Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, January 2, 2025
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40 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Musk laid off thousands of US workers and replaced them with H1B visa immigrants.
This entire H1B discussion isn’t about Americans not being able to do any job, it’s.. a robber baron lied to pad his profits! Who could have imagined that?
MAGA, he’s waging class war on you while running out the back door with all the money. This has always been the Republican party.
Spare me the populist nonsense — Vance didn’t show up for the vote on the child tax credit, Republicans don’t allow the PRO act to get to the floor for a vote, etc etc.
Here is a writeup on the HOR Speaker election, a detailed discussion of the procedures, also some discussion of ramifications and what may likely happen.
“Matt’s Five Points”
Here is a discussion of Trump’s imperial court and the maneuvering of the courtiers:
“Yastreblyansky”
snip
After much discussion of the above, then this:
Then some more discussion, this is a long piece.
Going another direction altogether,* while I don’t watch games anymore, I do look at tourney brackets still. I found it interesting that, so far, every top seeded team has lost to the “underdog” team that played a quarterfinal game. It will be interesting to watch this playoff boondoggle/cash grab evolve. (Especially if the SEC champ goes down today. Football is big business down there.)
*In a probably futile effort to put some air back into the room.
Tragedy in a Georgia County courthouse.
RIP
For some reason there have been pieces about the Y2K bug in the news media recently. Apparently there’s a controversy over whether it was even a real problem to begin with (spoiler alert: it was), as well as on the money and time and effort spent fixing it.
And, naturally, a lot of people who believe it was a hoax, because on Jan. 1st. 2000 absolutely no major catastrophe happened….
Many of the dire predictions of the world coming to an end* were fictitious hype to begin with. The Simpsons did a Halloween show segment on it, which was quite good at satirizing such things (like stop lights shooting laser beams, electric razors attacking people, etc.)
Plain fact is there were problems, but these were relatively minor, unless you were among those affected, and these began to show up in dribs and drabs in the second half of the 1990s. Notably things like credit cards showing up as expired if their expiration year was 00, 01, or higher. No big deal, as noted, unless it was your card, as also noted.
I first noticed the problem long before I ever used a computer. At some store, they had pre-printed receipts where the sales person filled in various blank fields. the one for the year read 197_. I figured such receipts wouldn’t be any good when 1980 rolled around (though you could cross out the 7 and write an 8 above it).
Fixes were rather simple, as newer computers used a four digit year. Fixing software was more difficult, but in a labor intensive way, and in not missing any dates. Me, at the time I handled accounting, payroll, and sales software at work, and had to upgrade to a newer version. everything else, like Word and Excel and Netscape, all kept chugging along on Win98.
*I wonder how people think a planet in a stable orbit through mostly empty space around a stable star can “end”. Sure, there are things which could end civilization, or severely damage it. Mass coronal ejections, massive volcanic activity, nuclear war, a nearby supernova (no stars likely to become nova are that close, but that could change in a few million decades), a very large asteroid strike, all would kill billions and cause worldwide environmental damages. Such things have happened in the past. Some may happen again in the future, or in five minutes, but none are likely in a given human lifespan.
By far the thing most likely to kill of humanity, as well as all life on Earth, is the Sun. As it matures it grows hotter. In a few hundred million years things may be too hot for most living beings. In around a billion years things will be hot enough to boil the oceans away, leaving our long suffering world a dry husk like Mars with a thicker atmosphere.
@charontwo: Then there is the third leg of the stool: the religious establishment. In Germany, the acquiescence of the Lutheran establishment also passively supported (or a least didn’t push back on) Hitler. The analogy in this country is the religious support of the Christian right wing. The decline of the formerly establishment Christian denominations (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc) have allowed that vacuum to be filled by non-denominational hucksters.
I savor Loomer and Bannon’s freak-outs. Bannon thought he was going to be Trump’s Goebbels, Loomer saw herself as Eva Braun. Of course Musk is Albert Speer, the superficially plausible, society-friendly one who made Hitler look less offensive. Which is more flattering to an insecure wanna-be like Trump, the Bible-thumping conspiracy-mongering lunatics of MAGA, or the richest man alive?
