Reality TV and Surreal Policies

"So that orange man who played such a powerful executive on TV? What was his catch-phrase?""'You're fired!'"
"Yes! Him. How is job growth under his leadership?"
"The economy has lost jobs in two of the last three months. He may not be creating jobs but he is creating drama."
"Well who could have seen that coming?"
"Umm .... if you watched his show, you literally saw that. Every single week the number of working people went down and the drama increased. Now he's just doing that on a larger stage."
"Wouldn't you have thought that he would have changed the script to something like, 'You're hired!'?"
"Well, he thought about it but decided that would be too boring - bad for ratings. So he's shut down the government but he is building a ballroom."
"Well that seems like a weird priority. What does he need that for?"
"When asked, he just danced around the question."
"Presumably once the ballroom is built ..."
"We will just see more of that. Yes."

Power Over and Power To - The Distinction Between Great and Awful Institutions

I watched a sharp Johnny Harris piece on the LDS Church, and one almost throwaway moment stuck with me: losing temple privileges for a few weeks after “going too far” with his fiancée—embarrassing not because people knew why, but because they could see he’d lost access.

As I get older, I get more sensitive to how institutions at their best give us power to ... amazon lets you quickly get about any product to your door within a day or two (even better, download an entire book within seconds) ... a great university provides you with testable theories about how the world works and how to create a life within it. A great religion simultaneously humbles you by reminding you of how inconsequential you are among 8 billion now and generations before and after while also giving you hope that your life matters.

But institutions can also exercise power over us. Sometimes they use us. The laborers building the Egyptian pyramids. The hopeful housewives trying to build a business through a pyramid scheme. The church member feeling guilty about desire.

Which brings me back to confessions. Expecting young men to confess lust to old men makes about as much sense as old men confessing joint pain to young men - that’s just what bodies do at those stages of life. But of course that arrangement also clearly gives old men more power over young men.

The trick of progress, it seems to me, is to reverse ancient injustices in which individuals were tools of institutions and instead do all that we can to make those institutions tools of individuals.

Interplanetary System - A New Information-scape

Soon I'll be launching something even bigger than www - the worldwide web.

Stay tuned for the ips. - interplanetary system - the information-scape too big for a single planet.

Patch notes: added moons, rings, and meteors.

Falling Off a Cliff with a Blindfold - Job Loss Blackout During Trump's Government Shutdown

The economy is losing jobs but we don't know how many.

Each month the BLS reports the number of jobs lost or gained. ADP is the private sector equivalent - a less accurate number that comes from a smaller sample size generated by a private company. Wednesday they reported that the private sector lost jobs in September.

With the government shutdown, two things have happened. Millions of federal workers are furloughed, have effectively lost their jobs. And the federal government will not be reporting job numbers until the shutdown ends.

The bad news is that Trump and the Republican's policies are already costing us jobs. The worse news is that we are flying blind and that we don't even know how many jobs, how much damage Trump's chaotic policies are doing.

In Trump's final month in office, 3,000 Americans a day were dying from COVID - a 9-11 every day. He ignored this and was focused on overturning the election that he lost.

Now he has regained office and in his first months increased his personal net worth by $3 billion. In every single month of Biden's presidency, the economy created jobs. Within months of taking office, Trump's economy was losing jobs. And now, as it continues to lose jobs while he gains billions, he shuts down the government so that no one can see the official tally of jobs he's losing.

Or as the MAGA boys call it: winning.

Jane Goodall on Making a Difference

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
- Jane Goodall

Donald Trump as the Last Resort

Did you know that Donald Trump is the only president in history to have never won a general election against another man? 

Donald. The last resort of American misogynists.