Dear Keen boots: Your recycling effort is undercut by your hypercapitalism

I bought one pair of Keen boots, listed as running narrower than other boots of theirs, a little over a year ago after seeing my sis rock a pair of their running shoes.

They're on the lighter side on weight, and probably on durability, but they work pretty well for lighter hiking. And, Keen touts its commitment to recycled materials.

Then, after a December sales push this last December, I bought a pair of decent, higher durability boots from them.

And?

I opened the doors of capitalist hell in return.

Every other day, at least, it seems that I get bombarded with another email saying this, that or the other shoe or boot is on sale.

A week ago, I made a mistake clicking one of the email links. It apparently had a tracking cookie that got past Ghostery and Firefox, because, just a few hours later, I got a new email about determining sizing. (I had clicked on the button for my size after looking at that particular boot.)

ENOUGH!

I've already been thinking that, should I need a boot again in the next five years, I'll visit one of the European companies that's cut narrower, and uses Continental tire rubber instead of Vibram for the soles.

Hey, Keen? As long as you're recycling, why not replace Vibram with recycled tires?

Update? The company has not responded to being tagged on Shitter or Fuckbook. I may have to drop the link on one of their Hucksterman posts. And the "how did you like the boots" email as well as its "buy these" emails are all "dead" or, rather, one-way "unmonitored" emails.

Sequels and reboots: Cancel culture vs suckitude culture of capitalism

Yeah, Kelsey Grammer may be a MAGAts member, and said so to the Beeb before Paramount+ folks cut his interview short. But, contra Kuff, that is no less a reason to watch a Frasier reboot than is any show starring politicized Democrat actors of Zionist persuasion who support Genocide Joe's Genocide. (Hold on to that thought.)

If you're worried a reboot will suck or Grammer's too old? Fine. If, like me, you think this is capitalist greed? Fine. (And now, we're going to get to picking back up on that thought.)

That, then is good reason not to watch a Spinal Tap remake, again contra Kuff and in this case, his enthusiasm. Elton John and Paul McCartney? Doing what? Singing "Candle in the COPD Windedness"? Or saying "This one goes to 11 but I still can't hear it without my hearing aids"? But, back to the cancel culture reason, then. Rob Reiner IS a Meathead of duopoly #BlueAnon-ism, retweeting fucktards like Marc Elias with the usual "A vote for Stein/West/RFK Jr is 'really' a vote for Trump," along with blindly supporting the proxy war in Ukraine and of course, the IDF / Biden genocide. No wonder Kuff likes him, as he never ventures outside of Texas state politics and never colors outside the duopoly lines.

Finally, Reiner's also a Meathead JFK conspiracy theorist.

So, fuck off Rob Reiner. And, on this version of cancel culture, Kuff can fuck off too. Shit like this is why Brains laughed at you at times. That said, that was a two-edged sword there. Anyway, he should have stayed on TPA and just snarked at Kuff more on things like this, like I do, and rearranged the weekly Texas Progressives Roundup to his own desire, like I do.

Disgusting: Warmonger Joe citing MLK

Almost as much disgust as a wingnut citing Martin Luther King's color of their skin as an excuse to junk affirmative action and pretend it worked, or if you're a Black wingnut like Clarence Thomas, to ignore that it worked to some degree and you benefited.

Anyway, here's Warmonger Joe Biden, per the WaPost, riffing on King's "I Have a Dream" speech itself, given 60 years ago this week.

First, this:

Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

You've done nothing to reverse the Trump tax cuts that exacerbated that, or the Bush tax cuts that became the Obama tax cuts, when your then-boss, Dear Leader, accepted them. And, don't tell me you have a Republican House now; you didn't in the first two years. You've also, while attacking Republicans on Social Security, have offered no concrete plan for shoring it up. And, while in the Senate, you supported partial privatization, like both Dear Leader and Slick Willie did as president.

Second, Martin Luther King didn't die a week after that speech. And as Jonathan Eig knows, and states, in his truly magisterial new bio of King, with an extended version of my Goodreads review here, he went on to protest the Vietnam War, and some degree, militarism in general, as well as the non-racial as well as racial causes behind poverty.

I quote, as he noted in the epilogue:

The epilogue is good in noting Reagan’s resistance to making his birthday a holiday, and how we still have failed to address King’s “call for an end to the triple evils of materialism, militarism, and racism.”

That anti-militarism would surely extend today to poor Ukrainians going into a proxy war meatgrinder, as well as the poor Russians also in that meat-grinder because we never really fully abandoned Cold War politics vis-a-vis Russia, other than when exploiting the nation.

As for the racism? Let's not forget that Warmonger Joe, like Bill and Hillary, was Superpredator Joe back in the 1990s.

Is it any wonder that Biden and #BlueAnon surrogates fear a third-party presidential run by a Black man, Cornel West, who is hitting on all three of these things?

Zelensky: The new and improved next Yeltsin?

Reminder: Western capitalists want to do to Zelensky's Ukraine what they did to Yeltsin's Russia, and because of this, one should assume Zelensky, family and friends will have the same sticky fingers that Yeltsin's family did at the top of a similar pyramid 30 years ago. As for the capitalist rapine, the Ukrainian Rada, pushed by Zelensky, has already signed off on an acceleration of post-Maidan plundering, including changing Ukrainian laws on land ownership and other things.

