27 October 2022

Reflux-Inducing Link Sausage Platter

Even more than usually indigestible!

  • So, I hear that there's going to be a Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special with a Special Guest Appearance by Kevin Bacon! Let's see, now… it's a fan-service thing, focusing on noncentral characters, for television, sort-of-between films in the main "continuity" stream. What could possibly go wrong (Bacon Number: 2)?
  • Recent research indicates that ten percent of Americans over 65 may have dementia. Applying this to the current (117th) Congress, and presuming that the subset "power-hungry megalomaniacs successfully elected to the Senate and/or House" is reasonably congruent with the study group, (rounded down) 6 Senators (of 64) and 12 Congresscritters (of 126) suffer from some form of dementia.

    Based on their conduct and general foolishness, I suspect that's a significant underestimate. It is, however, further proof that my generation (and the prior generation) needs to GTFOOTW — because the two critical behaviors that decay first, in virtually every form of dementia, are decisionmaking under (especially time-) pressure and ability to assimilate facts in an unfamiliar context. I can't think of a better description of a representative's very job… well, except for getting elected. So perhaps never mind.

  • And now for consideration of residential apartment rents (a bizarre mixture of Ricardian and non-Ricardian). This sort of thing is bad enough for living spaces (disclosure: former Greystar tenant!), but consider the analogous problem of publishers using secret algorithms to set compensation for authors… on even-less-verifiable data; commercial publishers do not get full access to e-book sales data, and historically have refused to consider library-lending data (indeed, the big commercial publishers all have longstanding in-house practices, often embedded in their preacquisition cost-sales spreadsheets, that rigidly tie anticipated library sales to a logarithmically-decreasing proportion of traditional-channel sales).

    One wonders if this arose in certain discovery (no endorsement of analysis intended). Because if it didn't, somebody screwed up.

  • Which leads into how authors, about a dozen years from now or so if this follows virtually every other change in distribution of the arts since the rise of vinyl records, need to start establishing their merch. At least those authors who expect to make a living solely from/directly related to their writings. Application of this sausage to the preceding sausage is left for those with tenure and waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands.

I can't believe you read the whooooole thing…