Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
Nate Wilcox
NASA throwing in the towel on Boeing Starliner and begging Elon to rescue the two stranded astronauts on the ISS is pretty notable.
We picked a helluva time to have complimentary crises of competency — both at the political and technical levels.
Mel
Nate Wilcox,
Yeah. I have trouble even thinking that we picked the time. We’ve been falling toward this ever since the Powell memorandum and Milton Friedman, and the decision that we wouldn’t bother to do anything right except money. And the money we’re only doing “right” in the most esoteric sense. It’s been a while coming.
bruce wilder
The competency crisis has indeed been a long time coming. It has devolved through more stages than I would have anticipated twenty-five years ago and taken more time. I did not anticipate the 2006-9 crisis would result in a depraved reprieve in place of reform and restructuring, launching a zombie politics, but here we are.
The baby formula shortage, I thought, will surely do in Biden, even if completely gutting public health didn’t. Private-equity pillaging continues unhindered except by a shortage of industries to destroy.
We seem to be getting down to a grim end-game scenario where the choice of dramatic dénouement ranges from a stock market crash to the sinking of an aircraft carrier to a nuclear exchange to one party jailing the candidate of the other before the election.
all seems as unreal as the funny money
Joan
I just wanted to share that twice now I’ve lost friends due to differences in our politics and I’m so bummed about that. The first time I walked right into it without realizing: I was excited the US was pulling out of Afghanistan, and two of my European friends were worried this would cause another migrant crisis in Europe so they weren’t excited about it at all. I vowed to not discuss politics with friends after that.
Now today I’ve lost an Israeli friend of mine based on differing views of the current conflict. I don’t feel the need to explain my view here because it’s likely close enough to Ian’s that people can guess, but despite my diligently never bringing it up it still got out anyway and now she’s done with me.
I’m bummed about this, because I don’t think I’m a person who’d rather be right than have friends.
Ian Welsh
Lost a friend to politics back in 2004, after I first started blogging. He was fairly conservative (Catholic). I never discussed politics with him, and when he tried I’d always demur, but he still became so upset the friendship ended.
mago
I too have learned my lesson about not discussing politics with friends since there is a seemingly universal divide. Even with my (ex) wife I avoid sounding off too much, and I always considered her a fellow traveler and a revolutionary sister. Alas and alack. People do disappoint.
I often vow to limit my comments here, but it’s about the only place where I feel free to express my political views. Also, I’m a notorious vow breaker.
StewartM
Bruce Wilder
The baby formula shortage, I thought, will surely do in Biden, even if completely gutting public health didn’t. Private-equity pillaging continues unhindered except by a shortage of industries to destroy.
And how, exactly, was Biden supposed to solve that problem in the face of two turncoat (paid-for) Senate “Democrats” and a hostile politicized court, Bruce? Remember, when Biden tried his first attempt at student debt relief, and also tried to undo Trump’s asylum policy, things well within his executive powers according to the legal consensus, conservative judges blocked for no apparent reason that it was overturning a R president’s policies.
StewartM
The competency crises is simply capitalism at its finest. All the tenets that drive capitalism reduce the quality of goods and services we produce, for that (along with the know-how of how to create them) are considered unimportant compared to the vision and leadership of the Howard Roarks (i.e. t.he furhrerprinzip).
In the reality version of things, as best narrated by someone like James Burke, the whole history of technology is not the history of isolated geniuses, but a multitude of small steps taken by many small hands. James Watt did NOT ‘invent the steam engine’; he improved the Newcomen steam engine which itself traced its history to many unknown inventors and tinkerers back in the medieval period. But this reality is faintly “socialist” as it acknowledges that all technological advances owe a debt to the past and to society as whole, and not that Howard Roak should have and control it all. Any Rand no like James Burke.
different clue
From the High Strangeness subreddit, here is a video called ” The Demonic Possession of Kenneth Copeland”. ( Kenneth Copeland is one of those TV preachers.) I offer it for the strange effect it may have on the watcher. It is a strange little trip.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1f0drih/the_demonic_possession_of_kenneth_copeland/
bruce wilder
StewartM:
Awfully convenient those narrow Senate majorities. When Obama had supermajorities, the Democrats did NOT enact a budget on time, increase the minimum wage, stop perpetual war, protect abortion rights, help distressed homeowners or prosecute banksters. Biden was a principal author of the student loan mess, but don’t let that bother you.
