Elon Musk

 I recently read Walter Isaacson's lengthy (670 pages with notes in hardcover) 2023 biography of Elon Musk.  This is a narrative account of Musk's life from his childhood in South Africa to his takeover of Twitter.  In my view while not without some points of interest the book is far too long and neglects the big picture.  I don't recommend it.

Elon Musk is of course an important and controversial figure in contemporary American life.  Among other things he helped create and grow Tesla and SpaceX two very successful businesses.  More recently he purchased Twitter.  But at times he seems his own worst enemy behaving erratically and constantly getting into trouble for little reason.  So far he has avoided disaster but his luck may run out at some point.  The purchase of Twitter seemed particularly ill-advised and could be a sign that he is having trouble keeping his life together.

Musk was born in South Africa in 1971.  At 18 he emigrated to Canada to attend college and soon moved to the US.  He was entrepreneurial cofounding Zip2 in 1995.  The company was purchased in 1999 for $305 million of which Musk's share was $22 million.  Musk then cofounded X.com which became part of Paypal.  Paypal was purchased by Ebay for $1.5 billion in 2002.  Musk next founded SpaceX and in 2004 was an early investor in Tesla which he soon came to dominate.  After some early struggles SpaceX and Tesla have both become very successful.   

What are the factors in Musk's success?  A lot of it was luck of course but on the other hand Musk gave himself chances to be lucky by taking risks.  It is hard to win the lottery if you never buy a ticket and Musk bought some tickets.  He was a tough sometimes abusive boss and that can encourage employees to work harder and accomplish more.  He had an advantage here in that rockets and electric cars are the sort of things many engineers want to work on and are willing to tolerate some workplace abuse for the opportunity.  

Another Musk insight is that products and organizations often contain a lot of fat, unnecessary parts and people that can be eliminated in the interests of efficiency.  If carried too far this can be idiotic as in the episode from the book covered in my previous post but in a lot of cases there are major savings available.  Musk also seems to have had reasonable good judgement about what people will find attractive in a product.  However his record here is more mixed as some features like the gulf wing doors on some Tesla's just aren't worth the trouble.

All of this along with Musk's chaotic romantic life are covered in the book but mostly in anecdotal form.  It is often hard to tell what is important and what isn't.  I would have preferred a shorter book with more analysis.  The book has some value, it does provide some insight into Musk and his good points and bad points.  The book is divided into 95 short chapters so you don't have to read it all at once.  Still in the end I expect most people can find better ways to spend their time.

Coverup

I recently finished reading Walter Isaacson's massive biography of Elon Musk.  I plan to give a longer review but for now will just relate one anecdote from the book.   Musk is trying to cut the cost of installing a solar roof.  So according to the book (p. 370-371) Musk advised his people that "... they should question the requirement that installers must work around every vent and chimney sticking up from a house.  The pipes for dryers and ventilator fans should simply be sheared off and the solar roof tiles placed on top of them, he suggested.  The air would still be able to vent under the tiles .."

This is of course idiotic advice.  The air won't vent efficiently if at all.  And more importantly in the case of a dryer exhaust the lint won't find its way out.  It will get hung up and block what little air flow is left.  Which could cause the dryer to overheat and start a fire.  Since lint is extremely flammable this is not good.  

Also even if this solution wasn't dangerous it isn't code which means Musk's company is likely to be eventually forced to fix any solar roofs installed in this way.  Which will cost them far more than if they had done it right in the first place.

In fairness to Musk it isn't clear that this method was ever actually used.  Sometimes his people were able to ignore his stupider suggestions.  And if it was used I expect the additional costs of being forced to redo installations in a code compliant way would have quickly caused the method to be dropped.  Musk in fact expected some of his cost cutting ideas to prove impractical when tried and have to be reversed.

Still this episode shows why some people find Musk easy to dislike.  And also why many people are reluctant to buy houses with solar installations on the roof.  Who knows what problems are lurking.

Election Night Bet

 I recently reviewed "Going Infinite" Michael Lewis's book about the rise and fall of Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF) and his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.  The book contains some stories about SBF's time at Jane Street Capital.  One of these stories is about trades Jane Street made on election night 2016.

As related in the book (pages 67-71) Jane Street had noted that the financial markets were moving in response to events seen as changing the odds as to whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would win the 2016 US Presidential election with a Trump victory seen as bearish.  Jane Street decided that if they could figure out on election night who was winning faster than anybody else this would give them a profitable edge as they could trade ahead of (front run) the markets. So with SBF playing a major part Jane Street set up a team to rapidly analyze the returns on election night as they came in, update the odds on who would win, and trade on the new information.    By the book's account this worked well with Jane Street acting on updated information minutes before the rest of the market got the word.  To quote the book "... Around one in the morning, after twenty-four thrilling hours without a break, Sam left the trading desk to get some sleep.  The markets seemed to have fully digested the news of Trump's victory.  Jane Street was sitting on maybe the single most profitable trade it had ever done.  ..".  

But then things go wrong.  Again quoting the book "Three hours later he returned to find that the markets had changed their minds about the likely effect of Donald Trump on the world's stock markets.  .. "What had been a three-hundred-million dollar profit for Jane Street was now a three-hundred-million dollar loss," said Sam ..".

But this account leaves an obvious question unanswered.  Why didn't Jane Street nail down their three-hundred-million paper profit by closing out their positions at one in morning after the markets had "fully digested" the fact that Trump had won?   They no longer had an information edge on the rest of the market so leaving the positions on was taking a risk without any expected gain.

Possibly the markets at one in the morning were not liquid enough to easily close out their positions.    However this would suggest the markets had moved in their direction because of their trades and not because the markets were belatedly realizing that Trump was winning.  But then their three-hundred-million dollar paper profit was at least in part an illusion as closing out their trades would inevitably  move the markets against them and they would not be able to realize the full paper profit.

Or possibly there was another reason.  But as told the story doesn't really make sense.  This is one of the weaknesses of Lewis's book, for whatever reason he seems unduly accepting of SBF's view of the world. 

