Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, December 13, 2022
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95 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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Something Eddie said yesterday clicked for me and helped me realize why I don’t find Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any of those things compelling. It boils down to alerts. I don’t like alerts popping upon my phone and so I don’t use the apps for those services but instead use the website. My alerts are limited to my text messages, so basically family and close friends, and my work messaging app. I check the NYTimes, the WaPo, The Atlantic and a couple of popular media sites multiple times per day, but I wouldn’t want them waving their hands at me and shouting “Look at me! Look at me!“
@EddieInCA:
It’s hard for journalists in general due to the speed and immediacy (Twitter does not wait for confirmation before posting), but I think the lure for media and entertainment in particular has to do with the drama and gossip. It’s very easy to snip at someone and it’s very easy for things to get misconstrued. It can be a total soap opera depending on who you follow.
And that’s the rub: Twitter is, mostly, who you follow. I have very little drama in my feed because I follow PR professionals, some authors, and news outlets. I do not follow celebrities.
@MarkedMan:
In agreement with this. For myself, only texts, email and calendar have alerts enabled and I refuse to use the ‘apps’ for any of the websites that I visit. If a website doesn’t render well on a phone w/o the app, then I don’t visit that site.
Hey, didn’t Matt Bernius promise us on Monday, December 5 that he’d have a Meme for Monday?
So where was yesterday’s Meme??????
@MarkedMan: I don’t even do texts. If you can’t be bothered to call me, I won’t be bothered at all by you. On the few occasions when a person does call me, I am just as likely to say, “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!!!” as I am to say, “Hello?”
The strong man’s Strongman, Putin, is afraid to answer the questions of the Russian news media.
@CSK: Matt’s Monday Meme (on Tuesday)
@OzarkHillbilly: You are thinking about this all wrong. The person that really wants to “leave you the fuck alone” should contact you in this order of preference based on urgency:
Mail you a letter
Email you
Text you
Call
In the first three, you the receiver can decide to ignore the message, read the message and not respond, or respond when you are damn well ready. With a call, you can ignore the rings and possibly get a message or you can take the call and be forced to respond.
@OzarkHillbilly: I haaaaaate calls. There are only a handful of people for whom I will answer the phone (thank goodness for caller ID) without having received adequate warning that a call was coming.
I have a “colleague” (really, another freelancer who is on the same project) who always defaults to calling as a first option. I NEVER answer the phone, it *always* goes to voicemail. I’ve told him repeatedly that something has to be on fire or someone needs to be bleeding out for me to pick up the phone and yet he still calls as a first response.
I’m even more alert-phobic.
I never use my phone for anything other than texts, calls, and the occasional bit of navigation.
If the phone rings, I answer it. 🙂
If its off or I’m out, voicemail.
I don’t normally carry my phone with me either.
@JohnSF:
Just curious – how often is it marketing crap or spam? When my phone rings, at least as an old fashioned call rather than a FaceTime, it is 90% likely to be “Scam Likely”, someone trying to sell me extended warranties on my cars, or a bogus Chinese language visa scam. I never answer the phone unless I recognize the caller or am momentarily expecting a call from an unknown number
Inflation continues to cool off, even more than expected this month.
I fully expect all the inflation scolds, who were blaming Biden for world-wide inflation, will be coming around to give him credit for wrangling this problem.
/:Snark.
The texts between 34 separate members of Congress and Mark Meadows have been obtained by TPM.
They basically show 34 members of the US Congress trying to install an un-elected dictator.
Most of them remain in office and will be the majority in charge of the House in the 118th Congress.
What could go wrong?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/mark-meadows-exchanged-texts-with-34-members-of-congress-about-plans-to-overturn-the-2020-election
@MarkedMan:
For me, very rarely these days.
It did peak a few years back but for whatever reason it’s dropped.
IIRC saw some reports that total unwanted calls are down a bit.
But it may just be because my target profile is minimal. 😉
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Some were, obviously, more aggressive than others.
But to my mind they all had the ability, given their offices, to find out and know the truth.
And yet they acted, purely on lies, to end Democracy.
