The Braindump Blog

📚 Finished reading Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi.

This is a very comprehensive book about running experiments. The heavy focus is on the modern type of online experiment where you might want to use thousands or millions of users who interact with an app or website in order to detect sometimes very small behavioural effects.

This contrasts with many of the previous books on experiments and statistics I’ve read that often assume you have maybe 30 in-person participants you’re looking to study in a lab. It also focuses a bit less on the statistics and a bit more on the practicalities of design and implementation, although there’s plenty of stats to get your teeth into as well.

The authors also share plenty of examples, usually from the big tech companies, so you can see how the experts apply these lessons to make their decisions.

To be honest, you can get a decent idea of what’s included from the chapter titles. Here we go:

• Introduction and Motivation: Why experiment? What are the basic ingredients of doing so?
• Running and Analyzing Experiments: An End-to-End Example
• Twyman’s Law and Experimentation Trustworthiness: Twyman’s law is “Any figure that looks interesting or different is usually wrong”, so this is all about misinterpretation and validity.
• Experimentation Platform and Culture: Maturity models and tools.
• Speed Matters: An End-to-End Case Study: Why platform performance matters.
• Organizational Metrics: The principles and practice of selecting metrics to measure.
• Metrics for Experimentation and the Overall Evaluation Criterion: How to derive metrics you can measure in an experiment from the organisational metrics above.
• Institutional Memory and Meta-Analysis
• Ethics in Controlled Experiments
• Complementary Techniques: Alternatives or complements to experimenting.
• Observational Causal Studies: What to do when RCTs are impossible to carry out.
• Client-Side Experiments: Should you run client-side or server-side experiments?
• Instrumentation: Culture and practice.
• Choosing a Randomization Unit
• Ramping Experiment Exposure: Trading Off Speed, Quality, and Risk: Considerations when releasing your experiment.
• Scaling Experiment Analyses: The less manual the better, generally.
• The Statistics behind Online Controlled Experiments: T-tests et al.
• Variance Estimation and Improved Sensitivity: Pitfalls and Solutions
• The A/A Test: What is it? Why run it?
• Triggering for Improved Sensitivity: When to trigger a participant into an experiment.
• Sample Ratio Mismatch and Other Trust-Related Guardrail Metrics: Measures of how trustworthy your results are.
• Leakage and Interference between Variants: Problems and solutions when test and control groups interfere with each other.
• Measuring Long-Term Treatment Effects: When you want to measure results for much longer than the typical 1-2 week duration of an experiment - and when you don’t need to worry about it.

All in all, highly recommended. I learned and formalised a decent amount even after being involved in this field for some time.

📚 Want to read: Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right by Harry Shukman.

The British far right is working to dismantle our democracy. This shocking, eye-opening undercover journey reveals who they are, how they operate and how they are normalising extreme ideologies including eugenics.

The book that this article in today’s Guardian is adapted from.

📺 Watched Matlock.

Not the original classic; this is a 2024 call-back to the show. Madeline Kingston, a previously retired lawyer, applies to work in a law firm she suspects of covering up a report about opioids that could have saved her daughter’s life. Each episode tends to cover an unrelated court case where Madeline - under the fake name Maddy Matlock, extoling a fake life - helps her colleagues save an innocent defendant.

To do this she usually leverages the prejudice against folksy older women that they’re basically invisible to those around them too harmless or cognitively impaired to possibly present any kind of threat to people they interact with in order to charm those involved in the prosecution of the case into providing the key facts or information that lead to the acquittal of the client concerned.

In between court room appearances she sneaks around undercover looking for the evidence she needs to prove the prior malign actions of the company with regards to her daughter’s tragic demise - did they do it, who was involved and why?

This side of the show is, to me at least, extremely obviously based on the real-life appalling events surrounding the Sackler family’s promotion of OxyContin - building an “empire of pain” - even if no direct reference is ever made to it.

Pope Francis has died.

🎶 Listening to Super Pedestrian by Annie DiRusso.

This is the first album from Annie DiRusso, and it’s a good one. I’m wasn’t tempted to skip any tracks. She’s an indie-rock musician , although this album crosses genres at time, with some songs being more poppy, others more punky - and often full of compelling and relatable self-introspection

📺 Watched Severance season 2.

