Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, April 26, 2022
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64 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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Another thread yesterday had me thinking about how often engineers appear in TV and movies and how seldom there is any kind of realistic portrayal of what engineering is actually like. I can think of a few movies, though:
-No Highway in the Sky
-The Martian
-Gravity
-Hidden Figures
Anyone have any others?
So Musk bought Twitter. A lot of non business talk about it. So let’s ask this: Is it a good business decision. Decided to look at some numbers.
Mind you, I don’t do this for a living but do have some understanding and familiarity about balance sheets.
Total Stockholder Equity: $7.3B
Adjusted Free Cash Flow (FY21): -$379.4M
A lot of talk about Non-GAAP numbers which seems to be a red flag to me as well as a lot of stock compensation numbers.
All sounds shaky to me but will to hear what others think.
@MarkedMan: October Sky
Russia “thwarted” a false flag “terrorist attack” last night, disrupting a cell of 6 assassins who were coming to take out that sweaty frog person who is their version of Sean Hannity. The investigators found (unopened unused) Nazi t-shirts, a (green) disguise wig, a book with directions for their murdering inside, signed by “Unclear Description,” and a bunch of sim cards. I’m sorry, I mean a bunch of copies of the game The Sims.
On a less funny note, Russia may be gearing up to invade Moldova.
@Scott:
Another data point on the question: Is Twitter a good investment, is no other bidders came forward and the stockholders pressured the board to take Musk’s offer. Typically, when a company comes into play, other potential buyers emerge and the cost of the purchase go up. Reportedly, several investment firms have looked at Twitter, but none felt it was worth pursuing. On stockholder pressure, that shows that the owners had little or no confidence that a larger offer would emerge.
Two ways to look at this; Elon, careful what you wish for or Musk is the dog that caught the car.
$100 Million to Cut the Time Tax
The nonprofit Code for America thinks it can unwind the administrative burdens that annoy and impoverish countless families.
One of our regulars, Matt(?), works or has worked for this organization. Congrats on recognition.
Multiple reports this AM that Ukraine is burning through Stinger and Javelin missiles faster than they can be built, and that some NATO members are getting concerned about the level of their remaining stock.
Bad Behavior Drove a Referee Shortage. Covid Made It Worse.
Over the last few weeks there have been a few top line posts that discuss a similar trend in our society as this article does.
The coach racially berated and yelled at a 14 yo? I’m sure he’s a good Christian.
@Sleeping Dog:
My initial belief continues to be that the difference is Musk owns an ISP with global reach, and is thinking about Twitter as a platform for a variety of other services for that network.
Study: Impact of population mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated subpopulations on infectious disease dynamics: implications for SARS-CoV-2 transmission
@Scott: Excellent
Sounds like must see TV to me.
@Neil Hudelson: Yes, Moldova is such a tempting country for Putin, it has zero tanks and 6 old MIGs that haven’t flown since 1995 and are inoperable. It is even poorer than Ukraine and dependent on Putin’s gas, not a member of NATO, and won’t put up any resistance. If (and that’s a BIG if) Putin manages to get all the Black Sea coast, then it will be a walk in the park to roll through Moldova, south to north, and hit Western Ukraine from the back.
Get this, the false flag attack for this potential blitzkrieg is plagiarized from Hitler’s casus belli against Poland in 1939, an attack on a radio station transmission tower in Transnistria that is used for Russian propaganda. First the “unclear signature” and SIMs games (rather than cards), then the blatant plagiarism, methinks this is a new way of passive resistance within Russia’s intelligence community, just make it so blatantly ridiculous that it would blow up in Putin’s face.
@RMR: Oh forgot to mention, Putin’s top general in southern ukraine on Friday started blabbering about “persecution of ethnic Russians in Transnistria”. That’s the prototypical frozen conflict that Donbass separatists used as a model, but it has been frozen for 30 years and Moldova has made no attempt to regain control (not having any airforce or any tanks in its army, and only 5000 active trooops).
Transnistria is 30% Moldovan, 30% Russian, and 30% Ukrainian, and 10% sundry other minorities. 30 years ago the Slavs ganged up together against the Moldovans, but in the past 8 years Ukrainians soured on Russians, but Russians kept control of Transnistria. It is a Mafia state whose main source of income is smuggling weapons and drugs, but there is some tacit cooperation with Moldova, if anything Ukraine’s closing of its borders is making Transnistria dependent again on Moldova.
