(Camera unknown)
Somewhere in Florence. What other country would have so many scooters in one place?
Monday 28 September 2020
Thursday 24 September 2020
Never Attribute to Conspiracy What You Can Assign to Stupidity, Ambition, or Cowardice
The problem is that the alternative narratives are mostly conspiracy theories, and in some cases pretty batty ones. Now I like a good conspiracy theory, and a good one is plausible.
One of my favourites is 'bureaucratic cover-up'. If you have ever worked in a bureaucracy, you will know that there is no need for anyone to arrange a cover-up of a cock-up. The people involved do it as automatically as they would arrange a working group to to delay a decision.
Combine the cock-up theory of history with the need of politicians and other members of the Establishment to maintain their position and privileges (and that's another motive no-one even needs to discuss), and you have a powerful explanatory tool.
The only reason we were in the shameful position of having a Prime Minister threatening his electorate with the Army is because of a half-robust broadband internet network in the towns and the wide availability of reasonably capable laptops. In 2000, there would have been no thought of sending people home to work, nor, I suspect would there have been in 2010.
Almost the entire Covid farce follows from the availability of high-speed broadband and laptops.
The rest follows from the fact that while politicians always were a bunch of morally-flawed people with latent personality disorders, once upon a time, even as recently as the 1970's, some of them were capable people with moral flaws and latent personality disorders. Now none of them are capable. Capable people can make much more money in other jobs, without needing to stain themselves with politics. Or university teaching. Or working in local or national government. There are no Civil Servants as capable as Sir Humphrey, though many may be as smug.
Have the sheer nerve to make those judgements out loud, and the need for elaborate conspiracy disappears. A converse of Asimov's Rule might be: any sufficiently stupid group action or decision is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.
If you stop thinking that the world is being run by smart people with stable personalities, and malign ambitions and flawed morals, then you don't need a conspiracy. Never attribute to conspiracy what you can assign to stupidity, ambition, or cowardice.
Whitty and Vallance don't say the things they say because they are conspiring to create Project Fear. Whitty's experience is with contagious diseases in Africa, which will lead him to think of zebras when he hears the sound of hooves, and Vallance comes from the pharmaceutical industry and wants a silver-bullet cure for everything. The man who caused the panic, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, has never seen a virus he didn't think that culling thousands wouldn't stop. All three of them are willing patsies.
The truth is that the UK Cabinet could not stand the pressure from the press, and the peer-pressure from other governments who had already locked down. Weak-ass bitches.
It is fairly scary to think you live in a world run by dumb, often malicious, people with personality disorders. Even though the current situation has made it fairly clear that many of the Democrat politicians and elected officials in the USA are all of those things.
Over here, Nicola Sturgeon needs some quality time with a psychiatrist, Boris Johnson needs a while with a therapist, and Matt Hancock needs to grow the **** up? None of them understand that their job is not to tell us what to do. Their job is to oversee the large companies, and the institutions and organisations of the State, and stop them from cheating and swindling us. Oh and there's something about secure borders and putting the interests of the UK electorate before any other country's electorate. But I'm just old-fashioned, I guess.
One of my favourites is 'bureaucratic cover-up'. If you have ever worked in a bureaucracy, you will know that there is no need for anyone to arrange a cover-up of a cock-up. The people involved do it as automatically as they would arrange a working group to to delay a decision.
Combine the cock-up theory of history with the need of politicians and other members of the Establishment to maintain their position and privileges (and that's another motive no-one even needs to discuss), and you have a powerful explanatory tool.
The only reason we were in the shameful position of having a Prime Minister threatening his electorate with the Army is because of a half-robust broadband internet network in the towns and the wide availability of reasonably capable laptops. In 2000, there would have been no thought of sending people home to work, nor, I suspect would there have been in 2010.
Almost the entire Covid farce follows from the availability of high-speed broadband and laptops.
The rest follows from the fact that while politicians always were a bunch of morally-flawed people with latent personality disorders, once upon a time, even as recently as the 1970's, some of them were capable people with moral flaws and latent personality disorders. Now none of them are capable. Capable people can make much more money in other jobs, without needing to stain themselves with politics. Or university teaching. Or working in local or national government. There are no Civil Servants as capable as Sir Humphrey, though many may be as smug.
