City's New Mascot

Green Eyed Monster

Like A Cold Sore That Won't Go Away

Dominium, so aptly named, is persistent if nothing else and is acting with Trumpian sense of entitlement and ownership of facts: "no one under age 55 will be able to live there,"  where "there" is an incredibly out of place high-rise apartment on Ashford Dunwoody. Like Trump, who has his own facts, he has a reality problem with Congress. Seems the 104th passed something called HOPA (Housing for Older Persons Act) which explicitly defines the rules for 55+, including the 80/20 rule and that only one resident need be that old.  This is an actual "act of Congress" that Mr. Dominium has no control over, so despite his protests, the actual fact is that, by law, folks under 55 can, and very likely will, live in these apartments. Otherwise, honestly (that's a stretch) why would anyone build three bedroom apartments? 

The fact that this man's proposal is so inappropriate that even advocates of urbanization are against it is concerning. What is more concerning is the bureaucrats at city hall that are actively advocating for this proposal. The folks are on our payroll, and they have not a single clue about, and even less consideration for the people living in this city. They don't know us. They don't care to. They don't work for us. So who do they work for? And what is the power these outsiders have over city hall bureaucrats?

Maybe it is time for a "power down reset," rebooting this operation with lots of new faces. 

Pedagogical Freedom

Ever spend much time with academics...professors? Outside the classroom, in the near occasion of alcohol? Yes, they're fragile. And they're whiners. But they are never more than a glass away from  dropping "pedagogical freedom" as an existential element of their professional life. Like tenure, this is something we in the real world never have, and yes, unfireable government bureaucrats are not part of the real world. So what is this "pedagogical freedom?" In a nutshell, it means no one, not a colleague, not a department head, not a provost and not a university president can tell them what to do or how to do it in their classes. No one. Anyone who tries, and in fact, anything they don't like, will be declared an existential threat to their pedagogical freedom. For some unfathomable reason, it has been widely accepted that the academy would collapse if professors' pedagogical freedom were to be infringed in the slightest.

Not anymore. 

Seems the University System of Georgia is rolling out a requirement that all syllabi be made publicly available. Professors are outraged. Seems they think transparency is something that applies to government and somehow their working as an academic in a public university  means they are not government employees, despite the fact that they actually are. But they really don't like anyone telling them what to do, even their bosses at USG. 

The histrionics are reminiscent of Campus Carry. You know, where bodies were going to drop by the hour and some profs protested by having office hours exclusively online (before pandemic shutdowns) so as to not be exposed to an armed student. Their imaginings include social media attacks based on syllabus topics. Heaven forbid! A troll. They see physical threats in their future. They expect self-censorship--like that's going to happen. They may actually fear that students, who now see the syllabus ahead of time, might choose another professor, like an in-your-face Rate My Professor. Should students not be allowed to vote with their feet? And parents' money? But mostly they whine about pedagogical freedom. You'd think they were Mel Gibson's William Wallace screaming "Freedom!" as he was about to be drawn and quartered. 

Targeting Target

As predicted (by lots of folks) now that Wally Whirled has left town the local Target is suffering the Dunwoody Shrinkage Effect. Seems some budding entrepreneurs tried to walk out with over $2400 in cosmetics. After many lies, including their ages, assumably in an effort to be treated as juvies, the perps copped to the theft. The justification: the perp wanted to start a business but didn't have the "capital" for inventory. Well, one could suppose that fencing stolen goods is indeed a business. Since they seem to be "operating" in Dunwoody, the next question is: are they paying their occupational tax? 

Maybe the Lords and Ladies should be less fervent in their drive to high density and pay a little more attention to driving down crime. 

Rolling Out The Red Carpet

This city put out the welcome mat for developers on day one, after all we had a Developers' Authority before we had a city hall. Now the city is rolling out the red carpet for developers wanting to build apartments. Hundreds, soon thousands of apartments since incorporation. 

And the folks that run this city want even more.

It is as if they are cold-calling any and all commercial property owners suggesting they do a tear-down and re-build converting these properties to huge apartment developments. Irony? Absolutely. Remember that one of the things the Dunwoody Yes! folks claimed would change was the zoning backdoor that let commercial property owners to build apartments without a zoning review. Now this city is encouraging exactly that.

