CSotD: Welcome to the new New
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This is the way the world ends, BC suggests: Not with a splash, but a trickle.
Note that they adjust a few meters at a time. It would make more sense to say "five kilometers" but comics aren't required to make sense and, unfortunately, neither is reality, or, at least, not the portion of reality that is in the hands of people.
A few seawalls, a little re-sculpting of shoreline, that'll do. No need to panic, just edge your way up the beach.
I think I've mentioned this before, but there are people in the deltas of Bangladesh who basically live halfway up to their shins in water because that's how it is there now. And some Pacific Islands have disappeared.
But none of them can vote and they'd better damn well not expect to come here and try.
And New York was already Democratic, so that whole "superstorm" thing didn't change anyone's thinking, though Gov Christie did have the poor judgment to welcome federal aid for his neighboring state's portion of the damage.
He has been working to bridge that gaffe ever since.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I've been trying to pinpoint how much of my issues with miniaturization are practical and how much is just me being an old fart who can't adjust to new technology.
We got a couch once that would beep early each afternoon, and, since it was not a hi-tech couch in any other regard, we figured something odd was up.
The problem was, the beeping would stop about the time we'd get close enough to explore, but, finally, it started beeping while one of the boys was sitting there. He dove in and fished out a wristwatch that had apparently gotten snagged as the thing was being assembled.
Which I mention because, if the worker who lost the watch hadn't set a daily alarm, we'd have never found it. And as MP3 players got smaller and smaller, the odds of them chirping up to tell you where they were got no greater than if they had been the pack of gum than which they were now smaller.
Now you can get tracking chips to attach to your keys and other often-forgotten objects, but the chips are sometimes larger than the piece they are tracking, so, if miniaturization was the point, you just dulled it.
In any case, this earbuds thing seems to be hitting a "now just hold on a minute" point with consumers and I don't feel so bad.
Maybe it's like printers, where they don't expect to make any money on the machine but rather on the ink. Maybe Apple is banking on replacement earbuds to turn their iPhone operations profitable.
Anyway, if I get a smartphone of some sort, it'll be a Galaxy. That way, not only will I be able to keep track of my ear buds but, if the phone gets lost in the couch cushions, I'll find it when it starts to smolder.
The watch in the couch was just a cheap Casio, so we didn't feel too bad about the poor schlump who had probably gone four or five couches down the line before he realized it was gone. I don't think guys who assemble cheap furniture wear Rolex watches, and Jeff Stahler makes a good comment on President-in-Not-Even-Waiting Trump's promises to the working class.
Stahler's not the first to note that automation has eliminated more jobs than offshoring, but there's another issue, which is that the "good" jobs are disappearing and if there were a way to get an order of burgers and fries from Malaysia to the USA while they were still acceptably warm, we'd lose those jobs, too.
One of the trolleries that has abounded since the Carrier deal is that, since these workers will pay taxes, bribing the company with tax incentives makes good sense. This seems to be at odds with the promise of tax cuts for the middle class, but my guess is that those workers won't be in the middle class, so we're okay, I guess.
Or perhaps Trump supporters will demand that the minimum wage be raised in order to make sure more workers are in fact paying taxes, because, for trickle down to go from Fanatical Rightwing Dogmatism to a Functioning Economic Theory, they are going to have to have enough disposable income to cover their rent and food as well as to sock some away in those special accounts that will pay for all their medical care once we've eliminated Obamacare and cut Medicare.
Autoworkers will be quitting in droves to go flip burgers and make some real money!
The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be on YouTube, according to Clyde, and that may be the most encouraging thought of the day.
Those whining about stupid people who voted for Trump should take a deep breath and then read what their fellow intelligent, well-educated allies are posting on Facebook. Clyde isn't the least informed amongst us.
They keep wanting Obama, for instance, to step in and halt the pipeline, to which my response has been, "And what good will that do, after January 20?" which never got much of an answer.
Then, this morning, in a discussion of Trump's apparent plan to do away with a lot of national monuments, someone was aghast to learn that executive orders can be countermanded by the next executive. And others were outraged at the revelation.
I also read an analysis of the coming apocalypse that noted that turning things around might require people to get up, walk away from the computer and actually pound some pavement, sign up some voters, promote some corrective legislation and so forth.
Still, when an ill-formed slacker like Clyde offers to keep things stirred up, let him be one of the political burger flippers without whom none of the more skilled work can happen.
Or the brownie-bakers. The revolution needs some of those, too.
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