Archive for August, 2023

Five Under the Fedora Truths Homeless for Fun and Profit, All Beers Look Alike to Me, Breaking a Twitter Habit, The Chosen Speeding Up and Biden Economy expectations

Posted: August 16, 2023 by datechguy in business, culture, economy, education, entertainment, tech, twitter
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Glenn Reynolds notes the shock of some that passing a law concerning homeless camps and actually enforcing it has caused camps to vanish. This is a disaster for some NGO’s in the sense that they get a lot of government and state money to solve a problem that can be solved by just enforcing the law.

Key quote:

We get urban decay because we tolerate it. And as for the nonprofits/NGOs, homelessness is far too lucrative a problem to solve.

There is no incentive to solve a problem that is both a profit center for you and allows you to claim virtue.

Speaking of profit centers there is a 2nd post at Insty today on a man who will be teaching about the Budlight fiasco at business school. It’s is certainly a subject worth scholarship but it that had a line that likely floated under the radar to most people that I found absolutely hilarious:

He emphasized that beer is essentially the same product, and what sets it apart is the power of its brand

I would submit and suggest this is pretty much true. I suspect a lot of brand loyalty in beer is all about habit. Break that habit and you break that brand.

And Speaking of Breaking the habit as of Today Tweetdeck is no longer a free service when I tried to access it today I was redirected to a screen offering me a blue subscription check for $80 a year.

The real point is Twitter’s value basically comes from addicting people to multiple streams of data and giving folks who want to reach a maximum size audience (advertisers etc) access to that stream. This move gives an incentive for people to walk away from the stream and once people are broken of the addiction your done.

While Elon Musk should of course make the best possible business decision for his product I submit and suggest this is rather foolish. Tweetdeck makes twitter useful because it allows you to view multiple streams in the same window. Without it twitter involves too many tabs and simply isn’t worth my time. I might keep a tab with my DM page available and I might answer embedded tweets I see elsewhere but if you want to get me to see something by putting it on twitter odds are starting today I’ll miss it

On a totally different note I was shocked to see that season 4 of the chosen was going to include the razing of Lazarus from the dead.

Given that this is the last big miracle before the entry into Jerusalem I figured we would see it till at least season 5, particularly since we are going to get the beheading of John the Baptist this season which comes much earlier.

That suggests that either season 7 is going to be all passion and resurrection, with season six all Jerusalem

(Don’t be surprised with the number of characters there is plenty of material for this to be the case) and Season five everything else OR that Dallas plans on moving up the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and having a large chunk of season seven covering a big chunk of acts.

Either way it will be interesting to see how he handles it.

Finally we have regularly been getting short weeks at work. Last week was 30 hours, the week before 32 and the week before 30 which is a great incentive to burn vacation days for people and unpaid time off has been offered which can be tempting on a really beautiful summers day.

Yesterday on the drive in all of us in the car agreed that we would be lucky to end up with four hours although one of us was optimistic enough to suggest me might manage 6.

Much to my shock and everyone else’s as well there seemed there was plenty of work in my department and by moving some people to it during the day ( and letting a few go home early who wanted to ) all of us who stayed managed to our delight a full 8 hours of work which guarantees us at least a 32 hour week.

That’s how bad the Biden economy is, it’s so bad that getting a full days work in the middle of a work week on a day you’re scheduled to work a full day is a pleasant surprise worthy of note

The Actual Question Concerning the Left

Posted: August 15, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Today Glenn Reynolds had a piece up noting that according to the university of Chicago 30 million Americans think that violence would be justified to keep Donald Trump from being president again.

It would be nice if I could say this report surprised me at all but it does not because of what the left has become.

Reynolds finishes thus:

The people running things seem either oblivious to, or hopeful for, the prospect of a civil war.

Given that they are bought and paid for by China that isn’t a surprise but I think there is a better question to be asked namely:

If an enemy was trying to foment civil war in the United States what would they be doing differently than what the Biden Administration and the left are doing now?

Only idiots who have never studied history or never lived though a civil would consider this a positive thing.

Rethinking support for Ukraine

Posted: August 15, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

With the Biden administration proposing another $24 billion to support Ukraine’s military, I think it may be time to reassess my enthusiastic backing of the fight against Russia.

The United States is by far the largest donor to Ukraine. Congress has already approved $113 billion in military, economic, humanitarian, and other aid for Ukraine, including around $70 billion for security, intelligence, and additional war-fighting costs. An estimated 90 percent of that total has already been spent or designated to be spent.

