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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Apparently 20x as many people were killed or injured in the war machine compared to the actual war 🤔

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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Now learning about the Nye committee which investigated WW1 production machine in the run-up to WW2. So that’s where the phrase “merchants of death” comes from. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee …

      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Damn the neutrality/non-engagement decades were really anti-military: “From the 4th biggest military force in the world in 1918, the US Army shrank to number 18, just ahead of tiny Holland”

      1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Roosevelt started rearming in 1936, years before officially dipping neutrality and joins the war. If you want peace, prepare for war?

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Damn, early on Patton ordered nuts and bolts for tanks at his own expense from the Sears catalog, they were so short 😱

      3 replies 1 retweet 25 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      1940: Roosevelt asks for 700 million in army appropriations, up from... 24 million. This, coming just 7 years after dumping the gold standard must have been a huge shock. How much is that in 2020 dollars?

      1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      About 15.6B inflation adjusted. Drop in bucket compared to CARES act. But then, shit was low-tech and cheap in absolute terms then.

      2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      “...on policy matters FDR was a procrastinator. He preferred to put off decisions — or at least to keep news about them from going public.” Hmm. The anti-Trump, who declares mission accomplished before it starts.

      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Bernard Baruch, organizer of WW1 War Industries Board (and target of Nye committee) declines to do an encore for WW2. Don’t blame him.

      1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Apparently WIB didn’t manage to pull its act together in time for WW1 despite (because?) of strong economy. Baruch nominates Knudsen, who enters stage left.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 5
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      Hitlers response to FDR plan of 50k planes/year: “What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records, and Hollywood” Oh shit Hitler had 2016-America viewing palantir

      3:36 PM - 5 Apr 2020
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          Knudsen starts off as an immigrant doing riveting work on the tough New York waterfronts and learning boxing. This is already cartoon grade. Marlon Brando plus Rocky.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          Montage of early industry career and now Knudsen is systematizing Ford’s assembly lines by 1916. The real Taylorism is Knudsenism it seems.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          Knudsen leaving Ford after high-level head-butting with Henry Ford, and going to Sloan at GM reads a bit like Wolverine leaving Magneto for Prof. X.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          GM is more interesting as an early business case study than Ford, even though Ford steals the technology honors. The invention of the federated conglomerate was a bigger deal than the assembly line.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          “Speed produces nothing in manufacturing,” Knudsen likes to say — which was one reason he eschewed the complicated time-and-motion studies of production gurus like William Taylor. “Accuracy is the only straight line to great production.” I LIKE THIS GUY

          1 reply 5 retweets 60 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          He’s basically discovered “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” thinking in 1922. True flow thinking including lean vs fat tradeoff. Unlike charlatan F. W. Taylor. There’s an element of Elon Musk first principles thinking to Knudsenism.

          2 replies 2 retweets 36 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 6
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          Knudsen set a “one to one” goal of matching Model T sales and got from 18:1 to 2:1 in a few years. He also invented model year system of annual updates. Damn.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Aside: this was clearly the OG example of the Mac vs PC pattern. Dunno why I didn’t see it before. Probably because this is the first time I’ve read about the Chevrolet story.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Kaiser was a dropout hustler who led with sales looks like. Makes his start in photography in upstate NY, then heads west to grow a hardware business, then lands in highway construction. So a hacker-hustler pair saved the US in WW2.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Kaiser builds thriving road construction business in BC but WW1 makes the name Kaiser acliability do he he adds back to US and grows big there.

          2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Kaiser building thousands of miles of roads in the west. Early adopter of innovations. Steve Ballmer type seems like. Hard driving and hard working but subtler than Ballmer... not a bull type. Seems like he elevated roadwork from mostly manual labor to mostly machine.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Now we have Kaiser orchestrating the Six Companies to build Hoover Dam. He spent most of the time in DC managing the political bosses.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Huh, Kaiser apparently pioneered the internal competition model with Grand Coulee dam, which he later used in WW2 work. I guess that’s where the X/Y flyoff model originated perhaps?

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 18
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          Okay. Chapter on 1939-40 world fairs as transition, and we’re finally into WW2. Knudsen meets FDR.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 18
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          Interior secretary Harold Ickes skeptical of Knudsen; “I have heard that Knudsen even makes his own notes in handwriting” (presumably as opposed to a secretary transcribing shorthand into typewritten notes) Moron. If you aren’t taking your own notes you’re not thinking.

          1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 18
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          Knudsen pulls together a sort of fellowship of the ring from across industry. They have to figure out what the military needs and tell them, because the military if 1940 doesn’t know.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 24
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          Finally into the war production story proper. We’re talking tanks, airplanes, engines. Building for US, British, and French needs all at once, 1939-41. Just a vast amount of action getting underway.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 24
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          Lessons and anecdotes at every level from rivets vs welding through contract laws to amortization regulations, to foreign policy. “Reality has a surprising amount of detail” is a good side read here. This is that times a million. http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail …

          2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 24
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          Nice anecdote: a banker who has to transfer top secret Merlin engine plans meets the battleship bringing them from the UK with an empty suitcase. The captain laughs: the plans occupy a whole railroad-car sized crate of paper (would be a container today... or a largish USB stick)

          4 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 24
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          I’m honestly kinda excited for the post-covid rebuilding.

          1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          Spark plug and steering gear auto subsidiary companies commandeered into making machine guns. We’re still on Knudsen. Kaiser is trying to get in on the action but Knudsen doesn’t trust him. Yet.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          The auto industry had 1050 factories and $3B in facilities and largest pool of engineering talent. Like Silicon Valley today. Except luckily SV capability is a better match for Covid response.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          “It was also an industry of associations” 850 companies, 1/20 of workforce,... saw this while at grad school at UM. Auto industry is ridiculously full of industry orgs associations densely knitting it together. SV is much looser.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          “What Knudsen saw in the defense buildup was more than just rearmament... he saw a way to revitalize American business and industry”

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          “The arsenal of democracy” has a nice ring to it. Need something similar to capture strengths for pandemic. China may have started it and democracies may have suffered way more casualties but I suspect long term liberal democracies will win the war against covid better.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          Vignette about unions opposing Knudsen and proposing alt Reuther plan by UAW chief Walter Reuther. Book is clearly anti-union but Reuther’s plan does look like stupid wrong-problem (fighters overran bombers) vaporware objectively speaking, from engineering and other lenses.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          Why FDR resisted urge to appoint war czar and take over all econon: “A victory small enough to be organized is too small to be decisive” — Eliot Janeway (who? an economist who influenced FDR it seems) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Janeway …

          2 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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          Alright Kaiser back in the story to build merchant freighters for British because America’s biggest shipyards were at capacity for navy orders.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          Knudsen gets full authoritah over Office of Production Management (OPM) but FDR sez he has to share authoritah with a labor leader. Guy named Hillman.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          Now we have Kaiser going brrr. Gets shipyard location swamp drained in 3 weeks instead of 6 months that people expect. Richmond shipyards. So that’s the story behind that huh. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Shipyards …

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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