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[2020-04-08 17:15:28] - My guess is Harris. -Paul
[2020-04-08 16:59:06] - warren seems to be the most logical, though there might be some pull for a minority woman to check more identity politics boxes. - mig
[2020-04-08 16:42:58] - xpovos: 3 points to gryffindor. anybody want to guess who his vp pick will be? ~a
[2020-04-08 15:55:27] - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-drops-out-presidential-race-n1155156 Biden is the nominee, officially. - mig
[2020-04-08 14:33:41] - pierce: Yeah, it would be great to not be trying to target voting laws to suppress certain groups, but assuming the status quo from the past few decades holds, that's probably not going to happen. Jerk move? Probably, but not quite the same thing as losing an election and refusing to step down. So in such a case... is Trump legitimate? -Paul
[2020-04-08 14:15:30] - ok. ~a
[2020-04-08 14:13:37] - a: I am calling it that when it suits my purposes.
-Paul[2020-04-08 05:41:36] - which is why i don't usually leave the spam up, i wouldn't want them to consider their resources here worth while. ~a
[2020-04-08 05:40:46] - daniel: it tries to put it everywhere. but if i had to guess, they probably also have some more complex methods of determining where to allocate resources. ~a
[2020-04-08 01:23:31] - So for spam bots? Do they just roll through different URLs and just try to submit that string text? So like that same spam bot is trying to log into espn or something with that string as a user id? Or how does it know there is utility (of a sort) in putting the spam here? I assume it just tries to put it everywhere? -Daniel
[2020-04-07 21:40:17] - in an ideal world we would all be equally outraged by an attempt to prevent anyone from voting, even if we personally disagree with that voter. but history is pretty clear that lots of people resist expanded suffrage if it's bad for their "side". - pierce
[2020-04-07 21:34:17] - it's not clear to me that there's any downside to that approach, other than voters being upset that you disenfranchised them (and if you were successful, that isn't as much of a downside). - pierce
[2020-04-07 21:30:55] - and the law was overturned again, but in the meantime it had been in place and some of its benefits to the republican party had been realized. so in summation, I think there's a meta-game being played where you pack the judiciary with people (like Roberts) who will be more skeptical of VRA claims, and then pass a lot of laws and tweaks so the courts get bogged down long enough that you reap the rewards. - pierce
[2020-04-07 21:18:55] - for example, Texas's law was originally blocked by section 5 of the VRA; Texas had to pre-clear changes to its voting procedures with the federal government due to its history of discriminatory laws. but the Roberts court overturned section 5 in 2013, and Texas immediately put the law back into effect. it had to be re-challenged (and re-appealed, etc) on section 2 grounds. - pierce
[2020-04-07 21:14:26] - my takeaway is that proving this conclusively is a Hard Problem, courts are supposed to evaluate "the totality of the circumstances" when there isn't direct evidence of intent, and so the legal outcome is heavily affected by the court makeup and the specifics of that case. - pierce
[2020-04-07 21:11:40] - a little investigation suggests that jurisprudence on voter ID laws with respect to the VRA is pretty inconsistent. looks like Lee v. Va. State Bd. of Elections has upheld VA's law, whereas Veasey v. Abbott overturned Texas's. - pierce
[2020-04-07 20:43:15] - the quotes make me assume paul was being ironic with it, but it'd be easier if we all just moved on from that (just remembering it among all the other needlessly polarizing things trump has done). - pierce
[2020-04-07 20:11:51] - are we calling it the china virus? i think even the president has stopped calling it that. ~a
[2020-04-07 19:35:09] - that said, there's ample evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately reduce voting among (e.g.) black voters, which seems like it'd make it trivial to overturn them if the jurisprudence about the VRA was as simple as that. - pierce
[2020-04-07 19:30:50] - yeah, the virus itself isn't a law, but laws and procedures that we put in place in response to the virus could violate the act if the result is abridgement of the right to vote on account of a protected class (race, color, or minority language). more breakdown - pierce
[2020-04-07 18:31:27] - paul: i think in this case the system is a standard, practice, or procedure. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:26:58] - a: Even if the system is a "China virus"?
