— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 29, 2024
Kahneman was a genius not only at formulating original insights into human behavior but at explaining them in a way that’s interesting and understandable to the non-expert.
I can’t recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow highly enough. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read.
RIP Daniel Kahneman
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 24, 2024
What Justice Jackson said to raise eyebrows was “Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods.”
Correct! One clear goal of the First Amendment is to hamstring the federal government from doing what it would like to do: control our speech. I would have expected a Supreme Court justice to have learned this in law school, not in on-the-job training.
Justice Jackson went on to say, “The government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country . . . by encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” she said.
There’s always a euphemism handy for “information the government doesn’t want you to know,” e.g., “misinformation” “disinformation,” “harmful information,” etc. We can’t have freedom of speech! It’s too dangerous!
As a thought experiment, if you had to select one person to decide what you can or can’t read, who would that person be? They also get to decide, regarding information transmitted audibly, what you can or can’t hear. Any information this person deems to be inaccurate or harmful or dangerous will be inaccessible to you.
Do you trust anyone that much? I don’t.
That’s what the First Amendment says (among other things), that the federal government is not to be trusted to censor information or control the speech of the citizens.
This movie probably doesn’t deserve the whole five stars but I have a real affinity for characters like Emily (played by Aubrey Plaza), who, like the Mark Baum and Vinny characters in The Big Short, are people with a code of honor, a sense of awareness, not looking for trouble, but not willing to put up with insolence or nonsense.
To give you a sense of what I mean — and this may need a very minor spoiler alert — a group of criminals has stolen a significant amount from Emily’s boyfriend (also a criminal but less physical than the other criminals) and she’s making a case that they should go and get it back because, among other reasons, the boyfriend owes her a cut of what was stolen.
The boyfriend is against the idea. “These are very serious people,” he says.
Emily replies, “No, no, we’re serious people. Ok? Motherfuckers will just keep taking from you and taking from you until you make the goddamn rules yourself. That’s what this is about. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?”
I say no.
John Patton Ford, in a first-time writer-director effort, keeps things moving. And I like the L.A. locations for a sense of authenticity.
Rating: 
Emily the Criminal
Down on her luck and saddled with debt, Emily gets involved in a credit card scam that pulls her into the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, ultimately leading to deadly consequences.Director: John Patton Ford
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Bernardo Badillo
IMDb rating: 6.7 (66628 votes)
‘This Is Shocking’: Some Democrats Demand CNN Apologize, Denounce Alleged ‘Islamaphobia’ Made Against Ilhan Omar https://t.co/PkDdBuwt6f via @dailycaller
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 16, 2024
It is shocking! I haven’t been as shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe.
I think Democrats really do believe that the role of corporate media in general and CNN in particular is to serve as a public relations arm of the Democratic party. A journalist taking an adversarial position vis-a-vis a Democratic representative should not be allowed to have a job.
What CNN commentator Scott Jennings said is that Ilhan Omar is a “public relations agent for Hamas living in the United States Congress.”
To me, that’s a pretty good one-liner, no better or worse than political barbs I read every day. All the people that I see complaining about the remark are people who’ve called Donald Trump Hitler, Satan, a fascist, a racist, a white supremacist, a dictator, etc., for the last eight years. If you want to dish it out, you’ve got to be able to take it.
You could make what I think is an excellent case that Jennings’ remark was not based on “Islamophobia” but on things that Rep. Omar has said, including that she is “Somali first, Muslim second” (where does “American” rank?) and that she is “here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the U.S. system.”
She also falsely pushed Hamas propaganda by claiming Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The U.S. intelligence assessment was that the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket. While she didn’t retract her original remarks, she did subsequently say that it’s important to ensure that information comes from credible sources.
I’m glad that neither Ilhan Omar, nor any of the people defending her, is my congressional representative. What a bunch of crybabies. I want a freedom fighter.
My connection with the events depicted in The Big Short is that I worked in the information technology department of a mortgage bank in the run-up to the 2007 implosion of the subprime mortgage market. Many of the big players in that market, like New Century and Countrywide, were based here in my backyard — in Orange County and Pasadena.
Given that it was fairly evident at the time that complicated financial instruments were being dreamed up for the sole purpose of lending money to people who could never repay it, it’s remarkable that very few people foresaw the catastrophe and that even fewer actually had the nerve to bet on it to happen.