Have the sheer nerve to make those judgements out loud, and the need for elaborate conspiracy disappears. A converse of Asimov's Rule might be: any sufficiently stupid group action or decision is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.
If you stop thinking that the world is being run by smart people with stable personalities, and malign ambitions and flawed morals, then you don't need a conspiracy. Never attribute to conspiracy what you can assign to stupidity, ambition, or cowardice.
Whitty and Vallance don't say the things they say because they are conspiring to create Project Fear. Whitty's experience is with contagious diseases in Africa, which will lead him to think of zebras when he hears the sound of hooves, and Vallance comes from the pharmaceutical industry and wants a silver-bullet cure for everything. The man who caused the panic, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, has never seen a virus he didn't think that culling thousands wouldn't stop. All three of them are willing patsies.
The truth is that the UK Cabinet could not stand the pressure from the press, and the peer-pressure from other governments who had already locked down. Weak-ass bitches.
It is fairly scary to think you live in a world run by dumb, often malicious, people with personality disorders. Even though the current situation has made it fairly clear that many of the Democrat politicians and elected officials in the USA are all of those things.
Over here, Nicola Sturgeon needs some quality time with a psychiatrist, Boris Johnson needs a while with a therapist, and Matt Hancock needs to grow the **** up? None of them understand that their job is not to tell us what to do. Their job is to oversee the large companies, and the institutions and organisations of the State, and stop them from cheating and swindling us. Oh and there's something about secure borders and putting the interests of the UK electorate before any other country's electorate. But I'm just old-fashioned, I guess.
Monday 21 September 2020
Photographs I'm Printing (24)
(Olympus OM10 ?)
Sometime when I was working in Covent Garden for an obscure Finnish telco. London snow is wonderful while it is falling for the first time.
Monday 14 September 2020
Thursday 10 September 2020
The Consumer Economy Has Recovered...
I spent a while at work developing some MI to show how the consumer is doing. After a lot of experiment, I wound up with:
Personal loans taken split by credit risk
Personal loans taken split by credit risk
Savings deposits and withdrawals <£1,000
Month-end current account balances
Credit transactions (income, basically) by category in current accounts
Spending by category through current accounts and credit cards
All compared to the same month in 2019. The first three run as a time series. The graph shows if people are doing more or less of whatever it is.
Why these metrics?
Personal loans are a significant decision and commitment. You're not going to take one if you're feeling insecure about your future. What I found was that the best-risk customers were borrowing as much as they were a year ago, but the worse-risk customers were borrowing less. A lot less. My estimate is that 40% of the population don't feel secure.
Savings deposits or withdrawals tell us about how much cash people have spare or need. Withdrawals fell a lot in the lockdown, but are returning to last year's levels. Deposits are up slightly: the longer-distance London commuters are saving a lot, but there aren't that many of them, compared to the size of the workforce, most of whom do not have as much to save.
Current account balances at month-end tell you if people have enough money to get by. Overdrafts are down on last year, credit balances are up slightly.
Now sit down.
Income and spending are at the same levels as they were last year.
I told you to sit down.
Yes, 1.2m people have lost their jobs and are claiming benefit. My data shows me the share I expect to see. Yes, in July around 4m people were getting 80% of their salary on furlough. These things are hitting the lower-paid more. The net effect of them losing income, but getting benefits, and of pay rises on last year for the remaining 80% of the working population still in full-time employment, is about zero.
Spending is at about the same level. How can that be when The Ledbury has closed and no-one can fly anywhere? Those activities have a high profile - at least for elite London-based journalists - but are a very small proportion of the economy - and again, mostly employ lower-paid workers. The bulk of most people's spending is non-discretionary: food, water, gas, electric, council tax, landline, mobile, insurance, petrol, road tax and the rest. Of discretionary spending, people have been doing DIY, buying furniture, or upgrading TV's, signing up for streaming services and spending more in supermarkets. Less spending in high street shops, more via mail order. Winners and losers in a zero-sum game.
That recovery everyone thinks is going to happen?
It happened. This is it. Same money, different consumption. That's how consumerism rolls.
What this tells us is that, faced with disruptive nonsense, people will attempt to lead the best lives they can within the restrictions. That's why everyone who was working in over-crowded hot-desk offices went home in a flash. Or why people on furlough did DIY or really did learn to play the piano.
And local high streets, and smaller commuter towns, with cafes and family restaurants are doing well.
