Skip to main content

Trading Cards

I wasn't very athletic in my youth, or any other part of my life actually. In any event I never collected baseball cards. This was long before there were other kinds of cards to collect, so not being into baseball cards meant I wasn't into trading cards. I had friends who were into it and that was cool.

Our former president teased Wednesday that he was going to make a major announcement yesterday (Thursday). He had already announced his candidacy for the presidency, and it seemed not unreasonable to think that it might be related to that candidacy. To my knowledge he has no campaign manager or staff yet, which makes that announcement a bit weird.

It turns out that the announcement was that he was selling pretty cheesy looking NFT's with his head photoshopped on tops of a child's idea of masculine figures (superhero, astronaut, etc.). They look bad and sell for $99 each. Since they are NFT's you don't actually get the image to hold in your hands, although he refers to them as trading cards.. Trump gets a cut if you try to resell it.

This is so unlike the behavior of any other presidential candidate that I am aware of that it is worth asking why.  I've seen some answers floated in recent days:

1) He needs the money. He's legally prevented and delayed for years the release of any of his financial records but with the fraud convictions in New York state his organization may be hurting, or he may not have been very wealthy at all. It's hard to know anything other than he is willing to spend a lot on legal fees to keep us from knowing.

2) He needs the adulation and his rallies weren't enough.

3) Habit. He's pushed so many cheesy products (Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, ...) over the years that he needs to do something to separate people from their money.

I think that part of the near-universal ridicule Trump has received has been that he claimed that this was a major announcement, but that hyperbole is his longstanding habit. Anything he does is major in his own mind.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accountability

Mathematics as a discipline teaches accountability. Every claim, whether it be a computation result or a statement (theorem) about how things work is accountable. We teach this accountability developmentally, with lower expectations at the beginning, and sometimes folk who study mathematics casually don't understand this. In my multivariable calculus classes, which I teach most frequently, I usually phrase my expectations as "give me a reason to believe your answer", citing my time working at an investment bank where my recommendations had financial repercussions and my supervisor never took my word for anything. In higher-level mathematics classes such as Abstract Algebra or Analysis I can be more explicit: these are the things we all agree to assume, these are the proof techniques which we understand; can you make an argument that convinces the community who have accepted those axioms and rules of inference that what you claim is true? We work hard to remove the ego fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Contents of Most Recent Email to NC Senators

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...
Post a Comment
Read more