Cobb

Obligatory Seriousness on Hiphop & Black Culture

Hiphop has been a net positive. There’s no way I could say that any of our lives would be richer if hiphop never existed. There has been too much brilliant innovation. But also hiphop is folk music, and folk are not always enlightened. I would not venture to say that any kind of folk music is a cause so much as an effect. Your mind doesn’t play tricks on you just because you listen to Ghetto Boys. That’s their confession, their life, their reality.

I take a much broader view of black culture in America. Hiphop may have all the attention of somebody, but somebody ain’t everybody. Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Blues and Hiphop are all creations in this broad culture, and anybody that knows that kind of music (IE can create it) knows that there are many different styles in all that. So I object to the idea that Hiphop owns ‘black culture’. Because most everything I know about hiphop is the hiphop of another time.

As for what is negative and positive in ‘black culture’, I can only presume that one means what are good and bad results of the choices black individuals make, and how do they explain themselves. I’m perfectly willing to admit that I leaned on Marvin Gaye and Al Greene to get the attention of the woman I married, and I love renting convertible sports cars and blasting Bruno Mars. But my intent was there before those songs ever existed. So a lot of people get into a kind of chicken and egg loop here, but I try not to. I’ve heard people say that if it wasn’t for movies and restaurants, they would never know what to do on a date. If it weren’t for Prince, 1 million babies wouldn’t be born. And yet that’s not a machine. You can’t just play Nelly on a hot night and guarantee that women will take off all their clothes. And if you listen to DMX, he’s telling you straight up that you aint strong enough. That’s a self-conscious distance between even the studio gangsta and his audience. Hiphop, especially gangsta is always reminding its audience who is real and who is not. Hiphop is smart enough to recognize it’s not causality. So anybody who takes it that seriously is either fooling themselves or actually stupid.

So of course there are fools and idiots everywhere. And yes we live in a society that has industries that capitalize on the weaknesses of fools and idiots. I’m just not so sure we can actually call that culture. There is not so much one should expect from folk music, folk dress, folk dialect, folk cooking anywhere in the world, especially when it’s in a consumer society aimed at its fools and idiots.

Individuals will always find a need to express themselves. In the English speaking world, most all poetry has gone into remission except for the 4/4 time rhymed couplets of most hiphop. I think if you give American culture and the English language the respect it deserves, it will be easy to find hiphop and poetry capable of expressing virtue, elegance and intelligence. If hiphop never did that, we could all write it off. But it did. For the world, and it probably will again.

 

Refugees & the Second Amendment

What if every country's citizens had the right to bear arms as we do in America? Well, from my way of seeing things, the creation of South Sudan wouldn’t have been necessary because women and children would have had the ultimate protection.

Think of it this way. In every African nation that has child soldiers (and they're all boys), they can oppress populations simply because even such a child can wield sufficient power to create refugees. The same goes for the victims of ISIS.

Right now, everywhere in the world that is experiencing civil war that has no gun rights for the citizenry are at the mercy of mercenaries and arms dealers. That also means, for the entire history of the Cold War, that the US and Russia got involved to arm rebel forces. If those people had the rights to bear arms in their own countries, they could have purchased them legally in peacetime and been more self-reliant, and the impudence of tyrants would have been dissuaded.

Every time you look at the sad face of a refugee, remember that they would have defended their own homes with lethal force if they had that right.

Go ahead. Google it. "African mother with rifle". I challenge you to find 10 pictures on the entire planet. It should make you vomit. 

 

The Human Shark

In the news today, "Ancient shark with 300 teeth found by scientists". It turns out that this guy is about 80million years old, give or take 5 million. What evolution is it doing? It's not. Why has evolution left the sharks alone? Well, it's something we don't often think about, and quite frankly I'm not going to do a lot of thinking about here. But I will propose the question, and maybe some of my friends here will know better than I. 

What if we are only speculating about the different hominids? I mean what if, as I've heard more recently, Homo Sapiens actually did breed with the Neanderthals and with earlier hominids like Heidelbergensis, Erectus and Ergaster? I remember when I was a kid, I heard a lot more about Homo Erectus, and Homo Erectus is about 1.3 million years old. So let us speculate that we went back a million years in our little time machine. Obviously we'd clean up a few of those dudes and chicks and hang out with them. But would they be sexy to us? I'm thinking they would be. And I'm thinking we'd try them out. And what a surprise if babies happened!

That would prove that our ideas about speciation as far as humans are concerned is all speculation. How could we prove that the DNA is just that distant enough to say Erectus was real species barrier? I don't know. Maybe somebody spent the time on this question that just popped into my head. But what if human beings are about as perfected as we get in terms of speciation? We are already adapted to our environment as well as a shark is to the sea, and we don't need to evolve. Evolution is not this thing that relentlessly changes us. We relentlessly change ourselves. But we are not and have not faced an extinction event. If H. Erectus is our actually reproductive genetic blood, for a million years, maybe this is as far as evolution needs to take us, absent a nuclear holocaust. See what I'm saying? 

