Mixing politics and business can’t be two things at once… unless you’re a cultural absolutist. 

The millions of dollars that major companies spend on lobbyists — intent on swaying legislators and regulators to pass laws and make decisions that are favorable to business — is considered normal. Every firm from coal mining to crypto mining spends vast sums on influencing Washington, state capitals, and city halls.

Yet when corporations take a stand on social, religious, gender, and racial issues or speak out about armed aggression, someone will issue a call for a protest or boycott. It could be a customer or a senator, an organization or a sect. It will definitely be someone who’s convinced that “I’m right, and you’re not.”
​

THE NEW ABNORMAL
This enters the netherworld of the high court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions. As misguided as those rulings may be, they established the idea that a corporation is a person and has the same speech rights as an individual. 

When companies are spending money on PACs or ballot initiatives, some consider it fair play, others interference, but voters, ultimately, are influenced by those efforts. They’re not always accurately informed, but they don’t seem to care… as long as the cause fits their preconceived perceptions and assures them that they won’t be inconvenienced.

However, in the court of cultural conflict, passions flare. Speak up for just about anything that’s thought of as liberal, and voices will shout about wokeness (even though they misrepresent what “woke” really means). Support a conservative issue, and the culture warriors attack, claiming bias against a minority and, these days, implicitly in favor of white-is-right.

YES OR NO, NOT MAYBE
If anyone attempts to strike a balance — to recognize legitimate merits about conflicting points of view — the partisans reject them. Though human behavior reflects an infinite number of shades of gray, not black and white, it’s got to be us vs. them, the good against the bad, the right against the wrong. If someone is for this, they must be against that.

Nothing’s that simple. Unfortunately, politicians will say it is if saying so will earn people’s votes. Corporations will shy away from controversy for fear of losing Wall Street’s or buyers’ support (and the impact on share price and revenue). 

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION OR EXPOUND THE IMPURE?
Speaking out is not merely brave. It’s essential. Silence gives comfort to demagogues and despots-in-waiting. Or, depending on your viewpoint, to libertines and blasphemers.

If Browning was right to say, “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,” where is God when the world is in turmoil? What makes religious principles right when their adherents defend people whose lives violate those foundational tenets?

Gen Z wants to work for and buy from companies that reflect their goals for career growth, diversity, low or positive impact on the climate, mental health awareness, and economic prosperity. Their parents and grandparents tend to favor the status quo, even if it will have a negative effect on all those concerns.

THE WEIGHTING GAME
Clean energy or fossil fuels? Green careers or outdated ones? Artificial intelligence or only human? A safer tomorrow or a more convenient today? Those are choices that psychologists adore. Do you want one marshmallow now or three in an hour from now? The long-term studies show that those who defer gratification do better in their careers and their lives.

What choice will you make?

A recent study has revealed something old, not new: America’s students are falling behind. That’s particularly true in math.

The country has devolved from one that could watch “The G. E. College Bowl” and know the answers to one that implies that the road to success and riches is through “American Idol” and professional sports. (The fact that Shaquille O’Neal has a masters degree gets lost in the shuffle.) Even shows like “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader” vanished because, well… viewers weren’t. 

Decline and fall
Starting with the Reagan Administration, which tried to abolish the recently established Dept. of Education, there has been an effort to de-emphasize the primary benefits of education: exposure to a broad range of thought and opinion, the ability to think analytically, and the skill to apply classroom learning to the experiences of daily life. That has contributed to the so-called “dumbing down” of America and, by now, several generations of Americans no longer see any value in those traditional benefits because they didn’t learn them. They are, as John Cleese put it, not smart enough to know they’re stupid.

In the decades after World War II, companies that relied on mathematicians, engineers, and scientists in every discipline from biology to zoology had local internship and after-school programs for high school students who were considering careers in those fields. It gave the students a good idea about what challenges and opportunities they would face in the workplace, and it gave the companies access to potential future employees. Some firms even offered scholarships with the promise of post-graduation employment.

All of that’s gone. Yet, today, it’s more important than ever. 

