Bitchin' Dave's Newsletter - Aug 1

  

August 1, 2023 Insights, news, ramblings, and other serious nonsense from Dave

Dave’s Musings

I’ve been keeping up with the news about “return to office,” and what I find most intriguing is that from a company’s perspective they feel they can “better manage” their employees, mentor them, and produce some nebulous “better results” with people who they can see. Even though the unexpected nature of sending people home during the pandemic caused high productivity and record profits for most companies!  

But there’s rent to pay, certain corporate tax breaks for having offices, and the commitment to the community that are important (the sandwich shop on the corner and the dry cleaner around the block rely on people coming for the office, for example).

For employees, the flexibility to work a more balanced schedule, with the ability to stop and start, take reasonable breaks to do things, and to generally help the work-life balance is a win. Plus, of course the lack of commute and commuting costs is huge. 

We’re clearly going through a renaissance of sorts. Much as we did when people moved to suburbs and started first commuting to offices. If you look back in history, this caused similar sorts of issues that had to be solved. 

How this ends is anybody’s guess. But I think it’s safe to say that it will be different than it was - and different than it is today. 

  

Falcon Heavy had a launch this week. I find this exciting and interesting based on it being 3 rockets strapped together - and they return them all to earth and land them.  The funny part (to me) is that I had plans to go up and watch this launch, but the weather was iffy, so I chose not to… and it got scrubbed two days in a row. And I was out of town when they finally did launch.  But I still enjoyed watching online. You can watch a replay at the link below: Falcon Heavy Launch

A group in Switzerland took a novel approach to looking at climate change, and what we can do about it. What they did was to crunch the numbers and used that data to suggest possible opportunities “It creates a data map made up of what-if decision pathways based on understanding existing uncertainties to help stakeholders and policymakers make decisions on climate action.” In the end, they suggest focusing on “other” things, like cooking, heating, industrial processes, and so forth in order to more affordably reduce the impacts of climate change. They also point out that a "portfolio approach" to energy supplies and usage would be helpful. Its a good argument that relies on solid data, and which we could start implementing right away. Fastest route to climate turnaround

The state of Oklahoma, where "tourism is a top industry" (their quote!) announced plans for the American Heartland Themepark. The reports are short on details about how this will be funded or who is involved. But they say they have some former Disney Imagineers working on the resort, and that it will open in 2025. The intent is to make it American-themed, heartwarming, and "family friendly" and they specifically talk about the RV park they'll open for guests. And naturally, they compare it to - and say it will compete with -Disney World. As a Disney aficionado, I can assure you that while it may be popular in the heartland, it will be nothing like Disney, Imagineers not withstanding.

I found this fun little probabilistic analysis of how many tickets one needs to buy in order to have 50-50 odds of winning some prize. It’s based on a specific game in the Canadian lottery system, but the principle applies to any.  In this example, you need to buy 174 tickets to assure that you will win “something” - which is likely a low level prize.  It’s a fun, geeky sort of read. Enjoy! 50-50 chance of winning

One Little Spark …  … for your imagination

The state of Florida (shamefully and reprehensibly) has implemented a new curriculum to teach black history.  It quite literally white washes history and uses phrases like slaves "learned skills they could use later in life," stays away from mentioning them being enslaved, and ignores simple truths.

They go on to talk about the Ocoee massacre (it happened right here in Florida: people of color were killed, their community destroyed, because a black man had the audacity to vote) using the rhetoric that “people on both sides committed violence” - downplaying it as much as possible.

It’s incredibly disheartening to realize that a group of white people created a curriculum for students in Florida, without using the wealth of information that exists on the topic, and without consulting scholars on the topic.  They want to create a point of view that "doesn't make white people feel bad."  Talk about snowflake behavior.  It’s not that hard to confront reality, and then learn from it.

More here:

https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/07/21/benefited-slavery-critics-say-some-states-examples-were-never-even-slaves/

Dave’s latest video

I've had some success with hydroponics, and I am sharing how it went! https://youtu.be/aHrZq8C80QM

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