Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, September 27, 2021
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56 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a 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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A Crypto-Trading Hamster Performs Better Than Warren Buffett And The S&P 500
Money makes people do some really weird sh!t:
Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 Million Conference Call Gone Wrong
The piece reads a little over the top, but there is no denying he’s one hell of a dude.
@Scott:
But how does it do against other hamsters or monkeys throwing darts at a board?
Would “Appocalypse” be a good name for a period where several phone apps fail or don’t work well? Or is it too close to Apocalypse to be of any use?
The Starbucks app remains stubborn and won’t let me log in. Then Waze began failing when I wanted to see a route home from the office (it’s done that before). A coworker’s app for depositing money to her child’s cell phone account also failed for a while.
Fortunately I’ve solved the coffee problem, but I still have money in the Starbucks app and I can’t make use of it. Not a lot of money, but it rankles. Maps sometimes does a decent job finding the fastest route, but not always (the reason I use Waze). The coworker can add money to the cell account at the 7-11 downstairs, or any other convenience store or supermarket also.
But there’s a reason why we keep those apps in our phones mining data. If they won’t provide something in return, they should go.
@Scott: I’m pretty sure that business with the hamster is a promotional thing pushed by crypto backers. It’s cute, but wow, is that not proof of anything at all.
The most important thing you need to know is that from July 1 or so, the S&P 500 has been up about 2.5 %. In the same period crypto was up about 20 percent. But it’s a cherrypicked period. Other times this year crypto has been flat or down. It’s still growing faster than the S&P yty, so that’s a thing…
Next, if you invest equal amounts in each of a bunch of cryptocurrencies, and trade them via some random process, what metric is most likely to tell you whether that was good? It’s a metric that compares you with doing nothing on that same portfolio, not one that compares you with an entirely different asset class. (Which is more or less comparing you with an index fund). How did the hamster do in this case? We aren’t told. He probably sucked. Even people often suck in this situation – they can’t beat the index.
Meanwhile, how has Berkshire Hathaway done versus their index, which is probably the S&P500, but might be another, for instance a world index? I haven’t looked it up, but they have probably matched or exceeded it, because Buffet is that guy. But even that guy misses sometimes. However, it’s on another asset class.
Meanwhile, the main practical use of crypto is drug dealing, extortion and money laundering, so you can look at price indices as an indication of how much criminal activity there is in the world.
I’m reading American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, by Nancy Bristow.
Thus far, the author has dissembled on previous flu outbreaks in the XIX Century, particularly a bad one in 1889-1890, and another in 1915. the similarities to our current COVID pandemic are uncanny: some play it down, others deny it even exists, public health measures have a hard time getting implemented, and sham remedies abound.
Now, had I read this prior to the trump pandemic, I’d have smugly assumed things are different now. In contrast to older times, for one thing, we know what causes the disease (viruses were first identified in the early 1930s, with the invention of the electron microscope; they are too small to see on an optical microscope). We also know how it spreads, how to mitigate the spread, and we have better treatments than existed in the late XIX and early XX Centuries (with a big caveat*).
But what did we see now? People downplay it, some deny it even exists, public health measures have a hard time getting implemented, and sham remedies abound.
I’d argue today it’s even worse, because we have effective vaccines now and there’s a moron fringe that keeps refusing it.
*We have better supportive treatments and symptom treatments, but not yet a highly effective drug that targets the infection directly. The exception being monoclonal antibodies, which work only shortly after infection.
@Kathy:
I’ve noticed over the years that there’s a pattern where terms from science fiction begin being applied to the real world, but at a much milder level. For example, the term robot in the real world doesn’t refer to a mechanical person with human-like intelligence and personality, and it’s increasingly just a term for automation. Virtual reality isn’t anything like the computerized dreamscapes in a lot of sci-fi works.
I realize the word “apocalypse” didn’t originate in sci-fi, but it’s a term that’s been heavily used to describe a particular type of sci-fi story, which in turn people slap on anything they see as causing significant disruption in modern life. It’s the same type of trivialization of a sci-fi concept we see in those other examples.
@Kathy:
Skip it and go straight to the Alpacalypse — the end of the world you can hug.
@Kylopod:
Of course I exaggerate and trivialize.
After all, the coffee kept flowing.
