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DL Open Thread: Saturday, June 5, 2021
Federal Judge Strikes Down Cali’s Assault Weapons Ban. Calls the AR-15 assault rifle ‘…a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment.” One of Dubya’s judges. Sinema Supporter: Back Filibuster Or Get Out. Right, like she’s gonna take that advice. Are Political Ads Getting It All Wrong? Very few, if any, seek to […]
DL Open Thread: Friday, June 4, 2021
The Second Amendment And Slavery: Perfect Together? Worthy of a REV podcast…here’s the gist of this historian’s argument: In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans’ treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states: […]
Lessons Learned
These were fun stories while they lasted:
Jan 29, 2021 — ‘Played’ by GOP in the Obama era, wary Democrats and Biden go big …“We have learned from past crises that the risk is not doing too much.
Song of the Day 6/3: Paul McCartney, “Another Day”
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, fans blamed Yoko Ono first and foremost. But the band member who took the most heat was Paul McCartney, mostly because he was the first one to publicly announce his departure. Critics soon made him a whipping boy because his first solo album, a low-key, mostly acoustic set, […]
DL Open Thread Thursday, June 3, 2021
All of us who thought Biden for President was a dreadful mistake are settling down for a hearty meal of crow these days — Smilin’ Joe turns out to be the GOP’s bane, and for a very simple reason: They’re having a devil of a time demonizing him. The evidence comes from the hothouse world […]
Lumber prices are up 240% year-over-year
There are supply constraints, for example, sawmills cut production and inventory at the beginning of the pandemic, and the West Coast fires in 2020 damaged privately-owned timberland. And there has been a huge surge in demand for lumber. Tariffs on Canadian lumber were raised, then lowered but last week, the Commerce Department released a preliminary […]
VERY EARLY LINE: Witzke to Face Lisa Blunt Rochester
Typical Republican, far-right conspiracy theorist, fellow Goldey-Beacom alum and all around nut bag, Lauren Elena Witzke must be the odds on favorite to take on Lisa Blunt Rochester for Delaware’s At Large House seat. The only question is, will she want it? I think she will.
As we’ve discussed Witzke isn’t a candidate in the conventional sense of wanting to fill some political office. She is a grifter and her grift is taking money out of the pockets of racist trump deadeners. So Witzke’s calculus isn’t “could I win?” but “will this race offer a profitable upside?”
My sense is that the answer to that question is – yes. The national wingnut media doesn’t seem to be very discerning when it comes to promoting candidates to the national wingnut audience. As long as the correct nonsense is emanating from Witzke’s face hole, the national wingnut media will play along – as if she is a legit contender. So while her name may continue to be a punchline in Greenville, the national money and juicy speaking engagements will continue to roll in.
Additionally, losing does not appear to be an impediment to maintaining the grift. Losing, being arrested, found in humiliating circumstance, etc… these things never seem to corrode the image of the wingnut grifters. Rather, because these are viewed as attacks by ANTIFA (or whoever) losing and being indicted actually burnish the wingnut grifter’s resume.
For these reasons, and because there is literally nobody else – I’m calling it. Lauren Witzke v LBR.
DL Open Thread Wednesday June 2rd 2021
Good Morning DL Peeps –
Click through to read more about:
– Democrats should be willing to lose the Senate rather than succumb to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin’s extortion.
– Biden gave a speech in Tulsa on the on the 100th anniversary of Tulsa massacre. “Darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”
– Diddling kids is now frowned upon for Catholic priests.
– Robert Reich’s Twitter: Bipartisanship is a meaningless goal when one party has given up on democracy.
The earth is shifting beneath Coon’s feet. Going around claiming to be the world’s greatest bipartisan this year is going to sound increasingly like bragging about being the world’s foremost eugenicist.
Generic News Roundup (In Case of Ennui Break Glass)
I understand Jason330’s despair at trying to summarize the news lately. The media, as they did during the maladministration of the Last Guy, have fallen into a tiresome reliance on clickbait headlines in which only the proper nouns change. It’s OK, Jason. Anyone can fall victim to MOES — Media Over-Exposure Syndrome. So, recognizing that […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday June 1st 2021
I haven’t listened to, read, or viewed any news in over 72 hours. My hair is regrowing, and my soufflé’s are majestic yet fluffy. So open thread is mostly on you, dear reader. What newsworthy items do you have to share in the comments? My meager contribution is this:
Won’t Somebody Think of the Shareholders!? Off-Shore/Automate The CEO Function
Over at New Statesman, writer Will Dunn proposes a great cost-cutting measure to make businesses more efficient and profitable: replace CEOs with machines.
A few weeks ago Christine Carrillo, an American tech CEO, raised this question herself when she tweeted a spectacularly tone-deaf appreciation of her executive assistant, whose work allows Carrillo to “write [and] surf every day” as well as “cook dinner and read every night”. […] Predictably, a horde arrived to point out that if someone else is doing 60 per cent of Carrillo’s job, they should be paid 50 per cent more than her. But as Carrillo – with a frankly breathtaking lack of self-awareness – informed another commenter, her EA is based in the Philippines. The main (and often the only) reason to outsource a role is to pay less for it.
If most of a CEO’s job can be outsourced, this suggests it could also be automated. But while companies are racing to automate entry- and mid-level roles, senior executives and decision makers show much less interest in automating themselves.
There’s a good argument for automating from the top rather than from the bottom. As we know from the annotated copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow that sits (I assume) on every CEO’s Isamu Noguchi nightstand, human decision-making is the product of irrational biases and assumptions. This is one of the reasons strategy is so difficult, and roles that involve strategic decision-making are so well paid. But the difficulty of making genuinely rational strategic decisions, and the cost of the people who do so, are also good reasons to hand this work over to software.
It would save a lot more money than increasingly automating lower-level labor, which in turn would probably help reduce the extremities of income inequality.
Sure, there would probably be some less-than-ideal consequences of automating our hierarchical organizing. But it’s not like human CEOs are any better at making choices that minimize human suffering. So hey, maybe it’s worth a shot. At least we can share the wealth around that way.
- Via boingboing
‘Bulo’s Fave Tunes: May 2021
So much great music this month, I plan to keep commentary to a minimum: Liked this comment: “I’m gonna get married AND divorced to this song and then let it haunt me for the rest of my life”:
Song of the Day 5/31: “Taps”
The 24 notes of this bugle call might be America’s most recognizable tune. Veterans are most familiar with it from its daily sounding at 2100 hours, or lights out — its original use when a Union Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield adapted it for his brigade in 1862 from an earlier bugle call known as “Scott’s […]
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