Not real estate related, but had to post this snarky masterpiece:
From The Atlantic:
No One Knows What Universities Are For
Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. “Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”
Administrative growth isn’t unique to Pomona. In 2014, the political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg published The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, in which he bemoaned the multi-decade expansion of “administrative blight.” From the early 1990s to 2009, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew 10 times fasterthan tenured-faculty positions, according to Department of Education data. Although administrative positions grew especially quickly at private universities and colleges, public institutions are not immune to the phenomenon. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent from 2004 to 2014.
How and why did this happen? Some of this growth reflects benign, and perhaps positive, changes to U.S. higher education. More students are applying to college today, and their needs are more diverse than those of previous classes. Today’s students have more documented mental-health challenges. They take out more student loans. Expanded college-sports participation requires more athletic staff. Increased federal regulations require new departments, such as disability offices and quasi-legal investigation teams for sexual-assault complaints. As the modern college has become more complex and multifarious, there are simply more jobs to do. And the need to raise money to pay for those jobs requires larger advancement and alumni-relations offices—meaning even more administration.
But many of these jobs have a reputation for producing little outside of meeting invites. “I often ask myself, What do these people actually do?,” Ginsberg told me last week. “I think they spend much of their day living in an alternate universe called Meeting World. I think if you took every third person with vice associate or assistant in their title, and they disappeared, nobody would notice.”
…
Complex organizations need to do a lot of different jobs to appease their various stakeholders, and they need to hire people to do those jobs. But there is a value to institutional focus, and the past few months have shown just how destabilizing it is for colleges and universities to not have a clear sense of their priorities or be able to make those priorities transparent to faculty, students, donors, and the broader world. The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.
In an email to me, Smith, the Pomona economist, said the biggest factor driving the growth of college admin was a phenomenon he called empire building. Administrators are emotionally and financially rewarded if they can hire more people beneath them, and those administrators, in time, will want to increase their own status by hiring more people underneath them. Before long, a human pyramid of bureaucrats has formed to take on jobs of dubious utility. And this can lead to an explosion of new mandates that push the broader institution toward confusion and incoherence.
…
Bureaucratic growth has a shadow self: mandate inflation. More college bureaucrats lead to new mandates for the organization, such as developing new technology in tech-transfer offices, advancing diversity in humanities classes through DEI offices, and ensuring inclusive living standards through student-affairs offices. As these missions become more important to the organization, they require more hires. Over time, new hires may request more responsibility and create new subgroups, which create even more mandates. Before long, a once-focused organization becomes anything but.
In sociology, this sort of muddle has a name. It is goal ambiguity—a state of confusion, or conflicting expectations, for what an organization should do or be. The modern university now has so many different jobs to do that it can be hard to tell what its priorities are, Gabriel Rossman, a sociologist at UCLA, told me. “For example, what is UCLA’s mission?” he said. “Research? Undergraduate teaching? Graduate teaching? Health care? Patents? Development? For a slightly simpler question, what about individual faculty? When I get back to my office, what should I spend my time on: my next article, editing my lecture notes, doing a peer review, doing service, or advancing diversity? Who knows.”
Goal ambiguity might be a natural by-product of modern institutions trying to be everything to everyone. But eventually, they’ll pay the price. Any institution that finds itself promoting a thousand priorities at once may find it difficult to promote any one of them effectively. In a crisis, goal ambiguity may look like fecklessness or hypocrisy.
Apple signs deal with OpenAI
Tried to make quick cash with OpenAI’s $OKLO but it wasn’t easy
Juice box says:
May 13, 2024 at 7:11 am
Apple signs deal with OpenAI
Hey Siri – write an essay on modern communism movements and their impact on global politics:
(does it)
Hey Siri – order me a pizza.
Playing Piece of Me by Britney Spears on Spotify.
Before long, a human pyramid of bureaucrats has formed to take on jobs of dubious utility. And this can lead to an explosion of new mandates that push the broader institution toward confusion and incoherence.
Sounds like the democrat party. Great write-up though and spot on.
Elitist AI leaves labor to immigrants
grim says:
May 13, 2024 at 7:31 am
Hey Siri – write an essay on modern communism movements and their impact on global politics:
(does it)
Hey Siri – order me a pizza.
Playing Piece of Me by Britney Spears on Spotify
Had an interesting discourse on humanoid robot AI.
