No Excuses

16 minutes ago, Ball Security said:

https://scholar.harvard.edu/ericfeiglding/bio
 

This bio on Harvard’s site says he has a doctorate in epidemiology from Harvard after graduating from JHU.    Is this a lie? 
 

How would a layman like me know?  I don’t want to post things from non experts.  It’s not like I’m quoting Dr. Oz here.  
 

https://undark.org/2020/11/25/complicated-rise-of-eric-feigl-ding

1 hour ago, Ball Security said:

Other epidemiologists question whether the vaccines alone are preventing infections or if it’s a combination of the vaccines with others wearing masks.  They are hesitant about the CDC’s guidance.

Eric Feigl-Ding is not an epidemiologist. He’s a clout chaser, who has a background in nutrition and somehow spun a loose connection with Harvard into convincing people he’s an expert in virology. 
 

He’s pretty much the Alex Berenson of left wing COVID fear porn.

It’s time

Bitcoin tanking on a day when there’s data released on greater-than-expected inflation is pretty funny. 

7 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

You wouldn’t expect high consumer demand during high unemployment.  It’s the combination that is weird.

Why? Considering two things:  

1. We are coming out of a pandemic, during which consumption went down, leading to pent up demand upon reopening.

2. Quite a generous expansion of UI benefits, that kept most people without jobs afloat (poverty actually going down following UI benefit expansions). 

There’s a supply crunch in many commodity areas and a demand boom with reopenings. Why are people surprised that consumer prices are going up? 

54 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

I think it depends on how crowded your outdoor area is.  

Yup, generally was a good idea to mask outdoors if someone was talking, singing, shouting etc in close proximity for a prolonged time. But going for a walk in the park, etc, we knew by Fall was safe. 
 

Even less need to worry now outdoors if you’re vaccinated. Talk, sing, dance do whatever. The unvaccinated want to roll the dice for death or Long COVID, more power to them. But I’ve resumed life back to normal, indoors and outdoors. 

2 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

This is my issue with declaring that fully vaccinated people can go maskless in public: the anti-vaxxers don't wear masks now unless forced to so they can shop. So how are us fully vaccinated people able to rely on every maskless person they encounter is also fully vaccinated?

Outdoor mask wearing was unnecessary even when people weren’t vaccinated. You won’t be catching COVID from people in ventilated, open outdoor spaces. 

17 hours ago, China said:

U.S. backs waiving patent protections for Covid vaccines, citing global health crisis

 

Click on the link for the full article

File this under policy actions that accomplish nothing. This is virtue signaling by the administration with negligible impact on global vaccine distribution. The choke point to vaccine production is supply chains and manufacturing capacity.

27 minutes ago, DCSaints_fan said:

I signed up for MLB.TV last year as I was out of market for the Orioles,  little did I know there's apparently some automatically renewal and they dropped a nice fat $100 charge just before the season begin, which I got zero notification for and only noticed on my statment. 

 

I did just recently get it reverted, however its a pain to think I have to constantly check my statements and remember everything I every signed up for. 

 

Then there's this $20 renters insurance payment I paid like a few extra months for because it was difficult to cancel. 

 

I would sooner just be able to verify every payment through my cell phone and be done with it.   I would setup a small crypto account and pay out of that, and occassionally transfer money into it from my bank.  

 

 

Forgetting to cancel your subscriptions on time is not an indictment of the existing financial system. Plus, this is super easy to reverse. I’ve done it like four times already this year and spent no more than 5 minutes total. Lol

1 hour ago, DCSaints_fan said:

And then another advantage is control.  With an ordinary bank account, you don't really control it.  Give out your CC # and someone can charge whatever they want on your account, sometimes months later and without your consent.  But with blockchain, unless you give up your private keys, you have full control over what happens, so this is impossible

The downside is that if you lose your keys, or god forbid, fall for a scam, you’re straight out of luck with cryptocurrencies.
 