We’re back with our intrepid macro-data-refining team of four who, after one of the most dramatic cliff-hangers I recall from 3 years ago (perhaps the only one I remember from so long ago), continue their attempts to figure out what is going on with their employer, Lumon, why they’re doing what they do, along with the dark secrets it holds. Plus how to live an acceptable split life.

This is, by a decent margin, my favourite show that I can remember from recent years, perhaps ever.

The premise is that they work on the severed floor, having willingly undergone the process of severance. This entails an operation that results the development of an innie - the person you are at work, and an outie - the person you are elsewhere.

Whilst sharing the same body and brain, the innie has no memory of what the outie is doing and vice versa. From their point of view, the outie lives their live, turns up to work, and immediately leaves again. Time has passed but they have no memory of what happened. Conversely, the innie is always at work. They leave the office and are then right back there, with no concept of what happened in between.

It’s a process billed to give you a break from your worst, most traumatic memories, as well as promote a healthy work-life balance - at least for the outie, who never remembers working a day in their life.

This results in something like a dramatic interpretation of a philosophical thought experiment involving the self - what does it mean to be you? - as well notions of consent and so on. It’s not a totally unrealistic possibility; witness for instance the IRL existence of split brain patients who, following a brain operation, can appear to develop two separate selves - each unaware of the other’s thoughts, each with their own awareness, preferences and personality.

Back in the Severance world, this is beautifully topped off with what could be seen as a critique of the the modern workplace, of office life, of the ridiculousness of corporate culture, of what we do to ourselves in the name of earning money - and what we let companies get away with in an era of pretty much unconstrained capitalism.

The show exquisitely done, hilarious at times, scary and tension-filled at others, mysterious and compelling with fantastic characters throughout. The visuals are incredible, the sound fantastic. It’s rightly won all sorts of awards.

I cannot wait for the next series. Please let the wait be less than between the first two.

🎙️ Listening to The Retrievals.

This is a podcast from the famous about a horrific incident in the history of the Yale Fertility Centre.

Women would visit the centre in order to participate in IVF treatment. Part of the process is the egg retrieval, where eggs are retrieved from the ovaries. This is an invasive procedure involving a needle being inserted into the ovary.

In isolation it’s potentially extremely painful, so patients are sedated or given anaesthesia such that they don’t suffer. Except at Yale, some were not. Instead of the intended fentanyl they were given vials of saline - salt water - which has no pain-prevention characteristics. Some thus went through an absolutely agonising, totally unnecessary, experience.

At this point it’s no spoiler to say that the fundamental cause was that a nurse was stealing the fentanyl for herself and secretly replacing it with the saline. But of course there’s a lot more to dive into in this story - the who, why and how did she get away with it for so long in such a renowned institution - alongside the important stories of the patients themselves.

Brace yourself for the long list of words that the New York Times found are flagged by the Trump administration to be banned or limited from usage within the government and all its outputs.

This list is from reporting over a month ago and even back then they claimed it was likely incomplete. At the time, the NYT had recorded over 250 web pages from federal agencies having been edited or deleted based on these words. I’m sure the number has only risen since then.

And yes, this is from the same administration whose President started off by creating an executive order literally called “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP” who has handed immeasurable unaccountable freedom and power to a guy who once claimed to be a free speech absolutist. Wild.

Here we go:

• accessible
• activism
• activists
• advocacy
• advocate
• advocates
• affirming care
• all-inclusive
• allyship
• anti-racism
• antiracist
• assigned at birth
• assigned female at birth
• assigned male at birth
• at risk
• barrier
• barriers
• belong
• bias
• biased
• biased toward
• biases
• biases towards
• biologically female
• biologically male
• BIPOC
• Black
• breastfeed + people
• breastfeed + person
• chestfeed + people
• chestfeed + person
• clean energy
• climate crisis
• climate science
• commercial sex worker
• community diversity
• community equity
• confirmation bias
• cultural competence
• cultural differences
• cultural heritage
• cultural sensitivity
• culturally appropriate
• culturally responsive
• DEI
• DEIA
• DEIAB
• DEIJ
• disabilities
• disability
• discriminated
• discrimination
• discriminatory
• disparity
• diverse
• diverse backgrounds
• diverse communities
• diverse community
• diverse group
• diverse groups
• diversified
• diversify
• diversifying
• diversity
• enhance the diversity
• enhancing diversity
• environmental quality
• equal opportunity
• equality
• equitable
• equitableness
• equity
• ethnicity
• excluded
• exclusion
• expression
• female
• females
• feminism
• fostering inclusivity
• GBV
• gender
• gender based
• gender based violence
• gender diversity
• gender identity
• gender ideology
• gender-affirming care
• genders
• Gulf of Mexico
• hate speech
• health disparity
• health equity
• hispanic minority
• historically
• identity
• immigrants
• implicit bias
• implicit biases
• inclusion
• inclusive
• inclusive leadership
• inclusiveness
• inclusivity
• increase diversity
• increase the diversity
• indigenous community
• inequalities
• inequality
• inequitable
• inequities
• inequity
• injustice
• institutional
• intersectional
• intersectionality
• key groups
• key people
• key populations
• Latinx
• LGBT
• LGBTQ
• marginalize
• marginalized
• men who have sex with men
• mental health
• minorities
• minority
• most risk
• MSM
• multicultural
• Mx
• Native American
• non-binary
• nonbinary
• oppression
• oppressive
• orientation
• people + uterus
• people-centered care
• person-centered
• person-centered care
• polarization
• political
• pollution
• pregnant people
• pregnant person
• pregnant persons
• prejudice
• privilege
• privileges
• promote diversity
• promoting diversity
• pronoun
• pronouns
• prostitute
• race
• race and ethnicity
• racial
• racial diversity
• racial identity
• racial inequality
• racial justice
• racially
• racism
• segregation
• sense of belonging
• sex
• sexual preferences
• sexuality
• social justice
• sociocultural
• socioeconomic
• status
• stereotype
• stereotypes
• systemic
• systemically
• they/them
• trans
• transgender
• transsexual
• trauma
• traumatic
• tribal
• unconscious bias
• underappreciated
• underprivileged
• underrepresentation
• underrepresented
• underserved
• undervalued
• victim
• victims
• vulnerable populations
• women
• women and underrepresented

📺 Watched Death in Paradise season 14.

Back on the tropical island that must have the highest murder rate around. Same setup as previously, only it seemed to me that basically the solution to every case involved realising that the act of murder actually happened a long time before it seemed to.

Grumpy new detective Mervin Wilson constantly pretends he wants to return home to his native England, but instead predictably stays around to help the rest of the local team solve, solve, solve.

Nothing new here; simply the gentle comfort of watching a season 14 of a show you watched the previous 13 seasons of. Only, oh no, can the eternal presence of Commissioner Selwyn Patterson really be at its end?

Previous season.

📺 Watched The Apprentice season 19.

Previous season.

📺 Watched Toxic Town.

This mini-series was also written by Jack Thorne, the same person who co-wrote another recent highly impactful show I watched, Adolescence.

Unlike the latter (despite what some largely offensive people like to claim about Adolescence), this series is based on a single, specific true event. One I hadn’t heard of, to my shame.

In 1981, the owners of a steel-making industrial site in the UK town of Corby closed it down. The relevant council decided to demolish and re-excavate the site as part of an urban regeneration program.

Shortly afterwards pregnant people in the area started having babies that suffered from birth defects at a weirdly high level. Some had miscarriages.

Each in isolation has no way to know that this is anything more than a rare and potentially personally devastating outcome for them, their family and of course their child. But once they start to learn of each other’s situations they come to the conclusion that something more than bad luck is going on in the area; eventually settling on the idea that what happened to them must relate to the mismanagement of the shutdown of the steel plant and the resulting very visible chemical contamination of the area.

They end up taking the council to court. The council fervently denies the allegations, disputes their evidence and tries to come up with some of their own. However, they do so dishonestly, prioritising blanket denial, and their own financial interests, over the suffering of the claimants. It’s hard to say it’s anything other than a deliberate cover-up, rife with corruption.

