Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I really should read my own blog.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

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122Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    Earlier today, the State security service of Ukraine arrested in Kiev a Russian citizen named Oleg Bakhtiarov for planning to storm the parliament, having recruited a couple of hundred provocateurs to assist. The plan was to destabilize the olitical situation so as to derail the upcoming (May 25) elections.

    Those who love to regale us with stories of Ukrainian fascists may wish to review the manifesto of the Eurasian Youth Union to which Bakhtiarov belongs. It contains gems such as “Our Revolution – the Conservative Revolution.”

  3. 3.

    Comrade Jake

    Well this latest from McMegan is DougJ bait. In the latest missive from our lady of the pink himalayan salts, she wonders if Obamacare is beyond repeal given the latest surge in enrollments (never mind the obvious). Her bottom line:

    But if it were impossible to ever cut off an expensive entitlement that goes to the middle class, TennCare would never have been cut.

    Well, alrighty then!

    Bonus points for reading the comments, where many a wingnut tear is being shed.

  4. 4.

    Alexandra

    I do like Kathleen Geier’s recent weekend work at Washington Monthly. Think she’s more interesting and is a better writer than Booman.

  5. 5.

    Eric U.

    I don’t know what’s wrong with unions, they seem like a great idea. The only Penn State employees that have gotten raises 4 out of the last 5 years are union members

  6. 6.

    ? Martin

    Jobs was a genuine asshole for the anti-poaching thing. He knew damn well it was illegal. In the end it wasn’t quite the wages that he was worried about but the constant departures of talent and need to hire them back later. Apple (and others) had a culture that the best way to move up was to leave, take your signing bonus elsewhere and your 10%-20% salary increase, and then 1-2 years out apply back into Apple, and take another bonus and salary increase. With so many tech firms in close proximity, your commute would barely change, and your new coworkers were often your old coworkers. That predated the anti-poaching agreement, and was also exacerbated by it. It might have been addressable by faster salary growth, but probably not. These companies leverage labor in a way that you didn’t use to see outside of Wall Street. Apple averages $400,000 profit per employee. And that includes their retail staff, which are 50% of the labor pool. Take them out, and each employee is carrying $3M in revenue and $800K in profit. Once competitive salaries start going, there’s virtually no end to it because companies will effectively never hit a point that they say ‘wait, we’re no longer profitable if we pay employees this much’.

    Apple and Steve Jobs personally should have been punished much more for that behavior. It wasn’t a ‘tech industry problem’. It was something Steve personally pushed across the industry and got everyone on board with. He really should have been singled out for punishment on that one.

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    For the past couple of weeks now, the planes and ships and human eyes scouring the designated patches of the Indian Ocean for MH370 have turned up nothing but the trash left there by an oceangoing global civilisation — pretty much what you’d expect if you understand how these searches go. Oceans are vast and deep, and even Boeing 777s are tiny. Will the international news media finally quit making a circus of the search? With the rote “human interest” stories about the people aboard, with the ignorant and unfounded and sensationalist speculations about black holes and a suicidal captain? Post a number if you must — “It’s Day 24 of the search for MH370, which went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean with 239 souls aboard …” But don’t sensationalise this. It’s hard enough on the families as it is.

  8. 8.

    rb

    Further evidence, as if any was needed, that Jobs basically lacked a soul, was vastly cruel, and ultimately led a rather sad and meaningless existence.

    I like my phone, but it’s a rather thin legacy next to being such a blatant hole of a person.

  9. 9.

    kindness

    @Comrade Jake: Thank you for giving us McMegan’s Cliff Notes. I really don’t want to give her any additional page views and she drives me freaking nuts.

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Amir Khalid:

    Will the international news media finally quit making a circus of the search?

    Ok, obvious rhetorical question. I believe the answer is “Leslie Blitzer has airtime to fill.”

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @? Martin:

    He really should have been singled out for punishment on that one.

    Karma took care of that, along with his own tendency to go with woo.

  15. 15.

    Poopyman

    Oh Noes! Newsmax tells me that JoeScar has broken up with Chris!

    Scarborough: Christie’s ‘Ship Has Sailed’

  16. 16.

    Scotius

    @Eric U.:

    I don’t know what’s wrong with unions, they seem like a great idea.

    Apple, Google and Ebay executive management certainly thought forming a union to pursue their common interests was a great idea.

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    In the end it wasn’t quite the wages that he was worried about but the constant departures of talent and need to hire them back later.

