Sunday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    via Anne Laurie, dunking on Elon:

    Wild Geerters
    @steinkobbe

    Elon fanboys are going apeshit for a product that does not and never will exist

    shauna
    @goldengateblond

    ·
    Nov 25
    wtf would it do, steer itself into other phones? spontaneously combust? randomly throw itself at small children?

    Watcher.Guru
    @WatcherGuru
    ·
    Nov 25
    JUST IN: Elon Musk says he will create a new phone if Twitter is removed from Google Play & Apple App Store.

    chatham harrison is tending his garden
    @chathamharrison

    The Tesla phone would somehow actually give people brain cancer

    2
  2. OzarkHillbilly says:

    One more dunk:

    Jon Schwarz
    @schwarz

    Tesla stock is now down 49% since Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter in April, losing over half a trillion dollars in market valuation. Just in the three and a half weeks since Musk took over Twitter on October 28, Tesla stock is down 27%, losing $190 billion in value.

    At this rate, the only place he’ll be able to unload Tesla stock at is flea markets and garage sales.

    2
  3. Kathy says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Make his own phone? What do you think this is, 2008?

    No, St. Elon would buy an existing phone manufacturer, fire half the hardware and software staff, bring in Tesla people to “review” something or other, charge a subscription fee for use of the phone, lose a ton of stock value, demand the surviving staff work loads of overtime without extra pay, and then threaten to set up his own satellite-based cell network if existing carriers won’t support his phones.

    13
  4. OzarkHillbilly says:

    A Mississippi-based furniture company abruptly fired nearly 2,700 workers in the US just days before Thanksgiving, according to multiple reports.

    Right before midnight on 21 November, thousands of workers – many of whom were asleep – received a text message from United Furniture Industries (UFI) saying that they were terminated effectively and were no longer allowed to return to work.

    “At the instruction of the board of directors … we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances, the company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately,” the message, which the New York Post reviewed, said.

    “Your layoff from the company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of Cobra,” a follow-up email from the company read, referring to a federal law that gives employees who lose their jobs the option to keep their employer-sponsored health insurance under certain circumstances.
    …………………………….
    One employee told FreightWaves: “It’s not fair to the laborers who seriously worked so hard to be blindsided like this. It’s not fair to the mom who just had a baby to wonder if she even has health insurance to cover it. It’s not fair to the cancer patient in the midst of chemo about how to pay for her treatments.”

    Why do I get the feeling there is some kind of malfeasance behind this?

    8
  5. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kathy: But but but he’s a genius of engineering! He built his rockets with his own 2 hands. All those cars catching fire? They’re supposed too! Planned obsolescence is in the software.

    2
  6. charon says:

    Nov 25
    JUST IN: Elon Musk says he will create a new phone if Twitter is removed from Google Play & Apple App Store.

    Perhaps a bit of market research first, see if there is a market for a Musk phone?

  7. Michael Cain says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Over the last 18 months or so, the six US companies who have reached a trillion dollar valuation at some point — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla — have lost something over four trillion dollars in value. None of the big boys are covering themselves in glory.

    The largest grid-attached battery storage system in Europe came online last week, using Tesla battery tech. More interesting to me is the success they are having with their software product that manages charging and dispatch for all of their battery products whose owners sign up — Teslas, PowerWalls, and the grid-scale stuff.

  8. charon says:

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/freedom-phone-meant-for-trump-supporters-is-also-made-by-chinese-vendor

    ‘Freedom Phone’ Meant for Trump Supporters Is Also Made by Chinese Vendor

    It appears the 22-year-old behind the Freedom Phone just took a Chinese-manufactured phone and rebranded the device to appeal to Trump supporters.

    Been there, done that.

    3
  9. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Nasa’s Orion capsule has entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon, as it neared the halfway mark of its test flight.

    The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit more than a week after launching on the $4bn demo that’s meant to pave the way for astronauts. It will remain in this broad but stable orbit for nearly a week, completing just half a lap before heading home.