MAGA won’t all get what’s happening to them, but some will. Spurned lovers.
@Scott:
…
This is a difference from the German analogy, religious activism – people who are very much not into compromise. There is the influence of Catholic Integralists on people like J D Vance and Samuel Alito, other plutocrats as well as some MAGA too. Also the Protestant “Dominionist” NAR – Lance Wallnau, Dutch Sheets etc.
The religious here are players with their own agendas, not just passively going along as in Germany.
( I have been drawing attention to the New Apostolic Reformation for a long time, I have lots of linkies).
@charontwo: Agree
Had a checkup with my electrophysiologist today. All is well.
My barber is closed and it may be permanently so. I have been going to the same shop for over 15 years.
Dear Wife is enjoying retirement. She took me to the doctor and this afternoon will be visiting the outlet mall in West Palm Beach.
@Kathy:
What about this?
I love that ‘This is Sportscenter’ Follow me to Freedom!
Former MLB player Lenny Randle has passed away. His NYT obituary downplays what he was most famous for- Punching out his Manager Frank Lucchesi while they were both with the Texas Rangers in 1977. RIP.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m half convinced he no longer needs the MAGAts in the base, because he won’t run for a third term, nor be on the ballot for the 26 midterms. Meantime. Xlon the Felon’s Brain might “merge” Xitter with Pravda Social, and run up the Felon’s score.
I am sure he wants to die a real billionaire.
CBS just interrupted Price is Right for a special report. A press conference on the NO attack.
They start the broadcast off with a talking head. Put Price is Right back on.
@Kathy: Here’s an example of what can happen with a time/date error such as Y2K. It concerned a single program that didn’t account for the 1996 leap year. It immediately shut down smelters in New Zealand and Australia, leaving the molten metal to solidify where it was, wrecking equipment.
It should be noted that forgetting about leap years was common in the first few years of commercial programming, but that was the 60’s and 70’s. Forgetting about it in a program developed in the mid 90’s is just gross negligence. The Y2K issue was exactly the same type of issue, but in contrast it affected 100’s of millions of computers and control systems around the world. Anyone who thinks it was a hoax is hopessly naive. If we hadn’t spent the time and effort in fixing it, there would have been thousands upon thousands of such incidents.
@MarkedMan:
I wonder how many dry runs for fixes in complex systems caused simulated shutdowns like you describe.
That was the kind of fault that could easily happen. I never understood why some people believed nuclear ICMBs might launch without orders or anyone pressing the button, just because the date was wrong or their software couldn’t understand it. Never mind how many safety systems they’d bypass, some of them actual physical systems like metal keys.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump’s always had contempt for the MAGA rubes. That they can’t see this very obvious fact is a testament to their blindness/gullibility. They call him “the blue-collar billionaire.” Ha. His whole life has been dedicated to becoming one of the elite–unsuccessfully. As Tom Nichols observed years ago, he wouldn’t enter one of their hovels if he were on fire and they had the last pail of water.
@Kathy:
It’s true Trump no longer needs MAGA–unless he tries to run for a third term–but he still wants their adulation.
@Kathy: Your post reminded me of an incident in 1996. My grandmother had fallen at her assisted living facility and was transported to the hospital ER. I went to the ER to check her in. Part of the form asked for date of birth but only allowed two digits for the year. I wrote in 12/21/93. The registration form showed her as a three-year-old female and would not accept the Medicare number.
@MarkedMan: “Anyone who thinks it was a hoax is hopessly naive. If we hadn’t spent the time and effort in fixing it, there would have been thousands upon thousands of such incidents.”
And the Covid vaccine and the lockdowns prevented the virus from raging completely out of control and killing millions more people than it did. Which is now used as “proof” that all the measures taken against the virus were useless at best and part of a conspiracy to take over the world at worst.
People really suck.
