4 ms·

That's a good example of why I'm reluctant to read and rarely read such articles, the WSJ, or the MSM (mainstream media). Also a good example of why, for such

That's a good example of why I'm reluctant to read and rarely read such articles, the WSJ, or the MSM (mainstream media). Also a good example of why, for such a topic, I want to see well done graphs over time. And the graphs should be as good as needed for, say, lab reports in freshman college physics. And I want quality at least up to that of common high school standards for term papers, e.g., references to credible, hopefully primary, sources. As in a popular high school literature short story, I want to be able to "look it up". The Internet is permitting new sources including some with some good reporting. For the WSJ and MSM, for me, on paper they can't compete with Charmin and on the Internet are useless for wrapping dead fish heads. They want to grab me, by the heart, the gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, and as soon as I start reading their work I feel their fingers on me. I do care, a lot, about the economy and news about business, but this WSJ article is a good example of why, still, I won't read the WSJ.

yaddaor 4y ago
So where do you get that kind of analytical journalism then if not in MaiNsTReAm mEDiA?
- graycat 4y ago
  For your > So where do you get that kind of analytical journalism then if not in MaiNsTReAm mEDiA? Part of my discussion was to explain that "that kind of analytical journalism" is not available in the MSM. Soooo, can't get such journalism from the MSM. So, get it elsewhere or don't get it at all. For a little more depth, the MSM has been in business for 100+ years, paper, radio, TV, and now the Internet. My view is that in this time they have found some techniques they believe in. In simple terms, they discovered long ago that they didn't know how to get many readers for "that kind of analytical journalism". And the MSM publishers are astoundingly similar in the "techniques" they use. Indeed, when one publisher gets a hot headline, many of the others will copy it, content, terminology, etc. In particular, for numerical data presented as I outlined, apparently the MSM hates that: (A) They concluded 100 years ago and have not changed their mind since that such numerical data presentations will cause the eyes of their audience to glaze over and the readers to move on. (B) As can suspect in the subject of this thread, presenting the data as I outlined, especially graphed over time, and as already observed in this thread, as is obvious, would make the alarmism of their story disappear. That is, one of the reasons for sloppy, incomplete reporting is that this is an easy way to get what we now call click bait. And one of the main reasons I want the "that kind of analytical journalism" is to reduce the amount of click bait. And, sure, there is the remark that, following what I am asking for, the MSM "would publish monthly" -- extra credit for knowing the source. That's not true, of course, since there is nearly no end of content to be reported, but, again, the MSM has treasured techniques, e.g., If it bleeds, it leads. I wrote: > The Internet is permitting new sources including some with some good reporting. I didn't say the sources exist yet! Such sources will appeal to fractions of the current MSM audience. Right: I am predicting that the audience will fracture into many small audiences. In a different sense from the MSM audience, this prediction of fracture is an assumption of my startup. But for your question of where to get "that kind of analytical journalism" one source is http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ I suspect that there are more and as time goes on will be many more. Well, there are more: (1) YouTube is becoming a single source for essentially all video content. Some of the content is "analytical". There promises to be more content, i.e., there are YouTubers. (2) There are the math/science sites https://simonsfoundation.org/category/features/science-news/ https://simonsfoundation.org/category/features/science-news/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ (3) For space, astronomy, and related physics, there is http://www.universetoday.com/ http://www.universetoday.com/ Uh, it is easy to notice reports of financial problems at CNN, WaPo, and the NYT. Since these are all ad supported, the problems are audience problems -- audience too small. Soooo, the MSM is changing, maybe just slowly going out of business. A lot of the content creators and publishers I've mentioned are essentially one person efforts. This means that, with the fraction I mentioned, the MSM is facing some severe pressure on cost of doing business.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    > "that kind of analytical journalism" one source is http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ Why is it that I am totally unsuprised that someone who is anti "main stream media" thinks that that steaming pile of dogshit is "journalism". They are fucking musings - its in the title.
    - graycat 4y ago
      There were some good analytical pieces on (A) the fact that we are and have been in a recession and (B) fentanyl and some of its money flows. And there were many more. Besides, the site is nearly all "that kind of analytical journalism" I outlined.
      - 2unious 4y ago
        * https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/renting-votes-and-forgiving-college-debt/#more-10779 https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/renting-votes-and-forgi... :: no sources * https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-chinese-mexican-fentanyl-invasion-of-the-united-states/ https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-chinese-mexican-fen... :: no sources
        graycat 4y ago