-Paul[2020-04-07 18:17:26] - systemic problems don't need a "who". it's the system, man. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:16:36] - paul: i don't think it matters. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:16:04] - a: Wait, but who is denying them the right to vote? -Paul
[2020-04-07 18:13:38] - pierce: there you go. if the cdc guidelines (or the voter-id) cause fewer minorities to vote, it's illegal. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:12:32] - paul: "In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 to create a "results" test, which prohibits any voting law that has a discriminatory effect irrespective of whether the law was intentionally enacted or maintained for a discriminatory purpose" ~a
[2020-04-07 18:11:05] - would it be legal? i'd say, no, probably not. but i'm not sure which law would be broken exactly. Voting Rights Act of 1965 maybe? the "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right ... to vote on account of race" part is often considered by the supreme court to be non-literal: voter-id laws for instance are grey areas? ~a
[2020-04-07 18:08:07] - a: Yes, horrible and a bad idea and all sorts of other things.... but also perfectly legal and allowed. -Paul
[2020-04-07 18:07:35] - a: Nothing about that is illegal. Yet at the same time, it very clearly is... affecting the election. In a situation like that, would a Trump re-election be legitimate in your eyes (assuming no other anomalies and he wins the popular and electoral vote). -Paul
[2020-04-07 18:06:56] - yeah that sounds horrible. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:05:42] - a: So, that's my point. Let's assume the election is tomorrow, but we're obviously still (pretty reasonably) encouraging everybody to stay home and the government does nothing to fix the problem (like make absentee voting easier or more voting places or whatever). -Paul
[2020-04-07 18:00:40] - i'm holding out hope that covid-19 is mostly gone by november. ~a
[2020-04-07 18:00:09] - paul: probably laws that allow for extra election officials to be hired so the election can happen over multiple days? ~a
[2020-04-07 17:59:23] - paul: i think i could imagine an election happening, but we'd have to change a few laws real quick. laws that require the election happens all on one day, for instance. laws that require that the election officials physically handle your identification. ~a
[2020-04-07 17:56:46] - paul: the current measures wouldn't really allow for an election. gatherings of 5 or more people, and whatnot. ~a
[2020-04-07 17:41:02] - a: Yes, I am saying we're still in a place where COVID-19 measures are reasonable. Like, let's say the election was today. So it passes the smell test to say that the government isn't ONLY trying to suppress voting. -Paul
[2020-04-07 17:20:08] - meanwhile, milwaukee only has five polling places instead of the usual 180 (link) - pierce
[2020-04-07 17:17:52] - sounds like wisconsin is a mess and gives us a preview of how it might actually play out. the state assembly and senate each convened for less than 30 seconds and refused to pursue the governor's proposal to extend the election and switch to mail-in voting. (link) - pierce
[2020-04-07 17:17:46] - but even then, it wouldn't be a representative election (even less so than usual), which is supposed to be the point of the thing in the first place. and importantly, those hypotheticals are clearly not where we are. people in republican areas are getting different guidance than people in democratic areas. - pierce
[2020-04-07 17:17:41] - Paul: to answer your question, I don't know how I'd feel based only on that description. in theory, there's a version of that scenario in which all the elected officials gave social distancing guidelines in good faith and didn't intrinsically or knowingly skew the election. if the outcome was based only on a difference between how R voters and D voters adhere to the guidance, you could at least argue that it's a legit election. - pierce
[2020-04-07 16:59:47] - a: I disagree that it's almost always illegal when the government suppresses turnout. unethical, sure, but we've seen lots of laws passed that are specifically designed for that purpose: ID checks, arbitrary criteria for purging voter registrations, targeted closures of poll locations... - pierce
[2020-04-07 16:55:58] - Paul: I would say the writers for this season of reality are back to their usual lazy antics, if the events that effectively turn Trump into a monarch are caused by a "crown" virus. - pierce
[2020-04-07 16:52:36] - a: I don't think Trump ever actually went the formal "blind trust" route (I don't remember if he'd said he would, but as I recall he did imply without using those words that he'd have no direct involvement). - pierce
[2020-04-07 16:07:20] - is anybody here at all surprised that trump had a financial interest in the manufacturing of hydroxychloroquine? what ever happened to those blind trusts? ~a
[2020-04-07 16:02:49] - well either the covid-19 measures are "reasonable" (by my definition?) and "legit" (by my definition?), or they're voter suppression. i'm not sure you can have it be both? ~a
[2020-04-07 15:56:38] - a: But it is suppressed by the government for COVID-19 (so relatively legit) reasons. -Paul
[2020-04-07 15:53:23] - paul: yes. probably. 21:30 is probably 9:30pm. ~a
[2020-04-07 15:47:53] - paul: if turnout is suppressed by the government, that's almost always illegal. ~a
[2020-04-07 15:37:13] - a: What do you mean "probably"?
