Re: Ella’s rant below, which I of course loved, is the fact that yes, they are incompetent, but what drives that competence is they just don’t fucking care. What this fucking guy said:
It isn’t that this Administration doesn’t grasp the “magnitude” of the problems that American families r facing. It’s that they don’t care. There’s a difference.
— Axl Rose (@axlrose) August 13, 2020
Axl gets it.
Bruuuuce
The Democrats are about doing things FOR people.
Republicans are about doing things TO people. And they have no conscience about it.
rikyrah
He knew.
He knew of all the dangers and didn’t care.
Stood there for months -LYING
And now, 200,000 Americans are DEAD??
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: And we know that that is an undercount.
Also on life support: confidence and trust in the CDC.
It’s true. They do not care. Vote those fuckers OUT.
Alison Rose
I usually avoid armchair diagnosis, but I really feel like Trump is almost a literal sociopath. “Almost” because sociopaths tend to be intelligent, and well…………..
jonas
Here’s the blunt truth: Donald Trump did shit-all about Covid-19 because he didn’t believe it was going to affect “his voters” (i.e. white, male, non-college degree assholes in the Midwest, South, and Sunbelt). That’s all you need to know.
laura
Straight, no chaser. Depraved indifference that you can see from outer space.
Poe Larity
Why work on Covid or hard things when you can use Federal Powers to secure a social media platform with 80 million US users? Declare it a Chinese spy operation, force a pre-election deadline and have your Oracle Bro pick it up.
Come November, those 80 millions users will be getting non-stop videos recs of dementia-Joe against 100% Great Leader Donald.
If you thought Zuck was bad, you have not met Larry.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Poe Larity: ORACLE: One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
MisterForkbeard
@Poe Larity: Larry Ellison is pretty bad. There was an Oracle All-Hands meeting a few years back where he spent a significant amount of time yelling about Obama and Clinton for no particular reason. The actual CEO (Safra Catz) is a little better, but not by much.
But Oracle won’t be able to do anything with TikTok in the next two months. Oracle is horrible with new technology in general and their uptake is really slow. And a good 80% of the time they wreck their acquisitions badly.
The most you could say for this is that Oracle won’t make TikTok take actually useful steps towards curbing the QAnon theories and other crap that’s overrun the platform.
Anne Laurie
Nah, usually we only hear about the intelligent sociopaths. The down-money, lower-IQ versions mostly end up institutionalized, if they don’t end up dead at an early age.
Unlike the lower-class sociopaths who get locked up for beating an inconvenient buddy / girlfriend / offspring to death, or get shot dead by a drug distributor who finds them skimming, Trump has been protected by his family’s wealth & influence.
Imagine the life arc of a ten-year-old Black kid with a ‘welfare mom’ who punched his music teacher, and contrast that with Donny Dollhand’s career. The jails, homeless shelters, and mortuaries are full of Trump’s psychological brethren.
James E Powell
@MisterForkbeard:
Nearly every time I read about these tech oligarchs, I think maybe Robespierre wasn’t all wrong.
Benw
Woke Axl and woke Sebastian Bach are excellent, my dudes!
debbie
@rikyrah:
Months? Decades! He’s never cared about anyone other than himself. Imagine his delight when his daughter brought his spirit animal for dinner.
Mai Naem mobile
I remember seeing some list of philanthropy by the tech oligarchs and Larry Ellison was one of least generous. I think Zuck is a POS but Zuck would have his age as an excuse . Ellisons been around about as long Bill Gates so it’s not like he hasn’t had the time to do something. He’s just a selfish POS. IIRC he was on one of those pay lists as the highest paid executive in California. This was a pretty recent list.
Chetan Murthy
@James E Powell:
Q: What platform does Oracle run best on?
A: Powerpoint!
But seriously, if you work in the I/T biz, you learn a healthy disgust for all the salesmen who populate the upper echelons of these companies. And that most “entrepreneurs” are salesmen first, and only sometimes actual inventors and creators. It’s all pretty disgusting. And the worst part is they think b/c they work -in- an industry with a lot of technology, they must -know- a lot about that technology, and hence, that they’re fit to opine on all matters technological and scientific.
Fuckwits.
Ohio Mom
I never liked Guns N Roses, I’d just about forgotten all about them. A pleasant surprise to find out Axl is a good guy.
