We know Haberman was supposed to write a book with Thrush before Thrush had some, um, issues. The publisher booted Thrush off and he got to keep his advance. Then Haberman backed out and had to pay hers back. Seems a bit unjust, in a way, but still curious why Haberman backed out instead of going solo.
Random Friday night thought. Discuss more important things!
Friday, January 31, 2020
Rules For Billionaires
The DNC debate rules might be good or bad, but changing them so Michael Bloomberg can get into the debates is, well, unsurprising... So of course they're doing it.
They're All Bad
I know the Senate is the greatest deliberative body in the world where all of the greatest people of America get along famously and frankly I go to bed every night just pleased as punch that The Chucks Grassley and Schumer have a grand old time in the Senate gym locker room. Get a tear in my eye as Snuffy Walden plays in my mind imagining their witty banter.
But, also too, their wonderful colleagues on the other side of the aisle are all corrupt assholes and they have been blowing up The Norms for years and I think it's past time for the Dems to tell THE AMERICAN PEOPLE just who those Republicans are.
Assume Senate comity dead.
But, also too, their wonderful colleagues on the other side of the aisle are all corrupt assholes and they have been blowing up The Norms for years and I think it's past time for the Dems to tell THE AMERICAN PEOPLE just who those Republicans are.
Assume Senate comity dead.
Proper
Britain is free at last, free at last.
Generational stolen valor is my latest "amusement."
This is why some festivities will be even more raucous than the one in Parliament Square. Tory MP Andrew Rosindell explained his party in Romford will involve British singing and British food “and English sparkling wine – nothing French or German”.I know this is a bit hard for Americans to understand, instinctively seduced by slightly posh accents, but the Tories are dumber than Republicans, the "objective media" (basically the BBC) is even more in the tank for Tories, and the Sensible Centrists are more actively destructive than Jon Chait and Claire McCaskill ever were.
That’s the spirit of friendship we’ve been promised, in which our independence creates a new spirit of harmony with our European neighbours, which we can celebrate like PROPER British people, not these Metropolitan traitors who eat European shite like pizza and have wine from places that know nothing about wine, like France. This is PROPER wine made from baked beans and Tizer.
He also displayed his optimistic youthful outlook when he demanded the BBC mark the event by playing “God Save the Queen” before it shuts down each night. This might not have the impact he hopes for, as the BBC hasn’t shut down at night since 1997, but that shows how out of touch the liberal whining BBC has become, deliberately showing programmes all night so it doesn’t have to play the national anthem before shutting down.
Other public figures have added to the national jollity, by making speeches that start with: “We are now in a position to heal the wounds of a divided nation, by coming together to tell the 16 million posh, traitorous, elite, sneering arse-wipes, ‘HAAA HAAAAA GET OVER IT, how DARE you express the slightest tinge of unease, you collaborator.’”
Generational stolen valor is my latest "amusement."
The age group that voted in the greatest numbers for Brexit were those between 65 and 75, so now the greatest generation this country ever produced can get on with the job of insisting they didn’t fight in the war to be told what to do by Europe, even though they were born 10 years after the war ended.
And this goes to show how patriotic they are; they were willing to fight Hitler even after he was already dead.
Both Sides
There's no doubt that President Obummer would have been driven out of office by Democrats by now if he'd been the Full Trump, and deservedly so. Political journalists who can't internalize that basic fact should be brushing up their fry skills instead of earning the big bucks.
Happy Brexit Day
It consumed the UK media to the exclusion of all else for years and now they barely talk about it. It's here, though the difficult parts are postponed. The Tories hav decided not to talk about Brexit anymore. They got it done. It's in the past. The difficult bits are yet to come, and my guess is that somehow those things will not be Brexit (because Brexit is GOOD) but evil Europe being evil.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGES
I wonder how things would be different if there was no NARRATIVE surrounding the primaries. As in, people woke up the next day read the results in their newspaper and then moved on. Starting in 2004 or so (starting before, of course, but *really* getting going in 2004) the hot takes about the hot takes about WHAT IT ALL MEANS go hyper-meta before any results are even out. Spinners as spinnning spinnning spinning towards freedom!
And no matter what happens, it'll be good news for John McCain.
And no matter what happens, it'll be good news for John McCain.
bUT hOW WilL wE PaY FOr IT
There's always money in the banana stand.
Add a gun that can’t shoot straight to the problems that dog Lockheed Martin Corp.’s $428 billion F-35 program, including more than 800 software flaws.