    As of an engine firing on Friday, the capsule was 238,000 miles (380,000km) from Earth. It’s expected to reach a maximum distance of almost 270,000 miles (432,000km) in a few days. That will set a new distance record for a capsule designed to carry people one day.

    “It is a statistic, but it’s symbolic for what it represents,” Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a Nasa interview earlier in the week. “It’s about challenging ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the limits of what we’ve previously explored.”

    Nasa considers this a dress rehearsal for the next moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts. A lunar landing by astronauts could follow as soon as 2025. Astronauts last visited the moon 50 years ago during Apollo 17.

    I’m as much of a space nerd as the next guy but this all strikes me as little more than a PR stunt. A very expensive stunt at that. I just don’t see enough of a return on investment to justify all this expense in going to Mars at this time. We can get a hell of a lot more bang for our bucks with robotic missions. Sending landers to each of the Galilean moons comes to mind.

    2
  10. MarkedMan says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: This is bizarre. And “at the instruction of the board of directors”? What Board has that kind of authority?

    1
  11. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Michael Cain: I looked into the Tesla battery walls. $11,500 for the first one, but one isn’t enough. The cost per wall comes down the more of them you buy (buying 2 gets it down to $9,000 per wall IIRC). It doesn’t matter as it is all well beyond our ability to finance w/o taking out a loan, and at this stage in life, taking on debt is not a good idea. I still have hope to find a cheaper solar solution to our energy needs, but at this point tesla doesn’t fit in. We currently have Hughes satellite for our internet connection but my wife is thinking about switching to Starlink (she makes all our tech decisions as I am too much of a luddite to trust with any such decision) on the recommendation of a former coworker who went there for work. (he is a software engineer iirc)

    As far as the tech stocks go, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla, Meta and Tesla aren’t in the same boat as the others. Meta because Zuckerberg isn’t the visionary he thought he was (nobody really wants to live in the Metaverse) and Tesla because Musk isn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was. He’s been getting by on the PR hype flogging his “genius” but that stock has always been way over valued.

    I don’t know enough about Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, & Microsoft, to make any comment beyond the fact that they are all companies with real value, the track records to justify investing in them, and adults are running them. There may be a $ number where it is worth investing in Tesla or Meta but as long as those 2 loonies are sitting at the head of their respective tables, I would stay far away from both.

    3
  12. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @MarkedMan: I suppose one that has cleaned out the company’s bank accounts. TBH, I don’t know enough about corporate governance to say anything beyond sarcasm.

    2
  13. Kathy says:

    Speaking of bad ideas, once more airlines, in anonymous way, are agitating for a reduction of personnel in the cockpit to just one pilot per plane.

    To begin with, no current commercial airliner can be regularly operated by one person. There have been cases where one pilot is incapacitated, and the remaining one manages to land safely. But these are rare emergencies and get a lot of help. I mean help like air traffic control clearing a path for them, holding back other airport operations, etc. You can’t do that for every flight.

    And the above demonstrates why having two pilots is essential. One pilot can handle descent and landing in an emergency if the other pilot is incapacitated. If there’s one pilot only and they are incapacitated, who is left to land the plane?

    You can talk all you want about increased automation, and how smaller aircraft are designed for a single pilot, and how even complex jet fighters all carry only one pilot. The question remains: who lands the plane full of people if the single pilot is incapacitated?

    BTW, small combat aircraft with more than one crew (usually two, in rare occasions 4), have only one pilot. the other person is a bombardier/navigator, radar intercept officer, and so on. But larger war planes, from transports to anti-submarine craft to heavy bombers, always carry two.

    The current wave of hubris goes so far as to suggest that on airliners currently in operations, could use two pilots for takeoff and climb out, then have one pilot take a break and let the other fly the plane alone in the cruising phase. The pilot on break would then return to assist with descent and landing. Presumably they’d switch between legs.