Since this city is so good at collaboration, how about they collaborate with the school system. Maybe they could work together to convert one of these commercial properties into a school for the students already in all those apartments this city has encouraged. You know, give these families a sense of place, a neighborhood school around which to build community. Is that because they don't care about the folks living in apartments any more than they care about those living in our neighborhoods? Is it because all they care about is making a place for developers?

Following The Science...

...right down the rabbit hole. 

Higher Ed has been broken for some time, what with the publish-or-perish system creating aberrant and abhorrent behavior, but now, with Large Language Models, there is a deluge of fictional "scientific" publications. Retraction Watch has been diligent in rooting out suspect publications, but now the flood of publications, and suspect publishers and editors has the attention of none other than the Grey Lady. The Times article points to a Moore's Law doubling of suspect publications and notes the increase in publishers of sketchy journals with equally sketchy editors and reviewers on staff. 

This is indeed a serious problem. One that has been around for quite some time, but now is headed in the direction of bogus articles far outnumbering legitimate research. Remarking on corrupt paper mills as lucrative business operations does little, and what little is being done, relies on automated processing to detect doctored and fabricated data, and scan for absurd wording. Have you ever read an article in popular press that uses the words "furthermore," "what's more," or "moreover," then you are reading something spewed out by a LLM. Nobody really uses those words. In an effort to hide their plagiarism, these millworkers pump out drivel that includes similarly uncomfortable diction, as well as artificial hallucinations and citations that do not exist. 

The Grey Lady finishes up as she so often does of late: with a swipe at Trump. A postdoc is quoted saying that the "stuff that the Trump administration is doing" is going to make the situation worse. Yes. That's right. "Stuff" is the appropriate technical term. It is worth noting that neither the NYT author, nor any of the sources provided any kind of solution. None whatsoever.

Investment Management

The stock market attracts some interesting characters. Day traders, if they still exist. Dynamic traders watching trends and news and talking of indicators, and momentum. Then there are those folks who buy stocks as part ownership of a company, buying shares in companies they'd buy outright if they could. These investors put in a lot of time and effort towards evaluating companies, their products or services, their operations, and most importantly, their management. These investors are looking for steady, long term returns on their investments and while they accept risk, they want this risk to be within acceptable limits, so they are looking for companies that reliably offer products and services customers want; that consistently grow the business, top line and bottom. 

The key to this analysis? Management.

Good management knows the market, their own offerings and their customers. They know how to optimize operations and they know how to weather economic storms. They handle economic good times and downturns with an equally steady hand. Good management drives the business to reliable returns in good times and bad. 

How do investors find companies run by quality managers?

They listen. See, companies report on their operations and with many caveats, tell investors what they see in future, in the upcoming reporting cycle. They better be right. And good management, because they know the business, and the economic climate they face, have a plan. When you read a quarterly filing or an annual report, you are reading that plan in all its glory. Investors rely on the quality and integrity of this information when choosing to buy and to sell. This is a key measure of top notch management. 

What happens if management's analysis misses the mark?

They are punished by the investment community. As investors lose confidence in management they sell off shares and the business' market value drops. This can cost highly compensated C-Levels their job. As it should. These managers are paid to know what they're doing, which is operating this business, and when their filings and reports lack veracity it screams "I have no clue." These are not people you want handling your money. And here's a key point: it doesn't matter if they come in high or low. A revenue windfall is just as bad as a shortfall because accuracy is competency. 

What about government?

Well, veracity does seem to be kryptonite for politicians and career bureaucrats, but many of the same principles [should] apply. So we're now confronted with an odd situation, where city "management" has uncovered a heretofore unanticipated windfall of around one and.a quarter million dollars. This is celebrated in the Blue Bag Rag, with some fairly weak explanations from the city bureaucracy, and you can expect the head cheerleader to be shaking her pom-poms at the head of the parade with a brass band playing Happy Days Are Here Again. The simple fact is, this is unacceptably bad management. This management does not have sufficient understanding of fundamental operations. Their budgets are unreliable and cannot be trusted, begging the question: what do they say that can be trusted? The obvious answer? Nothing. 

So, what can be done?

We cannot sell our stock, at least not without action under the gold dome to dissolve the charter. Operationally, mayor and council are powerless, even if we were to elect anyone who wants to remedy the situation. We could elect a group that would replace management, they can at least cut the head off the snake, and they could remove bureaucracies not relevant to founding commitments. 

Are we going to demand competence or just continue to sing along with the band?