The 25mm gun on Air Force models of the Joint Strike Fighter has “unacceptable” accuracy in hitting ground targets and is mounted in housing that’s cracking, the Pentagon’s test office said in its latest assessment of the costliest U.S. weapons system.
ROBOTAXIS
Elon time is become ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more ridiculous than Friedman Units.
Martin Viecha -- Senior Director of Investor RelationsWhat about the million robotaxis, Elon?
Thank you. The next question is, you set expectations that you would be feature-complete on FSD by the end of 2019. Can you please provide an update on when will we see this -- but with end users, where are you in retrofitting the FSD computer to older models?
Elon Musk -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I mean, to be precise, I said I was hoping it would be feature-complete with both FSD by the end of last year. We got pretty close. It's looking like we might be feature-complete in a few months. The feature-complete just means like it has some chance of going from your home to work let's say with no interventions. So, that's -- it doesn't mean the features are working well, but it means it has above zero chance. So I think that's looking like maybe it's going to be couple of months from now. And what isn't obvious regarding Autopilot and Full Self-Driving is just how much work has been going into improving the foundational elements of autonomy. The -- like the core autopilots in Tesla or Autopilot software and AI team is just is I think very, very strong in making great progress. And we're only beginning to take full advantage of the Autopilot hardware and the FSD hardware.
So I think it's -- the apparent progress, as seen by consumers, will seem to be extremely rapid, but actually what's really going on my head it seems like that is just having the foundational software be very strong and we've got really strong foundation. And then a really fundamental thing is moving to video training. So in terms of labeling, labeling with video in all eight cameras simultaneously. This is a really, I mean in terms of labeling efficiency, arguably like a three order of magnitude improvement in labeling efficiency. For those who know about this, it's extremely fundamental, so that's really great progress on that.
"If you fast forward a year, maybe a year three months, we'll have over a million robo-taxis on the road."That was last April.
According to Musk vehicles will drive anywhere. "If you need geofenced maps, you're not self-driving," he said. He said that Teslas will be available to autonomously navigate dense urban areas like San Francisco and New York by the end of the year.
Our Failed Media Experiment
the president's lawyer said that anything the president does is legal, and playbook wonders how it will affect that lawyer's social life in martha's vineyard? pic.twitter.com/n31bVRvdy5
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) January 30, 2020
Heartland
Most of my life the archetype of The Politician was a southerner or maybe a Texan. The Voters Who Mattered were all white Southerners. "White" being a key term. Sure the realignment was happening, as the weird Democratic coalition which included white Southerners and white southern politicians was dissolving. That was worth talking about in a limited context. But the South was always portrayed as a white place, including the rural South. Even today I bet most non-Southern Americans think all black people live in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, DC, and Los Angeles (!!), when of course the South - and the rural South - has huge (huger) black populations.
And now it's the heartland. A place which also isn't as white as is portrayed. African-American and Hispanic residents everywhere, even in places like Mayo Pete's South Bend. But the Heartland, of course, means Real American so it means White.
And now it's the heartland. A place which also isn't as white as is portrayed. African-American and Hispanic residents everywhere, even in places like Mayo Pete's South Bend. But the Heartland, of course, means Real American so it means White.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
America's Worst Democratic Presidential Candidates
Mayo Pete.
In the face of unprecedented challenges, we need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington politics we’ve come to know and expect.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) January 29, 2020
But They've Been Talking About This For Years
I don't know the truth of this or what it really means, but if a relatively small amount of money spent on Facebook (for example) is the key to winning an election, perhaps best to spend some money on facebook instead of complaining to the Facebook Hall Monitors (facebook is bad, delete it, but you go to the elections with the evil ad surveillance systems you have...).
Democrats and Republicans agree that the Trump campaign is far ahead of the Democratic Party in the use of this technology, capitalizing on its substantial investment during the 2016 election and benefiting from an uninterrupted high-tech drive since then.I think these stories are never quite right, but...
Republicans “have a big advantage this time,” Ben Nuckels, a Democratic media consultant said in a phone interview. “They not only have all the data from 2016 but they have been building this operation into a nonstop juggernaut.”
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Unpossible
I am surprised.
BREAKING: McConnell tells GOP senators he does not have the votes to block witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial https://t.co/EC85ytDAe2
— Matea Gold (@mateagold) January 28, 2020
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