@Kathy: The main problem isn’t really that the systems will spontaneously do unexpected things, although I suppose that could happen, it was that the system would unexpectedly crash and you couldn’t get it back online. That’s what happened with the smelters.
We were installing a production system at a customer starting in late 1999. We bought 10 brand new Dell computers and got one system up and running before the New Year. When we returned in 2000 to finish setting up we discovered that on the second reboot of every system it would give a fatal error message. We proved it was Y2K related because we could boot into the BIOS, change the date, and on the second boot the error would clear. As you can imagine it took us quite a while to figure this out and Dell Tech support was clueless. When we called them back and told them what was going on they never acknowledged it was Y2K related but about a week later they had a BIOS patch. They never reported it to the Feds, as required by law at the time. And these were computers that were entirely designed during the Y2K fix years.
This is apparently Trump’s best attempt at looking stern, magisterial, and commanding. I think it’s hilarious:
http://www.nypost.com/2025/01/02/us-news/trump-posts-stately-photo-vowing-hell-be-back-in-18-days-after-new-years-day-attacks/
@wr:
“It seems there was no need to call the fire department. The fire’s already out! all they did was add water damage to the house.”
@MarkedMan:
The problem is this is plenty. Lots of things ran through or on computers by 2000. So we might have seen widespread failures in banks, air traffic control, medical devices in hospitals, hotels, restaurants, etc. So there was no need to invent wild scenarios.
Maybe 1999 was a particularly slow news year…
We have an enormous issue with expertise these days. Looking at the ads I see, it’s clear that people are expected to find “the people” a more trustworthy source of information than “an expert”.
I think the issue is that Big Money can find “an expert” to say whatever it is they need them to say, in carefully lit, beautifully shot, choreographed statements. They don’t trust that. I kind of don’t blame them.
However, it means that they instead believe conspiracy theories promoted by “just folks” and Big Money has already figured out how to imitate that and also how to identify and target those who are most likely to swallow the garbage that comes after “What they won’t tell you about …”
BTW, one of the big tech news this year was the release of the Apple Vision Pro some time in February.
One of the smallest tech news of the year was the end of production of the Apple Vision Pro some time in November.
I saw a number of reviews of the cumbersome spectacles. All of them were very enthusiastic. None of them, including tech-centric channels, made any kind of follow up. except for one Youtuber who goes by Mr. Whose The Boss, who casually mentioned not using the device after doing his review.
It seems the next move is a cheaper headset.
The reviews, IMO, made me feel like it was an interesting toy. One pointed out how it could be coupled to an Apple laptop, and show the laptop screen virtually in front of your eyes. this seems pointless, paying $3,500 to see a screen you can see with your Mark I eyes, but there’s a twist. You could arrange several windows around you, all of any you chose, and turned to look at them.
I can see some value in that kind of functionality. Just not $3,500 worth.
@CSK: Those pictures of Trump look pretty pathetic to me. But I fear his booking photo showed he understands what looks presidential, or in control, or strong, or something to the MAGA better than I do.
@CSK:
@gVOR10:
The felon looks like a man who can sleep standing up.
@Kathy: I used my first set of VR goggles at a SIGGRAPH in 1991 and have been waiting for the killer app ever since. The Vision Pro is AR, not just VR, but it still is doesn’t have that killer app. The one thing I thought could create a solid if niche market was about 15 years ago when I saw an application developed for Boeing. It let a service technician don some AR goggles and “look through” an access panel to what was underneath, and then superimpose 3D videos of disassembly, servicing and reassembly. In the end, the amount of work to create all this content wasn’t worth it, especially since once a technician was past the training stages where they are paired with an experienced technician, they had done those actions hundreds of times and didn’t need such a tool. My understanding is the Apple product that has changed their workflow is the iPad, as they can carry the many thousands of pages from the various service manuals around in one hand and prop it up wherever they need it.