    Ok. what if the lone pilot in the cockpit is incapacitated? How does the pilot on break find out? they might not, until around the estimated time near arrival when they go to “assist” with the final phases of operations.

    What if an inflight emergency develops? While the most risky phases are takeoff and landing, plenty of accidents have taken place during cruise. Sure the pilot on break would notice if an engine blew out, or a cargo door ripped loose, or a lighter plane impacted, or a thrust reverser deployed uncommanded, or a rudder got stuck hard port, or an elevator broke, etc. Would they make their way back to the cockpit in time avert a disaster?

    TL;DR what if the pilot is incapacitated?

    4
  14. Kathy says:

    @MarkedMan:

    The one that threatens to fire the CEO if they don’t do a midnight massacre?

    Or the one instructed to do so by the CEO so they can appear innocent?

  15. Jen says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    @MarkedMan:

    They’ve been having problems for months. Back in June they fired the CEO, the CFO, and the EVP of sales. Apparently, things were too far gone. None of the retailers that sell Lane furniture appear to have been notified. Very strange.

  16. grumpy realist says:

    @Kathy: ….an idea which could be implemented until the first airplane crash. After which the airline company would get sued into oblivion.

    (I also think the FAA would have something to say about this concept.)

    1
  17. CSK says:

    @Jen:

    United Furniture, which owns Lane, broke a federal law in not giving its employees 30-60 days notice of the termination of their employment.

    4
  18. MarkedMan says:

    @CSK: And I was under the impression that COBRA was dictated by law too

    1
  19. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Well, I suppose if you’re going to break one federal law, you might as well break another.

  20. Kylopod says:

    I had a weird and disturbing dream last night that Nick Fuentes had been elected Prime Minister of Israel. I’m not joking.

    My mind has really gotten news-addled.

    3
  21. Kathy says:

    @grumpy realist:

    The FAA pretty much let Boeing certify its own MAX. have you any idea of the savings in having only one pilot per plane? Do you know how much shareholder value that would generate?

    The thing is if the manufacturers develop and sell and the airlines buy and operate one-pilot planes, by the time of the first few accidents and lawsuits, it will be too late to retrofit them for two pilots. And there’d be too many to just ground them all permanently, even not counting the orders backlog.

    Eventually we’ll get there, or at least it’s possible. Once you have such reliable AI controls that understand how to fly the plane and why the plane’s flown.

    Right now, the automation needs to be controlled by the pilots. Suppose you need to divert for some reason, and ATC tells you to change heading and altitude. you don’t turn and push the yoke or sidestick, nor do you move the rudder. Instead you enter the new heading and altitude plus rate/type of climb/descent into the flight management system, and let the autopilot change course and altitude.

    If this sounds too easy, consider an error in altitude input led to the crash of an Air France A320 during the type’s debut at the Paris Airshow. And an error in the heading input led to the loss of a Varig narrow body in the Amazon.

    The best cautionary tale, though, is a Qantas A330 incident where the automated systems crapped out. A single pilot would have found it much harder to recover the plane and land it safely.

    1
  22. Jay L Gischer says:

    You know, I think Musk is being a bit silly here, like y’all. But a new phone isn’t as hard as all that.

    For instance, the Kindle Fire line uses the Android source code, but disables a bunch of stuff, including the Play Store. Amazon offers its own store.

    This can be replicated. Whether it’s a good idea is a different question, but it’s not all that difficult from an engineering standpoint.

    1
  23. wr says:

    @Kathy: ” If there’s one pilot only and they are incapacitated, who is left to land the plane?”

    Ted Striker.

    11
  24. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    IIRC, Amazon tried marketing a phone, how’d that go?

    Bringing a twitter branded phone to market is a no brainer, marketing and selling it is another question.

  25. Jen says:

    @MarkedMan: I thought so too, but apparently there are some circumstances under which employers can escape covering employees. Since COBRA provides for continued health coverage under the current plan, if the company implodes and no longer offers health plans, then employees are SOL. (However, the company IS required to notify employees of any reduction in benefits 60 days prior, so they are in violation of that.)

