The Skittles Argument

Here is a bowl of Skittles. If you don't like Skittles, substitute chocolate M&M's.

Hundreds of them.

Help yourself.

Oh. Yes.

Ten are poisoned. Fatal poison.

But dig in. Please. What are the odds?

You won't, of course.

The downside is too great and the upside is fleeting.

It's the reverse of that awful mess that is Pascal's Wager. This is the one where we should believe in God because the upside is infinitely wonderful and the downsides are minor inconveniences. (One flaw in the argument is that the upsides only happen when we are dead, so you have to believe in the after-life as well. Another is that Pascal is assuming that the way the Catholic Church says you should live is the way to heaven, especially the donations-to-the-Church bit. But you're not supposed to point that sort of thing out, as it is considered bad manners.)

There's a whole class of arguments like this. Where one of the choices has penalties or payoffs way over anything we are prepared to risk. Like death or permanent injury or disability.

Some people argue against nuclear power on this basis. Sure the odds of the reactor blowing up are minuscule, but then again, Chernobyl.

The Skittles Argument was recently used by women explaining why they refused to have anything to do with men. Because one might be an abusive ***hole and you can never tell. Until it's too late.

Now it's used by men to explain why they are steering clear of dating and marriage. They don't know if the Skittle is poisoned, but what you do know is that forty per cent of men who pick a Skittle end up paying alimony and child support.

One flaw with using the Skittles Argument is its assumption that we cannot identify the poisoned Skittle. However, people aren't Skittles: very often, we can spot the Poisoned Skittle, and even if we get it wrong, we don't lose much by getting it wrong.

I'll modify that a bit. Very often, a psychologically healthy person can spot a Poisoned Skittle.

Which leaves a lot of people who can't. Because they have faulty calibration and don't know what a Poisoned Skittle looks like (ask me how I know about that). Or because they have faulty goals, which the Bad Boys / Bad Girls meet so well.

A variation of this flaw is assuming that everyone will react to the Poison the same way. Maybe it only affects people with existing conditions, and most regular people will be asymptomatic. Most people with existing conditions know they have them because the Doctor has already told them. There is no test for being asymptomatic, so everyone else has to assume they run a risk of feeling rough for a few days. Which is probably enough to say that even the fabulous taste of Skittles isn't worth the risk of finding out you're symptomatic.

So when what's at stake is everyday contact with everyday Skittles? That's as if we had a bowl of things that looked like Skittles, but most were just gum, and only a few were real Skittles, and who would grab a handful then?

How I'm Going To Use Favourites in Qobuz

My inner teenager interpreted "Favourites" as songs and albums I want to hear again soon, like maybe in an hour and then this afternoon. Which is at least as often as the favourite song of the moment would be played on the radio.

Not being a teenager, I don't listen to music like that anymore. Not even Spinning Around



which I would put on the headphones at work if I needed a pick-me-up before heading off for the gym. Or Money Guns and Lawyers



but I wouldn't call those "Favourites". I'd call those "motivation".

Which meant I was not doing well with finding a use for the functionality.

While thinking that I should be able to use it for something else useful.

One afternoon of now distant memory I was lazing in the shade in the garden, because it was way too hot to be sunbathing, and I was streaming Goldie's The Journey Man Remixes as an experiment. Timeless is one of the great albums of all time, and when I tried his next one back in the day, it was way too dark and Jungle-y. So I never followed up. Three tracks into the The Journey Man Remixes and I knew I would want to hear it again...

...and that's what my Favourites list will be. Songs and albums I want to hear again reasonably soon and would probably have bought on CD if it was back in the days before streaming. It's also going to be albums-I-used-to-have-and-got-rid-of-but-now-want-to-hear-again. Like Duke Ellington's New Orleans Suite. (If you have never really heard the Duke, I suggest giving him a listen. Qobuz has a bunch of his stuff.)

I could go on some sort of Favourites-building binge, but I'd prefer to build it up album by album, which is what I've been doing.

Going Bareface Within The Rules

I cannot wear a mask anymore.

You don't need to either.

