VOCABULARY: “Bottleneckers” use the Gooferment to limit choice?

Saturday, April 30, 2022

https://youtu.be/p4yb9SA_z20

Eye Test Innovators vs The Bottleneckers
36,978 views Apr 19, 2022
John Stossel
651K subscribers

*** begin quote ***

Need glasses? Going to an optometrist can be a pain and waste the better part of a day. So a company, Opternative, invented an at-home test.

It’s cheaper and more convenient than traditional eye exams. You just need a cell phone and a computer.
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But the American Optometric Association wants it banned. They say “it poses significant health risks to consumers” because “it relies on new, self-administered tests” rather than “assessment by an eye care professional.”

Is this new eye test dangerous? Or is it a cheap and efficient eye care alternative?

*** end quote ***

Well, when first I heard of it, I thought about my last eye exam.  It was done by an ophthalmologist; not an optometrist.  He scanned my retina. Reminded me to stay on my RX for high blood pressure that he’d detected more than a decade ago.  As well as, noting that my cataracts had not progressed any further. 

So there is a fine point on this.  Although I’m not sure what an “assessment by an eye care professional” would mean if that “professional” is an optometrist?

YMMV, I recommend seeing an ophthalmologist for your annual exam.  It may cost more but it could save your sight and even your life.

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VOCABULARY: “SLUDGE” — the administrivia that make getting things done near-impossible

Friday, March 25, 2022

https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/sludge/

Sludge: How paperwork, wait times, and confusion degrade our well-being

  • Sludge may be inevitable, but there are better ways to manage such frictions in our daily lives.

with Cass Sunstein

*** begin quote ***

As defined by Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, sludge is the amorphous accumulation of daily frictions that separate people from the things that can make their lives easier or better. Think tedious paperwork, long wait times, and bureaucratic procedures to fulfill simple requests. If you’ve ever navigated the layers of an automated answering system to speak with a human representative only to be put on hold for hours listening to public-domain slow jazz, then you know the pains of sludge.

*** end quote ***

Just yesterday, I called Walgreens about an OTC item that ordered on their website.  I had it confirmed then canceled.

I called three times.  Navigated phone choices.  Got a person each time who asked my name and birthdate — despite it wasn’t about a prescription — and they “transferred” me to a number that rang innumerable times then “transferred” me to survey “in order to give you outstanding service”.  Regardless if you took the survey or not, it hung up on you.

So I went to the store — ready for war — a nice lady took my name and birthdate — I have no idea why — and my order number.  She also said that they would fill my order but it would take an hour.

Argh!  So I left to do errands and came back,

New lady.  Took my name and birthdate — Argh! — and had no idea why order was cancelled.  Or why my order wasn’t ready.

Earlier lady returns equally clueless.

Then the pharmacist gets involved.  Also clueless as to why.  (It is an OTC item.)

After another hour, I get my order.  No apologies and no explanations.

SLUDGE in inaction.

Argh!

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VOCABULARY: “Security Theater”

Monday, March 21, 2022

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/why-vaccine-cards-are-so-easily-forged.html

Why Vaccine Cards Are So Easily Forged
Bruce Schneier

*** begin quote ***

Back in 2003, at the height of our collective terrorism panic, I coined the term security theater to describe measures that look like they’re doing something but aren’t.

*** end quote ***

Well, for once, he and I disagree.  The smug cheater getting away with fraudulent documents instills in society that some are above the “rules”.  Like when politicians are unmasked but force everyone else to mask up.  One set of rules for me; another for thee. Doe the smug cheater get to run red lights and put others at mortal risk?

As a little L libertarian, I don’t recognize the Gooferment as having the power to mandate a lot of what it does.  I’m for the “night watchman” government if we have to have one at all.  So, when the Gooferment politicians and bureaucrats promulgate their diktats, I feel free to treat them as “suggestions”.

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” — Robert A. Heinlein

So I stop at red lights and stop signs and expect others to do the same.  Not because the Gooferment has a diktat about it, but it is common sense to cooperate in the real world. 

If a shop keeper feel that masks are need for the well-being of their patrons — even if masks are ineffective and just provide some crazy people psychological comfort — then I’ll either accept their invitation to shop there wearing a mask or go somewhere else. (It’s not my role in society to disturb the peace and preach “any gospel” to the infidels.

Sigh, there are common sense rules that we obey for the benefit of humanity. And, they are way above diktats in moral authority.

But “theater” of any type should be mock, skirted, or just ignored if at all possible.  

(Note: I don’t do bail money. So obey that old knight. “But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.” Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes)

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VOCABULARY: The Streisand Effect

Sunday, March 20, 2022

https://www.mindbounce.com/trivia/the-phenomenon-wherein-trying-to-hide-information-makes-it-more-public-is-known-as/

TRIVIA
Hard

The Phenomenon Wherein Trying To Hide Information Makes It More Public Is Known As?

*** begin quote ***

Back in 2002, photographer Kenneth Adelman undertook a massive project wherein he photographed the California coastline in a series of 12,000 photographs. The purpose of the exercise was to document coastal erosion for the California Coastal Records Project, a government-sanctioned project focused on preserving the state’s massive coastline.

*** and ***

In 2003, when it came to the singer’s attention that her home was displayed on the CCRP’s website, her lawyers drafted a lawsuit and sued the photographer, the site displaying the images (Pictopia.com), and even the server company hosting the actual files (Layer42). The total damages sought were for $50,000,000.