-Paul[2020-04-07 15:37:05] - So voting turnout is suppressed (by the government) and Trump ends up winning re-election (very possibly because R's tend to turnout more strongly than D's). How legitimate would you all consider his reelection (assuming that these social distancing measures are still pretty reasonable in November)? -Paul
[2020-04-07 15:35:34] - Here's a hypothetical for you all: Let's say this COVID-19 issue lingers for months and November comes around and we're all still taking social distancing pretty seriously. Let's also say that no major moves are made to make absentee voting more accessible... -Paul
[2020-04-07 15:34:24] - probably. ~a
[2020-04-07 15:29:20] - a: Sure? That's 9:30 pm, right? -Paul
[2020-04-07 15:23:00] - 21:30 i assume. ~a
[2020-04-07 15:22:50] - paul: friday works, yes. ~a
[2020-04-07 15:22:44] - paul: trust, but verify, all women. (j) ~a
[2020-04-07 14:37:31] - mig: Assuming we're not one of the "believe all women" people... do you know how credible the allegations are? -Paul
[2020-04-07 14:28:11] - a: Friday work for SC2? -Paul
[2020-04-07 11:32:00] - a: I don't really know enough about the Roosevelt to say for certain, but the Navy higher ups certainly don't seem to have been painted in a very good light by it. On the surface, it seems like they were dragging their feet on a serious situation.... until they were quick to fire him for raising the alarm to the media. -Paul
[2020-04-07 10:22:55] - daniel: CNN and the times have certainly found time to cover biden's campaign even with the virus consuming most of the news time. I could maybe accept this as an explanation if there was *scant* coverage of this. But ... zero? - mig
[2020-04-07 03:54:01] - mig: I had no idea who that was and had to google it. I came up with https://www.salon.com/2020/03/31/a-woman-accuses-joe-biden-of-sexual-assault-and-all-hell-breaks-loose-online-heres-what-we-know/ which at least spells out the layout for me. So maybe there will be more to it as people have time investigate and maybe once corona dies down some so there is reporter bandwidth for something else. -Daniel
[2020-04-07 02:36:58] - also ... weird. - mig
[2020-04-07 02:36:18] - hmmm ... weird. - mig
[2020-04-07 01:55:43] - a: it seems like dumb office politics except w/ military people. - mig
[2020-04-07 01:38:32] - can we talk about brett crozier? he was the captain of the uss roosevelt who was relieved of duty by the acting us navy secretary. do you guys have any thoughts about him or the situation? ~a
[2020-04-06 21:20:38] - i've seen runners wearing masks in arlington. ~a
[2020-04-06 21:20:00] - i wear much weirder stuff biking and skiing. this seems like an easy solution, honestly. ~a
[2020-04-06 21:18:53] - i usually don't wear it biking, but i'll probably start. ~a
[2020-04-06 21:18:29] - wearing a mask while running seems like a hard no. - mig
[2020-04-06 18:54:36] - a: Mine are homemade cloth ones, though. -Paul
[2020-04-06 18:54:24] - a: Well, I think I've been outside my neighborhood once this week, and I wore my mask. I typically wear my mask on walks around the neighborhood too, so I guess so? -Paul
[2020-04-06 18:50:02] - -Daniel
[2020-04-06 18:50:00] - a: Yeah. -Danie
[2020-04-06 18:27:44] - are you guys wearing masks in public yet? i went to the store yesterday, and was wearing a mask. i felt VERY awkward wearing them in public at first, but something like 75% of wegmans (monument drive) patrons were wearing them so i was set at ease quickly. i bought my masks years ago (in fact i'm a little worried that they'll expire soon) for allergies & home improvement. ~a
[2020-04-06 15:37:53] - looks like nobody is a fan of buchanan. ~a
[2020-04-06 15:34:04] - (my link doesn't include any info post-mueller-investigation, post-ukraine, post-impeachment, post-covid, so i honestly think its possible "historians" view of trump could have only gotten worse.) ~a
[2020-04-06 15:30:14] - paul: i'm no historian. i fucking hate history. so my opinion is uninformed. historians themselves are likely to disagree on the matter. and they often do. ~a
[2020-04-06 15:10:43] - a: Do you think Trump is the worst president ever? -Paul
[2020-04-06 13:20:00] - paul: honestly, tuesday and thursday are free at 21h. so: any day? ~a
[2020-04-06 12:30:26] - paul: monday, wednesday, friday, saturday, sunday (easter). ~a
[2020-04-06 12:26:25] - paul: yes. 1 million tests in the united states. sars cov-2. since forever. ~a
[2020-04-06 09:40:26] - pierce: it was pretty painless to detach mine from my account as long as you have your ID. - mig
[2020-04-06 02:56:05] - poor little guy - pierce
[2020-04-06 02:41:56] - not to mention that the battery died on my official Blizzard 2FA keyfob ages ago, I'm sure it's a fun process trying to recover your account
- pierce[2020-04-06 02:40:57] - heh, thanks.