 

Per Chuck Spinney, guest posting at Patrick Cockburn's Substack, since Ukraine is the second-most corrupt country in Europe, beyond only Kosovo, and ahead of/worse than Russia, the American capitalist imperium already knows this and is helping accelerate that plundering as I type. For them, per the old saying the corruption is a feature, not a bug. They just worry about those who have been bought staying bought and also about not having wild price swings.

Reminder: These Western capitalists (and the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ with whom they work hand in hand) will ignore that Yeltsin's Russia led, semi-inexorably (contra Dostoevsky warning against anything close to determinism) to Putin's Russia.

==

 

Meanwhile, because of his support for said capitalist takeover, Counterpunch Radio's Eric Draitser now officially has his ass in a crack over the US agreeing to send cluster bombs to Zelensky. Hey, Eric, the way that Warmonger Joe has been doing incremental escalation for months, you knew that was a possibility. Just like, per an Economist story linked by Unherd at the top link, the vulture capitalists had been landing in Kyiv before the invasion and you knew that. Per another story linked there, you also know that the vulture capitalists did their best to do to Zelensky's first predecessors what they were doing to Yeltsin 30 years ago.

 

Or Draitser could just read Ivan Katchanovski with an open mind:

Self-proclaimed supporters of Ukraine in fact support or deny in spite of overwhelming evidence foreign-backed violent overthrow of Ukrainian government by means of false flag Maidan massacre with far-right involvement, civil war in Donbas & proxy war in Ukraine which all have…

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) July 10, 2023

That open-mind reading probably won't happen.

 

And, unless you believed Zelensky's PR lies about "the vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive," you knew it was not only a possibility but a likelihood a full month ago. I stopped listening at approximately the 1:40 mark. Eric, to modify an old saying, feel free to stick your ear next to the sonic mirror.

==

Meanwhile, Zelensky is repeating the standard lie of US clients that cluster bombs won't be used against civilians. It's surely a lie from him. If Putin ever made that claim, it was a lie by him. And, it was a lie by the US when it used cluster bombs before. That said, contra Ron Jacobs, and per Walter Kaufmann, I reject, for the most part, the whole idea of "just war." I'm not as out there as Norman Finkelstein, who does talk about justification, and says Russia was justified, but I can understand where he's coming from.

Ken Starr dead? Like shooting fish in a barrel, but, while here, I'm firing at both halves of the duopoly

Geez, over the last two weeks, I do a non-takedown but critical obit of Gorbachev, then another one, also non-takedown but critical, over Barbara Ehrenreich, then a takedown of the House of Windsor at the back end of calling out Americans for royal envy paralleling penis envy, over the death of Elizabeth II.

And now, Ken Starr is dead?

A sad embarrassment of riches, and with me having been on press deadline, I didn't have time to jump in the fray.

I sum it up in this Tweet.

Ken Starr will be buried in a blue dress stained with Linda Tripp's smegma. That will be inside an inner sarcophagus made of Baylor rapist green and gold football helmets. That, in turn, will be inside an outer sarcophagus made of Jeffrey Epstein's dollars.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 13, 2022

To expand on that, I recommend this Twitter thread, and, of course, the Rolling Stone takedown obit above.

Per that thread, beyond what I mention above, Starr defended other statutory rapists besides Epstein.

He helped Mitch the Turtle gut and eviscerate McCain-Feingold.

And, he represents everything wrong with the GOP federal legal and judiciary pipeline. As the account notes, Kirkland and Ellis is a kind of breeding ground. Then, as a forming ground, there's the Federalist Society.

Personally, I lived half an hour from Waco, Texas, when the Baylor shit started going down. I first noted how he was running protection for Art Briles, which itself was crappy enough given the way the Bears had previously coddled former basketball coach Dave Bliss from facing his own improprieties. And, I was still in the area when the Baptist non-dancers finally fired him.

Interestingly, as with Gorbachev, I had no tag for him. And, as there, I'm not adding one.

BUT?

We're not ending there.

Since I'm on a roll on semi-takedown obits, we're triangulating off Ken Starr to both halves of the duopoly, primarily the left-hand side.

Linda Tripp was a nutter, especially over Vince Foster conspiracy theories. No denial whatsoever here.

But? Contra the likes of Jeff Gerth at the New York Times blathering about Whitewater for years, then later saying "nothing here," there WERE things there. (Gerth, interestingly, blames NYT editors for the inaccuracies in his reporting.)

In terms of William J. Clinton, aka Slick Willie, vis-a-vis Tripp and Monica Lewinsky, there was of course Paula Jones in his past, even though she was in some ways manipulated by the wingnuts whose legal bidding Starr was too willing to do.

And, there was Hillary making a killing on those cattle futures, as part of a general lack of believability, and not too too long after the Slickster complained about his governor's salary. In my mind, there's no doubt she had help of some kind, and probably something that would meet the commodities futures definition of insider trading or the equivalent thereof. 

As for Starr defending Trump during his first impeachment? Doornknob forbid that I sound anything close to Glenn Greenwald, let alone Cucker Tarlson, but, even if Trump was trying to extort information about Hunter Biden from Zelenskyy, it's not like Hunter Biden was Mr. Innocent.

Both the cattle futures (which happened at the same time as the alleged problems and incidents collectively called "Whitewater") and the Ukrainian stiff-arming? Both reflect the duopoly disease of capitalism.

Related? Don't forget, as Twitter won't let you forget, that Epstein the hypercapitalist had plenty of connections in both halves of the duopoly.

Don't forget that NCAA Division I college football at a place like Baylor is ultimately about capitalism. And, don't I know it, from those two blog posts about Starr's time at Baylor. Had Art Briles been 2-10, his ass would have been sacked faster that a Whitewater minute.