Go to this link Amongst the blurb, you will find this...

If you have an age, health or disability reason for not wearing a face covering: you do not routinely need to show any written evidence of this you do not need show an exemption card 

This means that you do not need to seek advice or request a letter from a medical professional about your reason for not wearing a face covering. 

However, some people may feel more comfortable showing something that says they do not have to wear a face covering. This could be in the form of an exemption card, badge or even a home-made sign.

Read that carefully: you do not need to seek advice or request a letter from a medical professional about your reason for not wearing a face covering.

There is no-one who can approve your exempt status. Which means there is no-one who can dis-approve it.

The same blurb says

There are some circumstances where people may not be able to wear a face covering. Please be mindful and respectful of such circumstances. Some people are less able to wear face coverings, and the reasons for this may not be visible to others....

The Government says other people should mind their own business. It does not say there are exceptions. It does not specifically allow the Police or other officials to challenge you.

So how do you get to be exempt, if there's no-one to approve it?

That's what they were hoping you would ask.

Take a deep breath.

You are exempt if you say you are.

(That's what they were hoping you would not work out.)

Download the label ). Print it - colour for added effect. I had to experiment with size to get it to fit the lanyard I bought.

Wear it in the places they want you to wear a mask. It gives the shop or wherever an out if some ****ing busybody asks. You had a badge.

I have been using this for the last week.

Nobody has challenged me yet. Everyone is fed up with this.

#ImDone

Boris failed the Third Date Rule. You know the one: if she doesn't have sex with you by the end of the third date, she doesn't find you attractive. Wish her a prosperous life and move on. Don't look back. (Women have their own version of this.)

My first date was April 12th with non-essential retail opening, and haircuts. Second date was May 17th for indoor dining and the like. June 21st was Freedom Day.

That just got moved.

To the 29th of July - and you could see Boris wishing he did not have to say those words. The 19th is a distraction.

#ImDone is a lot of other people saying Sorry, but we're not putting our lives on hold anymore.

Go to this link, print the exemption card, get a lanyard and wear it. You don't need anyone's permission to do it, and you don't have to prove it to anybody.

Ask people wearing masks to remove them when they talk to you. Except waiters and shop assistants - unless you really cannot understand them.

Those things you have been putting off until this **** ends? Start doing them. Except for the overseas travel and nightclubs.

Look carefully at what the rules are. You can do a lot of the things you have stopped doing. Meeting people for lunch, or after-work drinks. Popping over to the GF's place for the night. Going to the beach at the weekend, or if you live nearby, in the evening. Playing computer games with the lads. Or Sunday football.

And most important, you can do a lot of those things you haven't been doing because, well, pandemic and safety and doing your bit?

Start doing those.

That's what #ImDone is about.

It's all those people who have been "good" and "cautious" deciding that they're done with that.

It's all those people who were waiting for this **** to end on a promised date, so we could do the things we wanted to do. (My state.)

It's not pretending there's no Virus. It's not breaking any laws. It's not being irresponsible.

It's leaving the stadium because you can't bear to see your team play like that anymore.

Favourites on Qobuz

In the good old days, your favourites list was on your shelves: it was your CD and/or vinyl and/or tape collection. Some of it, anyway. It isn't a real record collection if you don't have a couple of drunk-purchase clunkers in it.

I've been experimenting with streaming. I didn't get it with Tidal, because, well, you know, Tidal's preferred genre. I didn't get it with Spotify because I couldn't break free of the playlists. With Qobuz, I've found a way of working.

Browse in the record store, choose one CD by a composer or artist, if it's good, stream the rest. And I'd like to add those composers or artists to a list.

I browse in the record store because the online sites have not managed to reproduce that experience and functionality.

Why don't I take a photo of what takes my attention and stream it later?

First, that's a grift.

Second, the fact I have some money in the CD means I will spend more time and attention listening to it.

I wrote off Lars Graugaard's Engage and Share CD as a bad choice after a first listen. I gave it another whirl when I had moved my Marantz system around, and it sounded a little better. I gave it another whirl on the Hegel / 6000CDT, and it was much more interesting. I may well stream some more of his work.