Going Infinite

 I recently read "Going Infinite" a 2023 book by Michael Lewis.  This book chronicles the rise and spectacular fall of Samuel (Sam) Benjamin Bankman-Fried (henceforth SBF as he was known).  Born in 1992 SBF briefly became a multi-billionaire through his cryptocurrency exchange FTX which he founded in 2019.  However it all came crashing down in late 2022 through the equivalent of a bank run.  FTX's customers lost confidence in the exchange and tried to withdraw their funds.  FTX could not meet these withdrawal demands and declared bankruptcy because there was a $8 billion hole in their books.  SBF was soon arrested in the Bahamas (where FTX was then located) and extradited to the US where he was convicted of multiple charges in November 2023. 

I have read a number of Michael Lewis's books.  I liked some of them a lot, others not so much.  In my view this is one of the lemons.  Apparently the book came about because Lewis was asked by an investor friend to meet with SBF and evaluate him.  Lewis met with SBF and formed a favorable impression.  This led to SBF granting Lewis more access so that Lewis could write a portrayal that they probably both expected to be generally positive.  While the book is not clear about sources much of it appears to be based on stories SBF told to Lewis.  But SBF must be considered an unreliable narrator and some of the stories don't make a lot sense if you think about them too much. 

SBF attended MIT graduating in 2014 with a degree in physics and a minor in mathematics.  He then worked for Jane Street Capital for a while before leaving in 2017 to strike out on his own.  He cofounded Alameda Research and then in 2019 FTX.  He maintained a controlling interest in both.  He initially was very successful as cryptocurrency took off.  But the businesses were not built to endure tough times and collapsed in 2022 when cryptocurrency cooled.  The proximate cause was FTX had in effect loaned Alameda $8 billion (of customer deposits which FTX was obligated to safeguard) which Alameda was unable to promptly repay when FTX needed the money to meet customer withdrawals.  A contributing factor was SBF's refusal for whatever reason to adopt the accounting and risk management controls normal for businesses handling billions of dollars.     

The book largely covers SBF's rise with relatively little about his downfall.  It ends before he is tried and convicted after three top lieutenants, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, testified against him.         

SBF seems to have been a reasonably smart guy who lacked conventional people skills.  But he did seem to have some strange form of charisma which caused people including Lewis to overlook what might otherwise have been seemingly obvious red flags like his firm's lack of a chief financial officer (CFO).  Perhaps something akin to Steve Job's purported reality distortion field.  However as Philip K. Dick famously said: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”.  Perhaps SBF believed (and was able to convince others) that you could run a multibillion dollar crypto enterprise without carefully managing risk and not court disaster.  But reality is that you can't. 

One of SBF's eccentric traits was an addiction to video games which extended to playing them during zoom meetings with important people.  To some extent he seems have treated life as a video game where other people are just characters to be manipulated with no need to concern yourself about their fate.  At the end SBF seems detached from reality unable to accept that he has committed serious crimes.  Lewis also seems unwilling to explicitly say this although it is pretty clear from the facts he presents.  But Lewis takes some shots at John Ray who was in charge of administering the bankruptcy estate and recovering what funds he could for the creditors.  Which even if fair were largely irrelevant to the question of SBF's guilt.       

This book wasn't totally worthless but I found it a bit disappointing and won't recommend it.

Thunderbird

As well as the hardware problems mentioned in my last post I also recently had a software problem.  Starting on Tuesday June 7, 2022 the default Windows 10 email program (Version 16005.14326.20970.0) starting displaying some of my received emails as unreadable markup language gibberish. Strangely my oldest machine using the default Windows Vista email program was still able to display these emails in a human readable format. Some internet research provided no clue as to what was going wrong or how to fix it.  So I decided to try the free email program Thunderbird.

Downloading Thunderbird was easy but getting it to communicate correctly with my Aol email server was a bit aggravating. If you make a mistake you can get into an unfixable state which requires erasing the Thunderbird folder in an obscure Windows directory and starting over. However with the help of considerable internet research and trial and error I eventually got things working.  Once set up correctly Thunderbird seems to work fine. The problematic emails are now readable.

So this problem ultimately wasn't a big deal. However it left me a bit annoyed with Microsoft. It is not to their credit that the Windows Vista email program seems to be superior to the Windows 10 one.  As well displaying emails correctly I prefer the whole user interface.  I much prefer the Windows Vista photo gallery program as well.  It seems like Microsoft figures that it doesn't pay to spend too much money on these sorts of basic functions. 

Lenovo Chromebook 3

Early in 2020 I complained about a cracked screen on my HP notebook computer (model 15-b0015dx) which HP refused to fix under their warranty.  However I continued to use the machine for web browsing.  Besides the cracked screen the computer was prone to overheating and shutting down.  Perhaps this was causing long term damage as recently the disc drive appears to have progressively failed making the machine unusable.  The symptoms were as follows.  First the computer started closing some windows immediately after opening them.  This made some programs like Microsoft Solitaire unusable but others like the web browser continued to work normally.  Various purported remedies found on the internet failed to fix the problem but I didn't suspect a hardware issue at the time.  Then a few weeks later I noticed some of the icons normally on my desktop were missing.  I tried to reboot the computer to fix this but I ended up in the Windows Recovery Environment instead after some messages about automatic repair failing.  The recovery environment provides a MS-DOS window.  MS-DOS commands seemed to be working normally and I was able to save a couple files by copying them from the C: drive to a memory stick.  Then perhaps unwisely I tried running chkdsk.  This ran for over a day reported numerous errors and seems to have damaged my hard drive further.  When it finally finished MS-DOS could no longer find the C: drive making it hard to do much of anything.  Fortunately I had already saved the file I cared about most.       

My older Dell laptop which I had not been using much had failed more abruptly (probably also with a bad disc drive) a few months earlier so I needed a new machine for web browsing.  I ended up ordering a Lenovo Chromebook 3 - Model 82BA001FUS (11.6" HD Laptop - Celeron N4020 - 4GB Memory - 64GB eMMC - Onyx Black)  on sale from Best Buy for $79.  It was delivered a few days ago and I have been trying it out.

Chromebooks use Google's Chrome OS instead of  Microsoft Windows.  Together with a somewhat different keyboard layout this took a little getting used to.  It seems to work okay for web browsing the primary intended use.  However I don't (at least so far) find it as pleasant to use as the HP notebook (even with its problems).  The screen is noticeably smaller and displays less of a typical web page making for more paging up and down.  And I find the keyboard a bit awkward.  Although this is in part lack of familiarity.  It takes a little time to get used to using the alt key to emulate some of the missing keys (so for example delate is alt + backspace, page up is alt + up arrow and so on).  On the plus side the machine seems sturdier than the HP notebook and hopefully will hold up better over time.  The solid state drive is faster and may be more reliable than a mechanical disk drive but it offers considerably less storage and won't last forever as each memory cell can only be written to a limited number of times before becoming unreliable.

