Tony K's Blog

I have been seeing posts for "normal" people complaining about all the attention Taylor Swift and Kelce have been getting in the press. "We just want football!" they say.  I'm calling bullshit on that. 15-yard penalty and loss of down. There are three major sources of news on Taylor right now. 1. Swifties who are overjoyed that their idol seems to have found happiness. But that's fan magazine crap. You're not seeing that. 2. MAGA politicians and news sources with their breathless conspiracy theories. 3. Blowback from more liberal sources ridiculing the idiotic conspiracy theories and overall meanness of 2. I am pretty certain that the complainers are overwhelmingly fans of source 2. They are unlikely to pay any attention to source 3 at all. On the Chiefs football broadcasts, they spend an average of 25 seconds or so of camera time on Taylor, so that seems unlikely to be an ACTUAL issue. The other issue, of course, is that the fans of source 2 overwhelmin...

Project management processes often show the project progression by moving between the project team to do the work and a meeting with management to allow the project to move on to the next step. One expression for this sinuous depiction is "snaking." You can see the resemblance to a snake in the graphic. This type of process management is typical in Waterfall or Phase Gate processes.  Agile processes have become more common in recent years. They describe an iterative process with rapid testing, feedback, and turnaround. It actually looks quite similar, but rather than taking a few months, it takes a few weeks. Rather than going high on the chain of command, it goes up a level or two. Sometimes there are not phase gates at all, just continuous up and down. This up and down feedback, I am calling "MicroSnaking" or "micro-snaking." I'm the first. I stake my claim. The term is free for all to use. Knock yourself out.

The lightning strike was close by. We could see that it had hit one of the boats just down the dock from ours. Phew. It wasn't a direct hit we said from the dry comfort of a nearby restaurant. But things happened. In the days after the strike, several electronic systems on the boat were not working properly. Autopilot was out and the sound system was sketchy, Wind instruments worked intermittently. VHF radio worked, but could not read the GPS signal. The helm digital displays (IS40) worked intermittently. Although pretty competent with computers and networks generally, I had never done any work with a boat network. Work was busy, so we had the boat dealer's mechanic take a look at it.  His conclusion was that there was a problem with the chart plotter. We weren't really interested in buying a new chart plotter, but if that was the problem...  On the word of the mechanic, we were able to get a partial refund under warranty from Simrad. We even upgraded to the next size chart...

Tucker Carlson demonstrates once again that he is a hack . He is first, claiming that Democrats are saying Trump deserved to catch COVID, which may be true in some cases, but in a very limited way. Then he says this is like blaming a woman who dresses provocatively for being raped. Victim blaming is a difficult subject because two things can be true at the same time. The woman dressed provocatively, walking in a bad neighborhood is being foolish or naive at best. At the same time, many other people walk in that neighborhood all the time, there are laws that punish people who assault others, and there are police patrolling the street.  A presumption of safety is naive, but our human and societal values say that she SHOULD be safe to walk in that neighborhood. Now look at COVID. We have been warned for months of the imprudence of not distancing and using a mask. We would like to be able to assume that we can do otherwise, but COVID is not human. It doesn't follow human laws. NOr can ...

The FBI, CIA, NSA, the special counsel, and the Republican-controlled senate have all stated that Russia meddled in our elections in 2016 to benefit Trump. They all agree that the Russians are at it again. On top of it, the intelligence community is unanimous that white supremacist terror groups pose a clear danger. So logically, supporters of the president have re-evaluated their position and decided to vote American. Uh uh. Instead, the president is focusing on a group of African Americans with a clear grievance. Who held protests after a horrific murder as being enemies of the state and planning a coup. This is the same president who tried to sow fear about caravans of brown people invading our nation. He claimed it was such a dire threat that he called out the military. Of course, there was no threat, but you believed him. If you believed the invasion was real, and you believe that BLM is a dangerous insurrection movement, you are choosing to believe the single man, who surrounded ...

I have alienated most of my right-leaning friends, now I’ll work on the other side. I’m a bipartisan kind of guy.   Let’s talk climate change, specifically wildfire. We all agree that for wildfires to burn hot, spread, and be destructive you need to have fuel as well as generally warm and dry conditions. This is why there are seldom wildfires in the desert. Although conditions are hot and dry, there is little fuel, because it is hot and dry. The fuel needed for a wildfire never reaches a critical mass. So let’s look at the recent fires in California. People make a case that they are driven by climate change/global warming. I believe there is some truth in that. The August lightning storms that came through California were unusual. I have never seen that kind of weather in summer in California. Of course, if you attribute a weather event to climate change, it is disingenuous to say that other weather events are only weather—such as unseasonable snowstorms. If you do, you have an unf...

