Once more, on naming things
Once more, on naming things
The struggles of naming businesses and people. Also, Spotify and Bolt Payments engage in unorthodox promotional tactics.
The saying goes that the two hardest problems in computer science are cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
I have had more problems than the average person in regards to naming. And going forward, my problems may get worse — I may be facing a Max Power situation1.
But one naming issue of mine — that of the unnamed Climate Change company — has been resolved. And a different naming issue in the news — that of the Washington Football Team — has also been resolved.
But first, the week’s news.
Editor’s note: the week’s news is formally authored by the Newslettr, and compiled and edited by employees of the Newslettr. The long-form editorial is formally authored by its by-lined author. the intro is still no-ren’s land.
Regular Price: The blog is now at its regular price of $7/month or $72/year. If you want to become a paid subscriber, I recommend waiting: there will certainly be a half-off sale celebrating 2/22/2022. If you’re one of those people who wants to pay more: rather than give me money, do something I can’t pay people to do — like improve2 the Wikipedia article on Ho Chi Minh or Christianity in Africa.
President of Italy: From the BBC: “Italian President Sergio Mattarella has agreed to serve a second term after coalition parties failed to agree on a compromise candidate for the office. The 80-year-old emerged as the most popular choice after six days of often tense voting in Rome. He had expressed a desire to leave office, but local media reported Prime Minister Mario Draghi had convinced him to stay for the "stability" of Italy.”
The presidency of Italy is best described as being a ceremonial position — except on the rare occasions when it isn’t. The United States political system is suffering from a lack of leadership among those born in the 1950s and early 1960s, and apparently Italy has a similar issue.
Guinea-Bissau coup attempt: A coup attempt this week in Guinea-Bissau3. The BBC notes: “Coups appear to be making a comeback in West and Central Africa. Over the past two years there have been military takeovers in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Guinea, as well as further east in Sudan.” As of press time, the fog of war limits our ability to comment further.
Whoop De Do: Whoopi Goldberg was “suspended” from the TV show The View for two weeks after making “insensitive” comments about the Holocaust. the Newslettr is concerned that the situation is stage-managed; in particular our speculation is that Whoopi would have preferred a longer suspension, but the network bargained her down. Regarding “race and the Holocaust”, we commented tangentially in a December post.
The War on Joe Rogan: The culture war made its way to Spotify this week, with Neil Young fronting a group of musicians and podcasters attempting to boycott Spotify for {its failure to police COVID misinformation|its refusal to fire Joe Rogan}4.
To a certain extent, this is excellent marketing5 for Spotify. Their competitors include Google Music and Apple Music and Amazon Prime Music, and one can listen to Neil Young on any of those. But you can only listen to Joe Rogan on one service: Spotify.
That said: Spotify should not be allowing Robert Malone to describe himself as a “doctor” or “inventor of mRNA vaccine technology” on a platform it controls. However, it’s not entirely clear how they can disallow that — especially if “make Joe Rogan enforce it himself” isn’t an option.
Third Prize is You’re Fired: While the title of “unstable tech executive” is not particularly well-defined, it would not be too controversial to claim that Elon Musk is currently the most unstable tech executive. the Newslettr would give second place to Conor White-Sullivan of Roam Research6, who openly brags about running that company like a cult, despite the advice of everyone around him.
A new contender for third prize appeared last week, and resigned as CEO this week. Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt, unleashed a bizarre tirade against Y Combinator, Stripe, and the Silicon Valley Mob on January 24th. There is one important and true statement in the thread — most Venture Capital firms7 will not invest in companies that compete against their current portfolio. There are also several important errors8. In particular, almost everything he says about Hacker News is wrong.
After a second Twitter tirade against Y Combinator, with a nearly-opposite thesis9, I decided his antics probably weren’t worth watching. But with him stepping down as CEO on Monday, it once again seems there is something of note here — despite protests otherwise, this has been excellent marketing.
As an aside, that company also recently announced a 4-day work week — the opposite of the Yevaud Newslettr’s position on ideal work conditions.
Washington Football Team: The long saga of the renaming of the Washington football team appears to be over. After two years as Washington Football Team, they have chosen the name of Washington Commanders. the Newslettr does not like the new name, and would have preferred Red Tails, or Red Wolves, or Red Hogs, or Warthogs, or Monuments, or the Annapolis Admirals, or a dozen other names.
Thuban: The unnamed Climate Change company is now named: it is incorporated as Thuban Energy, Inc.. Unless that company either purchases advertising or shows up in the national news, the Newslettr will avoid discussing it. But today, the name Thuban is of interest, not the company.
Thuban is the name for the star Alpha Draconis, with Arabic etymology10. A Chinese name for the star Thuban is 右枢 / 右樞 (pinyin YOU4 SHU1), with 紫微右垣一 being (roughly) a translation of “Alpha Draconis”. In most other languages it is “Thuban” in some form or another. In Korean11 it is 투반, in Modern Greek12 it is Θουμπάν.