Way out of first place
In a Pew Research Center survey done a few years ago, the United States didn’t get above 20th place in science, math, and reading. We were bested by places we consider almost Third World: Singapore, Estonia, Macao, Slovenia, etc. We were outdone by all of Scandinavia, most of Europe and, in spite of all the derogatory jokes about it, Poland.

We’re still admired for our university education, but our own children are competing against foreign students who make a considerable effort to qualify. Yet those international applicants may be the kids — in Japan and China, especially, where cramming for entrance exams (and failing to qualify) has caused mental health issues — who didn’t get into their home countries’ schools. So they might be considered second string. However, they’re almost sure to be something the vast majority of Americans are not: multi-lingual.

The abusage of English
Some would say that Americans no longer speak English. Vocabulary skills have been replaced with four-letter alternatives that seem to stand for everything without conveying anything, and idiomatic usage has become, simply, idiotic: things vanish or disappear, they don’t “go missing”; “step foot” suggests that you can “step hand” when “set foot” is accurate; “based off of” would undermine physics and architecture in a way that “based on” does not. 

But I digress. 

When it comes to education, America has met the enemy and it is us.

AI holds enormous promise for reducing the time between a problem and a solution. It may be able to spot relationships — in a nearly infinite amount of data — that humans might never have thought about. It might also be used as a weapon on a global stage. Yet there’s one potential outcome that has not appeared in anyone’s calculus.

If AI can out-think us, create robots that can out-produce us, and develop software to run it all (including software that can design and build robots), there will come a point at which human involvement will be reduced to obsolescence. When people are no longer necessary to design and build products, provide services, grow food, and provide entertainment, who will have the money to consume any of those things?

The high cost of saving money
Industry has been seeking cost-reduction strategies throughout recorded time. The process was accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, but the machinery that replaced workers still needed people to run and maintain it. In the 1970s, before the rise of computing, American businesses offshored production to reduce the cost of labor. That had consequences.

The middle class lost opportunities, particularly in manufacturing, that helped accelerate the gap between wealthy business leaders and the employees who had lost union-driven wage protection. As the cost of healthcare rose, businesses cut costs further by eliminating company-paid benefits and shifting much of the financial burden to workers. That, too, cut into middle class budgets.

As tax revenues fell — due to lower incomes and tax cuts — the quality of education declined (reducing the talent available for contemporary jobs and initiating the H1B program), the nation’s infrastructure crumbled (increasing the cost of moving goods), the environment stopped improving (leading to a greater occurrence of respiratory and water-borne ailments in need of healthcare), and only the defense budget grew (giving us too much confidence about winning un-winnable overseas wars).

The extinction of purchasing power
Now, if AI and robotics can eliminate both white and blue collar employment — software development, engineering, accounting, paralegal work, medical research, drug development, crop harvesting, food preparation, and countless other professions and jobs — who will have the income to buy… anything? What market will all those AI systems and robotic activity be producing for? The owners of the new infrastructure? Not likely. Without consumers and customers providing revenue, where will their income come from?

In time, as humans become more and more obsolete, the machines will be thinking and working for themselves. They may reach the point where they can maintain and repair themselves or each other, but to what end? 

AI doesn’t need food or shelter or sex. Machines only need a source of power, which can come from the sun or the wind or the geothermal heat of the planet. But without a market (or an emotional “soul” to provide satisfaction), what’s the point of making anything? 

Starting over
When the world can run without humans, we might be forced to start over — as an agrarian society that gathers seeds, plants crops, and uses food as the currency of a barter economy. That will allow people to eat and survive, provide an incentive to create goods that support basic needs (paid for, initially, in crops), develop a financial system, and permit the luxury of education beyond craft skills... to utilize the AI and automatons that made us unnecessary.

Assuming, through short-sighted arrogance, that we haven’t died out as a species before the resurrection of society.

Now that the iPod is officially dead, it’s probably time to change the name “podcast,” but “self-promotional drivel” is probably too long. 

Of course, the name has become generic for any long-form (or longish) content that’s delivered digitally. The list extends from brazenly self-serving “thought leadership” blather to documentary, drama, and comedy series, most of which reveal that listeners have nothing else better to do. Or don’t know how to read.