My argument was that these devices would not be sold at a typical cost plus model, they would be sold based on the equivalent value of labor, and that a typical humanoid robot capable of basic tasks, would probably sell for $30-40,000 a year. These devices would be “leased” and not sold outright.
Given the cost of minimum wage, the total hours that could be worked, the $30-40k number seems entirely reasonable. In addition, these devices would easily cost double that to build, so a 5 or 6 year lease term would probably be correct.
I also argued that it would be the wealthy who benefit from these as servants, and the business class to replace low-cost labor. Hence, the $30-40k a year might actually be a bargain.
Was told I was stupid for taking this position, made no sense and nobody would pay that. Dunno, a 24/7 servant in a wealthy household, that doesn’t talk back, does what it’s told? Seems like they’ve been waiting for this for at least the last 150 years.
Also made the point that in many countries, robots would not be put to work doing the lowest-class jobs at all, because the ROI was far higher in other areas. So the caste system in India, for example, would become completely bifurcated, with robots taking a middle-caste role.
Again, I’m dumb.
iOS 18 release is coming this fall, needs some bling I guess.
Apple started it’s Siri revamp for a real conversational AI four years ago, and all they can do at the end of the day is use ChatGPT? “Apple GPT” must be dismal, even though they are spending millions of dollars per day on AI research. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and other artificial intelligence tools were all banned at Apple last year too.
I would say perhaps Tim Cook and the board pivoted here. They could not get enough legal content via offering millions of dollars to index news and media archive deals etc to build their own LLM with content they have rights too so they are going the route many companies are going with OpenAI taking the brunt of the lawsuits of content copyright etc.
Apple’s AI chief John Giannandrea is he even still relevant? There are billions being spent at Apple on AI development.
Yeah, that’s about right.
https://youtu.be/KJYV6EeKKuc?t=7198
humanoid robot AI.
Agility Robots Inc at Amazon now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8IdbodRG14
But is it gonna have a rack like Stormy Daniels?
I think you are missing the whole reason the wealthy have servants.
Dunno, a 24/7 servant in a wealthy household, that doesn’t talk back, does what it’s told? Seems like we’ve been waiting for this for at least the last 150 years.
LLM in Apple? That’s a cognitive crisis.
Nothing Apple does is nondeterministic, LLM is completely nondeterministic.
Ask an LLM the same question 100 times, you get 100 different answers, a different one every time.
Under the covers, Siri is barely AI, it’s decision trees and if, then, else statements. Sure, there is ASR to transcribe speech to text, and NLU to identify intent, but both are very basic. They could have done far more, but don’t, won’t, because they lose control.
This highly basic approach guarantees they have complete control. The process executes in the apple way, or it doesn’t execute at all. Siri sucking is not an accident, it is on purpose, this is what people don’t realize. Everything is specifically orchestrated, down to each pixel. Adopting LLM means giving up control of the user experience.
This is the AI crisis Apple really faces. I’m sure internally, they are horrified by this.
Siri + OpenAI may NEVER see the light of day.
Phoenix – You will be gifted one in retirement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y8YAMPFhk
In the short term societal changes will be smaller than expected. In long term will be greater than anything imagined
Somewhere in between Ex Machina and Her.
In the short term societal changes will be smaller than expected. In long term will be greater than anything imagined
I’m part of a few AI communities online, porn is pretty much the #1 use case right now, and they’ve got a pretty far lead at this point.
Tuning LLM for NSFW for story creation and dialog is huge. Hell, even OpenAI recently amended their charter/policies and have announced they are contemplating NSFW model behavior. They are doing this because the porn-focused AI communities are working in the open source arena where there aren’t such restrictions, and the models permit fine tuning (jailbreaking really), the filters and content moderation policies being put in place. They would stand out to lose out on serious $$ if they didn’t.
So, I guess in the short term, porn storylines are about to get much better? In the long term, this will all be synthetic. The job loss in the porn industry is going to be significant. Probably the first shoe to drop.
It could be an economic reinassance for the confederate south.
They have been stagnant without slavery.
grim says:
May 13, 2024 at 8:00 am
Dunno, a 24/7 servant in a wealthy household, that doesn’t talk back, does what it’s told? Seems like we’ve been waiting for this for at least the last 150 years.
a cottage industry for overclocking and jail breaking lower end robot models will sprout up no doubt.