Cooperstown: Once more unto the Big Hall breach and related

I hadn't planned for half this blog to become sports-related postings, but, between racism about NFL quarterbacks, COVID stupidity and interesting legitimate NBA news, and nuttery by baseball fans AND WRITERS, it has.

And, with that, unto that breach.

The "trigger" for baseball fans and writers who want their Granny, Uncle Leroy and three next door neighbors all voted into their "Big Hall" version of the MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is people like me who call them out on sabermetrics. My post about a bloated new class of veterans inductees, none of whom cleared 55 percent or so with writers, and most of whom who had also failed at least one, if not more than one, previous Veterans Committee election.

And, it's not just Big Hall fans in general. As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, the claim that Adam Wainwright would be a HOFer if not for injury is laughable. It's easy to troll fellow Cardinals fans who like to talk about "Best Fans in Baseball" with nuttery like that. And, when they bring it up? I point out that I'm such a Cards fan from way back that I was at the game where Glenn Brummer stole home. (And, if that doesn't ring a bell, you're not much of a Cards fan.)

To go on a tangent, it's like calling Bernie Miklasz out for puffing a non-existent "Cardinal Way."

At the same time, as a Cards fan, I nave noted my non-homerism in the past by saying that Mark McGwire is NOT A Hall of Famer. Because he's not; de-roided, I said, he's another Dave Kingman.

On recent triggers? I probably further cheesed-off the Uncle Leroy crowd by taking a deeper dive into Tony Oliva's case, or lack thereof.  And I deeper dived on Gil Hodges, too.

That said, it's not just the Hall of Fame. I've written a whole series of posts calling out writers first, fans second, who have bloviated over Shohei Ohtani. Yes, he had a very good season. No, it wasn't THAT good, and that's by 21st-century standards alone.

Frankly, per a meme that Craig Calcaterra used to post regularly, and still does while now working for NBC's Green Satan (I think he still does), I wonder if a lot of both fans and writers really do believe that "Baseball is Dying."

It probably is, and another lockout won't help. Adding the DH to the National League will only further drive away fans like me, not just as traditionalists, but as people who don't want NL games to get as long as AL ones. 

Commissioner Corleone was supposed to do something about that. In part being blocked by the players union, in part just not making it a bigger, more consistent priority, he's let the game drag on.

But, it's the fans as well. Many want the year-round DH, even with four-hour games. And they want Uncle Leroy in the Hall of Fame.

If baseball is dying, you're part of the cause. YOU killed Cock Robin.

Writers? Those of you who were in denial about roids at the time killed it too.

Back to fans, on this issue. If you claim a majority of players roided 20 years ago and so, Uncle Lenny the Roider should "go in," rather than us tossing out three managers? You killed Cock Robin, too.

Actually, capitalism is killing baseball. Capitalism is why, though not on its official job description, the Veterans Committee is unofficially encouraged by the HOF to vote in more players. Cooperstown, New York, as I noted on my original trigger piece, is a lot smaller than Springfield, Massachusetts or Canton, Ohio. Basically, it's a Hall of Fame factory town. (I had a late friend who was born and raised there, a leftist of some sort like me, as my oral history source.) Springfield, 150K. Canton, 70K. Cooperstown, 2,000 in an upstate New York cow pasture. And, built on a legend specifically designed to draw people to this cow pasture, in population decline for a full century. (That said, Canton's had a slower decline for 50 years.) Plus, the HOF totally controls the Veterans Committees. Per that link, sadly, Mike Schmidt is totally a Big Hall guy.

This guy GETS IT:

At the end of the day, it is a plaque in the gallery…and lots of merchandise sold for MLB teams, and the Hall of Fame. It also allows the newly elected Hall of Famer to charge extra for appearances and autographs.

Nothing to add.

The Basketball HOF, per Wiki, arguably both is more exclusive and has a better process for dealing with possibly overlooked veterans. Per Springfield staff, it's more exclusive when you realize it includes WNBA, or will, men's and women's college players coaches, and international ones.

Canton is similarly better in some ways. The Pro Football Hall of Fame, like Naismith, specify more how veterans should be considered and put a cap on their induction numbers.

Now, it's true that, with both these sports, the Halls of Fame control the normal player induction process in a way that Cooperstown doesn't; maybe that, in turn, leads to a sense of frustration that leads it to want various veterans committees to goose the vote.

ANOTHER woke piece on American Indians from High Country News

HCN must also think that Hispanic Heritage Month is American Indian Month, as for the second time in less than a week, it's been woken about American Indian or Indigenous people.

Last Friday, as I just blogged, it was "woken" about American Indian land issues for National Public Lands Day, and it was wrongly woken on its framing, wrongly woken to some degree on recent facts of which American Indians were the main ones at a site, and wrongly woken on assuming the American Indians of today held the same lands 500 or 1,500 or 5,000 years ago.

Tuesday? It got "woken" about the White Sands fossilized footprints discovery. (Note, per the original paper at Science, and per some caveating researchers, it is possible that the seeds squished beneath the footprints and used to date them could have fallen into the ground millennia earlier; one researcher called the land involved "a dynamic landscape."

And, Nick Martin was as wrong as HCN staffers before. The footprints prove pre-Clovis is right. (That said, this is just the latest of several nails in the Clovis coffin.) It does NOT NOT NOT prove that American Indians have been here "from time immemorial," whether Martin claims that, or Vine Deloria with his university PhD. 