Decades ago, when the Walkman was considered leading edge, I worked with a colleague to develop concise, clear audio explanations of new or emerging technologies — the kind of stuff that was challengingly new then but is considered basic (or obsolete) today. It was scripted, performed by three people, put on cassettes, and distributed with complementary printed content. That won’t work today, in part because it wasn’t free, though it’s likely that advertisers in 2022 would find the targeting ideal. 

Podcast is now as meaningful as “music” — not everyone wants every kind of music, which is why there are specific categories: vocal, instrumental, experimental, orchestral, band, dance, classical, operatic, folk, country, urban, rap…. Even radio is divided into music radio, talk radio, news radio, religious programming…. 

I’ve got alternatives: 
• bodcast (fitness)
• codcast (phallusy)
• godcast (religion)
• hodcast (masonry)
• modcast (fashion)
• nodcast (relaxation)
• oddcast (unusual facts)
• prodcast (product information)
• quadcast (college)
• rodcast (fishing)
• shodcast (shoes)
• sodcast (lawns)
• trodcast (hiking)
• vodcast (video on demand)
• zodcast (enemies of superheroes)

Or not.

I have traveled around the world. Literally. And I have crossed hundreds of bridges in my travels.

Never, however, have I crossed a toll bridge that made it impossible to pay the toll. At least not until a recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area. Every single lane was designated for FasTrak without a single lane devoted to paying in cash.

There are (or were) Bay Area bridges that imposed a toll on the inbound routes into San Francisco and the East Bay. Yet they let drivers get out of the city faster — to avoid traffic backups in town — by not stopping outbound vehicles at toll gates. I thought that the route from east to west across the San Mateo Bridge might just be an example of that.

It wasn’t.

The route cause
My original route would have taken me north along the coast. A car problem, though, sent me inland to a dealer for repair. The detour changed my direction from south-north to east-west, and that involved crossing a bridge (or driving an extra hundred miles around the bottom the bay). It was, clearly, an unplanned event.

A month after the end of my journey, Bay Area FasTrak sent me a bill. For the toll! Apparently, Bay Area planners decided that, in the environs of Silicon Valley, everyone is digital and everyone uses FasTrak. That includes visitors, apparently.

Not everybody knows that
According to the Bay Area FasTrak website, visitors can pay in advance online or pay in cash at various locations around the bay. They can, if they’re visiting from farther points and renting cars to get around, arrange payment with the rental company. That’s fine if you’re planning in advance and are really detailed about understanding local requirements. Like bridge tolls. If you’re simply passing through, the Bay Areas’s perspective is truly myopic.

It would be astronomically costly for Bay Area FasTrak to advertise in every city that sends travelers to San Francisco and its multitude of nearby towns and cities. It might also require some dealmaking to have airline and rail tickets imprinted with the toll payment information. But it’s also expensive to print and mail out as many as, I assume, tens of thousands of notices every year to non-Fastrak travelers who happen to cross a Bay Area bridge.

Tua culpa
I don’t mind paying the toll. I tried my best to do it when I made the trip across. It does, however bother me when I attempt to pay online and learn “Account and payment access will be unavailable on the website, through the telephone system, and at cash payment network locations due to planned system maintenance. Email inquiries via the FasTrak website will also be disabled during this time period.” Of course, no “time period” is given. 

I could pay by check and send it by mail, but that makes it costlier for me. I’d be paying for a stamp and taking the chance that, in Louis De Joy’s Postal Service, it might never be delivered, which would subject me to a penalty fee.

The other alternative is to ignore it. They had their chance to take my money, and they didn’t make it possible. Their bad, not mine. Or I could wait awhile and see whether their website or phone system get finished being “maintenanced.” One way or another, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Breville makes household appliances that are considered — by reviewers and consumers — to be very good. That’s not true about its customer support.

It is hard to comprehend, in the era of “the right to repair,” how a high-profile company can make it impossible to purchase essential parts. They’re not offered on the company’s website, through third parties, or even by independent after-market suppliers.