Bottom line I was attracted to this machine because of the cheap price and it seems functional.  However it is clearly low end, many people will prefer to pay more for a better machine.

South Brunswick Saker ShopRite Rant

Another rant this time about the South Brunswick Saker ShopRite supermarket.  Bottom line, their checkers should ring up sale prices correctly.  If they don't and this is later called to their attention they should cheerfully issue a refund for the difference.  Fortunately if they don't and you paid by credit card you may still have recourse.

After a long permitting and construction process a new Saker ShopRite supermarket opened a couple of years ago in Heritage Plaza (adjacent to Heritage Square) along Route 1.  ShopRite is a cooperative supermarket chain with stores in New Jersey and some nearby states.  Saker is their biggest operator with 39 stores many in central New Jersey.

The pandemic has made me reluctant to eat out and the new store is fairly convenient for me to get to so I have been shopping there sometimes.  Just before Christmas I bought a prime rib roast on sale for $4.79 per pound as advertised in their weekly mailed circular.  The shelf markings were not clear so I showed the ad to the checker to make sure I would get the sales price.  I was assured that I would.  I checked the receipt and saw I had received a discount but didn't notice until I got home that it wasn't sufficient to bring the price down to $4.79 per pound.  Apparently the checker should have scanned the ad in to get the full discount.  As it was I was overcharged by $14.83.    

When I returned to the store a week or two later I complained to the service desk about being overcharged.  I expected them to refund me the difference but they somewhat rudely refused to do so.  Although they accepted my version of events they claimed it was my responsibility to see that the sales price was rung up correctly.  Needless to say I disagree.

Fortunately since I had paid by credit card I had some recourse.  I challenged the charge with my credit card provider and yesterday they credited me with the $14.83.  It is unclear to me if my claim was actually adjudicated in any way (I was not asked for and didn't provide any details) or if the amount was too small for ShopRite to bother disputing.  Anyway I got my money.

It is somewhat baffling to me why ShopRite refused to refund the overcharge.  This was an advertised sales price which they should have expected to attract buyers.  Why incur ill will by trying to benefit from their checker's error?  Anyway I will be even more careful in the future.

Amtrak Refund Rant

 I haven't been posting much lately, maybe a few good rants will get me back in the mood.  First up is Amtrak.

As I have mentioned before, since I am afraid of flying I sometimes travel long distances by Amtrak.  So I had an Amtrak reservation from NYP to DEN (with a connection in CHI) leaving Friday, September 3, 2021 just before the Labor Day weekend.  I had purchased it online paying by credit card.  On Wednesday night the remnants of Hurricane Ida passed over New Jersey and New York bringing very heavy rain.  The resulting flooding caused my train to be cancelled.  Amtrak notified my of this by email Thursday night.  The email gave a phone number to reschedule and an email address to request a refund.  

Fortunately my plans were flexible and leaving a few days later was no big deal.  So I called to reschedule but got a message that it would be difficult to get through to a service representative until after the Labor Day weekend.  Still no problem, I could just book a new reservation online myself.  I did this leaving the following Thursday.  And I emailed a refund request and received an acknowledgement.

I duly took the later train and got to Denver okay.  But I don't hear anything more about my refund so eventually on Friday September 17, 2021 I called Amtrak customer service.  This involved a long wait for a call back (which to be sure is better than being kept on hold).  I eventually spoke to someone.  Despite the acknowledgement it appears that email refund requests are ignored (or at least not dealt with in any sort of timely fashion).  But the person I spoke to promised to process my refund request.  I was told it would take 7-10 days to appear.  And the refund for the NYP-CHI portion of my trip did appear on my credit card by the following Monday.  

However the refund for the CHI-DEN portion didn't show up even after 10 days.  I called Amtrak customer service several times to try to find out what was holding it up.  Each call involving lengthy waits for a call back and/or on hold.  However the representatives refused to investigate until two months had passed from the original call.  Purportedly to allow for credit card billing cycles although I could see online that I had not gotten a credit. So it wasn't until Friday, November 19 that someone was finally willing to trace the refund request.  At which point it developed that the reason I never gotten the credit is that it had never been requested.  Apparently the second part of the refund (for the connecting CHI-DEN train) required some supervisor's approval and it had been sitting in their email inbox for two months.  I was told it had now been approved and in fact it did appear on my credit card by the following Monday.

Obviously this is totally unacceptable customer service.  There is no reason that getting a refund for a cancelled train should be a lengthy and painful process.

2020 Taxes

 Although the deadline was extended to May 17 I managed to get my 2020 income taxes done on the usual schedule.  I submitted my federal return electronically late on April 13 and mailed my New Jersey return the next day.  I mailed the New Jersey return because I am too cheap and stubborn to pay the fee (about $20) to submit it electronically.  I used TurboTax Deluxe again as I have every year since 2010 (for tax year 2009).  I have complained about the program in prior years but I didn't have any big issues this year.  One minor problem was some directions which weren't correct for seniors (the tax laws are a little different when you pass age 65) but this wasn't too hard to figure out and I certainly have no desire to return to doing my returns by hand.

My federal refund didn't show up in my bank account until May 5 which seems a bit longer than normal.  For some reason it was for $5.95 more than computed on the return I submitted.  To date I have not received any explanation (perhaps they don't bother sending a letter for such a small amount).  It is possible I copied some number from a 1099 form incorrectly and this was automatically corrected but I don't really know.  This is bugging me a little but probably not enough to pursue the issue.  I haven't heard anything from New Jersey which has sometimes been quicker.  However it's probably not the right time to be expecting record speed.

Try, Try Again

As I have mentioned a couple of times, in 2010 I bought a cheap Dell Inspiron laptop computer. It has held up pretty well with a lot of use. However a couple of years ago it developed an annoying issue. The automatic Windows 10 update process started to fail repeatedly with an obscure error message about data corruption. I tried various purported remedies that I found with internet searches but none of them fixed the problem. I had basically given up and was resigned to living with an increasingly obsolete operating system (like with my still older Dell Inspiron desktop running Windows Vista).  However to my surprise on or about December 30, 2020 the update succeeded so the machine is now running the newest (20H2) version of Windows 10.

