Bad Science or Bad Journalism? Both?

Two recent articles raised my hackles. First this one on the closing of the only coal carbon capture plant in the US. The only person quoted in the article is a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. Why not a representative from NRG Energy who actually owns the plant? Not even saying NRG declined comment for this article was a red flag to me. Carbon Captured has been around for decades but the reporter here seems to connect it only to the Trump Administration mentioning Trump twice in the article.

The article says NRG took the plant offline after a "crash in oil prices." It's a coal plant not an oil refinery but whatever. With Biden in office oil prices have skyrocketed. According to the reporter's logic - wouldn't this be a great incentive for NRG to reopen the plant? I have more questions after reading the stupid article then if I never saw it.

The second article was: Long-term study reveals harm in regular cannabis use. A click-bate headline if ever there was one. "Regular cannabis use has harmful effects regardless of the age a person starts using, a University of Queensland-led study has found." It was this bit that really bugged me, "Compared to non-users, regular cannabis users were more likely to engage in high-risk alcohol consumption, smoke tobacco, use other illicit drugs and not be in a relationship at age 35." 

The article doesn't bother to define "high-risk alcohol consumption." And no mention is made about which habit started first. My guess is most people in the study probably started drinking or smoking cigarettes first then got into pot. I'm not trying to defend or promote regular cannabis usage but the slipshod nature of the article bugged me. It would have been more correct to simply say "study shows people with multiple bad habits are less likely to be in a relationship at age 35."  To which the average person would say, "Well Duh!"

Good Advice

Matt Taibbi on GameStop

 "This is for You Dad": Matt Taibbi's interview with an anonymous GameStop investor. Well worth your time. 

It really does feel as though CNBC is a participant in market manipulation for the rich. These hedge fund guys go on air and it's like they're trying to spook the herd in the direction of their trades. They tell everyone to get out when they're short, and once all the meat is off the bone, they go long, just in time for the recovery. They get to call the top and the bottom of the market. It's totally fucked.

The bailout and the pandemic just exposed how there are different sets of rules, not just for different types of investors,but for different types of businesses. Your favorite sandwich shop? Closed. If you've got 200 of those sandwich shops? Open.

The sentiment behind the GameStop situation is not going away. And GameStop stock as I type this is at $63.77 a share. Seems like many are still holding the line. 

Matt Taibi has a follow-up article to the above and it is also well worth your time.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Whenever I read "Huawei technology" my mind always reads it as "Nortel's technology" because that's where they stole it. I can't believe Canadians aren't more pissed off at China for ruining one of their biggest employers and the biggest technology company in the country...  Kept reading this story thinking it would make a great Ben Affleck movie (almost tailor-made sequel to The Town). Of course Patriots fans know Vladimir Putin is the greatest Super Bowl ring thief in history... Such a good prank - I want those stickers... And just like that - nobody was talking about Jeffrey Epstein anymore... THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!... Good luck with your Super Bowl squares today. I don't have a rooting interest in today's game but I would like to see a lot of points (if you know what I'm saying). It would be cool to see Tom Brady get his seventh Super Bowl ring though (and for Cameron Brate to catch more then 4 passes and for the coin flip to come up heads)... 

Budweiser Upside-Down Clown

 

 Still my favorite Super Bowl commercial. Only ran once because it was so disturbing.

Top 5 - Movies I Re-Watch

Inspired by this list - here are the Top 5 movies I re-watch (in order of preference -meaning if given a choice I'd choose the higher ranked movie).

1. Casablanca

2. The Quiet Man

3. The Thin Man

4. Slapshot

5. The Godfather

Just missing the list Avengers Endgame. The Harry Potter movies don't make the list because I now prefer to re-read the books much more than re-watch the movies.

What's the movie you'd re-watch the most?

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Lunik: Inside the CIA's audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite. Long but fascinating heist story.  (HT DaddyPundit)

- Not happy that I've had to take the phrase "circle back" out of my vocabulary

- Wrestling coaches strip in protest. Amusing video about a match at the 2016 Olympics that I had never seen before. (HT Tim Ferris)

- This is true

- The Thirty Tyrants: The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta. Today's must read article. (HT Execupundit) 

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

American Greenland would be a good name for an alternative history novel where Trump won his second term... Reminder of how much of a blue collar hero Bruce Springsteen is... Has it ever been proved that Ted Cruz isn't the Zodiac Killer? I mean he must have an alibi - right?... If something annoys or irritates you it can be said that it "raised your hackles" but what the hell are "hackles?" (Technically those are the hairs on the back of your neck.)... Biden cancels Elon Musk's adventures in space. Musk moved his businesses from California to Texas because of state bureaucratic meddling. How much of a public relations nightmare would it be for the Biden Administration if Musk moved his SpaceX operations to Mexico or some other cooperative nation for similar reasons?...  Donald Trump resigns from SAG-AFTRA. Good for him. The union is tone deaf to the problems their membership are going though. I don't think they understand how much his letter may resonate with disgruntled union members who will ask themselves "Why am I paying dues to this organization?"... 

