tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910Thu, 02 Jan 2025 23:29:04 +0000politicsrantsdemocracyjusticeshower thoughtsconstitutionThe American CrisisdraftefficiencyeconomicsfilmspersonalBook ReviewStar Warsletter to the editormanagementsportsstadium scamhttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (D)Blogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-3177577133975192838Tue, 17 Aug 2021 20:44:00 +00002021-08-17T15:47:53.118-05:00Are racist assholes racists who happen to be assholes, or are they racist because they are assholes?This is an important question! That assholery and racism are associated is something that doesn't need a citation - (but here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.02.005 - students with more self reported 'dark triad' traits also had more prejudice) are some anyway), but this . And if you we'rehttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2021/08/racist-assholes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-4608715163128144864Tue, 04 May 2021 22:57:00 +00002021-05-04T17:57:56.062-05:00It often seems to me that the world is an ocean of suffering as wide as space and as deep as time; and by some collection of miracles we have built for ourselves a ship, and raised ourselves out of that dark water of pain. Some of us have even managed to become dry. Now we sail that ocean of suffering looking for that dry land they call Utopia. The ship leaks - all ships do - and we pump out the https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/sailing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-2133448789265689206Thu, 18 Mar 2021 19:50:00 +00002021-03-18T15:09:11.588-05:00The paper is divided up into sections, and so I will divide up my blogging about it - but I will not be discussing them in the same order.Section 3: Why Stories matterThat "stories matter" is a common trope. Understandably this is a popular view among professional storytellers who (like everyone) like to think their work is important and "matters" in some especial way. This is also a fairly https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2021/03/harry-potter-and-pre-modern-economy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-3162730455688286788Thu, 22 Oct 2020 18:49:00 +00002020-10-22T13:49:19.148-05:00There's a joke that isn't mine and it goes like this:A man goes to get a Ph.D. in economics. Because he is a good son, from time to time he calls his mother.His mother asks him the same question she has asked for more than 20 years now:"So what are you learning in school" He then begins to explain search models of unemployment."You need to go to grad school to learn that people don't want https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/10/shit-your-mom-couldve-told-you.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-2521322546542999858Mon, 05 Oct 2020 16:43:00 +00002020-10-05T11:43:42.599-05:00Not the notion, but the term - for it has come to mean in certain quarters of the left (or perhaps the Left) what "socialism" has come to mean among the broad right, that is, "something (or someone) I do not like".But unlike the bugbear of right-wing thought, the neoliberal is a phantasm. Where are those who call themselves neoliberals?  If one cares to look, you might find a few who call https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/10/against-neoliberalism.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5018802898108425354Wed, 23 Sep 2020 18:00:00 +00002020-09-23T13:00:29.779-05:00I had kicking around in my head a notion to write something about the choice before Americans in the present election; that the question was nothing more or less than whether or not the United States would be a democracy for all people or a White man's republic.Then Ruth Bader Ginsberg died.And before she was buried, Republicans moved to nominate a new, hacktacular Trump appointee.Now they're https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-choice.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5015058397060589999Wed, 09 Sep 2020 19:33:00 +00002020-09-09T14:33:30.941-05:00 Myers-Briggs personality tests are bullshit.Oh, the basic notion of trying to classify a personality by considering a variety of independent characteristics is sound enough. But the theory that inspired the test, that humans can be neatly divided into some scheme of Jungian archetypes constructed from opposing personality traits is just ... not true.Take extroversion vs. introversion. This https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/myers-briggs-personality-tests-are.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-4397464315043264055Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:51:00 +00002020-07-01T14:56:03.169-05:00"Data is the new oil" is a phrase that I fucking hate. It immediately causes me to question the knowledge, judgement, and ability of the speaker. I am suddenly overwhelmed with the suspicion that they are the sort of person who thinks Tom Friedman is a deep thinker with profound insights, the sort of management type who reads the Art of War and takes all the wrong lessons from it. It is wrong, https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/data-is-not-new-oil.