Upgrading to a new version of Windows 10 apparently wipes out the update history so I am unsure exactly when the problem started or how many failed attempts there were (it seemed like dozens at least). This wikipedia article has a table showing the Windows 10 version history. Based on this my best guess is that my machine was previously running Version 1803 of Windows 10 which was released April 30, 2018. The next version 1809 was released November 13, 2018 but apparently didn't get installed on my machine. The end of support for 1803 was November 12, 2019 leading to nagging messages from the Windows's updater about moving to a supported version of the operating system. However as noted above repeated attempts to do so always failed with an obscure error message. Whatever the problem was persisted through versions 1809, 1903, 1909 and 2004 as they became available. But it seems to have gone away with version 20H2 which first became available October 20, 2020.  New versions aren't installed immediately on all machines (my other laptop is still on 2004) but apparently installation was attempted on December 30 and succeeded.

So far (with limited use) I haven't encountered any problems with 20H2 so hopefully there was no actual data corruption issue and Microsoft just had some bug in their update process that went away when 20H2 was released. This problem wasn't the biggest deal in the world as I could still use the machine (which was gradually becoming functionally obsolete anyway) but it is still a rather sobering example of how hard it can be for the average person to effectively deal with this sort of obscure computer issue.  

Late Adopter

There are people who like to buy new products as soon they come on the market.  Then there are people like me on the trailing edge of the adoption curve.  Usually this isn't a problem but occasionally I have regrets that I didn't get on board sooner.  I recently had such regrets regarding digital thermometers.

Prior to this year I had not needed to take my temperature for a long time as I have been fortunate in having generally good health.  However this year because of COVID-19 I have needed to take my temperature many times (among other things my employer requires me to take my temperature before going to work every day).  When this started I looked around and discovered I had two thermometers (both of which I believe were gifts from my mother who properly worried that thermometers were the sort of thing that I would neglect getting for myself).  One was an old fashioned mercury thermometer probably about 35 years old (the instructions are copyright 1983).  The other was a digital thermometer probably about 20 years old give or take (I seem to have lost the instructions).  Unfortunately when I tried it the digital thermometer (a K-jump model 720 sold under the Today's Health brand) didn't work.  Probably because the battery had died over the many years of disuse.

That left the mercury thermometer.   I had some trouble with it too.  Mercury thermometers contain a reservoir of mercury at the base of a narrow glass tube with temperature scale markings.  When you take your temperature thermal expansion forces some of the mercury up the tube.  The higher your temperature the more thermal expansion forcing the mercury higher up into the tube allowing your temperature to be read off.  But the mercury doesn't return to the reservoir by itself even after it cools down.  The thermometer has to be "shaken down" which means shaking (or jerking) the thermometer in such a way as push the mercury back into the reservoir.  Apparently there is a knack to this as I was unable to do it.  Fortunately I figured out (or maybe read about on the internet) an alternative.  By placing the thermometer in its case, placing the case in a sock and rapidly spinning the sock I was able to force the mercury back into its reservoir. This allowed me to use the mercury thermometer.

Although capable of doing the job (of measuring your temperature) mercury thermometers have some drawbacks.  According to the instructions they need to be in your mouth for four minutes to obtain an accurate reading.  I am not sure this is really necessary but I didn't experiment with shorter times.  The shaking down process consumes some more time.  Mercury thermometers are also fragile and a real nuisance if they break because of the mercury.  While using the thermometer daily for several months I actually did drop it a few times but fortunately a short distance onto carpet so it didn't break.  Still breakage is a constant risk.

So eventually I decided to upgrade to a digital thermometer.  I could have tried replacing the battery in the one I had but new ones were cheap enough that this seemed the way to go.  I ended up buying a Vicks SpeedRead thermometer  (model V912BBUSV1) sold online by Walmart.  This was cheap (about $10) and had gotten good customer reviews.  I am quite satisfied with it after a few weeks of use.  The  easy to read display shows your temperature with a resolution of .1 degrees Fahrenheit (the mercury thermometer had similar resolution with scale markings .2 degrees Fahrenheit apart but it was a pain to  read).  I took my temperature with both a couple of times with good agreement (off .2 degrees one time, 0 degrees the other time).  The new digital thermometer is also much faster.  I seem to average around 10 seconds before it beeps announcing that it is ready to read.  This is a little slower than the advertised 8 second best case but better than the 15 second average case in the fine print.  In any case much better than four minutes (or even the 60 seconds claimed by the older model digital thermometer).   

 All in all in this case the new technology seems far superior and I regret not buying a digital thermometer months earlier (assuming I could have found one in stock, apparently they were in short supply for a while).  The main disadvantage of a digital thermometer seems to be that the battery can die.  I don't know if the model I bought will provide a reasonable advance warning that the battery is about to die (and this wouldn't help if the battery dies because of long disuse).  For this reason I plan to keep the mercury thermometer around as backup.  Consumer Reports recommends properly disposing (a bit of a pain in itself) of old mercury thermometers because of the breakage hazard but I don't think the risk is high while it is being stored in its case.

HP Notebook Breaks

Last summer I received as a gift a HP notebook computer (model 15-db0015dx). This is a low end machine but it was fine for web browsing and checking my email. However after about 6 months of normal use it developed a flaw in the upper left hand corner of the screen (which I am told is due to a crack in a internal glass sheet). Although the machine was theoretically still within the one year warranty period HP refused to fix it. Their position appears to be that any problem that could conceivably be due to customer abuse of the product isn't covered by the warranty. Which of course makes the warranty of little value as I not sure what if anything would be covered.

In my case the problem could easily have been due to a manufacturing defect, the machine could have been assembled slightly out of spec with the glass jammed into a position where it didn't quit fit and was under stress which eventually caused it to crack. Or the design could be inherently defective, unable to withstand normal use. According to internet sources some of the newer lightweight machines are so flimsy that just holding the display part by the top corner instead of the top center to open it can crack the screen. Which in my view is a defective design.

This has left me considerably annoyed with HP and I will be reluctant to buy their products in the future. I will also think twice about extremely lightweight designs. I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop about 10 years ago. While a little clunkier it has held up fine with similar use. 

Driver's License Renewal

Last Friday I went down to a MJ MVC office and got my driver's license renewed for another 4 years.  This wasn't too painful although at one point I did have to wait about half an hour for my number to be called. This was a longer wait than I remember from previous visits but perhaps the Friday before a 3 day weekend wasn't the best time to visit.

