The final stages of TEDification include your own personal Netflix special

Ken Levine gives us another example of the researcher -> TED Talker -> celebrity progression.

So I come upon a special by someone named Brene Brown. Who? Well, she must be famous if she has a Netflix Special. So I click on and it starts like every other stand up special – the performer backstage (basically a waste of the first three minutes), and then this attractive middle-aged woman steps out onto the stage. It’s a big theatre with balconies. You can’t do a Netflix special without balconies. And she immediately gets a standing ovation. Have I been marooned on a desert island for five years? Who is this person getting a standing O? She starts off with a few mild jokes that are getting screams. And then I start to realize she’s not actually a comedienne, she’s a self-help guru. But she’s one for Millennials because every sentence was peppered with “So I’m like… and then he’s like… and I’m like… and like they’re like…”

...

Finally, she makes reference to a TED talk she once did. So I decided to turn off the special and seek the TED talk.
...
I guess Oprah or somebody discovered it and the TED talk went viral. And suddenly Brene Brown is a social media star. She now has a bunch of books (I assume with covers that she is allowed to approve), a top draw lecturer, and Netflix Special-er.

Her message sounds sound and every few years another self-help guru comes along (where is Susan Powter when we need her?), but to me the most interesting thing about Brene Brown is her transformation from academic lecturer to zeitgeist celebrity. She’s now got the new hair, new wardrobe, new zippy patter, new Millennial-speak. Someone should really study that phenomenon. Hey, maybe there’s a Hulu Special in your future.

Another reminder that the stakes for Mr. Musk are very, very high

From CNBC:

Tesla said Thursday it plans to raise up to $2 billion, with $1.35 billion coming from convertible notes and $650 million from new equity, including a big purchase from CEO Elon Musk.

In a filing, Musk signaled his intent to buy about $10 million of the electric auto maker’s stock in the new offering. The total equity offering is for 2.7 million shares of Tesla. Musk’s purchase would be 41,896 shares. Before the offering, Musk owned about 20% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, worth about $12.6 billion, according to FactSet.

Forbes lists the next worth of Elon Musk as $20.3 billion as of 5/4/19. $10 million is not by any stretch of the imagination a "big purchase" for him. $12.6 billion, on the other hand, is quite a bit, particularly given the tendency of Forbes billionaires/"billionaires" to exaggerate their wealth (and Musk's tendency to exaggerate everything).

The collapse of Tesla would cost Elon Musk most of his fortune, not to mention his reputation and all those perks of celebrity. Maintaining his persona as messianic visionary and disruptor is absolutely essential for keeping the funding flowing in.

We will probably never know how sincere Musk is when he talks about Mars colonies, or maglev vactrains or telepathy brain chips, but it is important to remember that the buzz those futuristic "ideas" generate buzz that is worth considerably more than $10 billion dollars to the "real life Tony Stark."

[And it appears to be working. ]

Drinking from the wrong pipe -- Bill Barr edition

For those who just got here, we have a long running thread about the implications of Straussianism in the conservative movement. One aspect we've been particularly focused on was instability of a system operating within a relatively free society (as compared with cases where the state controls the media) that depends on channeling censored information and sometimes outright disinformation to the base while keeping the leadership well informed.

Here's how we put it in 2017:

The initial purpose of this "noble lie" approach was to use the propaganda to keep the base sending money and showing up for the polls through of a combination of rage and fear. As with all Straussian systems, it was assumed that those in power would be in on the joke while the people who believed the lies would simply serve as electoral cannon fodder.

At some point though (I suspect inevitably), a couple of things happen. First, the believers become leaders. This is become blindingly obvious with Trump, but the children of Fox News have been in control of the party since at least 2010 and the roots go back further. Remember how Dick Cheney insisted while traveling that all hotel televisions be tuned to Fox News?

The second, and possibly more dangerous problem is that a propaganda-fed base has no capacity to self correct, rather it continues follow unsustainable paths that only gain momentum, often exacerbated by ratcheting mechanisms. Soon you reach a point where, even if the leaders accurately perceive the situation and realized the best solution, they can no longer reconcile that reasonable course of action with what the vast majority of their supporters have been told to believe for decades.