A good piece from the Smithsonian, from early 2020, notes specific archaeological exploration of pre-Clovis sites in British Columbia. It doesn't go back 25,000 BP, but it does go back more than 15,000 BP. It also notes that evolutionary population geneticists have provided research evidence that indicated the ancestors of (the first wave of?) American Indians had separated from Paleosiberians by around ... wait for it, wait for it .... 23,000 BP.

Martin's also wrong in a framing issue. Especially as time frames for the "entrada" have been pushed back, he assumes that "we" is who it once was. This opens the door to additional waves of migration. As part of that, it opens the door for a higher likelihood of migrations from the east, across the Atlantic, as well as Beringeria.

That Smithsonian piece discusses this at the end.

As scientists debate the peopling of the Americas, it’s worth noting there could be more than one right answer. “I think current evidence indicates multiple migrations, multiple routes, multiple time periods,” says Torben Rick, an anthropologist at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Very interesting. If archaeologists have been willing to entertain multiple migrations pre-Clovis but without the ancient footprints, I think this opens that up even more. (That said, besides the 

That, in turn, means that "we" is not always "we." Outside of it being all folks here before 1000 CE and the Norse contact, the "we" is not.

Finally, Martin himself approaches racism when he assumes that White anthropologists who have attacked pre-Clovis claims made in the past by American Indian archaeologists have done so because of racism.

Anybody who knows much of anything about New World archaeology and anthropology knows that Whites have battled each other for decades over the Clovis/pre-Clovis issue.

Then, there's this, at the conclusion:

Scientists and reporters could save themselves a lot of time by simply listening to Indigenous experts next time.

As in, assuming American Indians are always right?

Nope.

HCN really, REALLY does not want me to renew my increasingly-lapsed subscription.

And, per my comments above? Yes, people of any "race" can be racist. (I've seen anti-Black American Indian racism, too.)

These aren't the only pieces of wokeness HCN has done that invoke alleged American Indian wisdom. Some 18 months ago, in relationship to COVID shattering the globalized neoliberal economy, HCN claimed that the wisdom of American Indians who stayed in place could provide special insight. That claim, that they stay in one place, was of course wrong.

Meanwhile, while being "woke" on identity politics, HCN is quite capitalistic after all, or at least refuses to challenge it, on things like its annual photo contest.

And, it's perfectly willing to support a mix of wokeness and capitalism, even when that mix clearly involved many lies and half-truths. I even invented the tag "wrongful wokeness" for all of this. (Being alert to systemic racism, if one wants to use the term "woke," is not itself bad, and certainly, acting well on this knowledge is good. It's when one either tries to exploit this via capitalism combined with bashing as "unwoke" anybody who gets in your way, like Melanin Base Camp and its lies and griftings printed by HCN, or when one gets into reverse racism, which is itself racist, that we have the "wrongful" portion.

That's why, when in the middle of the first wave of COVID last summer, when it offered a one-year digital subscription for just $12, I passed. I've seen plenty since then to convince me this was the right decision.

That's because HCN refuses to admit that these repeated bad editorial decisions on its part are actually bad editorial decisions.

Halloween Creep now precedes Christmas Creep

Good fucking doorknob!

We're a full week before Labor Day, and more than two full months before Halloween.

And, Halloween costumes and decorations are already jamming aisles and walls at WallyWorld and dollar stores.

Remember when people were agog that Christmas decorations, candies and such were out on shelves by mid-October? Well, this is the exact equivalent.

Since Halloween has long been secularized, but originates in the Christian side from All Hallow's Eve, and in Celtic religion from Samhain and with witches and Wicca, maybe we can next get Christmas-like slogan battles.

"Happy HallowDays!"

No.

"Splendid Samhein!"

No.

"Bring Out Your Dead Day."



After ALL, the "saints" of the following All Saints Day ARE the dead.

I would like to add that, per the top photo, Christmas ripoffs like Halloween villages only add to my loathing.

Of course, speaking of greetings, the kids' "trick or treat" is itself extortionary. And, to the degree it derives from Samhain, throws shade on modern Wiccan claims that ancient Celtic religion was all sweetness and light.

Today is #StopBuyingCrapDay

Otherwise, it's known as Karl Marx's birthday.

I'm not a Marxist, whether of original persuasion, or Leninist, Trotskyite, Stalinist, Maoist, etc. Nor am I a neo-Marxist. Marx himself, though he made appeals for more scientific study of economics, wasn't that scientific. Besides, the Hegelian philosophical core idea behind his whole theory, the old thesis-antithesis-synthesis, is neither good science nor good philosophy.

That said, I find some interest in the Frankfurt School, for moving beyond traditional Marxist constraints on thought. Ditto for the likes of Franz Fanon, in part because people like him, unlike some alleged Marxists in the US today, do not believe everything reduces to class in the end. While I'm thinking of the likes of Doug Henwood, who tried to claim that Jim Crow was all about Southern whites breaking up working class Southern solidarity (not), or Adolph Reed attacking Black Lives Matter, not all alleged Marxists or fellow travelers are that way. Asad Haider is somewhat that way, though not as bad as what I've heard from others, I'll state.

Per the hashtag above, for various reasons, my day is different than Adbusters' Buy Nothing Day.

First of all, I want nothing to do with Adbusters' pretentiousness.

Second, per "No More Work" author James Livingston, in this piece, the market (though he's vague in the interview about what "the market" means), and its liberalism in the classical sense is a necessary part of democratic socialism.