I don't need to build up a favourites list of everyone I have CD's by: that's what the CDs are for.

There's another way of discovering new music that I'd forgotten until I bought a copy of Gramaphone and DJ Mag recently. Old-fashioned print. By people whose job it is to seek out new bands and listen to new releases.

That's what I want to put on my Favourites list - assuming Qobuz have them. I want to be reminded that Coil is a band well worth listening to more often.

As ever, I have to massively over-think this first, before doing what some teenager would do by instinct, and I'm sure I would do by instinct if I was a teenager now. But I'm not.

Choices, Options and Information

What’s the best recording of Mahler's First Symphony? If you are not familiar with recorded classical music, it feels like a sensible question. If you have listened to more than a couple of episode’s of Radio Three’s Building A Library you will know the question is fraught with difficulty. Not the least of which is explaining why it is fraught with difficulty.

If a performance of Mahler’s First has been released on CD, we can be sure of a number of things. The orchestra was playing in tune. It was playing the notes Mahler wrote in the order he wrote them. It was playing in tune and in time. The players were proficient, and the conductor at least competent. Historical recordings do expose the listener to the lower standards of performance and recording of earlier times, but as long as the recording was made in or after the 1970’s, it will not leave the listener wanting to wince.

Given those givens, most big-name conductors have been able to make a Mahler cycle recording: Solti, Rattle, Von Karajan, Salonen, and a dozen others. All of them are accomplished, thoughtful interpreters of music. Rattle can be a little on the clean side, Solti is famously lush, Salonen is precise and engaging... and so on. It depends on what you like to listen to. And your tastes may change over time.

You understand I’m talking about hi-if components?

The fact that the amplifier, DAC, CD transport, speakers and whatever else, as made it into a hi-if store tells you that the equipment will not have audible levels of distortion, has almost zero cross-talk between left and right channels, and will have separation and dynamics that the 1970’s manufacturers dreamed about but had no way of realising.

Which of the too many choices is “best”? All of them are “good”: the difference is in the details, but your ear is very sensitive to those details. It has to be able to tell the difference between a fox and a tiger walking over the leaves (or some other evolutionary example). What strikes some people as clean and pleasing strikes others as harsh and over-analytical, what is laid-back to some is too smooth and lacking dynamics to others. How do you choose?

Audiophiles call it auditioning the equipment, which is about as pretentious as can be. Regular people would say “listen to it, preferably at home”. Because your room will not sound like a dealer’s listening room.

In the end, a number of external constraints make the decision. Floor-standing speakers are only an option for people who live in detached houses with larger rooms. Play those above a whisper, and the neighbours will be complaining. The speakers put an upper limit to the power of the amplifier: you don’t want to blow out your bookshelf speakers with an accidental turn of the volume control. Then there’s the budget. And do you want a built-in DAC? An all-in-one streamer / amp? Add in the constraints of your budget, and you will have a much smaller choice.

You understand we’re talking about cars?

There are a lot of cars, but most of them are out of my budget. The best ones are new and come from German manufacturers: Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Audi. Those have re-sale prices to prove it. But all modern cars made in Europe or Japan are pretty much marvels of construction, compared to 1970. High-end, from Jaguar upwards, is impeccable, but I can't afford any of them.

Used cars offer the same range of choice, but amongst last year’s or earlier models. The time and the mileage will have allowed some weaknesses to appear. Some dealers will inspect the vehicle on purchase and maybe fix the obvious faults: they will deduct the cost of repair from what they pay its seller. Some will give it a wash and clean, and put it on the lot to be bought as is. Private sellers all sell as is. Let the buyer beware, or at least let the buyer get the AA / RAC round to look at it. Because I don't know what a manky suspension sounds like, or what a rotted sump looks like. Buy second-hand and you takes your chances. But at least I could take my car into a manufacturer-approved garage and get a service.

You understand this is about partners?

There is no manufacturer-approved service for people. Just like people make a living from knowing enough about cars so they can spot a duff one, so there are people who make livings from knowing enough about people to be able to spot a duff one. At least that's what mechanics and therapists / psychiatrists claim.