Long story short, the major rating agencies — Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s — were incompetent in their rating of subprime mortgage bonds, giving investment-grade and, in some cases, triple-A ratings to high-risk instruments. A lot of people took the ratings — which implied that subprime mortgage derivatives were no riskier than U.S. Treasury bonds — at face value and acted accordingly.
What is amazing is not just that people are greedy and prone to engage in ethically questionable activities; the big lesson is how people can reach unimaginable positions of power and essentially be (a) incompetent, and (b) not willing to do even the most mundane and trivial parts of their job.
The only less-than-positive thing I can say about the movie is that the Christian Bale and Steve Carrell characters are so compelling that when neither of them is on screen and you’ve got either Brad Pitt or Ryan Gosling — nothing against them personally but their characters aren’t interesting — the momentum flags.
The director is Adam McKay, best known as the director of a bunch of unfunny Will Ferrell movies (yes, that’s redundant), including Step Brothers, which Roger Ebert described as “a sign of the end of Western civilization.” How he was offered this movie I do not know but he does a capable job.
A couple of important points that I think were brought out better in Michael Lewis’s book:
What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they can get rich making dumb decisions?
Rating: 
The Big Short
In 2006-2007 a group of investors bet against the United States mortgage market. In their research, they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is.Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling
IMDb rating: 7.6 (532875 votes)
Biden Expresses Regret for Calling Laken Riley’s Alleged Killer ‘an Illegal’ https://t.co/McWvsZB68h
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 11, 2024
There’s so much about this that I don’t like. He doesn’t express regret for an immigration policy that allows people to enter the country illegally and to stay in the country even after being arrested for multiple crimes. He doesn’t express regret for a young woman being murdered as a result of that policy. There’s no moral equivalence between word games and murder. It’s beyond contemptible.
Anyone who thinks it’s important to tell people how to speak, what words they can and can’t use, is a person to be ignored and shunned. As a free citizen, I’ll speak the way I want to.
Biden was given a secure border and instructions on how to keep it secure. He issued close to 100 executive orders undoing everything the previous administration had done. I can’t say this for sure, but under the policies in place when Biden took office, I don’t believe the alleged killer would have been in the country, and Laken Riley would be alive.
A person who ignores a murder while apologizing for maybe hurting the murderer’s feelings by calling him what he is. . . it’s hard to marshal enough contempt for someone like that.
Happy International Women’s Day 2024! (Belated — I meant to post this yesterday.)
So many girls and women who’ve been a joy to work with as students, colleagues, teachers, mentors. I wish I could relive every moment with you. If you think you may be in that group, you probably are. If you’re not sure, message me and I’ll tell you. 🙂
I think I remember women better because there haven’t been as many of them. I work in software engineering. Women are underrepresented in software engineering. You may have heard.
Women and men are different so it doesn’t seem surprising that they choose to do different things with their lives.
Software engineering has been a good career for me because I like solving problems and building things, so I’ve been able to make a living doing, for the most part, things that I like and things that (I think) I’m good at.
On the flip side, I’ve also spent most of my life sitting alone in a room or cubicle staring at a computer screen. Not everyone wants to do that. So there are pros and cons just like any other job.
Having said this, if you’re a woman and you want to be a software engineer, do it! Do it because you love it! You may have heard that software engineering is not a welcoming profession for women. That is false. It’s a knowledge-based profession. If you know more than the other person and you can solve problems that they can’t solve, you are the queen of the programming jungle.
And as Holden Caulfield used to say, “I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while.”
You may have heard that male software engineers behave boorishly. In what profession do men not behave boorishly? Yes, I’ve seen bad things happen to female engineers: missing out on raises or promotions, not getting the project they really wanted, losing their job. All that stuff happens to men too. It’s happened to me. I’ve been out of work plenty of times and I’m as manly as you can get.
Enjoy your day. Follow your dreams.
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 10, 2024
I took a digital SAT recently. I’ve got a BA in Journalism and an MS in Computer Science, so I’m very well-rounded, like a sphere. I eat standardized tests for breakfast.
The English portion, or Reading or whatever they call it now, seems much easier to me. I got 800 (out of 800) on that. There’s no more “read a column and a half of text, then answer 10 questions about it.” You read a paragraph, answer one question and move on.
There are no more analogies. There are no obscure vocabulary words.