The way the process works is that you first go to a reception desk that tells you where to go next. In my case as I would have to present several forms of ID to get my license renewed I was first sent to a queue for several clerks who were checking that you had brought enough forms of ID to satisfy New Jersey's somewhat complicated requirements. This allows people who don't have the right ID to find out quickly. This line just took a few minutes. After the clerk checked my ID she gave me a sticker with a code (a letter followed by a number) on it and directed me to an area with chairs where I could wait for my code to be called.

The codes were being read out on a loudspeaker and also being flashed up on a bunch of video screens. When a code was called you were directed to a numbered window. Since I had nothing else to do I tried to figure out the system. It was a little complicated but eventually I deduced that there were multiple queues for the different services provided each with a different initial letter. The numbers (for each letter) were then being called in increasing order. I estimate there were about 4 clerks handling license renewal and about 12 people ahead of me. If each transaction took about 10 minutes this would account for about a 30 minute wait.

When my code was called and I went to my window and found a young woman trying to convince the clerk that she was next. The clerk was having none of it and eventually was able to turn her attention to me. I gave my IDs to the clerk and she checked them (with a slight scare when she momentarily misplaced my old driver's license).  I had to answer the same 3 questions on an electronic pad I had already answered on a written form that I had filled out (as directed) before going to the office. I had to sign my name on a different electronic pad (with another slight glitch when I tried to use the stylus for the first pad which doesn't work). At some point my picture was taken. You are offered the option to retake the picture if you don't like the first one which I declined (as in my experience the second one isn't going to be much different). Then I filled out a check to NJMVC and received my new license (which has a similar format to the old one) and my old license back with a hole punched in it.

As I was driving away I figured out what I think happened with the young woman. She initially missed her code when it was first called. When this happens after a few minutes they call the next code. At this point the young woman belatedly realized her code had been called but it was too late she had missed her slot. But instead of going back to the waiting area and waiting for her code to be called again in a few minutes (as I expect the clerk had told her to do) she had instead hovered around while the clerk served the next customer thinking she would be next. But that isn't how the system works, when the slot opened up again the system assigned the next code which was mine. When I was done I think she was still hovering around expecting to be next which still wasn't how the system works but I didn't wait around to see what happened. Ironically when I was waiting to be called I noticed a repeat code call right before mine which I expect was her code coming up again with a different clerk.  But as she was hovering around the first clerk's window instead of listening for her code it had done her no good.

I felt a little sorry for the young woman as she said she was missing work and seemed to be in a bit of a panic but on the other hand if you are in a hurry perhaps should you be paying attention so you don't miss your code.  And perhaps you shouldn't ignore instructions.  

The Education of Brett Kavanaugh - An Investigation

I recently read "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh - An Investigation" a 2019 book by two New York Times reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, about the 2018 confirmation fight over Kavanaugh's nomination to the US Supreme Court. During which Kavanaugh was accused of (among other things) assaulting one woman and exposing himself to another. First I should acknowledge a bias in that I would prefer to live in a universe in which the charges against Kavanaugh are baseless. That said I don't think this is very worthwhile book because it adds little to the press coverage at the time.

The charges against Kavanaugh involve events that allegedly happened over 30 years ago. In evaluating them it is important to account for the fact that human memory is fallible. Not only do we forget things over time we can also form false memories of things that didn't happen. The book does not discuss this at all. I believe there is a large academic literature about false memories which I am too lazy too look up. Instead I will cite a couple of examples from my own experience.

I have a memory of my father (who died over 30 years ago) telling my mother and me (and maybe my brother) that he had gotten a good post-doctoral position which however depended on his receiving his PhD by a certain date which he had failed to do. However when I mentioned this to my mother she had no idea what I was talking about. My brother also has no recollection of such a conversation which I now doubt ever took place. What I suspect happened is that I dreamed the conversation. I don't pay attention to my dreams and usually have forgotten them a few minutes after waking up. However sometimes a particularly intense or vivid dream can form a lasting memory. If the dream events are superficially plausible I suspect that years later I could mistakenly accept such a lasting dream memory as real. Which is what I think happened in this case.

In another case I recently had a conversation with a friend about something that happened over 15 years ago. It turned out our memories differed about one detail. Prior to this discussion I would not have doubted my memory. Even afterwards I thought I was right but in attempting to verify this I found a contemporary email backing my friend's version of events. In this case I think my memory of a real event was contaminated by my memories of somewhat similar but unrelated events. An example of such contamination would be if you had a high school acquaintance named Victor Jordan but later mistakenly remembered his first name as Vernon or Michael because of confusing him with the more notable Vernon or Michael Jordan.

This sort of thing makes me reluctant to credit one person's unsupported recollection of long ago events particularly in politically charged cases like this. But as I said the book does not discuss false memories at all. Instead it just largely repeats the contemporaneus press coverage with little new material. So if you were paying any attention at the time this book won't add much. And if you weren't paying attention you probably aren't that interested in an account of this length (307 pages with end notes) containing lots of basically irrelevant details.

Bad Blood

I recently read "Bad Blood" a 2018 book by John Carreyrou.  This book tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her startup company, Theranos.  Holmes was an undergraduate at Stanford University when she came up with the idea of founding a company based on revolutionary new technology that would allow many medical tests to be performed using a single drop of the patient's blood. Unfortunately Holmes didn't actually have such technology or it appears a realistic plan for developing it.  Holmes wasn't deterred by this, she dropped out of Stanford in 2003 and raised millions in venture capital for Theranos.  For a while Theranos seemed quite successful.  At its peak in 2013 and 2014 it appeared to be worth around $10 billion which would have made Holmes a multibillionaire.  However this valuation turned out to be illusory.

John Carreyrou was (and is) a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter. He wrote a series of articles for the WSJ starting in October 2015 about wrongdoing at Theranos which broke the spell Holmes had cast.  Other investigations by government regulators followed and it soon became clear that the vaunted Theranos technology had little if any real value.  Theranos ceased operations in 2018. Holmes has settled civil charges with the SEC and is currently awaiting trial on criminal fraud charges.  This book tells the story through 2018.

I was a bit disappointed in this book.  Much of it consists of the stories of various Theranos employees who were made uneasy by some aspects of the way Theranos did business.  This gets repetitive after a while. The book seems longer than necessary at about 300 pages.  And it doesn't seem particularly insightful about pulling together the facts that Carreyrou uncovered.  

