A disturbance in the force: Disney's universe is all about money, people. It gets as little of mine as possible.

Hard pass for me. I'd read vintage phone books before I give Disney any more money. To paraphrase the esteemed Ignatius J. Reilly, "Veneration of Disney is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate."

Will “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” rebalance Disney’s universe? (The Economist)

Getting the franchise right is crucial to Disney’s future in theme parks, toys and streaming

THIS WEEK “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” will dominate the global box office, and will probably delight fans across the galaxy. Yet the “Star Wars” franchise has not been nearly the success story for its owner, Disney, as its other blockbuster factory, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which this year produced the highest-grossing film of all time, “Avengers: Endgame”. The story of why that may be is worth telling, because getting “Star Wars” right would further Disney’s long-term ambitions across its businesses, from toys and theme parks to its latest endeavour, streaming television ...

Post-trutherism: "We have become passive consumers of bullshit."

Three new books, each with a variation on a theme of George Orwell: “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”

​'Bullshit is a greater enemy than lies' –​ lessons from three new books on the post-truth era, by Stuart Jeffries (The Guardian)

From Trump’s phoney claims to the Brexit ‘£350m a week for the NHS’ promise, we have become mired in a sea of bogus truths. But what can we do about it?

Bullshit is having a moment. A spate of new books, including Newsnight presenter Evan Davis’s Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It, Buzzfeed correspondent James Ball’s Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, and political journalist Matthew d’Ancona’s Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back are all premised on the notion that we are in a new era.

A bit about each book. First:

Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It, by Evan Davis

What’s the big idea?

Western societies have become rather like the Soviet Union “in being characterised by a pervasive tendency of those in authority to overstate their case. They bombard us with messages that are disconnected from reality as we see it. In the Soviet case it was the reality that was shameful; in ours, it is the communicators.”

Second:

Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back, by Matthew d’Ancona

What’s the big idea?

Post-truth came into being long before Trump, d’Ancona concedes. Anthropologists say we have been lying since early humans organised themselves in tribes. But in the 20th century humanity went shamelessly beyond just lying. French postmodernists argued there was no such thing as truth and objectivity, only power and interests. Unwittingly, the likes of Jean-François Lyotard were paving the way for Trump’s senior aide Kellyanne Conway.

Third:

Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World, by James Ball

What’s the big idea?

We mustn’t just focus on new technologies in explaining the rise of bullshit. We should follow the money. Old media outlets are suffering falls in ad revenue, which results in fewer reporters, which results in a journalistic ecology wherein regurgitating what politicians say is more cost effective than digging into what they’re saying. Fake news sites take this economic imperative to its conclusion: if a story is going to be unchecked or exaggerated, why not just make it up altogether and reduce production costs to next to nothing? The end result of this ecology, Ball argues, is that we give no more weight to the BBC or the New York Times than to a Facebook status or American Patriot Daily.

Even major news sites have sponsored links at the foot of their stories, often linking to fake or hyped news. As a result, Ball, argues: “Traditional media boosts and profits from fake news even as it tries to fight it.”

Duggins: Indy developer has "vested interest" in our community, and millennials prefer biking alongside Padgett cranes.

There's something surreal about the conversations taking place as to the preferences of the $60,000 per year millennials who'll be playing bocce ball at the Flaherty and Collins development, which I believe is slated to be called Gahan "Business of Residency" Manor.

That's because the words "business of residency" must be chanted as economic development mantras just as often as "trickle down" and "ripple effect," so that the turbine powered by George Orwell spinning in his grave continues to power our street non-sweepers.

But you see, these millennials won't need as many parking spaces because millennials like to bicycle and walk, and they're not auto-centric like their parents, and the former Coyle site is located in a "pedestrian friendly" area.

With almost no crosswalks, without any efforts made to promote a culture of walkability, because at a previous meeting David Duggins rushed to reassure the crowd that these walkers and bikers would be perfectly content with unaltered, adjacent, two fast lanes comprising one-way arterial streets, as built to interstate specifications, and thus discouraging walking and biking.

You see, THESE millennials will be different, and enjoy 18-wheelers thundering past as they ride to ... to ... where again are they riding in a city almost entirely without bike lanes, and no coherent plans to add ones that might actually connect to each other?

The comparatively fewer cars parked there won't be a problem unless they are, at which point the developer will have to deal with it ... perhaps by buying adjacent homes with further TIF One Card bonds to create more stormwater-friendly impermeable surface?

Even better ...

AT&T, which has a location across from the development, donated a 24-space lot to the city to be utilizes specifically for the development.

Yes!

More prime infill building space goes toward surface parking, contributing to stormwater issues, which millennials can reach by walking across a one-way arterial street with bike lanes that go nowhere and connect to nothing, where crosswalks are almost unheard of, and which -- thus far in the mayor's down-low stealth campaign to convince selected private questioners that he understands this so well that nothing can be done to change it for two or more years -- nothing has been done to change it now, and never will, in two or twenty years.

Do any of these people really believe a single word he's saying?

I understand Duggins, Gahan, Flaherty, Collins, Rosenbarger and Gibson spouting outlandish propaganda. I suppose now, at long last, I must finally concede that Scott Wood is mortally afflicted with the gibberish contagion, too.

This makes me very sad.

Doctor, my broom, please.

New Albany apartments receive zoning approval, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — The public funding has been OK'd, a substantial tax credit pledged, and on Tuesday, the developer seeking to construct a $26 million apartment and retail complex in downtown New Albany garnered zoning approval from the city.

Flaherty and Collins received unanimous approval from the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals to construct a 191-unit apartment development on the former Coyle auto property from 501 to 515 E. Spring St.

A variance was required for the project in part because the number of parking spaces planned doesn't meet the city's standard for apartments of similar size.

"He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist."

More philosophy than hardcore economics, but since hardcore economics possesses its own voluminous imagination, I'd say we can call it even.

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber (Strike! Magazine)

... These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

Fat Lip: "And the Texan just wasn’t going to have any of this journalism nonsense."

At LEO's Fat Lip blog, Jonathan Meador considers the Jeffersonville city council's no-tolls resolution, and recounts a surreal interview with 1Si's master of ceremonies, Michael Dalby. Is it just me, or are cracks in the pro-bridges contingent's demeanor becoming ever more obvious?

One Southern Indiana?, by jmeador on utter bullshit.

At any rate, here’s part of a transcript of a phone conversation I had with Dalby, which was painful but interesting in the sense that it shows the kind of temperament these pro-bridges folks bring to the table.