The Manufactured Border Crisis
OR… “How the GOP wastes taxpayer time and money on a fabricated crisis.” Does this crisis really exist and who’s actually responsible for it? Let’s explore.
Watch, But Don’t Listen!
With any politician, it’s more important to watch what they do, not listen to what they say. As has been stated, if a politician’s lips are moving, they must be lying. Nowhere is this true more than now… and more specifically within the ranks of the GOP, but it’s not limited to this party. The GOP has simply taken it to a whole new level. That’s not to say that the Democrats don’t lie; they do. Even Independents lie to get elected.
The difference now is whether they’re lying to you over something they’ve already done or lying to you over something they haven’t yet done. With the GOP, more often than not, they are not only lying to you over something they’ve already done, they’re lying to you over what they plan to do.
As stated, don’t listen to their words, watch their actions. Actions speak louder than words. If you watch what they do, then their lies fall right into place. They can’t lie their way out of their actions… though they may try, but that’s actually called gaslighting.
Border Crisis and Number of Crossings
Let’s begin this discussion with these dhs.gov border crossing statistics up to fiscal year 2013:
These above statistics set the tone of this article with regards to the statistics to come next. These above statistics also go to prove that we have had years under both Democrat and Republican Presidential leadership of higher than expected influx. Both parties are to blame here. Let’s further understand who was President at the time of the above statistics going back to 1989. Presidents prior to 1989 are not needed for the point this article is making. However, if you’re interested in all past Presidents, here’s a link.
In fact, up until 2013, the highest border crossings occurred at 1.8 million per year under Bill Clinton (D). George Bush (R) would get close second to this number at 1.3 million during fiscal year 1993. Here’s the list of presidents going back to 1993:
With the above table in mind, let’s proceed to the most updated DHS statistics for border crossings for 2013 and beyond. Let’s keep in mind that George Bush (R), Bill Clinton (D) and “Shrub” Bush (R) all presided over border crossings well above 1 million per fiscal year. It wouldn’t be until 2009 when border crossings began to subside again, but would then drastically surge during and after the COVID pandemic.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can exclusively say that their border crossing policies have worked to lower immigrant attempted ingress. Here are the border crossing apprehensions from 2013 to the 2024 (YTD):
At this point and with these ever increasing numbers under Joe Biden, you might be wondering what the hell is going on? This is a very good question. Before we get into the REAL answer, let’s discuss what the GOP is saying, but not actually doing.
Republican Lip Service
Clearly, the Republicans are paying a lot of lip service to this ever increasing turn of events around the border, but without pointing fingers at the actual situations and actual politicians who are driving this migrant influx to the southern border states. No, the GOP prefers to point fingers at the Democrats, even though the Democrats aren’t the ones driving the border crisis directly. While Democrats aren’t the party causing this drastic border influx, the Democrats also haven’t done much to arrest it either. This is called complacency, of which the Democrats are fully and entirely guilty. In fact, the Democrats prefer playing on the world’s stage rather than tackling difficult domestic issues. This is fully evident of the Biden administration’s continual meddling in world affairs, like Ukraine and Israel, all while fully ignoring the problems at home… except when such a problem suits their political fancy.
One thing is certain, nothing happens in a bubble. If something is occurring, there’s definitely a driving factor behind it. It also means that someone or something stands to gain from that driving factor. Let’s also understand that what the GOP / Republicans are saying is absolutely not what’s actually driving the influx to the United States southern border.
The Republicans are claiming that it is Joe Biden’s lack of policy around border that is the cause and reason behind this influx. In fact, this could not be further from the truth. Let’s get to that truth right now.
The Truth Behind the GOP’s Manufactured Border Crisis
The reason immigrants are now flocking to the United States southern border is actually due almost solely to Florida’s Ron Desantis (R) and Texas’s Greg Abbott (R) actions. How are these two governors responsible for this influx? It’s quite simple….
When these two nab immigrants from the border, place them onto expensive cushy busses and expensive, but cushy chartered jets… then feed, clothe and subsequently fly or drive them across the the United States… what do you think is going to happen?
Yes, the word is going to get out that now these Governors are now pro-migrant and, more than this, are willing to place you, as a migrant, onto a bus and transport you to a nice new city… FOR FREE. This transportation is literally considered winning the lottery for many migrants. These men are taking migrants and placing them onto a very cushy busses, only to drop them handily off in Chicago or New York or anywhere else other than at the border. They might even get new clothes and food in the process. What migrant would say, “No” to that? In fact, these actions might even drive more migrants to the border… and that’s exactly what’s occurring. Yes, the word does get out.
The millions of recent influx of immigrants is NOT due to lax government policies or even due to policy changes at all, no. The influx is due to these insane trafficking policies performed illegally by irresponsible governors. This fully Texas Governor endorsed and costly trafficking of migrants across America is almost solely and completely responsible for the wild influx to the United States, that and the remnants of COVID. I did write that nothing occurs in a bubble. Right here is where that bubble pops. The GOP would have you believe it is Biden’s policies that are failing… when it’s just the opposite. The policies are failing because it is the GOP who is sabotaging the United States for their own political agenda. They are they ones placing hundreds, if not thousands of illegal migrants onto busses and jets, then transporting them all across the United States.
Yes, this word DOES get out to those seeking asylum here. The GOP realizes this enticement fact and is continuing to do it anyway, yes, on purpose. It is, in fact, the GOP who is attempting to force Joe Biden’s hand. Even then, these policies under Joe Biden are almost identical to the policies that have come before. Yet, we now have double, if not triple the number of migrants to the border? And where is Joe Biden’s administration on this border issue? Twiddling their thumbs.
Texas has spent more than $148 million bussing migrants across the country. Greg Abbott has also bussed more than 102,000 migrants (and counting) to cities around the country. Greg Abbott has even paid to fly at least 120 migrants on jets to Chicago.
Illegal Maneuvers
Let me get this one out of the way right now. What Greg Abbott and Ron Desantis have done by placing migrants onto busses and into jets, then transporting said migrants across the country is actually an illegal Federal Offense under 1907. Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(a):
Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts. Subsection 1324(a)(2) prohibits bringing or attempting to bring unauthorized aliens to the United States in any manner whatsoever, even at a designated port of entry. Subsection 1324(a)(3).
and
Domestic Transporting — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) makes it an offense for any person who — knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law.
Clearly, 1907. Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(a) makes it federally illegal to knowingly transport illegal immigrants across the country. Yet, the DOJ has done nothing towards indicting either Greg Abbott or Ron Desantis for their ongoing part in this illegal campaign of transporting illegal aliens across the country. Where is the DOJ on this action? Once again, the DOJ is missing in action.
Homeland Security and ongoing Security Threats
For GOP governors to actually play these illegal shenanigans all for the sake of politics, this says a lot about the United States… and not in a good way. Governors are elected to govern, not to backstab and cause security risks to the United States Federal government. And once again, the Department of Justice and Merrick Garland have done nothing to enforce federal code over this matter. There’s not even been a peep about this, not out of the DOJ and not out of mainstream media. Illegal is still illegal, yet nothing.
Encouraging Illegal Migrants and Manufacturing a Crisis
The point to all of the above for Greg Abbott is to show that the United States border policies are not able to handle migrants at all. This has been Greg Abbott’s ongoing shtick for months. However, when a rogue governor decides to undermine and, indeed, run afoul of the rule of federal law by endangering the United States of America AND becoming a national security threat himself AND by knowingly and willfully using paid transportation to move illegals around the country, this is a serious federal problem. It’s also crime. Worse, his actions only serve to encourage and entice would-be migrants around the world to flock to the United States southern border. More than this, tensions are now rising between the United States and Mexico over Greg Abbott’s actions and the GOP’s wider actions involving the border.
In fact, it is Greg Abbott who is causing the border migrant flood. It is Greg Abbott is who causing the problems that the United States is seeing at the border. It is Greg Abbott’s policies that are indeed undermining the rule of law and the United State of America. It is Greg Abbott who is single-handedly ruining our relationship with Mexico… all for what? To score political brownie points with his Texas base and the GOP? Greg Abbott, just like Donald Trump, is a clear and present danger to America. If he wants to play games with Texas, have at it. When his games endanger the security of the United States as a whole, that’s when his shenanigans must stop.
Since when is it okay for Governors to perform federal illegal actions and get away with it? I guess it’s when Merrick Garland and the DOJ both choose to turn a blind eye to it. When the rule of law doesn’t apply to politicians, then who does it apply to? Clearly, not to anyone else. If politicians aren’t considered to be citizens under the same rule of law as anyone else, then there is no rule of law.
The rule of law must apply to everyone or it applies to no one!
Joe Biden and the Democrats
The Democrats don’t get a pass here. The Democrats are just as much complicit in this situation as is Greg Abbott and the rest of the Republicans. By Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrats staying mum about pushing an indictment onto Greg Abbott over his illegal transport of many, many illegal immigrants, the Democrats instead choose to sit idly by doing nothing at all. That’s also not governing. The point is, if you’re elected to govern, then govern. Sitting around doing nothing is not governing.
Unfortunately, this is what the Democrats are doing. Yes, some Democrats might have extreme liberal agendas, but it doesn’t matter when the Democrats of any type won’t push anything through. Sitting on your hands is not governing any more than bussing migrants across the country.
The State of America: Two Party System
America is under siege, not just by the Republicans, but also by the Democrats. Both parties are actively sabotaging the United States by either intentionally performing illegal actions (Republican politicians) or by sitting around doing nothing (Democrat politicians) allowing others to perform illegal actions. Right now, politicians of any party are running roughshod all over America and its citizens.
It is, in fact, the two party system that is failing America. Neither of the two parties are working towards or for the best interest of America. They both have their own internal agendas which don’t include working for the citizens or in actually solving problems. In fact, both parties seem intent on either doing nothing or in creating problems, rather than solving any.
The reason we elect our representatives is to work on our behalf. Yet, so many of these elected representatives only have personal agendas they wish to push. For whatever reason, these selfish, self-centered, egotistical, ill mannered politicians seem to be continually elected and re-elected. Why? What are they doing for you?
This is the state of America. America is being overrun by elected people who have no interest in fixing America. They only have interest in making bank for themselves and doing nothing else in the process. Lip service doesn’t fix things, only actions do. We need to tell these politicians to shut up and get to work.
Reactive versus Pro-Active
America has always had mostly a reactive system with politicians. Something bad happens, we make a law against it. That’s pretty much how the founders wanted it. That also means that knee jerk reactions tend to rule. What that also means is that when something bad happens, we can’t just ban it in the locale where it happened. No, we have to ban it everywhere.
This is what’s happening with abortion rights. When we thought we had the abortion issue locked down, conservative justices come along only to completely upend what had been in place for years… all to throw it right back into turmoil again.
Once again, knee jerk reactions rule the roost. Let’s not just ban abortion, now we have to ban everything possible involving abortion, including IVF, drugs, stem cell research and eventually, nearly everything that has come out of the technologies involving birth, babies, stem cells and all the rest.
The point now is that these politicians are taking aim at the very medical technologies which have given America incredible quality of life and longevity improvements. Yet, the fundamentalist Christians feel it is their place to take it all away and throw America back into a medical dark age. It’s coming, folks. You had better get prepared… all thanks to the GOP.
Drugs that had been created using these technologies are now under fire for the same reason as abortion. It’s only a matter of time. This is why FEDERAL laws handling fundamental rights must exist. They must exist and they must matter because it puts EVERY citizen on a level playing field no matter where they live. Having states create a haphazard patchwork of laws only serves to put everyone at risk. This is why Federal laws matter. It’s why Federal laws must exist. It’s why Federal laws have to continue to exist. It’s why Congress must act swiftly to craft Federal abortion laws that apply to all states equally. And yet, crickets!
The System is Hopelessly Broken
The Federal government cannot keep twiddling its thumbs doing nothing… thanks Democrats. The Federal government cannot keep throwing out and replacing the Speaker of the House… thanks Republicans. These are wastes of taxpayer time and money. When Government workers are not governing, then what the hell are they doing, other than collecting a paycheck? Why do we keep electing these worthless people? Something has to change. Exactly what that is and when it will happen is unknown.
I’d love to offer up a quick fix solution here. Unfortunately, our political system is so intrinsically and hopelessly broken, the only way fix it is to throw it out completely and start over fresh with a brand new and modern Constitution. We must endeavor to make a new modern Constitution that takes into account MODERN ideologies and technology, that limits the damage any one political party or political actor can do to America and that allows quick, easy and PERMANENT removal of bad actors from the stage. We cannot afford or allow this level of sabotage to remain in the ranks of politicians. Politicians need to work for the betterment of America; they are not elected to sabotage it.
One thing is crystal clear, America cannot stay on its current political trajectory. If anything, the manufactured border crisis proves this sabotage situation out… in spades.
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Fact Checking the Donald Trump Rhetoric
Donald Trump makes many claims and assertions which have no basis in fact. He does this almost every time he speaks at a podium anywhere. Additionally, misguided Republicans (aka his sycophants) blindly accept Donald’s rhetoric and believe Donald to be, and I quote these misguided people, “The Best President Ever.” Let’s explore how much of Donald Trump’s rhetoric is false.
Donald Trump’s Claims after Indictment
Let’s start with claims stated by Donald Trump’s own mouth following his indictment. Many of these claims may seem to hold weight until you realize that Donald Trump is a pathological lying narcissist. What that means in layman’s terms is that he habitually lies about almost every single thing he says. While there may be grains of truth in a few of his statements, they usually end with a massive lie.
I honestly don’t see the appeal or attraction in listening to someone whose lies outnumber truths and who continues to lie constantly, even when there’s absolutely no need to do so. Why so many Republicans are so willing to accept and embrace Donald Trump’s habitual lying needs to become the subject of an educational research paper that has yet to be written.
Let’s jump right into Donald’s claims…
Claim 1: Presidential Records Act requires Negotiation between National Archives and ex-President to return classified documents.
Claim Status: False. At the time a new President is sworn into office, all previous documents by the previous President must be returned, handed over to and automatically become property of the National Archives. Nothing in the NARA statute requires or even suggests “negotiating” with any former President for document turnover.
Claim 2: Joe Biden has over 1800 boxes of classified documents.
Claim Status: False. A small number of documents in boxes were found and returned from Joe Biden’s home in Delaware and Boston to the National Archives. It is entirely unclear whether those documents had been there from when he left office as vice president or if they were acquired and carried there after he became President. Additionally, the documents may not even be classified or sensitive. How would a Vice President gain access to such highly classified documents anyway?
Claim 3: All past Presidents have taken home classified documents after their administration ended. Trump actually admits to having done this himself (see below).
Claim Status: False and True, respectively. While Trump’s admission of taking boxes of classified documents to Mar-A-Lago is True, the remainder is False. No past presidents have intentionally and willfully taken boxes of classified documents from the White House or any other facility operated by the government upon departing their role as President. Donald Trump is the first and only President to have both done this upon departing the role and he is also the first ex-President to have admitted to having done this.
Claim 4: Trump’s call to Georgia soliciting votes was a “Perfect Call”
Claim Status: False. Trump’s call to Georgia’s elections official to solicit those officials to “find” 11,780 votes for Trump is not only NOT a “Perfect Call”, it very likely constitutes malicious intent to willfully solicit conspiracy and interfere with the 2020 election in Georgia. Willful election interference is a crime in Georgia.
Claim 5: Trump claims that America is experiencing the highest inflation in 60 years.
Claim Status: False. In 1979, 42 years ago, the annual inflation rate was 13.3%, 7.3% higher than our current 6% annual inflation rate as of February 2023. Let’s further put his statement into broader perspective. Donald Trump ushered in our current inflation rate as part of his own failure in handling the first year of the COVID pandemic. The United States is presently in the midst of inflation, not because of Biden, but because of Trump’s economic mismanagement of the pandemic his final year in office.
Claim 6: Trump’s claims about ballot box stuffing in the 2020 election were “all caught on government cameras.”
Claim Status: Mostly False, but also slightly True. It is categorically False and was never proven in Donald Trump’s over 63 election lawsuits that ballot box stuffing ever took place at any actual 2020 election polling places. Such activity was also never caught “on government cameras.” If it had been, he wouldn’t have lost over 63 lawsuits with this exact argument. However, Donald Trump himself did attempt to use the court system and the Insurrection itself to stuff his own ballots into ballot boxes to sway the election in his favor. Thus, his statement is somewhat True that ballot box stuffing was attempted, but only by Donald Trump himself and, by extension, those in the Republican party. In fact, many Republicans are still attempting to sway elections by heavy gerrymandering, which should be considered a form of ballot box stuffing and election interference.
