Coming home, wildfire visualization, and is there actually a difference between politics and comedy?

another krappy newsletter #8

Hey squad,

Greetings from New York! To answer your next question, no not the city and no not upstate. I am currently on Long Island. Or as I like to call it “the city that sometimes sleeps.”

Why am I here? Because, to quote Nickelback, “this is where I grew up.” I will be living the dream aka sleeping in my childhood room for the next three weeks to see my family. First time I have seen them in the last 10 months! Time flies when you sit inside all day every day!

Couple things to note from my trip so far:

1. Was my first flight in 6 months. It was surprisingly easy and safe. Plane was 50% capacity. Everyone wore a mask. Delta winning me over as a customer in a post pandemic world. United losing me as a ticket despite having their top tier status. One day they will write a Harvard Business School case study about how much United sucks.

2. I love how people in my parents neighborhood just help one another. People constantly watching one another’s houses while they are away, picking up groceries for the elderly neighbors, and all these other little things that make life a little bit easier. It is cool watching/being reminded of what happens when everyone buys into a neighborhood/community for the long haul. I never feel that in the Bay Area apartments I live in. I dont even know my neighbors names. I also don’t plan on correcting that when I get back. Like would it be cool to know them? Probably. But I don’t. And meeting strangers is hard. Will continue to just pay someone to get my groceries. Anyway. Yea. Community is pretty cool.

Without further ado, here a few of the things I watched or paid attention to this week:

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California Wildfires visualization

I don’t know if you have heard, but there have been some wildfires in California.

Below is the coolest map showing the locations and sizes:

3D Rendered Relief Map of California's 2020 Wildfire Boundaries (So Far) [OC]

Straight up, it looks like Frodo is about to throw the ring into the center of California.

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We take information for granted

Oxford and Cambridge came to be the premier institutes they are today by creating and hoarding information.

Between the 1300s and 1820, no new universities were established in England.

None. Zero.

In 1320, Oxford and Cambridge leveraged their early success to petition King Edward III to block the formation of new universities within England. At the same time, they encouraged alumni not to give lectures outside of the two campuses. With the policy in place, both universities secured a 500- year head start where they built reputations and networks of influence in England

s/o David Perell for that fun fact

Oxford and Cambridge understood that information is power. So they contained the flow of it to only within their school walls. Ideas became their huge advantage.

The “information hoarding” mechanism to create power/an advantage is still going on today in some way shape or form. Whether it be through intellectual property law or, if you prefer a bit more heavy handed, China not allowing open access to the Internet for their citizens, we have some hella fun ways to restrict information flow to one party’s benefit.

We take the power of information for granted now that we all are constantly plugged into the Internet. But remember that information ingested and regurgitated correctly can be a huge advantage in life.

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Comedy and politics

This tweet made me stop and think for a minute:

Johnathan 𝒶𝓉 𝐿𝒾𝓂𝒷𝑜 @JohnathanBi

The increasing amount of comedy in our political diet is underrated. It allows political commentators, disguised as comedians, to get away with a lot. We allow the premises in humor to be exaggerated, but these same premises become implanted as real political opinions.

Jonathan goes on:

E.g. Trevor Noah had this bit:

“Not having police live in their jurisdiction would be like if a president weren’t living in the country he was governing ... kinda like Putin.”

We only allow this punchline because we know it to be a joke. Yet the intuition that Putin fully controls the US (hard to defend in serious discourse) becomes engrained nonetheless.

Political comedians exploit the fact that the epistemic bar is lower in comedy than in discourse.

At what point do we stop pretending like Colbert, Oliver, and Noah are comedians? I have friends who cite comedian’s news commentary more than any other mainstream source. At some point, comedians stepped in to become the de facto historians/political pundits of our era.

One big lesson from the last decade is: entertaining usually wins. Especially if its humor expressed through some virtue signaling mechanism. People love positioning themselves as superior to people who are slightly less cynical than themselves.

But in all seriousness, this humor mechanism to get an outlandish claim past your built in bullshit sensor is fascinating. Wonder how many elections these comedians have affected? And how many of them have legitimately built a career off of Trump bits? I seriously think if this guy isn’t reelected, we might see a media bubble pop. Thousands of people released from the news cycles 24/7 Trump siren song.

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Do we actually remember anything in politics?

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

The news cycle is the most powerful force in the Universe. Remember the El Paso shooting? Remember the camps at the border? Remember Epstein? https://t.co/vVV19Fxwa0

Noah Smith had this enlightening break down on the news cycle last year and it is even better to read now that these events are even older.

The news cycle is the most powerful force in the Universe. Remember the El Paso shooting? Remember the camps at the border? Remember Epstein?

In two weeks I'll tweet "Remember Greta Thunberg? Remember the Climate Strike?"

The News Cycle is that little device from Men in Black that flashes a light and makes everyone forget what they just saw.

In fact, Billy Joel once wrote a song about it. But now you could fill up a "We Didn't Start the Fire" sequel with a few months of Big Events.

What huge news story today will we never speak of again in two weeks?

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My dog

Meet my parent’s dog Roxy. Roxy lives a hard life. Cue Sara McLachlan music.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

K. Rapp