Common wisdom regularly references Pareto - even while not knowing who the hell Pareto is. A humorist might even say that 80% of people who quote the 80/20 rule have never heard of Pareto.

Turns out it might even be worse.

Sturgeon has 90% of everything is crap .. and Andreesen agrees (Apple News Link to WSJ)

Seemingly even about his own fund.

”But doesn’t Sturgeon’s law also apply to investing in startups? A typical venture fund has a home run, a few companies with middling returns and lots of smoking holes in the ground. “We have a limited partner that has comprehensive data,” Mr. Andreessen explains. “For top-end venture funds, the good news is that it’s not 90% failure rate, it’s 50%. This is for top-decile venture.” So maybe Sturgeon’s law doesn’t apply. But wait. The 90% of funds below the top decline do worse. Sturgeon’s law rules. Mr. Andreessen pauses, raises an eyebrow, and nods in agreement.”

VPNs Poor Privacy and Security Practices.

(From ‘Consumer Reports’). As a ‘consumer' - not helpful.

Example …

“We found that 12 out of 16 of the VPNs we looked at either inaccurately represented their products and technology, or made hyperbolic or overly broad claims about the kinds of protection they provide their users.”

But which ones?

Wouldn’t a summary detailing some kind of ‘league table’ be useful - rather than just blasting the industry as a whole?

Idle thoughts.

Proving that ‘sound thinking’ might not be the same as ‘thinking with sound’.

I created a Numbers file from the information you sent over.

I exported it to Excel and sent that file to you.

Now you have the file, you can change the Excel.

I can’t change the Excel file, because I don’t intend to pay Microsoft to use a product that is inferior to what I already have installed.

BTW - you have a Mac, and so you also have Numbers.

Tell me again why you pay to use a product that is not as good as the free product you already have on your computer?

.. and don’t tell me because you are doing serious number crunching … I have seen the spreadsheets you created!

/J

We’re Living Through the Greatest Transfer of Wealth From the Middle Class to the Elites in History.

When historians look back on the decisions made beginning in March 2020 and still going strong, this period will be remembered as the “Great Consolidation”—the acceleration of a historic wealth transfer and power concentration out of the hands of the middle class and into those with political power and connections.

No doubt the Covid wealth extraction plan has gone, well - according to plan!

That said, the extraction has been going on for a long time, with no abatement. I think history is likely to record ‘this period’ as a blip on the steady extraction that has been occurring for decades!

My thanks to @manton for resetting my blog that I had broken. I mean really broken.

How - because I was trying to be clever with the footer - and I clearly was not!

Now back up with the Tufte Theme - courtesy of @pimoore running as it should - and the footer kind of organised as I wanted.

Next step - now I understand the very clever nuances that Pete has included in the theme - is to reintroduce some of the emphasis I want.

I am slightly hesitant to rely to much on some of the shortcodes he has added (yet) since those short codes (I presume) will only work on this template?

More diving needed.

john.philpin.com

Maps that Show the Historical Roots of Current US Political Faultlines.

Interesting piece even of itself. But even more so if you read it and draw parallels with other parts of the world.

My interpretation is that the boundaries on this map are ‘cultural boundaries’, reflecting what people feel and how they relate to each other in the U.S.A.
    Now imagine if instead of mapping the U.S.A., you mapped The Middle East.
and Rather than using state lines, you used the borders of countries.

In all honesty, I have seen maps like this in the past. Things like how the Kurdish culture spreads across at least 4 contiguous countries.

One difference between the States and the Middle East is that moving between states in the U.S.A. is a whole lot simpler than between countries in the Middle East.

I think this starts to expose the Middle East ‘fault lines’ in a very clear and explainable way. That is the historical imposition of political boundaries over people might make short-term sense and ‘bring order to the world’ - in the long term, it is ‘cultural power’ that drives the different regions of the world - and will be the final driver/decider.

This ‘culture trumps politics’ model is something that Venkatesh Rao touches on in this article from 2011. It is a long but fascinating read.

We’re Living Through the Greatest Transfer of Wealth From the Middle Class to the Elites in History

I really do hate that ‘elites’ word … they aren’t … they just happen to be a large group of people with lots of money and people in (or want to be in) power who want access to that wealth.

That said - a recurring observation.

The “connected” form a powerful bloc comprised of big government, big business and big special interests. And though their monikers label them “big,” they are comprised of relatively small elites. And they are seeking to use their power to benefit themselves at your expense.

“Today we’re excited to roll out the latest feature on Unsplash… you can now see your image download history making it super easy to re-visit and re-download any image.”

… wrote Unsplash.

Annoying that my download history only goes back 2 days.

that said,

MASSIVE KUDOS that my download history only goes back 2 days.

On the face of it they don’t seem to have been storing that information without telling me.

• Writing? Not so difficult. Writing well? OK, more difficult.

• Convincing friends to give what you’ve written a free tryout on their Kindle? Not easy as you’d think.

• Finding absolute strangers who like to read books like yours and then convincing them to buy Book One in an unknown series?

• Now that’s the tricky part.

Source : Dan Conover