    I think they’re also worried about employees taking company secrets with them, which is a legacy of the startup culture in Silicon Valley. That was a big reason for all the no-compete clauses they used to use for the same general purpose. I suspect that’s also why Jobs, who was clearly paranoid about secrecy, was the one who pushed the anti-poaching movement so hard.

  18. 18.

    kc

    As for Jobs’s reaction to the employee being let go with such brutal dispatch? His response to the email, in toto, was a smiley face, i.e., : )

    Jesus, what an asshole.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    @Eric U.: Unions are a great idea that sparked the American economic engine, but they’ve been so successfully demonized by the wingnut henchmen of the plutocrats that sometimes I wonder if their decline can be reversed.

    The most hopeful sign I’ve seen is the concerted action taken by fast-food workers, not that it’s had an appreciable impact on their lot (that I’m aware of, anyway).

    It must be said that in some cases, unions gave the plutocrats the rope with which to hang them, with rampant corruption in some instances and just terrible “optics” in others. Why, for the love of god, should anyone named “Hoffa” run a union today? Even if Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is an incorruptible angel, does this make any sense?

  21. 21.

    Pogonip

    @mouse tolliver: This is the kind of thing that prompts people to look into what some religious writers call the “Benedict option” (St. Benedict, not the recent Pope Benedict): you dodge this festering dung heap of a wrecked civilization as much as you can while you and your neighbors, friends, and family live decent lives and assist each other. Some writers think it’s possible that if enough people pursue the Benedict Option, things will turn around. I don’t. I think that best, the BO (!!!) people will fly under the radar of the sociopaths.

    If you don’t like bringing Benedict into it, I guess you could also call it drawing the screw-this-$hit card. There’s a Tarot card showing 8 goblets stacked up neatly, way out to hell and gone in the middle of nowhere. You can’t see what, if anything, is in them, as it’s dark. What you can see in the moonlight is a man who looks like he’s packed for a long trip striding off firmly. When I was learning to tell fortunes (for entertainment purposes only), my teacher said, “Now, what’s this scene about? What’s going through his mind?”. I replied promptly, “He’s thinking “Screw this $hit! I’m outta here!”

    “Exactly,” she replied.

    (I don’t recommend learning to tell fortunes these days because any young woman who wants a reading can buy any number of do-it-yourself books, or hop on the Internet, but it was fun while it lasted. I had a good costume and lots of beads.)

  23. 23.

    Mandalay

    @? Martin:

    Once competitive salaries start going, there’s virtually no end to it because companies will effectively never hit a point that they say ‘wait, we’re no longer profitable if we pay employees this much’.

    I don’t know what kind of salaries the top software developers (to use a deliberately vague term) at Apple and Google et al receive, but they should probably be getting millions for the benefits they bring.

    Good developers aren’t two or three times more valuable than the average highly competent developer – they are a hundred (to pick a big number) times more valuable. They deliver new approaches to producing software more efficiently and more profitably. They lead, and the highly competent merely follow.

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    While we’ve got an open thread, I’ve got a question:

    How does it happen that, with all of this Christie-Adelson folderol, no one in any media outlet I’ve yet seen has pointed out that the very idea that members of one of the two major parties – in the most powerful nation in the world – vying for the office of president, have to bow and scrape to a fucking casino magnate?

    It’s fucking humiliating, or should be, for the whole Republican party.

  27. 27.

    Mandalay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Why, for the love of god, should anyone named “Hoffa” run a union today?

    But…but….but…by that argument it would make no sense for Jeb to become our next president….

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    @? Martin:

    Apple and Steve Jobs personally should have been punished much more for that behavior. It wasn’t a ‘tech industry problem’. It was something Steve personally pushed across the industry and got everyone on board with. He really should have been singled out for punishment on that one.

    In Jobs case, I suspect karma was served. The arrogance that led him to the illegal anti-poaching cartel was the same arrogance that led him to believe he could cure his cancer himself and the resulting early death.

    Doesn’t make him any less an asshole, of course. But it does make him a dead asshole, a karmic victim of his own hubris.

  31. 31.

    Roger Moore

    @Pogonip:
    The problem with the “Benedict Option” is the old saying that for evil to flourish all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing. Refusing to fight evil because you don’t want to get your hands dirty is selfish and short sighted.

  33. 33.

    Bob In Portland

    @Gin & Tonic: How about when the Right Sector actually did storm the parliament last week? I guess authorities don’t worry about them. You seemed to overlook it.

  34. 34.