This dramatized documentary then tells the story of a few of the women involved, from the traumatic start of their plight through to their attempts to win some kind of legal justice for their children - no matter how hard the struggle became, no matter the toll the fight inevitably took on them and their families.

📚 Finished listening to Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes.

This is the second book in the ‘You’ series, likewise inspiring the second season of the Netflix show.

Honestly, it’s more of the same as the first was - a first person narrated tale of a guy falling into a wormhole of violent obsession with the next supposed love of his life and those around her.

It might be critiqued as being at least as unnecessarily gratuitous as the first, and I’m not sure it does my brain all that much good to read it. But the first person narration of a clearly increasingly deranged person was as compulsive as the first to me. As one can see by how quick I got to it and through it.

Basically if you liked the first, you’ll like this one too.

And now she wants to start her own social network. Yes, Liz Truss stood up at a crypto conference - where else? - to announce her plans to launch a new social media platform because blah blah something something free speech deep state blah blah.

Clearly being literally the person in charge of the whole of Britain wasn’t enough to dampen the faux-I’ve-been-silenced complex her ilk have. And her solution? Well, one more place on the internet where people can shout the N word to their heart’s content I suppose. How novel. So unprecedented.

No word on how Trump feels about this competitor to his own personal dumb wannabe Twitter, the appallingly named ‘truthsocial’.

Our disastrous and incompetent ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss re-emerges to provide an absolutely terrible opinion in the Telegraph.

Trump has been proven right about pretty much everything.

Obviously, in line with her previous Telegraph ramblings, her primary purpose in writing this nonsense, beyond just simple flattery, seems to be once again an effort to blame everyone else except herself for not understanding how great her disgraceful policies of yesteryear actually were.

I know only too well how policies can be traduced and the markets weaponised against people who are trying to change things. The 2022 Mini-Budget was a sensible package of tax freezes, spending restraint and supply-side measures, including fracking, which would have generated economic growth (and was smaller in scale than fiscal announcements before or since).

A huge amount of hysteria was generated, making it very difficult to get messages across. Ultimately, Conservative-in-name-only MPs, the economic establishment and their allies in the media contributed to so much turbulence that the policies could not be implemented. I was blamed for failures that were actually the Bank of England’s: it has since admitted that two-thirds of the market movement was its responsibility.

Once again showing that the MAGA folk exhibit the exact same behaviours they falsely ascribe to their more liberal enemies but in the opposite direction, I see that the little boys have got all over-excited about “pronouns”. You know, words like “he” and “she”.

And literally those ones, we’re not even talking exclusively about ones that the average Trumpy sycophant may never have encountered before their last viewing of an overdramatic Fox News report.

Soon after the new administration clocked in, federal government workers were literally banned from mentioning their pronouns in email signature blocks.

“All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks ,” instructions to State Department employees read, in an email they received Friday.

Oh, and they should be eradicated from official forms too:

The instructions to medical staff at some Veterans Affairs facilities also articulated how references to gender would have to be excised on forms: “The use of GENDER is not allowed on any form. We can only use SEX, and there should be only 2 options — MALE and FEMALE.”

More recently, it turned out that it’s apparently not enough that the remaining government employees are to have their at-worst-harmless email signatures censored and silenced. Non-government journalists aren’t supposed to use them either. Well, not if they want the White House to respond to their questions anyway:

On at least three recent occasions, senior Trump press aides have refused to engage with reporters’ questions because the journalists listed identifying pronouns in their email signatures.

Why? As if it wasn’t obvious. But it’s sometimes hilarious to hear what exactly they think they’re scared of.

“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Ms. Leavitt, the press secretary, wrote in an email.

The thought of sitting down at my professional job and writing a sentence like that just blows my mind. Of course the same could be said for a lot of official communiques these days.

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director had the following to say, apparently with no irony whatsoever.

If The New York Times spent the same amount of time actually reporting the truth as they do being obsessed with pronouns, maybe they would be a half-decent publication.

TIL: Microsoft Windows does not include country flag emojis. Somewhat unbelievable I only just noticed.