The other implication here is that just like all dogs are just dogs, all humans are just humans. We pretend that breeds are more differentiating than they actually are. I find it difficult to believe that vets learn in their schools that you must operate on poodles differently than bulldogs. There's no DNA barrier. It's just perception. We know that to be true of race. It's just human breeding for shallow effect. That means that 'social Darwinism' is really the only evolution that's going on, which is to say no actual biological evolution, just lethal discrimination. So if there is no actual scientifically empirical evidence for human evolution on the scale of half a million years at the DNA level, it's very clear that there's nothing we've got that the Romans didn't have, except for a better way of specializing ourselves into extremes. Usain Bolt and Angela Merkel can have a baby tomorrow. OK well, maybe Angela is past it, but you get my drift. The kid won't be as exceptional as either parent. 

So I think that leaves a lot more room for what we believe about 'genetics', but nothing anywhere close to speciation. That also means those Neanderthals were probably not as stupid on average as the average stupid person today. This argues for a very broad interpretation of the continuity of humanity as a lot more constant where it really counts, across the millennia. I take that to implicate our tendency to overhype our environmental circumstances. The guy with the iPhone X is really not better than the guy with no phone at all. And that means that stupid people aren't really that stupid. We laugh at Chihuahuas, but they still actually bite like wolves. 

Finally, this leaves me in an interesting place with regard to Extremistan. If more things are actually just social Darwinism, maybe we're just jawboning ourselves into superiority and inferiority. Maybe this is the secret the wealthy and powerful don't want us to know. Could it be? Nahh. Ok maybe. 

 

 

Why Do I Run?

Why do I work out? I work out to preserve the joy of the freedom of movement, so I can run in my waking hours the way I run in my dreams, as long as I can. I work to keep my body strong and healthy. To fight.  To fight illness and suffering. To fight death. And to preserve the will to fight all of my days. To protect my mind and my spirit as long and as far as I can.

The Barclay Prime Factor

Thrillist has gotten my email and has seduced me into clicking. It's not my worst habit, but I shouldn't give them so much of my attention. They make me forget that there is poetry in the world. Nevertheless they can be instructive on finding new foodie spots I have not yet discovered, overpopulated as they may be with younger, more energetic humans than me. (grumble).

This morning's seduction began with the thirty one best steakhouses in America. Interestingly enough, I've been to two of the first three. I haven't thought of Barclay Prime in a long time. It has been at least seven years since I was there. I remember that it was when paddle shifting dual clutch supercars were a new thing, and so I particularly noticed the new convertible Lambo out front. Come to think of it, there is nothing quite as sad as a three or four year old Lamborghini. They have to be sparkling as well as loud to maintain their appeal.  But I'll spare you these and other stoic observations to make my short and sweet point, aside from the seduction of the adjective 'best'.

The kobe beef wasn't worth it. 

I'm pretty sure that I saw on the menu, a listing for a kobe beef hotdog or hamburger for $100. I thought about it a long time, but I decided against it. I had an ordinary ribeye steak and found it to be unremarkable as ribeye steaks go. In fact, I have had three coming to Jesus level steak experiences in my life. One at Jockos, one at The Double Eagle and one at The Hitching Post. Aside from that, I think I have reached the age where the subtleties of everything non-intellectual generally fail to impress me. The difference between a first class steak and a world class steak is marginal after your 500th steak. And yet this distinction without a difference must be said with some deep appreciation for the privilege it is to eat so many steaks in one's life. I have such a deep appreciation for a good hunk of beef, but I can also spot a bargain, and there's something ever appealing about a bargain.

An old boss of mine used to tell me that we should go eat a cow, and in some high rise building in Bellevue, I had one of the largest steaks I ever ate in one sitting. I was physically in pain getting out of my chair afterwards. But what I remember was the elevator ride up. We were in the same car with game developers, one of whom looked to be in his mid 50s wearing a braided grey beard as long as your arm. They were totally casual in this hot shit restaurant, and I was like... trying to ignore that reality. It wasn't about the steak. It was about the Dosh Point, aka 'fuck you money'. I was wedded to my monkey suit. The steak wasn't quite as satisfying as it should have been. We overdid it. I really didn't need 24 ounces. But it was on my old boss. I was being seduced, or something. In the end, that business failed. 