James E Powell
@Chetan Murthy:
Most of them believe they are fit to opine on all matters and to a great extent the press/media go along with it. So we get Bill Gates messing with public education.
Steeplejack
@Poe Larity:
Interesting point. ?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell:
Bill Gates at least has a family history, his mother was a Regent at UW.
Chetan Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My father was a cardiologist (actually, a pretty good one); I’ll be doing your cardiac catheterization today.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: What qualifications does someone need to speak about public education?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Being someone that has used public education would be a start(Mary Gates was a UW graduate).
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: You don’t need to be a teacher, but you -do- need to be a sociologist with at least some training in analyzing the relevant data. And frankly, given what we know about the pedigrees of university regents, his mom having been one gives me no reassurance that -she- knew enough to opine, either.
Instead, with Gates what we get is a rich man who borrows the trappings of knowledge from his flunkies and uses them to dress up his own prejudices.
Wyatt Salamanca
Kudos to Axl and all the other musicians who seem to be coming out every other week to denounce Trump:
h/t https://variety.com/2020/music/news/john-fogerty-on-trumps-confounding-use-of-a-creedence-classic-about-draft-dodgers-he-is-the-fortunate-son-watch-1234767796/
h/t https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/eric-burdon-trump-using-house-150158471.html
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I tend to think that an educated person who has gone through public schools could very well have some valid opinions on the topic.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: There are … what? 300m such persons in our country? Let’s say only 2/3 made it to graduation. So 200m. It’s like saying that anybody who has lived single for a while and cooked for themselves is qualified to opine on cooking. Sure, it’s true in a way, but only as qualified as anybody else who’s done those things.
That is to say, not very qualified at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: Welcome to democracy.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus:
The problem is that such a person has no way of knowing whether their opinions reflect reality for others, or only for themselves. And their audience has no way of telling that, either. But also, heh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Early_life
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Which is why it’s “one person, one vote”. But Gates, by virtue of his billions, get far more votes on some of the public policy issues about which he knows literally nothing.
SFAW
“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV …”
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
I used to call it “Digital syndrome.” Engineering/tech people at Digital (a/k/a Digital Equipment Corporation a/k/a DEC) were generally pretty proficient in their field(s) of expertise. Because they were, they seemed to think it conferred expertise in unrelated areas — politics, sociology, auto mechanic work, and so forth. They were often wrong.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Thing is, it’s not like I have any love for public schools. I spent from 6th grade-onwards teaching myself everything, typically before it got taught in class, b/c my teachers were that imbecilic (Texas Goddamn, go figger). I graduated a year early, and spent the last year working two full-time fast-food jobs, so most of the time in class I was literally asleep. And yet got excellent grades, b/c really, how can it be a challenge to compete with shit-kicker crackers? My two youngest sisters (10yr later) went to a very decent private school 30mi away, and they actually got decent educations out of it.
That didn’t cause me to believe that public schools are useless, or that somehow for-profit charter schools would revolutionize all teaching. It might have helped, that in that same town a private “Maranatha” Christian school opened-up and some of my classmates transferred there; it was clear they were learning nothing there, either.
scav
The Sociologists I’ve run across are rather like economists when they came to people: they have a theory. It’s generally better to leaven such types with a variety of inputs and expertise.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: Well, I guess I should bow out of the discussion since by your definition neither of us are qualified to be a part of the conversation.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: +1
That’s the problem.
https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/now-gates-foundation-destroying-higher-education
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
At the risk of generalizing inappropriately: it’s not as if Texas public schools — considering their history of anti-intellectualism (so to speak) — are considered the ne plus ultra of the US public education system. So extrapolating Texas schools to the rest of the country is not unlike your plaint about tech people and their “knowledge” in other areas.
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW:
Precisely so. I didn’t conclude from my experience that public schools are useless, b/c I recognized that my experience was both not typical, and also that there was no way to equitably scale-up a private-school-based system.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s a term I learned recently: “epistemic learned helplessness”. It refers to the scientific method’s prescriptions for learning about the world. Nobody can actually run the experiments needed to ascertain the truth of the various scientific facts on which we base every action of our daily lives. We have neither the time, nor the skills, nor the facilities. So we trust others. This is a form of learned helplessness about knowledge: hence, “epistemic learned helplessness”. The key is how we choose from whom to take our facts about the world. And so, it comes down to how we choose experts.