The Atlantic recently revealed one of the more unbelievable examples of the rabid and revealing incompetence of the current high-ups in the US administration.

It turns out at least some of the VIPs use somewhat-but-should-be-more popular messaging app Signal to plot their military strikes. As well as chat about how much they hate Europe and share impossibly cringe-inducing streams of emojis.

How do we know this? Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidently invited one of the world’s more famous journalists, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, into a Signal chat group called “Houthi PC small group.”

PC probably means Principals Committee:

The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA

…

in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

Soon afterwards, a bunch of the ne’er-do-wells that are busy diminishing the stature of America overnight joined:

One minute later, a person identified only as “MAR”—the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio—wrote, “Mike Needham for State,” apparently designating the current counselor of the State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user identified as “JD Vance” wrote, “Andy baker for VP.” One minute after that, “TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or someone masquerading as her) wrote, “Joe Kent for DNI.” Nine minutes later, “Scott B”—apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or someone spoofing his identity, wrote, “Dan Katz for Treasury.” At 4:53 p.m., a user called “Pete Hegseth” wrote, “Dan Caldwell for DoD.” And at 6:34 p.m., “Brian” wrote “Brian McCormack for NSC.” One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.

The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”

They then went on to discuss their top secret plans to attack the Houthis alongside their strong loathing of Europe. Oh, and the fact that JD Vance probably doesn’t agree with Trump quite as much as he pretends to.

Goldberg understandably started off rather sceptical that the group was real rather than some weird AI prank or whatever. I mean, it does feel way too good to be true. But when he saw the military plans that were discussed actually taking place in the real world, there was no more doubting it.

The participants subsequently of course denied everything, except (somewhat to my surprise) that the message chain was real. Denying things that there is incontrovertible evidence for is of course no obstacle to the current administration.

Here we go:

Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.

says Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS

says Waltz.

At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”

The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues: “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)” “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Goldberg somewhat reluctantly reprints, proving the lie - whilst remaining very conscious of the potential national security issues inherent if he was to reveal some even more damaging content. But as they say even about the released bits and pieces:

If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.

Anyway, let’s get back to the ludicrous response to this potentially catastrophic breech from Trump’s people.

There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group

says Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

It wasn’t classified information.

says Donald Trump.

My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.

says John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA.

OK then, so I suppose they’d be OK with the Atlantic publishing the full exchange? Maybe Goldberg was playing it a bit over-cautious and this was nothing more than a public discussion they meant to humiliate themselves by typing into Twitter but accidentally hit the wrong app’s icon.

Apparently not.

Per the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt:

yes, we object to the release.

In the original reporting of the incident Goldberg deliberately held back a lot of information he felt would be too classified to be responsibly reported on. Including:

One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.

Goldberg wrote.

The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified

agreed Republican Senator Wicker.

The in-chat hilarity / horror continued.

We are currently clean on OPSEC.

writes Hegseth. Au contraire:

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

headlines famed reporter of one of the most famous publications in America.

This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff

said the White House Press Secretary. Deliberation hey? Well, it must have been Very Serious and Important I’m sure.

👊🇺🇸🔥

wrote Waltz, in said “deliberation”- a triptych of emojis that is surely now destined for the annals of memeolgy / my email signature.

Witkoff continued the thoughtful foreign policy discussion:

🙏🙏💪🇺🇸🇺🇸

Oh, and the usual suspects got all hot and bothered by Europe again.

I just hate bailing Europe out again

sighed JD Vance, supposedly confidentially.

Hegseth continued the bantz.

VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.

Ugh.

So why was Goldberg invited to this top secret chat? It turns out that it was probably neither a deliberate act of government transparency or particularly incompetent example of double-agenting by one of the MAGA faithful.

Rather it seems like Waltz saved Goldberg’s contact details to the wrong contact in his iPhone. He overwrote Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes' number with Goldberg’s. So when he tried to invite Hughes he accidentally invited Goldberg.

Waltz still isn’t taking much responsibility of course:

He also suggested on Fox News that Goldberg’s number had been “sucked” into his phone, seemingly in reference to how his iPhone had saved Goldberg’s number.