        It's been some weeks since I read the article, but one of the pieces of content was how cheap 1 Kg of fentanyl was in Mexico and how much, from memory, something over $10 million, 1 Kg sold for on US streets. That was some really good information, e.g., the street revenue is providing money enough to buy off likely some politicians. There was more analytical content there, right, however no partial differential equations, than I saw anywhere else. Sources? The common high school term paper writing standards want references to credible sources, hopefully primary. In this case, fentanyl from the Mexican drug cartels, the information is terrific and publishing sources might be dangerous. For the article on the recession, there was good data that clearly established that, according to the usual definition of a recession, we are in one. As I recall, the data presented was detailed and proved the point. I'm not returning to read the piece again, but I was thrilled with how solid was the case made when I did read it. Meanwhile I've seen a lot of words about recession in other media with never any actual definition given or actual data from good sources and responding to the definition. E.g., as I recall, some economists are quoted as predicting that we WILL be in a recession (suggesting that we are not yet, when the economist was quoted which was still after the article). To me, the other media just toss around recession while omitting any meaningful content.
blitzar 4y ago
I have seen the mob cosplaying as "journalists" fighinting against the "Mainstream Media". They are more of a joke than Fox news or CNN.
yellowstuff 4y ago
It seems like no one criticizing the article read it. There's a graph, starting in Feb 2020 so that it highlights the pandemic spike in rates and return to normalcy. And the article is written in the most neutral tone possible, pretty clearly targeting a business audience that wants information about shipping rates because of their importance for the economy and financial markets.
- graycat 4y ago
  I just looked at the article of OP (original post) of this thread, Costas Paris, "Ocean Shipping Rates Have Plunged 60% This Year", WSJ, Sept. 5, 2022 7:03 am ET, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ocean-shipping-rates-have-plunged-60-this-year-11662375780 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ocean-shipping-rates-have-plung... For > There's a graph, starting in Feb 2020 I saw no graph. For > And the article is written in the most neutral tone possible, I disagree: Instead the article is written with lots of adjectives instead of numerical quantities. E.g., in the title of the article, there is "Plunged". I object to "Plunged": When I was in college in math and physics, in grad school for my Ph.D. in pure/applied math, and taught optimization in an MBA program, I never used plunged. When I taught college calculus, I did a lot with derivatives that showed quantities increasing or decreasing but never used plunged. In my opinion, that word is intended to give the article, say, an emotional kick instead of > the most neutral tone possible. Other uses of adjectives I don't like include "sinking, surging, easing, shrinking", etc. When I pleased the highly concerned BoD and, thus, saved FedEx with some revenue projections from the differential equation y'(t) = k y(t) (b - y(t)) I presented a clear graph with clear numerical quantities and never used any adjectives, e.g., surged. Uh, here t was time, in days, y(t) was revenue at time t, b was the maximum revenue from earlier estimates of the market size, and k was, as is common in calculus, a constant of proportionality, and y'(t) is the calculus first derivative, that is, the rate of growth of revenue in revenue per day. So, the assumption is that at each time t revenue will grow directly proportional to current number of happy customers and also the current number target customers not yet customers. Then, sure, the growth curve will be a lazy S approaching the maximum market size b asymptotically from below. The BoD cared. I can't get anything meaningful from those adjectives. Instead I want to see numerical data, and for those uses of those adjective, the numerical data graphed over time. Such uses of adjectives remind me of short stories in high school English class and a children's movie where a teacher assures that class "adjectives are important in ANY writing". The article has > In 2019, the average cost to send a container across the Pacific to the U.S. West Coast was $1,500. I doubt that anyone can do much with that one number $1,500. But a graph of the rates, or even the average rates in some version of average, from 2019, or some years before, to the present should be good progress understanding how rates have changed. And still better would be, say, a good fitting regression model with independent variables from promising, common macro economic variables and variables particular to the container shipping industry -- that might let us make more sense out of rate variations, that is, identify causes (for a loose definition of cause) and make some progress predicting rates in the future. Gee, last time I heard, even Microsoft's spreadsheet software Excel would do the arithmetic for regression models! Once a world class mathematician specializing in stochastic processes reviewed my work predicting the expected number of surviving US missile firing submarines in a scenario of global nuclear war limited to sea. So, I had a model and some real data and gave expected values over time, including in a graph. The mathematician had an objection and I reminded him of how to make an application of the strong law of large numbers for bounded, independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables, and he agreed with me with "that's a good way to look at it". So, with some more analysis, it should be possible to make some useful predictions of shipping rates over time -- the article could be improved by doing such. For the "uncertainty" mentioned in the article, my Ph.D. dissertation was in best decision making over time under uncertainty, stochastic optimal control, and that might be relevant to customers of the container shipping industry. The application I made at the time had to do with varying oil prices -- hmm ...! So, the article could be improved not just mentioning uncertainty but making progress on doing something about it.