We referred to leaders being caught up in the propaganda as "drinking from the wrong pipe."

Keeping all of that in mind, check out this insightful piece of analysis from Josh Marshall:

It’s a common refrain among non-Republicans that Fox News and the rest of the conservative media superstructure have essentially brainwashed 30 percent or 40 percent of the population over the last couple decades. But implicit in that belief is that it’s those people, voters, for lack of a better word the audience of national politics. Elites or high level appointees or operatives may cynically participate in this flimflam. But somehow they’re not part of the process, they not stewing in the same cauldron. They’re cynical, amoral, pick your description.

This is a major blindspot. Bill Barr is another Republican guy in his late 60s who’s been living, as Miller puts it, in that Fox News/GOP legal circles cocoon for two decades. Why would he be any different from your birther uncle you avoid at holiday dinners?

More to the point, why would we be in the current situation if the bacillus of Foxism or rightwing authoritarianism (whatever you want to call it) wasn’t as pervasive with the Bill Barrs of the GOP as the ordinary Joes you see at the Trump rallies? More articulate, yes. But different? Not really. And why would it be?

Beyond the stonewalling and outrageous comments from Barr yesterday, one thing that struck me is that more than a few times he didn’t seem familiar with basic facts of the case or the Report. I don’t mean points in dispute between pro and anti-Trump commentators. I mean, basic factual details. It wasn’t clear to me he’d actually read the Report itself. At least some of his arguments seemed based on Republican commentaries rather than the actual document. Much the same applies to his comments about 2016 “spying”. This isn’t to excuse any of Barr’s lawless and now, in at least certain cases, criminal behavior. But it’s not clear to me he’s even sweating the details on behalf of his authoritarian aims.

"Her Pilgrim Soul"

With all of the attention going to the new Twilight Zone (haven't gotten around to it -- the queue is long -- but I'm big Jordan Peele fan), I thought it would be a good time to look back at the uneven but often very good 1985 series. It was the show that brought J. Michael Straczynski to the grown-up table and started his surprising long collaboration with the notoriously difficult Harlan Ellison.

The show also revealed a surprisingly sensitive side to Wes Craven, who directed a number of episodes. Here is perhaps the best.




Nice to hear Charles Aidman's voice again.

Stephen Repetski actually read that enormous environmental assessment from Musk's Boring Company

And here are some of the highlights.

Here's the Boring Company's draft DC-Baltimore "Loop" Environmental Assessment: https://t.co/pTkpugoidw

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

The "purpose and need" of the Boring Co's "Loop" is that we need "high-speed passenger transportation between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore."

Isn't that called Amtrak? Or MARC? pic.twitter.com/of6BVdfraE

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

"the above-ground infrastructure associated with Ventilation Shafts
would typically be behind tree-lines and therefore screened from view from B-W Parkway"

Yes, because I would hate to see some ugly buildings when driving along the Parkway in my car.

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

Excuse me but wasn't part of what Boring Co was doing different from everybody else is reusing the dirt removed from the tunnels and turning it into bricks? But now they're going back to disposing it? pic.twitter.com/f7SFeh30iM

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

"DUE TO LIMITED SIZE OF THE WASHINGTON, D.C. LOOP STATION LOCATION, INITIAL OPERATION OF THE LOOP SYSTEM WOULD BE LIMITED TO 1,000 PASSENGERS PER DIRECTION PER DAY." pic.twitter.com/n45iug1Bzh

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

The daily initial operating capacity of the Boring Co's DC-Baltimore system is equivalent to that of a single WMATA 8-car train.

Except WMATA's trains run more than once per day.https://t.co/x8mK78UG3M

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

Due diligence in Boring Co's EA means they list their competitor transit modes between DC and Baltimore, which they say include regularly-scheduled bus and rail service that are "inexpensive, reliable" and "frequent" for a cost starting at $8. pic.twitter.com/dnslTrkiJY

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

TBC DC-Baltimore Loop would pass through several aquifiers. The tunnels themselves would be fairly shallow, 30 to 44 feet down. pic.twitter.com/vwZGXthtne

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

I've seen nothing in this document how TBC plans to deal with water infiltration and outflow pumping infrastructure.