People are all second-hand. Even when they are still single. You and your age-appropriate partner have had plenty of time to develop off-putting habits, phobias, neuroses, personality disorders, drinking problems, dodgy choices of food, slack muscles from lack of exercise, a body-fat percentage caused by too many muffins, eccentric beliefs from veganism to flat-earth-ism. You have both had enough time to have acquired too much experience and become slightly jaded, or perhaps not enough experience and not quite able to negotiate the adult world.

There’s no “best” here, and what is “worst” is an academic exercise. There is a lot of "avoid". The bi-polar. The narcissist. The drunk. The addict. The career girl who always splits the bill, the girls who expects everyone else to pay. The hidden genes for early-onset Alzheimer’s. The people who have already made poor life-choices. The people who have few social skills, and the people who have too many. No wonder a lot of people just don't bother anymore.

Choices are almost never about "the best". Choices are about: do I have the budget to get something that does the job well? If I don't, can I live with what I can get? If I can't, can I do without? And finally, of course, if I make a bad decision, how expensive will it be to get out of it?

There are many, many reviewers of music. Many reviewers of hi-fi gear. And of cars. Lots of information and opinion, also lots of marketing and snake-oil. Not too expensive to get out of, which makes getting into it less scary.

Not so much about people. In fact, some people would say that we shouldn't judge someone by the mistakes they made in the past, but by the wonderful person they could become with us. So, still snake-oil then. Low information up front, high exit costs after purchase. That combination is not a co-incidence.

Woke As A Symptom of Irrelevance

You know why they say Get woke, go broke? Because real people don't want woke shoved down their throats, and woke people are broke people, and even if the Wokies did have any money, there aren't enough of them to form a viable market segment.

A company or institution that goes woke is run by a clueless twerp. The clueless twerp thinks that attacking much-loved cultural institutions will gain good publicity and make them money, or worse, they may not care what effect it has on the business. 

Have you noticed that nobody has targeted Thames Water for a woke attack? Or Scottish Power? Or Virgin Trains? Or Vodafone? Utilities. Supermarkets. Food manufacturers. That's because those things matter.

If a company or institution goes woke (Oxford's dons struck back against their clueless twerp), that means it no longer matters to the culture or the economy. It matters to the people who work there, but it has probably become marginal to the rest of us. Hollywood is marginal: it's been replaced by Amazon, Netflicks, and whoever else is making stuff for their streaming service. The British Library? How much more marginal than that could anything be? The National Trust is pretty marginal now, but its customer base seems to be striking back.

As for the Tate Galleries? Here is what Wokipedia notes:

The British slave-trade was abolished in 1807, before Henry Tate and Abram Lyle were born. However, the Tate Gallery states that while neither Henry Tate nor Abram Lyle 'was a slave-owner'; they state that 'we believe the firms founded by the two men, which later combined as Tate & Lyle, do connect to slavery in less direct but fundamental ways'. The Tate Gallery concludes it is 'not possible to separate the Tate galleries from the history of colonial slavery from which in part they derive their existence'

The Tate is run by twerps. It may have been relevant once, but clearly no more.

Woke is a sign of rot. Intellectual, spiritual and moral rot. Anyone who despises themselves or the fruits of their labour because of something their great-grandfather may not even have done, is weak. If I didn't do it, I'm clear. About half the relevant quotes from the Bible (should you care) support me. The other half have God visiting the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation. But then, last time I looked, though the Wokerati have psychiatric problems, none of them think they are God. So they don't get to visit the sins of the fathers on anyone except the fathers.

I have no idea why the Wokerati do it. If something looks crazy, it probably is, and never try to understand crazy. I do know why people pay attention to the Wokerati. 'Cause they dumb.

Faced with Woke, don't despair. It's a sign that something has been rotten for a while now, and it's starting to smell. Clear it out of your life, and more importantly, your investment portfolio.

You will miss the good old days of whatever it was. But all parties come to an end. And we have to find others.

Find something new.