Yep, magically “sucked” I’m sure. That said, it might be one example where - if the claim that it was prompted by an iPhone autosuggestion is vaguely true - Apple’s AI mishaps ended up being a force for good. Well, a certain type of good.

Trump of course randomly generated some of his standard phrases when in reaction to this. We started off with “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic”, followed up by a chaser of “The interest in the massive breach of national security is nothing more than a “witch hunt”. And the Signal app itself “could be defective”.

Signal is of course not defective. It’s constantly recommended by the folk that know these things as being a super secure way of communicating. It is a great option for messaging privately and securely; in fact my favourite. But no technology can be all that secure when you explicitly invite internationally famous journalists who have not joined the cult of adoring you, and hence you regard as your mortal enemies, to your chat.

Other interesting bits and pieces include:

At least some of these folk would seem to be using their personal phones rather than any secured government equipment, or at least that’s what Special Envoy Witkoff’s comment reads like to me:

“I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government” but then explained that the reason he did not make any comments in the chat until after returning to the US was “because I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip”.

But her emails, etc. etc.

And also the nature of this chat group might not be meeting the legal obligations regarding retention:

The messages in the Signal chat were set to be automatically deleted in under four weeks. The Federal Records Act typically mandates that government communication records are kept for two years.

Never let it be said that the Trumpistas are not creative in their cruelty.

The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country.

📚Finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance.

Yes, this is the famous autobiography of the current US vice-president, JD Vance. It is difficult, probably impossible, for me to read it outside of the context of the obsequious horrors he has gone on to do or support since. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to see if his book would help me understand what made him into the person that he became today.

At the time of its release the book generated some favourable commentary about its realistic portrayal of the oft-overlooked White working-class life in some quarters. Other people believed it did little else but engage in poverty-porn and reinforce negative stereotypes.

A good fraction of the book is the experiences of his child and young adult-hood. He does appear to have grown up in very economically and socially challenging circumstances. His parents did not provide him with anything remotely approaching the childhood we should want for all of our youngsters. Instead: desertion, drugs, threats, violence. A fairly largely proportion anyone’s list of potential adverse childhood experiences are on show here.

He was largely saved by his grandparents. They had their own struggles but, particularly his grandmother, became a positive role model in his life. He ended up doing very well at school. He later joined the Marines which he attributes with giving him a sense of discipline and responsibility. Next up he goes to Ohio State University and then to one of the pinnacles of American educational privilege - Yale Law School.

So, a classic rags-to-riches story.

That he expects everyone else to be able to replicate perfectly.

Yes, in between the slightly horrifying anecdotes we have constant infusions of “poor people are all lazy” and “underprivileged people should just have tried harder”. It’s the classic right-wing view, often to be found from those who did somehow make it from a deprived background into the bastions of elite privilege. I get the intuition, especially if you believe you did it yourself. The only problem is that that belief is basically never true.

Nonetheless if we discount the repeated humble-bragging, it’s clear to see he believes that he has power and status entirely basically because he…um…tried hard. So the only reason that every American doesn’t go to Yale Law is because they didn’t try as hard as him and, what’s more, they should have.

At times he comes so close to drawing what I see as the correct conclusions from his life experience that it’s painful to watch him retreat back into his tedious and predicatable rhetoric. I mean, part of the reason he was able to go to Yale Law was because of the Veterans Affairs “Yellow Ribbon” program whereby the state funded half his tuition. And Yale Law funded the other half due to his poverty-stricken background.

“The truth is, if it was not for the Yellow Ribbon Program I would not be going to law school.” he said, before leaving that fact out of his autobiography.

But the Yale Law funding side of things did make it in:

Yet the financial aid package Yale offered exceeded my wildest dreams…

In my first year, it was nearly a full ride. That wasn’t because of anything I’d done or earned — it was because I was one of the poorest kids in school. Yale offered tens of thousands (of dollars) in need-based aid. It was the first time being so broke paid so well."

Need based aid! Wow! Such DEI! So much affirmative action. Its a version of the same policies that are now pure anathema to him and the administration he’s part of.

I mean this days, his past actions would presumably have got him fired based on what Politifact’s interviewee reports:

Burke told PolitiFact that Vance served on the Yale Veterans Association, which Burke called “an affinity group that is considered a DEI group” and said it “was doing DEI work to increase veteran enrollment.”