    JGabriel

    @Pogonip:

    This is the kind of thing that prompts people to look into what some religious writers call the “Benedict option” (St. Benedict, not the recent Pope Benedict): you dodge this festering dung heap of a wrecked civilization as much as you can while you and your neighbors, friends, and family live decent lives and assist each other.

    These days, the “Guillotine Option” is looking more and more attractive.

  36. 36.

    Tommy

    @JGabriel: He helped create a lot of products folks love, but I’ve read many books about Jobs and he clearly wasn’t a “nice” guy. What I find most amazing is how ruthless he was.

  37. 37.

    Bob In Portland

    @gogol’s wife: If you’re talking about me, I’m still around. Not much news. There was a lot more coverage about the Kerry-Lavrov meeting on the BBC, not too much here.

    So what do you think? A loose federation the ticket for Ukraine? Disarming the militias roaming the streets?

  39. 39.

    Bob In Portland

    Also, locally elected governors as opposed to oligarchs being appointed by someone in Kiev? Or is that too democratic for your tastes?

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @JGabriel:

    How does it happen that, with all of this Christie-Adelson folderol, no one in any media outlet I’ve yet seen has pointed out that the very idea that members of one of the two major parties – in the most powerful nation in the world – vying for the office of president, have to bow and scrape to a fucking casino magnate?

    Damn good question. The media coverage I’ve seen centers on how Christie fucked up, not the fact that it’s outrageous that he was required to give Sheldon a tuggie in the first place…

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    @Betty Cracker: It is staggering isn’t it and even more important we get individuals registered to vote and they vote. I thought Citizens United was a terrible decision but I have to admit I never saw this coming. Where a handful of billionaires can almost rig elections. I just wish independents and moderate Republicans would wake up and realize what is going on.

  46. 46.

    CDW

    Plus, one of the sections of the democrat’s immigration bill would have allowed the techs to recruit immigrants for jobs that American weren’t “qualified” for. They’re all nothing more than 21st c. robber barons.

  49. 49.

    Gin & Tonic

    Locally elected governors? Nah, I think it’s better to install Moldovan-born Russian gangsters at gunpoint as “Prime Ministers.” Nothing says “democracy” like forcibly installing someone whose party garnered 4% of the vote in the last election.

  52. 52.

    Someguy

    Aaaah, the new Silicon Valley donor masters of the new Democratic Party… I’m starting to believe that if Sergey and Jeff and Jeff think something is a good thing, it’s probably pure unmitigated evil and the rest of us should run.

  54. 54.

    Tommy

    @Someguy: What is the old Google mantra, “Do no evil.”

    Look I like Google products (I am on a freaking Chromebook right now) but I don’t buy any of the PR about how “great” of a company Google is. They are a ruthless company that will crush anybody that gets in their way.

  55. 55.

    ? Martin

    @Cassidy: This is a worthwhile read on 2048 and ‘Threes’, the game it was cloned from, from the authors of Threes.

    I grabbed Threes the day it came out, and it’s a nice little way to pass a few minutes while actually supporting a thoughtful strategy. I’ve been surprised at the number and success and frankly, the shamelessness of the rip-off games.

    The body of the open letter is not long, but they included a huge amount of the communication within the team, and it’s quite insightful to see the work they did. They were really all over the place on the look and gameplay over the course of a year until they settled it down to what it shipped as. And then within 48 hours someone ripped it off.

  57. 57.

    Bob In Portland

    @Gin & Tonic: “Moldovan-born”? Oh, that’s right. Racial purity is one of your thingies.

    So your response is that you think that it’s payback time and the Ukrainians can screw with the ethnic Russians now because?

  58. 58.

    MomSense

    @Betty Cracker:

    Of course they won’t cover that aspect of it because the media outlets are owned by a handful of corporations so they are giving out tuggies to their corporate overlords as well.

  60. 60.

    Mandalay

    @Tommy:

    I don’t buy any of the PR about how “great” of a company Google is.

    They don’t care whether you buy that or not.

    All they really care about is that you buy from the ads on your Chromebook.

  62. 62.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: I am more of a sports and puzzle gamer on my PS3, but spending a lot more time playing games on my Android tablet. I am stunned by all the ripoff games. Somebody will mention a game to me I’ll head to the Google Play store and right there on the darn page for said game, they recommend many other games that are a direct rip off.

  65. 65.

    Tommy

    @Belafon: I’ve always had a non-compete. Very common in any professional service. The ad agency, law firm, you name it are scared to death you’ll take a client or two and leave for another firm.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bob In Portland:

    Dude, you realize that you live in a country where only native-born Americans are allowed to become president, right? Why is it weird to point out that the new head of Crimea is not actually from Crimea?

