Coffeezilla first got on my radar when the Financial Times quoted his investigation of a shady crypto deal. I've been watching his channel ever since and I can vouch for the guy. If you're looking for good investigative journalism focused on the financial side of crypto, NFTs, an … | Continue reading
Listening to Cohan, it's easy to forget how controversial going to war in Europe was. And finally, something appropriate from the great Jerry Goldsmith. | Continue reading
In addition to the great quote, I'd say this was exceptional work from Bob Chipman but I don't think you can be characteristically exceptional (seems like an oxymoron). He does a great job walking at critical tightrope, maintaining his objectivity while giving an evocative accoun … | Continue reading
A rational land-use policy in a state like California needs to balance the agricultural productivity against the proximity to housing demand. Though there is still more farming in LA County than you might expect, it's a tiny fraction of what you would've seen just 50 or 60 years … | Continue reading
The mystery of why this attack on the locavore movement was so bad when legitimate criticisms were so easy to come by would have first gotten a little deeper, then gotten simpler if I had googled the author first. Pierre Desrochers is associated with pretty much every conservativ … | Continue reading
I've never been a big fan of On the Media --they've always struck me as too wimpy for the job at hand -- but I am a big fan of Cory Doctorow and this segment is an excellent introduction to some of his most5 important ideas. [01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone interviews Cory Doctorow, … | Continue reading
To understand the politics of 2024, you need to understand the political journalism of 2022. Tom Bonier, the analyst who probably came off the best over the past couple of years, has a highly recommended thread commemorating the anniversary of the Dobbs decision. On the 2nd anniv … | Continue reading
Even in its current sad state, you still find yourself in interesting conversations on Twitter. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky born September 11, 1979) is an American artificial intelligence researcher[2][3][4][5] and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas … | Continue reading
Seeing a lot of comments along these lines from Trump watchers along with a lot of what does look like groundwork from the Trump camp. Not sure if I'd go 60%, but I won't be shocked if it happens either. I've always thought it was 60/40 that Trump would find an excuse to cancel a … | Continue reading
We have to be careful about how we talk about money in an election, particularly in this election. With financial questions, we're used to thinking in terms of businesses or (two perhaps a lesser degree) household finance where more money coming in is almost always better, as is … | Continue reading
June 19th... are there any polling experts on the Washington Post ed board? — G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) June 20, 2024 One day later... Biden is "ahead" in our national polling average for the first time all year https://t.co/cdR35yt9ac pic.twitter.com/aPKGKENAno — G Elli … | Continue reading
The fundamental rule of feral disinformation is that once a useful lie develops a life of its own, you can no longer depend on it remaining useful. Case in point: For a long time, sowing distrust of health and safety regulations and of the agencies and research institutions behin … | Continue reading
Tuesday, May 15, 2018 "Oh, the things that you'll see." To get a handle on turn-of-the-century mentality, you have to focus not just on the newness of individual technologies, but of the very idea of being able to do these now ordinary things. At the beginning of the 19th century … | Continue reading
From Andrew Gelman: "How would the election turn out if Biden or Trump were replaced by a different candidate?" The piece is definitely worth reading, informative and well argued, but the problem is Gelman never actually discusses replacing either Biden or Trump. Admittedly, the … | Continue reading
Happily, both of the nuclear units that were out of commission are back online producing 5,000 megawatts. Unhappily, there are still nearly 18,000 megawatts of coal and gas plants offline as this climate change-fueled heat wave sets in. #txclimate #txenergy pic.twitter.com/0XgsO1 … | Continue reading
The Alien Invasion sketch is very good and sharply observed, but Train Safety (from the team's wonderful radio series, That Mitchell and Webb Sound) is the essential one here. Every news editor should be required to listen to this every morning. | Continue reading
Bob Chipman takes a deep dive into Apple's disastrous and quickly aborted ad introducing the new iPad, approached in terms of marketing, cinema, and cultural/consumer history (the title is a hint to that last one.) I'll admit that when I started the video, the length seemed a bit … | Continue reading
Example 14,305: From the indispensable Stephen Findeisen, a.k.a. Coffeezilla. | Continue reading
Think about these two scenarios. One. After a particularly fuzzy night you realize that you have spent most of this month's mortgage payment on strippers and cocaine. You decide to go to the track and try to get ahead by betting longshots before your wife finds out. Two. You are … | Continue reading
This 2012 post its on one of the topics I've been meaning to bring into our election-year blogging. Persuasibility is one of if not the fundamental concept of marketing. The target audience of virtually all advertising is the persuadable segment of the audience. Given the large c … | Continue reading
This is Joseph. I had a conversation with Mark about why I was not a big fan of ethnic nationalism and ethno-states. I thought it might be worth putting these thoughts out. This is especially true in the context of nation states, which, by definition, tend to have borders. One of … | Continue reading
[I'm trying to get this one out the door quickly so I'll be using an outline format because it's faster.] 1. Unlike most of the polls we've seen over the past week, this survey actually serves a useful purpose in terms of history, political science, sociology, etc. It is importan … | Continue reading
Given the situation and what we know about Trump, it has been obvious since the first investigation started gathering steam that the more intense the pressure got, the more support and greater displays of loyalty he would demand from GOP officials and candidates, and that a time … | Continue reading
Within minutes of the verdict being announced, jokes started to circulate on twitter from people like James Fallows and NYT pitchbot, speculating on how long it would take for pundits and political journalists to start cranking out articles and think pieces explaining how the mul … | Continue reading
