Category: unkategorisch

bookending the era of “President” Trump

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When he came down that escalator it all began. And it ended when his friend Rudy held a press conference. At Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Which was as sketchy as it sounds.

Will this be the last time we heard from that man? Nope. Not at all. He started his political foray with the Birther BS. An outlandish attempt to discredit the legitimacy of the 44th US President. There was never substance. But it got him a kernel of a following. He realized that something being 100% made up is not hurtful in that concept. Au contraire. People will lap this substance free lore up. As long as you please their lower sentiments (“and some -I guess- are good people”).

So we are looking at years of this kind BS on the way out. Undefined slices of the GOP are involved, engaged as well. They are so power hungry that they swallowed all pride and just go along with the junk that flows out of Donalds mental orifices. If it gets them votes their pucker their febrile lips around anything he holds their way.

Birtherism never harmed those who dabbled in it when actual reality and facts folded it back into its ephemeral non existence.

Barack Obama was not born in Kenya. Everybody knew that. All along.

Joe Biden won the election November 3rd 2020. Everybody knows that. But there are careers to be had. There is power to grabbed in the lie that it would be different.

The real problem is that there is no cost to lying. The avalanche of falsehoods that the Whitehouse did peddle in was not helpful. At all.

“We are turning the corner”

the day TINA died

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Not that there would be an alternative. Just that stocks no longer look so great. They are about the future. And that one is – lets say – uncertain.

A couple of days ago (mid October 2020) I compared Market cap with product produced (things made or subscribers) and recent revenue and employee numbers.

Tesla had a market cap of one million dollar per car made. So the stock market thinks that Elon Musks car company will make a million dollars in profits in the future for every car they manage to make. The same number for other auto makers is between 3 and 8 thousand. Only Toyota (18K) Daimler (23K) and BMW (31K) are different. Still a 30 to 1 ratio between BMW and Tesla.

Apple is expected to generate around $9000US of profits for every iPhone they sold in 2019. So if you did buy an iPhone, and if we assume a simple and generous 50% profit margin, then you have to buy Apple stuff for $18,000 for this to make sense.

Oversimplifying things even more Amazon is expected to make $10633 from each prime subscriber they have. Which ignores AWS and non prime clients or other activities like Whole Foods. Still: Profit margin on amazon.com are in the low percentages. Thinking 2% would mean that prime people need to order stuff worth half a million with the online merchant. Even if you think that only 1/3 of profits from prime member everybody would need to get 2243 Instant Pots. Each. Good times.

But hey: “There is no alternative to stocks”

we could have known

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In a week there will be an election. The polls look favorable for Mr Biden. They always did. Which polls? All polls. Mr Cohen got thrown under the bus in the meantime. The disregard for facts is part of the Trump system. The GOP has no problem to not replace a supreme court justice when he dies in February with the reason that it is an election year when the President who picks the candidate is a Democrat, while 4 years later 4 weeks is ample time to get a new one installed if it will be a Republican.

So, what happens if there is no blue landslide? Trump will simply not concede. Much as he tries to turn the election with lies and schemes before it happened he will do anything to hang on to power. For him it will be ideal if there will be unrest: The police will be on his side, not on the side of democracy. At least that is what is his plan. When there is chaos he can thrive. If he stays in power it does not matter to him -or many of his supporters – that he is on the level of Lukashenko.

As before the world, and the Democrats, will be flabbergasted by total disregard for any decency. As it has happened before. In a rally yesterday he claimed that he prevented the Democrats from blowing up Mount Rushmore. And yet around 30% of the people follow him. Read his constant nonsense on Twitter and paper their skulls from the inside with his nonsense. They believe him. They will find that it is OK that he stays in power. And in a couple of weeks Corona will be so bad that you can not switch horses mid stream. And least that will be their argument.

Luckily I have been wrong before. Sadly not as often as I would wish right now.

We will see.