So, by "stop buying crap," I mean:

1. The made in China tschotchkes you don't need.

2. Trying to at least cut down on junk food.

3. Stop buying overpriced "branded" products. Why are you paying money for a T-shirt or cap with some corporation's name on it? Why aren't these corporations paying you instead?

4. I mean, stop buying so much in general. Instead of approaching this from a Marxist angle, try a Zen angle. Or my neo-Cynic one. Revolt against society more. Per Livingston, some type of capitalism isn't bad. Hypercapitalism is.

5. And per the image (story behind it here), and something I need to do myself, is stop using credit so much.

Neil Young, capitalist sellout — #hypocrisy alert (updated)

Neil Young (Wikipedia photo)

Neil Young has long been known for "reinventing" himself musically every several years, but he's long been seen as a consistent liberal political and social voice.

(Update, May 25, 2016: Well, maybe not a consistent liberal political and social voice. Sure, he endorsed Bernie Sanders earlier this year, but now, he's ready and willing to let Donald Trump use his music at campaign events, as long as he pays up.)

Back to the original ....

Well, maybe we should re-invent our understanding of him. And, his voice aside, part of a trilogy of "interesting" voices along with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, maybe we should re-invent our understanding of him as a musician — at least one who understands much about actual recording and engineering — as well.

And, why do I say this?

From this great piece from LA Weekly, which once and for all refutes the idea that "vintage vinyl" sounds better than CDs.

If anything, it actually is worse.

Due to the shorter "travel time" near the label, sound quality on a record deteriorates even further near the center of the black plastic. And (petard alert!) to get more than 40 or so minutes of sounds on a piece of vintage vinyl, the sound must be COMPRESSED! And, there's extra distortion, despite that compression.

And, no, you worshipers at the Altar of Vinyl, the Altar of Glass Vacuum Tubes won't help on this.

How does this all tie to Neil Young?

Simple.

It's his relationship to PonoMusic and the bullshit that Pono is selling to gullible worshipers at the Altar of Vinyl.

First, a background note. Pete Lyman, co-owner and chief mastering technician at Infrasonic Sound, notes that a lot of stuff being cut to vinyl is actually from stuff not only with digital masters, but with original engineering for digital. And, vinyl masters today aren't being produced the same way as they were in the pre-CD era.

Now, an introduction to more generalized hypercapitalist bullshit that's being sold to the Church of Vinyl:

As labels seek to capitalize on a physical medium that is gaining momentum, some marketing efforts offering superior sound are downright misleading. Most notable among these is "audiophile-quality 180-gram vinyl," which consumers assume is superior because it is heavier. Lyman, however, says the added weight offers no musical benefit at all. 

"It increases shipping costs and sales cost of the record. That's about it," he says. "It's the Super Big Gulp of vinyl, but you're not getting more [sound quality], really, you're just getting more vinyl."

OK, that sets the stage.

Here's the capitalist sellout:

With PonoMusic, Neil Young is leading fans down the digital version of a similar "bigger is better" sonic trail. 

It has long been believed that the human ear cannot hear frequencies above 22 kHz. This is why CDs sample sound at 44.1 kHz and 16 bits of information per sample. According to a theorem called Nyquist-Shannon, in order to reach a desired range, sound must be sampled at twice that range. Half of 44, obviously, is 22. 

Pono — along with some other digital retailers such as HDtracks.com — sells some tracks that sample music as high as 192 kHz, with 24 bits per sample. Pono also offers a PonoPlayer (retail price: $399), which the company says is optimized to play those tracks.

So, the 192 kHz is just bullshit. Per Wiki, 192kHz is at the upper end of bats' sonar-based hearing range!

It's bullshit in the same way as gold-plated audio connections and similar overpriced stupidity.

Since the human ear can't hear that high, a special music player that allegedly reproduces them — as well as engineers who claim they can tell the quality grade difference — is an even higher, pricier grade of bullshit.

Even if ol Neil ain't getting a direct cut of Pomo's money in exchange for his Kickstarter effort, he's still a capitalist sellout. If he is getting some payola (I see what I did there), he's a sellout in spades.

Actually, in play rights, etc., he IS getting a direct cut of Pomo's money, though:

You can buy an armload of used LPs for the $21.79 it costs to buy a 192 kHz version of Young's Harvest at the Pono store.

 Capitalist sellout.

I'm surprised that he hasn't offered an updated "After the Gold Rush," let alone "Heart of Gold." (I see what I did there.)

And, music engineering idiot, spouting New Agey-type nonsense like this:

As he's been pitching Pono, Young has continued to promote the idea that analog formats and recording gear offer the authentic sound, and digital is a compromise. 

"I don't think [Pono] can sound better than vinyl," he said earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show. "Because vinyl is a reflection and any digital is a reconstitution; it's not the same thing."

Or else, a — wait for it, wait for it ...

A capitalist sellout playing on his public persona, which would expect him to say something like this, and doing so at a capitalist palooza like the CES. 

That said, he's got plenty of suckers willing to buy into his capitalist sellout if Americans bought nearly 10 million vintage vinyl albums in 2014.

Hypercapitalism, Yosemite, the National Park Service and lawsuits

Early this month, I blogged about how Yosemite National Park needs to get "greener," noting specific things like lack of modern water facilities, no solar panels on buildings, etc. This is a hit-and-miss issue, as I noted; Zion, for example, is an exemplar of sorts within the whole National Park Service.

Speaking of ....