All compared to the same month in 2019. The first three run as a time series. The graph shows if people are doing more or less of whatever it is.
Why these metrics?
Personal loans are a significant decision and commitment. You're not going to take one if you're feeling insecure about your future. What I found was that the best-risk customers were borrowing as much as they were a year ago, but the worse-risk customers were borrowing less. A lot less. My estimate is that 40% of the population don't feel secure.
Savings deposits or withdrawals tell us about how much cash people have spare or need. Withdrawals fell a lot in the lockdown, but are returning to last year's levels. Deposits are up slightly: the longer-distance London commuters are saving a lot, but there aren't that many of them, compared to the size of the workforce, most of whom do not have as much to save.
Current account balances at month-end tell you if people have enough money to get by. Overdrafts are down on last year, credit balances are up slightly.
Now sit down.
Income and spending are at the same levels as they were last year.
I told you to sit down.
Yes, 1.2m people have lost their jobs and are claiming benefit. My data shows me the share I expect to see. Yes, in July around 4m people were getting 80% of their salary on furlough. These things are hitting the lower-paid more. The net effect of them losing income, but getting benefits, and of pay rises on last year for the remaining 80% of the working population still in full-time employment, is about zero.
Spending is at about the same level. How can that be when The Ledbury has closed and no-one can fly anywhere? Those activities have a high profile - at least for elite London-based journalists - but are a very small proportion of the economy - and again, mostly employ lower-paid workers. The bulk of most people's spending is non-discretionary: food, water, gas, electric, council tax, landline, mobile, insurance, petrol, road tax and the rest. Of discretionary spending, people have been doing DIY, buying furniture, or upgrading TV's, signing up for streaming services and spending more in supermarkets. Less spending in high street shops, more via mail order. Winners and losers in a zero-sum game.
That recovery everyone thinks is going to happen?
It happened. This is it. Same money, different consumption. That's how consumerism rolls.
What this tells us is that, faced with disruptive nonsense, people will attempt to lead the best lives they can within the restrictions. That's why everyone who was working in over-crowded hot-desk offices went home in a flash. Or why people on furlough did DIY or really did learn to play the piano.
And local high streets, and smaller commuter towns, with cafes and family restaurants are doing well.
Monday 7 September 2020
Thursday 3 September 2020
Making My Hi-Fi Sound Better
Before you read this, let me tell you a story about how a simple mod made the picture on my TV so much better. It made the colours brighter, all the shapes become more defined, a haziness vanished from the screen, the blacks get blacker and the contrast became more pronounced. The experience of watching was more absorbing, thrilling and involving.
Spoken like a true hi-fi reviewer. What's the mod?
I drew the curtains. Which in anyone's house will make all those things happen, if the TV screen is in a room with a window.
So not snake-oil then.
My speakers used to be above my height on bookshelves, about eight feet apart, and about six inches from the wall. Nothing around them. The sound was good, but could get overwhelming quickly on turning up the volume, and orchestral symphonies were often a bit of a mush. Also, sitting on the couch about ten feet away and half-way between the speakers, the sound would seem to come predominantly from the right-hand speaker, and on some recordings, more from a triangle between the speaker and the right-hand side wall (!), than from between the speakers. The left speaker never felt like it was involved in producing sound: it was just there. I would notice this especially after I had been writing for a while.
Then the venerable Paul McGowan of PS Audio said something that had me leaping off my sofa. If you really are going to put your speakers on a bookshelf, so they are near the back wall, put books around them to act as baffles.
Oh. Because I thought I shouldn't do that. But if Paul McGowan says so, and John Darko quotes him with respect, maybe I should give it a try. What can I lose?
So I put books round my speakers, and, um, well, the sound changed. It felt less harsh in the treble and more contained. Less bounce off the back wall I guess. But the music was still veering to the right.
Then I saw a video by Hans Beekhuysen in which he said that the speakers should be at ear height. So I stared at the shelves again and figured out how to do that. And I moved the speakers in so they had books on either side of them. Those changes made another difference. That mythical stereo sound stage between the speakers would appear now and again, only to wander away when I started concentrating. The sound was more contained and much less splashy, since the speakers were now surrounded by books to the side and shelves above them, cutting down a lot of leakage. I could play the music louder without getting confusion and harshness.