    2
  26. Kathy says:

    @wr:

    How many iterations of Ted Striker will be able to overcome the trauma they incurred at Macho Grande and land the plane?

    2
  27. Jen says:

    I read this article earlier today, and I’ve been thinking about the idea that publicly owned land can be cordoned off (aka, “moated”) by being surrounded by private land. It really seems to me that PUBLIC land should require public access, like through a public egress.

    All across England you see public footpaths that stretch across private property. It’s all very clearly marked. I’m sort of baffled that this is allowed to happen–what does a government employee do if they need access to the public land and the private landowner denies them the right to cross their property to access it?

    2
  28. Michael Cain says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Artemis, using SLS/Orion for human transport, funded through cost-plus contracts, is a requirement imposed on NASA by Congress. Every bit of the project other than human transport between Earth and lunar orbit, is being done some other way. The company that’s building the lunar orbital gateway and service module has booked Falcon Heavy. The only contract for a lunar lander signed so far is with SpaceX based on Starship/HL.

  29. grumpy realist says:

    @Jen: Historically, this has been solved under Common Law by there being an easement providing access to the “moated” property.

  30. dazedandconfused says:
  31. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Zuckerberg isn’t the visionary he thought he was (nobody really wants to live in the Metaverse)

    Wait. Keke Palmer is lying to us in all those TV spots? I’m soooooo disillusioned. 🙁 She looks so honest.

    1
  32. Kathy says:

    @dazedandconfused:

    I’d like to see the Inquisition Special perform in a cabin evacuation.

    And I’d rather fight for an armrest than not have one.

  33. Jax says:

    @Jen: It’s been my experience, at least here in Wyoming, that legitimate government employees just go do their work, I don’t know any landowners who try to stop them or deny them access. The state water guys, for instance, headgates are located all over privately-owned property, they don’t ask, they just go do it.

    1
  34. wr says:

    @Kathy: Well, there’s always Otto…

    3
  35. Mu Yixiao says:

    I’ll come back to this tomorrow, but… China is seeing the beginning of a revolution.

    There are open calls for Xi Jinping to step down. And for the communist party to step aside and allow democratic elections.. If you aren’t familiar with China, I can’t stress how important this is. This has the potential to be a “Asian Winter” in the style of the “Arab Spring”.

    No matter which way this falls, if it goes on, it is going to have a massive impact on geopolitics. And may see a lot of deaths.

    4
  36. Gromitt Gunn says:

    @Jen: The City I live in runs its own electric utility. When I bought my house, accepting the existing easement that allows access to the utility’s employees and contractors was a non-negotiable condition of sale.

    If they need to do scheduled work, they leave a door hanger a few days ahead of time and give us a date range, then knock when they arrive to give a head’s up and see if there are any keys and/or dogs that need to be dealt with. If we’re not around, they just head to the back and do their work. If there’s unscheduled work, they’ll skip to the knocking bit.

    It’s just a couple of power lines that run through the backyard, so I’m not sure what they would do if they needed to actually replace the poles or something like that, since there’s privacy fencing all around the neighborhood.

  37. Gromitt Gunn says:

    @Jen: The City I live in runs its own electric utility. When I bought my house, accepting the existing easement that allows access to the utility’s employees and contractor was a non-negotiable condition of sale.

    If they need to do scheduled work, they leave a door hanger a few days ahead of time and give us a date range, then knock when they arrive to give a head’s up and see if there are any keys and/or dogs that need to be dealt with. If we’re not around, they just head to the back and do their work. If there’s unscheduled work, they’ll skip to the knocking bit.

    It’s just a couple of power lines that run through the backyard, so I’m not sure what they would do if they needed to actually replace the poles or something like that, since there’s privacy fencing all around the neighborhood.