  67. 67.

    Thoughtcrime

    Too late for the greatest rock guitarists thread, so I’ll post it here:

    Had Duane Allman lived and moved West, you’d expect to find him hidden away on the same overgrown dead-end street in North Berkeley, behind the same screen door, in the same 1920s bohemian bungalow where you’ll find his daughter, Galadrielle.

    His favorite Les Paul sits on its stand, a precise replica including nicks and pick scratches. Other Gibson guitars are in their cases, ready to hit the road. Also lined up in their cases and ready to hit the road are stacks of “Please Be With Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman,” by Galadrielle Allman.

    The book, published March 4 by Spiegel & Grau, could not be called a memoir because Allman has no memory of being with her father. She was born in 1969, the same year as the Allman Brothers Band, and she was just 2 when her father clipped his Harley against the back of a truck in Macon, Ga., on Oct. 29, 1971.

    http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Galadrielle-retraces-path-of-Duane-Allman-dad-5361688.php

  68. 68.

    Cassidy

    @? Martin: I didn’t know about that, but I generally assume every game is a rip off of something else these days. I do remember looking at that game a month or so ago and passing on it.

  69. 69.

    Mandalay

    @JGabriel:

    How does it happen that, with all of this Christie-Adelson folderol, no one in any media outlet I’ve yet seen has pointed out that the very idea that members of one of the two major parties – in the most powerful nation in the world – vying for the office of president, have to bow and scrape to a fucking casino magnate?

    Well here is Exhibit A for the bowing and scraping, but have a barf bag handy before reading about this repulsive tongue bath…

    Walker told the RJC on Saturday about the menorah he lights at the Wisconsin governor’s mansion during Hanukkah, and he stressed the need for the U.S. to stand firmly behind Israel. He noted that he named his first son “Matthew,” which means “gift of God” in Hebrew.

    “Hey, Sheldon, thanks for inviting me,” Kasich chummily told Adelson after speaking during a luncheon on Saturday. “I don’t travel to these things much, but this was one that I thought was really, really important.”

    So we now know that Walker has the strength of a wet tissue, and the spine of a jellyfish.

  70. 70.

    dmsilev

    This is hilarious. Both the flop sweat desperation of it, and the fact that someone at Fox News’s graphics department has clearly read How To Lie With Statistics, but apparently gave up half-way through before the more advanced techniques were discussed.

  72. 72.

    Cassidy

    @Cassidy: And honestly, that open letter doesn’t make me want to buy it. For one 2048 is free, or was a free showcased app. Secondly, I’m not interested in playing something for years and maybe I will, maybe I won’t beat it. I want games that are challenging and fun, but we’re talking in between doing stuff. If I want to play a real video game, I’ll fire up the xbox.

  73. 73.

    Tommy

    @dmsilev: Maybe somebody there ought to read some Edward Tufte or attend one of his seminars. I recall after reading him I had to tell my boss pretty much all our presentations we were doing were misleading if not wrong. That didn’t go over so well.

  74. 74.

    Tommy

    @dmsilev: Maybe somebody there ought to read some Edward Tufte or attend one of his seminars. I recall after reading him I had to tell my boss pretty much all our presentations we were doing were misleading if not wrong. That didn’t go over so well.

  75. 75.

    Amir Khalid

    @dmsilev:
    Ah, How To Lie With Statistics. That and Thouless’ Straight and Crooked Thinking are essential reading for the full development of one’s bullshit detector, if one is among the good guys; or of one’s bullshit generator, if one is not.

  76. 76.

    Paul in KY

    @Thoughtcrime: Gregg Allman says in his memior that he thinks his brother probably would have died young anyway in another accident, as he was a demon for speed (going very fast in/on motorized vehicles). Thanks for the link.

  77. 77.

    JoyfulA

    @Amir Khalid: Re your question last night about the new German verb outen, even today some people of Pennsylvania Dutch* ancestry say, “Outen the light,” meaning “Turn off the light.” I wonder if outen might trace far, far back into vernacular German.

    *Pennsylvania Dutch meaning people who emigrated from the Rhine area of Germany (before there was a Germany) through the port of Philadelphia to southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1720s or so. The “fancy Dutch” (who were Lutheran or Reformed rather than Amish or Mennonite) maintained their Deutsch as the at-home language until the xenophobia of World War I.

  78. 78.