- pierce[2020-04-06 02:40:19] - Pierce: Fair enough. You're still welcome to join us if you change your mind. We can always use more people who aren't random people on the internet who crush us. -Paul
[2020-04-06 02:35:20] - Paul: I don't, no. I've mostly given up on PvP games other than casual stuff like Jackbox party games. Also I'm fairly cranky with Blizzard about their handling of the Hong Kong protests (though I don't envy them for being pressured to weigh in on it in the first place) - pierce
[2020-04-06 02:31:37] - it's just embarrassing that this stuff is so unclear. I bet you can get more accurate, understandable, and finely-grained statistics on people's pizza topping preferences, than you can about the contours of this pandemic. - pierce
[2020-04-06 02:28:48] - that would suggest that when their numbers showed 1M, that was actually around 2M tested samples. The CDC site describes its number as "specimens tested" so on that side (depending on the definitions) it may only have been referring to 75k people, for all we know. - pierce
[2020-04-06 02:24:15] - "Are you reporting people tested or specimens tested? We attempt to report the number of people being tested, not specimens submitted. To oversimplify, laboratories often require two specimens, so if you see 'specimens' or 'tests run' used to report on testing data, you may be able to infer the number of people tested by dividing by two." - pierce
[2020-04-06 02:22:46] - that's interesting. the "About the Data" and newsroom FAQ pages on that site suggest that's it's a much more flexible definition than the CDC's. some is drawn verbatim from states' published stats, some is extrapolated, and some is filled in (including from news reports). that could definitely mean that it's more accurate than the CDC page I'd linked, but it's a pretty huge discrepancy. - pierce
[2020-04-06 01:42:15] - Pierce: Do you play Starcraft 2 anymore? -Paul
[2020-04-05 23:51:31] - a: Also what evening works for you this week? -Paul
[2020-04-05 23:30:28] - a: Are we talking about 1 million tests since everything started? -Paul
[2020-04-05 17:17:54] - pierce/daniel: if you doubt the second site, you can see they source their data from states directly. not official, by any means, but it looks legit. ~a
[2020-04-05 17:16:32] - pierce/daniel: i'd like to talk about us's 1-million-tests that we discussed last week. multiple news sites are saying it's truth. pierce linked this site which seems to indicate that the 1m might be wrong, but this other site that wikipedia is using as a ref seems to suggest otherwise. ~a
[2020-04-05 16:39:58] - don't know if you guys saw, but the initial jobless claims were updated on thursday. last week things were already the highest in history, so i'm not sure if there are even words to describe how bad the numbers were this week. ~a
[2020-04-05 16:20:55] - the worst president. ever. don't worry, though, he's reluctant. ~a
[2020-04-05 16:15:48] - paul: yes please. ~a
[2020-04-05 12:16:54] - a: SC2 this week? -Paul
[2020-04-05 12:16:36] - Pierce: Probably. I'm not sure which is worse, though. -Paul
[2020-04-05 02:54:49] - frankly I think neither of them could plausibly have been uninformed, they're both feigning ignorance to cover for their mistakes in not acting more aggressively. - pierce
[2020-04-05 00:59:43] - Pierce: De Blasio might be worse considering population density. -Paul
[2020-04-03 21:06:30] - John Bel Edwards is up there too in botched responses. - mig
[2020-04-03 20:47:04] - and the population of NYC is comparable to the population of Georgia, so De Blasio's not off the hook either. - pierce
[2020-04-03 20:44:05] - and yeah, for the governor of the state containing the CDC headquarters, during this crisis, to make that claim... he's either lying, or so incompetent that it's actually worse than lying. hanlon's razor is not a defense. - pierce
[2020-04-03 20:38:56] - "'The king can do no wrong.' In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual." - pierce
[2020-04-03 20:38:20] - "There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." (link) - pierce
[2020-04-03 20:13:35] - we were so serious about hunter biden's shouldn't have that board position at burisma. i don't even disagree with that position. but why exactly doesn't jared kushner get the same treatment? ~a
[2020-04-03 20:08:54] - it seems like willful ignorance. they were talking about asymptomatic transmission nonstop in february. ~a
[2020-04-03 20:07:51] - Daniel: https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-updates-echoing-georgia-governor-de-blasio-says-city-health-officials-recently-learned-asymptomatic-transmission "Echoing Georgia Governor, De Blasio Says City Health Officials Recently Learned Of Asymptomatic Transmission" -Paul
[2020-04-03 20:06:09] - Daniel: Not Cuomo, De Blasio. -Paul
[2020-04-03 19:59:18] - paul: I saw the headline of the Georgia gov but are you sure about Cuomo? That would surprise me. -Daniel
[2020-04-03 19:45:24] - Although I will note that the incompetence doesn't seem limited to the Trump administration. I believe the Georgia (?) governor and Mayor of NYC only just recently found out that Coronavirus can be spread by asymptomatic people after having fought efforts to close down schools and whatnot. -Paul
[2020-04-03 19:36:14] - a: I'm not sure anybody here has any interest in defending the Trump administration... particularly their response to COVID-19. -Paul
[2020-04-03 19:27:01] - nbd. i stopped arguing because i mostly agreed. ~a
[2020-04-03 19:19:59] - sorry, I didn't mean to come across so combative. - pierce
[2020-04-03 19:17:52] - anyways, my arguments are petering out. i'm not going to defend the current white-house for sure. ~a
[2020-04-03 19:16:44] - gotcha. ~a
[2020-04-03 19:16:04] - so the incentives in this case are to appease someone who (for whatever reasons) is prioritizing the perception of the economy and trump's reelection over the professional guidance of health experts. there's plenty of evidence of what happens to people who contradict trump or who he perceives as disloyal. - pierce
[2020-04-03 19:14:25] - yah, ok. ~a
[2020-04-03 19:13:06] - for example, kushner was largely credited for that disastrous address to the nation where trump hyped a google site for covid test info that was vaporware, and generally tried to salvage the market numbers with PR rather than addressing the health crisis (and ended up doing neither). and yet kushner now has even more authority than he did then, with no evidence that he's, like, learned to defer to experts in the field or anything. - pierce
[2020-04-03 19:12:21] - what incentives? ~a