— Stephen Repetski (@srepetsk) April 18, 2019

Repost: Netflix's social media problem

Twitter was pretty much wall-to-wall Games of Thrones this weekend. Though the show does still have a marketing budget, it's safe to say the buzz is now mostly self-sustaining, unlike most of its competitors. Walking Dead did that. As did the Voice. Possibly the Americans.



GoT's impressive social media presence got me to thinking about this post from a few years ago.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Curiously, agressively anti-social

As previously mentioned Certain business models limit you to certain marketing approaches. For example, the standard model for scripted cable series is to run weekly for about three months usually following long story arcs with start dates varying from show to show. This model lends itself to promotion through blogs and social media and it may not be a coincidence that original, scripted shows have increased greatly in popularity and influence over the past dozen years along with social media. When it works well, these shows can create a powerful weekly cycle of buzz and feedback starting with Twitter traffic during the actual broadcast and building from there.

The sheer volume of tweets, posts and podcasts we're talking about is astounding and it's made even more valuable because it bypasses our normal anti-advertising filters. These are people we know recommending a show. What's more, there's a tremendous social norming aspect. Watching the show become part of what's expected.

Keeping that in mind, think about the Netflix direct-to-binge model. Social media thrives on having a critical mass of people sharing a common experience.  With a shows like House of Cards, the kind sustained build-up you see with a Game of Thrones is impossible and even an ordinary discussion requires you to find a group who are at same point in the viewing.

Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netflix, responds to this concern with a truly extraordinary statement:

“No one has ever watched anything on Netflix that they couldn’t watch all at once,” Sarandos said. There was no interest in changing that model for a new group of originals. But that not only meant changing consumer behavior, it also meant dealing with the realities of today’s social network environment.

Sarandos called it a “different style of watercooler etiquette.” Rather than having to deal with the weekly conversation that is produced, viewers need to ask each other which episodes they’re watching and dealing [sic] with that. Still, the strategy seems to be paying off, as viewers are continuing to tune in.

(quick aside: "paying off" implies improvement over what would have happened otherwise. By this standard you could argue that having disgusting bathrooms "pays off" for a filling station as long as someone still buys gas there.)

Sarandos is saying that part of the company's strategy is to get viewers to engage in less word of mouth promotion. That's an amazing position, hoping that people will refrain from conversation until everyone has had a chance to catch up on all thirteen hours of a show. Of course, by the time that happens (assuming it ever does), the show will be an old topic for the people who watched it when it first came out.

In an age where social media is generally considered the inevitable wave of the future, Netflix is launching a programming model based on people talking less about their shows. It's possible that there's some method to the madness here.

Of course, it's also possible these people haven't thought this through.

"The notion of singularity ... is a religion"

This essay from Joi Ito makes a lot of points that will feel familiar to regular readers (mistaking S-curves for exponential when discussing technological progress, the rise of cult-like thinking -- what we've been calling magical heuristics). Lots of other good stuff as well, which is pretty much what you'd expect from the director of MIT’s Media Lab.

The notion of singularity – which includes the idea that AI will supercede humans with its exponential growth, making everything we humans have done and will do insignificant – is a religion created mostly by people who have designed and successfully deployed computation to solve problems previously considered impossibly complex for machines.

They have found a perfect partner in digital computation, a seemingly knowable, controllable, machine-based system of thinking and creating that is rapidly increasing in its ability to harness and process complexity and, in the process, bestowing wealth and power on those who have mastered it.

In Silicon Valley, the combination of groupthink and the financial success of this cult of technology has created a feedback loop, lacking in self-regulation (although #techwontbuild, #metoo and #timesup are forcing some reflection).

On an S-curve or a bell curve, the beginning of the slope looks a lot like an exponential curve. According to systems-dynamics people, however, an exponential curve shows a positive feedback curve without limits, self-reinforcing and dangerous.

