The Latest Generation

The Glorious Revolution occurred about three and a half years after James II ascended to the English throne. People had been concerned about how James might change the government, but not enough to do anything significant for several years. Why did it work out that way, how common is such a period (i.e. between a change and its resolution) and what might it tell us about our current political situation?

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The Diary of John Evelyn includes some up-to-the-minute reactions to the events of 1688 (e.g. “10th June, 1688. A YOUNG PRINCE born, which will cause disputes.”)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42081/42081-h/42081-h.htm

There’s also a bit in the diary about meeting with an 11-year-old prodigy. Asked if the recent revolution was comparable to anything he had heard of, he gives the example of Constantine the Great and Maxentius - a Roman emperor with a 6 year reign ending in 312.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxentius

The diary also has the specific intended mention of  the bishops in England who thought the events  of the Revolution were what was foretold in the Revelation of St. John - see 26 April 1689 for details.

Here's the paper that pointed me to John Evelyn and his observations at the time.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4091697

Revelation 13:5 King James Version (KJV)

5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

"The History of England from the Accession of James II" came up in one of my searches. No guarantee of anything except that it may be of use  to anyone wanting another view of that period.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2439/2439-h/2439-h.htm

'The King explicitly avowed to the ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately intended to ally himself, that all his views had undergone a change, and that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather, his father, and his brother, of no account in Europe. "I am in no condition," he said to the Spanish Ambassador, "to trouble myself about what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for my religion.”'

One of my older tweets on why this next month (July 2020) might be interesting:

https://twitter.com/generationalize/status/1097257156712136706

Included for timeline, although I don't agree with the conclusion, since James II did not appear to be motivated by increased religious freedom.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/glorious-revolution-conservatives-should-not-celebrate-religious-tyranny/

 After recording, found that James II's queen was  Mary of Modena, which is probably rarely mentioned in narratives of the Revolution because having two different Marys in the story is ... confusing. 

The outro is the end of Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around, the title track from his fourth and final American Records recording. It's quoting from the 6th chapter of Revelation, which seems appropriate given all the rest.

Yes, there's a very obvious edit about 10 minutes in, where I had to insert the word "three" to describe how many centuries since the Glorious Revolution. We regret the error.

I can be found on Twitter @generationalize, and occasionally blogging at crisis.generationalize.com

Four months of job searching. Some jobs are coming back around, some different possibilities are showing up. Plus a bunch of thought about our current Fourth Turning.

A list of companies that have gone bankrupt due to COVID-19. Doesn't mean they'll never come back, but in recessions it often does mean that.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2020/05/03/coronavirus-bankruptcy-tracker-these-major-companies-are-failing-amid-the-shutdown/

Didn't even touch on restaurants and similar sources of food, for which a few weeks of closure has become permanent, and which also will have wide ranging effects.  Here's an article on Stan's Donuts, as a single example.

https://la.eater.com/2020/4/10/21216543/stans-donuts-closed-los-angeles-classic

Jurassic Park droplet scene...which doesn't really do that good a job of describing the issue. What should have happened at the end was Ian Malcolm saying (to the empty jeep) something like "See, I could've predicted that he would jump out of here at some point, but wouldn't have known it was here. Or that anything here was important." [standard Jeff Goldblum pause/stutter] "For example."

https://youtu.be/n-mpifTiPV4

Covid-19 testing in Los Angeles County

https://covid19.lacounty.gov/testing/

A look back at previous episodes that could be of interest these days. 

Here are the episodes mentioned in episode order:

Ep. 6 - Synthococcus Novae 

Ep. 10 - Unravellings

Ep. 12 - Where’s Poppa v. Quick Change

Ep. 13 - Welcoming Our Female Overlords 

Ep. 18 - Forty Years

Ep. 20 - Bob Newhart, JFK, and Hamlet

Ep. 21 - Why So Angry 

Ep. 26 - Unions in the Crisis

Ep. 30 - Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait 

Ep. 34 - The Crisis of 2020

Ep. 37 - Waiting for the Worms

Ep. 43 - Lost Boys and Golden Girls 

Ep. 49 - Unforced Errors

Still seeking a new position, here in the age of COVID-19, and what's new with that.

LA 2028 info can be found at https://la28.org

Here's the Twitter discussion - well, my part of it - on Financial Planning for different generations

https://twitter.com/generationalize/status/1252834711694540802

Since this is a generational analysis, trying to understand how to help the Hero generation led to how it happened last time around, which is how I ended up considering George Bailey and how he dealt with the ups and downs of the 3rd and 4th Turnings that he lived through.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/

The lesson that director Frank Capra took from those crazy times - or at least how he saw the G.I. Generation handle it - was "Keep trying to do right, do better, make the world better for those around you." The scene where the new homeowners get a full ritual welcoming to the "castle" seems much more like George trying to make the world better, not merely making life better for himself. (Though he still needs help from Guardian Angel Clarence to make it through.)

Continuing with the job seeker notes, this time after an April-long break.