Some modern-day Rosa Parks:
Staten Island crowd defies vaccine mandate by storming mall food court, video shows
As customers enjoyed their Saturday afternoon at Staten Island Mall and prepared to enjoy their meals, a raucous, maskless crowd of dozens opposing New York City’s indoor vaccination mandate stormed into the mall while chanting, “U-S-A!”
Everybody go get food and eat. That is what we’re here to do!” one woman said to the group, according to a video from freelance journalist Oliya Scootercaster. “We’re going to meet over there and go into the food court area and sit our butts down and stay as long as we like!”
“The people have rights!” one protester yelled, according to the New York Daily News. “Open the door, I’m thirsty!”
Of course Rosa Parks would not have been welcome to most parts of Staten island.
@Kathy:
Armaggedphone?
@Kathy:
Götterdämmering?
The Appture?
Dysphonia? Wait…that’s a different thing. Dystextia?
@senyordave:
And, surprise, surprise, the agitators were yelling pro-Trump and anti-Biden slogans.
@Michael Reynolds:
“Dystextia” is good.
@Michael Reynolds:
@CSK:
Dystextia existed before smart phones, though.
@Kathy:
Didn’t cases of dystextia used to be called “typos”? 😀
@CSK:
The digital variant affects people who took the misspelling vaccine.
Over the weekend I finished the second season of The Orville, and wasted some time watching the brand new THE Suicide Squad.
As to the first, I recall some buzz a few years back portraying the series as a Trek parody. Mostly they seem to tackle serious issues, while inserting a few mostly adolescent jokes and humorous situations. I did laugh a few times, but I don’t see it as parody, not the way Spaceballs was a parody of Star Wars and SciFi movies generally.
As to the latter, why do they even bother? The idea is good, and I suppose its worked in the comics, but this movie and the previous one feel shallow even for the genre. If you took out Harley Quinn in both, you wouldn’t have much left.
Oh, spoiler alert, I laughed when I saw Starro in all its glory. It looked like a stuffed animal a child might keep in their bedroom.
@Gustopher:
Thanks for the steer on CarpetGarden last night (or carpetgarden. I am unclear on the capitalization.)
Good recco. Major John Darnielle / TMG vibe in the lyrics. I might be in love.
Yr The Best reminds me strongly of Junkie Church by AJJ.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Ring-ring-ring of the Nibelungs?
The Dark Lord of Googledor;
One app to find them all…
@Kathy:
Maps
by the yeah yeah yeahs (Karen O)
Appocrypha
Not deemed to be canon.
Appalachia
Areas of former Soviet border states where Russia sets up nefarious black hacker centers. Plausibly deniable. See Belarus and Russian occupied Ukraine. Please download our totally benign flashlight app.
@senyordave:
Oliya Scootercaster is the most Potterverse name ever.
Staten Island is … I have no name … very weird.
The Apple of the All-Seeing Eye?
@Kathy:
Margot Robbie kicks ass. She nails Harley, but the movie is kinda blah.
(It was at least two years after Robbie became a big deal until I realized she was Australian. I had zero clue until I saw her on a talk show. She has a good dialect coach.)
Joel Kinnaman is my dude. I loved him in The Killing which was an awesome series y’all should watch. He needs better roles.
Mireille Enos too. She deserves better than to be Pitt’s wife in World War Z.
@Kathy: Yeah. I was baffled by Starro; it wasn’t a realistic enemy even in 1960. Then again, The Justice League was an experimental story line then.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: After I posted, I remembered not having seen the Justice League until about 3 or 4 issues into the run, so I’d never seen the B&B pilot story (I didn’t normally buy “The Brave and The Bold” at the drugstore.) Happened across the issue in question at a friend’s house (he had a pretty extensive comic collection). Really bummed at how dumb the story was.
@Kathy: @de stijl:
I think Harley Quinn works as a supporting character, but can’t carry the lead.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’ve been bingeing tons do DC animated content on HBO Max, from Batman the Brave and the Bold, to DC Super Hero Girls. Starro shows up now and then, and I don’t find it terrifying in any incarnation.
What would work is to make it disgusting. For starters, get rid of the cheerful pink and blue color scheme. Use dark green and brown instead. then have it ooze slime, and make the eye a compound eye, as in insects, or give it a non-human looking pupil and iris.
@Michael Reynolds: If you get a chance, watch a few episodes of the Harley Quinn cartoon — she can work as a lead, in a story about the abused woman stepping out of the shadow of her abusive boyfriend.