Yosesmite's parent was sued two months ago by the Delaware North concessionnaire company.

Why?

(It) claims it was owed big-time for its intellectual property investments at Yosemite. These include the historic Ahwahnee hotel, Curry Village and Badger Pass, names for which the company holds trademarks. 

 Formally known as DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite Inc., the Delaware North subsidiary argues that the government mishandled the intellectual property question, breached a contract and likely cost the company its shot at keeping the Yosemite business.

Now, regular readers know that I reject over-the-top claims of “privilege.”

But, there are real issues of privilege, or to put it another way, in this case, cultural appropriation.

Let's look at this more.

To be frank?

It's bullshit that DNC claims it owns name like "Ahwahnee" unless it can prove that this is an uninterrupted chain of custody from builder of hotel and that this is a made-up name by that person.

Rather, since it's an actual American Indian word, and an everyday one, the trademark to me seems questionable; and if there's any suing, the Yokuts should sue DNC, which I would love to see.

The other names? 

Given that Badger Pass Ski Area existed before DNC took it over, and that "Badger Pass" itself is a generic name for a place name, I'm not sure how that's trademarkable, even if some court granted it. That said, if it WAS trademarkable and the NPS has been dumb enough here and elsewhere, to give vendors inside national parks such trademarks, rather than retaining ultimate rights itself, we have another problem, Houston.

No, the customer is not "always right"

This nuttery is no more true than the "we're all in sales now" line.

If you're 'Sen. Cathouse,' you as customer
most certainly aren't always right!

I've heard "the customer is always right" a lot in the newspaper biz. Hey, inside the Beltway or inside the Mopac folks, this is yet another reason why you should try working at a real newspaper sometime, per Charles Pierce.

I know this has also been muttered to retail store clerks by their bosses for decades. In the newspaper biz, though, it doesn't just come from bosses; it, or the idea, at least, comes from many of those customers.

And, it's just not true.

The customer IS always entitled to a reasonable level of respect and courtesy. And, that's it.

I was contacted last week by a customer about misspellings of names. (She did later welcome me to the community after noting I was new, and also after complaining about the local radio mispronouncing names. That probably says something right there.)

As best I can tell, of the two names she mentioned, yes, I got one wrong (in a story-obituary, but not the deceased's name), but did not get the other wrong. At least she didn't claim I had his age of death wrong; I did not, despite hearing that "some people" might call right after that story came out.

Lady in question is a realtor.

So, madame realtor, a rhetorical question: Let's say you're listing a house at $100,000, and a customer says, "That's worth about $65 grand." Is the customer always right?

Thought so. Or, thought not.

Today's real appeasement isn't what wingnuts claim it is

With Sen. Tom Cotton and the letter of "The 47" of the Senate GOP to Iran, and three declared GOP presidential candidates and more on the way, expect words and phrases like "Iran," "appeasement," "Munich" and "Neville Chamberlain" to get mouthed by more and more Republicans in the next 18 months.

Or, with two Cuban-Americans in the race, substitute "Cuba" for "Iran."

Fact is that neither of these is what the real "appeasement" is.

Rather, as most recently illustrated by the Trans Pacific Partnership officially entering Congressional fast-track discussion, the real appeasement is continuing to "engage" with China in the blind, unsubstantiated belief that such "engagement" will automatically, at some point, liberalize Chinese government.

But, why would it?

Singapore was an authoritarian capitalist government for decades under Lee Kuan Yew. Israel is moving in a more anti-democratic direction as we speak, as is Turkey.

And, for worshipers at the hagiography of human rationality, Adam Smith never said that his invisible hand was dependent on a certain type of government. Since 1700s Britain was hardly democratic, that alone undercuts the slavering shibboleths of today's bipartisan foreign policy establishment about China.

Beyond that, it's not just Beijing that's being appeased — it's rich businesses, ever more multinational in character, even if officially incorporated in the US.

Of the four declared presidential candidates of both major parties so far, do you seen anyone who's not an appeaser?

Thomas Piketty: Allergic to the word "union"

I had read others' reviews of Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," and so I knew in advance that he had ignored the possible work of unions in trying to reverse the increase in income inequality in the last 40 years. Indeed, based on those other reviews, especially one by Thomas Frank, I had previously blogged about this issue.

And, now, having gotten a copy of the book from the nearest larger-sized library, I can see that in person.

Basically, it's because he ignores the past role of unions in reducing income inequality.

Piketty could have mentioned the word "union" as early in the book as page 9.

At the bottom of that page, he says:

In the last third of the nineteenth century, wages finally began to increase: the improvement in the purchasing power of workers spread everywhere.

And continuing in that same paragraph, on page 10:

Like his predecessors, Marx totally neglected the possibility of durable technological processes and steadily increasing productivity, which is a force that can to some extent serve as a counterweight to the process of accumulation and concentration of private capital.

Gee, wouldn't that be a good place to discuss the role of unions?

Nooooooo.

Instead, we're told that technocracy plus good old macroeconomics of productivity explains all.

But, we're not told WHY the owners of the means of production, to go back to the original "Capital," would share that increasing productivity's monetary benefits.

Gee, wouldn't that be a good place to discuss the role of unions?

Nooooooo.

It gets worse. I jumped ahead, after the Introduction in which that all appeared, and the word "union" did not, to Chapter 9, in Part Two, which is about "The Structure of Inequality."

Its title? "Inequality of Labor Income."

Gee, wouldn't that be a good place to discuss the role of unions?

Nooooooo.