[2020-04-03 19:09:36] - those disincentives existed in earlier stages of this crisis as well, but they didn't dominate our policy decisions. that means the leadership disregarded them, or had competing incentives, or both. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:59:37] - pierce: sorry, what incentive structures? there are disincentive structures in place for underreactions (approval ratings go down, and you eventually get voted out of office), but they're pretty slow moving. ~a
[2020-04-03 18:57:38] - I didn't intend that to mean "it's impossible to overestimate it". just that the leadership and incentive structures that led to our previous underreactions are still largely in place. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:46:32] - i agree it's a risk/reward exercise. but you had left that unsaid when you mentioned "we're still underestimating it". ~a
[2020-04-03 18:43:52] - this man died ~a
[2020-04-03 18:43:11] - I don't think that's the "other side" of what I'm saying. "how much should we spend to preparing for this scenario" is a risk/reward exercise. but there apparently was ample exploration of a scenario very much like this being a major risk, including the disastrous consequences of being unprepared. it seems obvious that we let thrift and/or apathy override reason. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:40:48] - i'm glad we all agree gates is the best. at creating a software company. ~a
[2020-04-03 18:36:53] - pierce: ok since you're here i guess i'm going to have to argue the other side of this: there are also downsides to overestimating it. so we can't only push one direction. ~a
[2020-04-03 18:32:09] - gates making it clear that it's extraordinarily costly to have been caught off-guard, helps clarify why we should invest in safety nets before we need them. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:28:44] - I'm also optimistic about Gates' involvement, their foundation has a lot of success stories in this specific area. I appreciate that he's highlighting that it will "waste" a lot of money, because I think part of our failures here come down to a lack of redundant protections. even though a respiratory pandemic has been a recognized scenario and we knew what we'd need for it, we find ourselves short on both equipment and logistics. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:21:37] - so in part, my perspective on this was informed less by the media hype and more by having watched policy decisions underestimate this thing over and over again. since it doesn't seem like our decision-making process has improved much (like with the Kushner thing), I suspect we're still underestimating it. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:21:10] - Nina had been fighting off a cough (that she'd picked up before we'd left) and I honestly expected there to be some level of scrutiny when we went through customs in Chicago, since one of the first cases in the US had been confirmed there two days prior. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:21:05] - I think the red flag for me was that China flipped from their early attempts to minimize and suppress information about it, to instituting a strict lockdown of 50M people immediately before the start of Lunar New Year (which is an incredibly important festival both culturally and economically). that's not something they would do lightly. - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:20:59] - we were in India in January when the stories started to leak out of Wuhan. I saw it transition from "new virus but only among a few people who went to this wet market" to "actually not all of the early cases can be linked directly to that market" to "there's evidence of human-to-human transmission" to "there are confirmed cases outside of China". - pierce
[2020-04-03 18:13:48] - a: I basically trust Gates here because he's very smart AND also seems to have knowledge about vaccines and the economy. -Paul
[2020-04-03 18:13:15] - a: Re: Gates. Yeah, I mean, I would be the first to say I don't have all the information. I don't know how many potential cures we have, or which look the most promising, or how hard it would be to test and/or manufacture. I'm glad it sounds like Gates and I are on the same page, though. -Paul
[2020-04-03 18:10:47] - a: Wait, what end am I on? The "it's just a bad flu" or the "mad max"? -Paul
[2020-04-03 16:27:39] - paul: this is like almost exactly what we were talking about wednesday. it sounds like gates very much agrees with you on this one. and i'm coming around. ~a
[2020-04-03 16:14:22] - so, like the same as usual. ~a
[2020-04-03 16:14:09] - pierce is at one end, paul is at the other, and daniel and i are in the middle. got it. ~a
[2020-04-03 16:13:45] - So I think it depends some on the audience and where on that spectrum they are starting which one of those two tweets I would direct towards them. -Daniel
[2020-04-03 16:13:19] - I think I'm in the middle on this. I think there are people who are goign crazy a little bit that think covid is going to like end society and we are going to end up in mad max style situation and I think those people are dumb and I'm like its basically a bad flu. Then there are those that still want to go to spring break and to movies and I'm like your dumb this is worse than a regular flu you need to be careful / stay at home. -Daniel
[2020-04-03 15:42:50] - it was posted to "leopards ate my face", which i think is a fair criticism: if you play with fire, eventually you're going to get burned. ~a
[2020-04-03 15:40:01] - agreed on all. i'm not at all sympathetic of the tone: they were laughing their ass off at all the dumb people. but i agree it is dumb to punish people with hindsight. ~a
[2020-04-03 15:37:59] - a: And I think that's fair for people to have been pretty skeptical at first because we didn't have a lot of info and the info we did have changed a bunch. -Paul
[2020-04-03 15:37:12] - a: Life comes at you fast. I'm a little bit sympathetic (although obviously not as much the tone). I was skeptical if this was really worse than the flu at first because the death rate seemed so low and the media has a tendency to hype up the threat of things (especially ones from a foreign country). -Paul
[2020-04-03 15:18:32] - paul: just dark enough. ~a
[2020-04-03 15:18:14] - what a difference 21 days can make ~a
[2020-04-03 15:04:49] - a: Easter is about resurrection. I would argue that Good Friday might be the more appropriate time to pack the churches. Too dark? -Paul
[2020-04-03 13:36:50] - jared kushner Is going to get us all killed. i think, now, i maybe have an idea where the "suicides will spike if we don't end the quarantine" bullshit came from. he seems to be a font of plausible sounding but incorrect-and-harmful data. ~a
[2020-04-03 13:15:47] - yeah, basically. what about easter itself, though, paul? we're supposed to pack into the churches for that i assume. actually, fo real, audrey noticed that since we've been dating (8 years) we've gone to my parents house for every easter, thanksgiving, and christmas. until this year. ~a
