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Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

natesilver.net

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Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#211

Post by cvoss »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #178
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling. Virtue signalling is a funny term. What, exactly, does it mean here? In what way is reminiscing about a venture that lasted 15 years of your life "virtue signalling"? It seems to be that word is trotted out as a meaningless cliche, something in the sense of "I don't like this thing, but I'll sound more sophisticated if I accuse it of this nebulous bad thing rathe…

The "virtue signaling" is signaling being a scrappy creative type who regrets/disliked the path he followed when he actually sold out to a big conglomerate at the first possible opportunity. The virtues being signaled are things like independence and grit.

I don't understand the use of the word "actually" in this sentence. The second half does not stand in contrast to the first half. In fact, it explains the first half.

And portraying oneself as having independence and grit when one doesn't actually (which I don't concede happened here) is not what virtue signaling is. "Virtue" here more closely means "morality" than "admirable or sympathetic qualities". Virtue signaling is disingenuously behaving like you are a moral person because it is advantageous, when in fact you lack such morals.

I feel the need to belabor this because accusations of virtue signaling are too often unfounded and amount to a cheap trick to shut down more thoughtful discussion.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#212

Post by stogot »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #169
robotresearcher wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more successful the company is, the more prone it is to flights of executive whimsy Apple's Liquid Glass comes to mind. The design exec responsible suddenly left Apple for Meta, a company rather less esteemed for design, and Apple still hasn't acknowledged this failure or backtracked.

Admit wrong, from Apple? Was there acknowledgement of say butterfly keyboards? Seems on brand to quietly walk back an unpopular decision.

Took them years to move on from their terrible keyboard design without a proper acknowledgement

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#213

Post by MostlyStable »

softwaredoug wrote: post #81
ninth_ant wrote: post #31

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me. He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emoti…

We should have a drinking game in Nate Silver thread anyone complains about 2016 prediction. Then everyone piles on to point out how probabilities work.

I long ago stopped commenting on threads (in /r/CFB) about the SP+ college football model because it go so, so, so tiring correcting the exact same misunderstandings about things as fundamental as what the model was even purporting to do let alone, how it worked. It is incredibly disheartening to me to see the staggering level of statistical illiteracy on display in any online conversation about a statistical model. I've come to the conclusion that it's not worth my, or any one else's time. I'm glad these things exist, and the communities who want them will self select. It's not use trying to convert haters.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#214

Post by kenferry »

I enjoyed FiveThirtyEight back in the day, but does anyone actually go back and look at the old posts? They were very much of the moment. I'd imagine the vast vast majority of the traffic to them is robots.

I can see why they wouldn't be a priority to keep up. For archival purposes, I'd think everything is still in the internet archive?

Nate seems to try to justify this a touch, saying he personally was looking for a specific article. Kind of a special case there…

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#215

Post by smcin »

Barrin92 wrote: post #208
macintux wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sore losers don’t generally write at length about their own mistakes and poor decisions that led to the ultimate demise of their baby.

they do since Substack was invented because it turns out a digital rehabilitation facility for whiny and overly wordy sore losers is a fantastic subscription business. Might want to think about selling that one to Disney as well and then writing about your great regrets of selling your substack on substack v2 in ten years, that's gotta be amazing content for another ten posts

What are your criteria for recognizing a useful insightful blog into a poster's previous business ventures?

Few tellers are neutral and objective, many writers get accused of selectively editing things: Philip Greenspun's account of the demise of Ars Digita springs to mind. Or Jerry Kaplan on Go (mobile startup). Or Joel Spolsky on the last decade of StackOverflow.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#216

Post by Shank »

kenferry wrote: post #214

I enjoyed FiveThirtyEight back in the day, but does anyone actually go back and look at the old posts? They were very much of the moment. I'd imagine the vast vast majority of the traffic to them is robots. I can see why they wouldn't be a priority to keep up. For archival purposes, I'd think everything is still in the internet archive? Nate seems to try to justify this a touch, saying he personally was looking for a…

> For archival purposes, I'd think everything is still in the internet archive?

I encourage anyone who thinks this is true to actually look for things in the internet archive and report back success. If you have the original exact URL you might be able to easily find something in the wayback machine, but if you have only a vague inclination that something existed and a general timeframe, it's a needle in a haystack. The wayback machine is, also extremely slow to retrieve data.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#217

Post by adamors »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #173
oceanplexian wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What position was Kamala Harris in the DNC Primaries before she was appointed as the General Election Candidate? First place? Second Place? Surely she must have been in the top 3?

Not sure what you think they should have done? There is no way to reorganize primaries that late in the year. It totally sucks that nobody tried to convince Biden not to run again before the primaries started though.

Plenty tried, old Joe thought he’ll clutch it out again. People were trying to dissuade him from running in 2023 already.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#218

Post by SilverElfin »

mholm wrote: post #40
SilverElfin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney removed a lot of the earlier IP from the official Star Wars storyline shortly after acquiring it. That IP was much better than the complete mess and politicization of Star Wars that happened in the sequels. Sure they are trying to squeeze money out of it - and maybe some of the TV shows are tolerable - but they killed the brand and its best content in the process.

Content quality and content monetization are very different. The EU had exceptionally low monetization and brand recognition.

They removed a lot of first party content too like the video games. But it almost doesn’t matter what was removed. The sequels and many of the shows were worse than all of it.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#219

Post by palata »

lmm wrote: post #201
palata wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting to blame it on the democrats. We ended up with him because enough people voted for him .

Yes and no. It's a two-party system and a lot of people vote for candidate X to stop candidate Y getting in. Indeed IIRC a lot of democrat messaging around the previous election was explicitly about stopping Trump rather than the merits of whoever their guy was.

Enough people did not vote against Trump is my point. "The democrats" voted against Trump, otherwise they don't really count as part of "the democrats" for this election, right?

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#220

Post by palata »

dwoldrich wrote: post #96
palata wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting to blame it on the democrats. We ended up with him because enough people voted for him .

And he won the popular vote if you believe that all U.S. elections are secure and sacrosanct. He is diabolical at getting people to talk about him and think about him constantly. Joe Biden on the other hand was a senile wrecker for Build Back Better and the party finally made "the switch" to unelected Harris far too late in the process. Even if she was a great candidate, with her odd laughter and fascination with bus…

Yeah I think the presidential election system may be the one to blame. Only two parties, both very much "to the right", doesn't feel like a sane system anymore. IMO the better way is to have the government represent the people, and representing the people generally means enough politicians and having to go for a consensus.
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