It’s the same ground tread in the Harley Quinn movie, but with enough space to let other characters breathe and have story arcs and growth. Also, she works better surrounded by villains than the nominal heroes of Birds of Prey.
And the cartoon uses the word “motherfucker” a lot more than the movies. I’m not saying that’s why it’s better than those movies, mind you.
@Kathy: I kind of liked Starro in his utterly ridiculous glory. I don’t think the movie had the right mix of emotional tones, but going more dark and realistic wasn’t going to help it. I needed more absurdity.
And a bigger part for Peter Capaldi. Sure, he had a decent sized part, but a bigger part. Or two other parts. The man is great, and can make even the most mediocre lines shine at least slightly.
@Gustopher:
TBH he is the only reason I am even considering watching the movie.
Just now I went to the bathroom and flicked the switch and one of the bulbs on the light bar above the sink mirror went “POP!”
Okay. Let’s replace it. No biggie. I have spares. The spendy, special, fancy bulbs that you are obliged to put in the sink light bar. Regular bulbs would be too tacky.
I am a semi-functioning adult. I had already stashed fancy-ass stupid spendy bulbs that matched. I patted myself on the back for being so foresightful. Well done, me!
As I was unscrewing the bulb it popped loose of the metal ring you screw into the socket.
Well, fuck me. This was unexpected. The bulb proper was sagging down suspended by a bare wire and the metal bit was still firmly screwed in to the socket.
My brain went “lets see if I can grasp the edge and unscrew the metal bit”
My hand was 7/8ths of the way there before another part of my brain screamed “ELECTRICITY!!!” Stop you fucking idiot! The switch is still on.
I came thisclose to zapping myself.
@de stijl:
Electricity and the “monkey brain” don’t always cohabit too well.
Like when I got kicked across the room trying to fix an electric heater that time…
Memo to self: “…don’t poke the fizzy sparky thing.
Unplug that m’f’er!
@Steven L. Taylor: Just so there is no misunderstanding: It is not a good movie.
It is a really tedious movie with a few good moments. Many of those moments are facial expressions and body language by Capaldi while or after delivering aggressively mediocre lines of dialog.
Left with a choice between rewatching “The Suicide Squad” and “Kill The Moon” (probably his worst story in Doctor Who), I would choose the latter for the shorter runtime and higher Capaldi/minute ratio.
@Gustopher:
Ditto.
The Harley Quinn cartoon series is pretty damned good. It cheekily explores her head space in a fairly subtle manner. And with a metric shit ton of creative ways to say “fuck”.
@de stijl: I once managed to get a voltage checker to explode while verifying the connections in a light switch. Not sure how.
I’ve decided that I should not deal with electrical problems.
@Gustopher: Odds are, given the finite nature of time, that I will never get around to it 😉
@de stijl: @JohnSF: @Gustopher:
Bill Bryson once said it didn’t quite understand why electricity doesn’t just dribble out of the socket.
@Gustopher:
Spoiler alert:
Wasn’t that the movie’s moment of moral clarity? The criminals were done, those who survived, and could walk away. Instead they choose to risk their lives, and their gains from the mission, to save the country’s population (and going by DC lore, the world as well), while Waller is exposed as the true villain of the piece.
It would help if I wasn’t laughing at the monster.
@Gustopher:
I am already on record as a huge Capaldi fan boi. Best Doctor ever.
If you have not seen Local Hero you really need to. He’s so young and nerdy and twitchy. He is very besotted with his colleague.
It’s a truly delightful movie. By happenstance I listened to a track off the Local Hero soundtrack last night. I believe it is called the “Wild” theme by Mark Knopfler. The whole soundtrack is excellent.
It’s a really damn good movie.
@Gustopher:
I was once present in an off-line forge works where a some old moulds were being switched out, and a foreman demonstrated why you should not touch Mr. Oil-Insulated Capacitor, using a sausage.
Crisspy!
@JohnSF:
Sausage, earthing wire, and (heavily) insulated tongs.
Foreman said: “The bit in the Frankenstein films that’s wrong, is, electricity brings things to life. Trust me, it don’t”
@de stijl:
@JohnSF:
@Gustopher:
I picture that in every live circuit there is a tiny, very angry Zeus holding a f**g big thunderbolt.
@Scott:
We’ve known since John Nash that for most symmetric games the optimal strategy is randomized. This just proves that cryptocurrencies are the investing equivalent of betting on rock/paper/scissors.