There should be a price to pay for this malfeasance.
There will not be.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t have caller recognition on my landline, and blocking “caller withheld” is problematic, because for some stupid reason the NHS and other official bodies insist on using “info withheld”.
Never bothered to activate on the mobile; never had a single spam call or text on it.
@JohnSF:
@MarkedMan:
I’ve assigned differing ring tones for particular groups. Friends that I suspect may call me have a special tone, my wife has a special-special. Every other call gets the default. If that rings, if I feel like it I’ll look at the phone, if it is someone in my contacts or I recognize the caller ID name I’ll answer, otherwise vmail. I never, ever answer the land line.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Wish it was here. Currently running at 11%
Maybe that cunning Joe Biden’s managed to give all your inflation to our government?
What malarkey and shenanigans! 😉
@JohnSF:
Dark Brandon is just the super-villain to pull off that kind of malarky and shenanigans.
The key to how he did it was found on Hunter’s laptop!!!
@Jen: I’m with you. Now in my case, I think I have an auditory processing issue. I don’t like and, in retrospect, ever liked receiving information audibly. In the office, I always preferred to go to someone and talk face to face. Receiving calls I always can feel a rising anxiety that I don’t get when communicating visibly. I can’t go through the drive thru at a fast food place because I can’t understand the speaker. My wife always makes the call for a reservation. Having texts and email and other visual media has made my life happier.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Ah, but just wait till he meets Dark Starmer Rising!
Latest Savanta poll seat forecast
Labour 482 (+280)
Conservative 69 (-296)
SNP 55 (+7)
LD 21 (+10)
Plaid Cymru 4 (=)
Green 1 (=)
Labour majority of 314
@daryl and his brother darryl: That’s how it works. The President has very little impact on the economy. But if they want to take the credit, then they have to take the blame. That’s the game.
From the AP:
“Only oligarchs have those kind of free speech rights!”
Have not checked voicemail in years. Texting is the best since you can choose to answer when you want and avoid long conversations. If you need a longer conversation then call.
Steve
@Scott:
Have you ever considered hearing aids? My only regret is that I waited until I was 61 to get them, rather than at 18, which is when I first noticed that once a bar got noisy enough I was in my own world for the rest of the evening unless the person I was talking to was right next to me and I could see their face.
@MarkedMan: That’s exactly how I am in a noisy crowded place. I end up just sitting there and smiling. I’ll have to check that out.
Letters are nice, too bad nobody writes them anymore. Email is fine, but only because I don’t get an alert. Texting sucks donkey fucking dick and I will hunt down and kill any person who tries it. I don’t even know how to access them. Phone calls? I live in a cell hole and my cell phone very, very rarely rings. It rang yesterday for the first time in months. Also I quite often unplug the home phone when somebody insists I answer their unsolicited phone call. I always answer when my wife, either of my sons, or my stepdaughter call*, usually after I first scream at the phone to “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!!!” Caller ID, doncha know.
*this depends on my actually being in the house, which isn’t all that often during the day.
@Jen: We used to have a voice mail machine for the home phone but it got fried by a lightning strike. We never bothered to replace it because most of the messages were left by solicitors looking for donations.
All in all folks, different strokes and all that.
I know someone who does investigations for the SEC. I would never ask her (and she would most certainly never tell me) about any ongoing case. But last year she asked my wife and I if we were invested in crypto. She commented that under certain circumstances crypto companies fall under their jurisdiction and that when they requested certain filings the stuff they got back was almost unbelievable. She didn’t go into details but I got the impression that there were no competent lawyers or accountants involved in crafting them (which would be the almost 100% norm) and that the documentation was of obnoxious-high-schooler-shouting-“You can’t tell me what to do!” quality rather than, you know, the stuff they were legally obligate to provide.
I’m still on Twitter because 22K people follow me on Twitter and that is useful for me in promoting things. I follow a few thousand people but I never read my feed. I go to notifications. If someone @’s me, I take a look. Other than that it’s self-promotion and political commentary. Lately though I only go to Twitter to take shots at Elon. Cuz it’s fun.
