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Opinion | Bill Gates ~ that i spot this opinion column The Bill has penned in NYT, and nevermind what he has to say; i want to see how he says it: how does this man actually write? i never got around to reading "the road ahead" -- probably not worth it at this point in any case: When the World Health Organization first described Covid-19 as a pandemic just over three years ago, it marked the culmination of a collective failure to prepare for pandemics despite many warnings. And I worry that we’re making those same mistakes again. The world hasn’t done as much to get ready for the next pandemic as I’d hoped. But it’s not too late to stop history from repeating itself. The world needs a well-funded system that is ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice when danger emerges. We need a fire department for pandemics. bill gates is reading this aloud at some lecture hall full of Important People. And then he makes his point. bill gates starts to describe what's gone wrong. But it's not too late to stop it i'm not really sure what i was expecting, here: it's competent, but as soulless as his operating system. firmly rooted in how you write a speech... for idiots... an in intense reliance on a maddening, plodding A/B structure to everything: bill gates is waxing on about something. And then he makes his point. But it's not too late. this shows up throughout his opinion article in conformal ways he's so boring that he can't even take boring very far. that if he were too boring, well, that might be interesting -- and we can't have that. |
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bill gates is a criminal, in many aspects, but one is concerning the pandemic. he prevented the vaccine from being open source. so he's responsible for countless deaths in poorer countries (countries historically screwed over by rich countries, in other words: the West). so i agree with his little speech. and one solution to the problem he describes, the only really right one, is abolishing capitalism and abolishing billionaires |
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of course the speech is boring as heck. maybe it's more bearable live. but the man is good at jumping chairs |
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jumping chairs i haven't heard this one before. i can guess. but this sounds like it's good; i've missed it until now. can you define this, please? so i can use it properly |
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bill gates is a criminal, in many aspects, but one is concerning the pandemic bill gates is a poker player. "pirates of silicon valley" is, i feel, a pretty true-to-life snapshot of Gates, at the very least. that he bluffs IBM into a massive contract for DOS saying they already have it built, while they actually have jack fucking shit. then he turns around and buys someone else's OS for $50k and reskins it; microsoft is made when i was, like, then, some friends and i were blasted all over the newspaper for a brief moment for running a computer charity. one of my childhood friends in on the venture met Gates in person at a speech and he agreed to donate to the cause -- and, what did he send? twelve boxed copies of win95. shrewdly self-promotional to the end. but that was still mad cool when i was, like, 11 meanwhile, after #metoo, it's floated out that... he's never been sketchy; he very solidly accepted no for an answer. but he was still trawling around microsoft for dates long after he'd been married; now he ain't no more so his whole charity thing is... partly, like, catholic guilt, i imagine... and he'll never wash himself clean of it at this rate... but also, i'm thinking of bezos. bezos is like "my money is going to charity but i'm not going to simply cut checks here; i'm looking for return on my investment" and so it is with Gates. even when doing charity, the capitalist, the poker player dominates |
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i really was just posting about my reaction to his op-ed style, though. i'll reiterate: i'm not sure what i was expecting and, yeah: it's kind of like, "the writing is good enough, i'm moving on now" and it's incredibly boring without being so boring that this in itself becomes noteworthy. solidly ticks the boxes while assiduously avoiding going above and beyond in absolutely any detail. |
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rupert murdoch is a mass murderer. i don't see a real need to waste much time bashing Gates. at least the guy is trying to try |
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and then there's richard branson, the consummate freeze-dried hippy, and it's rather sad watching him now. he said something like, "people are like flowers, just water them with a little love and watch them grow" and never mind anything else he's done; that's a beautiful advice and a beautiful quote. meanwhile, after he lands from space, it's like "oh god please put your shirt back on" and his space company is going bankrupt and if you take a step back history would look a lot more kindly on him if he'd just packed it in and focused on forest botany or something ten years ago. it's a better version of the same shit. he still wants to go kitesurfing; to win yacht races. that's what got him where he is, along with what does seem like genuine love for people. but past his arc now; quiet down you're just blowing it |