I saw the word "union" mentioned once in the entire chapter.

So, I skipped ahead to Part Four: "Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century."

Chapter 13 is "A Social State for the 21st Century."

Gee, wouldn't that be a good place to discuss the role of unions? Wouldn't it be a good place to discuss the possibility of established unions trying to revitalize themselves by looking to do more organizing work in white- and gray-collar occupations?

Nooooooo.

In fact, the U-word is again not mentioned in this chapter.

It's worse at the very end, in the index.

The word "union" has no entry.

Wow.

Beyond that, Piketty also ignores the third leg of the traditional "land, labor, capital" stool.

In the introduction, he briefly talks about how David Ricardo looked at the price of land, as a parallel to Thomas Malthus' overpopulation, as something that might produce a scarcity with economic effects. He notes that Ricardo was talking about farmland, and Piketty says the idea could apply to urban real estate today.

And then stops there.

When there's so much relevance of that to today.

Can the Green Revolution of the 1970s be sustained, or brought to a new level? Even for those of us who don't fear GMOs, but at the same time, like Norman Borlaug said the Green Revolution was just a one-generation fix, and reject the ideas that GMOs are the "cavalry riding over the hilll," or as I call it, an example of "salvific technologism," there's worries here.

And, things like Peak Oil or other diminishing mineral reserves could also be discussed in depth under the "land" leg of the stool.

But Piketty doesn't.

So, this is essentially a left-neoliberal technocrat writing a very incomplete book about how to fix the economy of the 21st century. And, one who's doing a cheap ripoff of Marx, and in his own way, arguably no more scientific than Marx.

So, true liberal friends, beyond my original blog post, I've now read enough of this book that you don't have to.

Plus, he's not that good of an economist in some of his theorizing. Indeed, that link explains exactly why he doesn't mention unions hardly at all:

Let me return to Piketty’s theoretical paradigm (the “neo-classical” paradigm). According to this theoretical paradigm all persistent unemployment must be explained as the result of wages being “too high”, i.e. as the product of trade union action. It is not accidental that Robert Solow whose “neo-classical” growth model Piketty invokes is a votary of “labour market flexibility”, which means in effect smashing trade unions through “free hire and fire”. Smashing trade unions on the plea that this would raise employment is currently on the agenda of corporate capital everywhere in the world including India. It is a pity that Piketty, despite his concern with wealth inequality, adopts a theory that provides sustenance to this corporate agenda.

Bingo.

Business titles always cut in business' favor

Take WallyWorld, and the many other companies that have followed its lead. You're an "associate," not an employee.

Does that get you any more money? Or any more assistance on late-night stocking?

No and no, of course.

Or take an industry like advertising or public relations, where you get the title of "account executive" your first day on the job. You're really an executive of nothing; you can barely go to the bathroom without a supervisor say-so.

Or, take the inflation of titles in small and medium-small companies.

I've never been the vice president of anything, but, if there's an executive vice president over you, then being a vice president pretty much means jack shit, doesn't it?

For that matter, if you have to be called an executive vice president to distinguish you from a plain old jack shit vice president, it probably doesn't mean too much, either.

But, did you once, if not now, fall for it? It's OK to be honest.

That said, titles cut both ways.

I recently, in my Career Builder feed, saw a job for a semiweekly newspaper on the High Plains, owned by cut-rate king Digital First Media.

With no daily newspaper around for more than 100 miles, and no semiweekly, a cut above weeklies, around (I think) for at least 50, and no other DFM paper around for 200 or so, it's cheap on titles.

General manager instead of publisher. News editor instead of managing editor. And, the news editor, the job I saw, officially listed as having a 4.5 day work week.

That's how I know those titles are used to justify lesser pay.

So, to summarize?

High title is used to fob you off on prestige instead of pay raise.

Low title is designed to "slot" you into lower pay.

Simple enough? 

Little bit of pleasure for the start of your work week? 

It's OK to say 'I can't'

One shouldn't say "I can't" to everything, of course. I won't disagree with the "positivity" gurus that one shouldn't have a blanket negative attitude.

But, one certainly shouldn't have a blanket positive attitude either.

For example, I can't do open-heart surgery, and I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to, either.

1. I would have to need a certain amount of manual dexterity, first. I might have that, and I might not.
2. I'd have to be able to operate without blanching, or worse, at the sight of blood. I might be able to, but, to be honest, I'm not at all sure about that.
3. I'd have to be able to operate without fear of screwing up. And, given my temperament, and upbringing, I'm not at all sure about passing that hurdle.
4. And, I'd have to graduate medical school to legally do open-heart surgery, as well as to learn about how to do it of course.

That last point is itself important. In addition to showing we all have limitations, it shows that some are externally imposed.

Because, to graduate medical school, I'd need:

1. Some pre-med classes
2. Money to take some pre-med classes
3. Med school
4. Money for med school.

I wouldn't want to spend that much of my own money, I'm sure that scholarships for someone my age aren't available, and I'm not going to borrow it. That said, that could be true of a 22-year-old minority B.A. graduate just as much as a 49-year-old single white person who's been out of school for decades.

That said, physical or mental limitations due to heredity, or due to poor educational background, are also externalities. If my hands aren't steady enough to operate, it's not my fault. Or, if I'm not a "sales-assertive" enough person, it's not (largely) my fault, even as positivity gurus still try to tell us "we're all in sales," even though I know that's not true.