Halp! I jail broke my XT2500 and now it doesn’t do windows. MotifMinds says they can’t help me as my warranty was breached.
That agility robotics video is silly, they are taking bins from a rack to a conveyor? It’s obviously a completely hypothetical test setup that’s not even remotely close to day to day ops. Ok, early stage R&D for sure, crawl before you can walk. What they showed is neat, but it’s still years away from being viable.
Those test robots are easily a few hundred thousands of dollars each, they are penned in that test corral because they’d probably walk in front of a fork lift and get clobbered. I don’t see nearly enough lidar or other imaging on that thing.
I have mentioned the 2025 Florida condo law a few times:
MIAMI—Ivan Rodriguez leapt at the chance to buy a unit at the Cricket Club, an exclusive bay-front condominium in North Miami. In 2019, he liquidated his 401(k) retirement account to purchase a nearly 1,500-square-foot unit with water views for $190,000.
But because of a recent state law that requires older buildings to meet certain structural safety standards, the condo board recently proposed a nearly $30 million special assessment for repairs, including roof replacement and facade waterproofing. It would amount to more than $134,000 per unit owner.
Rodriguez, 76, didn’t have the money. So he reluctantly put his two-bedroom condo up for sale, joining dozens of others in the building who are doing the same. After originally listing his unit for $350,000, he kept marking it down until finally it sold for $110,000 last month, or 42% less than what he paid for it.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/florida-condo-special-assessment-law-sales-e754ab09?mod=hp_lead_pos8&mod=wknd_pos1
The VIX just round tripped and is back at $12-13. Cheap. SVXY is also really extended.
Years away? Very soon Robots will render Tesla’s autonomous drive obsolete.
Jeeves will drive around in your 8 cylinder pickup truck.
Grim says:
May 13, 2024 at 9:11 am
That agility robotics video is silly, they are taking bins from a rack to a conveyor? It’s obviously a completely hypothetical test setup that’s not even remotely close to day to day ops. Ok, early stage R&D for sure, crawl before you can walk. What they showed is neat, but it’s still years away from being viable.
Was forced to convert to Schwab today from TD Ameritrade. What a god awful platform. Does anyone else have any good recommendations for a better trading platform?
Digit the robot is for tote consolidation, a process that involves organizing and repositioning the tote storage containers after all the inventory has been removed. Digit can autonomously sense, grasp these totes, while navigating an environment originally designed for humans.
They also have the Sparrow robot arm, which has suction cups and sensors to read the writing on merchandise in totes and then move them from the tote to another container/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBxKiz5I11o
Idea here is to build out a better last mile system to replace the bio robots over time before they can Unionize.
1987 Condo – Lesson here for everyone is never buy in an old high-rise condo near the ocean. That condo building Cricket Club was built in 1975, and well it looks dated and well along with many old high-rises there should be plans for the implosion, lifespan of modern concrete near salt water 50 years before serious issues start cropping up and 100 before it needs to be demolished.
https://www.miamicondolifestyle.com/cricket-club.php
I worked on implementing a warehouse robot a few years ago with a startup. It was designed to assist in picking merch off of shelves. Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) tech, it was more of a gimmick than anything, helped the picker pick faster. Eventually they will get to the point Amazon won’t need those one million warehouse workers.
“This highly basic approach guarantees they have complete control. The process executes in the apple way, or it doesn’t execute at all. Siri sucking is not an accident, it is on purpose, this is what people don’t realize.”
This is interesting. About a decade ago, I was brought into my companies Union plant to manage their prepress team. These guys were all very good at performing traditional prepress tasks for cold-set web print, but barely understood what they were doing with the computer beyond utilizing the imposition software that sets the pages in their unique locations for plate output based on different size, color, quantity and manufacturing configurations. This team could understand the software since they were performing the same task manually using a film camera and a step and repeat process only ten years earlier that for the most part, did the same thing. Well the purpose for bringing me in was to transform the team into one that understood digital print, which is infinitely simpler than traditional cold-set web, but completely different. As I put the training agenda together, the management at the plant itself would not let me teach them to fish, which in my opinion, was necessary for them to learn. Everything they had performed, up to this point, was based on rote, learned through repetition. They had no clue why or how the computer worked, but knew if they chose a few menu items in the correct order, it would do what they needed.