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-4709795080740205431Wed, 24 Jun 2020 15:31:00 +00002020-06-24T10:31:56.929-05:00So this is a thing that happened: https://wkow.com/2020/06/23/protesters-pull-down-forward-statue-outside-state-capitol/ Demonstrators had been marching around downtown Madison, frustrated after the arrest of a protester earlier in the day. The same group also tore down the Col. Hans Christian Heg statue a short time later. The group then went on to throw the statue into Lake https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/some-disordered-thoughts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-8864355291019528823Thu, 27 Feb 2020 19:08:00 +00002020-02-27T13:08:06.538-06:00letter to the editorhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/26/across-country-rural-communities-secede-states-why-column/4851817002/ David Franks <davidfranks31415@gmail.com> 1:05 PM (2 minutes ago) to letters Reading his opinion, I could not decide whether Glenn was arguing in good faith and simply stupid, or whether he was arguing in bad faith and https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/letter-to-editor-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-6284398716197338828Fri, 21 Feb 2020 19:09:00 +00002020-02-21T13:09:13.015-06:00Yesterday Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison, followed by 2 years on probation, as well as mandatory drug testing, 250 hours of community service, and a $20,000 fine for lying to Congress and witness tampering. Crimes such as those strike at the load-bearing walls of our political system, and thus out to be taken seriously and punished severely. So which of these punishments is mosthttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/a-fine-is-punishment-not-price.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-4516699503745553422Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:23:00 +00002019-09-04T14:23:16.888-05:00draft You can buy this at here, if you want to for some reason NPR, like a lot of self-consciously "mainstream" media (*cough* New York Times *cough*) is by self-construction a centrist  organization. By that I mean they've decided that "objectivity" doesn't mean a rigorous and fearless pursuit of facts so much as always being in between the poles (i.e. the center) of political https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/nice-polite-republicans.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-3061404671134979527Thu, 29 Aug 2019 17:58:00 +00002019-08-29T12:58:09.704-05:00 There is a in financial economics a theorem that goes like this: Suppose that 1) markets are in an efficient equilibrium, 2) there are no idiot ("noise") traders, and 3) the structure of possessing private information is common knowledge. If that were true then there would be no trades whatsoever. To quote Wikipedia: The idea behind the proof of the no-trade theorem is that if there is https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-no-trade-theorem-and-misgovernment.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-3620938266014339816Mon, 26 Aug 2019 16:47:00 +00002019-08-26T11:47:44.358-05:00It is popular to analogize the household budget the governments budget to your household budget. Now, I'm a big fan of analogies. They can explain complicated notions in simple terms that are, technically, inaccurate, but get "close enough" to how things work. But the analogy has to work, the correspondences have to make sense. The "government budget as household budget" meme isn't like that. https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/why-governments-budget-isnt-like-your.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-1434933671851397240Mon, 19 Aug 2019 18:31:00 +00002019-08-19T13:31:49.510-05:00draftrantsshower thoughtsThere is no such thing as safety; only degrees of risk. This can be a very hard thing to wrap your head around. People want to engage in dichotomous, black-and-white thinking, and while this is easy and useful and isn't always wrong, it often is. Save vs. unsafe is one of those false dichotomies. Because the truth is that right now, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are doing https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/there-is-no-such-thing-as-safety.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5423607876442580749Tue, 13 Aug 2019 19:39:00 +00002019-08-19T11:56:17.191-05:00constitutiondemocracypolitics There are 50 state legislatures in America and 99 state legislative chambers. Only Nebraska did the the smart thing and set up a unicameral legislature. The bicameralism of the rest is dumb, dumb, dumb. Nebraska, Land of Unicameralism Let me illustrate this with an example from Indiana, a state with which I am fairly familiar. The Indiana General Assembly consists of two chambers, a Househttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/an-example-of-why-bicameralism-in-state.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-181950939770067255Fri, 09 Aug 2019 16:13:00 +00002019-08-09T11:47:18.963-05:00economicspoliticsrantsA long time ago, I saw a very heated argument in a comments thread on Hulu (yes really) between an anarcho-capitalist and a sane person. It went something like this, though truthfully I'm probably steel-manning the Ancap. Ancap: We shouldn't have a state; the market will provide. Sane: What about roads? Courts? Protecting your private property? Ancap: The market will provide! Private companies https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-violence-natural-monopoly.