FWIW, I will have a use for a Vision Pro in a couple years, but it is even more niche. For the first years of retirement, my wife and I plan on traveling around the US, Canada and perhaps Mexico in a relatively small travel trailer. I don’t plan on completely retiring, and my work space consists of quite a lot of screen space. Four monitors at work, and at home a large laptop and a curved widescreen monitor, plus an iPad used as a third monitor to hold my calendar and music app. This isn’t something I would want to try to replicate in a trailer, but with a laptop and the Vision Pro I can go all out, without closing myself off. I’ can still see the trailer and the view out the windows, but can pin a screen with my IDE directly in front of me, my email to the space above one window, my calendar to another. I can put my personal stuff on the wall behind me so I have to get up and move around if I want to play a game or yammer on OTB. The possibilities are endless. But alas, this is way too niche of a use for Apple.
Nonetheless, I think we will eventually be using such technology, even if Apple has left the business by then. 30-40 years ago I considered myself a “realistic” technical enthusiast, and predicted the failure of all kinds of products that did, indeed, fail. But as time went on, I saw that some of these came back and eventually took over. For example, the Apple Newton was a failure, but years later I had a (much cheaper) Palm Pilot that dramatically changed a number of things to the point I felt I couldn’t live without them. A small but very significant example? Every year since I first went to college I got a bound calendar/scheduler/contact list book and I laboriously copied my contact list over to the new one every year, as well as people’s birthdays, etc. From the time I got my first Palm Pilot 30 years or so ago, I have had one contact list and one calendar. Many different devices, and many different Apps, but trivially migrated from one to the next. So the Apple Newton was an abject failure, but the Palm Pilot, with a few changes and a few years advances in technology, was revolutionary. I remember, “No one needs a portable computer”, “Only accountants need spreadsheets”, “Color copiers (there were no printers) are frivolous and no one wants one once they’ve printed a few documents”. Of course, 3D Movies were going to take over the world in the 1950’s and we’ve had a resurgence and failure every 20 years since then, so some things truly don’t take off. (I understand Samsung (?) is trying to bring this back again in the latest iteration.)
Specifically for Kathy: My daughter and her girlfriend are doing a three month tour of Central America, kicking off in February and are starting out in Mexico City. Any advice/recommendations?
@gVOR10: I have no idea what full MAGA finds appealing,but for my more nihilist brother, everything that makes Trump look awful is good, because it shows how incompetent the Democrats Deep State is that they can’t hold that shambling disaster of a man accountable.
This year there will be two partial Solar eclipses. In my book, this means there will be no Solar eclipses this year (bummer).
But there will be two total lunar eclipses. You can find out dates and times here.
Lunar eclipses are nothing much, but they have their charm. Best of all, you can stare at them as long as you like in perfect safety (as long as you’re not walking, driving, flying a plane, steering a boat, or standing in the middle of the road). Worst of all, they happen late at night.
The highlight, as in Solar ones, is totality. And it goes on and on and on for a long, long time. Of course, there’s little of interest. The Moon looks dim and red*, and, well, that’s pretty much it. there’s no drop in temperature, no weird illumination, no celestial features suddenly revealed, not even confused animals trying to figure out WTF is going on.
Watching a total Solar eclipse from the Moon would not be as impressive as watching one on earth. You’d see the Moon’s shadow crawl over the planet. Such things have been observed from spacecraft, including the ISS.
A Lunar eclipse on the Moon would be far more impressive. You wouldn’t see the Sun’s corona, as it would be blocked by Earth. But you’d see the reversed constellations, and the strangest lighting conditions. Namely a red ring around the Earth, as it refracts and scatters sunlight. See below at the asterisk.
*While the Earth’s shadow covers the whole Moon, Earth being far bigger, the earth’s atmosphere scatters and refracts sunlight. A good explanation of the effect is here. Essentially the Moon gets a long, Earthan sunset during a total eclipse.
@MarkedMan:
I recommend a package tour of local sites and nearby archaeological sites. There are several of the latter, including the Sun and Moon pyramids a short drive from the city, the Cholula Pyramid in Puebla, and the Tula site in Hidalgo. Not to mention the Cuicuilco site in town. I also highly recommend the National Museum of Anthropology.