[2020-04-03 12:47:51] - So what I'm hearing is that we should all go back to work the day after easter. Is that a good recap? -Paul
[2020-04-03 04:19:50] - ok. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:19:07] - anyway, I'd just caution us about any confident-sounding numbers right now. we need both good data and sound methodology and I feel like we still largely have neither. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:17:30] - and she's been really careful. like, groceries-only for about three weeks now. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:17:19] - dc on the other hand, yikes. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:16:59] - pierce: i have hope. i'd bet that virginias numbers stay under 1k. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:16:46] - pierce: yeah i don't know anybody with it. in fact i think you knowing someone who has it could be my only 2nd-degree connection so far. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:16:18] - *I'm a little spooked. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:16:03] - we found out tonight that a friend of ours is a presumptive case, first person I know IRL with it so I'll grant that a little spooked. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:15:05] - but I wanted to highlight that that's a lot of "if"s that aren't obvious when you look at the spiffy UI on IHME's site. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:13:44] - so yeah, if we put a sock in Trump's mouth, and if we strongly isolate right away if we aren't already, and if there isn't a second wave when we lift those restrictions, and if the trends given isolation practices follow the numbers that China reported about Wuhan, then 10k might be VA's worst-case scenario. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:13:14] - i don't think anybody here has been arguing we should all go back to work the day after easter. the whole 30 days to slow the spread thing needs to die. we'll go back to work when it's safe. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:11:51] - agreed. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:11:24] - for the infection rate, it becomes really important whether you've isolated people early in the process, and also that you don't lift those restrictions prematurely. and similarly, the mortality rate is heavily dependent on how much you flattened the curve, to what degree you overloaded your health systems. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:10:35] - i think a lot of models have us getting less than 1/3rd infected. i know that's not the upper-bound, but if we do everything right, and somebody puts a sock in the presidents fucking mouth, 1/3rd isn't unreasonable. ~a
[2020-04-03 04:08:25] - you're not invisible, I'm taking time to write. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:08:08] - a: VA has 8.5M people. a high end of 10k deaths, if you assume the mortality rate is at the lowest end of known numbers (Israel's 0.35%), would require only a third of the population to get infected. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:01:30] - ok, cool, i'm invisible? ~a
[2020-04-03 04:00:56] - I don't want to break my eight-year silence here just to drop in occasionally and be a downer, but a lot of the reporting about this situation seems to have treated it like a football game, a lot of half-baked numbers and not much reflection about whether the reporting itself affects the outcome. - pierce
[2020-04-03 04:00:32] - also your link doesn't really talk about how wuhan's numbers are incorrectly used. to be clear, we're both linking to ihme, so i'm not sure which part of the ihme link was discrediting its own projection. ~a
[2020-04-03 03:59:21] - did you see my reply? i'm not sure the error-bars don't include many scenarios. ~a
[2020-04-03 03:56:09] - s/both// - pierce
[2020-04-03 03:53:38] - https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1243819232950751233 - pierce
[2020-04-03 03:52:33] - which assumes both that we would put those types of measures in place, that wuhan's reported numbers after the lockdown are accurate, and that our own numbers that are being fed into this system are accurate. in other words, the high-end of those projections are just the worst version of the best-case scenario. - pierce
[2020-04-03 03:51:39] - pierce: have you seen the error-bars? virginia has between 433 and 10,000 deaths. in my opinion, the limits on the methodology are correctly represented. ~a
[2020-04-03 03:49:50] - I've seen criticism of those particular projections, and how they might be misrepresented by people (like journalists) who don't understand the limits of the methodology. my takeaway is that they assume the best-case scenario: strong isolation similar to wuhan's lockdown, and outcomes similar to wuhan's reported numbers. - pierce
[2020-04-03 03:18:24] - it's not all bad news, the models also say that things might start slowing in april. ~a
[2020-04-03 03:17:42] - i think things aren't slowing, they're speeding up. but the models seem like 100k-200k is still a reasonable estimate for the united states. ~a
[2020-04-03 00:33:25] - wait strike that I did some bad math. - mig
[2020-04-03 00:22:58] - the nothern virginia area is on the really low end of the scale for fatalities based on the #s I hear on the radio (like 0.2% rate). - mig
[2020-04-02 22:13:44] - paul: nothing is slowing yet from everything i've seen. maybe things will slow soon though. ~a
[2020-04-02 22:13:06] - covid19 projections . . . interesting. ~a
[2020-04-02 21:26:40] - a: Yeah, I keep waiting for our confirmed cases or deaths to look like they are slowing and I am not seeing evidence of it yet. Have you seen anything? -Paul
[2020-04-02 19:41:20] - i'm sure you guys have seen graphs like this before, but it's disconcerting that i just like googled "jobless claims" to find this graph, that's it. like, this is *historically* bad and it makes me wonder if the recession we've seen isn't just the tip of the iceburg. i've also noticed that the pathogen spread (just looking at deaths) is still exponentially increasing. ~a
[2020-04-02 19:09:17] - (currently deciding how i would commute from your house to sterling. since the west-ox bike path just sort of stops half-way, i'd probably either go all the way up reston pw to the w&od, or if i had a lot of extra time i'd take franklin farm road to the fairfax county pw to the w&od) ~a
[2020-04-02 19:04:32] - but . . . i'm always game. ~a
[2020-04-02 19:04:08] - paul: really, you're going to bring up bike commuting? i thought our last bike-debate was too recent. ~a
[2020-04-02 19:02:24] - though herndon is big. and shaped weird. ~a
[2020-04-02 19:01:49] - a: Yes, it is very nice. Especially since I drive and don't ride a bike.