The book isn't totally worthless, I did get from it a better picture of what happened.  However perhaps the story is ultimately not so significant or interesting that it needed a 300 page book, at least not this one.  I think most readers can safely skip this one.

Railroader

I recently read "Railroader" a 2018 biography of Ewing Hunter Harrison III by Howard Green.  Harrison (who went by Hunter or E. Hunter) lived from 1944 to 2017.  He worked for railroads most of his adult life starting out as a laborer (carman-oiler) in 1963 and eventually becoming the chief executive officer (CEO) of four different major North American railroads.  He made major changes that were very successful (at least from a shareholder point of view) and which have reshaped the industry.  Comparable in some ways to Steve Jobs, Harrison is much less well known (as indicated by the respective sizes of their wikipedia entries linked above).

A key measure of profitability in the railroad industry is the operating ratio which is defined to be the ratio of operating expenses to revenue.  Clearly lower is better.  Harrison made his reputation by significantly lowering the operating ratio at each of the railroads (Illinois Central, Canadian National (CNI), Canadian Pacific (CP) and CSX(CSX)) where he worked at the executive level. This led more or less directly to increased profits.  In many industries such increased profits would be temporary as competition means lower production costs are eventually passed on to customers in the form of lower prices.  However there is little price competition among the major railroads (they do compete on price with the trucking industry) so this process is occurring slowly if at all.  The result is much higher stock prices and happy shareholders. Certainly I am happy that my Norfolk Southern (NSC) stock is up about 120% (as compared to about 40% for the market as a whole) since I bought it in 2015.  Harrison didn't work for NSC but shareholder pressure is forcing the other major railroads to adopt his methods.

While Harrison made his shareholders happy other stakeholders such as employees and customers were less pleased.  If you browse the forums where railroad people hang out you will find a lot of animosity towards Harrison.  This is natural as some of the shareholder gains came at the expense of employees.  Many workers at all levels lost their jobs either because Harrison determined that they weren't really needed or because they were unwilling or unable to adapt to the new order.  No one likes to lose their job and there is a natural wish to believe (however delusionally) that the company will come to regret eliminating it.

Some customers too were unhappy with the changes.  In some cases because they were made worse off even if overall the changes were beneficial.  In other cases because the changes were disruptive short term regardless of any long term benefits. Harrison's take or leave it negotiating style and in some cases the lack of reasonable alternatives didn't help. Customer dissatisfaction appears to have been particularly acute with CSX the last company Harrison managed because Harrison seems to have tried to make changes too rapidly leading to frustrating service disruptions.  Harrison's haste is somewhat understandable as he died less than a year after starting at CSX and must have suspected he didn't have much time.  However it was enough as he was succeeded by a disciple, James Foote, who has largely followed the course Harrison set.

So what was Harrison's secret.  How was he able to repeatedly achieve outstanding results.  One important factor has been alluded to above.  The railroad industry is very old and over time arrangements had evolved that balanced the interests of employees, shareholders and customers in a certain way. Harrison realized that this balance was not set in stone.  A balance more favorable to shareholders was possible.  For example just because it had become customary to allow some employees to leave early (before the end of their shift) didn't mean Harrison had to go along.  If he required employees to work their full shifts he could get by with fewer of them.  There seems to have been a fair amount of fat of this sort that Harrison could eliminate if he was willing to unilaterally alter longstanding arrangements.  Similarly in some cases Harrison could raise prices or otherwise change customer contracts to the railroad's advantage.

Another thing Harrison did was emphasize the efficient use of capital equipment.  This is important in a capital intensive industry like railroads.  Harrison realized that locomotives and rail cars were only earning money for the railroad when they were in motion.  So he tried to keep them in motion.  If he operated his locomotives more hours per day he could get by with fewer of them.  Similarly if he reduced the time rail cars sat around in yards waiting for the train that would take them on the next leg of their journey to be assembled and dispatched he (or his customers who in many cases own the cars) could get by with fewer of them and also improve service by reducing transit times.

Harrison also introduced what has become known as precision scheduled railroading (or PSR).  This involved two changes. Freight railroads had traditionally not operated on set schedules instead dispatching trains once a sufficient number of cars had been assembled.  This meant customers could never be sure exactly when their shipment would arrive.  Harrison moved towards fixed schedules in which trains left at set times.

The railroads had also used a hub and spoke system in which a rail car would start at a spoke location pass though one or more hub locations and finally end up at another spoke location.  This involved a lot of assembling and disassembling of trains as cars would be brought together for one leg of their journey and then go their separate ways on the next leg.  This work was done at hump yards so named because they were built on an incline (or hump) to allow gravity to help move the cars around.  These yards tended to be expensive bottlenecks which slowed the movement of cars through the system.  Harrison moved towards a point to point system in which trains moved cars directly from their origin to their destination.  This allowed the closure of many hump yards. The net effect of these changes is theoretically to reduce costs while improving service by making it faster and more reliable.  In practice the cost savings from PSR seem to be clear cut but the service improvements have been a bit more debatable particularly in the transition stage while kinks are being ironed out.

Over the years Harrison had a lot of detractors but for the moment at least he seems to have prevailed.  The railroads he managed have for the most part continued on the new course he set and the remaining large North American railroads are adopting his methods, the financial results he achieved are just too impressive to ignore.  During their latest quarterly report conference calls NSC talked about hiring people with PSR experience and Union Pacific (UNP) said it was going to "pause" construction of Brazos Yard, a large new hump yard it had started constructing just last year with considerable accompanying fanfare.  The other large American railroad BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) doesn't directly report to public shareholders as it is now part of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.  Buffett has said that he tolerates a certain amount of fat in the companies Berkshire owns so there is less pressure on BNSF to rapidly adopt Harrison's methods.  Still it seems unlikely that Buffett will accept substantial underperformance indefinitely.

Regarding the book, Howard Green is a television journalist who interviewed Harrison several times. Apparently they got along reasonably well so Harrison commissioned Green to write his biography.  It was to be unauthorized in the sense that Green was to have the final word on content and in any case Harrison (who had been seriously ill for some time but continued to work) died before the book was finished.  Still Harrison probably expected the book to be generally friendly towards its subject and it is.      