Several weeks ago the CDC announced some new COVID statistics. They said that of all the 190k or so COVID deaths only 9500 did not ha e co-morbidities. The Trump administration and apologists have jumped on this claiming that COVID is a hoax and that Trump did great, etc. The first obvious issue has to do with death attribution. Let’s say some dude has a heart attack calls an ambulance and dies after they reach the emergency room. They do their post-Mortem stuff and discover that he also had controlled diabetes. What did he die of? Of course a heart attack. The apologists are effectively claiming it wasn’t the heart attack. Get over it. "Hospitals are slapping COVID onto as many cases as they can so they can make more money" is another thing I’m still hearing. First, is this actually a thing? Do hospitals get extra for treating COVID? Second, doing so is a crime. It’s called fraud. The poor sucker who writes COVID on the car crams victim death certificate has committed a crim...

Some thoughts about war strategy in Clash of Clans Clan wars pit an equal number of players from two teams against each other over 24 hours. Each player may attack twice--once on two different players. For an attack, a player may be awarded 0, 1, 2, or 3 stars. 0. When the player neither beats the town hall nor achieves 50% damage. 1. When the attacker either beats the town hall or achieves 50% damage. 2. When the attacker destroys the town hall and achieves over 50% damage, but not total annihilation. 3. Total destruction of the defender. A team gets points only for the max stars achieved against each defender. So if one player gets two stars and the next attacker gets 1 star on the same player, the team is awarded 2 stars. For descriptive purposes, when I talk about player 1 it is the most powerful person on a team. Higher numbers are progressively weaker players. Strategy During War Given this structure, it is possible for only the top half of the players to attack ...

Ranked Choice (RC) vs Instant Runoff (IRV) vs Approval RC and IRV are technically different. RC is a way of expressing preference, IRV is a method of tabulating votes from RC ballots. This is an important distinction. IRV, which seems pretty good can solve one problem (e.g. Gore v Bush) but introduce others. Technically IRV is nonmonotonic. That is, a shift of public opinion toward a candidate can cause that candidate to lose, and a shift of public opinion away from a candidate can cause that candidate to win. A different and probably superior method is one called Condorcet. It eliminates most of the IRV issues but introduces a few other, but less likely, issues. IRV is to Condorcet as single elimination is to round robin. Superior to both of them is Approval voting, in which you select all candidates that would be acceptable to you. It’s simple to tabulate and does not have the issues of either IRV or Condorcet. There’s a  website that has wonderful graphics of how the...

I'm hopefully about four years away from retirement. I have a good salary and, looking out to 2023, I think I'm in good shape overall. There will be three main sources of funding for the retirement years. 1. Wife's and my 401ks and IRAs 2. A lump sum retirement contribution from my employer 3. Social Security 1 and 2 are about equal right now, 3 is a fixed future monthly payment. The stock market has been hot since the crash of 2008. The Dow is now around 25,000. How much higher will it go? Is it going to crash? Would it be wise to transfer some funds from stocks into cash or bonds? My first thought was Yes, of course! But, I did a little digging on this and one piece of advice was that people approaching retirement should have a couple years worth of cash in their accounts so they don't have to sell stocks in a down market. That makes a lot of sense, I have seen literature that shows how a stock market decline immediately following retirement can demolish ret...

What trump is doing. Two things: He is fanning the flames of division, essentially betting that if his base, approximately half of the electorate has enough fear and motivation, they will vote him in. He is not trying to cross any divide or reach across the aisle. He is attempting to rule by getting a slim plurality to hate and fear the other half. He is succeeding. He is treating the US as a “majority rules” system, which we are to some extent, but that is not the fundamental principle of America. We are grounded by a constitution founded on the rule of law. Our greatest hope is that some portion of those that support trump today realize what he is doing and how it is undermining our nation. I read an article recently that questioned how people could be loyal to trump, when he shows no loyalty towards them. Interesting perspective. It made me think though back to some of the management training or reading I have done over the years. Specifically the PIC-NIC f...

Sea-level has undeniably been rising for the last 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. In the 130 years from 1870 to 2000, global sea level rose by about 200 mm. That’s 8 inches. This works out to about 1.5 mm/yr. Between 1950 (when the anthropogenic signature begins) and 2000, sea level rose about 75 mm (3 inches). That’s a pretty decent historical record.   A simple linear extrapolation of this trend gets you to 125 mm by 2100. That is an additional 5 inches or so. I’m not saying that is a good estimate of what will happen, but it’s probably a good starting point. In my view, it is probably towards the low end of what we would expect to see in the next 80 years. In a bay with 6-foot swings in tide twice daily, 5 inches is not going to change anything. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/ According to satellite data since 1993, the rate is about double the historical rate. If that trend were to continue, sea level will be another 10 inches abov...

I recently wrote a post as a thought experiment —Hypothesis Trump is moral and ethical. In a nutshell, that hypothesis is disproven. Some people read my headline and assumed that I am pro-Trump. I am not. I have never believed that Trump is a good person. His actions in the White House have demonstrated that enriching himself and his family is a high priority of his administration. At the same time, I know I live in an echo chamber that accentuates the negatives about Trump, and seldom presents different possibilities. In my view, the possibility existed that most of Trump's accomplishments had been relatively harmless signals to his constituency. Many people believe that Trump has caused a lot of damage tot he country (including reputational), despite lack of significant progress, and I get that. I think that until now, most of the damage has been easily reversible. I selected this issue as the litmus test, because there was pretty widespread belief among economists and l...