Math is still math, although as noted in the story, if you’re getting a lot of answers right, then they start serving you harder questions. I got 780 on the Math portion.
TL;DR: It’s an easy test. I got an almost perfect score and believe me, kids, I’ve been out of high school a long time.
Paid tutoring available on request. Maybe free if I like you.
You probably haven’t seen this. Or heard of it. It was funded by a Kickstarter campaign, released on iTunes, then later on Netflix.
The synopsis should note that it’s a neo-noir. Some of the marketing materials make it look like a Murder, She Wrote crime caper. It isn’t. It’s dark.
I just sat staring at the screen for several minutes after it ended.
Rating:
Man from Reno
A mystery outside of San Francisco brings together small-town sheriff Paul Del Moral, Japanese author Aki Akahori, and a traveler from Reno who soon disappears, leaving behind his suitcase and a trail of questions.
Director: Dave Boyle
Cast: Ayako Fujitani, Pepe Serna, Kazuki Kitamura
IMDb rating: 6.6 (2279 votes)
I can’t believe I’ve lived as long as I have without knowing this, but the United States has two primary ways of measuring the nation’s crime rate: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
I’ve always thought that the FBI UCR was the definitive word on crime stats. If you’ve got the UCR data, that’s it. Game over.
Not true!
The data above are a year old, but you can see that 2022 UCR data shows a drop in the violent crime rate, while NCVS data shows that total violent crime rose in 2022.
The FBI’s UCR statistics reflect crimes reported by the public to police. But most crimes are not reported to the police. To help account for the omissions, the NCVS measures crime in a nationwide household survey of respondents ages 12 and over. The NCVS data include both crimes that were reported to the police and those that were not.
Approximately 52% of serious violent crimes were reported to the police in 2021 and 48% in 2022.
I found out about the NCVS when I was doing some research on crime stats in the U.S. I hear some people (Democrats) claim that crime rates are down but that doesn’t map accurately to the world I see with my own eyes. The news always has plenty of violent crime stories, smash-and-grab robberies, etc. People are moving out of cities to get away from crime. Companies are closing stores in high-crime areas because they can’t make money and they can’t keep employees safe. Stores like Walgreens and CVS are keeping even relatively inexpensive items in locked cases so you have to ask someone to unlock them if you want to make a purchase.
And yet I’m told that crime rates are down. Not a problem. So now I see that you can cite the FBI UCR stats, which everyone does, and present what appears to be a rosy picture that’s totally out of sync with reality.
I laughed non-stop through Dumb Money, except during the parts that weren’t intended to be funny.
I had to take off a star because (minor spoiler alert, since the movie’s based on a true story that everyone knows) it’s a David vs. Goliath movie, and the Goliaths get their comeuppance, but that’s conveyed principally through explanatory text on the screen after the movie is essentially over.
The comeuppance should be on-screen! Show, don’t tell!
Rating: 
Dumb Money
A regular guy sinks his life savings into the stock of videogame store GameStop and starts posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up and a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich, until the billionaires fig...Director: Craig Gillespie
Cast: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio
IMDb rating: 6.8 (61296 votes)
Men and women's brains do work differently, scientists discover for first time https://t.co/UBU6miq2R2
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 7, 2024
In a breakthrough study from Stanford University, scientists have discovered — FOR THE FIRST TIME — that men’s and women’s brains work differently!
I know what you’re thinking: What year am I in? Men’s and women’s brains work differently?! I feel like any adult who’s ever been in a straight relationship could write a Ph.D. thesis on this topic.
I was explaining to a woman today that I lost a fairly small object that I’m sure I had in my car, but after searching the car top to bottom multiple times, I couldn’t find it.
And she said: “Did you look under the seat?”
I was gobsmacked. “No,” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s probably where it is.”
Another woman nearby, who’d overheard the part about scouring my car several times for a lost object, said “I bet I could find it. Did you look under the seat?”
That’s how the female brain works.
No one with a male brain would ever listen to someone tell a story about searching their car multiple times for a lost object and then say “Did you try looking under the seat?”
Research by the Institute for Family Studies shows 35% of married dads report being “very happy,” while only 14% of unmarried and childless men can say the same. “The data tells us that no group of men are happier than married fathers.”
Actually, it looks like the data are telling us that no men are happy, but married fathers are slightly less miserable than the norm.
