mandatory news coverage: 179-T14
mandatory news coverage: 179-T14
this tisatsar, there will be no coverage of others covering stories not worth covering. just the mandatory stories
At first, I was considering having last tisastar’s edition be the end for this format1.
The fates have decreed otherwise. There were too many news stories in the past tisatsar that justify mandatory2 coverage3 . (( and we apologize4 for the late distribution5; one news story (the England-France match in the World Cup) has delayed publication from its normal time ))
If my divinations6 are correct, the next two editions are to be “year in review” and “mundane occurrences”, and the last edition in this format will come out on-or-around the last day of February7.
and now, limited to those news stories that justify mandatory coverage, some of the Tisatsar’s News:
and now, a house ad involving content from OpenAI ChatGPT, summarizing the rest of this message somewhat accurately:
This edition of the Tisatsar Newslettr covers several news stories that the author believes are important and warrant mandatory coverage. These include President Joe Biden's recommendation to overhaul the presidential nominating calendar, the death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, the end of the jumbo jet era, and the result of the England-France match in the World Cup. The author also provides a brief overview of the history and significance of the Iowa caucuses.
The End of the Caucuses?: from the Des Moines Register on December 2:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden is recommending a massive overhaul of the presidential nominating calendar, calling for South Carolina to replace Iowa in the leadoff position and elevate Michigan and Georgia into the mix.
Biden has proposed that South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan make up the early voting window.
"Our party should no longer allow caucuses as part of our nominating process," Biden said in a letter dated Dec. 1 to the committee. "We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window."
For the history of the caucuses, and the logistical and procedural issues that mean even many Iowa Democrats are happy to see the caucuses go, you can read Lyz Lenz’s background post.
There is one protocol issue we must note: it isn’t entirely up to Joe Biden and the DNC when the Iowa Democrats hold caucuses. They are bound by Iowa law to do so by the end of February, and there is currently no option to select delegates in the June primary.
Iowa Republicans would have to approve a change … and both state and federal Republicans appear committed to maintaining the Iowa caucuses as first-in-the-nation in 2024. Historically, the parties have caucused on the same night, largely to ensure people don’t try to attend both caucuses. Clearly something will have to give.
the Tisatsar Newslettr awaits.
Death of Jiang Zemin: Former paramount leader8 of China Jiang Zemin died9 on November 30 at the age of 96.
Our immediate response to the news: "a competent bureaucrat" is the headline. Jiang’s job was to not mess up what Deng accomplished, and he didn't. Time will tell whether his successors will be as successful.
Under the Chinese system, if Jiang did have opinions about his successors, he kept them to himself.
End of the Jumbo Jet Era: The last (cargo) Boeing 747 rolled off the production lines. With the last A380 being produced last year, now both double-decker commercial airliners are no longer in production.
With the increased abilities of two-engine jets, the larger four-engine jets have faded from popularity. In the 1970s, trans-oceanic routes generally required three or four-engine jets to ensure safety. But with extended ETOPS10 the need for larger planes on longer routes has disappeared.
It’s Not Going Home: A World Cup filled with upsets11 and excitement has seen a result in the England-France match that was not so much of an upset. With a France 2-1 England result, England are now on 56 years12 and counting since their singular victory in the 1966 World Cup.
Everything must be in order. First writing, next editing, then censorship, last dissemination.
for a humorous anecdote related to the word “mandatory”, check this back issue:
The recent developments with ChatGPT are not quite so mandatory as to be discussed outside of the footnotes. Covering the “Generative AI” space accurately in real-time is a form of folly; it is advancing almost as fast as one can describe it to people not already in the field.
My assessment: the recent (December 2022) release is an advancement from “as intelligent as a fourth-grader with access to Google search” to “as intelligent as an eighth-grader with access to Google search”.
This is enough to do better than many people who graduated from eighth grade decades ago, yet on complicated questions it tends to stumble. This may just be that a 2% base error rate compounds in non-human ways when it has to “think” 50 different things.
However, for certain things, like «translating from my description to CSS code», it does a thoroughly competent job. One can imagine an expert doing things better, but what it does is both better than what I could do on my own, and more than good enough.
And, as “one of my predictions that I had better repeat as often as necessary”, I figure there is about a 10% chance that this technological trend is so spectacular that the concept of “money” is obsolete in ten years.
Then again, I thought there was a 10% chance that the hub-bub in April around Twitter was centered around “Twitter has ChatGPT style replies and moderation of tweets working internally and Elon went nuts because he saw the demo”. I mean … the employees had to be doing something, right?
Some might say that we are merely conveying the apology of another, that it is not our apology. They are correct, but irrelevant. The act of conveying the apology of another can also be described as “apologizing”. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the rules.
… upon further investigation, the publication schedule was on my calendar wrong. The deadline wasn’t Dec 10 1510GMT, but Dec 11 1510GMT. As a result, we are actually sending this Newslettr early, rather than late. unless someone fixes the scheduling … (famous last words)
It is unfortunate that Substack does not allow nested footnotes (footnotes-to-footnotes); if it did, the last of these news digests would be a single word, with everything else in the footnotes. well, actually, it’s probably fortunate that we won’t have to see that.
the Newslettr’s staff is in a state of complete ignorance regarding how it will react to the intercalary days on the Baha’i calendar. If we knew it 80 days ahead of time, it wouldn’t be new when it happened, now would it?
although … having three or four specific columns (other than the News, the horrible horrible News) seems possible. I wouldn’t mind writing a tisatsar-ly chess column, and … if Substack doesn’t support filtering those of you who want to read it, it will be on some other platform.
The term “paramount leader” is most commonly used to describe the leader of China. Terms like “president” are often reserved for democratically-elected leaders in the Western press. And, historically, the specific positions held by the paramount leader have varied; including Leader of the Armed Forces, General Secretary of the Communist Party.
Upon the death of Elizabeth II, we commented that Zemin was one of the few 20th century figures to outlive her. Now he has passed as well. Presumably this means the undying Henry Kissinger’s time is soon.
Wikipedia will tell you that ETOPS is an acronym stands for “Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards”. Other reference sources, such as gcmap.com, will give the other definition: “Engines Turn or Passengers Swim”.
Once it got to penalty kicks, was it really an upset that Croatia beat Brazil?
Beyond that, a rant on the use of the term “golden generation” in the press. For some reason, they insist on calling Belgium’s team a “golden generation”. But even the Belgian team has pushed back on this, noting they "haven't won anything". They haven’t even done as well as Croatia — which, despite back-to-back World Cup semifinal appearances, also haven’t won anything (yet). ((yes, back-to-back World Cup semifinal appearances is more than Belgium have done)) ((( The “actually, it is Croatia with a golden generation” takes mostly haven’t come out yet, so we will wait to mock them. )))
And … on the topic of gossip, the Daily Mail is a reliable source that this was in the news. (There was a quote fabrication scandal in the 2010s, but I think that has been sorted out. Regardless, they wouldn’t fabricate quotes about topics that weren’t in the news.)
The rant about «Wikipedia’s article on [[golden generation]] not being about the concept, but merely a bibliography of every major newspaper that has used the term to refer to a national team» will be saved for a future newslettr.
Some people have said that England winning the women’s European football championship counts as breaking the streak/curse. They are wrong.