The star Thuban was the pole star during Ancient Egyptian times. This is a fairly vague statement — the timeframe of “Ancient Egypt” still covers more years than subsequent human history. Wikipedia more specifically states that it was closest to the astronomical (north) pole in 2830 BC (or perhaps 2787 BC, as Wikipedia stated in 2007), and was the best and brightest North Star for at least 1000 years.
I have been unable to find any good evidence on whether Thuban was substantially brighter in the past, either when it was named as Alpha Draconis in 1603 (today there are at least 3 stars in Draco brighter than Thuban), or when it was the pole star 4800 years ago. Similarly, I have no idea of the odds of the star going supernova in the near future (or, rather, being observed to go supernova - it is 300ly from earth).
Tweet of the Week: Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) did a 30 minute availability on Twitter Spaces. In addition to comments on governance, he made one extremely accurate point about political campaigning.
Power Pack
by 力阿乐
Dateline: September 6, 2005. A deal rumored for months between Marvel Studios and Merrill Lynch is finalized. It involves over $500 million in funding for Marvel to produce 4 films.
The collateral for the loan? The rights to ten sets of characters owned by Marvel. (Of course, as the movies were wildly successful, the collateral remained the property of Marvel Studios.)
The characters in the arrangement are Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi. Each film is expected to have a budget of up to $165 million. (WSJ)
The Marvel fans among you will recognize 8 of these characters from films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This includes Shang-Chi, a relatively obscure title before the recent film.
The second-most obscure title is Cloak & Dagger, which was the topic of a two season long TV series on the Freeform13 channel in 2018. I have never watched it, and in fact know nothing else about those characters.
The remaining property, Power Pack, has not been produced since the 2005 agreement. It has been in off-and-on development for years. Most recently, as of September 2021, it is apparently not in active development.
That said, when there have been rumors for one decade about a property being made into a film, there will certainly be rumors for a second decade. And sometimes rumors turn into facts.
I have met exactly one person in my life who was familiar with the property. Or, at least, familiar enough with the property to ask me about the fact that one of the characters in the Power Pack is named “Alex Power”.
It is for this reason14 that I have been signing my name 力阿乐 these days in certain contexts. This name has the advantage of being Romanizable15 in multiple ways — either to “Alexander Power” or “Alan Lee”.
I did consider simply changing my name now to Alan Lee (or some other name without the property of being a slightly plausible translation error), but decided that was too much and too soon. It is still unlikely there will be a Power Pack film anytime soon — and I may well come across some other name before that.
The fact that Homer Simpson’s temporary last name is “Power” is evidence that not only is the universe playing a joke on me, it is laughing quite loudly at its own humor.
If anybody from Wikipedia is watching: when I do it, it does not violate site policy against either “canvassing” or “paid editing”. When you do it, it possibly does.
Guinea-Bissau is located next to Guinea, several thousand kilometers from Equatorial Guinea.
This is the gestalt operator, which I discussed a few weeks ago. It’s not immediately clear if there’s an important difference between the two phrases, or no difference at all. If there is a difference, it is unimportant to the rest of my argument.
The word “marketing” is one of those multi-syllable words to be skeptical of. Here, it means “promotion” or “advertising”.
I am probably not going to write a full length post comparing Roam Research to Quip or Notion. It is a very different product. It does one thing, and does it passably well: it manages your daily journal of activities in a rolodex style. It cannot do much else. It is also at a punitive “early access” price of $15/month (or $500/five years).
As a rule, most individual early-stage investors will not invest in competing companies either — under normal circumstances I certainly would not. The risks of future conflicts of interest almost always outweigh the potential financial returns. And on rare occasions … well, part of being a good Venture Capitalist is knowing when to break the rules.
This is where the punchline would be “After all, I know the Silicon Valley Mob, and he’s named the wrong ringleaders”. However, as a reminder, the official position of the Silicon Valley Mob is that there is no cabal.
The first thread, roughly, was claiming that Y Combinator was so powerful you had to work with them. The second thread, roughly, was claiming that Y Combinator was overpriced and no reasonable person would work with them.
I was under the impression it meant “the serpent’s tail”, but apparently just “serpent” is a more accurate translation.
It is easier to learn the Korean alphabet than it is to learn how to transliterate Korean.
In modern Greek, the letter β is pronounced as English “V”, and the digraph μπ (Mu-Pi) is used to represent the “B” sound in loanwords.
Freeform was formerly known as “ABC Family”.
There is also the issue of double-takes regarding “your last name is Power and you’re starting a power company?”.
Many United States government documents require the use of Roman characters, even where they do not require use of the English language.