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>=4 times now, i've seen people in completely unrelated bubbles spontaneously refer to bezos as a "soul-less robot." but i've also read about "puppy-like energy" and how he would run up and down the stairwell, fast as he could, and never take the elevator, and sorry, that's actually sort of like me. stuck in meetings all day? run up seven floors and feel better; amped when you get to the next one. have little patience for the weird looks. if they're too dumb to get it, fuck 'em -- but i can't fire people so it's this sort of engineering enthusiasm, almost, like, optimize my life. down to: fuck elevators; stairs are religion. the problem is -- he can fire people. and that not how everyone do. scale that up to a company that is about to launch thousands of satellites this year to build their own personal global comms network |
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bezos onto something, though, when he recently said "i'm writing a giant check to dolly parton; she's so nice. i'm sure she'll do great things" essentially admitting he's too much of a crab to do it right and carefully outsourcing to a reliable talent. |
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i suppose my utmost question: was bezos pumping out tunes loud on cans as he pounded the stairs? i lean towards no; that's where he and i differ |
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what sort of music does jeff bezos like if any very curious. |
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Unlike most of the great minds on this list, Jeff Bezos was not a music lover. In fact, it has been revealed that Bezos has “a lack of interest in music of any kind.” As a teenager, Jeff memorized the call letters of local radio stations so he could fake his knowledgeability to the music scene. He let Steve Jobs hire away his music editor, Keith Moerer, ultimately letting Moere and Jobs seize the lead in creating the iPod. However, Bezos has not given up on music just yet; he revealed in an interview with Billboard in February that he believes voice-activated home devices like Amazon Echo is the “next gigantic growth area” for the music industry. While he is definitely passionate about the potential of the music industry and streaming, not much is known about his actual taste in music other than that he’s a fan of “Americana,” the Amazon music station that his business partner Steve Boom is in charge of and that he’s a fan of the Zac Brown Band. i take it all back. this man is a fucking psycho. he and i are nothing alike. i regret giving him the benefit of the doubt |
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In fact, it has been revealed that Bezos has “a lack of interest in music of any kind.” i don't know what to say except that i personally view this as a warning sign of the highest order: that i do not want anything to do with this fucked-up trog. even if you seen cool to hang out with. especially if you're hot. then it's going to be a severe mess |
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seemmm |
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(Google 'Gates' and 'jump chair' to see him. I have to admit it's a close second.) |
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YO MAN YOU READ "HACKERS AND PAINTERS" at least Graham has some kind of generalising nouse also visits Hay on Wye fairly regulray to buy used boosk... |
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plus, lisp plus Hay on Wye... shouts 2 Richard Booth [look him up] |
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serum |
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YO MAN YOU READ "HACKERS AND PAINTERS" that i've never heard of this. or any of what you say. which actually makes me deeply curious i mean, i've read plenty, though. that steven levy's "hackers" is probably towards the top of my list. but some genius grouped all these books in a snuggly, invisible alcove for me, that no one else was terribly interested in the books in that corner and... really, i can't recall ever not having it to myself. but just running a few dealers of lightning is a bit snoozy but it's deeply important. jon littman's collaborations with mitnick while he was on the run were delightful. then there was actually quite a good number of like and... i remember reading one book... it was towards the trashy end, but memorable. especially for opening with a political protest computer worm called Worms Against Nuclear Killers (W.A.N.K.), another worm that showed a picture of the governor of trenton, nj as a worm being run over by a train on the train schedule, and i think something about an australian band called The Oils. later in this book, there was a stretch about Mendax, kind of on odd duck who stashed his disks with the illegal stuff inside of a beehive because... obviously. that it could have been fifteen or twenty years after reading this that i finally put all the pieces together, and realized that Mendax is Julian Assange, and i'd read about his escapades years before wikileaks or anything. then i'm figuring it out years after that's been going on; that was a trip |
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the cuckoo's egg, by cliff stoll. that book is the OG |
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not that it really matters. but i've met LPD, aka peter deutsch, from the first triptych lump of hackers. i remember as i got obsessed with that book in the early 90s, my dad kept saying, "oh, i know that guy a few times." LPD was one, and, bit after my dad passed, wrote him, saying, my dad knew you somehow, maybe say hello sometime? and answer was rather cosmic, really, like "i live on the opposite coast but i'll be in the train station you pass through every day for work bored and waiting for a changeover next week" and i imagine i came off as a weird bastard -- because i am -- but that was cool. i suppose he is most known as the inventor of ghostscript. but then he changed my mind on ecmascript a bit and was saying things about SIMD that were above my hed |
