Moving Fast, Breaking Things

If you ever worked for a corporation for any length of time you probably ran into some corporate philosophy that a management type read in a book or heard about at a seminar and for at least a while the Kansas City Star was operating under a “Fail Fast” policy.

Which – when you strain out the associated bullshit – basically means: “We’re going to try a lot of different things and abandon anything that doesn’t work immediately.”

Never knowing when to shut the fuck up – a trait few companies encourage – when I was informed about our new “Fail Fast” philosophy I responded: “The word that’s jumping out at me is ‘fail’.”

Possibly because some of our biggest success stories started with good ideas that took a while to catch on and right now I’m thinking of:

• Seinfeld

• The Beatles

• The light bulb

• The personal computer

• Kentucky Fried Chicken

• The Harry Potter books

• AirBnB

• Reddit

• HDTV

• The 3-Point Shot

And when you think about it…

• Christianity

I could go on and I think I will.

There are thousands of examples of things that failed at first, but eventually succeeded and if you’re going to quit at the first sign of trouble you’re going to abandon a lot of great ideas, but promoting a “Fail Fast” philosophy is a way to avoid responsibility (the true goal of most bureaucrats) because when you fail you can always say it’s all part of a bigger plan and people should actually be impressed with just how fast you’re failing.

“Move fast and break things” was one of the five values that Mark Zuckerberg promoted (no idea what the other four are, but “Make enough money that even a computer dork that looks like me can get laid” seems like a distinct possibility).

And Now a Word About Moving Fast and Breaking Stuff

Not all that long ago I was backing out of my very narrow driveway and somehow managed to catch the edge of my front bumper on a gate post and since my Toyota Matrix is put together using the same construction method as a set of high-quality LEGOs (I’m not kidding; some parts are actually snapped together) I pretty much tore the front bumper off my car.

So I followed Mark’s Zuckerberg’s advice: “I moved fast and broke stuff.”

Which might be a great philosophy if you have 250.3 billion dollars in the bank and can afford to abandon cars by the side of the road once the gas gauge dips below a quarter tank, but is incredibly shitty advice for the rest of us because replacing my bumper cost $894.75 and that’s for a really crappy car.

If you think about it – and I have – “Move fast and break things” is the 21^st Century equivalent of “Let them eat cake” (an out of touch Rich Person response to Regular People problems) and we all know how well that worked out for Marie.

In any case…

I started thinking about all this when Elon Musk defended what he’s been doing by admitting he’s made mistakes and plans on making more and encouraged people to correct him when he’s wrong, so it’s one of those “I’m going to ride a bull full speed through a china shop and let the Little People sweep up afterwards” philosophies promoted by people who don’t suffer the consequences of their actions.

BTW: You know who also “Failed Fast”?

Custer.

And while we’re on the subject; while Elon cuts government spending for things like cancer research, he’s happy to keep receiving government contracts himself and – according to the internet – in 2021 Space X received a multi-billion contract to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon so apparently those DEI policies are only bad and stupid when someone else promotes them and they don’t make you money.

And here’s a story about that:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/musk-works-slash-federal-spending-firms-received-billions

And they clearly should have given that money to me instead because I could cut the cost of that program in half by suggesting the first woman and person of color on the moon be Serena Williams (two DEI birds with one stone) because from what I saw at the Super Bowl, Serena appears to be a highly-evolved superior species and might not need a space suit to survive in a vacuum.

And if she happens to run into one of those Aliens that seem to populate space ships more often than not, I’m not sure I’d bet on the Alien.

Every year the NFL tells us how incredibly important the Super Bowl is and every year they treat the actual game like an afterthought that has to be squeezed in between commercials and halftime shows and shots of celebrities who never appear to be all that interested in the game.

According to the internet, Super Bowl halftimes are twice as long as regular season halftimes, there are more commercials and a higher volume of ad time (which affects what happens on the field) and that’s why I drew a Super Bowl parade with football marching behind the NFL’s greater concerns and if I’d had more room I could have made the parade even longer.

Having said that…

If there was ever a Super Bowl in which minimizing the actual game would be appropriate it would be this last Chiefs-Eagles game because it was never close and I say that as Chiefs fan.

But I also say this as Chiefs fan:

It was a great season (c’mon, they went 15-2 and weren’t even trying in one of those losses) and four teams have never ever been to a Super Bowl and 12 teams have never ever won a Super Bowl and only seven teams have four or more Super Bowl wins and only six teams have been to seven or more Super Bowls.

Nevertheless I did not enjoy this year’s Super Bowl, but things could definitely be worse:

I could be a Jets fan.

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by multiple news stories like Donald Trump announcing the Gulf of Mexico was now the Gulf of America, Canada should be our 51^st state, we might take Greenland by force and all the Palestinians needed to get the hell out of Gaza so we can turn that troubled piece of real estate into the Branson of the Middle East.

So all those stories were swirling around in what’s left of my mind and then Trump announced 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum which will cause inflation and piss off our allies like Canada, Brazil, Mexico and South Korea and it struck me that if we were looking for common sense we’d have to import it because there’s not a lot of it in the United States right now.

And now a word about the Gulf of America.

So Donald Trump decides the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America which gave the rest of the world a big laugh and then they kept right on calling it the Gulf of Mexico and so did the Associated Press.

And according to Our Future AI Robot Overlord that is currently biding its time and answering questions for Google:

“According to available information, Mexico has a longer coastline on the Gulf of Mexico than the United States, with approximately 1,743 miles of Mexican coastline bordering the Gulf compared to around 1,631 miles of US coastline.”

Which might explain why it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, but Trump likes doing phony patriotic things like dry-humping the American flag (which can lead to Red, White and Blue balls) that get MAGA hat wearers so excited they start chanting “USA!…USA!…USA!” while standing in line at the Golden Corral Buffet deciding whether to go with the meatloaf or chicken-fried steak or, quite possibly, both.

(OK, now that I’ve written it, that last line is total bullshit because I was trying to think of White Trash activities, but nobody’s Whiter and Trashier than my family and we did stuff liking parking cars on our backyard lawn and one of the pickups parked there has been in the same spot so long a tree has grown up through the engine compartment and I didn’t make that up. Also, meatloaf and chicken-fried steak are incredibly delicious and two of my favorite meals although you might want to question my food critic credentials because I’m pretty sure you could deep fry an Air Jordan and I’d consider it edible.)

Anyway…

The Associated Press reached the reasonable conclusion that just because a petulant, overweight billionaire with a bad comb-over wants to call the body of water directly to our South the Gulf of America, nobody else in the world is doing it so they wouldn’t either.

So being a 78-year-old brat Trump had AP reporters banned from White House events.

Which seems like Petty Bullshit (it is) but it’s also a Big Deal because basically Donald Trump is saying report the news the way I want it reported or I won’t give you access to the White House. Which is a really bad precedent and we’ve only got three years and 11 months to go.

Hang in there, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

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