I deleted Facebook years ago. I don’t need random forgotten relatives looking me up. Never bothered with Insta or any of the others. When a Twitter alternative appears I’ll migrate and bring my followers.
@Scott:
Actually in this case he got the blame, but is getting none of the credit.
Still it is the game…hence my /:snark.
@Scott: They are not cheap, BTW. Mine were $5K. But I suspect the recent ruling that they can go OTC will bring that down pretty dramatically.
I don’t know how many of you are college football fans but Mike Leach just passed away.
Mississippi State coach Mike Leach dies at 61
Two of my kids went to Texas Tech when he was coach there. Games were always entertaining. He was an offensive innovator and just a great interview. Too soon.
Same here. I can’t take directions. Give me a location, an address, Lat Long, UTM, PLS, and I will find it. Telling me to turn left here, right there, etc etc. and I will never find it.
@Scott:
Others have mentioned hearing aids. The ones I got three years ago made my life significantly easier. One of the useful things is that they link via Bluetooth to my phone so I get the frequency correction I need (big boosts to the upper frequencies) on phone calls as well.
Even after three years, it’s still startling for a couple of moments when I put them on in the morning and get that big treble boost.
No hearing aids for me because that is my happy place.
Sam Bankman-Fried has been charged with:
1. Conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
2. Wire fraud
3. Securities fraud
4. Money laundering
That is the only reason I would ever comment there.
My oldest is 18 today. Time flies! I’m not sure how it went by so fast.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah, before I deleted my Twitter account last January, I only used it to hate Tweet Ted Cruz and Chip Roy.
On the fusion matter, I wonder why the whole world got stuck with the Rickover-style water cooled fission reactor, rather than pursue other possible designs.
In the early days, 40s through 60s, many designs were tired. graphite moderated, sodium cooled, air cooled, etc. They all were inferior in some ways, some were far more dangerous. The water cooled design is good, but there are others which were never tried, or not at sufficient scale.
One I like is the molten salt reactor. It’s absolutely meltdown-proof, because the fuel and coolant are already melted, ergo molten salt. It can also pretty much “burn” anything radioactive, including many nasty fission byproducts. This means it produces little waste It’s probably less efficient than a water cooled model, but safer, and easier and cheaper to run.
There’s little chance of that when fusion is just around the corner (and always will be).
BTW, I predict fusion, when it comes, will fall short of expectations. not only because these are so high they almost reach the top of Elon’s ego, but because much of the hype is misleading.
Much of it has to do with radioactive waste. Fusion produces helium as a by-product, not radioactive forms of iodine, xenon, etc. Cool. But secondary reactions in the containment vessel will likely produce radioactive waste all the same.
We’ll see.
Very sad.
@Sleeping Dog: What are “alerts?” How would I recognize if my phone was sending me one? (Serious question.)
@Scott: @Michael Reynolds:
I followed Gym Jordan just to remind all his other followers (you know he doesn’t read it) what a scum bag he is.
@MarkedMan: I’m another if it rings, I answer person. Most of the calls are robocalls where the line stays dead until I hang up. Then again, considering that only about half a dozen people have my number, I wouldn’t expect anything else.
@MarkedMan:..Have you ever considered hearing aids?
I know that I don’t hear as well as I have in the past.
I get solicitations in the US Mail for those contraptions all the time. I know that they are not like my grandfathers hearing aid in the ’50s. We had to talk to his shirt pocket where the device was with the cord that ran to his earpiece so he could hear us. Most of the time.*
When anyone suggests that I think about a hearing aid my reply is always: “You are assuming that I want to hear what other people have to say.”
Besides, if I turn up the stereo system in my car. I can hear Led Zeppelin just fine.
encore
*Gramps came to visit one time when I was in High School. When the cat made an appearance Gramps said: “What’s the cat’s name?”
“Popcorn!” my sister yelled to him.
“Boxcar? That’s a funny name for a cat!”
Needless to say from that day on the cat’s name was Boxcar.
@Scott:
It’s known as “hidden deafness”–because it doesn’t show up in hearing tests–and I’ve talked about it here several times when explaining that “yes, masks do make it harder to understand people” (that’s not a reason to not wear them, it just needs to be taken into consideration).
