joined Parler

I've decided to give Parler a try. I'd heard about it for the last few months. I'd been on Twitter since 2011.

I signed up recently. It's been fun there so far. At the time of this writing I have zero followers on Parler, lol.

Parler does some things well. The site is a bit glitchy at times, so was Twitter in the earlier days, and through to today for that matter. What they are trying to build is a hard problem. On Parler a tweet is called a Parley, and a retweet is called an Echo. One of those good to know things.

Dilbert is there yay. some other unpersons who I used to enjoy following on Twitter before they mysteriously vanished are over on Parler. so it's a bit of a reunion. hopefully I've joined Parler during the fun time, the good time, while it lasts. I can remember when there was good time on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter too.

Well maybe you will stop by. My Parler username is same as on Twitter, @tookalito.

if the election was stolen

Trump was well ahead and pulling away in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then count updates ceased. Then we're told counting had been stopped and would resume the next day.

The next day awake to hear that overnight, despite counting being supposedly "stopped", still they had all "flipped" through the dark of night over to Biden.

And so it goes. It is what it is. Joe did brag during the campaign that he had the greatest voter fraud organization ever created.

I'm inclined to take him at his word. There's some appearance that they pulled it off for Joe. That's what it could be seen as.

So where to from here for the deplorables

So this election could usher in effective one-party rule in America, under the Democratic Party.

In the three boxes progression, this is where things are now at then
the ballot box
the jury box
the cartridge box

I don't expect rioting or violence in the near term from the chumps. That's the Antifa way. The deplorables are builders, not destroyers. There's no real history of it among the Trump supporters. There may be some more quiet or passive, personal type resistance. Less volunteerism, less civic participation, pessimism, cynicism, tuning out, more openness to at least listen to perhaps less mainstream solutions. But as long as paycheques (mostly comparable to the Trump era for most), social security and medicare keep flowing; then it may be the continued ongoing decline of certain demographics, after the renewed vigour of the Trump era. fewer children, declining life expectancy, opioids and alcoholism, declining standard of living, failed relationships.

So what could this new era look like. One-party or similar rule is hardly new to democracy.

In Japan the Liberal Democratic Party LDP

has almost continuously been in power since its foundation in 1955—a period called the 1955 System—with the exception of a period between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012

Japan has done pretty well for itself during that time. I somewhat remember the 1993 turfing out of the LDP, though I didn't realize how quickly they were back in office.

In Russia the Soviet Union Communist Party ruled for about 70 years. Back in junior high in the early 1980s I remember a teacher insisted that the Soviet Union had democracy, despite "elections" only containing one option on the ballots. She said that within the Party, there was competition and democracy/voting to advance into leadership positions. So the "democracy" happened within the Communist party, which was of course tightly integrated with the leadership and management of the Soviet State.

In modern Germany it is a duopoly, a modified form of one-party. After each proportional representation election, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats form a governing coalition. The only thing that may change from elections is which of them leads.

Germany and Japan are modern prosperous first-world nations. More homogenous, less diverse, both in demographics and geography than the USA today. The Soviet Union was geographically and ethnically diverse, a military superpower, and an economic second-world nation. The Soviet Union failed in 1991.

One thing that I'd expect to see under Democratic Socialism Party USA is more of a move toward international world government, with less national sovereignty. Perhaps a kind of global federalism model, where individual sovereign contries today are more like States or Provinces under an overarching global federal government. It's not yet clear what form this increasing globalism would take or the speed at which it would be implemented.

Hockey cards update

It's been a while since much happened with cards. This year there has been an increase in orders on sportlots for the baseball cards I have listed. It had been pretty quiet there for a while. Maybe with the 2020 pandemic and the lockdowns some people had more time on their hands and were dusting off old sets, trying to finish off o-pee-chee baseball collections from the late 1970s - early 1980s era.

With the recent sales I noticed my balance on sportlots is now over $30. I could cash it out to Paypal, it's over the threshold of $25. Then I thought on Paypal it would just be used for monthly Netflix or some such. So basically it would just be consumed with nothing to show for the baseball cards I'd listed, packed, mailed and sold.

That didn't seem very satisfying. Instead I decided to restart the long delayed hockey cards project. Figure out which sets were close to being complete. List the rest of the cards for other collectors.