Later he makes a big show and dance of the time when his grandma’s medical bills went up to the point that she couldn’t afford them. That’s a traumatic, potentially damaging or deadly, time for anyone so afflicted to be sure. All to common a US experience from what I understand. My genuine deepest sympathies to you all.

However, the conclusion he reaches from that is not, as you might expect from the rest of his book, that his grandmother didn’t try hard enough - that she deserved to die an agonising death because she is too poor to afford medical care. That she brought it on herself by not managing to get into Yale Law.

Instead, like a hero, having recently received his first big lawyer’s check, he swoops in to fund it for her, immensely proud that he could do so. Presumably blind-sided by his own glowing magnificence enough not to have noticed the rank hypocrisy of providing financial medical aid to his grandmother whilst despising the very existence of state programs like Medicaid that provide assistance to other people’s grandmothers. The grandmothers who don’t have sons lucky enough to have affirmative-actioned themself into the Ivy League.

The book cuts off well before his “Trump is Hitler” phase let alone his “Trump is the Greatest” phase. But we all know what happened next.

📚 Want to read: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

…a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.

I’ve had a thought circulating in the morass of my brain for a long while that so much of the scarcity we feel, especially that surrounding the basics of what is needed to live a subjectively good and effective life, is avoidable.

We could have ‘enough’. Rather, our struggles are a product of our societal structures, or sometimes even a deliberate policy, usually designed to further the ends of others.

Hopefully this book will help sense-check and formalise my currently fairly vibe based take on the subject.

In their great unwisdom, Amazon recently decided to remove the feature that allowed you to download the Kindle books you’d purchased from them via the web. You could then remove the DRM from the downloaded books so that you could use them on non-Kindle devices or back them up in case Amazon ever decided to permanently remove them from your Kindle or you lose your Amazon account. Obviously you should only have done this if DRM removal Is legal in your jurisdiction of course. Hmm.

Anyway, there are still (much less convenient) ways to download your books if you have either an older Kindle - although I hear if your Kindle is the black-and-white type then your covers and images. might all come out as monochrome as they are on your Kindle if you go this way - or access to a Windows computer, which preserves the colour. But the previous method I used to to remove the DRM doesn’t work any more.

However the file-liberating geniuses out there have figured that you can still remove the DRM, freeing your purchased files, if you try a slightly different method that involves an old version of the Windows Kindle software, Calibre and an extra plugin.

Here’s a description of how to go about it.

Install Calibre, along with the following two plugins.

• DeDRM plugin - current version is 10.0.9. Installation instructions in my previous post
• KFX Input plugin - current version is 2.22.0. You can install this from inside Calibre by going to Preferences -> Plugins -> Get new plugins -> Search for KFX -> Select to install “KFX Input”

Download Kindle for PC - but the trick here is it must be version 2.4.0 (70904). A current link to the right version is this. Newer versions won’t work.

Download the batch file disable_k4pc_download.bat from here - discussion about that starts here. It will create a file so as to prevent Kindle for PC auto updating. May or may not be strictly necessary.

Install the above Kindle for PC version as per usual. I turned off internet connectivity whilst doing this although that might not be essential, I’m not sure. The main point is that don’t want to give the software a chance to update itself to a new version from which you won’t be able to remove the DRM from your books. As soon as it was installed I went to Tools -> Options and turned off “Automatically install updates when they are available without asking me”.

Then run the file disable_k4pc_download.bat.

Turn internet back on and sign into Kindle for PC with your Amazon account as usual.

You can then right-click and download any book. They will download to somewhere on your disk; by default your Documents folder in a subfolder called My Kindle Content. You should then be able to add them to Calibre as normal (the Add Book option) and DRM will be stripped. At least for most books; apparently some special ones remain impervious to this.

The main issue I have with the above is that Kindle for PC doesn’t seem to be able to find or open any books shared with you via the Amazon Household feature. I’m not sure if there’s any way around this at present other than logging in as the person who shared them with you.

📺 Watched Adolescence.

