Author: ssegraves

Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Information Overload

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A bit of skepticism is a healthy thing. We should question motives, goals, and drivers in our leaders and in their policies. However, it seems like the sheer amount of information is stifling our ability to take in, process, and move through the chaff. News websites are run by a few different major news organizations and republish the same story with slightly different wordings across their network. Then you have the small time blogs (like this one) that publish stories as fact with little to no journalistic integrity. Those stories then get reposted on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook and “go viral” as a headline without the readers taking the time to read past the headline. So how does someone take in this deluge and not get completely steamrolled by too much information and how do they decipher what is news or opinion or simply information meant to incite some sort of innate emotion?

The first step is to look at how you find and consume news. Completely ignoring anything that is posted on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is a good start. Most of the “news” you will find there is a friend of a friend’s blog that is usually just a way for that person to vent (case in point, what you are reading right now is that). Sure, there are some actual news stories that get posted on Facebook but a lot of that stuff bubbles to the top because the news organization is trying to get as many eyes on it as possible and they will use headlines or graphics that are misleading to get a potential reader to click the link. Turning off the television is another great way to avoid hyperbole meant to grab your attention. Local news stations are good but remember that most are owned by a big news company. This isn’t to say that they are bad, you just need to know what lens they see the world through as you take in the information.

You can see where I am going. I like written news, whether it be print or online, I tend to get my news in written form from a number of different sources. To know which way the thing that I am reading leans, I use the media bias chart from ad fontes media.

Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart

Just from a quick glance I can tell that NBC and CBS skew a little to the left while The Hill and Wall Street Journal skew a little more to the right on the political spectrum. This doesn’t mean I discount or ignore what they say, it means I read each of them knowing that they tend to favor one side or the other.

My reading list for news is the following (in no particular order)

  • The Hill
  • The New York Times
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • NPR
  • Bloomberg
  • ZeroHedge
  • South China Morning Post

There are a few others that I will glance at including Real Clear Politics and The Atlantic but I try to spend as much of my time as close to the middle of that media bias chart as I can. Knowing that the New York Times is going to lean a little left on a story I can quickly look up the equivalent story in the Wall Street Journal and see what the right leaning thoughts are. This is particularly important when reading opinion pieces because again, these aren’t news, they are someone’s thoughts on a subject, they are going to lean one direction.

Critical Thinking Ignores Personal Bias

Maybe “ignores” is too strong of a word. Critical thinking softens personal bias. If all someone views is news and video stories about how antifa is setting the world ablaze, they are going to tend to think antifa is setting the world on fire, regardless if it is true or not. As a society, we should want as many well read people as possible. I want debates of issues but I want those debates focused on the issues, not the cruft that some news personality brought up. If more people read more opinions that don’t echo their own beliefs, we’ll be better for it. If more people know what is happening in the world, we’ll be better for it.

Part of what I see right now is hyper focus on a few domestic issues and those issues are surrounded by hyperbole and vitriol that actually adds very little to the conversation. It’s intention is to agitate the base on either side of the aisle enough to get them to repost on Facebook or Instagram and get more people agitated. We have to see through that.

Just removing vitriol is a huge first step. Abandon Facebook, or simply limit your time on it. Abandon Instagram, or at least avoid the politics cesspool part of it. Abandon Twitter, or start putting vitriolic posters on your muted list. If the yelling and noise doesn’t get constantly repeated eventually it will fizzle out and people can have debates with actual value and content. Knowing that we are being overloaded with information and disinformation is a good start.

Cargo is Piling up Everywhere

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From NPR —

Soaring demand from Americans for everything from iPads to cars is leading to a surge in freight crossing the Pacific, hitting business owners such as Nephew.

When the cargo with his games finally arrived on the West Coast, the container was immediately emptied so it could be sent back to China for another load.

The games then continued on to Minnesota by truck, rather than rail, which would have been more economical. The final shipping cost was about $12,000, at least 50% more than the game maker had budgeted.

We are getting a lesson in basic economics in real time. Businesses are trying to meet increased demand but there is a constraint on the supply (the shipping companies) and so things get delayed and prices go up. When we look at something like lumber, which is mostly produced domestically, those prices are finally starting to normalize as supply starts to meet demand.