I remember one day being incredibly frustrated by the team’s lack of care of effort about learning new things. I went to the plant manager and he said, the best strategy was to use the McDonalds cashier strategy. That is, to make a button for a Big Mac, french fries, and a coke. Then another button to supersize it. This way, they only have two choices, instead of four. The last thing we want is for them to have to think. Thinking leads to error and expensive redos. Which is the unfortunate truth in the world of high-speed cold-set printing where each press can produce tens of thousands of pages per hour. Think newspaper presses. I told management, they will never learn digital print if they are not allowed to mess around on their computers. Not this team of former manual film strippers who think of everything mechanically first before acting.
I couldn’t make any headway, so I automated the cold-set web functions they performed, since they were based on a standard set of rules and let them go. My former Premedia team in NY would takeover for any file issues that might stymie digital output. It’s ten years later now and we are five years past the removal of all of our cold-set web presses. We vend our remaining diminishing quantity of that work to an outfit in Secaucus where a few of them got hired. I went back to managing my three Premedia teams.
The parallel between Apple trying to keep their OS (and Siri) locked tightly to seemingly make their platform appear impervious to error and not AI compatible, is really the same issue my plant managers had with training their staff not to be able to think.
I think the lesson is broader than that. Any condo association is a closed financial group.
If things are going well, no issue. But if sales are forced, due to assessments, insurance costs, property tax, climate impact etc, folks will sell, if they do not sell, they may rent. As they rent, it reduces sales prices. After a certain percentage of rentals, the Feds restrict mortgages for future buyers, forcing down sale prices and creating more rentals…ask me how I know.
BRT,
The platform is not so bad, as it’s different. With some poking around, you can make it look just like Ameritrade did. Schwab’s customer service is light years better than TDs and their checking accounts are fantastic, besides their one shortcoming, which is you can’t deposit cash. But you can always give cash to someone else in exchange for a check which you can digitally deposit, which is how I get around it.
Oh yeah, their research offerings are significantly better than TD offered and they did port over Think or Swim. Give it a little time and it should grow on you.
BRT says:
May 13, 2024 at 9:54 am
Was forced to convert to Schwab today from TD Ameritrade. What a god awful platform. Does anyone else have any good recommendations for a better trading platform?
I am also extremely disappointed, I have 6 accounts ( 4 for grandchildren) and it is an absolute mess for me. I am not very savvy with technology but this is brutal. Let me know if you switch and to where. At this point I am very disappointed and frustrated. TD America seemed so much easier to work with….maybe I was just used to it.
Jim/BRT, what are the issues? The account linking and grouping?
JB, that Cricket Club web page looks like it was built decades ago as well lol.
BRT, the tech flow for trading platforms in the Schwab/TDA merger is going the other way…Schwab’s SSE is shutting down in favor of TDA’s ThinkorSwim.
ToS is much better than SSE but the two apps are left brain-right brain developed, ie. you most likely will have to re-learn everything except simple order entry (I did).
Sounds like you might be on the basic .com app for both brokers?
If so probably ought to upgrade from there in any case if you are doing anything more than simply occasionally hitting the ask for large ETFs. If so, ToS is likely where you want to be regardless of the merger. IBKR can work, and their margin/money rates are better but organizationally they are very temperamental…some people had problems executing orders during COVID breaks as IBKR is first and foremost about their risk management, not yours.
Left that Cricket Club building is in a great spot.
They are listing NEW condos down there for 15 million – 35 Million. Seems like a no-brainer to buy that old building and knock it down. Hey a 30 million dollar special assessment nobody living there on fixed income can afford? Sounds like a great way to get the property and redevelop.
Juice: And eventually Amazon may not be able to sell all that they sell, as many people won’t have jobs to pay for the stuff. Just saying.
Very Interesting and sobering article in the WSJ on the world wide baby bust. It’s happening all over the world and the decline is rapid it’s hitting all demographics.
It’s happening all over the world and the decline is rapid it’s hitting all demographics.
That’s because most males are a “5” and a woman wants at least an “8”.
3B – They can start paying women to have more children. China for example in one provice was pay $4,300 for having a third child in 2023.
Juice: They could , but will they? And will it be enough of an incentive? I can also see the outrage on the Left if they were to do this, paying women to be breeders, like a horse or a cow.
3b
Amazon makes it’s money from AWS, not selling stuff.
