Day 993 – Person of the Year

Sunday, October 8, 2023

I think Person of the Year is awarded to a person or phenomena that has greatly changed the lives of many, if so there are two candidates: AI and Taylor Swift.

AI is a thing. A big thing, and it will change our lives in ways predicted by the movie Forbidden Planet. Yawn.

Taylor Swift has had a huge impact. I’ve been listening to her music and she’s okay as a singer. Most of her songs sound the same. I’ve asked big Swiftie fans and was told to listen to the words, which I’ve been doing. She speaks for women. Mostly women her age, but also women of many differing ages and their struggles. 

But her impact is so undeniable, her Eras Tour has impacted the economies of any city or state that she has gone to. So much so that the Federal Reserve has commented on her impact to the U.S. economy. She has been invited by heads of state to come visit their countries. 

She has taken on big business. She has fought for musicians rights over their music and her own by example. She has taken on the big movie distributors. They didn’t want to release her movie this year so she made a deal directly with AMC theaters. Her ticket pre-sales are over $100 million boosting AMC’s stock price over 11%. She is a force, and a smart business person. She turned down investing in FTX because she realized they were unregulated. Now FTX is bust, and she is safely away.

AI may be the next big thing, but Taylor is the thing – now.

She is dating a football player. Bars advertise not the teams that are playing but the fact that they will be showing The Taylor Swift game. Oh, BTW, she has played in more NFL stadiums this year than any NFL team will, and she sold them out. In Boston, they advertised special trains to take people to her concert – twenty bucks. Sold out immediately. They added more. Sold out. She is a force like no other. 

In other news, I saw an article that said Matt Gaetz is the most hated person in Congress. This got me to thinking. Really? What about Jim Jordan? 

Then there are the female Worst Person in Congress candidates: Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. To be clear if the job of a person in Congress is to legislate and by that I mean to consider legislation and to pass it then none of these four are legislators. Can’t we have a job review?

What legislation did you work on?

None.

Hum, I’m gonna have to disagree with you on your job title of legislator because you don’t seem to be doing the basics of the job…

Moving on. Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, is broke. Rudy Giuliani is broke. Seems hanging with The Donald is bad for one’s wallet. But wait, Trump said he’s rich and doesn’t need anyone’s money (circa 2015). Then why is he sending out fundraising letters asking for a dollar? He also has told people that he would cover their legal bills, but it appears only if they “stay loyal.” Mark Cuban has said a good way to judge a millionaire (or billionaire) is by how many other millionaires that person makes. What if said person makes you poorer? Does that mean said person isn’t as rich as claimed?

Fortunately, Mike will continue the good fight to prove the 2020 election was stolen. Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence. We believe!

Temp is 45 degrees outside. Wow. What happened?

Saw a thing that said there was a test of little kids to see if they were geniuses – 98% qualified. Five years later the number dropped to like 45%. By adulthood it was 2%. The problem seems to be our educational system we beat the smarts out of people. That explains a lot.

Let’s go back to AI. A computer can beat a world master in Chess, in Go, or in poker. It was believed this was a long ways off, but it is here now. Why is that? Why is it that it was believed that this reckoning was a long ways off? The answer is absurdly simple. People over estimate their abilities.

Next.