Browsing Instagram or TikTok and you will see people blame increased prices on Biden or the global cabal but in reality the prices you are seeing in stores have little to nothing to do with who is in the oval office and more to do with basic economic principles. Another example is the basic issue of getting empty containers where they need to be to carry more cargo.

From Bloomberg —

First there were the queues at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which left as many as 40 container vessels awaiting a berth in early February amid a flood of traffic. Combined volumes at the terminals hit a record of 1.9 million containers in May, nearly double the Covid-19 low in March 2020.

Part of the problem has been that containers aren’t in the right places. In global terms, trade enjoyed a remarkably short and sharp pandemic. By September last year, volumes were already running ahead of their seasonally adjusted levels in January and February, as demand for medical equipment and spending on durable goods picked up in rich countries.

Trying to make all those deliveries on time meant that many vessels started making their return journeys empty, saving a few precious hours that would normally be spent picking up vacant boxes to ship back to China. That’s resulted in a glut of containers in European and North American ports and a shortage in Asia, pushing freight rates to astronomical levels on export routes.

Containers are sitting empty at ports around the world and can’t be shipped back because the ships are trying their best to keep up with demand. Add to this, there is not a huge demand for U.S. goods in places like China, there is no reason to ship back empty containers on these boats and return the containers to pick up more cargo. Some of the predictions are that this could take years to correct. The empty containers need to get back into a normal rotation which relies on demand to return in certain parts of the world and ships need to reposition to carry all of that cargo.

If there is one thing that COVID-19 has taught me, it’s that supply chains are fragile. Everyone saw the ‘Great Toilet Paper Shortage’ as a problem but what’s sitting in ports right now and the rates to ship goods around the world are the real issue. And the unfortunate reality is that there is no way to speed the process of recovery up for shippers. It will happen as demand returns.

Ford F-150 Lightning – An Ultimate Truck?

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I have been on the fence on the Tesla electric vehicles for a while and for a few reasons. For one, it seems ironically wasteful to buy a new vehicle simply because “it’s electric” and has a bunch of bells and whistles. The price point tiers of the Tesla are also a downside. Yes, you can get a base Model 3 for $33k but to get any kind of upgrades it’s $42k and if you want more performance, it’s $50k. All for a sedan.

Enter the Ford F-150 Lightning. I am still hesitant to buy an electric vehicle right now but the F-150 is more my speed. Ford has taken their best selling vehicle and made it an electric powerhouse. This feature preview by Marques Brownlee points out some of the coolest things with picture and video better than I ever could.

An EPA estimated range with 1000lbs of cargo of 300 miles but in reality closer to 450 miles (based on Marques’ math). Also, dual direction power where if your house loses power, you can use the truck to provide power to it. That’s huge. It’s a 6000lb truck but can still do 0-60mph in 4.5 seconds. I mean, that’s not something you’re going to use everyday but it is impressive.

It seems like a vehicle to keep an eye on. I have a feeling Ford is going to sell a lot of these and it might play a huge role in more electric vehicle charging stations and other tech entering the market.

The Covid Crisis in India

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From NPR:

India reported nearly 350,000 new cases on Sunday, more than any country on any day since the pandemic began, the fourth day in a row the country has broken that grim world record. Many worry case numbers are woefully undercounted since test kits are hard to come by, and hospitals are completely overrun.

Now cases and deaths have skyrocketed. Crematoriums are running day and night, unable to keep up with the bodies. There are desperate pleas for oxygen, hospital beds and medicine.

This is an unbelievable tragedy that is unfolding. I hope more countries step in to offer aid.

Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines

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Andy Greenberg from Wired (archived, non-paywall version):

Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode.

But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonald’s restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machines’ inner workings secret from them. What’s more, Taylor maintains a network of approved distributors that charge franchisees thousands of dollars a year for pricey maintenance contracts, with technicians on call to come and tap that secret passcode into the devices sitting on their counters.

This is a fantastic look inside the world of fast food, the kitchen tools that make the industry run, franchise and franchisee relationships, and the right to repair movement as a whole. I wonder what the outcome would have been had the protagonists had cozied up with the ice cream machine manufacturer.