In the past year, overall support for Ukraine has waned. According to a poll released by CNN last week, fifty-five percent of Americans now oppose more aid to Ukraine. The party breakdown is stark—71 percent of Republicans oppose additional assistance, while 62 percent of Democrats favor it.

Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. His invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea and the subsequent attacks a year ago, is anathema to world peace and security.

But is the wholesale support of Ukraine worth the cost and the potential downside of exhausting the ability of the United States to keep its military ready to fight against other threats, such as China?

The Heritage Foundation has put together a rather convincing case against continuing aid to Ukraine at its current levels.

In a recent opinion piece, Kevin Roberts, the president of the foundation, wrote the following:

–“It is simply untenable for Americans to bear the vast majority of the burden among our allies in standing up to threatening states.”

–“Our concentration on Ukraine has undermined our ability to address the worsening military situation in Asia, especially around Taiwan.”

–“However just and noble Ukraine’s cause is, continuing to focus on it at the expense of confronting and deterring China is not wise, moral, or conservative.”

Roberts makes a variety of good points. I take away three important ones. First, U.S. foreign policy must focus mainly on China’s economic and military threat rather than Russia’s. Second, the United States must take a strategic approach toward Ukraine rather than depleting American military stockpiles. Third, Russia poses a more significant threat to Europe than the United States, so NATO countries should assume a substantial burden of the cost. See https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-correct-conservative-approach-ukraine-shifts-the-focus-china#

I’m not arguing that we should cut off Ukraine. We just need to figure out a better strategy there and an even better one in dealing with China.

DeSantis 2024 is to the GOP Deepstate Establishment what Greek Food is to Leonard Hofstadter

Posted: August 14, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, primaries
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Sheldon: What is that you’re eating? Tonight is pizza night.

Leonard: I’d like to refer that to my attorney.

Priya: According to what I see here, Thursday nights are Franconi’s pizza night.

Sheldon: Yes, and when Franconi’s went out of business, we switched to Graziano’s.

Howard: That’s interesting. Can you just switch restaurants like that, Priya?

Priya: A good question, Howard. Turns out you can’t. According to the document you drew up, Sheldon, the selection of a new takeout restaurant requires public hearings and a 60-day comment period. Were those criteria met?

Sheldon: No.

All: Opa!

Sheldon: This is Greek food? Leonard, you hate Greek food.

Leonard: Not as much as you.

The Big Bang Theory: The Agreement Dissection 2011

Following up to my DeSantis endorsement There is one key advantage of Ron DeSantis over Donald Trump that everyone seems to be missing.

I’ve been a political junkie for 47 years and based on what I’ve seen the GOP do since Reagan left the room, Ron DeSantis is the type of candidate that the deep state and the GOP establishment historically hates.

Think for a second about his record: Ron DeSantis has

  • Openly taken on big business grooming squad (the same Disney & Budlight that Trump defended)
  • Openly taken on the Democrat machines in Broward county (the ones that the deep state has let operate)
  • Openly taken on blue states on illegal immigration (that the deep state deferred to) and
  • Openly taken on big pharma on COVID (the ones that have grown rich off of COVID)
  • Openly taking on big education

In short he is everything the get along go along GOP despises. Any other year the GOP deep state establishment would do all they could to marginalize, and even destroy presidential asperations he might have. Oh they might allow him a guy like him a seat but when it comes to the White House they would strive to sabotage him in the primaries as they have done to every strong conservative willing to fight the culture wars since the day I left the Democrat party last century.

Yet this year as many of the #OnlytrumpTM types have noted both here and at Instapundit in comments there are quite a few of these folks openly for DeSantis.

Why? Two words: Donald Trump

Donald Trump has changed the equation he is so despised by the GOP establishment (although some not as openly as others) that suddenly a guy like DeSantis who any other year they would be fighting tooth and nail is suddenly a viable and even desirable alternative for the GOP nomination.

Make no mistake, in any other year with no Trump on the ballot that same establishment would be pushing one of the squishes and calling DeSantis an extremist and doing all they could to destroy him.

That’s how much the establishment hates President Trump, they hate Trump so much that they’ll support an actual strong conservative to stop him and help him win in November just to spite the Donald.

I know it’s a silly thought on my part but I think actually increasing the potential vote pool, particularly in non-deep red states that aren’t already in the bank for us just might be a good idea even if those votes come from those icky folks not sufficiently Maga.

Finally I think the prospect of these jerks helping us to eight years of winning the culture wars and standing up to those who would soak the taxpayer to enrich their friends and being willing to openly fight the Democrats seems not only a good idea but a better revenge on those guys than anything else actually achievable.

DeSantis 2024!

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