I’ve had it since at least my mid-teens. Any significant background noise, and I need to be able to see the speaker’s mouth (got me slapped by my girlfriend more than a few times because she thought I was ignoring her 😛 ). I’m in my mid 50’s and can still hear a CRT whine, but voices in a semi-crowded room? Nope.
Well. I am upright. The ports are out. I’m left with a catheter and a drain till Friday. All the packing is out of me and they have unstitched the pressure dressing from my crotch.
I feel like a weak drunk baby. It felt like the whole world dissolved into gas bubbles and flipped around the first time I walked. Now I’m just trying to get out of here and on to my couch.
Another thing about fusion, is whether a chain reaction, or a sustained reaction, can be maintained.
An oil-fired power plant and a nuclear one both keep a constant heat source. That is, you turn it on once and it stays on until shut down (or if it runs out of fuel). Carn engines don’t work this way, you inject gas, compress it, then detonate it. It all happens very quickly, and multiple times per minute. It’s also very responsive when you step on the throttle, taking only a few seconds to accelerate faster with increased power.
In a star, the fusion at the core is ongoing. It progresses on to heavier elements, too, not just helium. the more massive the star, the more material gets fused and the faster the fuel is used up (that’s why red dwarf stars are immortal, and red super giant stars blow up after only a few million years).
Will fusion reactors be like stellar cores? Or more like internal combustion car engines, requiring lasers be fired again and again as each fuel pellet/capsule is used up? If the latter, how much more extra energy will be needed just to keep the lasers firing?
@Beth: Good news, may you find your couch soon
@MarkedMan: Since Medicare and suplementary insurers started offering coverage, MY cost has gone down, but my first device from my Medicare Advantage plan was a device that came in the mail. I got a new one this year from a local audiology practice and the difference in quality is remarkable because of the programmability that this one has. When OTC becomes a feature, my guess is that the effect will be more “better than nothing” than “a revolution in hearing technology.” Having someone who knows what they’re doing making fine adjustments makes a significant difference.
Well… That’s certainly one way to get 20-somethings to the polls:
Rubio and Gallagher introduce bill to ban TikTok in the US.
@Kathy: I’m a techie through and through and so might be expected to be all in on fission. I am not, and the lack of innovation is one of the two main reasons. It is a sign of a crippled industry or one viewed by its owners as merely a cash cow that will be discarded when it is worn out. Has there been any significant technological advancement in, say, the past 30 years that made it to full scale and that addresses any of the major concerns?
The second reason is that the industry buries its head in the sand. When Fukishima happened the industry was very quick to assure the public and the politicians that it was a one-off, that it couldn’t happen anywhere else. It may or may not be true with respect to the tsunami/earthquake combo, but there are dozens of plants around the world that would behave in the same way if the reactors failed and then external power was cut off. They do not “fail safe”. Not to mention that untold tons of radioactive waste are stored in what are essentially swimming pools. I don’t want to give anyone ideas but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with plans where a few individuals could get a mass-panic inducing quantity of that waste up into the atmosphere. I can’t speak for Europe but in the US the industry has relied on the government to find a long term solution and efforts in that area have been dormant for decades.
@OzarkHillbilly: The bicycle shop owner’s accident was just down the road in Punta Gorda. He had a shop there. The local news story was a bit vague but it seemed to be because of a missing stop sign. A lot of traffic signs came down in Hurricane Ian.
@MarkedMan:
Meet NuScale’s modular reactors–approved in 2022.
BTW to all the physics brains on this thread, re: the fusion announcement – am I right in my naïve assessment that a factor of 1.5 is meaningfully higher than the 1.25 previously estimated? Or is it just conservatism in the initial prediction?
@MarkedMan:
I really wish we’d put more research into the Thorium fuel cycle reactors, since they seem to solve a lot of the radiation problems (the waste has half-lives measured in years instead of millions of years)
And another tweeter bites the dust.
