Monthly Archives: November 2022

When You’ve Lost WaPo….

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The actual op-ed by George Will is behind The Washington Post‘s pay wall, and I’m a cheap SOB, so….

Here’s the gist of what he said, via The Hill.

Will said that Biden’s recent incorrect assertion that he had passed a massive student loan forgiveness package “by law,” saying “he got it passed by a vote or two,” should be disqualifying.
“Biden was not merely again embellishing his achievements. This is not just another of his verbal fender benders. There is no less-than-dismaying explanation for his complete confusion. What vote? Who voted?” Will asked. “It is frightening that Biden does not know, or remember, what he recently did regarding an immensely important policy. He must be presumed susceptible to future episodes of similar bewilderment. He should leave the public stage on January 20, 2025.”

And

Democrats should promptly face that fact, and this one: an Everest of evidence shows that Vice President Harris is starkly unqualified to be considered as his successor[.]

I don’t often agree with Will, but he’s right on this one.

Contempt

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Another example of the contempt Progressive-Democrats hold for us average Americans. Here’s Hillary Clinton, of millions of us average Americans are irredeemable and deplorable infamy:

I think that with all of the noise that we’ve gotten in this election season I don’t think that people are really able to grasp that. But more importantly, I’m not sure they really understand the threats to their way of life.

This is the sort of politician that wants us to vote for them next week. These folks think we’re just too grindingly stupid to govern ourselves; we must be led by these Progressive-Democrat Betters.

The Ubiquitous Computer

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It’s coming to our homes?

Imagine this scenario in the not-too-distant future. You’re awakened at 6:11 a.m. by the gentle sounds of tinkling bells and birdsong, even though you live in a 12th-floor apartment. Your alarm clock uses radar to track your breathing, and wakes you gently, with sound and light, when it detects you’re in a lighter phase of sleep.
Your transition to wakefulness triggers a cascade of changes in your apartment. Your window shades open automatically. In the kitchen, coffee starts brewing. As you pad into the bathroom to brush your teeth, a display projected onto the mirror above the sink shows your calendar for the day. It highlights what time you’ll have to leave to get to your office for the in-person meeting you scheduled for 8:30.
Returning to your bedroom, you find your stowaway robotic bed has retracted….

Nah.

I’ll never get so lazy I can’t have the wife or daughter or SIL or grandkids do those things.

Racism in School Admission Selection Criteria

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The advocates for Harvard and the Federal government in defending Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s racist selection criteria—all in the name of diversity and equity, understand—both said that they saw no end to their use of race in their selection criteria. Our Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden, through his Solicitor General, doesn’t even see a need to end racism in admission selection criteria.

Seth Waxman, Harvard’s advocate, admitted that the school is trying hard to get to a race-neutral future but sees no end in sight for preferences.

Sure they’re trying to put an end to it. Or to something.

Waxman went further, rationalizing

Harvard’s use of race by saying it is merely one of many “tips” that the school uses in making judgments about whom to admit—like whether a student is the child of an alumnus, or an athlete. …”just as being, you know, an oboe player in a year” when the school orchestra needs an oboe player “will be the tip.”

Chief Justice John Roberts commented on the disgusting nature of that:

We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination.

Biden was even more explicit:

Elizabeth Prelogar, the US Solicitor General…said using race the way the schools do could continue as long as their interest in diversity is “compelling.”

This disdain for the ability of some groups of Americans to compete, and so to maintain the need explicitly to protect those groups, is straight out of the philosophy of Roger Taney, and it’s shameful.

Some Contextual Questions

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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and of Alphabet’s wholly-owned subsidiary Google, in addressing anti-trust questions regarding Google’s ad-tech business, claimed that

Ad technology is a small part of what Google does, he said, and doesn’t make up a significant share of the company’s revenue, according to people familiar with the meeting [Pichai’s with Senator Mike Lee (R, UT)].

That begs a number of questions though. Questions being begged include these:

  • How much ad-tech revenue is there in the aggregate in the ad-tech market?
  • How many players are there in the ad-tech market?
  • How much ad-tech revenue is taken in by the (let us say) 5 largest players other than Google?
  • How much non-ad-tech revenue do those 5 largest take in with which they can buffer downturns in the ad-tech market compared to Google’s non-ad-tech revenue?

Regarding that last question,

…the parts [of Alphabet’s/Google’s revenue] that mostly relate to brokering the buying and selling of ads on other websites—generated about $31.7 billion last year, or about 12% of its revenue.

That suggests that Alphabet/Google has around 88% of its revenue from non-ad-tech sources with which to buffer its ad-tech in/outflow.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in Google’s scheme of things. What matters is how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in the ad-tech market place.