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 Adding in base 8, counting by ten, and other reform fixations With all of the usual caveats about small samples, I've been reading up on education reform movements past and present recently and I've noticed something. There seems to be a tendency to latch on … | Continue reading
[We dive a bit deeper into "what is intuitive? in the comments.] A few years ago, a Doctor Who episode had the doctor (or more accurately a doctor) figure out that he and everyone around him were simulations because, when asked to name a number, everyone independently always came … | Continue reading
Even under the best of circumstances, reading the polls at this point hoping to see who will win the election is a bit like weighing yourself to see whether or not you will be obese in six months. There is some correlation, but it doesn't actually tell you that much. Under the cu … | Continue reading
Love that CNN has adopted the Dominos pizza tracker format for trial updates pic.twitter.com/eiiFlmJNo2 — Tyler (@BalloonFlavour) May 29, 2024 I don't know what the impact of RFK jr is going to be in November (nobody knows) but for someone funded in large part by Trump supporters … | Continue reading
I grew up in the Bible Belt and was still living there in the late 90s when things started to change. We were never evangelical, instead opting for the Fred Rogers wing of the Presbyterian Church (and even by those very lax standards, I still soon qualifed as lapsed). Arguing wit … | Continue reading
🚨 #BREAKINGNEWS During a speech tonight Donald Trump is met with an angry crowd chanting "Hypocrite" and booing constantly the entire speech. The Libertarian Party has also chanted "Fuck Donald Trump." 🚨 pic.twitter.com/6ak797fZbH — Ford News (@FordJohnathan5) May … | Continue reading
A good day for a recommendation There is, of course, no such thing as the military perspective -- no single person can speak for all the men and women who have served in the military -- but if you are looking for a military perspective, my first choice would be Lt. Col. Robert Ba … | Continue reading
You can make the case that no auto has ever achieved punchline status faster than the Cybertruck. Certainly none have ever achieved it more deservedly. Back in Black | The Daily Show | Continue reading
Some stories are just made for Pitchbot... NEW YORK (AP) — A video posted to Donald Trump’s account on his social media network Monday included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he wins the election in November. @AP https://t.co/JSzINcRWiI — C … | Continue reading
Friday, May 23, 2014 Good grief! -- Sally Brown on New Math I have been working on a long piece on the parallels between the New Math of the Sixties and the Common Core math of today. As part of my research, I came across an amusing quote from a Peanuts strip of the time. From Wi … | Continue reading
Note: in this context, when I talk about the accuracy of the polls, I mean the correlation between the election results and where the polling averages were at the time the polls were being discussed. If I write a post today and ask if the presidential polls are accurate, I mean i … | Continue reading
As previously mentioned, the definitive rebuttal to Ezra Klein's NYT opinion piece is Josh Marshall's "A Quick Survey of Numbers, Vibes and the Inner Lives of Campaigns" which actually came out two days before Klein's piece (making it technically a pre-buttal). At the risk of pil … | Continue reading
This piece from Josh Marshall nicely captures the divide in what we somewhat euphemistically call the "liberal press."On one side is the meta-panic crowd, represented by people like Ezra Klein and Nate Silver, journalists and pundits equally worked up about what they see is the i … | Continue reading
I was trying to disengage from recent arguments with times people but I seem to have failed. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2024 This is a fairly minor turn in the ongoing New York Times saga, but it's still interesting as an indicator of just how tired of the paper of record … | Continue reading
Thursday, May 15, 2014 The SAT probably is unfair to the disadvantaged but not for the reasons you've been hearing This is another one of those posts that I started weeks ago as part of the big SAT thread then didn't get around to posting. One of the big questions was the fairnes … | Continue reading
From Monday's NYT: Gerard Willingham, 30, works as a web administrator and lives in Riverdale, Ga. He voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, but he plans to vote for a third-party candidate in November because of the president’s response to the conflict in Gaza, the issue about which he ca … | Continue reading
I'm not saying that effective altruism is a scam. I believe that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett sincerely want to use their billions to improve the world. Furthermore with one or two notable exceptions, I think that the Gates foundation and similar organizations have produced impo … | Continue reading
Even by meme stock standards, Trump Media is an insane story. For starters, as James Surowiecki points out "His company has $4 million in revenue, and it lost $58 million last yr, and it was valued at $9 billion, making it arguably the most overvalued company in history." Then th … | Continue reading
The interesting part of the RFK brainworm story is that literally no one who read it said, “No way.” — Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 8, 2024 Brain-eating worms, which I do not support, are not nearly as harmful to a candidate as the woke mind virus is. by Glenn Greenwald — New … | Continue reading
Here's another repost about 21st century journalists retconning the late 19th century narrative. Based on feed back to the original, I've added some relevant details. Thursday, March 22, 2018 Tech revisionism and the myth of the killer app I'm wondering if anyone else there occas … | Continue reading
I was having a long distance conversation with a friend from Atlanta recently. Like me, he spins way too much time watching television and following politics (making for, as you would imagine, some deeply nerdy conversations). When the subject turned to the presidential campaign, … | Continue reading
This is the one thing you always need to remember about tech visionaries: if you go back far enough, you can find some actual geniuses, but even their stories are mostly lies. Monday, January 29, 2018 Tesla and the New York Times – – adding a historical component to the hype-and- … | Continue reading
]Kaiser Fung WAZE weighs in here.] I suspect everyone reading this has had moments while driving where their phone has taken them off what seemed to be the quickest and most obvious route. The natural assumption at those times is that the navigation system knows something that we … | Continue reading
As I said before, I don't want to make too much of this analogy, but you could do multiple of these ads just on Trump's abortion quotes. | Continue reading