JB, agree, I know that area a bit, spent sometime nearby a couple years ago…also recently advised someone on their condo association, different town, but similar concept in that the dirt was worth much more than the four walls…they ended up with three units in their small complex which is effectively a blocking position to any sale which should have some premium attached to it…
Any opportunity for something similar here (1987 chime in as well…)…would seem a market clearing price for any unit is some combination of current market value plus the pro-rata assessment? Depending on the association documents wouldn’t a re-developer need to somehow gain control of a requisite number of units to vote a forced sale? Unless things got so bad the building itself is actually condemned (can’t imagine that occurring on that patch of dirt?)
Really not familiar with how these things work absent that one situation above….especially for buildings with this apparent number of units/owners…
And 3b the Left will embrace breeding for hire….you know, the whole ‘my body’ empowerment thing…same concept why hard core feminists support prostitution.
Remember, with liberals you are in bizarro-world…exploitation = empowerment.
I see basic income in the future. Which will, in essence be Corporate welfare.
Lib, just don’t like the look or feel. I’ve been using TD for 20 years so it’s going to be a learning curve but everything just always made sense on their platform.
Left, yes, I’m only on the .com sites. I am going to check out thinkorswim this week. I haven’t really been trading anything the past 6 months so the learning curve isn’t the biggest deal. But if there’s a better platform out there, I’d like to just move to something more appealing.
Left: Not so sure about that, but you might be right.
Socialist Boomer already gets basic income. They also get universal healthcare.
LAX says:
May 13, 2024 at 1:14 pm
I see basic income in the future. Which will, in essence be Corporate welfare.
BRT….
Sounds like you are moving apps regardless so IMO first cut for you is do you want (or believe you may want in the future) an actual trading platform or just the .com app.
If just the .com then simply pick the easiest to use or some other criteria. At that level functionality is all the same and data/analysis really doesn’t matter.
If you decide to take this opportunity to learn a trading platform would recommend ToS. Kind of depends on what you will do but IMO best all around. They have an open API so you can write any study you want, you’re not limited to just ‘canned’ studies. If that’s not your cup of tea other people already have and ToS actively promotes and supports these. They have some of the best data around…brokerages will pay for data and they, for example, offer daily every option trade time stamped with bid/ask and spreads (it’s great to see a 10,000 contract unusual option activity trade cross as an indicator, it’s essential to know if it was bought, written, or part of a covered strategy…). Although I don’t believe this is your cup of tea (not mine either) they had hands down the best margin requirements around, I’ve mentioned on here how that was life changing for some traders in my group. Not sure if that survived Schwab’s risk management…There are some ‘secret’ handshakes, frustratingly if you use IV as an indicator there is a major difference between IV rank and percentile, for some reason these guys label IVP as IVR, people have bitched for years not sure if that has changed as I use other resources. Overall, like any new app, it takes some learning but worth it and presumably post-merger ToS is here now for the long haul so there shouldn’t be any more risk that it will disappear any time soon putting your sunk time learning something new at risk.
GL
And BRT for my anecdotal I came to have much of my activity at Schwab because I was originally at a dedicated options house (forget the name now lol) that Schwab bought. I followed the software, guess I’m advising you the same.
Can honestly say that I have never been on Schwab.com in easily two decades except for two activities not supported on the SSE software they acquired….first, to transfer funds and second if I dipped my toes into futures.
They did keep dedicated options specialists (direct line, no 800 number, US based specialists) which I forgot to mention above is a benny. Hope they don’t disappear in the merger.
OptionsXpress?
The new Jeep Grand Cherokee blows. It looks like a girly car. Just saying.
3b,
How’s this for a street beast:
https://newautomagz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2024-GMC-Syclone-Pickup-release-date.webp
3B,
That’s mostly who are buying Jeeps today. Blame the Barbie movie.
Lib: Too bad. The whole history/ legacy of the Grand Cherokee gone.
Fast: That is a rugged beautiful driving machine.
Kamala drops an F Bomb.
Once upon a time in the West
https://youtu.be/wB7LNZyEpMk?si=Z__yx0bYpyG_Q-89
I saw a jeep today that looked like Miami Vice colors. Had that pastel blue body with the pink hinges and handles. An overweight middle age bottle blonde got into it.
GPT-4o voice chat demos are creepy.
O’Biden just announced he is raising tariffs on China imports. Didn’t he roll back the Trump tariffs on day one because he said it was bad and would crash the economy?