-Paul[2020-04-02 19:01:23] - herndon is near sterling
your commute must be nice. ~a[2020-04-02 19:00:38] - a: I work in Sterling, live in Herndon. -Paul
[2020-04-02 18:40:00] - isn't this (sort of) where paul and mig live? we are in an emergency, yay! ~a
[2020-04-02 15:20:41] - a: Yeah, that was the crazy thing. I couldn't believe the Freedom Portfolio was only down 6% for the quarter because from the high (around mid-Feb) it was so much larger. -Paul
[2020-04-02 15:15:17] - one thing i noticed doing my quarter1 numbers: the stock market didn't actually go down that much. since the beginning of 2020 was so positive, the fall seemed huge, but 2020q1 was "only" 20% down. ~a
[2020-04-02 14:35:16] - a: Dewey, though, is crushing thanks to TSLA and TDOC. -Paul
[2020-04-02 14:34:52] - a: Understood, but I am using the google finance API and am trying to restrict hits to it since it is finicky. I figure since I just need to track for a year, and neither offers a dividend and are unlikely to split in the next 8 months, I can just use my method. Also, you could still easily beat me (or Daniel, if you care about beating the market). -Paul
[2020-04-02 14:06:56] - paul: if there were dividends or splits, you can use the adjusted-close values of both stocks to do the math. the key to adjusted-close numbers is that they change history! instead of buying $1 worth of each stock on january 1st and leaving it at that, you have to buy $1 worth using the adjusted-close stock on january 1st and keep "pretending" to do that purchase (updating that purchase) as time goes on. ~a
[2020-04-02 14:03:04] - paul: in case it isn't obvious, i'm not really following the fantasy investing this year after it became clear i was totally going to lose miserably
. . . there are multiple ways of handling it, but as always the real and most-correct way is to use adjusted-close values. your plan of dividing the january 1st value of rubi and dividing by 1.082 works, but only if both tlra and rubi had no dividends (and no other stuff like splits). ~a[2020-04-02 13:31:04] - a: So, shareholders of TLRA got 1.082 shares of RUBI as part of the merger that went down yesterday. For fantasy investing, is it reasonable (for scoring purposes) to take the share price of RUBI on Jan 1st and divide it by 1.082 and treat that as the start price of my position and just use RUBI's quote going forward? -Paul
[2020-04-02 05:10:06] - I've been playing around with the AI dungeon as well. It's pretty interesting. I've had it playing with my 11-year-old, and the pair are doing a good job making an interesting story. Not a good one, but definitely interesting. She was approached by a doppelganger whose mother died before she was born! -- Xpovos
[2020-04-01 18:58:30] - aaron: I tried out the ai thing - it made me laugh. I was able to eat a monster which disappointed my parents. I think killed a village which made my mother cry. I then typed "be good" and it said I changed my ways and made my parents proud. lol -Daniel
[2020-04-01 18:20:49] - TWIST. ~a
[2020-04-01 18:20:42] - maybe there's more than one black dragon. ~a
[2020-04-01 16:35:22] - a: for my first adventure -- i was grimoire, on an adventure to kill an evil black dragon. a dragon swooped down and greeted me, and says "my name is grimoire." i asked... is there a black dragon near here? yes, but he was already slain. ha ha. the game is either a really bad writer... or it's a great one. i was definitely intrigued - aaron
[2020-04-01 16:24:39] - aaron: "I'm sorry," he said as he died. "He was killed by someone else." was he (my partnern) talking about himself in the third person? ~a
[2020-04-01 16:18:55] - covid-19 press conference bingo ~a
[2020-04-01 15:54:08] - a: (3) was kinda poking fun at your hyperbole. In what world would the lockdown get ended forever? The only one I can think of is if hydroxychloroquine worked. I actually believe most of what I said, but I also think we don't disagree on much (except, I guess, that we should judge how good of an idea it is by what Trump thinks of it?) -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:53:35] - As you pass an alley you see a man lying on the ground, blood dripping from his head. He looks up at you with lifeless eyes. "Hello," he says weakly. "I'm dead." "You're.... dead?" "Yes!" The man replies. "Dead! Dead! I'm dead!" ha ha is that what we sound like!?! - aaron
[2020-04-01 15:51:30] - https://play.aidungeon.io/ i just learned about this game today; an AI generates a text adventure for you in real time - aaron
[2020-04-01 15:46:34] - anyways, you've successfully played devil's advocate. i'm glad you don't actually believe these things
~a[2020-04-01 15:42:38] - paul: 1. because "the economy" and because "politics" and because "our president is a moron". 2. no, they're related because they're related. 3. i assume this is a joke. or you're making fun of my argument. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:42:19] - paul: the other commenters in twitter suggested the data maybe wasn't randomized and it maybe wasn't "corrected for observables" which i think means that maybe the people who got it were going to get better anyways? or something along those lines. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:40:31] - a: Assuming that tweet wasn't made up, and acknowledging that it might not be a big enough or random enough sampling, you don't think going from like a 50% death rate to 10% (or whatever it was) is an improvement in results? -paul