Claim 7: $85 billion worth of equipment was left in Afghanistan after US withdrawal.
Claim Status: False. Around ~$83 billion total was spent on managing portions of the US occupation of Afghanistan. On withdrawal, around $7 billion in total equipment was left behind, much of it left in an inoperable state. Let’s understand the further subtext over Trump’s statement. Donald Trump was instrumental in negotiating with the Taliban in his final year in office over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was planned for early 2020. Thus, the Afghanistan withdrawal and any associated costs of equipment left behind was a direct result of Donald Trump’s meddling in Afghanistan’s affairs. Donald Trump left behind an exceedingly short timetable for Joe Biden to execute a proper withdrawal, forcing this action just a few months after his inauguration. Thus, Donald Trump is actually at least partially responsible, along with Joe Biden, for the cost of any equipment left behind and any casualties after withdrawal from Afghanistan due to Trump’s exceedingly short timetable that Biden likely felt forced to uphold.
Claim 8: Illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-A-Lago
Claim Status: False. After months of the failure in negotiations back and forth between Trump and the National Archives to return documents, the FBI was sent with a legally issued, judge authorized, properly signed and carefully executed search warrant to search and seize the documents that Donald Trump brought with him from the White House to Mar-A-Lago. The search was not a “raid”. The search was conducted in an orderly fashion as written in the warrant. Documents were seized by the FBI in relation to those required by the warrant. Further context follows. Donald Trump was given every opportunity over many months to surrender all documents involving the National Archives, but chose to ignore those requests. The search and seizure was only required by the FBI because Donald Trump himself failed to comply with repeated requests by the National Archives to return requested documents; documents that Donald Trump claimed he did not have, but which were subsequently found during the legal search.
Claim 9: DOJ / FBI lying to FISA Court to gain access to spy on Trump Aide
Claim Status: Somewhat True and somewhat False. At the time, the FBI was investigating a Trump aide for possibly spying in relation to the 2020 election. When the FBI submitted its request to FISA, it believed that it then had probable cause for the investigation (False). It was later determined that the FBI’s probable cause might not have been valid (True). Further context is warranted. Because this situation happened under Trump’s Presidency, he should have done something as President. Clearly, he didn’t. As the then sitting President, Trump complaining after-the-fact about a situation that he could have handled then is his own fault and of his own making and no one else’s.
Claim 10: Alleged democrat unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators
Claim Status: Ambiguous. Trump is guilty of this himself. By Trump attempting to seat false electors in the 2020 election, who would then vote in Trump’s favor instead of the duly authorized electors during the electoral college vote, this is actually an unconstitutional change to election laws unapproved by states. Second, by requesting Mike Pence to throw the electoral college confirmation in Trump’s favor (remember, the “‘Hang Mike Pence’ chant?”) during the insurrection, this is also another example of unconstitutional changes to election laws not state approved. While Trump may be calling out a different event in his own mind, these are the two events that most people will remember that Trump perpetrated on the United States… events which fully fit Trump’s claim.
Claim 11: The DOJ was working in collusion with Facebook and Twitter to hide and suppress data involving the Hunter Biden Laptop.
Claim Status: False. Twitter and Facebook have never colluded with anyone in the government. Information about the Hunter Biden laptop was never hidden from anyone on Twitter or Facebook. Any posts removed or hidden were done so by each respective company’s staff. Further context is required. The alleged Hunter Biden laptop has never been proven to have ever been owned by Hunter Biden himself. A person purporting to be Hunter Biden, but never properly identified, dropped off a laptop at a repair shop. The repair shop owner turned the laptop over to the FBI. The laptop has never been proven to have ever been owned by anyone in the Biden family. The contents of the alleged laptop hard drive were supposedly copied prior to being handed over. The alleged hard drive content supposedly has incriminating data, but again nothing on that hard drive has been shown to implicate Hunter Biden or indeed even hold incriminating evidence. The data, the laptop and the situation were likely fabricated to disparage the Biden family. This one is solely a false talking point by the Republicans intended solely to disparage the Democrats and, more specifically, the Biden family.
Claim 11: Massive election interference (via Alvin Bragg)
Claim Status: False, but true in other ways. Context required. In point of fact, there is massive election interference occurring today, but not by the Democrats. It is actually a point of fact that Republicans are perpetrating massive election interference through heavy gerrymandering in their respective states. By redrawing district lines in convoluted and complex patterns solely designed to dilute Democrat voters into fewer numbers and concentrate Republican voters in greater numbers, this ensures Republicans win state (and federal) elections when they otherwise would not. Gerrymandering is a form of election interference on a massive scale. Gerrymandering is designed to allow politicians and legislators to pick their voters, subverting the will of the voters to pick their candidates. Additionally, Republican led states have tampered with voting laws by attempting to outlaw vote-by-mail and other similar proxy voting mechanisms in favor of in-person day of voting. These law changes are intended to exclude many legal voters (such as disabled individuals and veterans) as yet another means to allow Republicans to pick their voters, not the other way around as elections should require. Further, Donald Trump allegedly sought to interfere with both the 2016 and 2020 elections. See above to cite DJT’s interference with the 2020 election.
Claim 12: Alvin Bragg case “never should have been brought”
Claim Status: Wishful thinking. Donald Trump lived and worked in New York prior to his Presidency. Bragg’s indictment states 34 counts of falsifying business records with intent to commit “another crime” prior to the election. With this article, it’s pretty much proven that Donald J. Trump is a pathological liar. Lying this pathologically goes to prove that Donald Trump is not a trustworthy person and is not credible. Alvin Bragg has not proven himself to be a pathological liar or untrustworthy. As such, the Alvin Bragg indictment is a whole lot more credible than Donald Trump’s wishful thinking and statements of being “Not Guilty.” However, “guilty until proven innocent” is how the United States rolls. In that goal, let’s allow Alvin Bragg’s indictment to be brought to trial so Donald Trump can prove that Bragg’s indictment is indeed not valid, which will allow a jury to decide the matter of Donald Trump.
Claim 13: Crime statistics in Democrat run cities are the likes of which we have never seen before.
Claim Status: False. Republican led states far outpace crime over Democrat run states. Democrat run cities within Republican run states do have higher crime rates, but that’s only because the states are Republican run, operating under much more lax Republican state crime and gun laws. In fact, gun violence in Republican run (Red) states far outpaces gun violence perpetrated in Democrat run (Blue) states. It is actually Republican led states that have far higher crime problems than Democrat states. Most Democrat run cities in Democrat run states do not have the same crime rate problems as Democrat run cities in Republican run states.
Claim 14: In the 2020 election, DJT claims he won 75 million votes, “which is more than any sitting President in the history of our country.”
Claim Status: False. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump did not get 75 million votes. He received 74,222,958 votes. Rounding that, you’d round it down to 74 million votes. It gets worse, though. Joe Biden, in fact, won 81,283,098 votes (or 81 million votes). If anyone has the distinction of winning the most votes in United States Presidential history (based solely on Trump’s statement), it is in fact, Joe Biden who gets that honor. And yet, here we have Donald Trump taking credit for an honor which he didn’t earn and doesn’t deserve. Note that in 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but still managed to win the electoral college.
Claim 15: “[Documents] that I openly and in very plain sight brought with me to Mar-A-Lago from our beautiful White House…”
Claim Status: True. Donald Trump has confessed to having brought classified documents from the White House to Mar-A-Lago after having left office as President for a few hours, but then as ex-President after Biden’s inauguration. As ex-President, these (still classified) records were no longer Trump’s records and he had no more right to remain in possession of these classified documents after becoming ex-President. Admitting to having taken classified documents without authorization is probably exactly the admission and evidence that DOJ’s Jack Smith needs to majorly help indict and convict Trump’s case. Donald Trump needs to learn to shut his mouth.
Claim 16: “As President, I have the right to declassify documents, and the process is automatic.”
Claim Status: True and False, respectively. It is True that as sitting President, the President holds the rights to declassify some documents. It is absolutely False that the process is automatic. To declassify documents as President, forms must be filled out and submitted so that the National Archives can ascertain validity of the request and so that the documents can become properly reclassified in the archive. It does not and cannot happen automatically. However, the President cannot declassify certain types of statutorily protected documents at all, not even by thinking about it or by using paperwork. As an ex-President, however, the power to declassify documents is forfeit and lost. Simply walking out of the White House with boxes of documents in hand as soon-to-be-ex-President is not sufficient to ‘automatically’ declassify documents. The appropriate paperwork must be filled and filed to both verify if the document can be declassified and also to request the archive to update its classification, if so. If the President didn’t request these actions prior to becoming ex-President, then the documents should not be considered declassified. As stated, statutorily protected documents simply cannot be declassified at all by a sitting President. Possessing any of these statutorily protected documents as ex-President should be considered a felony. If Trump’s team had submitted declassifying document forms within 30 days of having exited the White House, the now Biden controlled government would probably have been lenient enough to accept the declassifying requests on Trump’s behalf, with the exception of statutorily protected documents, of course. I mean, how hard is it to do the right thing?
Republican Claims
While many of the Republican talking points have been covered by Donald Trump’s claims above, with those talking points lifted almost verbatim from Trump’s speeches, let’s discuss the delusions that many Republican voters are under about Donald Trump. Further, let’s validate these continually regurgitated Republican talking points.
Delusion 1: Donald Trump ushered in and presided over the best economic prosperity ever seen in the United States as the 45th President.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump didn’t usher in United States economic prosperity during his tenure. This economic prosperity is falsely attributed to Donald Trump. The prosperity that carried through Trump’s first 3 years during his Presidency was as a direct result of Barrack Obama. Obama ushered in this prosperity after the 2008 mortgage meltdown almost tanked the entire economy. It was Barrack Obama who spent the time and effort to rebound the economy to the prosperous level seen in 2015, just prior to Trump taking office. Once Trump took office, Trump rode Obama’s economic wave for his first 3 years, until the economy slowed in early 2019 and then COVID happened and fully tanked the economy. If Trump were the economic savior he is so readily touted and claims to be, Trump’s fourth year in office should have remained as prosperous as the 3 years prior, regardless of COVID. Note that economic prosperity includes job gains, inflation, wages and all manner of other metrics that Donald Trump rode and took personal credit for, but which happened because of Obama. One thing that Trump can take full credit for is tanking the economy once COVID arrived. Yet another dubious honor.
Delusion 2: Unemployment was at its lowest rate ever under Trump.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump presided over 2.9 million lost jobs over his 4 years in office. The unemployment rate went up by 1.6% to 6.3%. Compare that to the end of 2022 when the unemployment rate was 2.2% under Biden.
Delusion 3: The deficit was at its lowest rate ever in the history of the United States.
Delusion Status: False. Under Donald Trump, the United States deficit actually increased almost exponentially, skyrocketing from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion, the most ever for a one term president. A dubious honor to be sure.
Delusion 4: There were no wars under Donald Trump.
Delusion Status: False. While the United States entered no “new wars”, existing and inherited wars grew both in size and in monetary expenditures under Donald Trump. Trump even exacerbated these inherited wars causing even more death and destruction by his own actions, including the use of expensive drones. Trumps claims are just that, claims… and false ones at that.
Delusion 5: Gas prices were the cheapest ever under Trump.
Delusion Status: False. Donald Trump presided over somewhat cheaper gasoline prices between 2016 and 2019 than between 2010-2015 (which averaged over $3). The average price of a gallon of gas during Donald Trump’s presidency ranged between $2.00 and $2.75 per gallon. In fact, when Biden took office, gas prices began to decline a little over Trump’s term for at least Biden’s first year in office. After that, the gas price gouging situation began, echoing similar prices seen during some of Obama’s term in office. In the year 2000, though, the United States had seen gas prices drop to around 99¢ per gallon at the time, far cheaper than was ever seen during Trump’s time in office. More false rhetoric.
Delusion 6: Democrats are ushering in higher crime rates.
Delusion Status: False. In fact, this situation is truthfully the opposite. Republican led states are ushering in some of the highest crime rates in the nation. This is mostly because Republicans are NRA friendly, if not NRA backed. Thus, Republicans refuse to write legislation to control guns. Many Republican led states are now crafting and signing new legislation to both legalize guns even more and allow such activities as concealed carrying without a permit. For example, Republican Ron DeSantis recently signed a permitless concealed carry into law in Florida. Republicans are clearly very, very gun friendly legislatively, to the point that it is now facilitating skyrocketing crime rates and homicide statistics in Republican led states.
Delusion 7: Democrat cities are ushering in higher crime rates.
Delusion Status: Ambiguous and False. The subtext of this false narrative is to disparage Democrats without explaining that Republicans are actually responsible for this situation. Democrat run cities that are now experiencing higher than normal crime rates in those cities which exist within Republican led states. It is then no surprise that because Republicans are writing state legislation to relax gun laws, allowing open carry and even permitless concealed carry and easier access to buying guns, that the crime rate in all cities in those Republican states is skyrocketing. Thus, this false rhetoric is designed to ignore the fact that it is the Republicans who are actually responsible for the skyrocketing crime rates in those Democrat run cities.
Delusion 8: Democrats are responsible for the open border crisis.
Delusion Status: Mostly false. While Joe Biden has made a few questionable maneuvers regarding securing the border, Republicans are the ones making this situation worse. With Greg Abbott human trafficking immigrants across the country to other states along with Ron DeSantis, which is a federal crime, this action is backfiring on the Republicans. Abbott’s trafficking is actually having the opposite effect by encouraging even more immigrants to arrive at the border so they can be bussed into the United States. While Biden hasn’t sufficiently secured the border, it is the Republicans who are causing the borders to become clogged due to their cushy busses, free transportation and free food and lodging that Greg Abbott is giving to the immigrants the moment they get here. It is Abbott who is welcoming the immigrants with open arms, not Biden. The border security is actually the responsibility of Greg Abbott, in coordination with the border patrol. It is not Joe Biden’s responsibility. If Greg Abbott is not actively trying to secure the border, that failure falls almost squarely on Texas and Abbott, not on Biden. Once again, the false delusional rhetoric is the responsibility of the Republicans, not the Democrats.
Delusion 9: Donald Trump is the best president EVAR!
Delusion Claim: False. Donald Trump has actually proven himself to be the worst President in United States History. What other sitting president fomented a violent insurrection against the government? Donald Trump has had a lot of firsts, but none of these firsts are something to be proud of, nor do any of these firsts prove Trump to be a great or even good President. These firsts are of dubious distinction:
- President Donald Trump fomented and incited a violent Insurrection on the United States Capitol building for the sole purposes of causing election interference, entirely for the purposes of keeping himself in power as the President of the United States beyond his Constitutionally mandated 4 year term.
- President Donald Trump took many boxes of allegedly classified documents from the White House back to his home in Mar-A-Lago in Florida; boxes that hadn’t been proven to be declassified at the time. Trump argues that he declassified them simply by thinking about it. That’s not one of the legally adopted US Government processes required to declassify documents. The legal process involves filling out paperwork, submitting it to the archives and having that request accepted and acknowledged. If the archive staff wasn’t aware the documents were declassified, then they are not declassified. Attempting to declassify them as an ex-President also isn’t possible.
- President Donald Trump was the only President to have been impeached by the House of Representatives twice. He was also the first President to have been denied conviction by the Senate twice.
- Donald Trump is the first former President of the United States to have been criminally indicted by any prosecutor.