2020, 1917 style

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Worth your time. So well made. So nicely written. I was waiting for this kind of thing since there was DV tape. DV is around for 1/5th of the time that has passed since WW1. So there is that …

It is 2020 and Birkin bags are booming

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A birkin bag is a strange thing as it is. Jane Birkin recorded a song with a 41 Serge Gainsbourg in 1969 when she was 23. Their relationship was probably a bit of a scandal in 51 years ago. Today it would not be great for PR. And, yes, typos are seemingly a staple of news these days.

Da hat wohl jemand einen Apple Laptop

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Jahrelang verkaufte Apple Laptops mit Tastaturen die schlicht und einfach nicht immer funktionierten. Nicht weil sie kaputt gingen, sondern weil sie einfach so gebaut worden waren. War kein Problem für die Firma.

It’s a boy. It’s a girl. It’s a tie

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Entirely possible that there will be an open outcome in the election in 9 days. It would probably creep towards this state over a couple of days. If not weeks.

While in the meantime Covid cases surge. November 2020 will be rather interesting. There is a best outcome scenario:

  • end of Trump
  • Bojo’s Brexit crashes on the cliffs of Dover
  • a vaccine appears and works very well

Nobody knows. A nailbiter it is.

Here, have some emojis instead

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Apple kicks RSS readers out of their Chinese app store. RSS is a wonderful technology: It lets people simply create a news feed based on their content. It is open, fast, simple. A RSS reader allows you then to actively curate yourself where your interests are. Yes, you can build a perfect filter bubble with it. But it is you building it. By actively deciding what to subscribe to. I love this technology. It can potentially change the world, and it certainly did change my live. 20 Years ago.

In contrast people today let some obtuse AI show them in their Instagram, Google News or Facebook feeds what the AI feels should be shown to them. It could work out OK. Spotify shows how AI can really help with auto curating the world for people. Netflix for instance is really dismal in this respect. Youtube is OKish. Sometimes bad, sometimes good. Their ads are horrible though. Glad that I don’t see them, since I spend $10 / month. Point being that RSS helps as an antidote to the world being constructed around people.

Of course Apple does not care. They are not as malign in their core as Facebook and parts of Google are. But they rather not get in trouble with the middle kingdom over some small Apps. There is no money in RSS. Really none. It is just pure information management. Which is nice, since it has been left alone. Probably also been the reason why many (not all) news papers left their feeds intact instead of paywalling or add-i-fying them as some of them have their front pages.

“Reflect” by Max Cooper

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Whoa. This song is awesome. All his work is (seems to be). I had no idea about him. But “Reflect” is awesome. Thank you spotify. AI does not have to suck. Bummer that the youtube AI still so bad. Netflix: I don’t even want to talk about your issues if it comes to recommendations.

Back to Max Cooper: his work makes me very happy. I really like it. And I would have never found it, would the Spotify AI not have guided me.

Covid-19: We won

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Back in the beginning of the year Covid-19 was not making me happy. I was freaking out in January and in the beginning of February. Information out of China was obviously doctored (death and infected counts happened to be at a constant ratio to each other for a whole week). It was clear that it was airborne, and seemingly China felt that locking up 23 million people was the right thing to do.

Compared to that potential outcome, and now in September 2020 things are not that bad. Even in a shithole country like the US there are enough ICU beds right now.

Covid being a drama is now part of peoples news habit. Much like its absence was early in the year. When I freaked out. I still would freak out based on the information I had: Back then nobody really knew how lethal it is. African swine fever killed probably 40 million pigs in China alone. Biologically there is not that much difference between a pig and a human. For a virus the difference is far smaller than if you are sitting in a Boeing 747 or Boeing 747sp of the same built year.

Of course pigs have considerable less favorable living conditions. The worst of the worst that people ever had to endure is barely touching what the best of standard farming has to offer for that species. That makes a difference. A big one. In life enjoyment and in the spread of infectious diseases alike. Biologically there isn’t anything that would magically protect us from being a potential victim of a virus like ASF.

Compared to that outcome we did win. And we lucked out, since Covid is not ASF. And medical care for pigs is not on the same level than it is for humans.

Yes, I know, close to a million people have died from Covid. A horrible death. They and the people who knew them would beg to differ that we won. But still: This could have been so much worse. People overall behaved much better than I have anticipated. Team human won. This round. Again.