yaddaor 4y ago

So where do you get that kind of analytical journalism then if not in MaiNsTReAm mEDiA?

graycat 4y ago
For your > So where do you get that kind of analytical journalism then if not in MaiNsTReAm mEDiA? Part of my discussion was to explain that "that kind of analytical journalism" is not available in the MSM. Soooo, can't get such journalism from the MSM. So, get it elsewhere or don't get it at all. For a little more depth, the MSM has been in business for 100+ years, paper, radio, TV, and now the Internet. My view is that in this time they have found some techniques they believe in. In simple terms, they discovered long ago that they didn't know how to get many readers for "that kind of analytical journalism". And the MSM publishers are astoundingly similar in the "techniques" they use. Indeed, when one publisher gets a hot headline, many of the others will copy it, content, terminology, etc. In particular, for numerical data presented as I outlined, apparently the MSM hates that: (A) They concluded 100 years ago and have not changed their mind since that such numerical data presentations will cause the eyes of their audience to glaze over and the readers to move on. (B) As can suspect in the subject of this thread, presenting the data as I outlined, especially graphed over time, and as already observed in this thread, as is obvious, would make the alarmism of their story disappear. That is, one of the reasons for sloppy, incomplete reporting is that this is an easy way to get what we now call click bait. And one of the main reasons I want the "that kind of analytical journalism" is to reduce the amount of click bait. And, sure, there is the remark that, following what I am asking for, the MSM "would publish monthly" -- extra credit for knowing the source. That's not true, of course, since there is nearly no end of content to be reported, but, again, the MSM has treasured techniques, e.g., If it bleeds, it leads. I wrote: > The Internet is permitting new sources including some with some good reporting. I didn't say the sources exist yet! Such sources will appeal to fractions of the current MSM audience. Right: I am predicting that the audience will fracture into many small audiences. In a different sense from the MSM audience, this prediction of fracture is an assumption of my startup. But for your question of where to get "that kind of analytical journalism" one source is http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ I suspect that there are more and as time goes on will be many more. Well, there are more: (1) YouTube is becoming a single source for essentially all video content. Some of the content is "analytical". There promises to be more content, i.e., there are YouTubers. (2) There are the math/science sites https://simonsfoundation.org/category/features/science-news/ https://simonsfoundation.org/category/features/science-news/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ (3) For space, astronomy, and related physics, there is http://www.universetoday.com/ http://www.universetoday.com/ Uh, it is easy to notice reports of financial problems at CNN, WaPo, and the NYT. Since these are all ad supported, the problems are audience problems -- audience too small. Soooo, the MSM is changing, maybe just slowly going out of business. A lot of the content creators and publishers I've mentioned are essentially one person efforts. This means that, with the fraction I mentioned, the MSM is facing some severe pressure on cost of doing business.
- blitzar 4y ago
  > "that kind of analytical journalism" one source is http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ Why is it that I am totally unsuprised that someone who is anti "main stream media" thinks that that steaming pile of dogshit is "journalism". They are fucking musings - its in the title.
  - graycat 4y ago
    There were some good analytical pieces on (A) the fact that we are and have been in a recession and (B) fentanyl and some of its money flows. And there were many more. Besides, the site is nearly all "that kind of analytical journalism" I outlined.
    - 2unious 4y ago
      * https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/renting-votes-and-forgiving-college-debt/#more-10779 https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/renting-votes-and-forgi... :: no sources * https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-chinese-mexican-fentanyl-invasion-of-the-united-states/ https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-chinese-mexican-fen... :: no sources
      - graycat 4y ago
        It's been some weeks since I read the article, but one of the pieces of content was how cheap 1 Kg of fentanyl was in Mexico and how much, from memory, something over $10 million, 1 Kg sold for on US streets. That was some really good information, e.g., the street revenue is providing money enough to buy off likely some politicians. There was more analytical content there, right, however no partial differential equations, than I saw anywhere else. Sources? The common high school term paper writing standards want references to credible sources, hopefully primary. In this case, fentanyl from the Mexican drug cartels, the information is terrific and publishing sources might be dangerous. For the article on the recession, there was good data that clearly established that, according to the usual definition of a recession, we are in one. As I recall, the data presented was detailed and proved the point. I'm not returning to read the piece again, but I was thrilled with how solid was the case made when I did read it. Meanwhile I've seen a lot of words about recession in other media with never any actual definition given or actual data from good sources and responding to the definition. E.g., as I recall, some economists are quoted as predicting that we WILL be in a recession (suggesting that we are not yet, when the economist was quoted which was still after the article). To me, the other media just toss around recession while omitting any meaningful content.

