Monday, September 19, 2016
"Progress" in the geek space
And for that matter, in the grand scheme of things I don’t even have it that badly. I know really awkward, unpleasant-to-be-around people for whom, say, 4chan-type spaces online are their only social outlet. They are marginally employed and have little to no money. Many of them still live with their parents while pushing 30. They’ve set down a shitty path in life, and they have little hope of ever leaving it. These social spaces are their only treats in life.Or, what happens when reformers try to exclude people from their own social spaces.
Thursday, July 07, 2016
Government ordering people to start new lines of business
The Church of Anti-Discrimination, most confident of sects, will settle for nothing short of full establishment: under a California court settlement, ChristianMingle.com, which bills itself as the largest online Christian dating site, has agreed to establish search options for men seeking men and women seeking women.Insane. As the article points out, that means that gay dating sites also have to cater to straight couples now . . . I wonder if JDate allows goyim?
Labels: politics
Thursday, June 09, 2016
Public company costs
The SEC is complaining that companies aren't going public, and their investors would do better if there was more regulation.
That these things were written without irony shows how unmoored our discussion of corporate governance has gotten from reality. Clearly, the poor investors of Uber, Airbnb, and Snapchat must be slapping their foreheads, saying “THAT’s why success has eluded us! We need more SEC oversight!”Oy.
Labels: economics
Tuesday, June 07, 2016
GDP considered not useful
“We know less about the sources of value in the economy than we did 25 years ago,” wrote economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders in a 2009 article. “We see the influence of the information age everywhere, except in the GDP statistics. More people than ever are using Wikipedia, Facebook, Craigslist, Pandora, Hulu and Google. Thousands of new information goods and services are introduced each year. Yet, according to the official GDP statistics, the information sector (software, publishing, motion picture and sound recording, broadcasting, telecom, and information and data processing services) is about the same share of the economy as it was 25 years ago - about 4%. How is this possible? Don’t we have access to more information than ever before?”
Labels: economics
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Where shall I eat now?
Papaya Dog was the spot of spots.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Guns, but which ones
Silly silly silly.
Handguns are by far the most common weapon used in homicides, including mass murders. In 2012 Sen. Dianne Feinstein claimed guns covered by her proposed "assault weapon" ban were involved in 385 murders from 2004 through 2011, a period when there were more than 76,000 gun homicides. Taking Feinstein at her word, "assault weapons" were used in 0.5 percent of gun homicides during that period. Feinstein also attributed 455 injuries to "assault weapons," or an average of about 57 per year—a negligible share of aggravated assaults, which totaled more than 750,000 in 2011. Just as it is not clear why the Sandy Hook plaintiffs think AR-15-style rifles have no legitimate civilian uses, it is not clear why they think such guns are especially lethal. The lawsuit cites three characteristics, none of which is unique to so-called assault weapons:Just because something looks scary, doesn't mean it is scary.
Labels: politics
Throw the bums out
Apparently in some countries there are rules in Parliament.
Yesterday (or “yisterday,” as they say there), New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key got ejected from Parliament for not following the rules during Question Time (or “Quistion Taime,” as they say there). Specifically, he did not shut up fast enough when the Speaker stood up and called for order. Saying he had warned the PM about this previously, Speaker David Carter enforced the rules by ordering Key to get out.
Labels: politics
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Does Jesus smoke weed?