@Kathy:
For me, it sits in that sour spot between pastiche and homage. It isn’t funny enough or explicit enough in its parody to be an effective pastiche, nor gripping enough to be actual drama on its own. It wants to be The Wild, Wild West or The Avengers (to name two examples of successful pastiche/homage in the past) but ends up looking like an attempt at a gripping and emotional episode of Get Smart!
@de stijl:
To be clear Danny (Capaldi’s character) is on screen for maybe ten minutes or so. He is a secondary character. But he punches far above his weight so hard; he is very memorable.
Peter Riegert impressed the crap out of me as Mac. I did not expect nuance from him. I’d pegged him as a cartoony Animal House actor in my head.
Blew me away. When he went home to his cookie box condo on the edge of Houston I wept like a wee babby. Go back, idiot!
@DrDaveT: Are you referring to the 60s/70s The Avengers and Wild, Wild West or the recent reboots?
I’m not sure the original The Avengers was a pastiche as much as it was original, fun and delightful — it had its influences, but it was its own thing. Even Wild, Wild West didn’t seem utterly derivative.
The Orville just feels derivative and afraid to be its own thing.
And Get Smart! was brilliant.
@CSK: In one of the James Thurber short stories anthologized in ‘Thurber Carnival’, one of the young James’ maiden aunts is certain that electricity is constantly dripping from the lamps and wall sockets. The picture illustrating her in the act of worrying about it brings a laugh even only in memory.
@JohnMcC:
God, I think I read that when I was 12 or 13. Thanks for the memory.
@DrDaveT:
@Gustopher:
I think of The Orville as Trek TNG lite, with more ordinary characters, and some jokes thrown in.
Overall I’ve liked it. One really good ep is the first season finale, where Kelly breaks the unstated Prime Directive, and gets to see the consequences in the (historical) short, medium, and long term.
Get Smart is totally a parody of the secret agent genre, with malfunctioning, inelegant gadgets and all.
There’s no bottom:
CIA officials under Trump discussed assassinating Julian Assange – report
Despite naming Cheeto Benito on the headline, the report is more about Pompeo when he directed the CIA.
This is so wrong on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin. So I’ll settle for this:
Assange was ensconced in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. While I agree Wikileaks is hostile to the US, and the description as a hostile, non-state intelligence service is not far off the mark, assassination or kidnapping is off limits during peace time, especially in the territory of an ally (the most important ally, I’d argue), and involving a neutral, friendly country.
It’s Putin-level immorality with trumpian-level stupidity and disregard for all norms.
Fortunately it wasn’t carried out, but, come on, even discussing such things was well over the line.
@Gustopher:
I would prefer to forget that the reboots exist. Unfortunately, some things can’t be unseen. The Ralph Fiennes / Uma Thurmond film may be the worst film I have ever seen. Will Smith / Kevin Kline was merely bad.
Oh, I’m quite sure. I’ve read interviews with the original production team, who were stunned that the viewing public didn’t seem to understand that it was a tongue-in-cheek parody of James Bond from the beginning.
It was a deliberate simultaneous poke at Westerns and James Bond, and it succeeded brilliantly thanks to some clever writing and the talents of Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. Also great music and title animations. “Derivative” doesn’t seem like the right word, but it was certainly pastiche.
Sure, but it was brilliant in an over-the-top Blazing Saddles or Airport! kind of way. Nothing subtle going on there, unlike the ones discussed above.
@DrDaveT:
The character dynamics are so different that it really has nothing in common with James Bond. A woman is his partner and his equal, and they play off each other with mutual (flirtatious) respect — she’s definitely a bit of eye candy, and the camera will linger slightly, but she is a whole character rather than merely an object. It’s honestly a bit wacky to see something that old where the woman character is an equal — we seldom get that now.
Unless treating an attractive woman as an equal is part of the parody? What if James Bond wasn’t dripping in misogyny?
@Gustopher: Agree. I’ve seen every Mrs. Peel episode, and not once did I ever think I was watching a tongue-in-cheek parody, let alone one of James Bond.
I am currently fascinated by the Small Red Boy song by AJJ.
@de stijl: “It’s a truly delightful movie. By happenstance I listened to a track off the Local Hero soundtrack last night. I believe it is called the “Wild” theme by Mark Knopfler.”
Love that song. In fact, my wife and I walked down the aisle to it…