Last Chance to Snag Emirates First Class Using Alaska Miles

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Just a quick reminder that starting April 1, 2021, Alaska MileagePlan members will no longer be able to redeem their miles for Emirates First Class. This comes after a late 2020 announcement by Alaska that Emirates was removing the ability for their partners to redeem for the coveted front cabin.

So, if you have some extra Alaska miles gathering dust, it’s a good time to do some searching for that award, you only have two days left. I booked a reward from the US to Malaysia in early 2022 to at least lock in an A380 with the onboard shower. With the uncertainty of Covid restrictions I went as far into the future as I could. I am hopeful that the world will be on its way to a full recovery and reopening by then.

A Tale of Two Grocery Stores

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H-E-B

When an H-E-B grocery store lost power in Austin, they didn’t throw food out or make people put back their purchases.

From the Washington Post:

Around him were a couple hundred shoppers, some with only credit cards, trying to stock up during a statewide emergency. The power had been going on and off in this Austin suburb as cold weather overwhelmed the Texas grid. But no one told shoppers to put their items back if they couldn’t pay cash.

When Hennessy got to the cashier, he said, she just waved him on, thanked him and told him to drive home safely.

Compare that to a similar incident in Portland where a Fred Meyer lost power. From The Oregonian:

The food continued to sit unrefrigerated as the power outage dragged on at the store in Northeast Portland, prompting employees to toss out boxes of packaged meat, cheese and juice, whole turkeys, racks of ribs and other items they feared had spoiled.

The mound of discarded food in two large dumpsters attracted a crowd of 15 to 50 people at times who started taking some of it. Employees called police when they felt the scene got tense. Activists said police were “guarding” the food. Police said they were responding to “restore order.” National media picked up the story.

Two very different ways of handling similar problems. And while I am sure there is more to the Fred Meyer story, the idea that the store had to call the police to “restore order” is preposterous. What I would have liked to have seen from Fredy Meyer, which is a Kroger owned brand, is them to create order themselves by having food that would have no problem out of refrigeration for a little while, cheese and other dairy products, packaged cold cuts, etc. and hand them out in a reasonable fashion. Throwing it all in a dumpster while people watch and then throwing your hands up when there is a commotion is disingenuous. At the same time, the Portland Police should have shown up and immediately said “you created this problem, fix it”.

Looking at the Austin story, I have to wonder if corporate will back up the store managers. Sure it is good press, but it is also a lot of product that is leaving the store. Even if there was no story, it would be tough at the corporate level to come down on store managers for doing what is right for the community, regardless of the cost. The situation in Texas was and continues to be dire for a number of individuals, a few thousand in expenses for a company the size of H-E-B is small potatoes.

The team at Fred Meyer needs to take a good look at the H-E-B story and the reasoning behind it and learn something.

Threats to Critical Infrastructure

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From War on the Rocks:

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Warner was protesting 5G technology — reportedly an FBI line of inquiry. The campervan was parked in front of an AT&T transmission building and the explosion knocked down a network hub. The company website called the blast “devastating,” reporting secondary fires, loss of power, damaged equipment, and hazardous work in a disaster zone. Internet and cellphone service across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama was badly affected. AT&T scrambled to reroute service or deploy portable cell sites, with 65 percent of service restored two days later.

Experts saw this coming. In May 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued alerts about potential attacks on cellphone infrastructure due to conspiracy theories about 5G technology spreading COVID-19 — misinformation promoted by gullible individuals, celebrities, and nefarious actors like QAnon. U.S. alerts followed dozens of arson and vandalism attacks abroad, including on U.K., Belgian, Canadian, and Dutch cell towers. And in the wake of the Nashville bombing, federal, state, and local law enforcement feared copycat attacks on other U.S. communications infrastructure.

There have always been conspiracy theories but it seems that the prevalence of social media in people’s daily lives has helped perpetuate untruths even faster than in the past. When I talk to friends and family and their main source of news is Instagram, Facebook, or some obscure website, I usually expect to see or hear a conspiracy theory at some point.