blitzar 4y ago

I have seen the mob cosplaying as "journalists" fighinting against the "Mainstream Media". They are more of a joke than Fox news or CNN.

yellowstuff 4y ago

It seems like no one criticizing the article read it. There's a graph, starting in Feb 2020 so that it highlights the pandemic spike in rates and return to normalcy. And the article is written in the most neutral tone possible, pretty clearly targeting a business audience that wants information about shipping rates because of their importance for the economy and financial markets.

graycat 4y ago
I just looked at the article of OP (original post) of this thread, Costas Paris, "Ocean Shipping Rates Have Plunged 60% This Year", WSJ, Sept. 5, 2022 7:03 am ET, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ocean-shipping-rates-have-plunged-60-this-year-11662375780 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ocean-shipping-rates-have-plung... For > There's a graph, starting in Feb 2020 I saw no graph. For > And the article is written in the most neutral tone possible, I disagree: Instead the article is written with lots of adjectives instead of numerical quantities. E.g., in the title of the article, there is "Plunged". I object to "Plunged": When I was in college in math and physics, in grad school for my Ph.D. in pure/applied math, and taught optimization in an MBA program, I never used plunged. When I taught college calculus, I did a lot with derivatives that showed quantities increasing or decreasing but never used plunged. In my opinion, that word is intended to give the article, say, an emotional kick instead of > the most neutral tone possible. Other uses of adjectives I don't like include "sinking, surging, easing, shrinking", etc. When I pleased the highly concerned BoD and, thus, saved FedEx with some revenue projections from the differential equation y'(t) = k y(t) (b - y(t)) I presented a clear graph with clear numerical quantities and never used any adjectives, e.g., surged. Uh, here t was time, in days, y(t) was revenue at time t, b was the maximum revenue from earlier estimates of the market size, and k was, as is common in calculus, a constant of proportionality, and y'(t) is the calculus first derivative, that is, the rate of growth of revenue in revenue per day. So, the assumption is that at each time t revenue will grow directly proportional to current number of happy customers and also the current number target customers not yet customers. Then, sure, the growth curve will be a lazy S approaching the maximum market size b asymptotically from below. The BoD cared. I can't get anything meaningful from those adjectives. Instead I want to see numerical data, and for those uses of those adjective, the numerical data graphed over time. Such uses of adjectives remind me of short stories in high school English class and a children's movie where a teacher assures that class "adjectives are important in ANY writing". The article has > In 2019, the average cost to send a container across the Pacific to the U.S. West Coast was $1,500. I doubt that anyone can do much with that one number $1,500. But a graph of the rates, or even the average rates in some version of average, from 2019, or some years before, to the present should be good progress understanding how rates have changed. And still better would be, say, a good fitting regression model with independent variables from promising, common macro economic variables and variables particular to the container shipping industry -- that might let us make more sense out of rate variations, that is, identify causes (for a loose definition of cause) and make some progress predicting rates in the future. Gee, last time I heard, even Microsoft's spreadsheet software Excel would do the arithmetic for regression models! Once a world class mathematician specializing in stochastic processes reviewed my work predicting the expected number of surviving US missile firing submarines in a scenario of global nuclear war limited to sea. So, I had a model and some real data and gave expected values over time, including in a graph. The mathematician had an objection and I reminded him of how to make an application of the strong law of large numbers for bounded, independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables, and he agreed with me with "that's a good way to look at it". So, with some more analysis, it should be possible to make some useful predictions of shipping rates over time -- the article could be improved by doing such. For the "uncertainty" mentioned in the article, my Ph.D. dissertation was in best decision making over time under uncertainty, stochastic optimal control, and that might be relevant to customers of the container shipping industry. The application I made at the time had to do with varying oil prices -- hmm ...! So, the article could be improved not just mentioning uncertainty but making progress on doing something about it.