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Ellen DeGeneres returns to standup with a Netflix schedule. Maybe she did run a toxic workplace, but she seems self-aware and witty here.
She describes a set full of laughter, fun and games (like the game of tag she started around 2016 that lasted until the show ended). "We played tag, and I would chase people down the hallways. I would chase them all around the studio, and I would scare them all the time. I would jump out, and I would scare people 'cause I love to do that -- and you know, hearing myself say this out loud, I realize I was chasing my employees and terrorizing them. I can see where that would be misinterpreted," she says.
Bosses are firing Gen Z grads just months after hiring them.
I admit I clicked on this clickbait headline. Most of the article turned out to be the usual folderol about how the Young People Nowadays are lazy and sloppy and don't want to work. Same thing that was said about Millennials, GenX, Boomers and every other generation going back to ancient Greece.
The bottom of the article talks about the importance of having a good attitude in the workplace when you are in your 20s. Very true—I had a bad attitude in my 20s, spent much of my 30s unlearning that, and sabotaged my career because of it.
Now I'm working on not being that older worker who ... well, who acts like he believes the kinds of stereotypes promulgated in this article.
In Canto 20 of Inferno, Dante confronts a pit where the sinners have had their heads twisted around backwards; they trudge, naked and weeping, through puddles of cooling tears. Virgil informs him that these are the fortunetellers, who tried to look forwards in life and now must look backwards forever.
In a completely unrelated subject, how about those election pollsters, huh?
— Cory Doctorow
In a century of history, we see a new pollster predicting elections with uncanny accuracy a few times, and then failing spectacularly, followed by another polling star repeating the cycle. And the failed pollster has an excuse. For example, after Nate Silver called the 2016 election for Clinton, he backpedaled by saying that he was actually right because he gave Trump a 28% chance of winning.
My $.02: All Silver was saying was that Trump might win. How is that in any way useful?
Allow me to call the 2024 election, based on my polling: Trump might win this one. So might Harris. Also, one or both of them might exit the race (death, disability, etc.)
Related: I regularly see headlines quoting someone who called the last nine (or whatever) Presidential elections, touting their prediction for this one. But tens of thousands of people publicly predict every election. Sheer luck will give one or more of them a perfect record. For a while.
Cory:
When it comes to serious political deliberation, questions like "who is likely to vote" and "what does 'undecided' mean" are a lot less important than, "what are the candidates promising to do?" and "what are the candidates likely to do?"
But -- as Perlstein writes -- the only kind of election journalism that is consistently, adequately funded is poll coverage. As a 1949 critic put it, this isn't the "pulse of democracy," it's "its baby talk."