October, 2022 archive
QOTD 0
Thales of Miletus:
Afterthought:
I was led to seek out a quote form Thales of Miletus by Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mystery, Death of a Doxy.
I have been a Nero Wolfe fan since I read Some Buried Caesar in the back of the family car as my parents drove us to visit my grandmother [mumble] years ago. I am currently escaping reality by rereading the Nero Wolfe canon.
Game Changed 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, sociology professor Thomas Henricks explores why football has for all practical purposes supplanted baseball as America’s “national pastime.” It’s interesting and, in some ways, rather depressing read.
Me, I’ve pretty much lost interest in both: football because of the moral bankruptcy of the NCAA ruling body and and the odious behavior of too many of the NFL owners; baseball because the games have gotten just too darned long to be worth my time.
(But I still read Bob Molinaro’s column every week, because he is fine writer with a wicked sense of humor.)
The Lake Effect 0
Thom and Dean Obeidallah discuss Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, plus a couple of other topics.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
It is difficult not to conclude that we are a broken society doomed to failure by our own stupid.
A Thumb on the Scales 0
And this surprises just whom, exactly.
Courting Disaster 0
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier is less than sanguine about how the Supreme Supremacist Court might act in a case involving the “Independent State Legislature Theory,” if they choose to hear it, especially in the light of some of their recent decisions. An excerpt; follow the link for his reasoning.
Fly the Fiendly Skies . . . 0
. . . and get left holding the bag.
Airwave Pollution 0
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch follows the money.
Republican Family Values 0
Michael in Norfolk argues that Herschel Walker is a fitting standard bearer for today’s Republican Party. A snippet:
The Razor’s Edge* 0
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With apologies to W. Somerset Maugham, one the great writers of English fiction and long one of my favorite authors.
The New Gilded Age, It’s All about the Algorithm Dept. 0
At the San Francisco Chronicle, Amos Toh describes how exploitation of workers is baked into the snaring economy. He starts by recounting the experience of one person who drives for Lyft, but doesn’t stop there. A nugget:
(snip)
Algorithms that dispatch jobs to gig workers and manage how they are paid can be gamified in ways that compromise their livelihoods and well-being.
Exploitation is exploitation, be it empowered by whip or by algorithm.