  38. gVOR08 says:

    @dazedandconfused: I see at your link some of the passengers end up seated facing aft. The military, IIRC, do a lot of rear facing seats because they’re safer in a crash. But I’ve read it makes the passenger more prone to air sickness. I’ve ridden backward in corporate A/C a couple times. It does seem a bit disorienting.

  39. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kylopod: One thumbs up for weirdness.

  40. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Michael Cain: Yeah, I don’t know all the ins and outs of the contracts (tbh, my eyes glaze over reading of it) but regardless, I think we are wasting money on this program at this time. A day may come when it actually makes sense to build a moon base and go to Mars (and eventually beyond), but right now there are so many other questions we could use answers to that we can get without putting a very expensive human into the equation.

  41. Jen says:

    @Jax: The article is about Elk Mountain in Wyoming, that is public land, but the property surrounding it is all privately owned. A group of hunters used a not completely legal/not really illegal either means to get there, essentially they “corner hopped” at the points where property lines met.

    The landowner is suing them for $7 million, saying they caused damage.

    Because the law isn’t clear, the outcome of a lawsuit isn’t really clear either.

    From the article:

    “The head of Wyoming’s powerful ranching lobby isn’t laughing, either. Jim Magagna believes that the optics of the case are what drew advocates of corner-crossing, knowing how “a wealthy landowner who lives out of state” and who has made some “rather large claims in terms of the damage being done to him” would be perceived.

    According to Mr. Magagna, the hunters’ case isn’t just about a legal right to corner-cross. Under one interpretation of federal law, the public wouldn’t have to corner-cross at all to get to landlocked land: If the only way to reach public land is through private land, people can just take the most direct route “right through the middle.”

    That means, in Mr. Magagna’s view, it’s possible that ranches used for exclusive hunting experiences would have to open in part to the public — if the ranch is the most direct route to public lands.

    “The implications are potentially very large,” he added, noting that the ranches would lose value.

    This makes the most sense to me–a required access way through the private land–but it’s not common in the US. The closest we get to these arguments in New England are beach access/property rights.

    IMHO, it seems like the UK has the more sensible laws on this.

    1
  42. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Jen: I can’t read that article so I can’t comment on it, but here is Misery, the law says one has to grant access to “moated” land. If it’s public the state/feds get an access easement. If it’s private, the surrounding landowners have to give access to the individual.

    Of course, that all sounds well and good but some people are assholes and think the law doesn’t apply to them. They won’t give access until a court forces them too. Sadly, so do some govts. “You can’t fight city hall.” goes the old saying but that isn’t strictly true. You can fight city hall. but winning is a different story.

    2
  43. Jen says:

    @Gromitt Gunn: Right, but that’s not locking off public access to a federally-owned mountain. I guess I’m trying to figure out why US law is so…backward about accessing large swathes of public land that is surrounded by private property.

  44. Mister Bluster says:

    @Gromitt Gunn:..I’m not sure what they would do if they needed to actually replace the poles or something like that.

    I was not on the crew that placed the poles and strung the telephone cable when I worked in the landline telephone industry. I did work closely with those crews since my job was to splice the telephone cable after it had been placed. A lot of pole and line replacement was the result of storm damage like when I worked in Houston in 1983 after hurricane Alicia ripped it up. My understanding was that since the utility had rights to the easements that they could do what ever they had to access their facilities. I am only guessing but since fences belonged to the property owner their insurance may have covered the replacement cost.
    I crossed private property all the time to get to telephone lines in customers back yards.

  45. Stormy Dragon says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The Apollo program had sixteen unmanned launches before putting people on a Saturn V for the Apollo 7 mission, and then 4 manned missions before actually landing on the moon for Apollo 11.

    By comparison, one unmanned and one manned prior to landing seems pretty frugal.

    4
  46. Jax says:

    @Jen: I’m familiar with the case in question. The problem, in that particular situation, is some rich bastard came in and locked everything up. It’s happened quite often the last few decades.