There are likely many more firsts yet to come, but these above are the highlights (err… lowlights) of Donald Trump’s dubious Presidency. In addition to the false rhetoric already refuted above, Donald Trump’s term wasn’t spectacular by any Presidential standard. While Trump certainly wasn’t the first president to serve only one term, Trump most definitely shares in a very small group of Presidents who have only served one term including:
- James Buchanan
- Andrew Johnson
- Franklin Pierce
- William Henry Harrison
- John Tyler
- Millard Fillmore
- Warren G. Harding
- Herbert Hoover
- Zachary Taylor
- Martin Van Buren
- Rutherford B. Hayes
- Benjamin Harrison
- Chester A. Arthur
- Gerald Ford
- James Garfield
- Jimmy Carter
- William Howard Taft
- George H. W. Bush
- James K. Polk
- John Quincy Adams
- John Adams
- John F. Kennedy (for obvious reasons)
- Donald J. Trump
Donald Trump served as President, yes, but didn’t really help the United States very much. Most countries laughed at Trump like a clown and easily saw through Trump’s crass veneer. He raised the deficit by tremendous amounts, spending vast amounts of money, but not really providing much benefit to United States citizens. Because Obama had already set the economy on an upward trajectory, Donald Trump didn’t have to do much to keep that trajectory on track. He simply needed to not interfere with it and that’s what he did (or rather, didn’t do). Donald Trump’s legacy, however, wasn’t that he was mostly a do-nothing President. It would be how he handled his final year in office and specifically what happened on January 6th that effectively eclipsed his previous 4 years of service and rewrote his historical legacy as the 45th President.
Because Donald Trump was ill-prepared to handle the pandemic, he first tried to ignore it. When that didn’t work, he then tried to do as little as possible. This left the United States open to the rapid spread of it. While the CDC and other health agencies tried to steer Donald Trump in the right direction, he was having none of it. This meant that many hundreds of thousands of people died of COVID-19 in the early days because Donald Trump failed and refused to do anything.
It wasn’t until his approval ratings dropped to all time lows that he began to work on such projects as Operation Warp Speed, to develop and push through vaccines quickly. While he did preside over such health projects, it was too little, too late… at least for his legacy. If he had acted much sooner to the pandemic, many more people could have lived.
If Donald Trump had left well enough alone regarding the election and accepted his defeat gracefully during the 2020 election, you know by actually conceding to Biden, his legacy would have remained fully intact. Instead, Donald Trump took a different, highly questionable and very unethical approach to leaving office (or rather, to prevent his leaving office). Trump attempted to perpetrate many dubious (and probably very illegal) schemes in this process which ultimately fomented into a violent Insurrection on Capitol Hill by his supporters, all in the goal of attempting to halt the counting of the Electoral College votes with the sole intent to interfere with the Election and halt the peaceful transition of power.
Though, Donald Trump (and his cabal) claimed those violent rioters weren’t his supporters at all, instead suggesting they were actually Democrats and/or ANTIFA, even though this idea makes zero sense at all. Why would Democrats show up to a Trump rally at the Ellipse and support Trump? Then see those same Democrats march to the Capitol Hill buildings only to rip apart the buildings and violently attack police officers? It wasn’t a Democrat rally. It was a Republican led rally. Why would Democrats attend a Republican rally in those numbers? No, those people were definitely Donald Trump supporters.
Worse, for 4 hours and a handful of minutes, Donald Trump allowed the rioting to continue unabated instead of calling an end to it as President and sending in troops to stop it. The President should ALWAYS call for law and order, but instead this President stayed entirely silent, aiding and abetting the rioters silently.
Donald Trump’s historic legacy will be forever overshadowed and tainted by Trump’s incredibly dubious and stupid choice to foment a violent insurrection, followed by his over 4 hours of (in)action on January 6th, 2020… fully and completely eclipsing any good that may have been accomplished during his previous years as President. No one will care ultimately what he did in his early years, but everyone will remember that a President of the United States attempted to tear up the Constitution solely for personal gain.
Sychopant Supporters
Donald Trump’s sycophants, however, act like parrots. These delusional people simply repeat everything Donald Trump says almost verbatim, as if he’s somehow the voice of reason and/or the voice of truth. If anything, this article should illustrate exactly how misguided Donald Trump’s sycophants are and how much Donald Trump lacks the ability to tell the truth. Truth is just not something Donald Trump does.
The Washington Post estimates that of Donald Trump’s 4 years in office, he perpetuated well over 30,000 false or misleading claims. That’s not insignificant. Unfortunately, too many of his sycophants are blind to his lack of morals and ethics. Anyone willing to stand around for 4 hours while cops are beaten within inches of their lives is not someone you should endorse as “The Best President EVER” as you’re obviously delusional. Only someone delusional can look beyond the criminal, the unethical and then condone downright evil behavior only to claim they see someone who they believe to be “Good”. Good? That’s a laugh. Wolf in sheep’s clothing is more like it.
Donald Trump is not a good person. He’s not even an ethical person. There are things that Donald Trump most definitely is, though. He’s a manipulative person. He’s a sociopath. He’s a classic narcissist. He’s a philanderer. He’s bigoted. He’s misogynistic. He’s may even be somewhat delusional himself. However, there are almost no redeeming qualities about Donald J. Trump. How can you look in the mirror and state with a straight face that this man, a man who is willing to allow people to be injured and killed during a 4 hour period when he could have stopped it, a man who sat around allowing hundreds of thousands to die of COVID when he could have helped, is someone to look up to? No. There is simply no excuse here.
I don’t personally hate Donald Trump. I pity him. He’s a man who is caught up in his own delusional world and simply cannot break free. He is out for himself and what others can give him. This is why he relies on delusional people to continue to hand over their money to him. Donald Trump likely needs some major psychiatric counseling and therapy along with possibly some medication. He doesn’t need to be running the United States, however. This man should have, in fact, been barred from ever holding office ever again as he is simply not fit to hold it.
Those sycophants who parrot Donald’s every word AND who also hold governmental office must likewise be shown the door. Anyone who is that much of a blind follower of someone else cannot be working towards the benefit of their own constituents. If Donald Trump is more important then a congress person’s own constituents, voting them out and replacing them with someone who can think for themselves is the only answer. The current Republican party is blinded by a man who is ultimately a huge problem, not just for the Republicans, but for the entire world.
Let’s hope that Jack Smith, special counsel brought in by the DOJ, can bring this man to justice for the pain, suffering and, yes, death he has inflicted on far too many. If Donald J. Trump is elected again as President, his delusions won’t stop with an Insurrection. America as we know it will end… and along with it your freedoms, your home, your families, your beliefs and possibly even your very lives. Donald Trump is not the answer to America’s problems. America’s last gasp will be at the hands of Donald Trump. Donald J. Trump will end America. There will be nothing at all great about that, but then there won’t be many left to worry about it either.
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WordPress Review: Gutenberg Editor
This will be a no hold’s barred review of using the “new” Gutenberg editor in WordPress.com (and WordPress of any install). Let’s explore.
Calypso
Several years ago, WordPress introduced the then “new” Calypso editor. It had a blue-ish color style and was a straight up type of no-frills editor. It had some flaws, to be sure, but it worked well.
About 2 years ago, along comes the newest new editor named Gutenberg. This editor was thought to be intended as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing experience. Well, let me just say straight up and flat out, it isn’t. Yes, this review will be very critical of this editor. I generally refrain from reviewing my blogging platform, but in this instance I felt compelled and justified to review this editor and its massive set of usability and ergonomic flaws.
Gutenberg
Several years ago, the Gutenberg project started. This editor was intended to be the eventual replacement for Calypso. ‘Eventually’ has arrived and the hour for replacement is at hand. Yet, Gutenberg is still not yet prime time ready. It is so far from being prime time ready, I can’t even adequately justify how badly it isn’t ready. Where Calypso had some flaws, these were easily overcome with a small amount of fiddling.
With Gutenberg, fiddling takes minutes at a time (and many times way longer) and sometimes there aren’t even ways to address the problems inherent in this new editor.
Let me start by addressing Gutenberg’s positive features before I get down into the nitty gritty problems with it.
Gutenberg’s Benefits
I want to make sure to cover both the positive and negative sides of the Gutenberg editor so that I’m not called out for unfairly representing this editor. With that said, let’s get going. Gutenberg’s positives include:
- Block editing capabilities
- Some additional text styling options (superscript, subscript, etc)
- Not much else of note.
Block editing is pretty much where Gutenberg’s positives end. Block editing doesn’t greatly enhance the blog editing experience and, at the same time, Gutenberg adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to Calypso’s formerly simple editing design.
What does block editing do for the blogger exactly? It allows you to more easily move blocks around within an article. That’s pretty much its claim to fame. Though, I don’t see how that really buys much when most computers today offer copy and paste capabilities that allow this same functionality through drag, highlight, cut and paste. The fact that they spent gobs of time designing a new editor solely to solve a perceived copy-paste problem (that doesn’t really exist) speaks volumes of this editor’s design goals.
Gutenberg’s Drawbacks
There are many. First, the width of the editor is too narrow. Calypso had an editor width far greater than Gutenberg. This means that Gutenberg is not in any way a WYSIWIG design. Second, you must still preview your document… which in and of itself says that Gutenberg is NOT a WYSIWIG design.
Basically, Gutenberg’s team redesigned an editor for no reason at all. It was simply a new design to be a new design, but not to solve any actual editing problems. In fact, they’ve introduced new problems where in Calypso’s editor they didn’t exist.
For example, the bottom status bar in Calypso showed us the word count and other pertinent document information front and center. We didn’t have to click into or move our mouse to get to this information. Yet, in Gutenberg, this information is now hidden behind an icon that 1) makes no sense and 2) now requires active effort on the part of the blogger.
The block editing system also fairs just about as well (or not, depending on your point of view). There are a number of block types like paragraph, heading and image with an additional array of way lesser used block types like Star Rating, Highlighter, Quote and Pullquote.
As I said, the team has made this editor unnecessarily more complicated without the need to be this complicated. A text editor, in fact, should be much more simple, friendly, fast and easy. Many of these functions were handled in Calypso more elegantly, by highlighting text, then clicking to apply an attribute to that text. Basically, 1-2-3. In Gutenberg, you have to create a new block type by clicking many times, then placing that specific text into that block type.
Whoops! You chose the wrong block type? There’s almost never a way to convert from one to another. You must copy the content out, create a new block, and paste it in. Even then, sometimes copy and paste won’t work.
So, here’s where the block difficulties begin. Because blocks are now discrete elements within the body of the article… think of them as <div></div> sections, it’s difficult to get exact placement. In fact, trying to style any of these blocks using inline CSS is almost impossible. With Calypso, the text was straightforward and could be easily styled within the body of the article. In Gutenberg, if you want complex style options, you’re forced to use the Classic Block, which is effectively most of Calypso in a block. By being forced to use the Classic Block, you’ve pretty much negated the reason to even use Gutenberg in the first place.
That’s not to say you can’t style within Gutenberg, but it’s more about what happens after you do it. When you go into the HTML and muck about with styling of the paragraphs, Gutenberg’s parser typically fails to understand this HTML CSS addition and forces conversion of the entire block into HTML with no more instant preview available. Now you’re stuck viewing this individual block as ugly HTML forever. If you want to see what it will look like in the actual article, you must click ‘Preview’. Calypso happily and fully rendered in-line CSS and still allowed a preview. It never once balked at adding in-line CSS, though it might strip it out if it didn’t like what you did. This is one of Gutenberg’s biggest failures. Blogging is driven by HTML. Styling HTML with CSS is probably one of the simplest things you can do… yet Gutenberg can’t even understand simple CSS styling? Yeah, that’s a #fail.
For styling images and placing them in very specific locations within Gutenberg block articles, here’s where Gutenberg again fails. While you can create an image block and it auto-wraps text, there is no exact placement or altering margins of white space around the image block within Gutenberg. If you want exact placement or specific spacing for the text wrapping around your image, you must again revert to using the Classic Block. Again, another of Gutenberg’s failures.
If you’re going to spend time creating a complex block editing system, you’d think that exact placement of blocks in space within the document (i.e., drag and drop) would have been part of the design. Unfortunately, you’d have thought wrong because this aspect of Gutenberg simply doesn’t exist. There is no drag and drop or exact placement here.
What exactly is Gutenberg then?
That’s what I keep asking myself. Reinventing the wheel without actually offering us something new, improved and innovative is a questionable design choice. In fact, because of the overreaching complexity introduced by Gutenberg into a platform that should be all about simplicity is, again, questionable. WordPress has always been about making it easy and simple to blog. This convoluted, complex and difficult to manage editor only serves to make the blogging experience more difficult, not easier.
I’m not saying Calypso is a perfect editor by any stretch. Hardly. Calypso has a fair number of problems that also need to be addressed. Unfortunately, that editor’s updates had been abandoned about to the time the Gutenberg team started up. This left Calypso mostly unfinished, yet still reasonably simple to use and definitely easier to manage an article’s overall content.
Complexity
I keep talking about unnecessary complexity. Let me expound on that. Part of the complexity of Gutenberg stems from the block system itself. The fact that we now have to select a specific block type, not really knowing what each do in advance, means we now have to understand the block’s features and their usefulness. That means trial and error. That means a learning curve. That also means needing to understand the limitations of this new unfriendlier editing system.
Yes, it goes deeper than this. The blocks themselves, as I said, are discrete separate entities. You can’t embed one block within another. For example, you can’t make a block quote show up word wrapped next to basic text within your article. An example of a block quote block type is immediately below:
This is a block quote
forces a citation
Unfortunately, a block quote must sit in that position where it is. It can’t be moved into a wrapped position within another block (like an image). You’d think that this kind of innovation would be possible in a new editor. Unfortunately, no. Worse, as you’ll notice, this paragraph is too closely abutted next to the block quote. With Gutenberg, you can’t fix this horrible spacing issue. There’s no way without using inline CSS styling. If you attempt to use inline CSS styling, the entire block may be forced into HTML mode leaving no way to preview the block in the editor.
Now begins a Classic Block.
This is a block quote
The block quote in the classic block doesn’t force a citation footer, leaving much more white space without leaving this paragraph feeling so cramped. Remember, white space is your friend.
Let’s talk about images and placement
To place an image using Gutenberg, this is what you get. You can align left, center or right.
Here is a paragraph next to an image using blocks. You can word wrap next to an image, but you can’t change the spacing of the text around the image.
In a Classic Block, I can style the image to add margin-left and margin-right to change the spacing next to the words. I can’t do this in Gutenberg’s blocks.
Unfortunately, using Gutenberg to perform image wrapping has some unnecessary complexities. There’s no way to ensure that the block just below it is separate. Instead, it wants to pull up and wrap that block too. There’s no way to make sure that the block just below the image doesn’t wrap. Gutenberg attempts to wrap everything. With Calypso, this editor has more fine grained control over this problem because you can add HTML pieces that enforce this.
Here begins a Classic Block with some text and an image. I’m writing just enough text here so that I can insert an image and do word wrapping around the image. Keep in mind that a classic block is basically Calypso in a block.
As you can see, this image has more space to the right of it. I styled this image with a margin-right CSS tag which is impossible to achieve using a Gutenberg image block.
Importing Older Articles
If you’ve used Calypso to write articles in the past in WordPress, you may find that Gutenberg’s importing system to be questionable, if not downright problematic. If you attempt to convert a Calypso written article into Gutenberg blocks, expect failure and LOTS of re-editing. Yeah, it can be that bad. Though, it can import without problems too. It all depends on the article’s content. Importing a Calypso document into a Classic Block has much more likelihood of succeeding… after all, the Classic Block is pretty much compatible to Calypso.
There may be instances where importing an older article may not work in either the Classic Block or as Gutenberg blocks. Basically, you take your chances when attempting to edit older articles within Gutenberg. Most times it works, but it may mangle portions of your article’s spacing and other attributes that may see you spending time re-editing. You’ll want to be sure to scrub your article from top to bottom if you attempt to import an older article into Gutenberg. You may find your formatting has been stripped or other features become unavailable.
Gutenberg not Prime Time Ready
The problem with Gutenberg is that there are so many small nuances that are ergonomically incorrect, flat out wrong or of bad design that using it to blog can easily turn into a lengthy chore. While I did use Gutenberg to craft this article, it wasn’t by any means easy to achieve. I did run into quite a number of problems. For example, there’s a Gutenberg open bug report that prevents editing any block’s HTML without crashing the editor entirely. This means that once you edit HTML, the menu that allows you to convert back to visual editing disappears entirely.
You are then forced to quit entirely out of the editor back to the WordPress posts area, then re-edit the article again by relaunching the editor. The Gutenberg team is aware, but it is as yet unfixed.
The small floating menu that appears above the block when selected is problematic. Not only is it the same color as the editor itself (white) the imagery used on the icons is questionable, with none of the images looking professionally designed. In fact, it looks like someone hired their teen art student kid to design the images. They’re not only too simplistic and basic, many don’t read as to the function they perform. This whole area needs an overhaul… from the questionable floating menu to the coloring to the icon imagery. It’s awful and amateur.