It's a small room, by the way. And there are French windows behind the couch, so the sound can bounce straight back off the glass. Yes, I know. One step at a time.
Saturday morning, I'm still noticing the sound veering to the right. By now a number of thoughts are occurring to me:
Maybe a lot of lower-cost orchestral recordings were not made with an ear to the stereo sound stage? (1)
Maybe it's my hearing? Who said my ears worked equally? (2)
Maybe the amplifier favours the right channel? (3)
Maybe working takes away the brain-cycles needed to process sound into a stereo picture? (4)
Maybe it's time to abandon Source Direct and use the balance and tone controls like a normal person? (5)
The tone controls on the Marantz PM6003 don't make a lot of difference: the bass doesn't suddenly boom, or the treble hiss, if you turn either up high. It's more like some of the weight goes out of the sound when turning that bass down, and some of the edge goes off the treble when turning that down. I skewed the balance WAY OVER TO THE LEFT.
At last. The sound stays where it should be, in the middle. It now feels like the left speaker is doing something.
Except, I then discovered from another Paul McGowan video, that the sound should not feel as if it is coming from the speakers. It should seem to be coming from somewhere in the middle, which is what the `sound stage' idea is all about. The speakers should be there, but the music should be elsewhere.
So I turned the balance back to neutral and sat in a chair to make an equilateral triangle with the speakers, shut my eyes and listened to the music. The orchestra was in the middle. The sound was coming from between the speakers, rather than from the speakers. As it should be.
But the moment I started working, the orchestra shuffled over to the right while I was looking at the screen. I looked up: there they were, and the right speaker was in the middle of the orchestra. Which is actually what I had been experiencing.
It's definitely me. I'd say it makes sense. The sound comes from the speakers and the brain translates it into music and makes it seem to be coming from the space between the speakers. That's a reasonable amount of processing: think about how hard you have to concentrate to hear where a sound is coming from when you have no visual cues. So when I take a whole load of processing capacity to write some of the things I do, it's maybe not surprising that my audio processing gets a little sloppy.
Hefting the balance to the left cancels out that `processing drift'. If I'm listening in full attention mode, which I would do more on headphones, then I would put the balance back to neutral.
Maybe a lot of the hi-fi stuff about speaker placement and room set-up is the same as drawing the curtains. Maybe the sound from the right speaker is bouncing off the table in front of it? Who knows? That's what the balance control is for. It works. Who cares if it's not the purest hi-fi practice? I have a decent stereo sound image and a tighter sound that I can crank up the volume on without it turning into mush.
Which is what I want.
(1) I think that is definitely true. I'm not convinced that sound design in classical music is as good as in pop/rock/dance, or even if they've heard of it. After all, if you're sitting at the back of the Festival Hall, you're really getting mono sound. In posh churches, the choir doesn't even face the audience, but sings across the aisle to each other.
(2) When I use headphones or in-ears, I don't notice a skew to the right. Just a wonderful all-over stereo sound-stage. So I think my ears are okay.
(3) You would think they tested for that.
(4) Possible, if not actually plausible.
(5) Because I fell for the whole real-audiophiles-use-Source-Direct thing. Which is a conceit that assumes all your kit is electrically and sonically transparent. And anyway, who says the source CD / music file was mixed properly? DJ's adjust the EQ to suit the mood (or at least they say they do). Using Source Direct is like trusting the chef to add the right amount of salt and seasoning. The chefs who can be trusted to do that make very expensive food. Eating what I can afford, I'll taste-and-add, thank you.
Spoken like a true hi-fi reviewer. What's the mod?
I drew the curtains. Which in anyone's house will make all those things happen, if the TV screen is in a room with a window.
So not snake-oil then.
My speakers used to be above my height on bookshelves, about eight feet apart, and about six inches from the wall. Nothing around them. The sound was good, but could get overwhelming quickly on turning up the volume, and orchestral symphonies were often a bit of a mush. Also, sitting on the couch about ten feet away and half-way between the speakers, the sound would seem to come predominantly from the right-hand speaker, and on some recordings, more from a triangle between the speaker and the right-hand side wall (!), than from between the speakers. The left speaker never felt like it was involved in producing sound: it was just there. I would notice this especially after I had been writing for a while.
Then the venerable Paul McGowan of PS Audio said something that had me leaping off my sofa. If you really are going to put your speakers on a bookshelf, so they are near the back wall, put books around them to act as baffles.