In exponential curves, Singularitarians see super-intelligence and abundance. Most people outside the Singularity bubble believe that natural systems behave like S-curves, where systems respond and self-regulate. When a pandemic has run its course, for example, its spread slows and the world settles into a new equilibrium. The world may not be in the same state as before the pandemic or other runaway change, but the notion of singularity – especially as some sort of saviour or judgment day that will allow us to transcend the messy, mortal suffering of our human existence – is fundamentally a flawed one.

Revisiting the New York Magazine pseudo-science thread -- now with consequences

And pretty damned horrifying ones at that.

As of this week, there have been 695 cases of measles in the U.S. across more than 20 states this year—the highest annual toll seen since the disease was declared extinguished in the U.S. in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given that it’s only April and we’ve already broken a yearly record, it’s worth wondering: Just how much worse could things get?

Measles is a highly contagious virus, capable of infecting someone through airborne droplets left behind by someone else, even hours after they’re no longer present. But measles’ one major weakness is humanity itself. Humans are the only natural host the virus uses to reproduce and spread. That means if you can fully stop the chain of transmission between people—by vaccinating practically everyone who could be exposed to it, for instance—you can eradicate measles completely.

In the U.S., the eradication of measles was formally declared in 2000, thanks to a tremendous public health effort and a mandatory vaccination program. But since there are still parts of the world where measles happens regularly, even with vaccination, travelers have continued to catch measles somewhere else and bring it to the U.S. Because most Americans continue to be vaccinated against it at an early age, though, outbreaks and cases of measles since 2000 have largely been isolated.

The anti-vaccination movement, however, has provided the kindling for this resurgence in measles, according to Peter Pitts, former associate commissioner for external relations at the Food and Drug Administration and president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.

“This measles epidemic is a perfect storm of vaccine denialism, stupidity, and groupthink,” he told Gizmodo.

As has been widely reported, one of the major epicenters of the anti-vaxx movement was the pricier sections of the west side of LA, which brings us to...

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

David Wallace-Wells, autism and bad science

David Wallace-Wells has been catching a lot of flack (most of it richly deserved) for his recent New York Magazine article on climate change. It is a hugely troubling sign when the very scientists you were claiming to represent push back against your article.

This controversy illustrates a larger problem with science reporting at the magazine. We already have a post in the queue discussing the neutral-to-credulous coverage of topics ranging from homeopathy to magic crystals to Gwyneth Paltrow's goop empire. The Wallace-Wells piece takes things to another level and goes in a very different but arguably worse direction. Rather than giving bad science a pass, he takes good science and presents it so ineptly has to do it a disservice.

I am not going to delve into that science myself. The topic has been well covered by numerous expert and knowledgeable writers [see here and here]. The best I could offer would be a recap. There are some journalistic points I may hit later and I do want to highlight a minor detail in the article that has slipped past most critics, but which is perfectly representative of the dangerous way Wallace-Wells combines sensationalism with a weak grasp of science.

Other stuff in the hotter air is even scarier, with small increases in pollution capable of shortening life spans by ten years. The warmer the planet gets, the more ozone forms, and by mid-century, Americans will likely suffer a 70 percent increase in unhealthy ozone smog, the National Center for Atmospheric Research has projected. By 2090, as many as 2 billion people globally will be breathing air above the WHO “safe” level; one paper last month showed that, among other effects, a pregnant mother’s exposure to ozone raises the child’s risk of autism (as much as tenfold, combined with other environmental factors). Which does make you think again about the autism epidemic in West Hollywood.

No, David, no it doesn't.

I want to be painstakingly careful at this point. These are complex and extraordinarily important issues and it is essential that we do not lose sight of certain basic facts: by any reasonable standard, man-made climate change is one of the two or three most important issues facing our country; the effect of various pollutants on children's mental and physical development should be a major concern for all of us; high ozone levels are a really bad thing.

But the suggestion that ozone levels are causing an autism epidemic in West Hollywood is both dangerous and scientifically illiterate. You'll notice that I did not say that suggesting ozone levels cause autism is irresponsible. Though the study in question is outside of my field, the hypothesis seems reasonable and I do not see any red flags associated with the research. If Wallace-Wells had stopped before adding that last sentence, he would've been on solid ground, but he didn't.

