WindowManager

Retired tech executive with too much time on my hands. X interests include US politics, tech, finance, health, the 1980s, movies, social commentary…

[WindowManager @window_manager]

Window Manager is Japanese expression (madoguchi) for a manager with limited operational responsibilities and engagement. The term suggests a manager whose primary “duty” consists of gazing out of the office window, symbolizing a position that has become largely ceremonial, redundant, or sidelined.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

Flight capacity in SoCal is the last thing stopping business growth in California: taxes, regulation, $20 minimum wage, family leave laws, the list is endless and gets longer each year, which is why CA has a mass exodus of business. Airport capacity is not even on the radar of the companies leaving. Freight capacity and (lack of) automation at the port of Long Beach is a bigger variable for driving local business growth than bringing in a few more business people each day at SNA.

I'm a pro-business, retired tech exec, and the original post that kicked all of this off from Palmer (and then an insult to "Boomers", who vote) is an example of businesses people being ham-handed when dealing with local sensitivities. Then those same business people get surprised when CA districts keep voting in even more anti-business representatives who keep passing more anti-business legislation.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

https://t.co/mccOkIE0R8

[WindowManager @window_manager]

John Wayne has a noise abatement program passed by citizens’ representatives that live here, you know that whole ‘democracy’ thing. I’m seeing people who don’t live here saying because one businessman suggested it, that the airport should be expanded, no matter what the locals say. Now if enough locals change their mind and vote differently then the noise abatement can be overturned, or people in Long Beach or LA can vote to reduce their airport noise. But in general when these cities were set up, LAX was the big regional airport, and SNA the sleepy suburban one that shut down at night, and people moved where they did with that understanding. No one is saying that there should be zero SNA airport, but it should stay a regional one, with LAX the big one. Same as IAH/HOU, or ORD/MDW.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

@RobertoDimitri9 @gregoryblotnick This is the salt water estuary the planes take off over that leads to the beach.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

The flight traffic does not just affect the immediate airport area. Noise heat map show planes at low altitude and holding flight patterns increase noise as far away as Yorba Linda and San Juan Capistrano, 20 miles away. So these areas will be part of the political pushback from business people not wanting to drive an extra 20 minutes from LGB or 45 mins from LAX.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

The question isn’t the existence of the airport, it’s its expansion. This is like saying if you live on a two-lane road you never have the right to complain it’s being turned into a freeway, and you should just move. Plus LGB is a mere 20 minutes away and LAX, one if the busiest airports in the world, a mere 45 minutes away. The ‘you must expand SNA at all costs, screw the locals’ generally don’t know that there are two other airports nearby and no need to expand, no matter one lone businessman says.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

Long Beach airport is 20 minutes away from this airport, LAX 45, and it’s one of the busiest airports in the world. Why does this specific airport need more flights for start-ups? If 20-45 minutes of extra driving from an airport kills your start up maybe you need a new business plan.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

@WallStreetApes If passed I think it would be overturned on First Amendment grounds.

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@fivepointscap The S&P 500 are like corporate shares of the US economy. Long term you’ll do fine with dips here and there.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

@SaysSimulation Person with many kids lives like a dog, dies like a king. Person with no kids lives like a king, dies like a dog.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

The problem is not “gambling”, but “easy frictionless internet gambling”. If you had a gambling problem in the old days it took effort - you had to have an illegal bookie, or travel to Vegas, or find illegal gambling dens. With point-and-click mobile phone gambling it opens up the addiction to everyone, and sucks in people who might not otherwise do it. The fact that gambling sites advertise during sports events is horrifying, and point to turning an occasional pastime or small-time vice into an industry that requires growth, and needing problem gamblers to drive that growth. This industry requires severe regulation, starting with advertising bans similar to cigarettes.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

Actually when everything goes okay Lufthansa is still a crummy airline. Their business class seats are about 15 years out of date, food is mediocre, service is, well, German, so don’t expect a smile with your meal. Add to that Frankfurt airport (not run by Lufthansa but a major hub) and it is just awful to get through with mile long hikes and some of the worst immigration control I experienced in 20 years of international travel. I dreaded my business days which required me to go to Germany a few times a year (Luft was only direct flight) and was very happy when that ended.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

My straight A kid who speaks two languages and aced their SAT didnt get into their first OR second pick college, but boy did hundreds of foreigners who never set foot in the US, some who barely speak English.

Scumbags like this congressman put foreigners over US citizens starting in college, then point to all the foreigners coming out of said colleges as ‘proof’ that companies need to hire foreigners over Americans.

Parents, when you go through the hell of college admissions and wonder why your kid can’t get into any schools and might have to take a gap year, thank congressmen like this. When they hit the job market and are competing against mass foreigners who accept lower wages so can’t get hired, thank this guy.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

https://t.co/uXTnxSeS2I

[WindowManager @window_manager]

The fundamental problem is the economic assumption that infinity population increase is required for a healthy society. As quality of life goes down for the population at large with mass immigration, culture change, and social upheaval, economists still applaud since the GDP number statistically goes up and ‘pensions stay funded’. When your only metric is economics, population replacement and civil unrest are simply acceptable trade offs because economics has no moral or wellbeing variables.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

I read Brothers Karamazov using a digital reader and am currently in the middle of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time - one of the longer pieces of serious literature- both no problem. Both require a slow deliberative reading effort to absorb, often rereading passages or pages so, at least for me, I think concentration can overcome a tendency to skim digitally.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

When my packrat parents passed it was a giant estate sale followed by a hauler for things no one else wanted. I did arrange, digitize, sort and share the piles of photos that were never important enough for them to ever organize themselves.

But even the cup I made in third grade for Father’s Day, or the mould of my hand at 4, they are just things that someone else would need to throw away if I didn’t. I do understand stumbling across objects that unlock memories, but memories should be separated from sentiment, and for unlocking memories Proust probably said it best:

“The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object…which we do not suspect. It depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it.” In other words there are memories locked away that are brought forth by objects, and if you don’t find the object, you’ll never unlock the memory.

But once the object is found and memory unlocked, there is no reason to keep the object. For me photographing it and archiving was enough, and away it goes, my memories and sentiment no longer needing a totem to bring them forth.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

@realZacRepinski @healthychangez Padua. Off the beaten path, quaint and historical.

[WindowManager @window_manager]

@taimurabdaal Ditto restaurant reservations, like that is always what they have AI do at trade shows to show how wonderful it is, and I’m like “that’s not a big deal for me”.