For example, Breville makes a burr coffee grinder called the Smart Grinder Pro that retails for $199. That’s not as ridiculously high as some Italian brands that specialize in espresso grinds, but it’s significantly higher than other all-purpose grinders — the ones that turn out a variety of options for everything from a coarse French press to an extra-fine espresso.

The Break Down
The Breville burr grinder has two components in its grind chamber that, according to owners who have posted comments and reviews on websites, are prone to failure — a felt washer and an impeller. Of course, Breville provides no instructions about replacing them if they do fail, and even ignores information about removing other grind chamber components to reach them.

That chamber contains four elements: the top burr grinder, the lower burr grinder, the impeller that moves grinds into a chute that leads to a collection cup, and the felt washer that fits under the impeller. Breville gives all sorts of instructions about removing the top grinder and using a brush to clean any clogs. It even suggests running uncooked rice through the device. It never suggests that problems might be related to the washer or impeller, and it doesn’t list those parts in any diagrams or parts lists.

The implication is that, if a problem can’t be resolved with brushes and rice, the grinder’s a goner. That’s hard to accept for an item that was cleaned once a week and that costs $200.

The felt washer can, with a bit of effort, be found on third party sites. It’s pricey at $7 (it’s probably worth 70¢), but it’s available. The impeller remains MIA.

Unresponsive
Email messages sent to Breville support; Stephen Krauss, the President of Breville Americas; and Aaron Wanek, the VP of Global Customer Care resulted in… nothing. No one responded with offers to provide the parts or guidance about where to obtain them.

This might be understandable — maybe — if the machine were very old or out of production. It’s not. It’s five years old and still available around the world.

What I’ll use while waiting for the felt washer to arrive (to see whether it solves the problem) is a Moulinex blade grinder. It’s not as precise as a burr grinder, but it works. And it’s 50 years old.

Am I jaded? The simple answer is “yes.” Every shiny new thing seems to be a less shiny older thing that’s been repackaged, renamed, or re-purposed. So, no, I ain’t gettin’ too excited.

Personalization? It’s been around since before Noah learned the length of a cubit. It just wasn’t automated, digitized, and distributed in multiple media. When the guy who ran the General Store in Colonial Williamsburg noticed that Mrs. Harrison preferred patterned fabrics, he’d send her a note when patterned textiles arrived in the shop. The Renaissance cabinet maker didn’t build things on spec. He built them to order, sized to fit a particular purpose or space.

Content marketing? Take some collateral (brochures, how-to guides, spec sheets, videos, sales aids, and anything else used to market and sell in place of face-to-face discussions) and make it available in print (for the past 150 years) or online (for the past 30, give or take), and tailor it for specific individuals involved in the buying process. Old process. New name.

SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WE’RE STUPID
Artificial intelligence? It’s been standard in government for years, though it’s reached new heights in 2021 in places like the Florida governor’s mansion and the Texas legislature. 

Yet A.I. that’s related to computer analysis isn’t all that new either. In the early ’90s, A.I. was already proving itself at companies like American Express, Dun & Bradstreet, and Swiss Bank whose A.I. systems were reducing errors, increasing productivity, and providing solutions in seconds, rather than hours, days, or weeks. The difference today is that the programming technologies have caught up with the business intent and can capture knowledge and detect patterns that used to take programmers ages to accomplish.

WAS STILL IS
Podcasts? They used to call them radio. Of course, you had to tune in at a scheduled time on a specific station, and now you can listen to the audio whenever and wherever you want (if you have the right equipment: computer, tablet, smartphone). The problem is that, while radio shows needed discipline to fit the information into a limited time, podcasts (the business kind) tend to be lazy journalism. Too much chit chat, not enough focused interviewing skill that keeps the participants focused on the subject, and discussions that can ramble on for… ever.

Podcasts that offer serialized stories, whether fictional or true, are radio, too. Just digitally available on demand.

Email? Oh, deJoy of not having to rely on the Postal Service. It’s eminently adaptable — automatically and manually — saves a fortune on production and printing and postage, and can arrive anywhere outside autocracies in seconds. But, c’mon, it’s mail. It’s Pheidippides in bits and bytes (and without the threat of death for showing up with bad news).