This 4-part drama is somewhat sweeping the world by storm, at least the small part of the world I inhabit. It’s a very moving, powerful and relevant series that follows what happened after a (fictional) 13 year old boy is accused of committing murder.

The acting is quite incredible, especially considering that this is the actor portraying the boy concerned, Owen Cooper’s first acting role. That is so astonishing I almost can’t believe it’s true.

Each episode has been shot in real-time, all essentially done in the same shot. We see what happens to the characters in real-time, learn what they learn, perhaps feel something of what they would feel. This means that the episodes tend to be situated in a single area; in one case almost a single room. This takes nothing away from their gripping, compulsive nature.

I don’t have the knowledge to confirm, but it comes across as a pretty realistic depiction of the real-life processes that would be involved. And, harrowingly, importantly, a commentary on some of the aspects of modern society - especially contemporary online culture - that can lead to the type of tragic events concerned that we should all take something away from.

Parts of the US are going to have at least the same sort of labour shortage problems as we in the UK do post-Brexit if they carry on putting immigrants off coming to work in the US, let alone the whole forcibly deporting anyone who looks a bit foreign cruel and unusual strategy.

Well, except that Ron DeSantis and his Florida posse have got a novel idea to solve the issue.

The galaxy-brained idea is to…drum roll…promote formerly-illegal child labour. Who needs those woke 20th century laws preventing five-year olds working their statutory 25 hour days down the mines?

From CNN’s write up:

The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days

Previously-popular DNA analysing company 23andme has filed for bankruptcy.

On the basis that no-one really knows what’s going to happen to it next, various organisations - including California’s Attorney General and the NYT’s Wirecutter - are advising that customers should probably download and delete their (very sensitive) data. It’s a shame given the potential for good such a collection had, but totally makes sense to do given today’s world.

From the aforementioned AG’s site:

To Delete Genetic Data from 23andMe:

1. Consumers can delete their account and personal information by taking the following steps:
2. Log into your 23andMe account on their website. 
3. Go to the “Settings” section of your profile.
4. Scroll to a section labeled “23andMe Data” at the bottom of the page. 
5. Click “View” next to “23andMe Data”
6. Download your data: If you want a copy of your genetic data for personal storage, choose the option to download it to your device before proceeding.
7. Scroll to the “Delete Data” section. 
8. Click “Permanently Delete Data.” 
9. Confirm your request: You’ll receive an email from 23andMe; follow the link in the email to confirm your deletion request.

To Destroy Your 23andMe Test Sample:

If you previously opted to have your saliva sample and DNA stored by 23andMe, but want to change that preference, you can do so from your account settings page, under “Preferences.”

To Revoke Permission for Your Genetic Data to be Used for Research:

If you previously consented to 23andMe and third-party researchers to use your genetic data and sample for research, you may withdraw consent from the account settings page, under “Research and Product Consents.”

I find it quite disgraceful that 23andme hasn’t reached out to its customers about this at all as far as I can tell. Indeed they’re still selling their service, currently promoting the always-weird-to-me Mother’s day sale in case you want to expose your mum to the risk. Outside of the bankruptcy, I can’t imagine why it would ever be a good idea to buy a relative a 23andme kit, unless of course they specifically asked you.

📚 Finished listening to You by Caroline Kepnes.

This is the book behind the TV show “You”. And, at least from my slightly distant memory of the show, it’s pretty much the same story presented in the same style in a different format. So here again, our protagonist narrates his thoughts and dreams as he instantly falls in love with, and becomes ever more dangerously obsessed by, a young lady who visits his bookstore.

Where it goes is not exactly unpredictable. Not much of a spoiler to say that the story contains sex and violence, perhaps a little more graphically than necessary. Shades of the classic “women as perpetual victims” genre and a couple of other tropes are on display. But, to be fair, the girl in question here is integral to and features throughout, the story, and the first / second person narrative style that made it so compelling to me probably makes this unavoidable. It’s not like the guy doing the talking is presented as either a reliable narrator, let alone a sympathetic character.

It’s the sort of thriller that’s all the more chilling for being somewhat plausible. If nothing else, the story might encourage folk to lock down their Facebook a bit.