*** and ***

Two years later in 2005, Mike Masnick, CEO and founder of the Techdirt blog, immortalized the whole affair when he wrote:

How long is it going to take before lawyers realize that the simple act of trying to repress something they don’t like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see (like a photo of a urinal in some random beach resort) is now seen by many more people? Let’s call it the Streisand Effect.

*** end quote ***

An interesting addition to the genre of Unintended Consequences?

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VOCABULARY: “The Overton window”

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/overton-window-bitcoin

The Overton Window & Bitcoin
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, FEB 12, 2022 – 09:00 PM
Authored by ‘DON’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

As Bitcoin enters the mainstream conversation, it is becoming increasingly common for politicians to embrace or disparage the technology…

*** begin quote ***

“The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse.

“The term is named after American policy analyst Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.”

*** end quote ***

Can’t stop BITCOIN because it fulfills a basic human need — the ability to save financial wealth from the rapacious of seizure by central Gooferments!

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VOCABULARY: pareidolia

Sunday, February 13, 2022

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2022/02/10/second-life/

pareidolia, our tendency to see significant patterns where none exist.

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VOCABULARY: Thomasson — an object with no purpose

Monday, January 3, 2022

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/12/04/pointlessness-exalted/

Pointlessness Exalted

*** begin quote ***

Artist Akasegawa Genpei took a strange inspiration from this: He defined a “Thomasson” as “an object, part of a building, that was maintained in good condition, but with no purpose, to the point of becoming a work of art.” For example, in Tokyo he’d noticed a well-maintained stairway with a blank wall at its top, and a ticket window that had been boarded up but whose tray had been assiduously permitted still to function.

Akasegawa’s colleague Chikuma Shobo eventually published a whole taxonomy of Thomassons: useless doorways, useless staircases, useless windows, doors to nowhere, senseless signs. Just like art, these items have no purpose in society, but they’re preserved with care, to the point that they seem to be exhibits in themselves. “However, these objects do not appear to have a creator, making them even more art-like than regular art.”

*** end quote ***

An interesting concept.

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VOCABULARY: A ‘brand tax’ on future job searches

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire-talent-fears-career-black-mark-2021-12

*** begin quote ***

Facebook’s reputation is so bad, the company must pay even more now to hire and retain talent. Some are calling it a ‘brand tax’ as tech workers fear a ‘black mark’ on their careers.

*** end quote ***

Like with those who worked at Enron, and their auditors Arthur Andersen, were stained in future job searches.

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VOCABULARY: ‘Typical Rykozhop’ is Russian for Rube Goldberg, or worse

Saturday, November 6, 2021

https://www.boredpanda.com/problematic-design-solutions-typicalrykozhop/

30 Construction Solutions That Don’t Solve Problems, Only Create Them, As Shared By This Instagram Account (New Pics)
Jonas Grinevičius and Mindaugas Balčiauskas
 
*** begin quote *** 
 
Many of us instinctively know whether a design is good and user-friendly or if it’s something clobbered together at the last minute without much thought for aesthetics, the future, or our poor artistic feelings. However, some home design ‘solutions’ are so problematic, they deserve to be named and shamed far and wide.

That’s where the Russian ‘Typical Rykozhop’ project on Instagram comes in. The account documents the most egregious design and construction decisions that would make any design major’s jaw drop (watch some of them faint, too!). Scroll down for the best of the truly worst (or is that the worst of the worst?) and upvote the design solutions that you simply love to hate, dear Pandas.

*** end quote ***

It’s definitely pretty funny to this fat old white guy injineer.  In a few cases, it is hard to figure out what they were trying to accomplish.  And, in one, I was befuddled.

Reminds me when I was working on a new building for a Wall Street datacenter.  Some SVP gave the “baby” electrician aka union apprentice for some trivial thing.  I think the fellow parked in the guy’s “space”; there were no markings or assignments I was aware of.  When the Unions heard about this, they had had enough of the this guy and that was the straw that broke their back.  It wasn’t the first time he’d <past tense synonym for urine output> them off. So they took advantage of a blanket order to work any overtime needed to get the building done ahead of schedule, and that Saturday EVERY TRADE came in to work putting up doors.  They put EVERY DOOR in a nine story building in one day just as it was drawn on the plans by the architect and signed off by everyone in the chain of command.  That Sunday morning, when I came it and did my daily walk thru for site security with my supervisory team, I immediately recognized what had been done.  I got the dubious pleasure of calling my SVP telling him that “I thought” (I knew) EVERY DOOR was installed backward (i.e., the holes were on the hinge side).  Since these were ALL special fire doors, they have to be ordered and remade from scratch. The union’s chief steward suggested that they might want to ask a certain SVP about who could park where and ALL the trades called in sick on Monday.  One of the few times I ever saw the CEO, CFO, and a bunch of other Chiefs was that Monday morning at 7AM walking through the building.  By lunch time, that SVP was fired and, on Tuesday, the doors began to come down very very slowly.  The building was delayed two months.  And, we were all verbally informed don’t mess with the unions.  

Laugh!

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VOCABULARY: Sc3nius is communal genius — magical time-place combinations

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

https://www.notboring.co/p/sc3nius

Sc3nius We’re all gonna make it

To clear up some terms we’ll use here, “scenius” is the concept of communal genius, but we’ll use Scenius with a capital S to describe those magical time-place combinations. Scenius is the proper noun; scenius is the common one. Ancient Greece was a Scenius. The Renaissance was a Scenius. Silicon Valley was a Scenius. (Not Boring)

# – # – # – # – #

Interesting concept and going global due to the web.

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