There’s a new book out called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I haven’t read it but it did give me an idea for a fun drinking game. Every time you hear the phrase “threat to democracy” or a variant thereof between now and the presidential election, you take a drink. The downside is you’ll be dead long before November and you’ll never find out who gets elected.
The authors of the book were interviewed on MSNBC this past week. One of the authors, Tom Schaller, said this:
“First of all, [white rural voters] are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay demographic in the country. Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third: anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech, they’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally. . . . they’re also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalist. And fourth: they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”
This fellow is a professor of something-or-other but he sounds like every other partisan hack who doesn’t care about anything but electing Democrats. The way they talk to and about rural voters is amazing, and then they need to read a book to figure out why rural voters are enraged?
Republicans should be paying this guy but no, he’s doing it for free! Play clips from this interview in every swing state from now to November.
I’ll let you work through the lies, omissions and logical fallacies of Schaller’s statement yourself — it’s not hard — but I’ll give you a head start on the “most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant” point.
Because another thing happened this past week: there was a Democratic primary in Michigan, which Joe Biden won easily because he has no opponent.
But he did lose in three cities to “Uncommitted.” In one of those cities, Dearborn, “Uncommitted” won 57-40. These three cities are home to a large Arab-American and Muslim community, who have been clear that they have a problem voting for a candidate who is selling F-16 fighter jets to be used to murder their family members.
Now as soon as a Muslim or Arab-American even contemplates the possibility of not doing what they’re told and voting for the Democratic candidate, the masks come off and you see the real face of the Maddow watchers and Pelosi lovers.
Twitter reactions included: “I’ll be waving goodbye when they are all shipped out, back to their mother country. Good riddance.” Or “When Trump gets re-elected, let’s all enjoy watching these people get shuttled into death camps.”
I may not have the quotes exactly from memory but I assure you I’ve captured the kind of racial condescension and hatred that Democrats love to pretend that they don’t have for minority groups.
If you’re a member of a minority group that they think they own, the minute you step out of line, you will never see hatred and bigotry unleashed on you of the kind that American liberals unleash.
That’s my rebuttal to white rural voters being the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant demographic in the country. As I said, you can work through the rest of the claims on your own. It’s easy, fish in a barrel.
I just read another LinkedIn post from a person who lost her job and wanted to say farewell to colleagues. I’ve read a lot of posts like this. Probably you have as well. This one was the last straw. I’ve begun to feel like I’m watching something terrible happening right in front of me without saying anything about it.
My dad graduated from the Naval Academy, served his country, got his first civilian job and worked at that company his entire life. It wasn’t uncommon for men of that generation to work their whole career at one company.
It’s not possible that those companies never had a bad quarter or a bad year, but they managed downturns without layoffs. Workers weren’t acquired and disposed of like potted plants.
This was before human dignity was replaced by managerial elites with no interest in the development, prosperity, security, freedom or well-being of their employees.
I have managed people and had to let a couple people go, not for financial reasons but because they really weren’t contributing anything. I guess I can say in my defense that I was not the person who hired them.
I was asked to let another person go. I hadn’t hired her either. This person was a pleasure to have around, did her best with every assignment, and I couldn’t let her go so I quit. I don’t mention that to aggrandize myself but to emphasize that I think there’s something really wrong with the way I’m seeing employees being treated.
Remember the law of the sea: The captain goes down with the ship. When the captain starts throwing people overboard, something is really wrong.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Thanks to loopholes in the Trump tax cuts, the biggest companies in the country have been able to avoid more than $276 billion in federal taxes. This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 2, 2024
A lot of professors use the X platform to thoughtfully engage with the issues of the day. This guy uses it to regurgitate DNC talking points in ways that don’t even make sense. And yet I actually feel embarrassed for him.
The recently released 2024 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation, reveals that, regrettably, the global average score for economic freedom has fallen from the previous year’s 59.3 and is now the lowest it has been since 2001, at only 58.6.
Singapore maintained its status as the world’s freest economy, followed by Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan.
To our credit, the United States has an above-average score of 70.1. The bad news is that’s the lowest score ever for the U.S. in the 30-year history of the index. The U.S. is now the world’s 25th-freest economy. Apparently the Biden administration’s lack of commitment to the rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency and market openness is corroding our economic freedom.
North Korea has a commanding grip on last place in the index, with a score of 2.9. No other country is even close. Cuba posted the second worst score of 25.7.
