5 Thoughts for October 20, 2015

1. I remember a handful of years ago, cable companies lying about attrition, aka cord-cutting. Well, it's clear as day that cord-cutting is real, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. I cut the cord some 12 years ago; glad to see others have figured it out, too. I would expect that the downward trend has been fueled by the plethora of plug-in devices, such as Chromecast, which has sold 10M units in two years.
2. Speaking of cord-cutting, ESPN is going to cut 4.3% of its workforce, due to subscriber losses and lower revenue, which apparently has shaken the media world up quite a bit. Not that you needed this piece of news to realize what was going on; I've written about it before, that the media and ESPN in particular has obfuscated its viewing numbers. The most-viewed sporting events in the US, has always been on broadcast TV -- the most watched sporting event in the US, in the history of television, was this past year's Super Bowl, where nearly half of the US population tuned in, at one point in the game; the most-watched college football game, ever, was USC-Texas in the 2005 Rose Bowl. With services such as Sling TV, sports fans can, at-will, subscribe during the season and unsubscribe during the off-season, without penalties you would normally incur with cable. This will only hurt ESPN further.
3. Hurricane Olaf doesn't appear to be headed towards Hawaii. Nonetheless, if you add up all of the hurricanes and tropical storms that have originated from the Central Pacific and Eastern Pacific which have affected in some way, the Hawaiian Islands, Olaf makes 14 this season, with one more month to go. On a related note: If you look at the strongest El Nino season on record (1997), compared to the current one, you'll notice that 1997's was stronger, but the surface temperature this year is warmer over a much wider area off the west coast of US; even the Indian Ocean is much warmer this year than it was in 1997, but don't tell that to climate skeptics.
4. Climate change is real. It's not just that the tropical whitefly -- a pest I researched in elementary school for a paper! (yes, we wrote research papers in elementary school!) -- has spread throughout Portland, or that the pine beetle I took a photo of, seven years ago, is now all the way north, just short of the Yukon territories, or that the small sandy beach in I once used to lie down on in Honolulu is no longer visible except at low tide, or that my research turned up the fact that half a century ago a typical winter season in Portland included several feet of snow whereas now, it's a good year if we have several inches of snow. None of that really matters. What really matters, is that there is raw data showing the anomaly of surface temperatures around the world getting worse, and far too many people just don't give a damn. That's what bothers me.
5. The only words I can find to describe Lucas Padgett -- the brother of Jared Padgett, a student who brought a bag of guns and ammo to Reynolds High School last year and killed a student and injured a teacher, who wanted that bag, the unused ammo and the weapon used to murder a kid -- are deeply profane ones...but here goes: BDITU. If that wasn't enough outrage, the judge, Michael Greenlick, whose ruling inferred that he would return these items associated with a child's murder, isn't up for re-election until 2021: BDITU honorable mention.