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just a laugh. that if you are dead-set on doxing me -- why? i'm more irritating than interesting; thx -- if the library still has that first-ish edition hardcover of that's where you can get my fingerprints, on those pages. you'll have to scale up from when i was eleven. if it will help, i can cite brands of junk food you can search for traces of to match the prints |
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i remember going to get the older, more dog-eared copy of Hackers that i own at some bookstore. really blows my mind how clearly i can pull this shit back, and... no, Levy was not there. that i'll just have a giggle on meeting book authors, because i have met precisely two (2) of note, and they were both notable 1) dan brown he was on a tour that included our local barnes and/or noble that was at a mall that was... a bit out of the way, but still decidedly upscale. i don't really remember the conversation except to say that i probably said a lot and he was very tolerant. very polite and nice. i got a signed copy. i read it as somewhat horrified; this man understands computers worse than hollywood. i put the book on a shelf and forgot about it. around 2014, when i really needed cash, i sold it for $150 or so. i've not read or watched da vinci anything, thanks, nor do i plan to 2) William Sleator this man's books, actually pretty mind-bending when i was just reaching out to my teens. freaky enough, but Singularity haunts me to this day. i remember him going on a very bitchy rant about R. L. Stein in front of me and my fellow 9-10yo's. as bad as that sounds at first, i think he was absolutely. fucking. right. that Stein just farts out those books with no thought; no effort; makes a million my ontology at this point is i got goofy and donald duck to sign my autograph book at disneyland. i ask him for an autograph. he informs me -- making me feel a bit bad, but not too bad -- that protocol is that you're supposed to buy a book, but signs his autograph anyways, a few pages after goofy. he moved to thailand and i am beyond certain he is a pedophile. |
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1 -- digital fortress (1998) |
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oh my gosh, Sleator was just brill. i keep coming up with more. he told this story: this woman i knew had this annoying dog and i kept being like, please don't bring that freaking dog over, and she kept bringing the stupid little dog over, and then it shat on a carpet i liked very much, and so i wrote the dog into my book and then killed it that i actually remember being rather upset about how the dog was treated in the story, and that was rather mind-blowing, at nine years old, to hear how the story had been crafted in this juncture |
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i want to just dig this up as, like: the fucking shit you will never read anywhere else. did you read the books of William Sleator in the 90s as a lad and, like, hey, these are fucking great? did you then read R. L. Stein books and think: oh my god these are fucking shit that i didn't have the vocabulary, but this was, more or less my opinion, when William Sleator showed up for my 5th grade class, when i was then -- in retrospect, probably a bit sauced -- and went on a rant about how R. L. Sleator was crap, how a friend of his wouldn't stop bringing her dog over and the dog pooped on his rug so he wrote it into his book and then killed it, then the weird tangent about thailand. railing on me for asking for an autograph without a book to sign but then remembering i'm just a kid and dialing back and signing it anyways and in the end getting it just right; made me feel rude but still did it and even before i saw the "love's secret domain" video once i was old enough to understand sex to understand what his thailand thing was about. and now that i'm older than that, i read, he had a grand old time in thailand, a bit of a drinker, had a stroke on his second thai boyfriend one day and i just feel i owe it to the man, to say it, because i don't think anyone else will: this guy was an epic freaking bastard. he was a treasure. a crabby, drunk treasure |
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*when i was ten -- and, in retrospect, he probably was a bit sauced |
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it was quite a sensation for me, as a ten year old, to hear an adult go on what the world would eventually call a bitchy internet rant in front of a bunch of ten year old kids, because he was right, he was so fucking right. then there was some context behind his books, including the thing with the dog. then, one of his books was some autobiographical childhood stories; blowing up a soda bottle in a hallway with dry ice down the hall from dad's office. he did the charles dickens book tour thing and just respun them aloud in front of us, much shorter for the time bracket, and he was wonderful at it. then a decidedly strange digression into thailand -- i can quote bits of it, but it wouldn't make much sense. then, much like an adult book event, everyone diffuses, there's some chat and signings. if anything, his issue is he was very, very deeply seriously writing children's books and this makes it hard for anyone to take you seriously on a critical level. that he was fine with this, thanks, but then to see r. l. stein... i can dredge up, perhaps, one other guest star in 5th grade, the guy who brought a whole bunch of calculators -- this was the early 90's -- including one branded SHRAP which i loved as much as he did. other than that, he and i had little in common but sleator. very vivid memory |
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