Autism is frightening, mysterious, tragic. This has caused people, particularly parents facing one of the worst moments imaginable, to clean desperately to any explanation that might make sense of their situation. As a result, autism has become a focal point for bad science, culminating with the rise of the anti-vaccination movement. There is no field where groundless speculation and fear-mongering are less welcome.

So, if ozone and other pollutants may contribute to autism, what's so bad about the West Hollywood claim? For that, you need to do some rudimentary causal reasoning, starting with a quick look at ozone pollution in Southern California.

Here are some pertinent facts from a 2015 LA Times article:

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy selected a limit of 70 parts per billion, which is more stringent than the 75 parts-per-billion standard adopted in 2008 but short of the 60-ppb endorsed by environmentalists and health advocacy groups including the American Lung Assn. The agency’s science advisors had recommended a limit lower than 70 -- and as low as 60.

...


About one-third of California residents live in communities with pollution that exceeds federal standards, according to estimates by the state Air Resources Board.


Air quality is worst in inland valleys, where pollution from vehicles and factories cook in sunlight to form ozone, which is blown and trapped against the mountains.


The South Coast air basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, violated the current 75-ppb ozone standard on 92 days in 2014. The highest ozone levels in the nation are in San Bernardino County, which reported a 2012-2014 average of 102 parts per billion.

Now let's look at some ozone levels around the region. West Hollywood, it should be noted, is not great.

But just over the Hollywood Hills, the situation is even worse.

Go further inland to San Dimas and the level is even higher…

Higher still in Riverside ...

Though still far short of what we find in San Bernardino.

If you look at autism rates by school district and compare them to ozone levels, it is difficult to see much of a relationship. Does this mean that ozone does not contribute to autism? Absolutely not. What it shows is that, as with many developmental and learning disabilities, the wealthy are overdiagnosed while poor are underdiagnosed. It is no coincidence that a place like Santa Monica/Maibu (a notorious anti-vaxxer hotspot) has more than double the diagnosis rate of San Bernardino.

The there's this from the very LA Times article by Alan Zarembo that Wallace-Wells cites [emphasis added]:

 Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiologist at UC Davis, suspects that environmental triggers such as exposure to chemicals during pregnancy play a role. In a 2009 study, she started with a tantalizing lead — several autism clusters, mostly in Southern California, that her team had identified from disability and birth records.

But the hot spots could not be linked to chemical plants, waste dumps or any other obvious environmental hazards. Instead, the cases were concentrated in places where parents were highly educated and had easy access to treatment.

Peter Bearman, a sociologist at Columbia University, has demonstrated how such social forces are driving autism rates.

Analyzing state data, he identified a 386-square-mile area centered in West Hollywood that consistently produced three times as many autism cases as would be expected from birth rates.

Affluence helped set the area apart. But delving deeper, Bearman detected a more surprising pattern that existed across the state: Rich or poor, children living near somebody with autism were more likely to have the diagnosis themselves.
Living within 250 meters boosted the chances by 42%, compared to living between 500 and 1,000 meters away.

The reason, his analysis suggested, was simple: People talk.
They talk about how to recognize autism, which doctors to see, how to navigate the bureaucracies to secure services. They talk more if they live next door or visit the same parks, or if their children go to the same preschool.

The influence of neighbors alone accounts for 16% of the growth of autism cases in the state developmental system between 2000 and 2005, Bearman estimated.

In other words, autism is not contagious, but the diagnosis is.

The fact that I had to Google the topic because I'd forgotten the name of the company should tell you something

[On a somewhat ironic note, I put the wrong name in the original version of this post.]

A big part of the dotcom boom was the idea that the surefire secret to success in the new economy was to have an online business, quickly line up tons of funding, bring in serious traffic and establish a strong brand through memorable, preferably edgy ads. (Thankfully, we've learned or lesson.)
Few companies took this idea further than Outpost.com.


From Wikipedia:

The company expanded rapidly, taking advantage of the booming Internet. Revenue increased from $1.9 million in the year ended February 29, 1996 to $22.7 million in the year ended February 28, 1998.

