WHY, IT’S AS IF THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, OR SOMETHING: Bloomberg News will not investigate Michael Bloomberg or Democratic rivals.
(Updated and Bumped.)
Archive for 2019
November 25, 2019
HMM: Elon Musk’s chaotic business strategy for Tesla is actually brilliant.
The big challenge to understanding Tesla’s strategy is that most of us only look at it from one level of analysis. Namely, when we see Tesla, we see a company that produces cars. But when I teach executives how to invest in future technology, I encourage them to think at multiple levels of the technology stack: not just products but also components and systems. So let’s take a closer look at Tesla.
At the level of the product, although a Tesla looks the same as other vehicles, underneath the hood, the vehicle has a fundamentally different architecture—both in terms of hardware and software. This matters because a long research tradition underscores that when incumbents face a new technology architecture, they struggle to understand and adapt.
Even though they can see what the technology is, they struggle to adapt both because they are reluctant to give up the existing capabilities they have perfected over decades and to fully integrate the new ones. Although incumbents may imitate the new architecture, they have a hard time overcoming the way they have done things in the past and to match the superior performance of the new, purpose-built architecture.
You can see evidence of this playing out in the auto industry. Early electric vehicles produced by incumbents on internal combustion engine architectures paled in comparison to the Tesla, and even newer “blank slate” efforts sometimes don’t quite measure up.
I’ve been saying for a long time now that Tesla’s challenge is to move from boutique manufacturer to mass-manufacturer of electric vehicles before the mass-manufacturers figure out how to make electric vehicles. But it might be more on point to say that the race is between a tech company trying to become a car company, and various car companies trying to become tech companies.
MASS HYSTERIA, DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER: Feminists and conservatives agree: Good riddance to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 as a place for men to buy lingerie for women. From the beginning, women’s interests were a corporate afterthought. While the company has tried to brand itself as helping women feel good about themselves, its advertising has always been about fulfilling male fantasies.
It’s not good for customers, and Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have such a great reputation with its employees, either. This summer, more than 100 models signed a petition demanding that the company protect its models from sexual misconduct. Did you know Victoria’s Secret was also closely associated with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein?
Now, after last year’s fashion show had the lowest ratings ever, the sordid event appears to be gone for good. “Oh, Thank God,” ran a headline in New York magazine’s website for women, the Cut. “It’s Over Now.”
To be fair, the sexual revolution has been over for quite some time.
Elsewhere in news emanating from Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island:
● O.K., Prince Andrew’s out of public life. Why isn’t Bill Clinton?
● If Prince Andrew met with Ghislaine Maxwell this spring, does he know where she is?
● FBI ‘know where Ghislaine Maxwell is’ and are ‘building case against’ her.’
Finally, speaking of dogs and cats living together, some important news they can use, from my local vet:
1984, THE HOW-TO GUIDE: Data leak reveals how China ‘brainwashes’ Uighurs in prison camps.
The leaked Chinese government documents, which the ICIJ have labelled “The China Cables”, include a nine-page memo sent out in 2017 by Zhu Hailun, then deputy-secretary of Xinjiang’s Communist Party and the region’s top security official, to those who run the camps.
The instructions make it clear that the camps should be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline, punishments and no escapes.
So it’s just communism then.
AS LONG AS HE DIDN’T INHERIT THE LACK OF POLITICAL BACKBONE: Joseph Baena spitting image of dad Arnold Schwarzenegger in bulging bicep snap.
IT ISN’T ABOUT SAVING THE PLANET; IT’S ABOUT GAINING POLITICAL POWER: Why Everything They Say About Climate Change Is Wrong.
First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species. “‘Our children are going to die in the next 10 to 20 years.’ What’s the scientific basis for these claims?” BBC’s Andrew Neil asked a visibly uncomfortable XR spokesperson last month.
“These claims have been disputed, admittedly,” she said. “There are some scientists who are agreeing and some who are saying it’s not true. But the overall issue is that these deaths are going to happen.”
“But most scientists don’t agree with this,” said Neil. “I looked through IPCC reports and see no reference to billions of people going to die, or children in 20 years. How would they die?”
“Mass migration around the world already taking place due to prolonged drought in countries, particularly in South Asia. There are wildfires in Indonesia, the Amazon rainforest, Siberia, the Arctic,” she said.