Transnistria’s Mafia leaders would rather avoid getting into any war, most of their weapons are rather old. They do have about 1500 actual Russian troops with officers appointed by Moscow (and local grunts) guarding the biggest ammo depot from Soviet times, with tens of thousands of tons of ammo. But probably 90% is well past its shelf life by now, so not actually useful. I don’t see any chance of this frozen conflict flaring up on its own, unless Putin pushes his way in, like he has in Donbass. Putin has shown already that he is all too willing to do the unthinkable, so I wouldn’t put anything past him, not even tactical nukes.
Ron DeSantis signs bill to create Florida voter-fraud police force
Careful Ron, If they investigate and prosecute actual voter fraud, it’s gonna cost you votes.
I’ve decided the following does not constitute a spoiler for Severance, but you may disagree, So proceed at your own risk.
As noted before, a severed person gets divided into an innie work persona and an outie non work personal life. The thing is the outie has full control and reaps the rewards of the innie’s work. This makes sense insofar as the innie exists only at work, so therefore has no need for money or vacations.
In essence, this is self-slavery. You’d become your own slave.
The outie you wouldn’t be aware of the toil and effort at work. the innie you would be aware of nothing else.
Of course, this gives the employer an army of slaves, eight hours a day every weekday.
Just what musk wants twitter to be?
@MarkedMan
I tend to lump science/math in with engineering, but here’s my list of films that put people from my world on the big screen:
– Real Genius
– Sneakers
– War Games
– Apollo 13
– A Beautiful Mind
@Jay L Gischer:
Real Genius is a phenomenal movie. There was some sort of crazy DVD sale a little while ago and I made my partner get me, Real Genius, Weird Science, Big Trouble in Little China and Better Off Dead.
As a bonus, I got accused of having terrible taste and a dirty look.
@MarkedMan:
IMO, it is seldom that movies or TV contain any realistic portrayal of what anything is like. And this includes things invented for a particular TV or movie.
Real Genius is great!
“Is it the dream where you’re on a pyramid in sortof sun god robes and people are throwing little pickles at you?”
“Are you peeing?”
“…no.”
“Why… Oh! Is it because I’m in here? Weird.”
“Can you hammer a 6-inch nail into a board with your penis?”
“… no.”
“Girl’s gotta have standards.”
@MarkedMan:
What gets me is how often theatre is depicted wrong in TV and movies.
@Jay L Gischer: @Beth:
Jam it!
Big fan of Real Genius, Weird Science, and War Games.
@Beth:
You seem to be feeling better. Are you out of the hospital?
@RMR: I can’t speak to the mindset of the Moldovan people, but I can use Google Earth. Moldava is hilly and rugged. Not the best place to bring heavy armor through if there is a local resistance. Afghanistan comes to mind…
@Jay L Gischer: I’m familiar with Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, and while the former definitely shows real-world engineering, I don’t remember the latter actually dealing with math in a significant way. All I remember from Sneakers is when Robert Redford sat on the Cray Supercomputer in Ben Kingsley’s office. Haven’t seen Real Genius or War Games. What about them struck you as realistic?
@Kathy:
That’s probably fair and also probably necessary to some degree for story telling. I remember some early video game experiments where the developers simply tried to make everything as “realistic” as a text adventure could be. The characters spent so much time finding food, cooking it, finding shelter, erecting it, etc that the games were unplayable.
Still, science and engineering are usually just used as more or less a substitute for magic. The engineer/scientist has a brand new idea that none of the other scientists or engineers who have been working on the same problem for decades has ever had, despite it being fairly obvious. They make at most two attempts to make it work, it all comes together perfectly (except for that one little glitch that they have to physically scramble to prevent) and the day is miraculously saved.
Trouble on Reedy Creek
Life and poorly conceived and written legislation is full of unintended consequences.
@Mu Yixiao:
Hah! Wouldn’t have expected that!
@MarkedMan: For all the films on my list – and also, for instance, The Martian, what stands out is the characters.
They look, sound, and behave like people I know from my world. That is rare for a film. That’s the thing about A Beautiful Mind – it’s a down-to-earth portrayal of top-tier mathematicians. And there’s a great scene where Nash describes game theory in terms of “which girl do you ask for a date?”