The strength of the biography is Green's access to Harrison, his family and his friends.  This led to hundreds of hours of interviews many with Harrison himself.  However Green perhaps relies too much on stories told by or about Harrison in interviews.  While these stories do give an impression of what the man was like there is often room to doubt that they are completely accurate.  In several cases Green notes that other people's accounts of the same events differed.  However in other cases Green seems to have made little effort to establish what actually happened.  One disadvantage of becoming friendly with your subject (and his family and friends) is that it may make you hesitate to ask questions that they might find disagreeable.  For example Harrison's father apparently suffered some sort of injury while serving in the armed forces during WWII. The book is extremely vague about exactly this was.  I expect the relevant military records still exist but perhaps Green was reluctant to ask Harrison to request them.  Similarly Harrison was seriously ill while working at CSX and ended up dying just a few days after finally going on medical leave.  But again the book is vague about exactly what was wrong.  It appears Harrison was not very forthcoming and Green was unwilling to press him. CSX was also kept in the dark and as a result changed its bylaws to require future CEO's to be regularly examined by a company doctor.  

Harrison retired somewhat unwillingly from CNI at age 65.  He didn't enjoy not working and eventually teamed up with a couple of hedge funds to get himself installed as CEO first at CP and then still looking for new worlds to conquer at CSX.  Naturally the incumbent CEOs (and his previous employers) were not too enthusiastic about this so a certain amount of maneuvering involving proxy fights and lawsuits was involved. This was covered in a bit more detail I would have preferred as I was more interested in what he did as CEO.  

I thought the book was a little weak in analyzing the relative contribution of the changes Harrison made to the improved financial performance.  For example the book discusses numerous changes Harrison made to improve the operating ratio by cutting costs.  But of course the operating ratio can also be improved by increasing revenue through higher prices or volume.  The book says little about this.  Perhaps this is because the contribution of revenue increases was insignificant but if so it would nice if this was explicitly stated.  

It is also unclear to me to what extent the benefits of Harrison's changes extend beyond railroad shareholders to society at large. Harrison claimed his changes would improve service and allow the railroads to take market share from the trucking industry.  Was he correct?  The book isn't much help in answering this question, perhaps interviews with a few large rail customers or trucking competitors might have shed some light.  Regarding future competition between trains and trucks, trains are more energy efficient and will have a competitive advantage if oil prices increase significantly.  On the other hand self driving technology would help trucks more than trains as driver costs are more important for trucks.   

In summary I thought the book was okay.  It was reasonably entertaining and I learned some things from it. However when I saw the book in my local library I checked it out because I already knew a little about Harrison and the changes he has brought to the railroad industry and was interested in learning more.  If you have no such desire you probably won't find this book to be of much interest.

Crashed

I recently read "Crashed" a recent (2018) book by Adam Tooze about the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2008-2009 and its aftermath.  I had previously read Tooze's book "The Wages of Destruction" about the economy of Nazi Germany and found it interesting so when I saw this book on the new books shelf at my local library I thought it might be worth checking out.  This was a mistake.

The book is very long (over 700 pages including nearly 100 pages of index and notes) but displays little insight.  There is a old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees which seems to apply.  We are now at some remove from the GFC and so (one would hope) are better placed to identify its important features and effects.  But this book doesn't really attempt to do this. Instead it largely consists of a chronological recounting of events with little real analysis. The failure to develop any sort of convincing theoretical framework means the book is of little help in understanding and evaluating policy alternatives going forward.

For example the book states in several places that the American response to the crisis (although flawed) was more effective than the European response.  However the book doesn't consider the obvious possibility that the American response just appeared more effective because the problems in America weren't as serious as in Europe.    

Again the book seems to vaguely disapprove of the way Europe dealt with Greece but with little consideration of concrete alternatives and their advantages and disadvantages.  When the Euro was introduced many American economists thought it was a mistake because the area involved was too diverse to be adequately served by a single uniform monetary policy.  The book does not really discuss this.

One general view of the GFC is that people want to save more money than the system can safely accommodate.  That is there are more people who want to lend money than credit worthy borrowers.  In such a situation there is a great temptation to pretend certain loans are safe when they are not.  If this imbalance is real than specific regulations aimed at preventing certain types of bad loans are likely to just cause the problem to reappear in different forms.  But this sort of bigger picture view is lacking in this book making it of little value in my view.

To sum up I didn't like this book at all.  It just recapitulates events at length without adding much in the way of understanding.  I would avoid it.        

Middlesex Jury Duty

Last Monday I was summoned for jury duty at Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  This is the second time I have been summoned for jury duty since I moved to New Jersey, but the previous time I was excused when I called in the night before.  No such luck this time.  However I wasn't selected for a trial Monday which fulfilled my obligation and means I am exempt for the next three years.

There is an information page for jurors but I don't think it was as helpful as it could have been for first time jurors like myself who aren't familiar with how the system works.  So I will describe my experience in some detail.

The reporting time was 8 AM.  This is earlier than I am used to getting up so I was paranoid about arriving on time.  I left my townhouse around 7 AM.  The drive was about 30 minutes and it took another 10-15 minutes to drive up to the fifth level of the parking garage, walk back down and walk a couple of blocks to the juror entrance.  So I got there about 7:45 AM.  Although the entrance was theoretically open at 7:30 AM when I arrived they were just starting to send people through the metal detector.  So I had to wait in line for the metal detector and then in some more lines to be checked off a list and get my juror badge.  It seemed clear no one would have cared much if I had been a few minutes (or maybe as much as an hour or so) late.

Once you are processed you are sent to the juror waiting room.  This was a big room which appeared to hold about 200 people.  It is important to realize that it is not a courtroom.  So while (as the juror information page states) lots of stuff is banned in courtrooms (like reading books or newspapers) it is all fine (within reason) in the juror waiting room.  So you can bring a book or electronic device to occupy yourself with while waiting.  You should also bring a bag to stuff it all in (out of sight) if you are summoned to a courtroom lest you be asked to leave it behind.  Fortunately I had done this without knowing for sure it was okay.

Once in the juror waiting room you are shown a short movie giving general instructions and extolling the virtues of the jury system and welcomed and sworn in by a judge.  Then you wait around.  Short smoking breaks outside are allowed as long as the staff knows where you are.  From time to time a list of about 40 names is read out.  These people are led away to a courtroom where a jury is selected for a particular trial.  There were 5 such lists (two in the morning and three in the afternoon) read out while I was there.  I was the first name on the second list so there might have been more (but probably no more than one) lists read out in the morning while I wasn't there.      

