Picto Diary - 23 to 31 October 2021 - Hoover Institution Retrea

Above: TIMDT in Sprinter. New Frontier RV Park, Winnemucca, NV. 26 October 2021.

TIMDT exults, "my own sheets!"

New Frontier RV Park was, by far, the best RV park where we have spent the night... of the ten or twelve RV parks where we've stayed over the last year. Lots of space. Privacy created by trees separating the parking spots. Spacious and up to date showers and bathrooms.

We dined at Winnemucca Inn, my traditional dining spot while stopping here. TIMDT is OK with me staking $100 on a dollar slot machine as long as I opt out any time accumulated results exceed $100. I stuck to my commitment and walked away when the total came in at $112, having, before the previous spin, been at about $65. Two weeks ago at the Venician in Las Vegas a similar strategy got me out at $156 after only three spins. See? I have a system! Bishop beats the casino!

Above: I-80 westbound, 9:00 AM. Between Winnemucca and Lovelock. Pershing County, Nevada. 27 October 2021.

Above: Facebook Logo, Menlo Park, CA. 27 October 2021.

I captured the image of the Facebook logo, while stopped at a traffic light, at Facebook headquarters, just off the Dumbarton Bridge in Menlo Park, CA.

Mini coincidence! Facebook changes its corporate name to Meta, the next day, 28 October 2021. See file image above.

I'm a very satisfied Facebook user. Four reasons. 1. News feed. I curate my own news feed sourced by online subscriptions and posts from Facebook Friends. I'm reading from a multiplicity of sources never possible pre Facebook days. 2. Diary. I post book my own book reviews, images and narratives of travels, family events, and philosophical essays. 3. Networking. I remain in touch with people I've known all over the world on a level never conceivable before social media. On Facebook, I have eight hundred Friends and one hundred eleven followers. 4. Broadcast platform. I share essays I write and articles I have read, enjoying interactive dialogue with friends and followers on topics of interest. I also appreciate the targeted ads tailored to my preferences I get from Facebook... makes shopping much easier and highlights items of great interest of which I might not have otherwise been aware.

Facebook is receiving bad publicity these days. Conservatives, like myself, are angry at content moderation decisions that seem to go against them. De platforming President Trump is an appalling act tantamount to a tech oligarch coup. Deeply troubling. But, most of the anti Facebook brouhaha derives from complaints of liberals who say that Facebook's algorithms exacerbate violent extremism... read: their conservative opponents get too much play on Facebook. Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro often gets more daily shares on Facebook than any other pundit, liberal or conservative. So what better way to get Shapiro off Facebook than to accuse him of making extremist assertions. It is somewhat amusing that liberals lauded Obama's use of social media, including Facebook, in Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential elections. It wasn't until Trump also successfully used Facebook in his own 2016 campaign that liberals started complaining about Facebook iniquity. Zuckerberg seems to be between a rock and a hard place. He has both liberals and conservatives coming at him. But for his de-platforming Trump, I think Zuckerberg has done a pretty good job in protecting conservative thought (free speech) circulating on Facebook, particularly when you consider the rabid liberalism which pervades Silicon Valley and Facebook employees.

Washington meddling, either anti-trust, or regulations restraining so-called extremist speech, represent less of a problem for Meta than the slowdown in new customer growth and the rise of new competitors like Tik Tok. Facebook should go back to basics and advertise its benefits along the lines of the things I like about Facebook, cited above. Don't apologize. Celebrate your virtues. Maybe the Meta feint is part of that.

Closed the day with dinner with friends at St. Michael's Alley restaurant in Palo Alto.

Above: Francis C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, Stanford, University, Palo Alto, CA. 28 October 2021.

Hoover Institution Overseer lunch.

Highlight comment by Condi Rice, Executive Head, Hoover Institution: "Socialism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Social works only under one condition. At the point of a gun."

Above: Bishop. Hoover Tower, Stanford University. Palo Alto, CA. 29 October 2021.

Attending Hoover Institution Fall Retreat. 28, 29 October 2021

Highlights. (I'm fallible... mistakes in note taking are mine).

Peggy Noonan: Woke won't last. No lie ever survives. I don't know how woke will die, but, it will. The Right can do little to stop it. It will have to be solved from within the Left itself.

Larry Diamond: Topic of his talk could well have been, "How the Chinese are F..king the US Every Which Way but Loose."

Condoleeza Rice: Socialism: From each according to his abilities, to each according of his needs. Socialism can work only under one condition... at the point of a gun.,

Eric Hanushek: 10% lifetime loss of income for one year loss of school during Covid,.

H. R. McMaster. Rising debt and a slow economy have degraded US defense capability.

John Cochrane: We live in a post fact world. Hoover is like the Irish monks who safeguarded the truth and passed it along.

John Cochrane. I'm waiting for social science to become science and not narrative.

John Cochrane. The CDC and the FDA have screwed up massively. Why have heads not rolled?

Niell Ferguson: Cost of government Covid actions such as lockdowns and school closures not nearly offset by the medical benefits.

Niell Ferguson. If you can't posit your thesis in one sentence, you are not ready to talk about it.

Niell Ferguson. Chinese hypersonic missile is the "sputnik" of our times. The US is in an existential competition with the Chinese Communist Party.,

Niell Ferguson. There was a coup in this country. A sitting US president was removed from the public square by tech oligarchs. Deeply shocking.

Victor Davis Hanson. Fauci, Clapper, Brennan, and Comey, all unelected senior American officials, lied under oath to Congress. None has been held to account for his lies. The citizen has lost the ability to audit people in power. Until there is accountability at the top levels of government, our freedom will continue to erode.

Victor Davis Hanson. To survive as a free democratic nation, America needs a strong middle class, control of its borders and avoidance of tribalism. America no longer has border control, its middle class is shrinking rapidly, and tribalism is on the ascendency as, hat tip Barack Obama, the notion of diversity begins to trump merit. Anti democratic "nudging" comes from the powerful administrative state which advances the the doctrine of diversity, and from "evolutionaries," elites, in academia and elsewhere, who see the Constitution as an impediment to progress.

Victor Davis Hanson. I am worried about the Millennial generation. Home ownership, marriage rates and birth rates are all down. Millennials are products of a mediocre education and exhibit collective despair. There are no longer norms in society for them to replicate.

Victor Davis Hanson. Tradesmen are in short supply and making high salaries that many college graduates will never attain. During Covid, the tradesmen showed that they were the true heroes of our society.

Victor Davis Hanson. Trump accomplished fair trade, border control, China confrontation on stolen technology, energy independence, deregulation, a growing, low unemployment economy and and a constructionist judiciary. He did all the things that the people here at Hoover are pushing. Yet, I have Republican friends who say, to the effect, "I like what Trump did, but I can't stand him as a person, so I didn't vote for him. Go figure. FDR, LBJ, and JFK engaged in as sordid moral behavior as that of which Trump is accused. The press handles such matters differently today than they did back then. Without the deus ex machina of the Covid lockdowns, Trump would have probably been president today. 70% of Republicans say they want Trump back. They say they want to win ugly more than they want to lose gracefully a la Romney, McCain etc.

Condi Rice. Defense of liberty and private enterprise has never more important than it is today.

Post event: Dinner with friends at Sundance Steak House, Palo Alto, CA.