It turns out a bit to my surprise the 1980-81 o-pee-chee hockey set was only 5 common cards from being finished all these years. I was able to find them at the local dealer Strictly Singles and finish the set. There are some good cards in that set. The Wayne Gretzky are his second year cards, not the famous and very valuable rookie cards from 1979-80, oh well.

The other hockey sets I'm in the process of listing on sportlots. The sets aren't close to being finished, or in some seasons I just have a small number of cards. 

There is one set I'd originally found in a shoebox of cards I bought for $3 from a yard sale in the early 1980s. The 1973-74 o-pee-chee hockey set is more than half done, about 100 cards from being finished. There are a lot of familiar names in that set from growing up and Hockey Night in Canada. So I think I will put my sportlots credit towards that set.

the Wayne Gretzky second year hockey card. it is worth about 5% of the rookie card

When the music stops in Hollywood

So Harvey Weinstein has been convicted of rape. I was surprised by the verdict. I thought he would be acquitted. Although perhaps tawdry and inconvenient, the encounters were basically transactional. But the jury saw it differently.

The Weinstein victims as a group. They come across as a large number of 30-40-something, former B-C-D-list actresses and models. Asia Argento, Rose McGowan, Ashley Judd, Selma Hayek et. al. Many of them I'd only barely heard of or not at all, don't have wikipedia entries.

There does not seem to be much represenation from those bigger names who still have viable Hollywood careers. Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Watson.

just the number is interesting in a way. wow so many, dozens of them it seems. A marxist might note the reserve army of under-employed, interchangeable models and actresses in New York and Hollywood. It gave the likes of Weinstein a lot of leverage to operate a casting couch. When the number of roles is less than the number of starlets and there is always someone else you can just give the work to.

the whole trial is kind of surreal in a way. the casting couch has been around for a century or more. it is as old as Hollywood. in that sense Weinstein is unlucky. what he did is just what movie moguls have been doing for decades, taking advantage of their position and power. trading access to potential future roles and a Hollywood career, to be part of a scene, for immediate encounters in the present. basically requiring them to put out in order to get in or stay in the game. there's nothing new there.

it reminds me a bit of the rock and roll reckoning with Hedley. something that was formerly accepted, part of the culture, is very suddenly no longer accepted. Weinstein had the bad luck to be partaking at the time the music suddenly stopped. that doesn't make what happened right, or is "unfair" to Weinstein, it's just notable that there is very likely nothing unusual or extreme about Weinstein's actions compared to others in his position for the last century.

perhaps with certain groups of men in certain positions, entertainment executives, star athletes, rock stars, race car drivers, powerful politicians, media celebrities, wealthy players, etc. possibly they are often propositioned or good looking women indicate to make themselves available to them. perhaps they could develop a sense of entitlement or make an assumption about a woman in their presence. perhaps become a bit careless, just assume from being propositioned frequently, seems totally normal in that life perhaps. not a good plan in these times

Glad to see Brad Pitt doing better

So apparently Angelina Jolie is felling better and stronger now enews, metro with a couple of movies coming out.

well isn't that nice. personally, I'm glad to see Brad Pitt doing better after being cleared in FBI abuse investigation.

the whole thing with Brad was dubious from the start. a lie. now he is cleared and it's good. good for him. good in a way for all formerly married men who find themselves facing these sudden abuse allegations after their marriages end.

I got thinking about why Brad was able to win. I came up with these reasons in order of importance

1. resources Brad has vast wealth and was able to hire top notch lawyers, private investigators, PR flacks, etc. he was always able to properly defend himself against false allegations.

2. access to mass media and fair coverage Brad has powerful friends in Hollywood and the mass media. Notice there was no piling on effect on Brad when the allegations came out. Brad was able to ensure the coverage was at least reasonably fair of the allegations. If it came to it, Brad could probably have enabled his own side to get out via a 60 minutes segment, Vanity Fair cover, etc. turns out the correct media strategy (nice to be a be able to afford great publicists per #1 above) was to lay low, let the investigation run its course, be cleared, emerge on top.

3. muscle Brad wasn't going to be intimidated or bullied by FBI or local police goons with their broad shoulders and guns. per #1, Brad can afford his own bodyguards. they have big muscles too, and guns. also with the resources for top legal help, you wouldn't see Brad interrogated for hours with no lawyer present, or his house ransacked with no warrant; at the orders of some maliciously-motivated allegations.