Background: The tax bill recently passed by Congress will have two results: benefits will go down for the majority of Americans and taxes will go up for the majority of Americans. Donald Trump and his family are in a position in which they will overwhelmingly benefit. They do not need most of the benefits, and DT's inheritance taxes alone will decrease by $4 billion . His family will also benefit enormously from the change in the pass-through rate. I am assuming that he pays taxes in the US at all, which based on the one tax return he made public is the case. It is fair to assume that the Trump family will benefit by more than $5 billion personally overt he next 10 years or so. Hypothesis: Donald Trump, as president of the United States is in a position to approve or veto a bill that will benefit him more than 99.99% of his constituents. Human beings all have a self-serving bias, and ethically and morally aware adults realize this. As a result, if Donald Trump is ethically and mo...

There is a lot of talk from the republicans about how the tax cut on business will flow down to workers. Let's be clear about this though. The initial impact will be to increase profits to businesses. The tax shortfall has to be made up from somewhere else, either reduction in spending (mainly from programs for the poor), or from increases on others (aiming at blue state tax deductibility). Wages are set based on the local labor market. Any belief that a tax cut will result in higher labor rate is irrational. There is an argument that lower taxes will result in more investment, but this takes years, and may not actually happen. By the way, taxes on US businesses are among the lowest in the world already. Yes, the statutory rates are higher, but there are many deductions and dodges allowed. And ultimately, if we are to have programs that protect us and the poorest and least fortunate members of society, it has to be paid for. Ultimately, that means taxes. We all pay for it in ...

I wrote this in October of 2016. I had no idea how prescient it would be.   Trumps greedy long game - Trumps' heirs would receive at least $4 billion benefit at the expense of the US taxpayer   Donald's 1995 tax return was recently released. It's interesting that he had a tax loss of almost $1 billion in that year, but that, along with tax deductions, is business. Really nothing to see there. But it got me thinking.   The tax system is complex for businesses. One of the features is that it allows businesses to recognize depreciation of assets. Most governments do this in some form to encourage investment. If you invest $1,000 on an asset that is allowed to depreciate over 10 years, you can subtract $100 per year from your income each year for the next 10, until the tax value goes to zero. This reflects the value from a tax perspective, not the actual value.   If you then sell the asset for $50, you then owe taxes on $50 (sales value mi...

I see three concerns about voter "irregularities": vote fraud, obstruction at the polls, and disenfranchisement through manipulating laws and rules. Vote Fraud Hey, I'm from Chicago where "vote early and often" is more than a slogan, it's a career path. If you believe the mythology, this is mostly democrats. This is cheating, and it is illegal. It undermines our democracy by overrepresenting a point of view. It should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is little evidence that this happens regularly at a large scale. The good news with this one is that everyone still has a voice; the bad news is that widespread abuse could dilute and overwhelm those voices and the process. Obstruction and Intimidation at the Polls This is bad. Trump's call to his followers to get out to the polls is troublesome. If they keep it under control and do not attempt to intimidate or obstruct, that's ok. I believe that there i...

The tax system is complex for businesses. One of the features is that it allows businesses to recognize depreciation of assets. Most governments do this in some form to encourage investment. If you spend $1,000 for an asset that is allowed to tax depreciate over 10 years, you can subtract $100 per year from your income each year for the next 10, until the tax value goes to zero. So you pay less in normal taxes at your tax rate. This reflects the value from a tax perspective, not the actual market value. To emphasize, virtually all governments allow this recovery of costs on an accelerated basis to encourage investment. If you then sell the asset for $50, you owe taxes on the $50 (sales value minus depreciated value of zero). Likewise, if you can get $1,200 for the asset, you would owe tax on the full $1,200. Equipment and machinery tend to go down in market value over time and with use, whereas historically, property appreciates. Even then, the gain is taxed at the lower ...

http://www.youtube-mp3.org/  seems to be out of order This one is working... https://www.youtube2mp3.cc/ Converting the sound from YouTubes into mp3s. Free!

I voted for Obama's re-election. He is not an evil Kenyan, Muslim, socialist. He is not a crazy spendthrift. Nor do I think he is the second coming. I believe he had some solid, very strategic victories in his first term that are and will be good for the country. Really if you look at what Obama actually did, he is pretty much in the same camp as some of those crazy herd-line right wingers like Goldwater, Nixon, Romney, and Reagan. I want to lay out my logic and reasoning for myself on why I think this was the right thing. It will be fun to look back 4 or 10 years from now at this. I also want to thank those whose views are different tlhan mine who have respectfully engaged around issues using facts and logic. The issues we face are not simple and are not solvable by sound bites and cynicism. There is tremendous depth of knowledge, thought, and understanding required. Romney I believe that if you separated Mitt Romney from the party system, he would be s...