If you blog with WordPress, please let me know your thoughts on this new Gutenberg editor. Yes, it does work to a degree, but that all ends fairly quickly if you decide you want to go deeper into the HTML to style things.
Otherwise, too many times you get the below (note, Classic Block used for the below image as the spacing needed to be styled):
Out of 5 stars, I give Gutenberg a solid 2.2 star rating. I give Calypso a 3.8 star rating. Calypso is simpler, easier to use and overall gets the job done faster. The lower rating for Gutenberg isn’t necessarily because of its failures, but mostly because its design goals didn’t seek to improve the overall WordPress blogging experience or help us making blogging faster. Complexity is a double edged sword and doesn’t always make things “better”. If anything, that’s the primary takeaway from this updated editor’s design.
There are even more usability and ergonomic problems that I simply can’t get into here. You’ll simply have to try it and compare. Though, I’m never a fan of designers who feel the need to place stuff behind increasing layers of menus. If it’s a function that can be front and center, it should be front and center. Placing that thing behind layers and more layers of menus only serves to waste my time.
Launch Speed Benchmarking
Here’s where Gutenberg fails again. The amount of time it takes to launch Gutenberg is excessive. Calypso takes slightly under 2 seconds to completely launch and be ready to edit your article. Unfortunately, it takes almost 10 seconds for Gutenberg to launch before you’re ready to edit. Yeah, that’s a big step backwards in performance. Time is important. Waiting almost 10 seconds for an editor to launch just to make a simple change is a severe waste of time. If you have to do this multiple times in a day, that wasted time adds up.
Gutenberg needs a MAJOR overhaul in the launch performance area.
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Should I allow a team work-from-home day?
[Updated: April 26, 2020] In hindsight and knowing all of what’s going on in the world with COVID-19, I wouldn’t have written this article. Seeing as working from home may now become the new “norm” in business, I am leaving this article here as a testament to the fact that no one, not even me, can foresee how world events can change how a society or how businesses function. Realize that the information contained below is now mostly “out of date” and is here solely as a snapshot as to how the world existed prior to social distancing and stay-at-home orders. Ironically (and in spite of this article), working from home now seems to be the new norm. Please continue reading this article from this perspective.
Article Begins
I previously worked at a company which, at the team leader level, endorsed a once-a-week work-from-home day. I can now definitively state, “No, you shouldn’t allow or offer full team work from home days.” Let’s explore why.
Day Off?
The biggest reason not to allow such a work-from-home day is that it is typically treated as a “day off”. This is even true of the managerial staff. At the business where I worked and on this specific day, after we had our “morning teem meeting”, everyone went their separate ways doing whatever they pleased… and it was usually not work related.
This becomes a very difficult situation for those who are consigned to pager duty for that week. When you need to get in touch with someone to resolve a problem, it can become nearly impossible to reach them while during office hours on “work from home” day.
Work from home days should be limited to individuals rather than teams, assuming you wish to allow this perk at all. For example, allow an individual to choose a work from home day and allow that single individual to work from home on that day. That leaves the rest of the team in the office performing their daily routines. This allows for timely problem resolution in almost every case. Even then, if the team member who is at home is needed, they can typically be reached. It also allows other teams to get in touch with your team should the need arise.
Rant
The biggest problem I personally experienced with a “work from home” perk day was that I had no choice in it. If I showed up in the office on the work-from-home day, no one was there. The desks were all empty. Even if I were at the office, I still had the same problem. 
Everyone else was running around in their cars or doing something other than work. This meant that even after spending a long time locating a co-worker, trying to get someone’s mind wrapped around a work problem might take ages longer than normal.
Their thoughts were on driving their car or picking up groceries or ferrying their kids or whatever their assumed “day off” tasks entailed. Their minds were clearly not focused on work. This meant that waiting for people to get back in front of their computers and get into the correct mindset might take an hour or longer. That’s an hour that a problem is not getting resolved. It’s an hour that’s causing delays because they are not doing what they are being paid to do.
This is a big work ethic problem. If I’m handling the pager and I’m expected to resolve problems, some of which I have no first hand knowledge how to resolve, I’ll need someone else’s involvement to help me understand the system that’s broken. Yet, the person with the expertise is out running around instead of working at the their computer at home (where they are supposed to be).
Knowledge Transfer
Some of this might be considered a documentation problem or a knowledge transfer problem. I agree, it is. But, there are many, many companies where selective staff choose to keep their knowledge close to the vest rather than documenting it. This is usually a sign of job security… that this person believes that if they openly document what they are doing, that they will have no value to the company.
This situation is particularly a problem if the person also happens to be the team leader. As a subordinate, I’m not tasked to manage a manager. Though, I can strongly urge them to document. However, that’s not the working relationship. I can ask, but they don’t have to comply. In many cases, they don’t and won’t comply. This leaves me back at square one. I’ll need their help to resolve the problem… every time until I can reverse engineer what they know. What they know about the systems is in their brain and in no one else’s. Until I spend hours reverse engineering that system to understand what they know, I’ll always need their help. That’s job security.
Worse, many times, these folks have PGP locked all of the doors. This means that even were I to try and reverse engineer what they did, I can’t even resolve the problem because I’m led to a PGP locked door. This means that they hold the literal key and they must be the one to open it. For this reason, teams must be in the same office together through the work day… rather than separated across city distances at various dwellings. Businesses rent office spaces for a reason. By having a team “work from home”, it means that the office rental space isn’t being used and the monthly rental money is being, at least on that day, wasted.
Work from Home
I will, however, state that work from home CAN work, if it’s implemented properly. A manager can allow one of their subordinates to work from home IF they are properly monitored. Monitoring means keeping in contact with the person via chat servers, email and pagers. Communication is your friend. That doesn’t mean pestering the person, but it does mean regularly staying in touch when the need arises. Clearly, if there is no need of this person, then let them work in silence. But, pinging them occasionally via email, chat or messaging will give you (as a manager) a sense that the person is at home in front of their computer doing work, not running around in their car taking care of non-work business. At the same time, there’s the “out of sight, out of mind” problem. If a person is out of the office, the optics from other staff might cause issues. Allowing one person to work from home means they’ve gotten a perk no one else may be getting. Offering this to one person means offering it to all staff.
Working from home is, however, a double edged sword. While on the receiving end, I did find the freedom itself is nice enough and not having to spend for the gas and wear and tear on my vehicle is cool. The difficulty is that when the team isn’t together, it kills a work day where things could have gotten done. That forces doubling up on work the following day when we all, again, meet in the office. Doubling up on work is difficult at the best of times, but moreso if that day happens to be Friday.
Teams should work together every day, each week. They should work on projects together, manage the business together and functionally be a team IN the office. You can’t be a team when the team isn’t together.
HR Advice
If a manager or executive approaches you about having a team “work from home” day, you should seriously discuss these downsides with them. The biggest problem is that it kills productivity between team members.
For example, we had our team “work from home” day on Thursday. In fact, it was the worst of all possible days to offer this. It’s the day before Friday… the day when everyone has mostly “checked out”. Friday is one of the worst days for productivity because people are concerned with the bar or a party or the weekend. Their minds are not on the work day at hand. Their minds are on the end of the day and the weekend.
By having the team “work from home” day set to Thursday, this means that it will effectively be a 3 day work week. There is Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday which supports solid team efforts. Then there’s a break on Thursday which means a huge loss of productivity for the final two work days of the week. Some people may even schedule Friday off which effectively offers a 4 day weekend breaking productivity even further.
If a manager or leader is thinking of a setting up “work from home” day, the only two days where it’s feasible is Tuesday or Wednesday. I wouldn’t allow any other days… definitely not Friday or Monday and definitely not Thursday. I also wouldn’t allow a work from home day every week. That’s too frequent.
Working from Home
Don’t get me wrong, being able to work from home is nice on the surface, but it’s horrible for business logistics. You hired your team to be in your rented office space and work together as a team. Having that team work from home can be difficult to keep track of people… particularly when other teams need access to these staff members. Other teams must put requests on hold when a full team is out of the office.
In fact, it’s almost unheard of to allow an entire team out of the office for a single day, let alone every single week. Business must be conducted every day, not just the days when people feel inclined to show up.
The difficulty, however, comes when a VP or executive proposes a “work from home” effort. While I understand there might be a personal issue requiring this VP to be at home on a specific day, he could have simply set up his own personal work from home day solely for himself. Keep the rest of the team in the office. Instead, he endorsed an entire team work from home day… a mistake.
Personally, that (and a number of other problems surrounding this person and another manager) didn’t work for me and I had to leave that job. Jobs are already difficult enough without throwing in these unnecessary wrenches. I felt the team didn’t get enough done throughout the week, partly because of this incorrectly placed “work from home” day, but also because of sheer lack of team bonding. The manager over the team really did nothing to attempt to bond the team together… instead leaving us to our own devices. This is a separate problem, just like the knowledge transfer issue above, but it definitely compounded with the work from home issue to create a large set of problems which made working for this company much more difficult than it should have been.
Team Bonding
Let’s talk about team bonding for a moment. Every work team is effectively “thrown together”. It’s a bunch of people who don’t know one another initially, but must find common ground to get work done as a team. To that end, the team must have the occasional get together to allow some time away from work to talk and mingle, but that time can also be used by managers to discuss how overall work efforts are progressing.
Team outings need to offer, first, a work related meeting that discusses ongoing metrics that affect the team. If the team is in charge of keeping the servers functioning, then the meeting should discuss these efforts. If there are efforts to secure the servers, then it should discuss the security efforts. Whatever projects are currently underway, these should also be discussed so that all team members are aware of who is doing what projects and who might be needed to help these projects succeed.
Then, after the formalities of work related discussions end, the team will be free to mingle, talk and eat dinner or play video games or whatever fun team bonding activities have been scheduled. At the office, there’s limited time to bond with your co-workers other than at lunch. Having out of the office team bonding events is important to make give the team time to talk about things other than work.
When a workplace offers “work from home”, this activity completely disrupts the ability of co-worker bonding in the workplace. Without a monthly or quarterly team bonding event, there’s no way for co-workers to functionally bond… leaving a scattered team.
Team bonding is important to ensure that work efforts proceed efficiently and normally. Otherwise, you get conflict between team members who refuse to work with one another because each person thinks that their project is the most important… when all projects are important, but no more important than the next person’s project. Still, the projects are all for the benefit of the employer, thus it is the manager’s responsibility to make sure the staff manage the priorities of those projects accordingly.
Team Perks
As a team leader, consider the perks you offer your team carefully. Don’t choose perks like “work from home” because eventually (yes, even you) will abuse it. But, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that a work from home day sacrifices productivity for that and the following day. Be careful when choosing perks that sacrifice two or more days of team productivity. If you plan to allow a work from home perk, choose to allow it for a one-on-one basis so that you can control who is out of the office when.
By making this change, you be in better control over when key people are in and out of the office. Full team “work from home” days should not be permitted or offered. If you currently support such a one-day-a-week perk, you should rethink this stance.
If you are a manager over a team that already has a once-a-week work from home day, you should stop this perk immediately! Be careful to offer a compensating perk once you get rid of this one, such as individual work from home days which are scheduled well in advance. Or, alternatively, allow team members to arrive late, leave early or have flex shifts on specific days as long as their in-office hours offer a minimum of 3-4 hours of overlap with other team members. With such a retooling of this perk, the team will work together in the office every day, offering much more weekly productivity and provide better team bonding.
If this article helped your situation, please leave a comment below letting me know how you managed your work situation.
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Did Toys “R” Us have to fail?
If you’ve read various articles including this Bloomberg article, you might come away thinking that all of what happened to Toys “R” Us began a decade ago (i.e., the early 00s). In fact, you would be so wrong… and so would Bloomberg. Let’s explore.
The 80s
Around 1981 or 1982, I worked at Toys “R” Us. Even at that time, Toys “R” Us ran a questionable business model. A business model that, I might add, even store managers recognized and thought was unsustainable. In fact, after having discussions with store managers at my store, I got an earful about how they thought that the chain would likely fail within a decade if they kept on using that business model. This was the early 80s.
What business model?
Toys “R” Us sowed the seeds of its own destruction at least beginning in the 80s, perhaps as early as the 70s. What questionable business model is this? The model chosen was to operate the stores in the red (otherwise known as losing money) through 80-90% of the year (aka, “90 in the red”). Then, the management hoped to recoup those losses in the final 1-2 months of the year during holiday season sales. It didn’t always work out.
While this model seemed to work to keep most Toys “R” Us stores afloat through the 80s and 90s, it served to keep the company from really turning a solid profit and, ultimately, led to the company’s massive debt load. What that model meant to the stores is fully stocked shelves every day of the year. This was readily apparent walking into any Toys “R” Us store. The stores were not only full, they were positively brimming over with the latest toys. This also meant putting itself into massive debt each year in inventory and then hoping to pay off that debt at the end of the year when most of the stores finally ran “in the black” (read, turning a profit for the year).
Keep in mind that many of the stores didn’t turn a profit, but so long as enough stores did, they could cover for the debt they had been incurred company wide, or at least so that was the idea. Even the store manager at my Toys “R” Us location could see the handwriting on the wall in the early 80s. This store’s business model was not sustainable and I was, even as an standard employee, told this by various managers. These managers didn’t hold back their thoughts.
Bloomberg, Fads and Sustainability
What Bloomberg got right was that even a decade ago, TRU’s debt load had put them underwater. What Bloomberg didn’t address was that this debt began almost 2 decades earlier of overbuying, followed by hoping that a “hit toy” would kick them over the profit line at the end of every year.
“Hit Toys” were Toys “R” Us’s hopeful thing. They needed that Tickle Me Elmo or Nintendo Wii or Lazer Tag or Cabbage Patch Kid fad toy to carry the chain into the new year with profit on the books. Throughout the 80s and 90s, there were a string of these hit toys practically every year. Fad toys which flew off the shelves and brought Toys “R” Us to profitability each year. It was a risky move for Toys “R” Us to bank on a hot fad each year, but there it is.
Unfortunately, relying on this kind of yearly toy fad to sustain a business every year was not only risky, it began to burn Toys “R” Us as these yearly fads began to die off by the late 90s. Even during mid-late 90s, these fads were much less intense than they had been just a few years earlier. By the mid-00s, these fads were practically non-existent. Sure, there were hot toys, but no where near the levels of sales that Tickle Me Elmo or the Cabbage Patch Kid fads offered to Toys “R” Us’s bottom line… particularly when Best Buy, Walmart and Amazon concurrently began diluting the toy profits of TRU.
These fading fads were responsible for killing other toy stores chains as well, such as Kay Bee Toys and even the once high flying, high end FAO Schwarz. These fading fads also left Toys “R” Us holding a huge mound of debt.
Walmart
While Walmart did usurp the title of top toy seller from Toys “R” Us, that’s primarily because Toys “R” Us prices were always on the higher side. Walmart did carry toys, but not all toys. If you wanted something you couldn’t find at Walmart, you went to Toys “R” Us and it was pretty much guaranteed they would carry it (even though it might be out of stock). Walmart didn’t even stock many of these. The toy section in Walmart was always small by comparison. Sure, you could find better deals at Walmart, but only from the toys that they chose to carry.
Walmart was also not very kind to collectors in the 90s. If a collector showed up to buy toys, Walmart would try to do everything to keep that toy item away from the collectors… sometimes even going so far as to banning them from the store simply for buying toys. Does it really matter whose dollars are buying an item? Granted, I wasn’t particularly happy that a collector had gone to Walmart to buy out all of the “good” stock leaving tons of “peg warmers” sitting around that no one wanted. But, that’s how toy collecting worked in the 90s.
The whole collector market kind of died off with the advent of places where collectors could buy case packs, like Entertainment Earth. Instead of having to rummage around Walmart at 3AM (when they stocked new merchandise), you could order a full case of figures, guaranteeing that you’ll get at least one “rare” figure. This meant that the once Walmart and Toys “R” Us shopping locations for collectors became a thing of the past. Collectors took their money online to buy cases and stopped buying at Toys “R” Us. Buying case packs is easier, more convenient and doesn’t require the hassles of dealing with surly underpaid Walmart workers.