In 1997, Money Magazine rated the site as "Best Site for Computer Equipment". Outpost.com raised $2.7 million in venture capital in 1997, at which point the site had 25,000 visitors per day and 1.3 million customers. The company secured another $22 million in financing in 1998, and raised another $70 million from its initial public offering. Outpost.com opened a warehouse in Ohio that could guarantee next-morning domestic delivery and worldwide delivery within 48 hours. Outpost provided next-day shipping on all orders, regardless of size, up until 2001.

After the dot-com bubble burst, the company fell on hard times. In 2001, the company entered into a merger agreement with PC Connection but then terminated that merger agreement and the company was sold to Fry's Electronics for $21 million including the repayment of $13 million in debt from PC Connection. At that time, the company had 1.4 million customers and 4 million visitors per month to its website.

Hail Marys and the limits of the hype economy

Events are moving quickly and in a very bad direction for Tesla.

The company reported Wednesday that automotive revenue in the first quarter fell 41% to $3.7 billion from $6.3 billion in the previous quarter, a far steeper drop than expected for sales of all its electric-cars — the Model S, the Model X and the Model 3.

Total sales, including Tesla energy and battery storage products, fell 38% to $4.5 billion from $7.2 billion.

The sales slump in turn slammed the company’s bottom line. The company turned unprofitable again after two rare quarters of positive earnings. The net loss was $702 million, after a $139-million profit in the previous quarter. (The first-quarter loss was close to what the company recorded in the year-earlier period — $709 million — when it was grappling with fundamental manufacturing problems.)
Scarce cash got even scarcer. Cash on hand dropped from $3.69 billion at the end of last quarter to $2.2 billion. That included paying off $920 million in convertible bonds.

Operating cash flow turned negative — a net $640 million going out the door over the three months versus a positive $1.23 billion in the previous period.

Tesla shares, down about 22% for the year through Wednesday’s close, were up slightly in after-hours trading Wednesday, to about $259 a share.
...

Where the money for such projects will come from is unclear. Musk was asked why he doesn’t raise money through a debt or equity sale. Musk said he’d rather focus on efficiency first. “I don’t think raising capital should be a substitute for making the company operate more effectively,” he said. “I think it’s healthy to be on a Spartan diet for a while.”

Without an infusion of equity or debt, major expansion would require healthy cash flow. But cash flow has gone negative. Capital spending, which funds assembly lines and other manufacturing operations, has been declining. It fell from $325 million in 2018’s fourth quarter to $280 million in 2019’s first quarter. The number topped $1 billion in the third quarter of 2017 and has fallen with each quarter.

Not surprisingly for those who have been following his career, rather than tamping down expectations, Elon Musk has responded with even more incredible promises (from a couple of days ago:

Tesla’s aim is to create a fleet of self-driving cars that can be used as robot taxis in what Musk is calling the “Tesla fleet.” The company will manage the apps and software. Tesla owners could let their cars out for robo-taxi use, with the company keeping a percentage of the revenue. Tesla would also operate its own robo-taxi fleet.

“We expect to deploy the first robo-taxis with no one in them next year,” Musk said Monday. “I’m confident we’ll get regulatory approval somewhere.”

Make no mistake. Musk is talking about level 5, fully autonomous vehicles, something that, as far as we can tell, no one is even close to. Most researchers put this functionality at least a decade away, which is why the focus has shifted to finding ways to get the most out of level 4 AVs.

Even by his standards, this is an audacious claim, but the stakes are stunningly high. The valuation of Tesla has always been based on a combination of hype and the "real life Tony Stark" persona and there are still investors who want to believe (as well as those who don't).

The range in target prices for Tesla stock is almost bizarre, reflecting wildly different opinions about Tesla’s growth prospects. The stock closed trading Monday at $262.75 a share, down 3.9%.

The Ark Invest money management group sees Tesla trading at $4,000 as self-drive technology becomes more popular. Ives puts an “outperform” rating on Tesla, with a 12-month price target of $365.

At the other end of the spectrum, Garrett Nelson of CFRA recommends Tesla stockholders sell, with a target price of $225 a share. And short sellers have set a target price as low as zero.