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-8104029811376920626Tue, 30 Jul 2019 17:49:00 +00002019-07-30T12:49:47.621-05:00justiceshower thoughtsI haven't been able to get this case out of my head lately, so I'm putting my thoughts into writing in the hopes that that solves my problem. The facts are these - guy accidentally leaves two of his kids in a hot car, goes to work, and eight hours later they're dead. A fucking tragedy. I feel for the guy, for his wife and for his three surviving kids - their family's fucking torn apart and https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-even-point-of-this.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5289769967340148324Tue, 09 Jul 2019 20:32:00 +00002019-07-09T15:32:18.479-05:00"As a nation of free people we shall live forever or die by suicide." - A. Lincoln The American political system is breaking down. The Constitution of 1789 is showing its age, and the duct tape that kept the system from flying apart is being gleefully ripped up by a Republican party in the teeth of a trilemma; that is, they can choose any 2 of: 1) Hold onto political power 2) Moderate or https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/07/why-i-fear-for-american-democracy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5293764247122961238Sat, 11 May 2019 06:03:00 +00002019-05-11T01:03:45.821-05:00I like to say there are two kind of scientific results; things your mother could have told you, and things your mother did tell you that were wrong. The whole point of science is that you don't know which is which until you test them. At various times from various people I have heard expressed a folk theory of American politics that "these things go in cycles" and "politics is like a https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/are-there-cycles-in-american-politics.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-8286726475549976645Wed, 02 Jan 2019 22:05:00 +00002019-01-02T16:05:18.491-06:00 Elsevier (1880 colorized) There is an old joke from the Soviet Union that I like to retell, and it goes something like this: An old man is distributing pamphlets in the street. This is very obviously counter-revolutionary political activity, so as soon as the police walk by they arrest him, and being good Communists they don't even glance at the contraband pamphlets as they seize them; theirhttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/nemesis-of-reason-part-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-919344375065107832Fri, 17 Aug 2018 20:33:00 +00002018-08-17T15:33:57.140-05:00This is dumb Los Angeles Metro will be the first U.S. transit agency to use a security system created by the federal Transportation Security Administration to scan riders as they enter the system, the agency announced this week. New York and San Francisco has also been testing the technology, which TSA says will thwart terrorism or mass shootings. The agency says it plans to install the https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/what-is-base-rate-of-terrorism.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-117864115727978017Thu, 09 Aug 2018 20:08:00 +00002018-08-09T15:08:59.611-05:00justicerantsIn 2017, Chicago experienced 650 murders. CPD cleared 17% clearance of those murders. In 2017 NYC experienced 269 murders. NYPD cleared 77% of those murders. CPD and NYPD have similar budgets per capita ($400-600 per city resident). They employ similar numbers of officers per resident (~4.4 and ~5.2 officers per thousand, respectively). And in absolute terms CPD solved HALF as many murders as https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/solve-fucking-murders.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-3358780732761842406Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:25:00 +00002018-08-01T11:25:12.720-05:00rantsshower thoughtsThis is a quibbling bit of cultural criticism, but in my opinion, the official US national motto is terrible and should be changed. I think a good motto is some concise combination of boast, threat, and statement of purpose. Like Quebec's: "Je me souviens" - literally, "I remember". It promises a commitment to maintaining national identity against assimilation pressure, stubborn resistancehttps://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/national-mottos.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7990902480246612910.post-5202566677034143492Tue, 24 Jul 2018 21:08:00 +00002018-07-24T16:18:17.529-05:00democracypoliticssportsstadium scam I don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that tI don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that the Green Bay Packers are objectively the best NFL franchise – and perhaps the best American sports franchise, period. And this has nothing to do with their players (I couldn’t name any!), their coaching (ditto!), their track record (I’m utterly ignorant), https://professionalcynicblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/why-green-bay-packers-are-objectively.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (D)1