Banks in the US offer a layer of protection through reversibility of transactions.
 

The security side of cryptocurrencies isn’t really solving a pressing issue in US finance. I can see the upside for people in developing and authoritarian nations, where confiscation of financial assets by corrupt leaders/institutions is an issue, but it’s not a relevant issue in developed nations.

Doge outperforming Bitcoin over its existence is pretty great. An inflationary coin, that everyone knows has no use case, has been a much better store of value than BTC.

1 hour ago, Hersh said:

what I don’t really understand is, is there nothing that did that already? I really gotta spend some time looking up examples cause I don’t understand enough 

At its core, decentralized blockchains real value is basically a secure database that can’t be altered by one entity. 
 

It’s a pretty boring technology but people are trying to will it into existence as something really cool. Legitimately it’s most practical use case is non-fungible and transparent public records to prevent government and institutional corruption. 

2 hours ago, Dan T. said:

So the Wall-Westbrook trade isn't quite the disaster it appeared to be earlier in the season.

Westbrook was always better than Wall, always will be. I feel like the negativity had more to do with fan attachment.

Westbrook is insane. All time great.

The case for Ethereum maximalism. I think I’ve shared this before but worth reading for those who haven’t:

https://elidourado.com/blog/case-for-ethereum-maximalism/
 

I honestly don’t care for Bitcoin at all. My crypto play money is 90-10 ETH-BTC. 

Another good one published today, examining if the comparisons to FDR are justified:

@tshile

Two of their recent pieces worth reading:

Changes to the corporate and capital gains tax rates

They also argued that the stimulus package was too big

I think the only place where you may find thoughtful analysis from a center-right perspective is the Economist. Although if you read it (or listen to it) weekly, you may come across as thinking that it’s a liberal magazine these days, but that’s more of a reflection of how far to the right American conservatism has swung. 

It’s amazing the policy stuff you can accomplish and talk about when you just ignore the opinions of psychotic deficit hawks.

Also ****ing lol,

4 hours ago, goskins10 said:

Yet Dems get killed for deficit spending - even when it's considerably LESS than rep! 

This was true pre-Biden, but the Republican hypocrisy on deficits has finally caught up with them. They have made zero effort to hammer Biden on economic policy and government programs because they know public opinion is against them on it. There is a reasonably strong argument that economic policy dialogue has shifted to the left in America, thanks to a concerted effort by activists of all types.

The never ending culture war ****show is the GOP’s only hope for remaining relevant and keeping their base engaged. They have nothing to offer this country but a laundry list of mostly made up social grievances. 
 

Liberals are decidedly winning the culture war and conservatives are upset that mainstream culture doesn’t want to entertain their bad, regressive views. The whole idea of “wokeness run amok” is a GOP invention to rat**** their social views back into mainstream acceptance.
 

Playing into it by toning down demands for an inclusive and empathetic society is actually going on the defensive. 

33 minutes ago, COWBOY-KILLA- said:

There needs to be pushback on cancel culture and unnecessary rhetoric that alienates and moves moderates the other way. Doesn’t mean you have to change your beliefs but just the way we frame those beliefs. 

This is where data would be good to see. Because right now, the Biden admin is doing really well with moderate and independent voters. Some of these culture war things play out quite visibly online but whether they are hurting Democrats with moderates and independents is really not clear. The GOP’s favorable polling are at an all time low.

Elements of the activist Dem base do some tone deaf messaging but a majority of the public seems to view the GOP in a much more negative light. Could it be that the culture war stuff is a net loser for the Republicans because they take far more asinine positions than liberals?

1 hour ago, goskins10 said:

 

 

This!!!!   Neither one have good messaging. The difference is the republicans are always on the offensive and the Dems continue to play defence. They need to stop that **** and go on offence. 