[2020-04-01 15:39:15] - a: (3) If the lockdown gets ended forever, doesn't that mean hydroxychloroquine was a success and thus.... it all worked out? -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:38:50] - a: (1) I disagree that the lockdown would stop immediately and forever just because we ramped up production of hydroxychloroquine. Why do you think that? (2) Even if it did, that is irrelevant to whether or not it's a good idea to ramp up production, no? That's a separate decision to criticize (or support). -paul
[2020-04-01 15:38:47] - "improvement in results" that's really the biggest problem. there has been no improvement in results shown. all we have is "promising data". ~a
[2020-04-01 15:35:41] - paul: "but we do have SOME testing which shows an improvement in results, right?" not really. none of the testing was randomized so all of the testing could have the causation relationship reversed. it might help 0%. it might not. more testing necessary. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:32:48] - a: Understood, but we do have SOME testing which shows an improvement in results, right? This isn't just randomly giving people some medicine that we have no idea how it will work. We think it will, just don't have proof that it does, right? -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:30:21] - bbl, meetings. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:29:52] - finite resources. finite . . . attention? imagine if we ramped up production of hydroxychloroquine. i *guarantee* the nationwide lockdown would STOP. immediately and forever. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:28:02] - a: I get the point about finite resources, but I don't see why we can't continue to look into a vaccine while also doing this. -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:27:48] - here's my thoughts as to "why" gates is right. and it's the "act first and try to prove correlation/causation later" problem: if it turns out that 100% (ish) of the people who were given hydroxychloroquine were going to recover *anyways* then hydroxychloroquine doesn't help. at all. doing nothing would be better. or, *alternatively*, if it turns out that hydroxychloroquine helps, but doesn't help enough, then we'll still be fucked. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:27:47] - oof no. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:27:30] - a: I guess the devil is in the details. I am advocating we treat it as a valid treatment now and give it to as many critical patients as possible while ramping up supply to prevent supply problems unless there is a better, more promising lead to focus on (which, to my knowledge, there isn't). -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:23:04] - i'm saying we shouldn't be treating it as a vaccine yet. doing testing: good. ramping up production: bad. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:22:34] - a: So... I'm confused, are you saying we SHOULDN'T be giving hydroxychloroquine to critical patients? -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:19:38] - paul: "We can try giving hydroxychloroquine to critical patients" oh but we are! "tell Trump to shut up and to continue the lock down" that clearly won't work. "As far as I know there's only this one (or two?) that has any kind of evidence that it works" i think that's the point. following the rumor instead of the data is what gates is saying is the opposite of what we should do. that doing so would be harmful. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:15:53] - a: Also, dammit, Teleria just completed a merger with Rubicon so scoring the fantasy investing season just got to be a pain in the ass for me. -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:15:20] - a: "there aren't like 5 drugs to try out. there are like 10^1000 drugs to try out" Are there? As far as I know there's only this one (or two?) that has any kind of evidence that it works. -Paul
[2020-04-01 15:14:35] - a: Okay, but we're talking about different things here. We can try giving hydroxychloroquine to critical patients AND tell Trump to shut up and to continue the lock down. None of these are mutually exclusive. -paul
[2020-04-01 15:09:47] - april first. if you haven't seen this guys videos, they're all super-serious videos about picking locks in this educational-style. but obviously, this one is less serious. (nsfw audio, but i guess we're probably all wfh here, right?) ~a
[2020-04-01 15:05:25] - paul: there aren't like 5 drugs to try out. there are like 10^1000 drugs to try out. ramping up production on one is so insanely worse-than-helpful. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:04:55] - paul: "so if it doesn't work, are we that harmed?" a million times yes. if the people in charge are talking about hydroxychloroquine nonstop, instead of talking about what he should be talking about: 1. a nationwide lockdown, 2. actually doing testing (instead of lying about said testing), 3. a data based approach to finding a vaccine (which is exactly the point; don't just pick them randomly), then we're fucked. ~a
[2020-04-01 15:02:32] - a: That would be the case if we had to choose between a few different drugs, but we don't. There is like one possibility. It's either make that or not. So if it doesn't work, are we that harmed? But if it does work, a silver bullet would be nice. -Paul
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