I suspect that a lot of the visionary pronouncements and proposals about giant underground slot car racing sets  and brain-computer interfaces we've been hearing about recently have less to do with the projects themselves and more with maintaining a futuristic aura around Musk, and thus propping up the stock a little bit longer.

It worked for a long time but even in the hype economy, there are limits.

Elon Musk's self-confidence shouldn't inspire much confidence

More good work from Timothy B. Lee on the Tesla beat [emphasis added]:

Tesla is less than two years away from full self-driving, CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with MIT researcher Lex Fridman published on Friday. And he said Tesla was far ahead of other companies working on self-driving technology.

"To me right now, this seems 'game, set, and match,'" Musk said. "I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone."

Musk told Fridman that Tesla customers would need to keep their hands on the wheel "for at least six months or something like that." But he predicted that soon—"maybe even toward the end of this year, I'd be shocked if it's not next year at the latest"—Tesla's self-driving technology will become so good that "having a human intervene will decrease safety."

Musk has maintained an optimistic mood about Tesla's self-driving progress at the same time that other industry CEOs have been tamping down expectations. (Musk is congenitally optimistic on this topic—in 2015, he predicted that fully self-driving cars would be ready within two years, declaring it a "much easier problem than people think it is.")

...

"Tesla Autopilot is not yet even close to where Waymo was 6 years ago," wrote Brad Templeton, a longtime self-driving car evangelist who advised Google during the early years of its self-driving car program.

By 2012, Google had developed highway driver assistance software that had capabilities similar to recent versions of Autopilot. Google considered selling this technology as a standalone product but decided there was too much danger of drivers becoming overly reliant on the technology—and failing to properly monitor it.

So Google pivoted to developing fully self-driving cars that would never need customers to take control. By 2015, Waymo was confident enough in its technology to allow a blind man to ride through residential streets in Austin, Texas. But more than three years later, Google's project—now rechristened Waymo—still hasn't launched a fully driverless taxi service.

At this point, regular viewers should be able to fill in the the missing dialogue without much trouble. Musk is a huckster, and like most of the best of the breed, he has the gift of believing his own line. His natural lack of talent as an engineer (he really is shockingly bad at this) may actually give him an advantage here -- that Dunning–Kruger boost of confidence can make a pitch even more convincing.

You can almost imagine the conversation with the genuinely gifted engineers at Tesla as they tried to explain the many problems with that were almost solved compared to the handful that were still years away from resolution, patiently walking him through the subtle distinctions and spelling out the difficult trade-offs required to get an autonomous vehicle ready for the road.

The real tip-off is "much easier problem than people think it is."  If you've ever had a job that required presenting complex technical or analytic concepts, you've probably had that moment where you realize that your audience missed all of those fine but important point and drew exactly the wrong conclusions.

Of course, your audience probably didn't use those conclusions to justify the viability of a multi-billion dollar company.

It's entirely possible for Netflix to be a fantastic success and a disastrous failure

Not just Netflix, of course. For any of the numerous companies with both huge valuation and sky-high price to earnings ratios, healthy growth and a couple of decades of solid profitability aren't enough to justify the level of investment. These companies have to be unprecedented, spectacular successes that completely dominate their industries.This is one of those facts that everyone knows but few spend much time thinking about, at least few of those in the business press.

Personally, I hope that Netflix has a long and lucrative run -- the more players, the better -- but it's important to remember that the bullish argument for the stock price requires blowing Disney out of the water, and right now, the house of mouse is looking rather substantial.

Check out this graphic courtesy of Barry Ritholtz:

Elon Musk's latest sounds "worse than pointless"

At this point, I don't think that Musk actually expects to get any real money out of the DC to Baltimore tunnel proposal directly, but he has got to shore up his visionary credentials and he has to do it fast.

Demand for Tesla cars appears to have stalled. Stores are being closed. Inventory is piling up. Prices are being cut.

Panasonic, the company’s closest business partner, abandoned plans to expand operations at Tesla’s giant battery factory in Nevada unless car sales pick up.

Although Tesla posted consecutive quarterly profits late last year, Musk has prepared Wall Street for a loss when first-quarter 2019 earnings are announced April 24.