    ? Martin

    @Mandalay:

    I don’t know what kind of salaries the top software developers (to use a deliberately vague term) at Apple and Google et al receive, but they should probably be getting millions for the benefits they bring.

    And billions for the CEO, amirite?

    Look, the issue isn’t really whether some cherry-picked group of individuals are deserving of their fair share of the profits. And at Apple, most of their profitability has really come from the supply chain/manufacturing side. There’s a reason Tim Cook is CEO and not Craig Federighi or Jony Ive. It’s their ability to freeze everyone else out of critical components, like the year they bought 6 months global supply of flash memory leading into the holiday season and pretty much killed every iPod competitor dead because nobody could actually manufacture anything. They’ve done that at least 3 times since in other areas. They’re doing it now with sapphire.

    The issue is really whether those profits are being returned to the vast infrastructure that has propped up those guys work – from the workers that assemble the devices (who are seeing steady and not small wage increases compared to competitors, but where more could be done) to infrastructure, which Apple has invested in somewhat, but not really proportionate to those profits. We’re finally seeing them build more advanced factories, and in places like Texas and Arizona, and dumping money into solar and biomass. But we aren’t seeing them invest in disrupting the US cellular market which is the basis for much of those profits (the carriers massively rip consumers off here in the US, a situation which Apple cynically exploits), or transportation hubs that rival what China has built to allow them to relocate more manufacturing here, or even investing in their own local neighborhood so that they don’t need to shuttle workers in and out of SF, and so on. Here Apple is building this new park-like campus while their highest paid employees move into high-density urban housing. Seems like there’s an opportunity to split the difference here.

    We don’t need more rewarding of some thin wedge of the workforce – that’s what has gotten us into this disaster. We need a larger, broader foundation built on which to push everything upward. And Apple and the rest of the tech industry could do vastly more there, but so long as nobody is doing much of anything, they remain in competition around rewarding that thin wedge.

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy: 538 is doing some of the same thing with their articles. They definitely know better. It’s enough to want to just give up on the hope anyone will get it right.

  80. 80.

    jl

    @Comrade Jake:

    ” if it were impossible to ever cut off an expensive entitlement that goes to the middle class, ”

    So a market reform that helps an unstable insurance market from destroying itself is now an ‘entitlement’? By that standard, most insurance markets are middle class entitlements.

    I have to remind my students in applied policy analysis that if you want to base a social policy on an economic equilibrium, it is a good idea to check whether such an equilibrium is likely to exist.

    But learning some economics and business seems to have turned into a word game that means nothing, and rots the mind (worries this economist).

  81. 81.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tommy:
    Truthfulness is not the measure of sales or business presentations, alas. Effectiveness is. A presentation, however truthful, that doesn’t persuade people to buy the thing or pay for the service is ineffective, therefore bad. A presentation, however misleading or wrong, that does persuade is effective, therefore good. Let bullshit ring!

  82. 82.

    Tommy

    I am watching all of Comos and I have two thoughts. (1) This is really, really cool. (2) There is so much about science I didn’t know. I feel like I might know nothing about space.

  83. 83.

    Mandalay

    @? Martin:

    And billions for the CEO, amirite?

    Nice irrelevant strawman you built there. You have no equal when it comes to refuting claims that were never made.

  84. 84.

    Amir Khalid

    @JoyfulA:
    I don’t think this is that “outen”, which is a dialect word in English. In standard German, “turn out the light” is “Schaltet/Schalte(n Sie) das Licht aus!”. This “outen” seems to come from the English “to out” in the fairly new sense of exposing a person, e.g. to out oneself (i.e. to come out) or someone else as gay, as in the example I cited in that comment. To expose someone in German is “jemanden enttarnen/entlarven”.

  85. 85.

    dmsilev

    @? Martin: They might not know better. Remember, the NYT graphic arts department was doing most of the graphics for the previous iteration of 538, and now it’s home-grown. Good informational graphics are hard to do even putting aside willful deceit like what Fox is trying.

  86. 86.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Amir Khalid:
    Aircraft are mostly made of aluminum. Being tens of thousands of feet above ground level is not a natural condition for aluminum. Every now and then that simple fact catches up to the operators of aircraft. Parts fail, systems fail, people fail. It’s no more sinister than rolling snake eyes. I’ve seen perfectly good aircraft fall out of the sky and unbelievably damaged aircraft bring their crews back home. The attempts by the nooz to sex up the crash of MH370 is a sign of just how bankrupt the nooz has become.