What I have learned in the intervening years is the extent to which we must work with consistency and within the aegis of our ambition. I have always expected to be first rate but not world class. I cut myself out of that arena when I recognized that my French had lapsed and I didn't attain my Master's degree. I thought I was out of it, and I still haven't bought the Rolex, although I could afford one if I made a point of it. But that $100 kobe beef hamburger and that Lambo. I have come to realize that they are on a logarithmic scale. The quality is on the X axis but the price is on the Y. It seems way above my head because it costs so much, but it is not far from the quality I have already experienced. If I'm the poorest guy in Barclay Prime, it's OK. There's a McCormick & Schmick up the street that is not in the location location location, but its steaks are first rate. 

It turns out, of course, that no American restaurant ever really had authentic, official Kobe beef. The Japanese never exported it. It was all fake. And yes it's true now that you can buy a Camaro that outruns Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis. What's important is your attention to the difference. When I sold stereo, I used to tell my customers that if you can't hear the difference, don't pay for the difference. But like wine snobs, we generally associate quality with price, even when we can't tell the difference ourselves. It's about the signaling, of course; it's about drawing other people's attention to the distinctions. 

I enjoy my life. I need to remember not to show off. I need to remember that my indulgences in those things for which I pay particular attention to the distinctions are for myself. I need to simply be happy and not brag about what stuff makes me happy. My enjoyment of that which makes me happy is its own reward. I'll share it with some modesty. 

At the same time I need to be aware of the extent to which people are enslaved to their own Dosh Points as I have been, which we may never reach. We need to pursue our barbell strategy. Prepare for both extremes, enrichment and impoverishment. Live without regret, as a warrior all your days. Dig for treasure but love the shovel. Only be a fanboy of the dead. 

The HashFlare Scenario

Somebody asked a question about HashFlare, which is a website that promises to mine Bitcoin for you, for a small fee. I took the time and worked out some of the economics of Bitcoin mining. I think it will be very instructive:

Q. How much money do I need to invest if I want to make 3 bitcoins a day by investing in a cloud mining platform like Hash Flare?

A. Uh. You can’t afford it.

In January 2016, 1TH/s would get you 0.004 BTC per day. 
If you wanted 3.0 BTC / day you would need 750 TH/s of compute power.

The Antminer S9 costs $2000 each and delivers 14 TH/s of performance. Therefore you would need a rack of 54 of them. Each Antminer S9 draws 1600W of power. So at 10cents per KWh, each Antminer S9 is going to cost $3.84 per day x 54 = $207.36 of electricity per day.

So if I’m HashFlare and I’m leasing the ability to mine 3.0 BTC/day my capital cost is 54 x 2000 = 108,000. But let’s say I get a discount and can get a bulk order of Antminers S9s at 10% off. (Fat chance, but let’s assume it.)

97,200 financed at 5% interest over 3 years works out to about 2915.00 per month. Plus electricity cost of about 6225.00 per month. That’s a 3 year cost of approximately 329,040. Let’s round that out to be $330,000 bucks.

So if I’m HashFlare, I’m going to mark that up a whole lot to cover my costs. Let’s see how much.

So let’s look at the SHA-256 Plan.

That plan says $1.50 per month gets you 10 GH/s. So $150 per month will get you 1 TH/s and therefore $2100 per month will get you one month of 1 Antminer S9 performance, and you don’t pay for electricity. Still, you need 54 of those to mine 3 BTC per day. Therefore you’d have to pay $113,400 per month to Hash Flare. That sounds about right.

Now 3 BTC/day at a steady $4000 per Bitcoin gets you $12,000 per day. In a month that’s $360,000. That would give you a net profit of almost a quarter million dollars per month. Here’s the problem. HashFlare is not going to give you that price unless you lock it in for a year. Which means you have to promise them a 1.36 million dollar contract per year.

See the problem here? If you can afford to spend $1.36 million per year to pay Hash Flare, why wouldn’t you just buy the hardware and electricity yourself for $330,000 over three years?

Well of course you wouldn’t. You’d be in the same business as HashFlare making 4.08 million over 3 years on costs of $330,000. And guess what? That’s a bigger profit than you’d make mining BTC. HashFlare would make 12x investment on you no matter what the price of BTC is. You would make 3x profit depending on the price of BTC. Meaning HashFlare only needs your business for 1 month to cover their investment. Oh but wait, you’ve signed up for a year. Quit early and I bet you pay a fee.

Now the big curve ball is that now you see it’s a much better business model to be in the HashFlare business than to mine BTC yourself. But then you’d have to compete with HashFlare. And the more people who get into the HashFlare business (and the pure mining business) the more the demand for Antiminer S9s goes, and the the more net hashing power there is in the world to mine BTC. So the cost of Antminer S9s goes up, and the net ability for 14 TH/s to actually mine 0.004BTC goes down.