4. willing to fight regular suburban dads in Brad's situation of false allegations often give up. perhaps agree to an extremely unfair and unfavourable divorce settlement, and the abuse allegations disappear as suddenly as they appeared. who can blame them, facing financial ruin, permanent separation from the kids, and even jail. Brad from #1 above had the resources to properly defend himself. with that it may have motivated him to stand and fight and ultimately be vindicated

5. was actually innocent yeah that. the allegations were false and Brad was cleared. I put this at the end intentionally. unfortunately it is a known thing when these allegations come up apropos of divorce, that the guys all too often are unable to properly defend themselves and miscarriage of justice occurs. this time the good guys won.

--

Has there been an investigation into the original false accusation against Brad? where did that start? also if there was some issue why didn't Angelina say anything all those years they were together.

perhaps someone in law enforcement should listen and believe reports that Brad Pitt was falsely accused of abuse. follow up and find the original source of the false allegations. uttering false abuse allegations is itself a crime.

what's sad is that Angelina is the bad parent. she took her kids into a hot war zone to advance her UN career. recklessly endangered their safety, threw her own kids under the bus, for her own personal benefit and aggrandizement. who again was the bad parent in that marriage? yet it was Brad under FBI investigation. funny about that

Price's law and the 80/20 rule

Recently I got thinking about Price's Law and Pareto Principle and if they are compatible or saying the same thing.

I've known about 80/20 for some years, back as far as university. The 50 per cent and square root I'd head of more recently, in the last few months. I was wondering how to reconcile them.

under Price's Law it states

50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

Now under the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle it can be stated as

80% of the work is done by 20% of the total number of people who participate in the work.

I will use these definitions as cited. Though I've found things a bit strange because on some sites I've heard the term Pareto used with square root and half.

So there is overlap between them. The 80% of work under Pareto 80/20 is included in the 50% of work under Price. The Price contributors are a subset of the Pareto contributors.

I got a bit confused thinking about it. I was thinking about cutoff points and in terms of small worker sets. At small sizes it can seem a bit confusing and even contradictory between Pareto and Price.

They overlap twice. Let X be the number of workers. solving for  

sqrt(X) = X/5

0 = X² - 25X

with solutions of X = 0 and X = 25

so X = 0 makes sense. no workers do no work. It was X = 25 that I got stuck on a bit.

At X = 25 under Price, the top 5 people do 50% of the work. However under Pareto 80/20 the top 5 do 80% of the work. So it seems at low sample numbers Price and Pareto don't work quite so well.

The trick is to use larger samples. At larger sizes X/5 dominates sqrt(X), the numbers stabilize and it becomes clearer.

Let's say that the number of units of work done is equal to the number of people. This would match up to say an outsourcing contract where each worker generates 8 billable hours each day. So to the client with 100 contractors from the outsourcing firm they purchase total 100 units of work a day. Now who within the 100 people gets what actual useful work completed is somewhat opaque to the client.

So if X = 100; then under Pareto the top 20 people do 80 units of work, and under Price the top 10 people do 50 units of work. So the 10 Price people average 5 units of work each, and the (20 - 10 = 10) Pareto people do (80 - 50 = 30) units of work, or 3 units of work each. The remaining 80 people do 20 units of work or 0.25 units each.

Now if X=10,000; then under Pareto the top 2,000 people do 8,000 units of work, and under Price the top 100 people do 5,000 units of work. At this 10,000 number (about the size of a company on the NYSE, a phone company, or power utility) the ratio of Pareto to Price people is 1,900:100, or 19:1. The Price people now accomplish 50 units of work each and the Pareto people are still solid contributors at about 1.6 units of work each. The remaining 8,000 are alas invariant at 0.25 units of work each.

So as the population scales, if we accept Price as invariant that sqrt(X) will do 50%, the exceptionals really soar. Still the "solid contributors", the non-Price Pareto people will do 30% of the work, while being essentially 20% of the population, as X/5 - sqrt(X) approaches to X/5 for larger X. So the non-Price Pareto people will approach 1.5 units of work each.

Which is pretty good for the solid contributors. The "remaining 80%", the fungibles will get laid off first. At a ratio of 1.5 units per person to 0.25, the average solid contributor gets 6 times as much done than the average remaining 80 person. So you want to know who the solids are and keep them around.