Thinking about the sad-lonely-boy and his appearance at Dave Chapple’s gig, Musk likely believed that he’d be received by adoring throngs. After all, Chapple had been banished by the Woke, so in Musk’s febrile mind, anyone at the show should be big on owning the Libs. To be fair, at the beginning, the booing v. cheering was about 50-50, but as the seconds ticked away, many switched sides, deciding booing Musk was the proper reaction.
@Kathy:
Most the reactors running in the UK are still gas cooled (AGR) design.
And Canada uses the heavy water moderated CANDU.
Both IMHO better technologies than the PWR.
PWR became the commercial default, as it was chosen by both US and France, and then by almost all other countries as the “off the shelf” option.
Stars rely on gravity to initiate and to maintain equilibrium.
Unless we get a means of gravity manipulation (e.g. Clarke’s “asymptotic drive” with micro black holes !) that’s out.
Any inertial fusion reactor will be like an IC engine.
OTOH the magnetic confinement type might be more sustainable.
But feeding in more fuel while maintaining confinement?
Tricky.
@Mu Yixiao: So in another decade or two, if nothing goes wrong, we might see power connected to the grid from the first meaningful design change in what by then will be a half century or even 3/4 of a century?
And, unless things have changed, virtually all the research money invested in this comes from governments and not from the industry itself.
I may sound cynically skeptical but when I was a kid there was all kinds of exciting new designs that went nowhere. (See the Carter Administrations massive investment in breeder reactors, for one.) And every decade since I’ve read about the next amazing thing that was on the edge of full scale commercialization. So far, nada.
@Beth: I hope you and your new cooch get to your old couch soon.
When it comes to phone/text/email, here is some context of my daily life:
Texts: Between 200-300 per day. Yes. I get a text approx every 3 mins on average per day.
WhatsApp Work group chain: A running timeline of what’s happening on set, updated approx every 3-5 minutes. Probably 200 during the course of the day. This is separate from the texts listed aboce sent to my actual phone number.
Emails: 120-180 per day, every day, seven days per week.
Calls: 30-50 per day, five days per week.
My phone is an appendage at this point. More than 20 mins without it, and I’m feeling lost. Some of my best days are those when I’m between gigs, and I just “disconnect” from anything cellular or wifi enabled.
@MarkedMan:
The mistake in fission is trying to get it done by private enterprise.
It should be a nationalised industry.
Private corporations have little incentive to be innovative if the get a payday anyway.
Or if they never do because it gets bogged down by legalities.
That’s why France is able usually to get 80% of electricity from nukes, and has a lower carbon footprint than any other major industrial nation.
Because it used a state corporation to get the job done, and did not permit legal challenges to stand in its way.
@Gustopher:
My partner said “that is amazing. Tell them they made my day.”
@just nutha:
Alerts or notification as some apps call them, can be audible chirps or visual cues, some where on the home screen. On Android phones there is a global setting for Notifications, go to Settings>Notifications and you can see what your options are. Also at the app level you can manage them for the specific app: Settings>Apps>App Name and you’ll see an option for notifications.
Don’t know the procedure for iPhones.
@Sleeping Dog: Dammit. I love Popehat, and Twitter was the easiest way to digest his helpful and frequently hilarious content.
Sigh.
On the call/text/email/letter front. I’m fairly agnostic. However, for work, if people ignore my calls or emails I will show up with a smile on my face and politely grind someone into dust until the problem is solved. The other side of that never wins because I fundamentally enjoy it. I’ll wait all day, come back 2-3 times. I’m like water wearing down a mountain and I enjoy it.
@Sleeping Dog: Thanks. I was wondering if I was not getting any but it turns out that I only ignore them. 🙂
Oh, joyous news
Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person—and the amount he’s lost this year is enough to land 4th place on the list
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
@Beth:
I tend to text someone and ask if it’s okay to call before calling them, because calling them unannounced implies I think whatever I have to say is so important I expect them to drop whatever they’re doing to listen to it immediately.