  88. 88.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Alexandra: I’m the exact opposite: I find Geier to be so predictable as to be tedious. To me the most obvious example is how she treats research studies. Every time she cites one and says that there are methodological questions about it you know exactly where she is going to fall in her assessment of those questions. If she likes the findings of the study, she will find the methodological issues unpersuasive. If she doesn’t like the results, she’ll toss it because of the problems. Every single time.

    That’s not the sign of someone who is interested in actual evidence.

  89. 89.

    Comrade Mary

    @Gin & Tonic: Actually, I think Jobs had one of the rarer types of pancreatic cancer that has a much better prognosis if it is treated properly early on. He may have really doomed himself by going down the path of woo before getting conventional treatment.

  90. 90.

    ? Martin

    @Mandalay: It’s a logical extension of your claim – that the people closest to what the consumer is most likely to credit, and to the piece that has the highest competitive reputation should reap a higher portion of the profits. The CEO is the very embodiment of that, at least in the case of Apple. Their CEO is not some marketing flunkie or self-professed turnaround artist, but an engineer considered to be an operations genius. In fact, all of their executives are considered experts in their area.

    But what appears most visible to the outside isn’t necessarily what actually drives the company’s success. In Apple’s case the programmers aren’t the sharp end of the spear. In many regards software is their weakest area. Manufacturing is unquestionably their strongest area, and nobody credits that. Their semiconductor business is remarkably strong and clearly class leading:

    Unfortunately I don’t have enough data on Swift to really produce a decent comparison image. With six decoders and nine ports to execution units, Cyclone is big. As I mentioned before, it’s bigger than anything else that goes in a phone. Apple didn’t build a Krait/Silvermont competitor, it built something much closer to Intel’s big cores. At the launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple referred to the A7 as being “desktop class” – it turns out that wasn’t an exaggeration.
    …
    Looking at Cyclone makes one thing very clear: the rest of the players in the ultra mobile CPU space didn’t aim high enough. I wonder what happens next round.

    Your focus on the programmers is just a twist on the ‘job creators’ bullshit. You focus on rewarding the most visible players and not on the ones that matter.

  91. 91.

    Tommy

    @Comrade Mary: That is what I got from Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. They caught it pretty early but he refused the suggested treatment. It progressed and then it was just too late.

  92. 92.

    JPL

    Putin told Angela that he is going to move some of his troops away from the border. McCain will say too little too late.

  93. 93.

    ? Martin

    @dmsilev: The whole point of 538 is to rise above that stuff and do data right. You have to start by actually doing it right.

    Look, I did a lot of correspondence with Nate when he first arrived over at Kos a bazillion-seeming years ago. He knows his shit – he really does. He knows that chart is deceptive. He should be hiring people that know the chart is deceptive, and his editors (if that him personally) should stop the deceptive chart. They aren’t. That’s not a damning condemnation, but it’s disappointing to see. I’m not terribly surprised because, well, EVERYONE does it. I yell at Maddow when they do it on her show as well, as I’ve yelled at Nate. But it would be nice to see someone set a proper example that isn’t a peer review publication.

  95. 95.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: I was a Apple user from 1987 until just a few years ago. The change was I got sick of their software. The widespread change to open source software where I can get any app I want on a Windows machine for a fraction of the price (if not free) for a Mac, well that was the final nail in the coffin.

    I tend to agree their supply chain is key but that wasn’t always the case. In one of the tech pubs I read a story of how they handled an iPhone launch and it was staggering what we into making sure they had enough phones. But I recall the days where you couldn’t even get a new Mac on launch day.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dmsilev:

    I saw that this morning on FB, and thought that if I were a nice person, I’d sign up the Fox graphics team for an Edward Tufte seminar, or send them a book, or something. But I’m not a nice person, so I didn’t.

    ETA: Ah, Tommy got there first. Glad to see another Tufte fan!

  98. 98.

    Tommy

    @SiubhanDuinne: Oh his seminar was one of the best things I ever did. Plus his books are literally artwork. Heck I love the fact he founded his own publishing company so the quality would be what he wanted.

  99. 99.

    Mandalay

    Amidst all the flak flying Christie’s way over the weekend, this turd that came out of his mouth was mostly overlooked:

    “If we want to just have arguments and stand for nothing, we could just form a university.”

    Christie has decided that being anti-intellectual and badmouthing universities is the pathway to the presidency. A very bad move in the long term. I suspect this one will come back to bite him time and again.

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Tommy:

    I am the same. I adored the seminar, bought all the books that were then available, and framed the “Napoleon’s March to Moscow” graphic. He is a brilliant, very creative guy.