But as long as you brought it up, when during the shortage of infant formula, did anything depend on a Senate vote?
mago
The world looked the same outside my window this morning as night gave way to dawn then a pink sunrise over distant mountains.
The jays started squawking and attacking the suet feeder—a recently acquired trick on their part. The finches and chickadees jostled for position on the pine branches waiting for an opening. Rather idyllic.
Later over breakfast I checked my limited newsfeed to discover the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France on a series of trumped up charges. The implications are staggering.
So then I turn to another story and see where Israel sent 100 jets to bomb southern Lebanon—a bit of a provocation. Of course this followed more bloody murders in Gaza and further atrocities in the West Bank. Not to speak of events of which I’m completely ignorant.
I sometimes wonder if there’s any benefit to knowing about the insanity and carnage that dominates the world these days, but I can’t help myself.
Anyway, the sun rises and sets; the season and light changes, and the feeding birds keep denting my budget. But out there in the vast beyond chaos reigns and it’s all interconnected. Time to go work in the garden.
Buen día a cada.
different clue
@Mago,
Would the jays where you are be Stellers Jay?
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrNY_3nfMtmRgQA469XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=steller%27s+jay+image&fr=sfp
Or would they be the same good old blue jay that we have back here in the East and South and MidWest?
Chuck Mire
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
mago
@different clue. Stellar jays rule the neighborhood but we have the good old blue jays as well.
Willy
I worked at Boeing 30 years ago, lasting 4 years until my sanity started giving out. I once subbed for a lead at a meeting of the minds, gathered to decide the best financial course of action for a certain product. I learned there that 20 leads were meeting once a month for 1 hour for 1 year, after which a decision would be rendered.
A few years later while gigging at a small company, my PM called and demanded that I make the exact same decision as that Boeing group had spent a year trying to decide. Except that I had 15 minutes. After a few frantic calls and number crunching, I called him back with my decision, which wound up being the correct one.
Let’s run the numbers, shall we?
12 meetings x 20 attendees x 1hour = 240 man hours
-vs-
1 meeting x 2 attendees x 15 minutes = 0.5 man hours
Boeing did a lot of meetings that way. I suspect they weren’t so much about brainstorming towards correct actions, but to hobnob for political purposes. I have many sad (yet humorous) comedy stories about the goings on in that place, enough for a TV sitcom show running several seasons.
Some Jack Welch method attempts to streamline things came after my time. From witnesses, I heard that most of the results were clusterfucks. These clusterfucks would take up far too much space to itemize, but you get the idea. To their credit, back in my day Boeing did only extend MBAs to engineers. But these weren’t the kind of engineers Jack Welch was trying to include in his fanciful theories. They were the kind of guys I met at that meeting I described, the one with all the political purpose hobnobbers.
Curt Kastens
If there is a massive volcano eruption near Naples that does an enormous amount on damage, would this event count as a Black Swan event? Sure could have been said before it happens that such an event will happen. But since it could not have been said in 2022 for example that such a thing would happen in 2024 or in 2025 does that mean that such an event really can not be predicted?
Keep in mind that ever since the late 1990s a trend began (with the fears of computer tradgedy taking place at the turn of the century) that there is a emminant disaster lurking in every petroleum storage facility and every artificial sweetener, and every vaccine, and in every sniffle, every doughnut, every authoritarian politician, every astroid in the milly way,
In other worlds, get us worring about things that are not really dangerous so that we do not worry about the thing that really is dangerous.
You should actually thank your lucky stars that this bait and switch works on a lot of people. Becuase if it did not work a lot of people would be worring about things that are most definately dangerous. But people should not worry about the things that really are dangerous because there is not a damned thing that they can do to prepare for these dangerous things anyways. OK wait there is at least one obvious thing that they can do to prepare for the monster that is fast approaching. They can not buy beach front property in Florida, or a winter condo in Phoenix. Oh right that is two things. How about not pan a vacation in Italy or Florida? OK I stand corrected.
But it still goes without saying that you can run but you can not hide for much longer.
Nor will your AR-15s protect you from your gas masks in your underfround bunkers.
different clue
Header: Gardening.
Good article on Urban Conservation Gardening/Farming with some interesting internal links in the article. Titled: The Powerful Potential of Tiny Conservation Plots. Here is the link.
https://www.noemamag.com/the-powerful-potential-of-tiny-conservation-plots/