One restaurant I can recommend is Café de Tacuba, in particular the original one in the city center. It’s not the best, but it offers a great deal of variety. I’d stay away from street taco stands (in fact, I do; I don’t trust their hygiene standards), but there are plenty of good taco places like Los Panchos.
I’d recommend visits to archaeological sites in Quintana Roo (mainly Cancun and Tulum), especially if they will visit Maya sites in Central America.
@Kathy:
If I’m understanding what you’re saying, I was doing that in “smart” classrooms almost 10 years ago with multiple screens. So no, definitely not worth $3500. 🙁
@MarkedMan:
I remember a lot of talk and spilled ink in computer and general interest magazines, about what would be the killer app for the PC, which would finally generate widespread adoption of home PCs. it turned out to be the internet.
I never got that, as there were tons of useful tools one could use. I’ve had a home computer of a sort since 1984 or 85 or so. Getting on the internet meant buying a modem and finding an access point, which wasn’t easy early in the 90s.
There’s internet for all these VR/AR goggles, so obviously that’s not it. There’s immersive TV and movies, which might be particularly useful on a plane, but not at the price Apple charged.
IMO, it needs to work with tactile controls of some kind. Gestures on air just don’t cut it, no matter how good the goggles are at recognizing them, or even how well they work. tracking your vision, sure. But typing on air or clicking your fingers just feels unnatural and unsatisfying.
As to the Newton, I can’t separate it from “Eat up, Martha.”
I did have a Palm device years ago. I liked it. I preferred writing by hand on it than typing on a cell phone.
@just nutha:
A major problem of VR/AR goggles is they are one-person devices. Cell phones are too, but not entirely. You can show someone what’s on your phone, play music through a speaker, stream video to a screen, etc.
To share what you see in the goggles with other people, they all need to wear the same goggles. That’s a lot of money.
BTW, I think smart phones are outrageously expensive, too. But there’s somewhat more justification. Essentially they are small computers, and most cell service providers let you pay for your phone over two or three years (yes, even if they provide the phones for “free”). That’s one reason I’ve never paid for a smart phone since I got issued a company phone.
@Kathy: Thanks so much! I’ll pass it on. I was there on business for 4-5 days in the early 90’s but have no recollection other than that I liked the people I was with and when I went out everyone seemed truly friendly but… “formal” isn’t right. “Proper”? “Dignified”? In any case I mean it as a compliment.
Speaking of killer apps, when I had the Palm Pilot I used to rip audiobooks into a format I could transfer there, and then listen to them with (I think) a cassette or CD adapter during my commute. But it was a nerdy, tedious and finicky thing to do, and queuing up the next one required pulling over or risking life and limb for everyone on the road. Then Apple came out with the iPod and, while they spent a lot time on the device itself, they spent even more on the experience of loading them with music and audiobooks or these crazy new things called, of course, “Podcasts”. I used my iPods for years before I ever bought anything from iTunes. Microsoft, on the other hand, came out with Zune, and while the device was perfectly fine, the accompanying app was all about maximizing profit by steering the users. No surprised it failed horribly.
@Kathy: iPhones are outrageously expensive, Samsung phones are outrageously expensive. A common garden variety smartphone adds $10/month to my phone bill* for 2 years. Not outrageously expensive.
*I pay $15/month to T-Mobile for phone, text, and 5 gigs (of which I used one last month). And paid cash for my last phone.
@just nutha:
With UGA losing earlier this evening, it has come to pass that each of the four teams that had a bye in the first round has lost their first playoff game in the quarterfinal round, at a nominally neutral bowl game site. It’s also notable that each of the quarterfinal winning teams had played and won their first round playoff game on their university’s home field.
@Eusebio: Certainly interesting (especially the home field part) but I don’t think our society can expand the Xmas to New Year holiday season to accommodate destination bowl games starting in early to mid December. This is probably as much about maximizing ticket revenue as it is about finding who’s “the best,” and the market for neutral field playoff games is unknown. It may well be that shooting for second place is the game theory move in this model. That may not turn out to be “best for business,” tho.