@Kathy:
AIUI, the original reason was that water-cooled enriched-uranium reactors all produce plutonium as a byproduct. It’s not the best way to get weapons-grade plutonium, but it works. Another reason is that licensing a reactor design includes licensing a bunch of stuff about the fuel. Once a manufacturer starts down a particular path, they’re sort of stuck. That’s one of the reasons that we see companies that built earlier generation PWR designs putting forward Gen IV PWR designs, companies that built earlier BWRs have Gen IV BWR designs.
Finally!
US finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine
Though what’s also needed is a radar controlled gun network, so the guns can handle cheapo drones, and leave the SAMS to deal with missiles.
@Sleeping Dog:
He really doesn’t understand how unpopular he is right now. Even if you might be inclined to side with him on some topics or still got some fanboy left in you, he’s constantly showing how toxically unstable he is (and eager to show it off) and business doesn’t like that. Musk’s whole schtick was being as close to Tony Stark as a real person could be – eccentric genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist who’s futurist leanings will save us all. Problem is Stark is a flaming hot mess in canon and Musk doesn’t even have the redeeming qualities the comics give Iron Man. Musk really, truly does think he’s a beloved figure who’s every brilliant move garners haters naturally so he isn’t connecting this time is different. This time, there’s not built-in culture of placate the boss to soften the blow and it’s all out there in real time for everyone to see.
He’s actively being red-pilled because that’s who is left to kiss his butt; like everyone who falls in with QAnon or the alt-right, it’s a spiral of alienation that keeps reinforcing itself. The audience was supposed to love him since they were likely not “woke” or “sensitive” but when they didn’t, we got to see the “Boo-urns” excuse happen in real life. He’ll be angry and double down, now only going where he can be SURE there’s no cruel “woke” people -MAGA and alt-right functions. Makes him even more toxic and drives away more potentially like-minded folks because he’s going too far down the rabbit hole for them to follow.
@MarkedMan: It sounds twice as good to me, but I only have mild experience in physics and systems.
Just to chime in on the hearing aids issue, I have had them for 5+ years, should have done it sooner with my hereditary hearing loss. I’m hoping the OTC ones can somehow be adjusted at home, and have good noise filtering.
My current ones weren’t the highest end, but still cost $4-5k. They really don’t help much in noisy places, they just make the noises louder. One of my problems is clearly my brain’s signal-to-noise processing, and it seems to vary based on how tired I am.
I’ve argued on this forum that masks suck for the hearing impaired. I won’t back down from that position because it’s a significant factor in me understanding people. Not just the mildly muffled sound, but I’m 100% sure I pick up context from people’s faces, even if I don’t technically read lips.
That’s what the Guardian said. Just such a sad loss. We all go, but some go way too soon.
Thanks for all the replies on fission reactors. Work just hit too hard for me to keep up. It’s Hell Week 2, after all.
I think I’ll go looking for a comprehensive history of nuclear power. I just read recently one of nuclear accidents (some minor and some older than one would think possible). It included something about the development of reactors, but that was not the focus.
@EddieInCA: Holy fuck… What you need is a good framing hammer. Or at least, that would be my solution.
You misspelled “bigger asshole” again.
As someone who regularly ignores phone calls, I don’t ever expect somebody to answer my phone calls. I am happy to leave a voice mail telling them what I am calling about and to call me back when it is convenient for them. What I don’t want is a 37 texting back and forth to hash out something that could have been settled in a 2 minute phone conversation.
@Sleeping Dog: These “richest person” rankings are frequently silly. How many of these people have actual hard money, not money-that-would-exist based on investment value estimates that fluctuate daily? The “world’s richest person” would not need to borrow money from actual rich people — like Saudi royals — to buy Twitter.
Are Putin and MBS on this list? Actual world’s richest people with real money that doesn’t just exist on stock balance sheets?
@DK:
I’ve wondered about that. For instance, I thought Elon could have bought the late Twitter with loose change from the couch, or from a few days’ interest on his accounts.
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s why I text “Got time to talk? If not when’s a good time?” and that’s it.
@Matt: Same result, different venue.
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah except I don’t have to spend a minute waiting on ringing before leaving a voice mail saying what I could of said in under 10 seconds.
@Matt: TYPED not said ugh. Takes like 10 seconds to type. what I listed earlier.