The controversial chief executive also faces contempt charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He had agreed to settle SEC stock fraud charges after tweeting falsely last August that he had the funding to take Tesla private. In the settlement, he agreed not to tweet material information about the company without prior vetting. A federal judge said the settlement could be clearer, ordering both sides to put on their “reasonable pants” and revise the agreement.

Amid the bad news, Tesla’s volatile stock has fallen from a year-to-date high of $347.31 a share to 273.26 on Thursday, a 21% decline.

 The valuation of the company was always driven primarily by Musk's carefully cultivated "real life Tony Stark" persona, and that persona is starting to fade just as the company's debts are coming due. He absolutely has to keep the show going.

Aaron Gordon of Jalopnik has an insightful review of the latest act.

Elon Musk's D.C. to Baltimore Tunnel Sounds Worse than Pointless

What if I proposed digging two 35-mile tunnels that would begin and end right next to two train stations that currently have service between one another? And this tunnel would be right underneath an existing highway? But this tunnel would be used to skim cars along tracks at speeds no one has achieved yet? And it would move fewer than two trains’ worth of people per direction per day?

...

This is no small caveat. 35 miles is a really long tunnel, and they’re not just digging one, but two of them. The report claims a digging time of less than two years, which would be an unprecedented achievement orders of magnitude [Not quite, but still a lot -- MP] faster than any other tunneling project to date, as Kevin DeGood, Director for Infrastructure Policy at the Center for American Progress pointed out:

Reuters: “Boring says it would take between 12 and 20 months to dig the [35.3 mile] tunnels.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahah

— Kevin DeGood (@kevin_degood) April 18, 2019

For comparison, a 35-mile twin-bore tunnel through the Swiss Alps took 17 years to build. Yes, digging through the Alps is much harder than the soil beneath Maryland, but not that much harder.

And, for the record, it takes high-speed trains 17 minutes to travel through the tunnel, or only two minutes longer than the proposed travel time in Musk’s DC-Baltimore route.

...

Instead of talking about those things, The US and Maryland DOTs are investing actual resources to study this pointless tunnel and openly advocate for its construction. In a statement accompanying the report’s release, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao talked up the potential benefits (heavy emphasis on “potential”):

    The publication of a draft environmental assessment for this unique project demonstrates the Department’s commitment to preparing for the future of transportation across all modes.

All modes?! It’s a car in a tunnel! That mode exists!

It's been an eventful week.

I think we should all take this advice for now and come back refreshed and ready to go Monday morning.

An important message for everyone eager to tweet your thoughts on the Mueller report at 9:30am

pic.twitter.com/jHiMfT0G6x

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) April 18, 2019

“Uber for astrological readings” is still a more rational investment than the actual Uber

I'm afraid there's less to this story than meets the eye. All snark aside, astrology has been a popular and profitable segment of the economy for a long time and an app that delivers horoscopes makes perfect business sense. Unlike, for example, a model based on buying movie tickets than reselling them at a loss.

From the New York Times:

As an Aquarius, David Birnbaum is naturally skeptical of astrology. But as an investor, he has zero doubts about the business potential of the $2.1 billion “mystical services market.” It’s an area that he has been trying, unsuccessfully, to invest in for nearly two decades.

Mr. Birnbaum researched lots of astrology start-ups in the Web 1.0 era but concluded then that they were not good investments. “They were pretty much just marketplaces sending traffic off to random astrologers,” he said. “They were definitely shady.”

This year he finally backed one: Sanctuary, an app that can be described as “Uber for astrological readings.” For $19.99 a month, you can receive a monthly one-on-one chat consultation with an astrologer. (The app also provides free daily horoscopes.)

Mr. Birnbaum’s decision to back a horoscope company through Five Four Ventures, the incubator he runs, “gets a lot of grins” from people in the finance world, he said. But they get it. Astrology is having a cultural moment, and for investors, that translates to dollar signs.

In recent years astrology traded its psychedelic new-wave stigma for modern Instagrammy witch vibes, and those vibes are very popular with millennial women. This means there’s money to be made. Start-ups — professional, non-shady ones with interesting business models — are bubbling up, eagerly raising funding from people like Mr. Birnbaum.