Bill Gates has no qualifications to be an expert in many of the areas where he opines. But let’s take an area where he *does* come out with good ideas: his work on infectious diseases worldwide. He allies himself with known authorities in medicine and public health: that’s how we know he’s not a charlatan in those areas. His work on charter schools? Not so much. He’s in there with all the other grifters and assholes.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: I should have added: and also because I’ve read enough stuff by actual authorities who look at public schools both in the US and in other countries, who look at public schools in the US while controlling for variables like wealth of parents and the district, to conclude that the problem is poorly-run public schools and especially poorly-paid and -respected teachers.
I have a relative who -rages- against SF public schools (which are rightly judged to be pretty terrible). When I point out that -anybody- with the skills to be a good teacher here can make 2x -instantly- by going to a tech firm, she …. has no good response. It’s laughable, that we don’t connect these two facts: that lots of teachers in SF aren’t very good, and that anybody with intelligence, energy, skills, and a good education in most subjects, can get a much, much, much better-paying job in industry.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
Not unlike Lou Gerstner, who went from AmEx to RJR Nabisco — and then to IBM, which he apparently drove into the ground
ETA: I should probably have replied to your comment @ 38 (“Bill Gates has no qualifications to be an expert in many of the areas where he opines. “) instead, since it’s more relevant to mine.
Omnes Omnibus
Neither do people on this blog.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Benw:
The one that dropped my jaw was Jim Gaffigan. I had to laugh when his wife told him that less cussing would be a bit better and his chastised-sounding response.
Ian
@Omnes Omnibus: The ability to speak seems about the only one I can think of.
Now, the ability to opine about public education, or perhaps the ability to do so well, are different questions to which I dare not answer.
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW:
I was there for the Gerstner years (started in ’95). And he actually did a credible job of turning IBM around. But, it turns out, he was unable to change IBM’s internal culture. For the first few years, the -urgency- of IBM’s situation meant that stuff could happen, but by 1999 already, it was reverting to its old imperial culture, and …. well, that was that. His successor was old-line IBM, and it went downhill from there again. In retrospect, he would never have been able to succeed for one simple reason: IBM’s entire culture was built around a way of doing I/T that was going the way of the dinosaur, and for all his efforts, Gerstner was never going to change that culture. It was too deeply-ingrained
Of course, I didn’t realize that, and spent years and years fighting the stupidity and inefficiency of IBM, when I should have been working for one of the new companies that would take the many niches that IBM was too incompetent and obtuse to ever compete in. But them’s the breaks: hindsight, 20/20. etc.
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: Come on you know better than that. The problem isn’t that people like gates are abusing some democratic right that they share with all of us. It’s that they’re using their wealth to create a megaphone to broadcast their not-very-special opinions so as to influence policy. That might be defensible if their opinions were as well supported as their bank accounts: But that is not the case. It’s disingenuous to conflate their exploitation if economic power with democratic expression of a supportable opinion.
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s the opposite of true. With the exception of a few aggressively contrarian assholes, and some harmless enthusiasts, this blog is notable for its well-qualified and well-informed commentariat.
billcinsd
@Omnes Omnibus: opinions that are 30-50 years out of date, so the validity is pretty questionable
Starfish
@James E Powell: Both Zuck and Gates have tried to mess with public education. Ellison has too, in a much smaller way. He appealed his rich people home valuation by saying that his home that he had spent a ton on was worth much less because it was so unique that no one would want it. This cut the tax dollars to the local public school by a bit because Allison’s house was worth a lot.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
You might want to dismount from your hobby horse. Or maybe it’s a purity pony?
Gerstner pretty-much reversed IBM’s decline. Considering he came from industries more-or-less unrelated to tech, that in itself was pretty remarkable. Especially considering Akers was a tech insider who led (or aided in) IBM’s decline
My point, which you seem to be doing your best not to get, is that having a “background” in a particular field is not necessarily a prerequisite for success, just as NOT having a background therein is necessarily a prescription for failure.
SFAW
@billcinsd:
Considering the decline in public education can probably be tracked to the start of Reagan’s term, maybe it’s not quite as questionable. [Yes, I realize the “learning environment” (so to speak) has changed since 1980, but that doesn’t mean all of pre-1980 education is worthless. And considering a lot of curricula are now teach-to-the-test-based, and has been heading that way for awhile, well …]