@Michael Reynolds: “If someone @’s me, I take a look.”
Since I’m not on Twitter I couldn’t @ you, but was very impressed to see you and your wife quoted in the Times (or maybe the Post?) as being among the authors publicly taking the side of striking workers at HarperCollins. Fighting the good fight there, you rascally progressive!
@DK:
OTOH if you have that money, you’re likely to park it somewhere. For security, and to make money from money.
Some of the nominally wealthiest people around at the time,were the British aristocracy during the “high farming” period of c.1840 to c.1880. But almost all their wealth was tied up in land.
I suspect a lot of MBS’s and Putin’s wealth is actually in property also.
Musk’s nominal wealth is of course based on Tesla, which a lot of analysts consider to be massively overvalues, because it’s viewed as a “tech stock for growth” not as a vehicle manufacturer.
@Matt: I don’t think I’ve ever been able to type a text longer than a single word in 10 seconds, but I miss the letter I’m trying for a lot, too. I’d get a stylus, but my chiropractor had a tablet that patients would use to sign in and the stylus was worse than trying to press the letter spots, so I’m a stylus atheist (astyluseist?)
Oh yes, you are so much superior than I. As you ignore the inevitable texted replies requiring you to reply to their replies… Fuck that shit. If they can’t call me back, then I guess it wasn’t worth their trouble.
As I said way way above:
I’m happy you have found Eden. It is a hellscape for me and I want nothing to do with it. That you feel the need to assert that your ways are so superior to mine says a hell of a lot more about you than it does me. So… Fuck off with your airs. Like me, you are just another amoeba in the soup of life.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Me and touch screens don’t get along at all. The other day a cashier said it was due to my “magnetic personality”. She was lying of course, but it still put a smile on my face.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
If you absolutely must reply to texts, and have a laptop or desktop handy, you can run a version of Whatsapp on the web. I think the URL is web.whatsapp.com
Then you can use the keyboard like a civilized person.
I use the web option mostly to download files, but for replying as well now and then.
@Kathy: I use Whatsapp on my phone because a friend of mine in Korea likes to make video calls with it. Sadly, I’ve never actually used it as the originator of a message because it’s too complicated for me to understand. I suspect that trying to use Whatsapp to send a reply to a text from another messaging system would be like asking me to build a cold fusion reactor–to link to another topic from today.
@JohnSF: They should have separate “richest people” lists thank rank wealth in terms of liquidity.
You know, so we know which ones to eat, and which not to waste time on lol
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I have it on my phone because people wouldn’t believe me if I said I didn’t 😉
I sometimes do find it useful to send messages, like when a phone call seems obtrusive, or more often when they won’t pick up the phone.
@Scott:
@Franklin:
When I was working workers’ compensation (W/C) on the claimant side, we saw a lot of hearing loss claims. Mostly men with a history of working industrial/construction/logging jobs. On their audiology reports, there was a large “notch” in their hearing range, which coincided with the Hz range most women’s and children’s voices fall in. 9/10 of them had gone to the audiologist for a hearing test because their spouses/family complained that they didn’t hear what they were saying. Make all the jokes you want, but a work history with continuous/frequent sounds of certain volumes and intensities leaves people with the inability to hear more than “mumble-mumble” from people around them. Might explain how my grandfather and late Father-in-Law could both sleep in front of a tv that you could hear out on the street.
My personal experience is that a couple of range accidents, and one weapon discharge in an enclosed space, combined with 20+ years of cranking up dictation equipment have left me relying on lip-reading for clues to the mumble. Given Cracker’s success with the new hearing aids, I may have to see what luck I have with the new technology.
@wr:
Huh. Did not see that. Imagining the HC chairman seeing it and yelling, “And exactly how much did we pay that bitch* for another monkey book?”
I actually unionized a Sambo’s restaurant many years ago. We’d been union at the Oakland store, so when I moved to the Concord store I invited the union in. Of course I was politely told to fuck off since I was management, but it worked out. ‘My girls’** got their breaks.
*My well-compensated wife.
** It was 1977.