Toys “R” Us Kids Grew Up
Kids of the 80s became collectors in the 90s and became families on the 00s. The once popular collector market throughout the 90s fell apart into the 00s because the collector market changed and Toys “R” Us failed to understand this important change. The collector market is (or at least was) also a huge market that kept Toys “R” Us afloat in addition to the end-of-year-fads. However, brands like Hasbro and Mattel didn’t grow with the collector market. Sure, Hasbro tried, but the toys they made were tiny improvements over their (sub)standard toys. Mattel also tried with its collector Barbies, but, again they failed to understand the critical quality needed for what collectors really yearned.
In essence, the toy brands themselves didn’t grow to provide what collectors wanted… which left Toys “R” Us mostly without collector money. However, collector brands did grow up for the collector market outside of Toys “R” Us, including Sideshow and Hot Toys brands. These brands are now considered the premiere collector “toy” brands for adult collectors. These “action figures” are some of the highest end, most expensive, most collectable toys out there, yet these are not sold at Walmart, Target or even Toys “R” Us (before they closed). Though, you can find them on Amazon via third party sellers. This is where Toys “R” Us failed to keep up with the kid-turned-adult collectors. Hot Toys figures cost anywhere between $150-350 per figure; a price point that collectors are more than willing to pay to get that level of craftsmanship. A price point that Toys “R” Us never carried. A quality that not Toys “R” Us nor Walmart nor Target ever carried.
While Toys “R” Us continued to sell these low-end toy products to kids, it failed to grow up and to sell high end collectibles to adults. Ironically, this runs counter to their jingle. The most prestigious type of collectibles that Toys “R” Us sold were the collector Barbies and McFarlane figures, offering price points at $15-40. A price tag that cannot provide the levels of detail, paint jobs and overall craftsmanship that goes into a Hot Toys or Sideshow figure. Adult collectors want high end figures and Sideshow and Hot Toys fill that niche. Toys “R” Us management never recognized this growing trend.
“I don’t want to grow up, I want to be a Toys “R” Us kid”
This jingle is ultimately the rationale that appears to have led Toys “R” Us management down the wrong path. Instead of singing the praises of not growing up, the toy store should have realized that kids grow into adults; adults who still want to buy collectible toys, but who don’t want the junky, low priced Hasbro and Mattel versions. They want premiere brands like Hot Toys offering highly detailed, highly realistic, meticulously crafted and painted figures… not Hasbro’s now antiquated, poorly painted, robot-style 12 inch figures. You might give these cheap toys to your kids, but you wouldn’t display them in a display case.
This collectible market began with highly detailed military figures, but branched out into licenses with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Warner Brothers and various other large movie franchise brands. Toys “R” Us failed to latch onto this market and, thus, failed to capture the once Toys “R” Us kid who had grown into an adult and now desires these highly detailed collectible toys. As kids grow into adults, tastes change and people want more sophisticated products. Hot Toys and Sideshow found that niche for sophisticated adult tastes. Yet, Toys “R” Us failed to recognize this niche.
If Toys “R” Us had realized this mistake and had added brands like Hot Toys to its shelves, it might have been able to entice the collector’s market back into its stores and pay down some of its debt. Every discount retailer has, so far, failed to realize the adult collectible toy market. However, this lack of foresight hurt Toys “R” Us the most.
Kid Tastes
Additionally, kids tastes have also changed as a result of brands like Hot Toys and products like the iPad. Kids don’t want want to buy Leap or other “toy” or “fake” tablets when they can ask their parents for the real thing. Kids also want the higher end Hot Toys than the poorly crafted Hasbro Ironman figures. While Toys “R” Us did begin carrying Apple products, the stores really thought of these more as a toy rather than treating them as something useful. Best Buy always treated their Apple section with the best possible displays. Toys “R” Us displayed its Apple tablets right next to random other tablets as though they weren’t anything special. I’m not even sure that I’d have felt comfortable buying an Apple tablet from Toys “R” Us. Not only did they have no one versed in this technology on staff, what they carried could have been 2 or even 3 generations old. Toys “R” Us just didn’t treat these products with the respect that they deserved.
As a result of kids changing tastes and higher levels of sophistication, kids really didn’t want much of what was in that toy store after a certain age. This meant that Toys “R” Us was primarily for kids of a certain age and below (probably 8-9 or younger). Even still, these ages were growing up faster.
Toys “R” Us Closure
Did Toys “R” Us have to close? Yes, it did. Without a management team capable of fully understanding the downsides of running its stores using the “90 in the red” model throughout the year (and failing to accommodate the changing tastes of adult collectors), the stores ultimately succumbed to closure. It was inevitable.
What tipped the scale, though, was 2005’s $6.6 billion leveraged buyout of Toys “R” Us by the KKR, Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust; a purchase that saddled the corporation with at least $5 billion in debt, in addition to its already mounting toy inventory debt each operating year. There was simply no way Toys “R” Us could recover from and pay down that debt considering its interest each month.
In fact, it was this very same leveraged buyout that not only trashed Toys “R” Us, it also lost its original private equity investors at least $1.28 billion. Even these private equity firms were ignorant of Toys “R” Us’s “90 in the red” model. You’d think that between three different private equity firms, one would have had brain among them. I guess not. Toys “R” Us was not worth buying strictly because of that business model… and it was especially true when considering saddling an already debt overburdened company with even more debt. It was an insanely stupid buyout made more stupid because of the lack performing even the most basic of fiduciary responsibility. Those private equity firms got exactly what they deserved out of that deal. Make the wrong deal, get the wrong results.
If I had been sitting in the room when this buyout deal was being considered, I would have put the kibosh on that deal pronto. If managers of stores could recognize how badly Toys “R” Us was operating in the 80s, why couldn’t a bunch of suits at three different private equity firms see this before plopping down $6.6 billion?
Overvaluation
If anything, 2005’s TRU sale is a cautionary tale. There are way too many buyouts that are purchased at way too high a value. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Companies worth maybe $500 million sell for $3 billion? It’s just insane the money that’s being overspent. Would you walk into Walmart and offer to pay $25 for a $5 tube of toothpaste? I don’t think so. So, why do these investors think it’s okay to spend $6.6 billion on a company worth maybe $1 billion at its best… and it was then likely actually worth much less considering the debt that it already carried. Its insane business model should have further reduced its value.
Could Toys “R” Us have been saved?
Probably not. At least, not with its status quo business model. But, it might have been saved IF Toys “R” Us had adopted a more balanced approach to its store sales and more sane merchandise ordering in combination with letting managers actually handle full store merchandising instead of relying on nice looking, but misguided corporate-standard planograms.
Only stock enough merchandise in a specific store that that store can actually sell. Let managers move stock around on shelves and place the merchandise in their store where it’s most likely to sell. Additionally, don’t send stock to a store where the buying demographic isn’t buying that type of merchandise. If Barbies aren’t popular in a particular store’s demographic region, send limited amounts of Barbies there. It’s a waste of money and effort to stock merchandise that doesn’t sell. One of Toys “R” Us’s biggest foibles was its cookie-cutter store approach. That meant it was sending the same stock to all stores regardless of popularity in that local store’s area. It also meant that it way overspent on toys that would never sell at certain stores. Eventually, they simply had to clearance out those toys. Each store’s inventory should have been customized based on buying habits of local consumers and by the local manager. Only the local store team knows what’s the “hot sellers” in their store.
Clearance merchandise is actually a red flag in the retail business. It means that, as a store, you way overspent on merchandise that you couldn’t sell. If you have excessive clearance merchandise, then your merchandise spends are way off. It also means that your buyer is overbuying stuff that isn’t selling. It means you need to rethink your buyer and it means your new buyer needs to rethink how much to spend on similar types of products.
One of Toys “R” Us’s other foibles was its inability to recognize and stock the “hottest toys” rapidly. If you send 5 of something to a store and it sells out in 10 minutes, you need to stock more of it and you need to do it pronto. Yet, it might take Toys “R” Us 30 or more days to get that merchandise back in stock. That’s 30 days of zero sales… sales that could have been had the next day and the day after that. Missed sales were one of TRU’s biggest problems. Having merchandise in stock that you can sell day after day is a huge win. Yet, if the corporate buyers don’t even know to reorder this thing again, the store is blind. This is why the next part was so important to improving TRU.
Instead, this toy chain should have let the local managers have autonomy via cutting merchandise from their store that isn’t selling and placing rush orders on the hottest toys. By letting the managers, you know, actually manage the store’s inventory properly, the stores could have cut costs and raised profits. The managers could have done this by buying more of popular hot sellers in that area, shuffling cold merchandise to other stores that can sell it and cutting non-sellers from the inventory. In fact, managers should have actually had access to every store’s inventory throughout the chain and when that item last sold there. If a particular item is selling hot in one store, but is completely dead in other stores, the hot item store manager should be able to request stock moved from the cold stores to their store. This way, managers could have directly moved inventory from store to store instead of placing orders for more stock, thus causing more debt. Only after the existing in-store inventory was exhausted should a new order need to be placed. The buyers from the chain should have endorsed this manager autonomy.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t a priority for the very rigid corporate run TRU. I could walk into a store in Texas and find specific toys always out of stock. Then walk into a TRU in St. Louis a week later and find twenty of them sitting on the shelf with dust on the top. If stores had been able to request the hottest toys moved from other stores, the chain could have saved a lot of money on new stock orders.
This change in business model could have drastically improved Toys “R” Us’s profitability throughout the year. It probably would have cut down on orders to toy sellers, but something’s got to give when you’re running a retail store chain. If the toy manufacturers had to suffer a little to let Toys “R” Us recover and be a whole lot more profitable, then so be it.
Unfortunately, TRU’s status quo model endured. Even if the leveraged buyout hadn’t occurred in 2005, Toys “R” Us’s fate was pretty much sealed strictly by is “90 in the red” (cookie cutter) mentality. It was only a matter of time before it succumbed to its own debt burden even if it hadn’t incurred a ton more debt after that poor sale. The 2005 unwise sale simply accelerated Toys “R” Us’s already looming demise.
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Security Tip: Apple ID locked for security?
This one also doubles as a Rant Time. Having my Apple ID account locked is an issue I face far too often with Apple. Perhaps you do, too? In my case, no one knows my account ID. Yet, I face having to unlock my account frequently because of this issue. I personally think Apple is causing this issue. Let’s explore.
Unlocking an Apple ID
As with far too many things, Apple’s unlocking system is unnecessarily complex and fraught with digital peril after-the-fact… particularly if you enable some of Apple’s more complex security features (i.e., Two Factor authentication).
One of the things Apple hasn’t yet to get correct is properly securing its Apple ID system from intrusion attempts. That doesn’t mean that your account is unsafe. What it means is that your account is unsafe against malicious attacks targeting your account ID. But, there’s an even bigger risk using Apple’s ID system… securing your credentials by using an email address. I’ll come back to this practice a little later.
Once your account becomes locked, there are a number of major problems that present. The first immediate problem is that you need to remember your security questions OR face changing your password (assuming standard security). If you use Apple’s two-factor authentication, you face even more problems. If you don’t use two-factor and you’ve forgotten your security questions, you have the option to contact Apple Support to help you with your security question problems to gain access to your account. On the other hand, if you’ve forgotten your security information set up when enabling two-factor, you’re screwed. Apple can’t help you after you have two-factor set up… one of the major reasons I have chosen not to use two-factor at Apple. Two-factor IS more secure, but by using it you risk losing your Apple ID if you lose a tiny bit of information. That risk is far too great. With all of the “ease of use” Apple is known for, its Apple ID system is too overly complex.
The second problem is that once you do manage to get your account unlocked, you are then required to go touch EVERY SINGLE DEVICE that uses your account ID and reenter your password AGAIN. This includes not only every Apple device, but every device utilizing Apple services such as Alexa’s account linking for Apple Music on the Amazon Echo. If you use Apple Music on an Android, you’ll need to go touch that too. It’s not just the locking and unlocking of your account, it’s the immense hassle of signing into your Apple ID on EVERY SINGLE DEVICE. Own an Apple Watch? Own an Apple TV? Own a Home Pod? Own an iPad? Own a MacBook? Use Apple Music on your Android? You’ll need to go to each and every one of these devices and touch them.
On the iPhone, it’s particularly problematic. You’ll be presented with at least 3 login prompts simultaneously all competing with one another on the screen. Later, you’ll be presented with a few more stragglers over the course of 30 minutes or an hour. Apple still can’t seem to figure out how to use a single login panel to authenticate the entire device and all of its services. Instead, it must request passwords for each “thing” separately. So many prompts pop up so fast you have no idea which one is which because none of them are labeled as to which service they are attached. You could even be giving your account ID and password to a random nefarious app on your device. You’d never know. If you own an Apple Watch, you’ll have to re-enter it separately for that device as well. Literally, every single device that uses your Apple ID must be touched after unlocking your Apple ID. Unlike Wi-Fi passwords which you enter once and it’s shared across every device you own, Apple can’t possibly do that with its Apple ID system so that we enter it once and it populates ALL of our devices. No. We must touch each and every device we own.
Worse, if you don’t do go touch each and every one of these devices immediately upon unlocking your account, you risk having your account locked almost immediately by just one of these devices. Apple’s ID system is not forgiving if even one of these devices hasn’t logged in properly after a security lock. You could face being locked out just a few hours later.
So the rant begins…
Using Email Addresses as Network IDs
Here’s a security practice that needs to stop. Apple, I’m l👀king at you! Using email addresses as an ID was the “norm” during the mid-late 00s and is still in common practice throughout much of the Internet industry. It is, however, a practice that needs to end. Email addresses are public entities easily seen, easily found and, most easily, attacked. They are NOT good candidates for use as login identifiers. Login identifiers need to use words, phrases or information that are not generally publicly accessible or known. Yes, people will continue to use their favorite pet’s name or TV show or girlfriend’s name as login IDs. At least that’s only found by asking the person involved. Email addresses are not required when developing login systems. You can use tie the email address to the account via its profile. But, it SHOULD NOT be used as a login identifier.
When an Apple ID account gets continually locked, Apple Support suggests to change the login ID, but that’s not going to change anything. You’re simply moving the crap from one toilet to another. Crap is still crap. The problem is that it still uses an email address and, to reiterate, email addresses are easily seen, found and attacked. What I need is a login ID that’s of my own choosing and is not an email address. This way, random folks can’t go to Apple’s iCloud web site and randomly enter an email address intentionally to lock accounts. If I can choose my own login identifier, unless I give that information out explicitly to someone, it’s not guessable AT ALL and far less likely to be locked out by random folks entering junk into web based Apple’s login panels.
Oh, and make no mistake, it’s not people on an iPhone or iPad doing this. It’s people going to Apple’s web site and doing it there. There is no other place where it can be happening. And yet, we unsuspecting users are penalized by having to spend a half an hour finding and reentering passwords on all our devices because someone spent 5 minutes at Apple’s web site entering random information incorrectly 3 times. Less than 5 minutes worth of effort triggers at least 30 minutes of work unlocking the account and reentering passwords on many devices and services. And then there are the stragglers that continue to prompt for at least an hour or two after… all because Apple refuses to secure its own web site login panels from this activity. This is not my problem Apple, it’s yours. You need to fix your shit and that’s something I absolutely cannot do for you.
Notifications
Apple prides itself on building its push notification system, yet it can’t even use it to alert users of potential unusual activity on its very own Apple IDs. If someone is incorrectly trying passwords on a web site, they know where this vector is. So then, tell me about it, Apple. Send me an alert that someone is trying to log into the Apple Store or the iCloud.net site. Inform me that my ID is being used in a place that seems suspect. You know the IP address where the user is coming from. Alert me. Google does. You can, too.
Additionally, Apple stores absolutely NO information about bad login attempts. If you attempt to contact Apple Support about your account activity, they don’t have access. They can’t even tell you what triggered your Account ID lock. This level of information is the absolute bare minimum a company using centralized login IDs must offer to its users. If Apple can’t even bother to help you find out why and where your account was locked, why would you trust Apple to store your information? Apple puts all its cards on its functionality side, but it can’t put a single card on this side of the security fence? What the hell, Apple?