But in saying so, the XR spokesperson had grossly misrepresented the science. “There is robust evidence of disasters displacing people worldwide,” notes IPCC, “but limited evidence that climate change or sea-level rise is the direct cause”
What about “mass migration”? “The majority of resultant population movements tend to occur within the borders of affected countries,” says IPCC.
It’s not like climate doesn’t matter. It’s that climate change is outweighed by other factors.
Read the whole thing.
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO MEMORY HOLE: New York Times memory-holes its own report that Ukraine interfered in 2016 election.
AT AMAZON, Countdown To Black Friday Deals Galore.
FASTER, PLEASE: Takeda’s Dengue Vaccine Shows Promise.
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. TAK -0.59% released data from a large late-stage study Saturday showing that its experimental dengue vaccine was highly effective in preventing children from dengue illnesses and hospitalization overall from four types of the virus.
But the results suggested one potential concern, and the vaccine was slightly less effective overall than earlier data showed.
Effective measures to stop the spread of dengue are among the most urgent needs in global public health. Approximately 3.9 billion people in tropical regions of the world are at risk of infection with the virus, which is carried by an aggressive mosquito that teems in populated areas. An estimated 390 million people a year are infected with dengue. The World Health Organization listed dengue among 10 global health threats of concern in 2019.
But only one licensed vaccine—Dengvaxia from Sanofi SA, is available so far, and it has had safety problems. Takeda’s ongoing clinical trial of its TAK-003 vaccine, involving approximately 20,000 children between the ages of 4 and 16 in eight countries, is being closely watched.”
Effectiveness against one of the four types of dengue virus, however, is a bit subpar.
HERO DOG ARRIVES AT WHITE HOUSE: President Trump honors Conan, dog injured in al-Baghdadi raid.
UPDATE: “President Trump brings out Conan the Special Forces dog from the al Baghdadi raid. President Trump says Conan is trained to attack if you open your mouth — and warns the press to be careful.”
Heh, indeed.™
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 25, 2019. “Another debate, Bernie ties Biden, Buttigieg tops the first two states, and billionaire Bloomberg jumps in, only to find himself tied with the guy who just walked across New Hampshire alone.”
THEY ALWAYS SHOW YOU WHAT THEY’RE AFRAID OF: The Left’s Revealing Overreaction to Attorney General Barr’s Landmark Speech.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. At least the “cybertruck” is interesting. “Have you looked at new car designs lately? Half of them look like a Yeti cooler mated with a lamprey. Most car commercials now end with a shot of their ‘lineup,’ which is to say, eight crossovers distinguished only by how much their grilles are yawning. In 2017, construction crews in London removed a fatberg—’a 130-ton mass of sanitary products and cooking fat’—from the city’s aging sewage system. A small amount of the fatberg was put on display in a museum, but the rest was secretly injected with human growth hormone and turned into the Infiniti QX80. What I’m saying is, at least the Cybertruck looks different”
THE IMPORTANT THING IS INCREASING AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE SPENT ON THE RIGHT PEOPLE: Colorado has spent hundreds of millions to help kids read. Now, it will spend up to $5.2 million to find out why it’s not working.
JULIETTE “BALDILOCKS” OCHIENG: A short explanation of why Big Media entities float outrageous BS into public consumption.
JUSTIN TRUDEAU WOULD BE IN TROUBLE AT INDIANA WESLEYAN: “Guilty of Cultural Appropriation in an ‘Insensitive’ Facebook Post.”
BUSINESS CLIMATE: “China today is feeling a lot like Russia in the 1990s.”
“SPOT THE CRIME IN PROGRESS:” Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are the principals of Fusion GPS.
TODAY’S NEWS, ARTICLE II HAS NOT BEEN AMENDED: BREAKING: Donald Trump is President.
“EVERYTHING WITHIN THE STATE, NOTHING AGAINST THE STATE, NOTHING OUTSIDE THE STATE,” BUT IN MANDARIN: Huawei is suing French critics who say it’s tied to the Chinese state.
DEMOCRATS: TRUMP’S WORSE THAN HITLER!
Also Democrats: Let’s give him extensive warrantless spying powers!
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “’My oppression is not a delusion.’ So chanted students at the College of the Holy Cross, a private, and rather handsome, liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts, and for which parents fork out $54,000 a year in order to have their children brutally oppressed. In this case, by a talk by Heather Mac Donald.” Or as David Thompson writes, “It Was Monday And So There Was Psychodrama.”