    Did you know that his studio in lower NYC was pretty much wiped out during hurricane/ superstorm Sandy?

  101. 101.

    dmsilev

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, Tufte’s books are great. At this point, though, I’d be happy with graphics that aren’t willfully deceptive. We can work on improving the information density after clearing that first hurdle.

  103. 103.

    Renie

    @JGabriel: You’re right! And I don’t hear a lot of have Adelson wants no internet gambling so I’m sure they must back him on that also. It’s such an obvious connection.

  104. 104.

    Tommy

    @SiubhanDuinne: I did not know that. Sad. I mean he is a collector of some pretty rare books. I hope they made it through or where someplace else. Like in a vault :)!

    BTW: I have the Napoleon’s March to Moscow framed as well.

  105. 105.

    Bob In Portland

    @Mnemosyne: Of all the things to discuss I find it unironic that our native Banderite seizes that as a thing to upset himself about.

    The whole ethnic purity thing is not going to work well this time around in Ukraine. There’s far too many ethnicities, even in western Ukraine, to carry on that way.

    So who’s complaining in Crimea? The people who refused to vote?

  107. 107.

    ? Martin

    @rb:

    Further evidence, as if any was needed, that Jobs basically lacked a soul, was vastly cruel, and ultimately led a rather sad and meaningless existence.

    I defy you to find among our appointed ‘leaders’ of industry, or government, or anything else for that matter, individuals that don’t fit the same description.

    People like this are successful because they have a vision and focus that is blinding. Steve Jobs once said:

    People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

    That’s not just true of innovation but everything. Obama is where he is because he did the same thing. He told various groups and individuals to fuck off when they took him off of his path. And he was okay (perhaps not as seemingly gleeful as Jobs could appear to be) doing that because he believed he was working toward a higher goal that would carry broader benefits if he achieved it. Yeah, he probably crushed more than a few individuals along the way, but his goal was healthcare, and civil rights, and nuclear disarmament, and whatever the hell else was part of that goal that he felt would help more people if he was successful. And I think we’re all in agreement that’s true if we insert John McCain as the winner in 2008.

    That’s equally true for anyone we consider at the top of their discipline – actors, musicians, athletes, and so on. You may completely disagree with their goal, and you may be more or less sympathetic to the people that they step on along the way, but that’s the nature of the thing. Most exceptionally successful people are exceptional assholes. We all wish they weren’t, but it almost always comes along for the ride in some form or another.

    And there’s always a flip side to these individuals. Steve had billions but lived in a pretty normal house in a pretty normal neighborhood. His neighbors liked him. People he interacted with outside of work liked him. But his vision was Apple and in that context he was an utterly ruthless asshole. Outside he anonymously gave millions of dollars to AIDS research, to fund children’s hospitals and a ton of other things. He could have polished his image by going public with stuff like this, but he didn’t.

    So, yeah, the guy was a supreme asshole, but I bet in the final analysis he wasn’t much different than others of his status. Many others treat their neighbors like shit, but others around them better. Doesn’t make them better assholes.

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bob In Portland:

    The whole ethnic purity thing is not going to work well this time around in Ukraine. There’s far too many ethnicities, even in western Ukraine, to carry on that way.

    You’re conflating “ethnicity” with “nationality.” Why should someone born in Belarus be allowed to lead Crimea? I thought you guys were still pretending that Crimea is an independent country. Are you now admitting that Russia just flat-out annexed it? If so, why does Crimea have a prime minister?

  111. 111.

    dollared

    @? Martin: Yeah. And jail for the options backdating thing. I really don’t get why it’s legal to steal now. But I’m old fashioned that way….

  112. 112.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Mnemosyne: Crimea, for 20 years until two weeks ago, was the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. It had a different status than the rest of the oblasts (states.) Not the same, but think of the USVI or Puerto Rico as opposed to Florida. They had a legislature, the same as, say, Bavaria does. Sergey Aksyonov (reportedly a Russian citizen, not Ukrainian) was a member of that legislature, elected from the Russian Unity party, which held 3 out of the 100 seats. On February 27, the armed men in uniforms without insignia took over the legislature, locked the doors and confiscated everybody’s cell phone, at which point reportedly 55 of the 64 members present “elected” Aksyonov as Prime Minister. The veracity of those numbers is anyone’s guess, as at least some of the legislators say they weren’t there.

    Funny how Bob ignored every aspect of that except the “Moldovan-born” and went on about ethnic purity. Aksyonov would find that amusing as well, I suppose, as his stated aim is to remove Ukrainian as a Crimean language. I’m sure that’s for political reasons, not ethnic purification.

