Thinking in Bets

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Annie Duke is a professional poker player. And she wrote a book with the complete title: “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts”. I enjoyed it a great deal. Yes, at times it feels a bit redundant. But I don’t mind: She points out important flaws in our reasoning. Hearing things more than once is OK with me. It’s not that I would live already what she points out. I had the good fortune to read “Lucky or Smart” by Bo Peabody 15 years ago. It is a great little book, and I really am thankful that I got to read it before I happened to have what people would call success.

“Thinking in Bets” has a broader scope. It looks at decision making and where we really and generally suck at it. She also points out what we can do about it. I like it. I hope to remember what I have learned.

For me the trouble with great books like this one is that I listen to it, understand most of it. Agree with it. Spend a couple of times to implement some things. And then next thing comes along. And the work leaves vestiges at best. I should probably listen to books again instead of jumping on new ones. But they are all so interesting …

Daᴙk

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Finished Dark. Glad we didn’t binge it. Glad we watched it. Glad I could watch it together with somebody who matters to me. Not sure if I would recommend it to somebody who is not with somebody. Glad we spent the money on a decent 4K OLED. At 77″ it is – with decently lensed content like this – actually on the small size. Glad that we got our telco to switch us away from the DSL sub station that we were on before. With the 15Mbit they sent us from there 4K didn’t fly. With H266 it eventually will as we have learned this week. But today it would not be enough.

Daᴙk is really worth watching I think. Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar did an outstanding job in writing and directing it. Also in assembling an awesome cast and talented production designers, composers and all the other crafts one need to make such a tight piece. It is refreshing to watch something and not to know if I am just stupid and don’t get it, or if it is not known yet why something happens. I am looking forward to watching it again. There are still things that don’t make sense to me. Interesting to find out why I still don’t understand some aspects.

That Netflix makes large bets like this one is great. Lots of other, actually rather crappy, stuff they make as well. But then again, there is no Sendeplatz that it would take away from content like Daᴙk.

y2k

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A deadline clip from 1998. Now hat we know the outcome it appears to be a rather strange piece. Back then it was not.

I oscillated between being worried and being totally calm in respect of my job. After I had set the date forward on the machines in question and they still worked I was not worried. There was a patch one could install so that one utility that nobody had ever heard of would continue to run. Somehow I ended being in charge for a specific slither of computer systems in next larger entity that owned us. I wasn’t very much liked, probably also since I was an arrogant a*hole, that even was right some of the time. So when I asked for a budget of zero peoples reaction were telling: They were convinced that come January 1st 2000 I would finally be a problem of the past. Didn’t happen for a while.

But when the road to our house was blocked for non residents January 31st I started to worry again: It eventually ended up at a drinking water reservoir. Where the authorities worried about drinking water for 16 million people? Actually not: They just didn’t want people to go up there for the fireworks. It came – it went. And sold lots of computers.

Of course January 19 2038 will be whole different matter.

2046

history media

Anne Haeming schreibt in der Taz über Luc Besson’s “Der Profi”, und – Überraschung – in den letzten 26 Jahren hat sich vieles geändert. Die “Kritik” is brav mit #Me too verhashtagt. Aber wirklich neues fördert Frau Heaming nicht hevor. Man wird das Gefühl nicht los das der Film jetzt irgendwie schlimm sein soll. Die Autorin endet mit:

Leute, diesen Film anschauen, einfach so: Das geht längst nicht mehr.

Aha. Nun wissen wir das also. Also was machen? Umerziehen nach dem (versehentlichen) betrachten? Schwarze Balken? Schauspieler per KI ins der jetzigen Kultur entsprechenden Alter setzen? Das ganze Werk gleich in den Giftschrank. Neben Riefenstahl ist noch Platz.

Das Problem dieser Kritik ist, das sie schreibt als gäbe es irgendwo einen objektiven Maßstab von dem was geht, und was nicht geht. Den gibt es natürlich auch: Wenn etwas Leiden verursacht dann ist es bedenkenswert. Sollte meistens vermieden werden.

