he got a call from one of his customers to look at a newly installed “automated elevator system.” The system came from one of our worst vendors, <a href="https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/0607211" target="_blank">C-G Systems (Colton, CA)</a>, who had installed a complicated half-analog/half-digital system that was intended to monitor, weigh, and deliver premixed cattle feed to feed trucks. Literally, <em><strong>none of the system worked</strong></em> when the C-G engineers packed up and left in the night, abandoning the feedlot owner with a million dollar non-functional system. Arnold brought me along for a walk-through of the new, deader-than-a-doornail facility and he immediately started identifying sections that he thought could be brought to life fairly quickly. This was 1972, when the most advanced digital “technology” available was TTL in 14 and 16-pin DIP packages and A-to-D circuits came from a very few, very expensive manufacturers. Neither Arnold or I had ever worked on digital logic to that moment. So, we took a bunch of notes and went home to do research. We both bought <a href="https://www.amazon.com/TTL-Cookbook-Donald-Lancaster/dp/0672210355" target="_blank">Don Lancaster’s TTL Cookbook</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rtl-Cookbook-Donald-Lancaster/dp/067220715X/ref=sr_1_6?qid=1674234915&refinements=p_27%3ADonald+Lancaster&s=books&sr=1-6&text=Donald+Lancaster" target="_blank">The RTL Cookbook</a>, and Walt Jung’s National Semiconductor <a href="https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/op-amp-applications-handbook.html" target="_blank">Applications books</a>. And we spent a couple of weeks reading and experimenting with these circuits. Then, we went back and, section-by-section, we brought most of that system to life. There were areas that wouldn’t be practical or possible for at least another decade, but the grain mill could at least move grain, measure it, and deliver it by conveyor to the trucks. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Hereford, Texas was a tornado magnet and when <a href="https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth46552/m1/2/" target="_blank">the city got clobbered by tornado just past midnight on April 19, 1971</a>, Arnold decided his family needed a tornado shelter. (The edge of the tornado passed by the house I was renting by less than 150’ and we slept through it.) So, Arnold grabbed a shovel and dug the outline of the foundation and walls a couple of days later. He and I dug holes for the walls and he lined those holes with plywood frame work and poured the concrete himself. Then, he rented a backhoe and dug out the basement, poured the floor, reused the wall plywood as a frame for the ceiling which he braced massively, and poured the ceiling and buried the structure. Over the rest of the spring, he finished that new basement/storm shelter into a terrific family entertainment room with food and water storage. Throughout the construction, the city inspectors harassed him for not using “approved” contractors. Every time they tried to ding him for a code violation, he demonstrated that he’d exceeded code by a wife margin and they backed off, pouting all the way. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Texas was never going to be a place where I’d be happy and even less so for my wife. Before our 2nd daughter was born, I’d started looking for a way out of that armpit, only a few miles from Dalhart, Texas where the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_and_Joe" target="_blank">Willie and Joe</a>” cartoonist Bill Mauldin once told a Rolling Stone reporter “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bill-mauldin-drawing-fire-55910/2/" target="_blank">If they ever give the world an enema — Dalhart is where they’ll put the tube</a>.” Bill was wrong, Dalhart was much nicer than Hereford and Dalhart had a tiny fraction of the multiple sorts of pollution that Hereford generated. Arnold went above and beyond to help me relocate. First, he strongly recommended that I start my own business, like his, in Guymon, OK. We wanted to go further from Texas than that, so he put in several good words for me with a large equipment dealer in Central City, NE and that was the job I took. As part of that research we did for the grain mill, I had started working on a small mobile electronic scale of my own design and Arnold connected me to a friend of his in Garden City, KS who was running a larger scales servicing business and a small manufacturing operation. It took me a few more years to finish the design and when I did I handed it off to Arnold’s connection who produced it for a few years. A few years later, that resulted in a life-saving large royalty check at a critical time in my unemployed life and career. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">I learned countless things from working with Arnold Stevenson. I owe him my career and, likely, the best parts of my life. From early on in my experience with Arnold, I started looking at every piece of electronic equipment as something that was probably designed by half-hearted, mediocre engineers and that could be improved along with being repaired. I learned that doing a job as well as possible was its own reward. I learned that just having a job isn’t enough; financially, personally, and security-wise. I learned that as soon as I got a job, I should be looking for the next one and getting myself ready to be able to do that next job. I learned that management is more often than not, useless and incompetent. I learned to depend on myself for education, training, security, and to always be looking to be ready for what comes next. I learned to collect educational resources from any place I find them and to assume that any education I get that is worthwhile is going to come from my own effort; often without any school’s assistances and totally from my own research and study. </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Arial">Arnold died in 2006, back in Hereford after some time in his hometown of Garden City. When I passed through Hereford on my way to California, Arnold was in Garden City and I missed seeing him. The next time I was in Hereford was 2014 and too late. It is possible that I had talked to Arnold once or twice since we left Hereford. I know I certainly thought of him thousands of times between 1973 and . . . now and beyond. Anyone who has gone through a massive change in perspective, ability, experience, and insight has to owe several people for all of that. In many important ways, I think Arnold had more effect on my life than did my father. As a result of working with Arnold, I rewrote practically every life-lesson I’d absorbed between birth and age 26 when I left Texas. I had a lot more lessons to learn, but all of them were built on the 3 years I worked with L.A. Stevenson. </font></p> <p><sup>1 </sup><a href="https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/eastvalleytribune/obituary.aspx?n=l-a-stevenson-arnold&pid=16399353" target="_blank">L.A. "Arnold' Stevenson Garden City Telegram, The (KS) January 20, 2006</a></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0