Bitchin' Dave's Newsletter - Feb 20

 Dave’s Musings

The streaming world remains enormously complex, with way too many options, and prices ranging from next to nothing to fairly expensive on a monthly basis, for maybe a few things you might want to watch. And with the ability to stop and start at will, its hard for companies to make profits or adequately forecast for the future.

I've heard people talk about the "Bundling of unbundled services" to try and help. Mostly, its theoretical as companies want their own profit margins and don't want to revenue share, in particular.

Except in the world of Sports. There's a partnership happening between ESPN, Fox, a few regional players, and Warner Brothers (TNT, etc) to provide a pretty comprehensive package of everything EXCEPT for what's on Paramount/CBS and Peacock/NBC.

But here's the rub. This package might cost north of $50 per month. In which case, you would be better off getting nearly all of that content, plus live channels, and some additional content (on demand movies for example) by subscribing to YouTube TV for about $70 per month.

And there's another factor that can't be simply dismissed: there is opposition. You have the DOJ looking at this as perhaps anti-competitive, and they may stop it. And the NFL is upset that they weren't alerted to this in advance; each of the major players in this service has NFL broadcast rights, and the fear is that this partnership may all generate additional revenue, without the NFL getting a cut.

The BBC recently produced a documentary about the NASA failures that led to the Space Shuttle Columbia burning up on re-entry. It's a retrospective that reminds us what happened and how - but adds a more human touch by interviewing the families of the astronauts, and talking with NASA personnel that continue to carry guilt about what transpired. The thing that hit home for me was that the NASA engineers never took the threat of missing heat tiles seriously, in spite of the inherent danger, and the fact that some tiles had gone missing before and caused some (non-catastrophic) damage to the vehicle. To me, its personal. I was on a NASA funded project in graduate school - a project that examined heat tile replacement, and safety protocols. Our team found risks, and suggested that the damage could be catastrophic even though to this point, the program had been lucky. We suggested remedies, for which the NASA engineers thanked us. But these suggestions were ultimately ignored, dismissed, and in one case, literally thrown out. Even though I did everything I could as a grad student, I carry a little of the guilt, too. And I sometimes think about the people who actually replaced the tiles, and how their lives were impacted. Oh and by the way, something that I also think about is how Richard Feynman saw much of this same thing when he joined the team that looked at the Challenger disaster a decade before I worked there. You can read more of those details in the second link https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001tts2/the-space-shuttle-that-fell-to-earth https://lithub.com/how-legendary-physicist-richard-feynman-helped-crack-the-case-on-the-challenger-disaster/

Here's a cool story about a 16 year old who created something to help the visually impaired. When I first read it, I started thinking about Geordi LaForge, who was in Star Trek the Next Generation. He had a visor that gave him sight in the 24th century land of science fiction. But this application is different. Here, Tiffani Gay has created a device that essentially uses haptic feedback to let the user know when they are near something. I love seeing young people who create something to change the world! https://www.clickorlando.com/podcasts/2024/01/29/orlando-teen-invents-device-with-potential-to-help-22-billion-people/

In general, Disney has been a good neighbor in the state of Florida. Taxes are collected, Disney does some philanthropy, promotes volunteerism, and tends toward environmental consciousness. Of course, they are a large corporation, and they have somewhat selfish motivations at times. But at least they make an effort. Recently, they announced they would be setting aside 80 acres of land to build 1,400 units of affordable housing. And just this week, they were granted zoning approval and construction will begin shortly. This will not be a Disney branded enterprise; but vacant land on the west side of the property that Disney owns will be used. It will be built and operated by a company with more experience in this area. There's no question that outward appearances aside, this will benefit them on two fronts: there was an economic incentive offered by the state to create housing, and it provides some low cost housing which would be convenient for people who choose to work at the theme parks. Still, I take it as a net positive outcome. Affordable housing is hard to come by in Florida for very many reasons, so this is a step in a good direction.

I was reading the attached article about Chief White Calf, the model for the Native American head that served as the Washington Redskins logo for many years. To set the context, this article did appear originally in Fox News, so you have to take some of what they mention with a large amount of salt. (hint: they focus on cancel culture) That said, I certainly will concede that losing Chief White Calf to history - the man, not the mascot - is rather a shame. We should celebrate those who were here when the Europeans arrived and remember who they were and how they lived. But the thing that they completely and totally missed on is why the football owner decided to part ways with the image: money. The Supreme Court ruled that they did not have control over the likeness, and therefore the team couldn't protect its logo via copyright. And that meant that anyone could (and for a short time many did) create unofficial merchandise and sell it - and the team had no recourse. The logical thing to do was come up with a new copyrighted logo that they could then profit from. This was not about anything else. And fans petitioning the new owner for the name to revert to "Redskins" simply will not happen, for that reason. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/canceled-tribal-chief-white-calf-091527373.html

Latest video

Here is the history of the phrase "I'm going to Disney World" https://youtu.be/hMvm6ljIy9I?si=vDUxyWm9csdrrs20

One Little Spark …

I find it disheartening that as a society we’ve started normalizing gun violence. Its been 6 years since the attack on a school here in Florida, and little has changed. If anything, gun regulations have been loosened, or have been brought into question. And in the past week, there was a shooting at a mega Church in Texas - where parishioners said they felt safe up until then, and couldn't imagine a shooting happening there. And there was another shooting at a superbowl victory parade - where people simply gathered to celebrate and have fun. Children who went to enjoy a moment were wounded. Its well past time to actually do something, rather than just hiding behind the 2nd Amendment. If you read in its entirety, you realize it has some limitations: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Surely it is open to some interpretation, and maybe we can have an honest discussion about what it says, its intention, and the "Oxford Comma." It certainly seems to me that "well regulated" could mean licensed federally, and there is absolutely no need for high powered, high capacity weapons of war in regular people's hands.