 

Show the data that shows Rep presidents over the last 50 yrs have all significantly raised deficit spending while Dems have all lowered them. Why are they not showing unemployment ver the 12 to 14 yrs over and over and over again???   Keep hammering all the gun violence in this country - hard!    

 

I mean yea they go after them here and there but outside a few like AOC and Pete sometimes, no one is pounding the Rep for their ignorance and the damage they have done. Stop playing defense and go on the offensive and go as strong as you can! Covid, Social Security, corporate taxes as they really are. There is so much more but the dems say it a few times then forget it.  

The people who are swayed by things like data and wonky policy proposals, mostly college educated voters, are already voting for Democrats at record numbers. 
 

This debate is pretty much at its core, just another rehash of “why are white voters without college degrees not voting for liberal policies that economically benefit them”. And I think it all comes down to culture and identity being a significant driver of human behavior, and people don’t typically think of their lives solely from the lens of economic well-being. 
 

The GOP is very good at driving white working class agitation on cultural issues, and there isn’t much the Democrats can do here that doesn’t involve throwing some of their core constituencies under the bus. And I think some of these constituencies definitely could be messaging better, but the party typically isn’t the one who dictates messaging to activist groups. The influence directionality is typically from the activist side to the party side. 

The data guy at the Economist has a different take than Carville:

39 minutes ago, tshile said:

@No Excuses

i think as an overall trend youre correcy

but political change isn’t a smooth trend line it bounces up and down while it overall moves upward (upward being progress towards what you describe )

 

I think the point is you can smooth out the bumpiness a bit, on the way up, with some better messaging

 

(and that every missed opportunity to do that, is an opportunity for the other side to have some wins and drag things further down)

I view our current social dysfunction as pretty much what happened when the printing press was invented: society lost its mind as the information landscape expanded and it took a while for the new normal to take hold, but it did eventually. The internet and social media is the modern day printing press.
 

The wokes and the anti-wokes are going to duke out all of societies ills digitally over the next decade or so, social media companies will have to figure out how to regulate the digital information landscape and all of us will have to live through a turbulent social time. 
 

There was a recent op-Ed by a conservative writer on “Why is everything liberal” in a country that’s mostly equally divided politically, which I think raises some good points:

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
 

Most of the activist and donor base energy is on the “woke” side, and a small % of highly engaged activists can enact social and cultural change far beyond their actual representation in the overall population. In the 70s-00s, the dominant intellectual and cultural mainstream was a mix of Reaganomics conservatives and the right wing church. The activist right wing crowd has been slowly overtaken by the QAnon-Alex Jones crowd, and they are not going to be winning the hearts and minds of the American youth and corporate America.

14 minutes ago, Destino said:

Im not convinced what you’re describing is the woke crowd.  The people that normalized gay rights and interracial couples came before anyone calling themselves “woke” was normal.  The woke crowd has brought us more recent developments in lgbtq and race issues.  Things like anti-racism, intersectionality, whiteness, an unknown number of possible genders, and cultural appropriation.  

The theoretical basis for today’s “woke” crowd was laid out by legal and academic scholars in the 70s and 80s (critical race theory was developed by law school academics in the 70s and intersectionality in the 80s). It seems different because these ideas went from academic theories to widely accepted cultural frameworks, but they’ve been influencing social justice activists for a long time now.
 

Fringe ideas that went mainstream because the people who advocated for them and adopted them as frameworks for social change won significant cultural and legal victories. 

It might be a problem for the Dems in some parts of the country politically, but the cultural shift in America has decidedly been won by the “woke” crowd. Almost the entirety of the private sector and mainstream culture is along for the woke ride. 

Good or bad? I think it misses the mark at times, but it remains a solidly better alternative to the hypocritical, puritan culture of the white, church-going crowd it replaced. Instead of canceling interracial couples and normal expressions of sexuality, we are cancelling racists and bigots, and sometimes people who get unfairly lumped in those categories. 
 

Still better than what existed before. Things will normalized and deradicalize eventually.