Once in a courtroom you are told a few details about the case and the names of the parties, their lawyers and potential witnesses so you can make the court aware of any conflicts.  If I understood correctly this was a civil case involving an automobile accident in Pennsylvania (it was unclear to me why it was being tried in New Jersey).  You are also given a list of questions you will be asked so you can look them over and be prepared when the judge questions you.  Then you are called up individually so the judge (and attorneys) can question you (semi-privately) at what was called a sidebar.

I was the first name on the list so I was the first person called up individually.  I was soon excused when I told the judge (entirely truthfully) that I sometimes have trouble staying awake.  I felt a little bad about this as I definitely didn't want to be selected and this felt a little like shirking.  However I also didn't want the judge yelling at me for falling asleep and listening to boring testimony after lunch is legitimately the sort of thing I might have trouble staying awake through.

In any case there were other questions on the list that might have gotten me excused.  One asked if you would give any different weight to the testimony of a police officer.  I expect the answer they want is no but I was prepared to justify at length why I would.  Another was about my view of  "tort reform" and I was prepared to expound at length about the deficiencies of the American tort system in my view.  I also had an issue with the introductory video we were shown which advised (among other things) that we might want to give to more credibility to witnesses who seemed confident.  It is my understanding that academic studies have shown this is bad advice, that confident witnesses are no more likely to accurately recall events than hesitant witnesses and I would have complained about this given an opening.

After you are excused from the panel you are supposed to go back to the main waiting room which I did.  However you are also supposed to check in so they know you are available to be called for another panel.  I didn't do this immediately because I didn't realize I was supposed to (although I expect they told us this several times somehow it didn't register).  I didn't figure it out until after the first panel had been selected in the afternoon so I unintentionally reduced my chances of being picked for a jury a little.

We were given an hour for lunch.  Our parking was covered but only for one interval in the parking garage so driving anywhere would have meant paying for the afternoon parking myself.  Fortunately there are a variety of deli type eating places within a few blocks.  I walked for a while and eventually bought 2 slices of pizza and a coke for about $5.  Which was edible if not great.  Then I walked back and went through the metal detector again in plenty of time for the afternoon session.  

We were repeatedly told we were obligated to be there until at least a certain time (4:12 PM if I remember correctly) no matter what but in practice we were let out a few minutes early once they they were sure no more jurors would be needed that day.  If you are selected for a trial you are required to show up for the duration (absent some sort of acceptable emergency excuse).  A few extra jurors are selected to allow for attrition but don't participate in deliberations unless needed.  For my panel the judge said we should be prepared for the trial to last all week (until Friday) although he was going to try to finish by Thursday.  This I expect wasn't including deliberation time which can sometimes be lengthy.

So all in all a tedious but bearable exercise if you are prepared with something to keep you occupied.  And fortunately my employer will still pay me for Monday as the $5 juror pay isn't going to go very far.      

The Undoing Project

I recently read "The Undoing Project" a 2017 book by Michael Lewis.  It primarily tells the story of two Israelis, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who worked together for many years studying how people make decisions especially bad decisions.  Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel economics prize for this work (shared with Vernon Smith).  Tversky would probably have shared in the prize as well if he had not died in 1996 (at the relatively young age of 59) making him ineligible.

I was disappointed in this book.  It is quite long (352 pages plus notes) and unlike most of Lewis's work I didn't find it to be particularly entertaining.  It contains a lot of biographical material about Kahneman and Tversky which (while intermittently interesting) isn't especially relevant to their professional work.  It is repetitive in places (for example colleagues and students describing how brilliant they were).  It abruptly introduces other characters and then drops them without really integrating them into the narrative.  It contains chapter notes at the end of the book but no index.  It suggests that their work was very important but doesn't really explain why.

Nor did I think it was especially instructive.  It isn't technical enough to be a good introduction to Kahneman's and Tversky's professional work.  I have previously reviewed books by Ariely, "Predictably Irrational" and Thaler, "The Winner's Curse" which discuss related work on decision making.  While I didn't recommend them either they would provide a better introduction to the field.

In short I would skip this book.  It isn't a good introduction to this subject area and I didn't find it compelling as entertainment.

Chasing Hillary

I recently read "Chasing Hillary" by Amy Chozick.  Amy Chozick covered Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign for the Wall Street Journal and her 2016 campaign for the New York Times.  In this 2018 book she gives a long (375 page) first person account of her experiences.

Chozick mentions several times Hillary's inability to give an inspiring explanation of why she was running for President.  One could similarly ask what was the point of this book.  It is pretty useless as history as it assumes you already know the big picture of what happened.  A college student assigned to read this book 20 years from now would not learn much about American politics between 2006 and 2016. 

The book contains a lot of autobiographical material.  In many ways it is more about Chozick than Hillary.  But it does not really succeed as autobiography either.  Chozick doesn't seem that important or interesting.  And she presents herself as such a caricature of the insanely ambitious (and insecure) career woman who only cares about getting her byline on the front page of the paper that you begin to wonder if she is writing self-parody.

And while the book is amusing in places it is far too long to succeed purely as entertainment.

The book describes a toxic relationship between Hillary and her press corps which is largely Hillary's fault as she (and her campaign aides) make no effort to hide their utter contempt for the reporters covering her.  While somewhat understandable this was a bad mistake on Hillary's part as just a little judicious flattery would probably have paid off in better coverage. 

Chozick criticizes the way the New York Times covered the material hacked from the Clinton campaign and released but doesn't explain what she thinks they should have done instead.  Hillary's speeches to Goldman Sachs were a campaign issue, once the transcripts were obtained (albeit illegally) and published on the internet I don't see how the New York Times could avoid discussing them (especially since authenticity doesn't seem to have been an issue).  Of course if Hillary wasn't  willing to release the transcripts herself she probably shouldn't have given the speeches.  It used to be fairly easy to tell different things to different audiences but it is a lot riskier now.

In general I think the Russian meddling wasn't a big deal.  It was well known during the campaign that Putin preferred Trump to Hillary.  Prior to this election being known as the candidate preferred by the Russians wouldn't have been considered an advantage (and in fact there is little reason to believe it helped Trump more than it hurt him). 

So in summary unless you are a real politics junkie you can safely skip this book, it doesn't contain much of lasting value and isn't that entertaining.