“We” are all advanced politics knowers. I don’t think telling voters, “it’s not THE DEMOCRATS just SOME DEMOCRATS” is a winning message for most people.I want stuff I think is good to pass because I think it’s good, I also know that we’re one fairly likely death away from losing the Senate before that can happen, and one or two elections away from losing the whole damn country. B-b-but not OUR fault is probably not the 2022 campaign slogan I’d go with.
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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 […]
DL Open Thread Monday May 31st 2021 – Wanted: A Shadow Senator
I’m taking the day off so instead of combing the headlines I’ll just leave you with this open thread random thought. Coons is terrible. I think we all agree on that. But it is nearly six years until he is up for re-election, so what to do about it? I’ve been thinking about mechanism they […]
Song of the Day 5/30: B.J. Thomas, “[Hey Won’t You Play] Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song”
Pop, county and gospel singer Billy Joe Thomas died yesterday at age 78, three months after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Though he’s most famous for his pop hits “Hooked on a Feeling” (No. 5, 1968) and “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (No. 1, 1969), Thomas started out as a country singer […]
DL Open Thread Sunday, May 30, 2021
Another day, another reason to worry that Chris Coons is going to fuck us up like the no-so-secret Republican he is. David Dayen the American Prospect reports that Coons is trying to force his pick to run the U.S. Patent Office on the White House. Why can’t we have nice things? Delaware is a bigger […]
DL Open Thread For May 29, 2021
DOJ Asks Judge To Toss Lawsuit Against Trump And Barr For Violent Clearing Of Lafayette Square. Seriously, WTF? Trump and other U.S. officials are immune from civil lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his movements, government lawyers said of the actions taken ahead of a photo op of Trump […]
The Only Thing Keeping the GOP Afloat is Bipartisanship Mania Among Democrats
Coon’s case of Bipartisanship Mania isn’t unique, it is just an extremely virulent and debilitating strain. 100% of the DC media and nearly all elected DC Democrats are afflicted. @sambrodey Schumer on GOP blocking of 1/6 commission: “I hope this is not the beginning of an effort from Senate Republicans to prevent this chamber […]
Song of the Day 5/28: Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides, Now”
I’m going to guess this is Chris Coons’ favorite song. He’s looked at the issues from both sides now, and still somehow he really doesn’t know Republicans at all. Before Judy Collins recorded it in 1967 — actually, before it was released as a single in 1968 and reached No. 8 — Joni Mitchell was […]
DL Open Thread For Friday, May 28, 2021
Kathy McGuiness Crosses That Ethical Line. Again. When you’re an elected official, it’s bad form to announce a supposed new initiative AND solicit campaign funds in the same e-mail. But that’s what she’s done, not for the first time: Dear Steve, Today, I announced my accountability and transparency initiative dubbed Project: Gray Fox. Since I […]
Did you hear the one about the clueless fucking idiot who went on twitter to talk about bipartisanship?
Coons went on Twitter to talk about how great bipartisanship is. Twitter was not having it.
“We tried to bipartisanship very very very hard, but the bad Republicans were bad.”
Coons doesn’t give a fuck. He’s got his lifetime sinecure, so fuck you!
We’ll lose score of seats, but that will not change Coons’ life one bit. His daughter will still qualify for a safe, legal abortion if she ever needs one and he will still be the first call lazy DC talking head types make when they need some reach around the aisle happy talk.
And Who Is This Message For
Song of the Day 5/27: Everclear, “Santa Monica”
I’ve been on a bit of a ’90s kick lately — I’m more and more convinced that decade was rock music’s last hurrah — and this tune has gotten lodged in my head, so an [[[EARWORM ALERT!]]] is in order. By late 1995, when this song from “Sparkle and Fade” broke out on Alternative Rock […]
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