@CSK:
No. I’m still here. I’ve been moved to the surgery wing and have a time slot to get this taken out. I feel like absolute garbage.
@Beth: FWIW, gall bladder surgery is to surgeons what the “Hello World” program is to programmers. It is usually fast and low risk, and so it is one of the first ones they learn.
@Beth:
Sorry to hear that you’re feeling lousy. You won’t miss the gall bladder, though.
@MarkedMan:
It’s practically all laparoscopic now, isn’t it?
@MarkedMan:
I should have added that myself. A movie realistically portraying, say, a sales job, would have no time for a story.
That’s pretty much the view many regular people have of science and engineering.
I think there’s a problem now that many people seem to think stuff in lives does work as it does in the movies. I recall criticizing many of Benito’s proposed schemes as “unfortunately life is not an action movie.”
@Beth:
Look at the bright side: you’ll feel better some time after surgery.
I was up and about and cooking just one week or ten days after the hernia surgery.
@Beth:
Hope you’re better soon. Best wishes.
@James post on Utah Dems backing the candidacy of Evan McMullin, raised the question on which party will he caucus with.
Apparently neither.
@MarkedMan:
Moldova will only resist Russia if either
1) it has a realistic chance of repelling them; so far it has no Javelins, nor much other anti-tank weapons; neighboring Romania could help covertly, but time is of the essence
2) if they come to believe that being occupied by Putin’s army will lead to large numbers of rapes, murders, and looting (see Bucha), it might go down fighting anyway
There doesn’t seem to be much time–just 2 hours ago the single bridge over the Dniester River, that separates Budjak, the SW corner of Ukraine from the rest of Ukraine was bombed by Putin’s planes. The only strategic value in doing that would be if Russia is prepared to have an amphibious landing in that SW corner of Ukraine. Which is very ethnically mixed with no outright majority, but most minorities speak Russian, which might lead Putin to think (wrongly) that they want to be “liberated” by him
Details at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budjak
@CSK:
Hmm… Interesting question. I never met a surgeon that said they were working open for a cholecystectomy but, on the other hand, I worked for a company that made the laparoscopic instruments they used in the minimally invasive version, so they might not think to talk to me about it.
OK, according to the NIH, 92% of gall bladders are done minimally invasive in the US, and the ones that aren’t are usuallly conversions. A conversion is when it starts laparoscopically and then the surgeon decides to go open. As far as I know the most common cause of conversion is unusual anatomy and the surgeon feels they can’t get an adequate view or feel from a scope. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a serious problem, as it isn’t unusual for people’s actual anatomy to be different than a textbook, with no harm.
An open gall bladder is still a minor operation, but would leave a longer scar.
@Sleeping Dog: What’s the next step, now that he’s identified himself as the person NOT to vote for among voters who are aware and want their Congressional cohort to accomplish things? (I suppose that it’s possible that Dems would still vote for him as an obstructive force.)
@just nutha: Follow up question: Are there enough Dem primary voters not alienated by having no candidate to overtly support and inclined to show up to throw the GQP primary to him?
@just nutha: I’m suspect not caucusing with a party is not such a big deal. Given a tightly split, highly partisan Senate, his vote will be valuable quite often and therefore he will have leverage. I’m not sure he would get any more leverage by participating in various Republican or Democratic infighting.
@Sleeping Dog: I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
ETA seriously, that this was fubared from the gitgo is the least surprising news ever.
@RMR:
My concern is what do NATO and the EU do if Mad Vlad extends his war to one more country.
I don’t see sending troops or conducting aerial warfare. Vlad’s nuke deterrent is still there. It might provide the push needed for several European countries to sanction Russian oil and gas.
Past that, one can only hope Vlad doesn’t take it into his head to attack a NATO country, confident his deterrent will keep NATO from fulfilling Article V obligations.
@RMR:
An amphibious assault on the Bessarabian coast would be very risky indeed.
It’s within range of the Neptune missiles based around Odesa, and if the British Harpoons have made it there, within their range also.
There was also talk about possible supply of Brimstone shorter range missiles mounted on trucks.
And some mention re. the Norwegian NSM; whether anything has actually happened on that front, I don’t know.
Also, Ukraine could move units between the extreme south west coast and Odesa area via the Moldovan territory south of Olanesti without crossing Transnitrian “territory”, assuming Moldova agreed.