Apple Locking Accounts
I also firmly believe that Apple is intentionally locking accounts. When these lockouts occur, it’s not me doing it. I’m not out there entering my account credentials incorrectly. It’s not my devices, either. My devices ALL have my correct password setup. This means that either someone has guessed my email address or, more likely, Apple is intentionally locking the account. I firmly believe Apple is intentionally doing this internally and it’s not incorrect password attempts at all. The more it happens, the more I believe Apple is forcing this. I don’t know why they would want to do this, but I do believe they are. Maybe it’s a disgruntled employee who just randomly feels the need to screw with Apple’s users?
Apple’s Response
I’ve called Apple Support at least twice regarding this issue and gotten absolutely nowhere. They can’t and, more importantly, won’t help with this issue. They claim to have no access to security logs. They can’t determine where, when or why an account was locked. In fact, I do believe Apple does have access to this information, but I believe Apple Support has been told not to provide any information.
If Apple Support can’t give this information, then this information should be offered through the Apple ID account site (appleid.apple.com). This site should contain not only the ability to manage your Apple ID, it should also store and offer security information for when and where your ID was used (and where the account was used when it locked). Yet, Apple offers NOTHING. Not a single thing. You can log into this site, but there are no tools offered to the user. Apple exposes nothing about my account use to me. Google, on the other hand, is very transparent. So transparent, in fact, that they send “unusual activity” alerts whenever your ID is used in an unusual way. Google errors on the side of over-communication. Yet, Apple hasn’t done shit in this area and errors on the side of absolute ZERO communication.
Get your act together Apple. Your Apple ID system sucks. Figure it out!
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The Curious Case of Fallout 76: What went wrong?
[Updated: Oct 4, 2021 for Battle Royale Mode]
I’ve already written plenty about Fallout 76. So, this one is likely to be my last about this disaster of a video game. In this article, I intend to detail all of what went wrong (and is still going wrong) with this game and why it’s such a critical failure. Let’s explore.
Fallout History
Fallout is a series about a post-apocalyptic landscape that has been ravaged by nuclear war. Because the Vault-Tec corporation (a company within this universe) saw the coming of the nuclear war, they built vaults to house the best and the brightest to bring about a new future after the devastation had cleared. We won’t get into just how Vault-Tec’s foreseeing (and building the vaults prior to the) the nuclear war makes Vault-Tec appear complicit in the nuclear war itself.
Anyway, the vaults became a safe haven for limited residents (who paid dearly to Vault-Tec, I might add) for entry into a vault. Because there were so few vaults and so few spots in a vault itself, many people did not get a coveted spot in a vault even though they had enough money to pay their way into one. There were many who were left out. I digress at this backstory and Vault-Tec’s possible collusion in the war.
Suffice it to say, the vault is the place where pretty much every Fallout game begins including Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.
Once each of these games opens, you are forced to make your way out of the vault into a hostile, treacherous, dangerous, nuclear fallout-laced landscape (without a weapon, food or protection). You are forced to forage and eat irradiated foods. You must live in disease ridden conditions, at least until you can create your own clean space. You must find or build your own weapons. There’s always something or someone after you. Many creatures have even mutated into giant versions of their former tiny selves.
Once outside, you find that survivors have grouped themselves into factions for safety including such old favorite factions as the Brotherhood of Steel, the Raiders, the Enclave, the Railroad and so on. In Fallout 76, there are seven (7) factions including the Enclave, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Responders, the Raiders, the Free States, the Whitespring, and the Independents.
Unfortunately, because the factions in Fallout 76 consist entirely of stationary Protectron or MODUS robot vendors, there’s no “joining” a faction in this game. Though, you can follow in the footsteps of the former now-dead faction members and gain access to faction facilities by finishing up uncompleted quests for left-behind robot computers.
So, exactly how did Bethesda get Fallout 76 so wrong? Here we go…
Game Design
Video games are about having fun in a fantasy landscape. It’s about taking off your IRL hat and putting on a fantasy world hat to relax, play with friends and generally do things in a game you can’t do in real life. Let’s begin to understand what led to this disaster.
=> Lack of NPCs
Going into a Fallout game, you sort of expect certain things to exist. Certain things that have come to exist in every prior game in the Fallout franchise. You know, those pesky things called non-player characters or NPCs for short.
NPCs have been a staple in every Bethesda RPG up until the release of Fallout 76. Let’s add a bullet point (and this one is a major point), that one of the biggest reasons that Fallout 76 fails is due to the lack of NPCs.
NPCs are one of the primary reasons people go into the purchase of a Bethesda role playing game (RPG). Without NPCs, the game is entirely barren and lifeless. Fallout 76 proves this out. One might even say, the entire game is soulless. Part of what makes a Bethesda RPG interesting to play is that you feel something for the folks who have been put into this untimely and hazardous situation. Without people there to feel for, there’s no emotional tie to the game. Fallout 76 is as soulless of a game as has ever been made. The only other game to have this same problem is No Man’s Sky… except we knew going into the purchase of No Man’s Sky that there would be no NPCs.
With Bethesda’s past track record, we simply had no idea that Fallout 76 wouldn’t have NPCs until we cracked open the shrink wrap.
=> Short and Few Main Quests
One other thing Bethesda is known for is making lengthy games. Games that, if you work through them as intended, might take you 3-4 months to complete. Granted, that may include participating in a few side quests, but even the main quests will take you at least month or better to get through.
With Fallout 76, you can blaze through the main quests (all 22 of them) in less than a month and be stuck at endgame content.
In fact, there are more side quests in Fallout 76 than there are main quests. Even then, the main quests are far too short.
=> Multiplayer vs Solitary Quest Completion
Bethesda had hoped that its idea of having 24 players in one of its “World Servers” would be a great way to get players to interact with one another (and create story). Gamers don’t “create” story, they “consume” it. Todd Howard got this idea entirely wrong. In reality, what that ends up is just the opposite. Few players actually want to co-op with other players and instead you end up with a bunch of loners all running around the world doing their own thing (or griefing one another). After all, each player can only complete their own quests, anyway.
Because each person must complete their quests on their own, having a teammate doesn’t really do you much good. It can help in combat situations where you’re ganged up by lots of creatures, but that’s about it.
The solitary nature of quest completion runs entirely counter to the notion of getting 24 players together on a server as a whole. It just doesn’t work.
As a follow on to this problem, the lack of NPCs makes completing quests boring, repetitive and tedious. Reading computer terminals, listening to holotape recordings and reading notes is not what players want to be doing in an RPG. These are non-interactive media. It’s just lore being told to us by a long dead character. A character that we have no reason to even trust is telling us the truth. We’ve never met them and never interacted with them. We have no idea if what they want us to do is in any way necessary. Are they leading us into a trap or is what they’re directing us to do useful?
The secondary problem is that all of these holotapes and notes and so on are optimally placed so as to be found. It’s as though these dead folks were expecting us to come along and read and listen and do. It’s all too convenient and handy. It’s as though it was all planned out by something or someone in that world. Yet no “world designer” has ever come forth. It only ends up making this lore more trite and contrived.
If this is supposed to be a treacherous, dangerous environment, finding these people and their situations would be much harder than it is. Ultimately, the setups are as convenient as they are boring and repetitive.
=> No Effect on the World
At the end of completing the quest for lore, you find that nothing in the world actually changes. All of the running around. All of the collecting. All of the fetch quests. All of it is for naught. You do get lore around the Scorched, but in the end the world remains unaffected. The Scorched do not disappear. The Scorchbeasts still appear from their fissure sites. Even the Scorchbeast Queen still spawns if someone conveniently launches a nuke over Fissure Prime.
If you’re going to spend hours traipsing through the wasteland, fetching and fighting and doing and consuming, you would think that the world would be a better place in the end. In Fallout 76, the world doesn’t change. It doesn’t become a better place. It doesn’t get built.
The 24 vault dwellers released from Vault 76 were destined to rebuild Appalachia. Instead, these 24 “players” simply become loners who build their own camps, don’t bring about change and don’t in any way make Appalachia a better place. The game worlds remain entirely status quo at the end of the quests. So, what’s the point then?
=> 24 Random Players
As mentioned just above, gathering 24 random video gamers together on a server isn’t going to lead to anything useful. Real video game players don’t (and can’t) make a game. Players can only interact with the environment. The fun must be had by what the designers design, not by interacting with 23 other live players.
This was a total miscalculation by Todd Howard. Any video game designer thinking you can rely on other video gamers to help make your game work, think again. Fallout 76 is the prime example of how this thinking entirely fails you.
As a designer, you must take the time to build fun and interactive activities for each and every person who joins your game world. Again, you can’t rely on other players for this “fun”. Player versus player (PVP) activities only go so far and even then many folks don’t want to participate in PVP. You can’t rely solely on PVP to carry an RPG game.
If you’re trying to carry a game using PVP activities, then you need to design a Brawlhalla, Apex Legends or Fortnite kind of game and skip the RPG portions. Just keep it simple and straightforward for PVP and leave out the RPG elements that simply get in the way of that design. If your game is PVP, then make it PVP. If your game is an RPG, make it an RPG. Don’t try to try to marry an RPG into some PVP thing or you’ll end up with something like Fallout 76 which just doesn’t quite work.
=> Bugs and Code Management
Bethesda has unofficially become known as Bugthesda. After Fallout 76, this moniker is given for good reason. Fallout 76 is exactly the poster child of everything wrong with Bethesda’s ability to code games. For Fallout 76, each update has taken one step forward and made at least two steps back, many times reintroducing old bugs.
There’s a serious problem at Bugthesda with their ability to code this game. I’ve personally witnessed bugs that were squashed two releases ago reintroduced to a later release. In the coding profession, this is called a ‘regression’. Regressions are typically frowned upon heavily. No one wants to see old bugs reintroduced into new versions. If you squash a bug once, it should stay squashed and gone.
Good code management practices should see to that. This means that using industry standard code management practices should prevent regressions. If you check in code to a repository which fixes a bug, that code fix should eventually make its way back into the “main” branch. Once in the “main” branch, that bug should never see the light of day again. This clearly means that Bethesda is likely not using standard code management practices.
For teams not using standard team code management and storage practices, like Git, then it’s easy to grab old code and reintroduce bugs because there’s not a single place to store that code. That’s the worst of all disasters. Not having a standard code management system in place is nearly always the death of a project (and product). Your product can’t sustain heavy regressions and expect people to come back for second helpings. Eventually, people walk away because they know they can’t trust your code to work.
When bugs appear, disappear and reappear over and over, trust in your ability to code a functional product disappears. Trust is the most important thing you have as a software engineer. Once you blow that trust, it’s all over.
=> Limited World Events
With a game so heavily entrenched in a 24 multiplayer world, you would have thought Bethesda would have given us many intriguing world events for multiple players to gather around, combat and defeat. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
Out of the gate, Bethesda offers exactly one big world event in Fallout 76. That event being the Scorchbeast Queen event.
The problem with this event is that it entirely relies on other players to spend a significant portion of time traversing through a silo site fighting tons of robots and dealing with broken computers to launch a nuke into the world. Even worse, it requires the player to have not only fought their way through a silo site, but they must have also caught and fought a Cargobot to get a missile launch keycard. They also must have gone through the Enclave quest line to become a General in the Enclave, which requires killing at least 10 Scorchbeasts. It’s an involved and grindy quest line just to get to point where you can even launch a nuke.
Instead of these largest world events simply spawning on a timer, you have to wait until a player decides to launch a nuke on their own. Lately, this has been few and far between because with each release, Bethesda makes it more and more difficult to launch a nuke. This ultimately means that the biggest world event in Fallout 76 almost never happens.
That’s not to say there aren’t other world events. There are, but they are no where as big as the Scorchbeast Queen event. Events like “Path to Enlightenment”, “The Messenger” and “Feed the People”. However, these events are small potatoes by comparison. The Scorchbeast Queen event requires multiple people all doing as much damage as possible to bring down the queen in 20 minutes. With “Feed the People”, one person can easily do this quest and, subsequently, the loot drop at the end is piddly and low-level garbage. The queen’s loot drops are nearly always worth the time and are typically high level drops.
If you’re promising an engaging multiplayer world, you need to deliver on that promise. Relying on other players to trigger the biggest world events, now that’s a huge mistake. Instead, the biggest world events should trigger randomly without player involvement. Let the small events be triggered by players. Let the biggest world events be triggered by timer. It’s fine if a player can trigger a big world event, but don’t rely on that method for the largest events to be triggered. If no player triggers the event within a specified period of time, then trigger it on a timer. But, don’t leave the game barren of these large world events simply because players aren’t interested in spending the time to launch a nuke at that exact location.
=> Even more Grindy
One of the the things that Bethesda doesn’t seem to get is grinding. No one wants to spend the majority of their time online fighting the same creatures over and over simply to level up. Worse, when you do level up in Fallout 76, it’s all for naught. The creatures cap out at about level 68. Yet, even if you get to level 180, that level 68 creature can still kick your level 180 butt.
This is is not how level systems are supposed to work. The game arbitrarily caps your SPECIAL stats at level 50. Effectively after level 50, you’re still level 50 even if your level indicator says your level is 142. This means that you can’t even level up past the highest leveled creatures in the game.
At level 142, I should be able to one shot nearly any creature in the game that’s level 68 or below. Unfortunately, creatures have two levels in this game. There’s the level number (i.e., 68) and then there’s the HP bar. The HP bar is actually the creature’s real level. Some creatures might have 200 HP, where a Scorchbeast Queen might have between 3000 and 50000 HP (even though its level is labeled 50 or 63 or 68). Worse, when you approach this creature, you won’t know how much HP it has until you begin firing on it. Even then, it’s only a guess based on how fast its health is dropping.
This means to beat some creatures in the game, you can easily spend hours grinding and grinding and more grinding. Fallout 76 is, in fact, one big ugly grinding mess. With all of the fiddling and nerfing (aka “balancing”) that Bethesda has been recently performing, grinding is getting even worse, forcing you to spend even more time at it. Bethesda is going to nerf themselves out of a game.
=> Collision Detection, Guns and Bullets
The weapons in Fallout 76 are probably some of the worst in a Fallout game I’ve experienced. Worst yes, but not in the way you might be thinking. It’s worst in a way that makes you cringe. The guns regularly miss enemies even when aiming directly at them using a scope. This is strictly bad collision detection. The game simply can’t seem to recognize when a shot has connected with an enemy.
Bad collision detection is ultimately the death of a shooter. If your game is intended to be a shooter, the one thing it better be able to do is shoot and connect. If it can’t even do this most basic thing, the game is lost. Games with guns need to “just work”. Failing to accomplish this most basic thing should have left this game in development. You can’t release a shooter and not actually have the gun mechanisms work.
But, here we are. The game barely even functions as a workable shooter. There are even times where guns fail to fire even when the trigger is pulled and released. Indeed, there are times when button presses aren’t even registered in the game… requiring the gamer to press twice and three times consecutively to get the game to recognize the press… and wasting precious time. If you had the perfect shot, but the game ignored your press, you’ve lost that opportunity and you have to wait for it to come around again.
This is one of, if not THE, most frustrating thing(s) about Fallout 76. When guns don’t work, your shooter is broken. This means you should focus on fixing the fundamentals in the game before branching out to downloadable content (DLC).
=> DLC too early
Instead of fixing the never ending array of existing bugs from when the game was launched, Bethesda has mistakenly pushed their teams to create new DLC and add-on quests.
While I won’t get into these half-baked, half-designed DLC add-ons, suffice it to say that the developer team’s time would have been better spent fixing the existing fundamental flaws than releasing under-designed unfun DLC.
I ask you, if the game can’t even get the basics down as a shooter, how can it possibly be good with new DLC? The answer is, it can’t. And, this is why Fallout 76 continues to fail.
=> Players Find the Fun
Because Fallout 76’s quests ended up more grindy than fun, many gamers had to resort to finding their fun using alternative means. What ended up happening was that players went looking for (and found) loopholes in the software. When code is poorly written and released untested, it’s going to be chock full of bugs… and that’s Fallout 76 in a nutshell.
Gamers found ways to dupe and sell their duped items. This was one of the primary ways gamers found their own fun. Not in the quests. Not in the combat. Not in the nukes. They found their fun working around the bugs and making, selling and trading loot. Another way was breaking into closed off dungeons like Vault 94, Vault 96 and even the now-legendary “Dev Room”. Players found their fun outside of Bethesda’s design. Fun that couldn’t be had through the mediocre quests, the crappy storytelling system, the horrible combat system and the problematic collision detection.