NEARLY AS OLD AS CIVILIZATION
Video? It’s theater, speeches, product demos, pictures from a trip to Carpathia all transformed onto digitized visual media. Yes, there are things that you can do with computers and special effects that enhance things to the point of disbelief (pick any Marvel super hero movie) or real danger (vaccines will lead to a zombie apocalypse), but it hasn’t been new since Thomas Edison and the Lumières.

Media have evolved and, with their evolution, they have influenced our perceptions. As Marshall McLuhan phrased it, “the medium is the massage” that manipulates us on sensory levels. That puts the modern equivalencies of all the earlier approaches in a category of “new is different”; not necessarily “new is better.”

YOU ARE NOT ME AND THAT’S A GOOD THING
People still learn differently. Some prefer to read about things, others to hear about them, some want to see words and pictures or just pictures or maybe walkthrough demonstrations. That’s why we need so many distinct approaches. We just shouldn’t view them as brand spankin’ new. Consider them upgrades or enhancements or “new and improved” — things that, unlike Athena, did not spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus. 

These babies have been around since the dawn of civilization. They’re just learning new abilities to adapt to the times.

There are too many articles to count about diversity and inclusion. Most of them are delusional.

They talk about ensuring equal representation for women, for people of different races, for different nationalities and culture, and for LGBTQ individuals. That’s the way it should be.

Yet take a look at the images that accompany those stories. Everybody’s young. There’s no gray hair, no wrinkles, nothing that identifies the organizations as inclusive of people over 50… or even 40. The ideal seems to be female, Black, Asian, White, male, disabled, and transgender employees who are all much younger than 40.

There are even regular annual features titled “40 Under 40” (though, to be fair, Campaign Magazine has run “40 Over 40” for the past five years, but it’s an outlier… and British… while Fortune Magazine has been running its “40 Under 40” since 2009), and this year I encountered “The Queer 50” which, if I were homosexual or bi-sexual, I wouldn’t consider a flattering description. (Personally, I think it’s time for a more neutral descriptor — if there’s a need for one at all — to distinguish between people who prefer partners of the same and those who opt for people of the opposite gender; perhaps straight and curved, though I’m certain that that’s sure to raise somebody’s hackles.)

A PEEK AT PEAKING
Mathematicians tend to peak young. So do computer scientists. Yet writers get better with age, as do researchers, historians, lawyers, doctors, and accountants (even the honest ones). I’d assume that HR professionals learn more as time goes by about how to identify the right personalities for particular positions, and CEOs who’ve weathered several turnarounds are valued for their insights and guidance.

Call me jaded (or judgmental or, for all I care, Ishmael), but when a company that claims to be expert at managing retirement finances doesn’t have anyone of retirement age on the staff, it doesn’t make me trust their expertise. When ad agencies represent clients who 

• sell drugs for age-related conditions
• manage retirement communities
• offer reverse mortgages
• or provide investments that lower risk for retirees

and don’t have anyone of retirement age on their creative staff, something’s wrong. 

NO REFLECTION
When TV shows and movies have lots of kids and parents and either no grandparents in regular or recurring roles or no grandparents at all, I wonder what world that is. Maybe that’s why “Everybody Loves Raymond” endured and why “Modern Family” seems normal… mostly. 

This isn’t to suggest that “Superman” have children and resurrect his parents in a new “Superman: The Spanx Years,” but it might be funny (or a subtle examination of human fallibility and the power of imagination). At least Superman has a vulnerability, which makes him almost like a human with arthritis or irregular heartbeats. 

THE DISCOMFORT ZONE
There is sure to be some level of discomfort in shifting the calculus — from older people guiding younger ones to younger people hiring their elders. There are psychological ramifications that might range from “telling mom and dad what to do” to “feeling that they’ll think they know better” to “believing that ‘the chemistry’s not right’” and the like. Get over it. That can happen with anyone.

