Tag: Constants and Variables
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Another trust restorer
Sailer points to a university president who has learned the Bud Light lesson. When you’re running a business or a college or a government, your SOLE goal is serving your employees and customers. The business or college or government has specific well-defined products. Beer or research or safe neighborhoods. As long as you work SOLELY…
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What for?
Tara Henley, former CBC reporter who turned independent, interviews Eric Kaufmann. He’s trying to set up a School of Heterodox Social Science within an existing British college. He offers a balanced and rational approach to the whole mess of Cancel and Woke and such, recognizing that censorship and orthodoxy are permanent in academia. As I…
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Two errors at once
Watching the “independents” fall into line with the warmongers like passive iron filings under a strong magnet. Influencers and marketers lose both influence and quality when they stray from their specialty. Bud Light is an error on the consumer side. A specialist in beer loses customers when it strays into gender politics. A specialist in…
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What we lost part 99999999
Demons and Cadillacs don’t have a reverse gear. Demons only back up under external force, jumpy and tectonic in nature, like shoving a Cadillac backwards with a bulldozer. It’s worth noticing when demons are forced to skid backwards. A couple days ago Canada’s parliament gave a standing ovation to a 98-year-old ACTUAL LITERAL NAZI, a…
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The constant
Still thinking about the two-sided failure of marketing this year. The constant on both sides is the culture war. Bud lost its main audience when it focused on culture from the tranny “left”. Repooflicans lost their working-class audience when they focused on culture from the effete elegant Buckleyan “right”, which is precisely identical to the…
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Leaning in, steering in
Substack is “leaning into politics” by hiring a political coordinator who worked at CNN and WaPo. Not auspicious. One basic rule runs deeper than all the current idiocies and monstrosities. Big corporations MUST conform to the whims of the ruler if they want to function and grow even bigger. Big media needs lawyers, loans and…
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Breaking a taboo
In this clip Vivek is discussing bitcoin with an old friend, not a random interviewer. His casual demeanor is appropriate for the situation. (Normally Vivek is fully suited up.) What Vivek is SAYING is orthodox techie talk, not unusual. What he’s DOING is more interesting. He’s drawing diagrams and using them to illustrate his points.…
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Good question
Somebody asked on Reddit: Water is the base drink. What’s the base food? Evocative question. My instant answer was barley. Barley grows everywhere, unlike rice and wheat and corn. Most of the answers were broader, including all of those localized grains when turned into some kind of bread. BUT: What about the premise? For most…
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More detail on bubbles
Yesterday I made the point that bubbles and frauds depend on who’s in charge, not on the specific mechanisms of money. In 2011 I made the argument in more detailed form. = = = = = START REPRINT: One of the Money Talk shows featured a good long interview with economist Ken Rogoff, who has…
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Meaningless observation
Pundits in 2016 and this year are noticing a difference between the two parties. I observed this strongly in 2016, but I’ve been paying too little attention this time. (2020 was too fucked to observe anything.) In both 2016 and 2024, the R campaign had a real choice of candidates who were claiming to represent…
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Goddamnit, why do we learn so much harmful shit?
One of the rather annoying world traveler types on Substack was discussing the Italian habit of walking IMMEDIATELY after eating. This violates everything we ever learned from TV and doctors and school “health” classes. They STERNLY commanded us to wait at least 30 minutes after eating. Recently I tried the Italian way. It’s unquestionably better.…
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Empathy, not credibility
Denyse points to an interesting experiment with AI preachers. The researchers took advantage of an existing android preacher robot in a Japanese shrine. They surveyed believers who had experienced a real human sermon vs the robot sermon. The robot was seen as “less credible”, and more importantly the robot got less donations than the human.…
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Longest lasting series?
There are four semifinalists. Nash Ambassador Olds 98 Chrysler New Yorker Buick Roadmaster All other names were clearly shorter. Criteria: 1. Must remain in continuous use except WW2 when all cars except Jeep were interrupted. 2. Must remain on the same step of the ladder, never descending the stack like BelAir or Fairlane. Ambassador started…
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Vivek just won me.
In the middle of a somewhat tangled discussion with Greenwald, Vivek said that we need to REOPEN NORMAL TRADE WITH RUSSIA. No more war, no more sanctions, just be human. I’m all yours, Vivek. You’re on the same side as Harding and FDR and Henry Wallace. = = = = = Later: Why did this…
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Real AI vs Altman’s AI
This is pure fraud. Computers have been optimizing routes for 60 fucking years, long before the current generation of “creative” AI. The traveling salesman problem has always been a major part of computer science, a major force in developing PREDICTIVE big data, and it was mostly solved in the ’50s. Here’s a 1969 book on…
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