This whole activity seems to have come to the surprise of Bethesda. It was as if they couldn’t have foreseen this problem. It happened early on in The Elder Scrolls Online, too. Why wouldn’t it happen to a half-baked game like Fallout 76? It did.
=> Half-Baked Patching
Because every Fallout 76 release Bethesda has sent out has only marginally improved tiny parts of the overall game, the game is still very much of the hot mess that it was when it was released at the tail end of November 2018. It’s now the middle of April 2019 when this article is being written and very little has actually changed.
Sure, they added a distillery as a DLC that produces some of the most useless liquor in the game. The Pre-War liquor is still the best free liquor in the game (and offers the best benefits) and you don’t even need to use a distillery or waste precious crops to get it. The new liquors not only are not covered by the existing perk card system, each of those liquors have heavy downsides. The distiller also doesn’t support the Super Duper perk card to create extra dupes when crafting liquor, unlike every other crafting table. As an example of how bad the new liquors are, Hard Lemonade gives a huge boost to AP regeneration, but at the cost of 1 minute of negative AP regeneration as the “Hangover”. Rad Ant Lager gives +50 carry weight (yay) at the cost of -50 carry weight during the 1 minute hangover (boo). Extremely sub-optimal when in combat situations.
Nukashine fares even worse. Not only is the effect of this liquor pointless (increases unarmed damage), during the “Hangover” you black out and end up in some random place on the map. Making a Nukashine is simply a waste of a Nuka-Cola 
Quantum (which these drinks can be difficult to find in the world even at the best of times). On top of the pointlessness of this liquor, selling Nukashine to a vendor yields basically no caps (the currency in Fallout). In fact, making a Nuka-Cola grenade is a much better use of a Nuka-Cola Quantum than Nukashine will ever be. I wasn’t really going to talk about the added DLC much, but I felt the sheer crappiness of this one need to be discussed to show how pointless it all really is. The rest of the DLC doesn’t fare much better than the distiller.
If you’re going to give us a distiller, then at least set it up so that the stuff we make has some value to vendors, gives us much better perks than what’s already in the game and is covered by our existing perk cards. If you’re not going to do this, then why bother creating it? That’s why I consider this DLC half-baked. No perk card coverage. No outstanding new liquors. No value to the new liquors. So tell us, exactly why we should find this fun?
=> Player Bans
While Bethesda calls them a “suspension”, it’s actually a ban. A suspension lasts 1-7 days at most. A ban last months. So far, because gamers ended up using the bugs in the game to find their own fun, Bethesda has penalized many of these gamers by suspending them for sometimes unproveable reasons. What that means is that Bethesda did some digging and found that some gamers had accrued “too many” items in their inventory.
Let’s understand that the original release of the game allowed infinite carrying capacity. You simply became overencumbered when you went over your natural carry limit. This meant that you had to use AP to walk around. When AP ran out, you had to stop and wait for the AP to regenerate or you walked even more slowly. This was the original design BY Bethesda.
After the whole duping scandal erupted, Bethesda blamed the gamers and not themselves for the problems in Fallout 76. The bugs are entirely there by Bethesda. That gamers exploited the bugs, bad on you Bethesda. You should have better tested the quality of your game. Testing is on you, Bethesda… not the gamers. If you failed to test your product, then it’s on you when bad things happen.
If you didn’t want gamers to carry infinite items, then you should have released the game with a carry limit cap. That you didn’t do this initially was a miss on your part. Anyone could see that was a vector for abuse. Waiting for it to be abused, then blaming the abuse on the gamer is entirely disingenuous and insincere. Blame yourself for the bugs, not the gamers.
=> Most Recent Update
As of the latest “Wild Appalachia” update, the game is still very much of a mess. It still crashes regularly, sometimes the entire client crashes back to the dashboard. Sometimes the game won’t load in. Sometimes the character load-in is extremely laggy, stuttery and problematic. If you do manage to get your character loaded in, the shooter basics still don’t work. You can manually aim dead onto enemies and the gun will entirely miss (several times in a row). So, you resort to VATS. VATS sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. You can be literally inches from an enemy and VATS will show a 0% chance of hitting. Yes, it’s STILL that bad.
Nuking on servers can make them highly unstable, particularly in the nuked region. If you enter a nuked region, you can expect the game’s frame rate to drop to about 10-15 frames per second… and I’m not joking. There are other places in the game where this frame rate issue is a problem. For example, when you’re in camp and trying to construct in the workshop menu.
There are many spots in the game where the frame rate can drop to practically nothing. These problems should have been worked out months ago. Yet, instead of fixing these absolute game engine basics, Bethesda has its devs off creating half-baked DLC to try to rake in new revenue.
Unfortunately, with every patch, Bethesda’s devs add back in regressions removed two or three patches ago. It’s been a never ending cycle of one step forward and two (sometimes three) steps backward. The world never gets better.
=> End Game
Every game has a problem with end game fun. Unfortunately, Fallout 76’s end game starts the moment you first login. The whole game is end game. There’s not a beginning to this game, so how can there be an end? Even once you do complete all of the main and side quests, there’s even less to continue doing in this world.
I do understand the reason for the DLC… to try and bring back old players. But, that’s going to be difficult considering you banned a very large number of them from the game. The few that weren’t banned aren’t going to come back simply because you put a crappy distiller in the game or that you created a 7 day long festival and forgot to actually give out the most desirable masks. They’re certainly not going to come back to grind for Atom to buy the useless (and expensive) Atom Shop items.
Ongoing Disaster (Battle Royale)
[Update: As of the September 2021 update, Bethesda has officially retired and removed the Battle Royale game mode named Nuclear Winter from Fallout 76. Regardless of its removal, the below is still relevant to when it existed in the game. I guess Bethesda finally wised up to exactly how big of a disaster Nuclear Winter really was.]
Here’s the part where I talk about DLC. As Bethesda continues to add questionable new game modes to Fallout 76, I have to wonder what’s going on over there. First, Bethesda adds the ‘Survival Mode’ server to its list of game play engines. This server basically enables PVP right from your character’s load-in. When you join ‘Survival Mode’, if you encounter another player, your character is pretty much dead. I’m uncertain the impetus behind adding this game mode other than to segregate PVP from the ‘Adventure Mode’ servers and put it into a different server. Yet, this segregation is not yet over.
Because Bethesda has been feeling the pinch from Battle Royale games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, Bethesda seems to feel left out. After introducing ‘Survival Mode’, Bethesda next introduces a new ‘Battle Royale’ game mode. Instead of trying to design a new Battle Royale game using an engine actually designed for that kind of game play, which would actually make the most sense, they instead grab the source code for Fallout 76‘s server and they wedge a Battle Royale mode into Fallout’s less than stellar game and combat engine.
Both of these game modes are questionable in and of themselves. For example, how do either of these game modes progress the Fallout story in any way? They don’t. The ‘Survival Mode’ server is designed to simply make the game more difficult. Instead, what it makes the game is pointless. You can’t quest, you can’t follow quest lines, you can’t even play normally…. for fear of losing not only all of your junk, but part of your aid.
With Battle Royale, there’s no point for its existence in the Fallout franchise. There’s not even a story basis for it to exist. Worse, it’s not even close to competing with games like Apex Legends or Fortnite. In fact, a battle royale mode would make a whole lot more sense to exist in The Elder Scrolls than in Fallout. Sure, Fallout is about gun fights, but it’s not about this silly and unnecessary concept being forced into the Fallout universe… a universe where battle royale actually makes no sense at all. The Elder Scrolls at least had an ‘Arena’ where a battle royale could feasibly take place within the story’s narrative… and make sense in the context of the larger Elder Scrolls story arc. Fallout has never had such a “battle” concept in its franchise. Adding this in now simply makes zero Fallout story sense, but makes sense only if Bethesda is trying to “cash in”.
Sure, Fallout survivors might need to do things to amuse themselves in a toxic nuclear wasteland… but, would they actually play in a Battle Royale themselves? No, I don’t think so. Bethesda is now adding stuff that’s so out entirely of character for the Fallout universe, they’re just adding stuff to “keep up with the Jones’s” instead of because it makes sense for Fallout. If you want to trash your franchise, this is a good way to go about it.
Let me also say that the implementation of Fallout 76’s Battle Royale mode is entirely trash and illogical to boot. You’re trapped in an ever condensing ring of fire. A ring of fire that actually makes no sense when you’re supposed to be tasked with rebuilding Appalachia. As contestants continue to kill one another (and the ring condenses to a tiny circle around them), the last man standing is the person who “wins”. In fact, the “winner” actually loses, because the condensing ring of fire would actually end up killing everybody. This is how logically stupid this concept really is. Effectively, it’s not really even Battle Royale, it’s a “Last Man Standing” game. I’ve also seen much better “Last Man Standing” multiplayer games.
If Bethesda wants to create DLC that’s in keeping within the Fallout universe, then they should tie these new game modes in with the existing lore that they spent all of that time creating. For example, how about implementing multiplayer dog fights? Or, how about actually using the ‘Animal Friend’ and/or ‘Wasteland Whisperer’ perk cards to tame beasts that can be used in a multiplayer arena? This would require the player to spend the time to locate and tame a beast (and level it up and equip it) for use in the arena. That kind of mode makes a lot of story sense… and makes sense to wrap new lore around all of this.
Since the world is dangerous and treacherous, use the existing lore as the basis for creating unique new multiplayer challenges. Don’t just grab the first unoriginal idea to come along (e.g., Fortnite) and slap it into a world server. You know, spend time actually putting some amount of thought and effort into tying the existing lore into the new multiplayer game modes. Give them a basis to exist in the universe. Don’t add game modes because you CAN… do it because it both makes actual sense, is logical and is entirely in keeping with the Fallout universe lore.
Overall
The game is STILL a very hot beta mess offering a poorly written, badly conceived and boring storytelling system utilizing no NPCs. The combat system is the worst system I’ve encountered in a top tier game developer’s title. No joke. It is the absolute worst. Even the patching hasn’t improved it. If anything, it’s actually gotten worse.
There are times where button presses are entirely unresponsive. You might have to press the button two or three times rapidly to get the game to register even one press. You might be trying to pick up something, trying to fire your weapon, trying to search a container or it might manifest in any other number of ways. Unreliable button presses are the death of a game that so heavily relies on real time play value.
No amount of patching or DLC will solve these basic fundamental engine problems. To solve the storytelling problem, you need to add NPCs to the game.. which would require redesigning the game from scratch. To solve the combat problem, you need to redesign the combat system from the ground up using a practical engine actually designed for real-time online use.
You can’t take a 20 year old offline game engine and attempt to patch it for an online use. Doing so will produce exactly the problems found in Fallout 76. Fallout 76 needed a game engine designed entirely for online play. Designed for real-time combat. Designed for real-time activities. Designed for responsive button presses.
Unfortunately, what we got was a crapfest of epic proportions that Bethesda will neither acknowledge nor comment on. If this is Bethesda’s new game development norm, I won’t be investing in any more Bethesda games. It’s just not worth paying $60 (or more) to be an alpha tester for a game written on old technology that isn’t up to the task.
In short, Fallout 76 is STILL an immense hot mess that has not at all improved since its November launch.
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Rant Time: Fallout 76
I’ve been playing Fallout 76 on and off since its release. However, Bethesda has not only miscalculated the quality of the game itself, Bethesda’s devs have repeatedly introduced more bugs than they have fixed. So far, the patches have been a strategy of one step forward and three steps back. This game has all of the signs of code outsourcing and illustrates all of the dangers of this practice. Let’s explore.
Game Development
Having worked at many different high tech companies that write code for their business to succeed, I have seen many different code writing practices… some good, many more that are bad.
Typically, when code is written “in-house” (meaning, by developers on site at the headquarters), the quality control remains at a “standard bar” set by the development manager. This doesn’t mean that every piece of code written is great, but it does mean that the bad code likely won’t make it into production after “code review”. The “code review” process is a process by which all code is peer reviewed by other developers to make sure the code is up to formatting standards, that it doesn’t make any egregious mistakes and that such things as math calculations make sense. Comments in the code are usually optional and up to the development team to set how code gets documented.
I’ve worked at many companies where code is not documented at all. Instead, the documentation is written in a Wiki or similar internal web site describing the design goals of the code. I don’t particularly like this practice when working on the production side of the house, but it’s generally not a practice we can win a fight against. Reading documentation in the code is sometimes the only defense when code acts up in production. If they choose not to write inline documentation, that’s on the development team. Though, I will say that this practice leads to technical debt and is not recommended.
Without diving too deeply into code development practices, let’s apply all of what I’ve said to Bethesda’s Fallout 76.
Bad Coding Practices
I don’t even know where to begin with how Bethesda is managing this product. Let’s just say that having worked in several large Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) organizations, how Bethesda is handling Fallout 76 is so behind the times, it’s not even funny.
Today, the current practice is to use the following code development cycle otherwise known as Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This cycle has the following phases:
- Planning
- Analysis and Requirements
- Design
- Development
- Integration and Testing
- Implementation / Release
- Operational Maintenance
These 7 phases are a never ending cycle in a continuing software product. In fact, there could be several releases all running in concert each at different phases. Meaning, the current release is at phase 7, the next release is at phase 4 and two or three future releases are at at any of the phases prior to release.
The SDLC process has grown out of bad coding practices used during the 90s and has been adopted to counter those bad coding and release practices. This life cycle is a way to ensure quality of code when it is finally released. It’s also a way to ensure that the end user has the highest quality experience possible with the end product. Quality assurance is the name of the game. As a development company, the key to success is to minimize disruptions via bad code and maximize user experience with high quality features. No code is ever perfect, but you can reduce problems by following best coding practices and implementing solid SDLC processes.
Bethesda’s Coding Practices
Unfortunately, Bethesda has chosen a poor coding cycle for Fallout 76. Instead of treating Fallout 76 like a professionally produced product using SLDC practices, they are simply slinging code as fast as possible without actually performing any sanity checks or, indeed, performing any quality assurance on the end product.
In fact, with each new Fallout 76 release, the product has become increasingly worse, less reliable, less performant and increasingly more unstable. By “worse”, I mean that they’re introducing not only regression bugs that break previously and correctly working features, they’re introducing new bugs and not even fixing the bugs they claimed to have fixed. Indeed, the product is actually getting worse.
While I realize that coding a game like Fallout 76 is probably reasonably complex, the difficulty I have with this game is why a developer is touching code in portions of the game where bugs did not exist. What were they doing touching that part of the code? And yet, here we are, this newly broken code is being rolled out to their production servers?
Clearly, Bethesda performs absolutely zero testing. These bugs are so basic, anyone spending 5 minutes using the game would spot them instantly. It’s crystal clear that Bethesda is NOT following an SDLC process. They’re just releasing code by the seat of their pants and hoping it does “something positive”.
Outsourcing
Because Fallout 76 gets worse with each successive release, this has all of the telltale signs of Bethesda outsourcing their software development efforts to an off-shore team (possibly in India). Having worked with outsourced developers in India in the past, you MUST micromanage these outsourced companies at every tiny step. You also need to be extremely explicit with how you want the implementation and you need to 100% test every piece of delivered code.
Failing to micromanage an outsourced software development company leads to the exact problems seen in Fallout 76. While I can’t be 100% certain that Bethesda is outsourcing, their release practices certainly have all of the earmarks of using this practice for Fallout 76. There’s absolutely no reason why previously working features in the game should inexplicably become broken in the next release.
And believe me, I’ve become exceedingly tired and irritated of fighting these compounding stupid bugs in this game. Not only does it show Bethesda as a low quality developer, it says they have no quality standards of any kind. You don’t intentionally roll out broken features in a formerly working product… you just don’t do this.
Chasing Abusers
Bethesda has clearly bitten off more than they can chew. They certainly have no one on their team who understands SaaS product scaling. If one gamer on the server crafting boiled water can bring the server to its knees, there’s a major problem with this product. In a properly designed multi-user product, no single user should be able to overload the server with any “standard” user interface activity. By “standard”, I mean features that the product is supposed to properly support.
There are many instances where a single user can craft foods at a crafting table which causes “Server Not Responding” or incurs major lag for other users on the server. These are sanctioned activities intended to be used by the users, yet they can break the server?