    That said, hunters have also become quite the assholes in the last 10 years or so. They leave their trash everywhere, won’t shut gates that were shut when they came to them, they basically have no respect for the fact that this is our HOME. We don’t have a problem giving access to hunters as long as they’re respectful, plus the state kicks us a little money for every tag filled on our land.

    The app in the article, though, has caused problems. Problems enough that we had to start locking the back gate into the ranch that’s close to a county road. The reservoir sits on a piece of BLM ground that nobody ever applied for a patent for (because it was a natural lake) when the ranch was proven. That piece of BLM ground is UNDER the water, with some small corners on the edges of the reservoir, completely surrounded by our private land. Thanks to that app, people think there’s a giant BLM piece hiding back there that could be hiding a monster buck! Nope, sorry, and we don’t allow boats, either, so it’s been a point of contention when non-locals show up demanding access to dirt that is under water.

    And they do DEMAND access. We had a guy show up with a very large speedboat. Our reservoir has no dock, no ramps, no improvements, and the time of year he showed up, he would’ve gotten stuck in the mud trying to get it in the water, or the propeller tangled in the weeds, anyways. But he was PISSED, swore up and down his map said it was public access, stabbing his finger at his phone and his map, yelling at me. It was an unpleasant experience.

    2
  47. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    For instance, the Kindle Fire line uses the Android source code, but disables a bunch of stuff, including the Play Store. Amazon offers its own store.

    Your example is the phone that was cancelled in less than a year and resulted in almost $200 million in losses to the producer?

  48. Jen says:

    @Jax: It’s so very interesting. I’m sorry you (and others) are having problems, and yeah people can be horrible. I’m just intrigued/baffled/curious about these public land “islands.” It seems like more hassle than it’s worth to hang on to these parcels?

    That an app would cause this to be an issue is also intriguing.

  49. Jen says:

    @Jax:

    some rich bastard came in and locked everything up

    This, to me, was entirely predictable, which is why I am wondering why this wasn’t dealt with ages ago. This is not a new phenomenon.

  50. Jax says:

    @Jen: It’s relatively new, here. Historic, 5 generation ranches spanning tens of thousands of acres are going up for sale, and nobody has the money to buy them because the cattle market is generally shit. The offspring get greedy and everybody wants to cash out, the one kid who wants to keep it historic can’t afford to pay off all those millions. So the only people who can afford to buy them are rich, cash-only buyer’s looking for a tax writeoff. They don’t do things the way it’s always been done around here.

    1
  51. Stormy Dragon says:

    @CSK:

    Since the article said that the company laid off ALL of its employees, it sounds like this layoff falls under the “faltering company” exception to the WARN act (basically you don’t have to give 30 days notice if the company itself isn’t going to exist in 30 days).

    1
  52. DrDaveT says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    Your example is the phone that was cancelled in less than a year and resulted in almost $200 million in losses to the producer?

    Hmm? Kindle Fire is not a phone; it’s a tablet. Not my favorite platform, to be sure, but it works. It predates most of the major tablets, and didn’t really take off, but it’s still there.

  53. Jim Brown 32 says:

    @DrDaveT: Ms Brown bought be the original KF 7 in 2012–its STILL running. I’ve jailbroken it a couple of times in 10 years so its working with an Android flavored OS.

    I don’t know how they made money with a product as durable as the KF.

    (Note: Yes, I know–they sold it at a loss to give customers direct, firewalled access into the Amazon ecosystem.. could have made it a little more disposable though. Cant believe a $80 product has lasted 10 years.)

  54. Flat Earth Luddite says:

    @Jax:
    Entitled folks can be the worst. And for my sins, I’m familiar with the issue surrounding app mapping and inherent inaccuracy. Up here in Upper Leftwingistan, we have hunters lost every year relying on their cell phone maps instead of paper maps and/or the intelligence Dawg gave baby geese (i.e., none). We had a family die on a winter road trip because Googly sent them up on an unimproved logging road up in the Siskiyou’s in mid-winter. A friend who used to do SAR (before age caught up with him) used to say that the Road to Hell was a Google Map.