Compounding and Taxes

 

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

Americans are very unsatisfied at the moment.  Not exactly a "Morning in America" type feeling.

As an aside - Devo's cover of Satisfaction is one of my favorite covers of all-time.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- VDH: When (or if) comes the pushback? 

- Morgan Housel: Unfortunate investing traits

- Talk about fuzzy math - Minnesota's budget forecast projects $641 million surplus. But "the 2021-23 budget has gone from balanced to a $1.273 billion deficit." How can you have a surplus and a deficit at the same time?

- Glenn Reynolds: Why are the Democrats so scared of Donald Trump when they just defeated him?

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Any endeavor has unintended consequences. Any ill-conceived endeavor has more." - Stephen Tobolowsky  

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."- Richard Feynman

"Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." - Steve Jobs

 "Never start a sentence you don't know how to finish." - Paul Dirac 

"Is it wrong to gamble, or only to lose?" - Sky Masterson (Guys and Dolls)

"The virus here is government - or at least the incompetents who advise our rulers and cannot admit the legitimacy of distension."  - David Mamet

Truth

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Senator Rand Paul slams the idea of biological males competing with females. Excellent questions at the end - where are the feminists on this? Where are those who supported the original purpose of Title IX? How come they are not speaking out?

- Couldn't agree more. (HT Stephen Landry)

- The importance of being prepared.

- The problem with experts. "Our experts have become clerics."

The WWE and the Executive Order

President Joe Biden's Executive Order allowing biological males to compete against females should be taken to absurd lengths to show how misguided it is. And by absurd lengths - I am of course talking about professional wrestling.

At one time I was a wrestling fan but that was back in the day of Rowdy Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant and a young Hulk Hogan. I have no idea of who the wrestling stars are today but I am aware that women's wrestling has become somewhat of a big thing.

Why wouldn't Vince McMahon use this Executive Order as an almost ready made story-line? You could have a disgruntled, not talented enough, not strong enough wrestler who can't compete with the top tier of male wrestlers and who is simply just a nameless opponent to be beaten by his peers night after night. This not good-enough to compete against other biological males uses the Executive Order to fight against and beat biological females. He could even carry a copy of the Executive Order and shove it in the face of any critic or person who tries to bar his path.

This "gal" could wear a sports bra and make-up and become one of the biggest "heels" in wrestling history. Insert preferred pronoun here would pummel women in the ring while the male and female wrestlers (and audience) seethe. It would make great TV. You could have male wrestlers work as managers for female wrestlers and while the female in the ring distracts the referee - the male manager could choke out this latest reincarnation of Gorgeous George. 

Of course the Social Justice Warriors would have a fit about the whole thing but what exactly would be the problem? This would just be a dramatization of what female high school and college athletes would be facing in real life.

The whole thing could build week after week until it culminates with the biological male getting a shot at the Women's Championship Belt at Wrestlemania! Tell me that wouldn't sell tickets. Vince McMahon make it happen!

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Back in November I was paying $2.09 for a gallon of gas. Today I paid $2.59 a gallon. Elections have consequences... Well you can't argue with this logic... They say the Reddit/GameStop situation is fueled in large part by people using their last stimulus checks to buy the stock. I can't help but wonder if this is true - how crazy would things be if the stimulus check was $2,000 instead of $600?... Pesticide Executives would be a good name for a band... It still blows my mind that the Patriots led Super Bowl LI vs the Falcons for ZERO minutes and still won... Obesity in the US may in fact be traced back to the phrase "Go big or go home"... 

Perspective

Via
 

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO. Andy Jassy from AWS to take over. I found it interesting that AWS seems to be the big dog in the company now.

- Nice summary of the GameStop situation as of last Friday

- Businessman plans first all-civilian SpaceX flight to benefit Saint Jude's. Looking forward to seeing the commercial about the mission on Super Bowl Sunday. 

- Speaking of Amazon - The relentless Jeff Bezos. A good look at how Amazon got to this point.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes that I hope may resonate with you.

"It is not philosophy we are after, but the behavior of real things." - Richard Feynman

"There's only one standard of justice in the field of economics: the verdict of a free market." - Ayn Rand

"Very little is needed to make a happy life." - Marcus Aurelius Antonius

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves." - Alan Watts

"The more serious you take yourself, the unhappier you're going to be." - Naval Ravikant

"Love your country, but never trust its government." - Robert Heinlein

Farnam Street Knowledge

- Getting Ahead by Being Inefficient

- How Not to Be Stupid

- The High Price of Mistrust