My Covid-19 visualizations on Tableau Public. Turns out, though, that the population count is at an odd grain, and that throws off the death rate per 1000 calculation.  Improvements in progress.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/patrick.bowman#!/vizhome/CoronavirusCOVID-19Cases_15886328387010/DecentMap

Here's the Imbellus web site:  https://www.imbellus.com/

I’m on Twitter: @generationalize

Can we tell the start of a Fourth Turning by noticing the frequency and intensity of nation-level unforced errors? A look at the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when in retrospect the nation was clearly falling apart, and the unforced errors during that decade that might have been good indicators of what was happening.

https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/the-notorious-flight-of-mathias-rust-7101888/

“At about this time, Soviet investigators would later tell Rust, radar controllers realized something was terribly wrong, but it was too late for them to act.”

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration released a publication called “Soviet Military Power” which was frankly intended to make the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics look more powerful than it was. In 1989, someone FINALLY put out a response to it, called Soviet Military Power, Annotated” which pointed out that it was frankly a propaganda document. Unfortunately, the annotations were also frankly propaganda. At one point it alludes to Rust’s flight as having a lot of lucky coincidences that just happened to embarrass the Soviet Union on Border Guard day. It implies, that is, that Mathias Rust’s flight sure looked like an intentional propaganda stunt that must have had direct help from someone who wanted to embarrass the USSR> Anyway, if it was the case that this was anything else, I’m rather confident that Rust would have been “disappeared” a while ago.

Googling us intelligence tracking Mathias Rust leads to a “Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War” - nothing there, really, that I used here, but it was interesting reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Solidarity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Round_Table_Agreement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severomorsk_Disaster

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/11/world/soviet-naval-blast-called-crippling.html

Listing them here for additional clarity and impact.

• 1979 - Afghanistan
• 1980 - Solidarity
• 1983 - KAL 007
• 1985 - Chernenko dies
• 1986 - Chernobyl
• 1987 - Mathias Rust
• 1989 - Berlin Wall Falls
• 1991 - August Coup

HBO’s miniseries on Chernobyl influenced my views of the Chernobyl disaster by making the causes clear enough to be enthralling cinema. It’s a good intro to the disaster, although parts of it are fictionalized.

I could not find the cosmonaut cartoon, but saw it at work every day in 1985-1987. There was another cartoon I remember but also couldn’t find about Solidarity: Polish &  Soviet leaders discuss the labor union, and assume that it was engineered by reactionary forces in the West. It then shows a small group of people reading from The Communist Manifest: Workers of the world, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

That sixth Star Trek film is The Undiscovered Country, released in December 1991, only a few weeks before the official dissolution of the Soviet Union.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102975/

Continuing with the job seeker notes and how it is interacting with these days of COVID-19.

Nothing in particular to add for links here, this week at least. Except perhaps to note that googling "SPY Chart" will get you a decent chart of the S&P 500 SPDR/SPY ETF. 

And as ever that it's worthwhile to watch Derry Girls, from which I derived the style of my unexpected purchase of a few hundred S&P ETF shares.

It's a week later and, yes, I'm still out looking for work. The surprising thing is how quickly my situation has gone from Unusual to Standard. Notes on the coronavirus, the Big Reset Button, and everything else going on.

Relativity Space: https://www.relativityspace.com

For California, here's the site for unemployment insurance. You can sign up the day you are let go - and should, since there is a waiting period before benefits start. (Although probably waived due to the masses of people having to stop work because of COVID-19): https://www.edd.ca.gov

After my resume is updated, I'll be starting on my LinkedIn profile as well, so don't expect to much from this right away: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatpatbowman/

Check earlier episodes of The Latest Generation for notes on The Crisis of 2020, my thoughts on the arrival of that crisis, and impeachment.

Here's a good site on current status of COVID-19

https://ncov2019.live/data

Some thoughts on job-searching in the modern era, and how it might be different for a GenXer in a Crisis/FourthTurning. These thoughts are based, of course, on personal experiences during a current job search. Other episodes based on this job search are expected ....

Every once in a while someone alludes to a specific generation being defined by a specific technology that the cohort grew up with. Why generally does it have issues, and when might it be a good idea?

Here's the article that started it, with the Papaya Pay discussion with CEO Patrick Kanns at the start.

https://www.builtinla.com/2019/10/31/la-fintech-trends

A few results from the search for “Why is Gen Z averse to credit card debt” 

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/research/millennials-and-credit-card-debt-study/

Although it says that Gen X, Millennials, AND gen Z had increases in credit card debt.

This one happens to use a similar definition for Gen Z as we’ve described here but also says they don’t have a real problem with credit cards

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/18/credit-cards-report-gen-z-taking-more-debt/2008655001/

As does this one…

https://www.paymentssource.com/list/mobile-first-gen-z-doesnt-fear-credit-cards-debt

and this

https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/gen-z-is-racking-up-card-debt-after-era-of-tightwad-millennials

Some episodes I mention within this one (can also be found on Apple Podcasts, of course):

http://traffic.libsyn.com/latest/Ep._23_There_is_No_Gen_Z_-_The_Latest_Generation.mp3

http://traffic.libsyn.com/latest/Ep._36_-_The_Movie_Prediction_-_The_Latest_Generation_.mp3

http://traffic.libsyn.com/latest/Ep._46_-_Star_Wars_-_The_Latest_Generation.mp3

You can find me on Twitter: @generationalize or (occasionally) blogging at http://crisis.generationalize.com and http://stories.generationalize.com