Facebook’s Scale

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Adrienne LaFrance, writing for The Atlantic, “Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine”:

People tend to complain about Facebook as if something recently curdled. There’s a notion that the social web was once useful, or at least that it could have been good, if only we had pulled a few levers: some moderation and fact-checking here, a bit of regulation there, perhaps a federal antitrust lawsuit. But that’s far too sunny and shortsighted a view. Today’s social networks, Facebook chief among them, were built to encourage the things that make them so harmful. It is in their very architecture.

I’ve been thinking for years about what it would take to make the social web magical in all the right ways — less extreme, less toxic, more true — and I realized only recently that I’ve been thinking far too narrowly about the problem. I’ve long wanted Mark Zuckerberg to admit that Facebook is a media company, to take responsibility for the informational environment he created in the same way that the editor of a magazine would. (I pressed him on this once and he laughed.) In recent years, as Facebook’s mistakes have compounded and its reputation has tanked, it has become clear that negligence is only part of the problem. No one, not even Mark Zuckerberg, can control the product he made. I’ve come to realize that Facebook is not a media company. It’s a Doomsday Machine.

I disagree with the idea that Zuckerberg can’t control his creation. Facebook can be reined in, if Zuckerberg wanted it controlled.

Nine Months of Ringing

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When the first lock downs in the United States were announced I was returning from a work trip to Montreal. On the flight home I had not felt great but was not worried about Covid-19. The next day I felt a little better and went out for a lunch at a restaurant not knowing it would be the last time I’d have a sit down meal inside of a place for now 9 months.  On Saturday I woke up with what I can only describe as the worst ear pain I have ever experienced. My left ear felt like it was going to explode. Nothing I did relieved the pain and I eventually gave in and went to a ZoomCare clinic because finding an appointment at my primary care physician was not possible. The ZoomCare nurse said “yep, you have an ear infection”, gave me some antibiotic drops and sent me home. At first it seemed like the drops were working but on the second day of using them I noticed fluid coming from my ear and then blood.

I returned to ZoomCare and they put me on stronger antibiotics but also suggested I see my primary care doctor. I gave that doctor a call as I left and while my doctor wasn’t available his nurse practitioner was so I was able to get in. When the nurse practitioner looked at my ear she became very concerned that the infection had moved into the bone in my ear canal. A couple of higher strength antibiotics were given, including an oral one to try and fight the infection internally. They also made an emergency appointment with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) specialist in case the infection was in the bone.

The scheduling process for the ENT was not easy as Covid had pretty much shut the practice down. The schedulers wanted to make sure that the appointment was absolutely necessary and that I had no symptoms of Covid. Again, I was in excruciating pain, I couldn’t drive because it hurt to move my head certain ways.

My appointment required a Covid test but the visit itself went fine. The ENT was convinced that the infection was not in my bone. He did confirm that my eardrum had burst and applied some thick steroids and antibiotics to the eardrum and kept me on heavy duty antibiotics. He also stated that he thought it would be a quick recovery and that the pain should really start to fade in the next day or two.

Returning home from that appointment felt like relief. There was a plan, some meds, and an optimistic view from the doctor. Sure enough, the pain started to fade away the next day and I started to really feel like I was improving. A week went by and the pain was completely gone but I was still having fluid in my ear so I returned to the ENT (after another Covid test) where I was told that stronger steroids needed to be applied, so that was done. I was also told that my hearing would eventually return and to be patient.

The waiting

After two months of carefully treating my ear I still felt like I could not hear very well still had a constant ringing in my left ear from when all of this started. The ENT wanted me to come in and having a hearing test and to just double check my ear. My hearing test came back with my results essentially being no different than a test that was performed a few years ago. The doctor did notice some scar tissue on my eardrum but did not see any fluid behind it. His explanation for the ringing was that eventually it would fade.

But, here we are 7 months later and my left ear still rings. I still have trouble understanding conversation when there is a lot of background noise or if the conversation is more on my left side. Even small background noises interfere with my ability to fully hear and distinguish words in a conversation. During conversations the ringing is there but is mostly just an annoyance. During silent moments the ringing is distracting and frustrating because it is all I hear.

As a Covid vaccine makes its way around the world I am really hoping it is easier to find a new ENT to get a second opinion. The reduced hearing is my biggest concern with the ringing a close second. I’d like to be able to have a conversation with people without having to adjust my head or hear ringing in the background. That’s all I really want in 2021.