Shaq: Kyrie Irving “Idiot,” Has Twitter Gone to the Dark Side?, DeSantis Lies about Crime, Pelosi Attack Is Funny …:

I spent close to four hours this week on my mail-in ballot. I researched every candidate, proposition, and judicial nominee. Even on propositions I was certain about, I did a deep dive just to make sure I hadn’t missed some nuance in the fine print. Even after all that research and filling in my ballot, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about everything. You never can be in life. All you can do is use reason, logic, and facts to come to the best conclusion.

Laziness is what is threatening democracy. It’s easier for people to join a political party and regurgitate their policies than go through the effort of researching, agonizing, and deciding. Political ads are a joke, usually twisting the facts into some half-truth clothed in an emotional appeal meant to bypass critical thinking. The theory behind political ads is to make you vote for something that makes you feel good about yourself the way dogs are rewarded with a treat when they do what we ask.

From what I can tell, many people use midterm elections to punish rather than forge a better future. For example, there are issues with the economy right now and polls show voters want to blame Democrats. But the facts about the economy show the exact opposite. The deficit has been reduced, even though it had ballooned under the previous Republican presidents. Yes, there’s inflation, but that inflation is worldwide. Do you seriously think that a Republican Congress will do anything vastly different concerning the economy than the Democrats? The real issues are about domestic freedoms and protecting the rights of the marginalized.

The news that BuzzFeed is downsizing its news operations is news to me – because until now I did not know that BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News were two different things. I thought it was all the BF click-bait garbage generating machine.

Am I the only one who didn’t know there was a difference?

(H/t Hanna Brooks Olsen; via Rachel Sanders)

In 2008 the prices of some structured credit products built out of subprime U.S. mortgages went down, and as a result there was a global recession and millions of people lost their jobs. If you had asked a normal person in 2007: “How would it affect your life if it turns out that investors have mispriced the super-senior risk in synthetic collateralized debt obligations built out of subprime mortgage tranches,” that person would have said “I have no idea what you are talking about, but I can’t imagine how that collection of words would affect me.” But it did. 

(Via Matt Levine in Money Stuff)

That was messy but somewhat comprehensible. I guess. And then this:

If you asked a normal person, you know, two weeks ago: “How would it affect your life if the prices of some monkey JPEGs and algorithmic stablecoins crash,” I think most people would reasonably have said “I do not own a monkey JPEG and do not aspire to own one, so this will not affect me at all.” My guess is that they would have been right. My guess is that the real world is not too affected by the crypto world, and that if crypto prices crash there will not be a ton of contagion in the rest of the financial system. But I think it is, at this point, debatable. Crypto has at least started to work its way into the real financial system. Some traditional investors also own crypto; if their crypto goes down they might have to sell regular stuff. Some public companies are exposed to crypto (because they are crypto exchanges, because they have levered crypto holdings, etc.), so your boring old index fund might go down when crypto goes down.

There is nothing about cryptocurrency and NFTs that doesn’t scream !SCAM!. The amount of magical thinking in this thing shocks me. That it will become part of the real economy, the one that helps people pay bills and buy groceries, terrifies me.

I used to say something along the lines of, “A lot of smarter people than me figured this was ok, so it must be.” I don’t say such ridiculous things any more.

Not that I don’t respect science and economics and those who do them and associated disciplines. I doubt our current definition of “smart people”. If they’re only the like of Musk and Bezos and Gates and Thiel, then I’ll spend time looking into what actual “smart people” in the arenas think.

I stopped believing in a benevolent billionaire entrepreneur doing anything beyond self-aggrandizement and adding a few extra billion to their Forbes profile.

I hit another annual milestone the other day, pushing my release version to 49.0.

V48 was surprisingly good given the current state of things. In no particular order:

I moved out of my sister’s family’s house

I moved into a rental house I adored with my son

I went to Seoul for work 2 times for a total of 5 months

Fun weird layover in San Francisco where I got to hang out with my sister-in-law

I got out and away with my SO as often as practical, including a surprisingly delightful trip to Huntsville, AL

I stayed in school … barely

I bought a house that I love

Lots of quality family and SO time including a zany Thanksgiving in Connecticut

What does v49 hold in store?

Who knows. It’ll be a journey, that’s for sure.

I revamped my office on Labor Day.

The essential elements are still here – the two tables, the many computers, the turntable, and sundry tech office things. Essentially the office doesn’t function significantly differently than before. It even has roughly the same layout. So, what changed?

Trash, first off. I got rid of 2 bag worth of recyclable detritus like empty tech boxes. Actually, it was mostly empty tech boxes.

Next came my main desk, the bigger of the two tables. I ad to replace a dying monitor a few weeks ago. Instead of ordering the same size (27”) or bigger and replacing the other one my son absconded with (which I gifted him) with the same, I got two smaller and lighter matching displays (24”). Between an on-line sale and some credits I got the pair for a song. Now, instead of my desk as the landing zone for a hodgepodge of various bits it houses the displays, the DSLR I use as a webcam, the microphone on a boom, and my coffee mug warmer.

Oh, and the sit/stand desk riser. I can use this for the first time this calendar year.

Layout wise, I moved the main desk back so I have more space & can see out my office door. The window is better positioned so I can look out and see the woods instead of my neighbor’s house. The ceiling fan and light are now above me instead of in front of me. This is far more comfortable.

However, perhaps the biggest change for my mental well being is the vast reduction in clutter. I carefully ran cables and tied them together with straps. Most of the piles of paper are out of view (until I process them).

The best thing about it, if you include the new monitors, the cost to do this was about $150 with the balance going to some screws, an extension cord, and some other bits ’n bobs. More of the cost went into time – about 5½ hours – with a but more to come to hang white boards (another part of the cost) and tidy my book shelves.

Well worth the effort!

I’m not an Olympics fan. I’m more than happy to talk your ear off about why. I also don’t care about the Oscars/Academy Awards, People’s Choice Awards, Grammys, what celebrities are up to, &c, a.k.a. entertainment. I will learn all I need to know through proximity to people who care about such things.

The news sources I follow frustrate me in that their apps won’t let me block such categories or topics. Apple News will.

Or, it pretends like I can. The interface isn’t always clear what it will block: is it the topic? A person mentioned in the article? The source itself? There is a block source option, but I reserve that for news outlets that aren’t worth my time or attention.

I blocked all that I could find in the topics related to the Olympics. Yet, now that they are in full swing, there is a whole section just down from the top stories that tell me the latest Olympics news and the medal counts.

I want the Olympics to get off of my lawn!