There would also be a very high probability of Romanian volunteer forces turning up in Moldova if fighting with Russians began there. Highly combustible situation.
@OzarkHillbilly:
What this implies is that vaccines do prevent Delta and Omicron infections, even if there are breakthrough cases as well.
Therefore the anti-vaxxers keep driving up cases and providing SARS-CoV-2 a huge reservoir. At this rate, this pandemic will last decades.
@Kathy:
Speaking of gas:
Russia to Halt Gas to Poland on Wednesday in Major Escalation
Poland seems confident that it can make it through until the Baltic Pipe from Norway comes online this October. (Possible linkage to new LNG terminals in the German North Sea also?)
Vladdy also announces:
“I remain the world’s greatest master of strategy! Derp!”
Great article in The Atlantic about Code for America, the organization Matt Bernius is a part of. Link
ETA: I see Sleeping Dog beat me to it!
I just had an hour-long conversation with a former student (he stopped by the factory to pick up equipment he had repaired). The last time I saw him was 25 years ago. Not only did he still remember me, he was actually talking to someone about me yesterday.
Feels kinda weird. I don’t feel like I’m old enough to have students who are now teachers.
@Beth: here’s hoping you heal quickly and feel better soon.
@Beth: Once you have the surgery, you’ll be amazed how many people will tell you “oh, yeah, I had that as well…..” They’ll send you home with a prescription for a painkiller (my doctor gave me an anti-nausea drug as well which I don’t think I ever used) and will probably have you come back in a few weeks for a check-up on the healing.
@Monala:
Monala, you need to get up early in the morning to beat the Sleeping Dog 🙂
@Sleeping Dog:
Perhaps you should call yourself “Wide Awake Dog” or “Sleepless Dog.” 😀
@MarkedMan: The movie 2011 (sequel to 2001) actually had some really cool behind-the-scenes engineering developed for it. Somewhat back-of-the-envelope because we haven’t actually carried it out yet, but the aerobraking procedure to get into orbit around Jupiter is feasible.
Sometimes a headline just grabs you (the picture alone is priceline):
Japanese man who married virtual character now on a mission to educate others about ‘fictosexuals’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/japanese-man-married-virtual-character-204251344.html
@senyordave: I meant to say “priceless”
@senyordave: who says romance is dead?
Between that and the new Netflix show Heartstopper, I think we are in a golden age of romance.
(Heartstopper is actually really, really good — an adorable, earnest queer teen romance where there’s no attempt to be edgy, sexualize children, wallow in hedonism, glorify drug use, or have a middle aged man marry a doll. It’s basically sweet but not cloying)
(Sometimes I watch whatever Netflix tries to push on me)
@MarkedMan:
And speaking of magic, as an engineer I laugh every time I see Tony Stark’s magical 3D interface CAD (Computer Aided Design) machine.
@senyordave:
Is “fictosexual” a new name for “sex doll”?
@grumpy realist:..The movie 2011 (sequel to 2001)…
I suspect you are thinking of 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
IMDb does list a film 2011 released in 2020.
“The daily life of a night owl video editor working in his apartment, gradually slides into anxiety when a mysterious neighbor, whom he never meets, but whose presence is constantly felt, gradually torments his existence.”
I never see my neighbors either but I like it that way.
@Beth:
Been there… had it.
I had turned SUCH a yellow color before I went in.
In Denver, the surgery was done by robot. It seems that it is the thing to do now. (Yet I still was billed by everyone that stood around in the room.)
Thank you everyone for the kind support. I really helped me during a very scary time.
So, around noon they told me I was on the board for surgery around 3:45 pm. 20 minutes later the came in and said I was going down NOW! I was in the middle of a real estate closing from my hospital bed. I ended up finishing signing the last documents from the OR staging area. Whatever anyone else says about lawyers, we are fundamentally crazy people.
Anyway, the surgery was a success. The pain has become manageable, but the gross feeling of something being wrong and the inability to eat while also being starving was worse. Thankfully that’s all gone. I’ve just got some minor pain in my abs, but my guts feel fine.
I ate some dinner and then they released me. It’s great to be home.
Thank you so much everyone.
@Beth: Excellent news! Here’s to a speedy recovery!
And congrats on closing on a new house!
@senyordave: Longview School district blocked my access to the article on my desk computer. 🙁