Tag: The Broken Circle
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Smart idea
CBC interviewed a Canadian businessman with a sharp idea. Canada should have its own car company. It would help to give the nation a commercial purpose, a source of pride. There’s no technical or physical reason why not. Canadian car factories are still as active as ever, and Canada has steel producers and most other…
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IOOF history
After spending some time at the Odd Fellows retirement home in Eureka Lake, Polistra decided to seek out a lodge. She found a typical one in La Cygne** near the southeast corner of the state. Like most lodges it was in a downtown storefront. The building looks like it originally housed a bank. A grocery…
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Starker comparison
In previous item I contrasted Hudson’s personal approach to GM’s anonymous bureaucracy. Hudson was a stock company but behaved more like a family-run outfit. Hudson’s founder Chapin continued running the company from 1909 until he died in 1936. Then Abraham Barit, who had been with the company from the founding, took over and continued until…
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When spells break
Thinking about broken spells and busted myths today. When spells break, weird shit happens. We’ve had a lot of broken spells in the last 30 Bush years. 9/11 broke the spell of “terrorism” and Wilsonian “democracy” imperialism. 2008 broke the spell of honest banking. 2020 broke the spell of “public health” as a healing profession…
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Let a hundred basis points bloom
Not a good analogy, but maybe the comparison will help me to think about one of the parallels. = = = = = The solid side of the parallel: ZIRP was an extreme outlier, totally unprecedented when Bugsy Bernanke ordered it in 2008. Previously the expected interest had pulled down to 2% at some points…
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Deeper dodge
Via Yahoo, Reddit has made its first revenue report after entering the stock criminal market. Before the IPO it was owned by Conde Nast publications. The report shows revenue of about 3 dollars per user, but that’s not profit. The site lost 7 dollars per user. As always VCs are seeking a tax loss gimmick,…
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WPA salesmen?
I’ve been focusing on WPA and related work since 2008. This year, for no particular reason, I’ve been focusing on sales and advertising after completely ignoring the subject for 72 years. Got curious about the connection. WPA definitely employed white-collar workers who had been discarded along with the skilled laborers when Wall Street bombed America…
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Pony in Oz
Jeffrey Funk gathers up a long list of fake AI successes. In each case the machine was only doing part of the work, with humans in India doing the rest. There’s a real Turk inside the Mechanical Turk. There’s a little man named Ramesh behind the curtain in Oz. The same illusion was forced on…
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All open now
The purpose of venture capitalists, and the stock market in general, is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF PROFIT. The stock market is the RECIPROCAL of real business. When real business prospers, the market goes to zero. When real business collapses, the market goes to infinity. VCs make the goal perfectly transparent. They invest to destroy business…
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Donating
Continuing the theme of Trump as LBO artist and gangster. Every company or country he touches goes bankrupt so he can grab the assets. Even if he DOESN’T grab the assets the company or country goes bankrupt. The Ankler included these numbers in one of their articles about developments in the media business: = =…
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LBOs all the way dooooooooooooooooown
And I do mean doooooooooowwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnn. Latest idiocy from the beautifully collapsing “journalism” industry is the strange hiring and firing of Ronna McDaniel, former head of the Repooflican party. NBC hired her and then immediately fired her when their own employees refused to work with her. That’s a good reason to fire someone, but why didn’t…
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Stop telling us to be nice.
More idiot niceness from an “opinion” columnist. He says we should listen to our opponents. STOP BLAMING THE VICTIMS. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THE PEASANTS DO. As long as the monsters in charge are MAKING more wars and more problems at an accelerating pace, the peasants will try all sorts of pointless behaviors. Some will…
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Yes it is a conspiracy.
This CompactMag article by an architect discusses the shittiness of modern buildings. = = = = = START QUOTE: Life in a recently built apartment is like a simulation that’s constantly glitching. Your towel bar looks like a towel bar, but it can’t hold the weight of a wet towel without falling out of the…
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For once the admins are right
Via KREM: A group of WSU faculty is complaining about the current university president, saying that he needs to bring in more money. They want a new admin that will: = = = = = START FACULTY: Will implement effective strategies that bolster the academic and research excellence of WSU, along with its associated reputation…
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It was really The Street!
TIL, as they say, that Wall Street was an OUTDOOR AUCTION for a hundred years, and didn’t come inside as an organized exchange until 1921. The outdoor auction occupied the full width of Broad Street, not Wall Street, with traders shouting bids at each other. After telephones were common, the traders rented offices in facing…
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