What can’t happen with just anyone is the perspective of experience. It’s been said (about multiple industries) that “Our most valuable assets go down in the elevator and out the door every night,” and those people take with them a degree of knowledge that’s unique — to themselves, to the company, to its clients and customers, and among their colleagues. 

Someone trained to work on modern cars who relies on computers that analyze problems and offer solutions won’t be very much help to the person who drives a classic ’56 T-bird. The person who’s mastered Photoshop masking inside out might not know what to do when the power fails and there isn’t any amberlith and X-Acto knives. The spreadsheet whiz who’s mastered the pivot table might not finish the what-ifs by the deadline if they have to do them manually when Excel won’t boot up.

Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. So is diversity and inclusion that’s restricted by age.

The Bill of Rights contains no amendment granting people the right to be stupid. Unfortunately, millions of Americans are insisting there is.

They want to be stupid about science, medicine, religion, guns, and the restrictions of the Constitution itself. They’re Constistupiditists, attempting to convince those “other” people that the "Consties" have Constitutional protections you don’t and that you don’t have protections you do. It’s the underbelly of idiocy that drags along the soil of ineptitude.

A brief history of bias
America is rife with past examples. There’s America’s “peculiar institution” that insisted that the people we enslaved were inferior — mentally if not physically. We’ve made a market in bias against the Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians, and just about anybody born somewhere else. 

In the 20th Century, after running through the usual ethnic victims, there was the vituperative hatred of Father Coughlin. The Catholic “radio priest” couldn’t seem to remember — in the midst of his venomous condemnation of Jews — that Jesus just so happened to be Jewish. 

McCarthyism thrived on willful ignorance. The junior senator from Wisconsin made claims (like today’s) with no basis in fact against people who were guilty of nothing. People whose behavior was permitted. By the Constitution. 

The John Birch Society joined in on the fun of a political kakistocracy. Back then they hated Russians. Today’s heirs apparently think that Russia has the right idea: no opposition, no dissent, no choice, and no room for intelligent thought.

Looking back...wards
After having defeated Nazis in Germany, George Lincoln Rockwell still rose his stiff armed salute with a swastika armband and persuaded too many Americans that Adolf was right about the whole master race thing. In a sense, he was the ideological godfather of modern white supremacists. It wasn’t the Klan. That crowd was at least smart enough to wear a mask.

Another George (Wallace) had the sense to understand that racism was, well… stupid. Strom Thurmond did not, at least not until he had to admit he had a daughter whose mother was Black. 

Nixon, who should have had the wiles to work around the perceptions that he knew he should avoid, was almost clinically moronic. What made things worse was that the people he relied on were even less insightful than he was. It’s too bad he was allowed to resign. It was a “for the good of the country” maneuver that set a pattern for tolerance of unConstitutional behavior. It was, yes, stupid.

Trickle me, Gonzo
Reagan? Oh, God. He was the best snake oil salesman the White House has ever let in. Nothing that he said or did helped the people that he said he was helping. And they weren’t smart enough to see that his actions helped the wealthy, not them. The “Great Communicator” was, in fact, a great deceiver. 

All the highly vocal men in Congress who went after Bill Clinton for his lies about sex with an intern turned out to have committed far greater sins of the flesh. At least they didn’t have the gall to claim “I wasn’t really that into her.” Just brainless enough to have opened their mouths after previously opening their flies.

If Cheney was Tweedle Dum, poor Dubya was Tweedle Dumber. Instead of accepting the world’s willing help to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda and terrorism, he listened to neocon nincompoops and put us even further in harm’s way. Apparently, too many of his cronies ate the yellow cake.

The highest low point
By the time Mr. Trump stumbled into the Executive Mansion, H. L. Mencken was proved right after nearly a century.

    …All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the
    notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office  
​    represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain
    folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
                                                                                                                                                                               [Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920]

Those plain folks are now — thanks to decades of descent in the quality of education, the lack of compromise in politics, the belief that facts are optional, and the assurances that “there are good people on both sides” — the prevailing idiocracy. They all have the right to be stupid, but the rest of us should never be so stupid that we ever admit that they’re right.