Oh. Because I thought I shouldn't do that. But if Paul McGowan says so, and John Darko quotes him with respect, maybe I should give it a try. What can I lose?
So I put books round my speakers, and, um, well, the sound changed. It felt less harsh in the treble and more contained. Less bounce off the back wall I guess. But the music was still veering to the right.
Then I saw a video by Hans Beekhuysen in which he said that the speakers should be at ear height. So I stared at the shelves again and figured out how to do that. And I moved the speakers in so they had books on either side of them. Those changes made another difference. That mythical stereo sound stage between the speakers would appear now and again, only to wander away when I started concentrating. The sound was more contained and much less splashy, since the speakers were now surrounded by books to the side and shelves above them, cutting down a lot of leakage. I could play the music louder without getting confusion and harshness.
It's a small room, by the way. And there are French windows behind the couch, so the sound can bounce straight back off the glass. Yes, I know. One step at a time.
Saturday morning, I'm still noticing the sound veering to the right. By now a number of thoughts are occurring to me:
Maybe a lot of lower-cost orchestral recordings were not made with an ear to the stereo sound stage? (1)
Maybe it's my hearing? Who said my ears worked equally? (2)
Maybe the amplifier favours the right channel? (3)
Maybe working takes away the brain-cycles needed to process sound into a stereo picture? (4)
Maybe it's time to abandon Source Direct and use the balance and tone controls like a normal person? (5)
The tone controls on the Marantz PM6003 don't make a lot of difference: the bass doesn't suddenly boom, or the treble hiss, if you turn either up high. It's more like some of the weight goes out of the sound when turning that bass down, and some of the edge goes off the treble when turning that down. I skewed the balance WAY OVER TO THE LEFT.
At last. The sound stays where it should be, in the middle. It now feels like the left speaker is doing something.
Except, I then discovered from another Paul McGowan video, that the sound should not feel as if it is coming from the speakers. It should seem to be coming from somewhere in the middle, which is what the `sound stage' idea is all about. The speakers should be there, but the music should be elsewhere.
So I turned the balance back to neutral and sat in a chair to make an equilateral triangle with the speakers, shut my eyes and listened to the music. The orchestra was in the middle. The sound was coming from between the speakers, rather than from the speakers. As it should be.
But the moment I started working, the orchestra shuffled over to the right while I was looking at the screen. I looked up: there they were, and the right speaker was in the middle of the orchestra. Which is actually what I had been experiencing.
It's definitely me. I'd say it makes sense. The sound comes from the speakers and the brain translates it into music and makes it seem to be coming from the space between the speakers. That's a reasonable amount of processing: think about how hard you have to concentrate to hear where a sound is coming from when you have no visual cues. So when I take a whole load of processing capacity to write some of the things I do, it's maybe not surprising that my audio processing gets a little sloppy.
Hefting the balance to the left cancels out that `processing drift'. If I'm listening in full attention mode, which I would do more on headphones, then I would put the balance back to neutral.
Maybe a lot of the hi-fi stuff about speaker placement and room set-up is the same as drawing the curtains. Maybe the sound from the right speaker is bouncing off the table in front of it? Who knows? That's what the balance control is for. It works. Who cares if it's not the purest hi-fi practice? I have a decent stereo sound image and a tighter sound that I can crank up the volume on without it turning into mush.
Which is what I want.
(1) I think that is definitely true. I'm not convinced that sound design in classical music is as good as in pop/rock/dance, or even if they've heard of it. After all, if you're sitting at the back of the Festival Hall, you're really getting mono sound. In posh churches, the choir doesn't even face the audience, but sings across the aisle to each other.
(2) When I use headphones or in-ears, I don't notice a skew to the right. Just a wonderful all-over stereo sound-stage. So I think my ears are okay.
(3) You would think they tested for that.
(4) Possible, if not actually plausible.
(5) Because I fell for the whole real-audiophiles-use-Source-Direct thing. Which is a conceit that assumes all your kit is electrically and sonically transparent. And anyway, who says the source CD / music file was mixed properly? DJ's adjust the EQ to suit the mood (or at least they say they do). Using Source Direct is like trusting the chef to add the right amount of salt and seasoning. The chefs who can be trusted to do that make very expensive food. Eating what I can afford, I'll taste-and-add, thank you.
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