And, per that, if I "can't" do something because, per Polonius in Hamlet I must "To (mine) own self be true," that's certainly not a fault or a limitation. After all, per Daniel Goldhagen in "Hitler's Willing Executioners," way too many Nazi-era Germans found that they "could," indeed, murder Jews for no other reason than that they were Jews.

But, back to the more everyday "can't."

Even if one is wrong, or overly self-pessimistic for thinking and believing this, others of us should ask why this person is saying that. Beyond the fear of failure, maybe it's a fear of lack of education or training. And, in the "we're all in sales" modern American business world, that latter concern is nothing to laugh at indeed. When many companies (especially in a business field like mine) are stretched ever thinner, and there's little to no training or support offered for new job demands, or, in other, Fortune 500 type cases, companies have the money they could offer training, continuing education, etc., but in a Social Darwinian way, instead expect you to shell out on your own, then it's a legitimate issue.

Beyond that "I can" vs. "I can't" is too black-and-white. Theoretically, Michael Jordan could hit a AA-level curve ball, but far less easily than he could dunk.

So, don't be too doubting of yourself. But, when you are reasonably doubting of either yourself, or the larger situation around you, don't be too hard, either. The world needs pessimists in general; a few more of them on Wall Street might have prevented the financial meltdown.

Jaron Lanier just went way down in my book

Jaron Lanier, not a visionary

And, it's because of his own new book, "Who Owns the Future?"

He's got some good things in it, but, even in his own words, here at Salon, he clearly doesn't have problems creating the occasional straw man:

We don’t realize that our society and our democracy ultimately rest on the stability of middle-class jobs. When I talk to libertarians and socialists, they have this weird belief that everybody’s this abstract robot that won’t ever get sick or have kids or get old. It’s like everybody’s this eternal freelancer who can afford downtime and can self-fund until they find their magic moment or something.

Well, yeah, libertarians may believe that. But, name names on any socialist who does. Especially that last sentence.

You can't.

And, for the real crushing, let's bring in the heavyweight crusher — Evgeny Morozov.

I had missed Morozov's review of the book, but it's well worth a read.

Near the bottom, he tackles the straw man issue:

Stingy with specifics — he rarely quotes his ideological opponents, opting for constructions like “I am often told” and “I continue to hear fairly often,” and introducing them as the “Pirate Party/Linux/openness crowd” — Lanier eagerly opines on dense economic matters. “Keynes was an unapologetic financial elitist and had no interest in a quest for income equality or a planned economy,” he informs us, without providing a source.

But, that's minor.

Lanier, contra my blog post about "We're not all in sales," apparently wants to commodify the Internet and turn us all into entrepreneurs. A neoliberal indeed, it seems, as Morozov nails him:

In Lanier’s ideal future, we would all be liking in the morning, texting in the afternoon and tweeting in the evening. Robots and 3-D printers would do all the hard work, allowing us to get rich simply by being ourselves. “In a humanistic digital economy,” he writes, “designers will still make a living, even when a dress is sewn in a home by a robot.” And the good news keeps coming: “Someone who wears the dress well might also make a little money inadvertently by popularizing it.” Go ahead: Get yourself another dress and get even richer!

To account for this lucrative wardrobe, Lanier proposes a system of ubiquitous surveillance, with cameras, databases and all. Since we can’t get any privacy, we might at least get paid. “Commercial rights,” he notes, “are better suited for the multitude of quirky little situations that will come up in real life than new kinds of civil rights along the lines of digital privacy.” 

Following Lanier’s logic, any correction in the market system — say, price adjustments based on changing demand — would require that extra profits be transferred to consumers. But should you expect a supermarket to send you a check simply because you chose to buy one brand of milk over another? Probably not. Why treat Amazon differently?

Even if there's a bit of over-the-top caricature in the first graf, the general gist is right.

First, who wants to be doing that all the time? If that's Lanier's solution, it's not very humanistic, and it's not very practical.

Second, per the third graf of the quote, Nike doesn't pay me to wear a Nike T-shirt right now, not even a micropayment an infinitesimal fraction of what it pays Tiger Woods. Why would any of this change, when big companies pay marketers to work to continue to get us to do this for free?

Third, and even more anti-humanistic, is this idea of "you can't fight the digital snooping, so you might as well join it." That mix of neoliberalism, libertarianism in drag, and outright antihumanism is some mix of depressing and disgusting.

Jaron Lanier just went way, way down in my book. Beyond the libertarianism and the antihumanism, the naivete level is just incredible.

He uses the word "hypercapitalism" in his Salon interview, yet is naive enough to believe that hypercapitalistic companies, especially those focusing on the "infowars" I've blogged about before, are actually going to give you and I a "cut."

I simply don't get how someone who has certainly in the past given such indications of brilliance can be that naive, or more bluntly, that dumb.

But, that's not all.

Lanier titled one of his previous books, "You Are Not a Gadget."

However, his ideas on how much we should commodify ourselves in the Internet world sure make it sound like he's done a 180 on the thesis of that book. Because, one way of reading that commodification idea is that Lanier is now saying we should just shrug our shoulders, accept defeat, and make ourselves into cybergadgets.

Finally, per this Smithsonian piece, it's arguable that Lanier isn't as much of an outsider/rebel on these issues as he makes himself out to be. I think he's generally done a very good job on diagnosing the problems, but his solutions are just all wrong. Maybe Morozov's worries about "solutionism" aren't all wrong.

==

Update, Nov. 12, 2017: Lanier has a new memoir out, and a Guardian review indicates that maybe he's softened a bit on some of these issues, but probably not a lot.