Ob nun jeder die Brutalitäten dieses Films sehen muß ist vielleicht fraglich. Aber diesen Film jetzt pauschal via ist-me-too zu verurteilen ist lächerlich. Und eine Indikation der Zeit. In nochmal 26 Jahren wird diese Kritik selbst in der kritischen Betrachtung stehen. Der Film wird dann als Zeitzeugnis bewertet werden. Nicht mehr. Nicht weniger. Bis dahin gucke ich ihn dann einfach an. Einfach so.

The Hagia Sophia will survive …

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… the recent changes as well: Durings its almost 1500 year long history the building has been eastern orthodox, roman christian, eastern orthodox again, muslim and secularized. It has survived iconoclasts, crusaders ( still not clear why exactly they sacked a Christian city at the Bosporus when they set out to liberate the holy land from muslims, but hey, middle ages make as little sense as times do today ) and muslim conquerers. Funny that Wikipedia titles it as the ‘fall of constantinople’ it was still there, just was run by different people. The walls of Constantinople did actually fall. Enough for things to have this outcome. But as far as walls are concerned they had a pretty darn good run.

In 17 years Hagia Sophia will be exactly 1500 years old. Erdogan will be a chapter in history books. Not one that many people will be proud off. The building, it will not care.

attention

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Since we have not been careful with our attention this is what we ended up with: Two presidential candidates. One from the Republican, the other from the Birthday Party (Not a joke by me). As Plastic Jesus says:

STOP
MAKING
STUPID
PEOPLE
FAMOUS

presidential pretzel

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Dear Universe, could I maybe gently remind you that it did indeed happen that somebody chocked on a pretzel, lost consciousness and collided with a coffee table. By the looks of it the current inhabitant of said living room does snack. He does watch TV. Difference is that he is 20 years older and does not jog 3 miles in 21 minutes.

what a great book: This Is Not Propaganda

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I really enjoyed Peter Pomerantsev’s 2019 book “This Is Not Propaganda”. It mixes a biographical thread of his very interesting family history with the very recent developments of miss information campaigns. How information topology has changed during the last  quarter century has been of some interest to me. While I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination I am not totally naive on the subject either. Pomerantsev does in my opinion a wonderful job in explaining the pedigree of the mayhem that messes with our societies right now. He focuses on a couple of key points along the way that brings them exemplary to life. I think even if one would have not never considered why it can be, that a rather reality TV persona can be what used to be the ‘leader of the free world’, one would understand the causes much better after reading this very insightful book. There were a couple of passages where the author managed to explain topics to me in a wonderful concise way. While the existence of ISIS had not escaped me either, I had never really understood what drove the sudden surge of this phenomenon. After a few pages I realized much clearer why this ‘movement’ became attractive enough for people to actually go there. It is high time that more people understand how manipulation of political movements functions on the Internet. The companies running the infrastructure have provided the backbone for allot of things that are really bad for mankind. They did not intend to. They simply did not notice. Maybe they still are ignorant. They certainly do not much to reign it in. There has never been more junk information on the pages of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Good information quality is the fresh water in the developed world in the 21st century. Lots of entities have plenty of motivation to dump dead donkeys in the wells that are owned by these companies. People will not stop drinking from them. They actually like the taste.

noRepo

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Back in September I felt that the sudden increase in Fed Repo activity would be a sign that something was afoot.

Specially since, while there was speculation abound, there was no clear explanation why there was that sudden need for money of this nature in September. The treadmill was turning as usual, but also squeaking.

Now Repo is no more. As Reuters writes this is probably due to a rule change making this tool less attractive for banks.

That the balance sheet decreases in the same time is interesting. Not what I would have expected right now.

Remdesivir: 62% decrease in fatality

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Gilead releases the results of a study with 312 people being treated with Remdesivir compared to 818 people of a similar group. They headline of a 62% decrease in fatality rate is impressive. 13 people being treated with the drug had died. If my math is not broken (as it is often) that means that 29 people would have died without the drug. With such a small sampling size the percentage range is one that I would take with a grain of salt. Just 3 people more that would have perished and fatality decrease would be less than 50%. I think I own some Gilead stock, so that part works out. And I thankful for everything that seems to work. I am just cautious about headlines that sound really good.