Abusers, on the other hand, find loopholes to allow them to perform activities that the software was not designed to do. For example, duplicating items by logging on and off in very unusual ways… ways in which the developer didn’t test or consider during the design phase.
Right now, Bethesda is chasing down these unintentional holes at all costs… and by that I mean, by introducing game breaking bugs that affect standard users who are not abusing. And, they’re attempting to fix these holes at the cost of ignoring the design failings of the game that also need to be addressed. Many of these design failings were introduced at release and are still waiting in the queue to be addressed by Bethesda. Yet, instead of taking care of these long standing bugs, the devs are flying by the seat of their pants fixing the holes… which honestly don’t need to be fixed as a fire drill.
Penalizing Players
Bethesda doesn’t understand the dangers of reduction. Removing or degrading product features is always a negative for the end user, never a positive. For example, the Two Shot Explosive weapons are what players long to find. These rarely dropped highly powerful weapons are, in fact, one of the sole reasons players come back to the Fallout franchise.
Sure, the questing is fun, but it’s the Legendary dropped loot from these difficult bosses that is the actual Win. It’s the trophy that says, “Hey look what I got after spending all that time defeating the Scorchbeast Queen”. By degrading, limiting and/or removing these highly sought after items from the game, this removes a substantial reason to even play Fallout 76.
If you spend an hour defeating a boss only to see it drop a 12 damage Pipe Pistol (the same as a Level 1 enemy kill), what have you really accomplished? How does that make the gamer feel? Does it make the gamer feel good about what they’ve just done? No. Does it make the gamer want to come back and do it again? No.
On the Wrong Track
Bethesda is entirely on the wrong track. If you have abusers in the game, chase them down and ban them… no holds barred. If you find a player who is carrying 300,000 weight in duplicated items, ban them. Remove them from the game. Find them all and remove them. Logic dictates that anyone carrying 25,000 Stimpaks along with 25,000 guns stacked didn’t create them through legitimate means.
You ban the abusers. You don’t code around them. You don’t hobble your universe to make the duplicated guns worthless. Instead of spending precious time alienating your intended gaming audience, you focus on making the game better for legitimate users willing to stay within the game’s design framework. For those who stray and choose to test the coding boundaries of the game, you ban them… permanently. You also make a warning statement that any persons intending to cause harm to or disrupt the services will be banned without warning. In-game abuse can only be dealt with one way, the ban hammer.
Yes, you can fix the bugs along the way that enabled that abuse, but you don’t make that your sole and entire means of existing. You focus on fixing the bugs that are getting in the way of your legitimate paying gamers who are willing to stay on the game’s “golden path”. By “golden path”, this is a software development phrase that means the track designed by the developers for end users of the software product to follow. Anyone who strays from the “golden path” may encounter bugs, unexpected consequences or crash the software system. Though, your developers should have coded proper error handling so that crashing is nearly impossible.
Yes, some users can unintentionally stray from the “golden path” occasionally. These users are not the target. It’s the users who intentionally stray from the “golden path” to exploit holes in the software to gain access, privilege or items which are unintended. Speaking of gaining access….
Dev Room
There’s been much controversy over this room. Personally, I don’t care if it exists or not. However, that this room made it into Bethesda’s Fallout 76 production servers is entirely a design miss. Such dev environments should never make it onto production servers. That this room rolled out onto the production network is a problem Bethesda needs to address internally. Users who stray from the golden path into this room isn’t the fault of the gamer. Bethesda, you left the room in the game. It was your responsibility to ensure such rooms don’t exist on the production servers. That users ended up in there, that’s your mistake, Bethesda.
Sure, you can drop the ban hammer on these users, but that’s not good public relations. In fact, dropping the ban hammer on users for entry into this room is severe. If they didn’t cause damage to the game or take anything from the room, there’s no damage done. Those users who took items from the dev room and duplicated them should be banned… not necessarily for entering the room, but for exploiting the duplication bug which disrupts a server for other players.
Again, it comes back to disruption. Any gamer intentionally causing disruption to the game outside of the “golden path” should be perma-banned. This act of disruption should be spelled out as abuse in the terms and conditions for the game.
Fallout 76 is SaaS
Even though Fallout 76 is a game, it’s also a Software-as-a-Service product and it should be treated in the same way as any SaaS product. Yet, Bethesda hasn’t the first clue of how to build or operate a SaaS product. That’s crystal clear.
Bethesda’s SDLC seems non-existent. Without any kind of software quality assurance team, there’s no way to ensure the product lives up to any kind of quality standard. Right now, this game is a piss poor attempt by a game studio at a SaaS product. A product that is on the verge of being a spectacular failure. I might even argue, it’s already reached the failure point.
Bethesda, you have a hard choice to make. If you continue to chase the abusers at the cost of fixing the REAL problems with this game, your game WILL DIE. The choice you need to make is whether to stay on this insane path of chasing abuse bugs or stop this insanity and begin fixing the real reliability and stability problems with this game. Such real problems include severe frame rate drops, enemies can spawn in unkillable states, invisibility problems (enemies and players alike), the problem with quests that can’t be completed, the problem where Legendary enemies drop without any loot at all.
Game Economy and Systems Design
Bethesda continually argues that the abusers caused disruption to the economy in the game. What economy? There is none. If you call vendors with 200 caps an economy, that’s not an economy. An economy is players buying, selling and trading with one another. You know, the whole reason you designed the game with 24 players in each “World”. Yet, when players actually tried to create an economy, you shut them down with patches and then released many of the rare items to the vendors to make them “less rare”.
Part of the reason items were rare was entirely due to incidence of spawn rates. Spawn rates, I might add, that you designed into the game intentionally. Spawn rates intended to force players to hunt for stuff. Yet now you’re all butthurt over the fact that players actually created an economy around this.
What exactly are you wanting the players to do in this game then? Aren’t the players supposed to “rebuild” the wasteland? Setting up trading shops and whatnot is exactly what players would do in a world like this. In fact, in the ruthless wild-west of the wasteland, players would likewise be ruthless in obtaining anything and everything they could. That players used duplication exploits comes with the ruthlessness of wasteland territory. The problem with the duplication exploit isn’t the duplication. It’s the disruption it causes to other player’s games. That’s the abuse vector. That’s the reason to ban-hammer the player. The server disruption is the abuse, not the duplication.
Still, you should have been warning players all along the way when their weight got too high. That you didn’t have anything in place to monitor this part of the game is a design miss. A miss that wouldn’t have been missed if you had had a proper Systems Engineer reviewing the design all along the way. Yet, you chose to rush the game to market unfinished and now you have to redesign it along the way… a redesign that is causing player unrest and player abandonment.
Patch Upsides vs Downsides
The last several patches have been attempts at thwarting the abusers by fixing the exploit vectors at the cost of not fixing long standing disrupting bugs… bugs that have existed since the game’s release (i.e., getting stuck in power armor, unkillable enemies, invisible enemies, loading screen problems, etc). This strategy has been to the entire detriment of the Fallout 76 gaming community. Not only have you alienated so many users from the game, you continue to alienate more and more with each new patch.
If you’re planning on releasing a patch, you need to focus on the upsides of patching. You know, like fixing bugs that players NEED to have fixed… like frame rate issues, like audio glitching, like server lags, like a bigger stash, like improved features. Sure, you can throw in fixes like nerfing the Two Shot and Explosive weapons, but you also need to offset these heavily negative gaming experiences by adding positive new things to the game to entice gamers back… like adding new weapons to the game to take the place of those heavily nerfed Two Shot Explosive weapons.
There’s no reason for gamers to play Fallout 76 if the Legendary dropped loot is now no better than standard dropped loot. Focusing entirely on downside patches isn’t going to win you new players. It’s simply a quick way to the death of Fallout 76… as if the game needed any more help in this department.
Overall
Bethesda, you need to rethink your strategy for Fallout 76 and future MMO endeavors. The current strategy you are taking to address the issues in this game will not bring more players to this game. In fact, you’re likely to turn this game into a wasteland with only a handful of players ever playing.
If you stay on this path, I predict that you will end up shutting down your servers for this game by the end of 2019. Gamers won’t continue to play in an environment where the loot is not worth their time.
And what the hell? Serum recipes cost 19,000+ caps? Considering you can only hold 24,000 caps in the game, this is insane. Even 6,000 caps would be excessive.
Bethesda, figure it out quick or the game ends.
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Rant Time: Polaroid Zip and App
I haven’t ranted in quite a while and it’s time, especially considering this is the new year. Polaroid is the target of my tirade today. Let’s explore.
Polaroid Zip
The Polaroid Zip is a small pocket photo printer priced around $99. You can sometimes find it on sale. But, don’t go out and buy it before you read this article!
There are a number of these small pocket Zink paper photo printers available such as the Polaroid Zip, the HP Sprocket, the Canon IVY, the LifePrint, the Kodak Mini2 and even the not-so-pocket-sized zInk Happy photo printer. Every one of these printers depends entirely on an app designed by the company selling the printer. In fact, without this app, the printer device is an entirely useless brick… they don’t support Airprint!
Useless is exactly what Polaroid Zip has become when Polaroid updated its software with a major update in mid 2018. The formerly working app, which was a just a slight bit rough around the edges, worked to produce high quality prints. This latest 2018 app version is a piece of trash the size of Mount Everest, once you toss all of these now useless Polaroid Zip printers into a mound at the landfill.
The updated app is entirely junk!
The Dangers of Portable Devices with Apps
I have no idea what compelled Polaroid (C&A Marketing) to toss out the older, completely working app and replace it with a broken piece of junk. However, it completely spells out the danger of buying into these app enabled devices.
In yesteryear, we used to buy printers which had standard printer drivers that would simply just print from any app capable of printing. On iOS, these are known as Airprint printers. With the introduction of the Polaroid Zip and similar devices, this is no longer a concept in the printer industry. Now, you must using a single proprietary app to funnel and print your images. If the app breaks, you can’t print.
I’m not sure WHY this standardization change made its way out of the printer industry, but I don’t like it one bit. It makes the devices far less flexible than their distant printer brethren and it makes printing images far more complicated than it needs to be. I don’t want to have to always use your stupid little app just to print an image. I want to be able to print from any app on my phone. Being tied to and dependent on your stupid little app is not only an asinine requirement, it’s insanely stupid. Please, just open your printer up to iOS as an Airprint device. Let us use whatever app we want to use. I don’t want to be dependent on your stupid app that you can hack up and break at the drop of a hat.
Polaroid as a Poster Child
I’m sorry that I have to rail so hard against Polaroid, but they made their bed and now they must lie in it. It’s their app and they ruined a perfectly good printing device by producing such a crap app to go with it.
The older app was at least functional, had semi-intuitive tools and simply just worked. This new app requires jumping between multiple screens, has tools buried in several different places, is more complicated to use, they removed “magic” enhancements designed to print images correctly on Zink paper and overall hobbled the printer.
Worse, now you have to waste tons of paper because you have to tweak and retweak the image OUTSIDE of the app to get a decent print out of the printer. The Zink paper is expensive and wasting sheet after sheet just to get a print is stupid and costly! With the old app, I never wasted one sheet. What I saw on screen was what I got out of the printer (pretty much). This new app provides no such predictable output. What you see on the screen is definitely not what you’ll get out of the printer… and this is why this newest 2018 update is such a #FAIL on Polaroid’s part.
Get With The Program, Polaroid
Polaroid, do the right thing! Pull that crap of an app from the store and revert to the older app version. Let your new developer update that crap app to the point where it is at the same level as the older app. That might take 6 months to 1 year. Whatever it takes, just do it.
For now, remove that app from the store and put the old one back. This new one sucks hard and doesn’t work. Right now, my printer is a useless $99 brick. Polaroid, do you want to reimburse me my money?
Class action lawsuit anyone?
If you’ve had a similar experience with your pocket photo printer from another brand, please leave a comment below and let me know.
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Why was the V TV series (2011) cancelled?
As Randocity had predicted in this earlier Boycott V Series article, V has officially been cancelled by ABC as of May 13, 2011 (Friday the 13th). Let this article serve as a cautionary tale for future producers. This was not a good day for the V series cast and crew as they had just lost their jobs. Oh well, such is life in show business. However, this cancellation goes to prove yet another experiment turns into a failure at the expense of what started as a good TV series. Why was the V series from 2011 cancelled? That’s quite a story story in and of itself. Let’s explore.
Why was the V TV series cancelled?
Since V’s (V stands for Visitor) second season launch in January, the producers and/or ABC had made the insane choice to not allow V back onto Hulu, iTunes, Amazon or any other streaming media service (including ABC’s very own streaming TV web site). That meant that there was no way to watch back episodes or catch up on missed V episodes. This also meant as people began missing episodes, they couldn’t catch up and said, “f-it” and moved on. This choice effectively forced people to watch the series on TV live the night it broadcast or buy a recorder to time shift it.
Lessons Learned?
When your TV series targets the exact age demographic of people who watch their shows via Hulu (or any other streaming site) and then when you decide to cut these exact viewers off from your show, it’s ultimately the kiss of death. Ultimately, this is the reason the series failed. V is, unfortunately, also a perfect example of what not to do with streaming media when promoting a TV series. Don’t shun streaming media, embrace it. Embrace it with open arms and nurture and foster its growth. As a producer you want, no, you need viewers. The more viewers the better. It doesn’t matter if you have to rip the video of each episode and personally seed the file on bitorrent yourself. Do it!
What you don’t want is, well, exactly what the producers did to V. Don’t bite the hand the feeds you. Worse, the show began to feel the effects of its lower and lower viewership (and ratings) and began making more and more desperate, drastic and insane story choices to try and recover that lost viewership. It didn’t work. These “creative” choices saw main characters killed off from the show, yet didn’t do anything to increase viewership. This only made the show worse and more pointless. But, these story choices were simply a side effect of the stupidity of not allowing streaming sites to stream (or store back catalog) this series. You can’t change a story to attempt make up for that poorly conceived ‘no streaming’ decision. To get viewers back, the producers would have had to rescind that decision and allow the show back onto Hulu, iTunes and Amazon. By April, it was already too late to rescind that decision and gain back that lost viewership. Ultimately, the series was doomed.
Cost Per Episode
One must recognize that this TV series was quite costly to produce. While I am unable to find an exact figure to place on the cost per episode, because this series relied almost entirely on CGI to handle the interior shots of the Visitor ships, this only added to the mounting pressure of producing this series. I’m positive that the cost per episode directly contributed to ABC’s decision to pull the plug, but only because of a drastic drop in viewership. The exceedingly questionable decision to remove the series entirely from streaming services left a huge gaping viewership hole that the producers couldn’t fill. In essence, it tied the producer’s hands and simultaneously left the series effectively without an audience. Meaning, the age group who would tune in to watch V wouldn’t be willing to do it solely on an over-the-air broadcast. That meant forcing viewers to sit down at a specific time in front of a TV or buy a device like a recorder to record the series. Both were unpleasant propositions, especially when you could formerly tune in at your leisure on your phone, laptop or tablet device. Thus, the viewership drastically tanked. With that drastic a viewership drop, ABC was left with no choice but to pull the plug on the series.
Back Catalogs & Advertisers
Any show should always allow a back catalog of episodes to be available on streaming sites for even just a few months to allow viewers to keep up with a show in progress. A back catalog of older episodes allows viewers to take their time catching up and feel good about the time when they watch. Sure, these views may not give the immediacy of the Neilsen ratings for over-the-air TV, but so what? That system is so antiquated, it needs to die. Instead, we need a new ratings system that takes into account real viewers from streaming sites and next day views. Skip the ‘night of’ viewership numbers and go with a model that resembles how people are actually consuming TV today. Internet enabled TVs are not going away and neither are mobile devices. Hello advertisers like Proctor and Gamble, get with it. Same day viewership of TV shows is over. That day has passed. The future of TV is through next day viewing or even month later views. That’s where the advertising revenues will be had.
So Long ‘V’
It’s unfortunate that the producers felt the need to make stupid choices like ‘no streaming’. It was a gamble that simply didn’t pay off. It turned the series into a shambles through poor story choices. Oh well, V has had its short-lived day. Tomorrow is another day and with it new TV shows to sink your time slots into. But, let’s just make sure they continue to do it on our, the viewer’s, terms.
To the producers, embrace change or perish. That’s the prime lesson to take away from the ‘V’ experiment. Yes, the V ‘no streaming’ experiment was truly a failure.
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