One year ago today: March 21, 2020, early lockdown comment.
Five years ago today: March 21, 2016, salted & roasted, yeah!
Nine years ago today: March 21, 2012, the verdict is no.
Random years ago today: March 21,2017, clueless guitar replies.
Here’s the world’s top selling EV, edging out the Tesla. It has seating for four Chinese-sized people, at least until they start eating American food over there. With a range of 100 miles when new, I’d have one in a snap for around here. Just you watch, however, the US will either import-duty these things out of reach or muck up the process with their DMV mentality so bad you’ll wish you hadn’t. Right now, electric vehicles do not need to be registered, but the American bureaucracy will not stand for that. They’ll cook up some excuse to get you on file, such as not paying road taxes.
It says here somebody is writing a new web browser (Neeva) and asking the same question as myself. Why? Maybe it’s like MicroSoft. Why go back and fix their own mistakes when people are sucker enough to buy the same junk repackaged as the latest? I can show you screens saying no results found next to the file with the same name in every version they’ve flogged. What we need is another operating system, not Linux, that works and (this is important) is easy to use.
Where the user can change their file display format and it stays changed, or can turn off features they don’t want without consulting a manual. I see Forbes is finally issuing warnings about Google Chrome, some 13 years after this blog. I first warned in November 2008, but the earliest recorded blog warning was on July 15, 2013. The browser is called Neeva and purports to be ad-free. While this is a giant leap forward, it is still built by ex-Google people, so there is likely a catch. Like sugar-free, it probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. Still, ad-free causes a quantum shift in how people make money on the platform, a use for which the Internet was never exactly intended, so shall we wait and see. If it is private and ad-free, it could be the browser this blog has been calling for since a decade and a half ago.
There is no chance of a Sunday drive. And the scooter needs a whole new carburetor, so that’s out. I can, however, eat anything I please and I have a hankering for fried chicken. Another three hours on the electrical and I’m ready for a break. I left the floor panel loose a year ago and thanks for that. Makes today’s work easier. I’m not straying far from the K-cup coffee maker, a good book, and some tunes that were real hits. That’s different than those pieces that made such and such on the charts but I never heard of them.
[Author’s note: further investigation of Neeva solicits a big warning. It is just as dangerous to your safety and privacy as Google. It collects personal information that is absolutely unnecessary to the operation of a search engine, including your name, phone number, mailing address, and user history. How they can claim this is safe and they can be trusted is beyond me. Also, the service will cost around $15 per month, so they need your identity for that. Go ahead folks, be the next round of suckers. What you look at should be private information.]
Big junkyard.
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Unable to sleep in today, I dug out my DVD on Freakonomics. I also have both books and the one thing they prove beyond doubt is that incentive works. But they consistently overlooked the reason why evenly applied incentive produces uneven results. I had a laugh at the study paying the kids to get high marks. On too many students, it barely worked at all and the reason was completely missed. I know the answer. All students with a C average (for example) got $50. This has two effects. First, why should I work any harder than to get a C if that is the maximum payout?
The other is trickier to comprehend, but it goes that if you start to win consistently, it is only a matter of time until they change the rules on you. The weaker students in the study worked hard for the first $50, then decided it was not worth it. So the total payout decreased when instead it should have been used to increase the incentive for the top performers. You bet as a youngster I fully grasped this principle. Unless you take unfair advantage (cheat) to make subsequent winning easier, then winning is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Prime example? Income tax.
Put another way, the very existence of welfare causes the lazy to drop out of the work force simply because they can. Lately this useless lockdown has given many millions their first taste of the easy money. That’s the bunch I have to keep ahead of. They will quickly adjust to living on their welfare and swell demand for all the basics. My forecast is they will also try to commence working under the table. I’m reminded of the stories of gold rushes. Few strike it, but many make a fortune selling them the dream, along with blue jeans and frying pans.
I listened to the remainder of Freakonomics, including parts I flat out disagree with. I submit that I’ve proven enough ambition can become a substitute for talent, of which I had no useful versions. And, I add, it is a poor substitute. Everybody has some talents but they are not necessarily a match for the situation. When I was young talent was very rare. I never understood if somebody had the talent to sing, why did they not do it all the time? Please don’t be one of those jerkoffs who says hard work is a talent. I was raised in an atmosphere where ambition was stultified by hard work, and any ambition still left was constantly subjected to that “good for you” idiocy from all quarters.
Let’s just say, Freakonomics gets me thinking, and that’s why I keep re-reading it.