    Bob knows nothing at all about my background or politics or the reason for my interest in Ukraine, and every assumption he’s made so far is a swing-and-miss, which also amuses me — as does his comic book-level understanding of the current politics. One of the key “tells”, though, is the constant repetition of “Banderite” or “Banderovtsi” — which is a term I’ve only ever heard used by two groups of people: Russian propagandists (or their dupes) or members of the competing factions of OUN (the Ukrainian Nationalists Organization), of which I doubt Bob is a member.

  113. 113.

    JoyfulA

    @Amir Khalid: I was going by what I heard from people said to be “Dutchy,” like my step-cousins.
    My mother speaks and understands Pennsylvania Dutch, but in Europe , she couldn’t communicate with anyone in Germany, Austria, or eastern France—except a hotel maid in Switzerland, oddly enough.

  114. 114.

    dollared

    @Mandalay: Amen! (without so much Galtian “one hundred times better tan others” stuff).

    It isn’t just about great versus good developers. It’s a fucking boring job and there are very few people who want to do it all their lives, especially given the high demands and industrial design constraints of world-distributed software.

    There are X0,000 people at my technology company, and I tell everyone I work with that if they are not a developer, their job is to 1) free up developers to do their jobs or 2) sell the output of the developers.

  117. 117.

    Bob In Portland

    @Gin & Tonic: Maybe it’s time to share, you know, if you feel I’m not getting where you are coming from. How come you are tied up with Ukraine? Gramps come over here under one of those Operation Paperclip deals?

    As far as who hold what positions in Crimea, let’s see how things sort out after they have elections. The fact that the particular party this guy was in only had three members of the legislature means nothing.

    And you seem to be avoiding the news in order to fight in the margins. Do you think that there should be a strong central government? Do you think that it’s a better system of government for governors of regions to be appointed by Kiev, or do you think that people in various regions should get to vote for their governors?

    Do you think that the unofficial militias should be disarmed? You’re against beating up people in the streets, right?

    As far as where Ukraine’s economy is going, it looks like the folks in Kiev have thrown their lot in with the IMF. Considering where it’s heading you can understand why Crimeans might want to separate themselves from the coming collapse. Right? Do you have any problem with Russia trying to raise the Crimean standard of living to match folks in Russia?

    Or don’t you want to look for a solution to Ukraine? If not, what do you want?

    As far as what terms I use for the neo-Nazis in the streets of Kiev, you are a fool if you actually think I’m someone’s propagandist.

  118. 118.

    Bob In Portland

    @Mnemosyne: So get on your flying unicorn, wave your magic wand and tell us how you’d change everything over there to make it better. Would you allow a loose federation in Ukraine? Or do you want to arm the Banderites with nuclear weapons? You want Yulia with her finger on the button?

    You didn’t answer. Did you read the Robert Parry piece about those unfortunate neo-Nazis? Is Parry just another Russian dupe?

  119. 119.

    Chris T.

    @Mandalay:

    I don’t know what kind of salaries the top software developers (to use a deliberately vague term) at Apple and Google et al receive

    $100k+, but it tends (or did, back when options were “free”, clamped down on since Sarbox) to be more about stock. Many also pay out yearly bonuses that can add 10%.

    Signing bonuses can also run up into six figures, although sub-$100k is more common.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bob In Portland:

    So get on your flying unicorn, wave your magic wand and tell us how you’d change everything over there to make it better.

    It would be nice if Putin would let his neighbors solve their own problems without invading them. I’m assuming you might have a slight problem with Obama using political problems in Mexico to annex Baja California? Or would that be okay as long as he was able to gin up a few “neo-Nazis” to get you all in a panic first?

    Did you read the Robert Parry piece about those unfortunate neo-Nazis? Is Parry just another Russian dupe?

    Yes, and yes. Any other questions?

  122. 122.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mandalay:

    Good developers aren’t two or three times more valuable than the average highly competent developer – they are a hundred (to pick a big number) times more valuable. They deliver new approaches to producing software more efficiently and more profitably. They lead, and the highly competent merely follow.

    While this may be true on some level, it’s part of the “10x developer” meme that is turning parts of the tech industry into a hypercompetitive nightmare. Companies hear this and go “wait, why don’t we fire everyone else and just hire those 10x guys?” And it doesn’t work that way: you go looking for them and what you end up with is a bunch of obsessive cowboys who will work 100 hours a week but can’t work together.

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