Linked in previous item on Columbia University vs ElonTrump.
This overlong piece was written in 2021 at the height of Trump’s PREVIOUS monstrosity. One thing has changed for the better. At that time the Weather Bureau was still doing the wrong thing, hammering Gaia and losing the trust of the people. Since then they’ve figured out the mousy approach, staying under the radar (or more precisely WITH the radar!) and doing their duty.
In the piece I quoted my usual Carver quote. Another Carver saying is actually more suitable and more Bookerish.
Start where you are.
Work with what you have.
Make something of it.
Never give up.
Carver followed this advice magnificently. He stayed in Dixie, worked with Dixie’s agricultural resources, made all sorts of new crops and products to help Dixie farmers, and kept going through a long life.
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Two sources for this rant:
1. Irritation at the Weather Bureau’s failure to predict simple temperature one day in advance. They’re always wrong, and always wrong in the same direction.
2. Reading Pat Foster’s history of American Motors. Nash/AMC had three brilliant managers who understood Booker T’s rule. When you’re a mouse living with a cat, you can’t afford illusions. You have to live carefully, stay under the cat’s radar, find your unique talent and optimize it. Nash had succeeded longer than the other mice by following the rule. Roy Abernethy took over from Romney and spoiled it because he didn’t grasp reality. He wanted to beat GM at its own game.
Foster has a sharp observation:
“Perhaps he felt that he would be the one to beat the odds, just as Henry Kaiser** had felt.”
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Low-status people and companies survive by knowing the odds. We live by anticipating and predicting.
Government ruins both types of knowledge. Government and media give us fake ideas of risk and fake predictions.
What’s the purpose of governmental and corporate predictions? In the current insane era, the ONLY purpose is creating chaos and panic. The extreme [ahem!](but certainly not final) example is the grotesque HOLOCAUSTAL use of predictions and models to IMPRISON AND GAG THE ENTIRE WORLD. We see the curves, and we think we are guaranteed to die from a perfectly ordinary flu bug. Without the constant hammering of curves and models, we would simply
LOOK ABOUT YOU.
TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.
and we would realize there’s no epidemic at all and no risk at all. When we can see and sense the risk for ourselves, we judge the risk correctly.
When we rely on externally supplied predictions and odds instead of our own, we are completely vulnerable to the monsters… AND we lose our own ability to predict. Muzzles and distancing destroy physical immunity. Models and fake risks destroy mental immunity. USE IT OR LOSE IT.
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[2025 note: my bitching about the Weather Bureau isn’t valid now.]
The Weather Bureau no longer predicts weather. They’re too busy fulfilling their PANIC QUOTA. Every day must have at least one PANIC. A dry summer is EXTREME DROUGHT WARNING. Nice calm fall weather? STAGNANT AIR WARNING. Nice calm spring weather? POLLEN WARNING.
Before the current UNIVERSAL PANIC, what was the point of predicting? The old Islamic astronomers had it right, and later astronomers also had it partly right, though they had already surrendered most of the battle.
When you know how the universe moves, you can move with it.
This is just a longer-timeline version of basic neural prediction. When you walk, all of your senses anticipate each step and move with it. When you hear a sentence you know the pattern and your semantic predictor stays ahead of it.
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Long before the 2020 monstrosity, western culture stopped moving with the universe. Meritocracy and free will are an intentional ASYNCHRONOUS departure from the universal rhythm.
We delusionally believe that we will be “the one to beat the odds”, and many of us waste our own lives and ruin our employees and citizens in futile pursuit of beating the odds.
Exceptionalism and Messianism are two good names for this delusion.
Nature doesn’t have exceptions. Nature doesn’t have messiahs. Nature has one way of doing things, and you can live and profit best when you swing WITH nature instead of trying to be the exception.
Or in less ethereal terms: NOBODY beats the odds. The mouse can’t beat the odds. The cat doesn’t have to beat the odds because the cat MAKES THE ODDS. GM was the perfect example.
THEY KNOW IT’S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY’RE MAKING THE HOAX.
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Footnote on AMC: Abernethy took over in 1962 after Romney went into politics. Abernethy’s decision to play GM’s game was doubly stupid because Rambler was already moving into the Big Three’s sales league by PLAYING RAMBLER’S GAME. The Big Three introduced their compacts in 1960, attempting to PLAY RAMBLER’S GAME. This only helped Rambler, which continued gaining sales from ’60 to ’62, beating Plymouth. Abernethy was trying to copy the obviously losing strategy, at the exact moment when the Big Three were trying to copy Rambler’s winning strategy.
His stupidest move came in ’66. Ford had opened up a new and successful segment with the Mustang, a RAMBLER-SIZED sport coupe. Abernethy answered with the Marlin, a FULL-SIZED and weird-looking fastback, which immediately failed. Even stupider, the Argentine branch of AMC had already created THE perfect answer to the Mustang. The IKA Torino was a beautifully modified Rambler American with an elegant British wood and leather interior. A little Jaguar. Abernethy had the correct answer IN-HOUSE, but he insisted on spending millions to find the wrong answer. Later after Chapin took over, AMC hit the correct note with the Javelin.
Most non-SUV cars in recent decades have been in Rambler’s size range of 100 to 108 inch wheelbase. Rambler won in the end, despite Abernethy’s stupidity.
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** Footnote on Henry Kaiser: He was also trying to play the wrong game. His natural game was government contracts. He mastered the art of ONE product for ONE buyer. From big dams to PT boats, he succeeded without problems. He decided to get into consumer products where VARIETY and PRICE are crucial. He made exactly ONE car at a time when the other independents offered at least two sizes in a dozen different types. His car was similar in size and power to Dodge, but priced 50% higher than Dodge. Military contracts are famous for absurdly high prices. He failed fast, and the company was saved by his son Edgar who gave up trying to make ONE car and became a holding company for Willys, the best mouse. Willys offered different vehicles for different types of people, and all of them were OUTSIDE the range of Big Three products. Willys is still going strong now, after several later takeovers.
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