J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 50

Martha Wells Is Having too Much Fun Here...

Highly recommended. Martha Wells appears to have had an illegally large amount of fun writing this novel. Here a newly-created instantiation of Murderbot sets out on what is supposed to be a suicide mission. Murderbot's first person POV:

Martha Wells: Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel https://books.google.com/books?id=sBK_yAEACAAJ&dq=isbn:1250229863: 'Obviously some things had happened since [the] A[--hole ]R[esearch ]T[ransport] had... cop[ied the old me to create me]...

...And ART was right, it couldn���t risk a comm contact, even to get intel. If the Targets managed to deliver the threat to kill ART���s crew, it would put them in control of the situation and we had to avoid that any way we could.

I said, "I���m not actually a human baby, ART, I remember the f---ing directive���I helped write it".

"You���re not making this any easier", ART said.

"You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one".

ART said, "Prepare for deployment..."

#books #highlyrecommended #noted #sciencefiction #2020-05-12

Noted: Morley: New Normal?

Neville Morley: The New Normal? https://thesphinxblog.com/2020/04/27/... ���Microsoft Teams... [might] be... used for a seminar of 10-12 students, where a class of 150 is clearly a non-starter. But having now had a couple of department meetings via Teams, I���m sceptical.... [Is] online class discussion... what we actually need to prioritis[e?].... Might it be possible to get more people more involved���and even more so if it takes place asynchronously, so people have time to think and compose their answers, rather than privileging the ability to come up with coherent thoughts spontaneously?��� #internet #noted #universities #2020-05-11

Noted: Kelly: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

Kevin Kelly: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/: ���Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe. Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points. Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better... #cognition #noted #2020-05-11

Noted: Gibbon: Roman Tolerance

Edward Gibbon: Roman Tolerance https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/10/quote-of-the-day-october-5-2011-roman-tolerance.html: 'The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.��And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord...

#books #history #noted #romanempire #2020-05-11

Noted: Tufekci: Coronavirus and the Blindness of Authoritarianism

Zeynep Tufekci: Coronavirus and the Blindness of Authoritarianism https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/: 'China���s use of surveillance and censorship makes it harder for Xi Jinping to know what���s going on in his own country...

#authoritarianism #fascism #noted #2020-05-11

Noted: Davidow & Malone: Dopamine Capitalism

A Precis of the thoughts that Bill Davidow and Mike Malone have been having recently on how modern high tech information age capitalism is increasingly finding it much more profitable to create evanescent and ultimately pointless desires then to satisfy durable and important needs: William H. Davidow & Michael S. Malone: Dopamine Capitalism https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/new-casino-capitalism-by-william-h-davidow-and-michael-s-malone-2020-04: ���It is no secret that with the digital revolution has come many new forms of addiction, as users chase after social-media "likes" and other online stimuli. But less understood is the extent to which most of the tech industry now relies on behavioral manipulation to maximize profits at the expense of our wellbeing.... The powerful companies (and, in some cases, governments) that control the Internet have moved from accidentally or unwittingly creating human ���robots��� to knowingly doing so. Contrary to the usual warnings about artificial intelligence and automation, the biggest near-term threat to humanity is coming not from our machines, but from the people designing them. Those shaping the current technological era have violated the public trust by choosing business models that are openly amoral or even immoral. Following in the footsteps of the tobacco companies and the casino business, they are consciously creating and fostering addictive behavior in the name of profits...

#cognition #economics #grifting #internet #latecapitalism #noted #psychology #2020-05-11

Gold Nugget Mandarins...

Edge of Nowhere Farm: Growing Gold Nugget Mandarins in AZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMF07ZTWZAw: ���Today we're taking our first harvest of Gold Nugget Mandarins���...

#food #noted #2020-05-09

Noted: The Career of Gylippus

William Smith: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography & Mythology http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DG%3Aentry+group%3D12%3Aentry%3Dgylippus-bio-1: 'For all that we know of the rest of the life of Gylippus we are indebted to Plutarch (Nic. 28 ; Lysand. 16, 17) and Diodorus (13.106). He was commissioned, it appears, by Lysander, after the capture of Athens, to carry home the treasure. By opening the seams of the sacks underneath, he abstracted a considerable portion, 30 talents, according to Plutarch's text.... He was detected by the inventories which were contained in each package, and which he had overlooked. A hint from one of his slaves indicated to the Ephors the place where the missing treasure lay concealed, the space under the tiling of the house. Gylippus appears to have at once gone into exile, and to have been condemned to death in his absence. Athenaeus (vi. p. 234.) says that he died of starvation, after being convicted by the Ephors of stealing part of Lysander's treasure; but whether he means that he so died by the sentence of the Ephors. or in exile, does not appear. None can deny that Gylippus did the duty assigned to him in the Svracusan war with skill and energy. The favour of fortune was indeed most remarkably accorded to him; yet his energy in the early proceedings was of a degree unusual with his countrymen. His military skill, perhaps, was not much above the average of the ordinary Spartan officer of the better kind. Of the nobler virtues of his country we cannot discern much: with its too common vice of cupidity he lamentably sullied his glory. Aelian (Ael. VH 12.42; comp. Athen. 6.271) says that he and Lysander, and Callicratidas, were all of the class called Mothaces, Helots, that is, by birth, who, in the company of the boys of the family to which they belonged, were brought up in the Spartan discipline, and afterwards obtained freedom. This can hardly have been the case with Gylippus himself, as we find his father, Cleandridas, in an important situation at the side of king Pleistoanax: but the family may have been derived, at one point or another, from a Mothax...

#history #noted #2020-05-09

Well Played, Calculated Risk, Well Played!

Calculated Risk: April Employment Report: 20,500,000 Jobs Lost, 14.7% Unemployment Rate https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2020/05/april-employment-report-20500000-jobs.html: ���The second graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms���

#noted #2020-05-08

American Carnage: For Project Syndicate

The Project Syndicate people titled this "American Carnage": a good title. They also had to cut it massively. Here is the draft I am most satisfied with: J. Bradford DeLong: American Carnage https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-coronavirus-lethal-incompetence-by-j-bradford-delong-2020-04: ���Throughout Donald Trump's presidency, it has been obvious that the American political system and public sphere are broken. But only with the federal government's embarrassingly incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic has that breakdown translated into a significant loss of life���

As of the evening of April 23, 2020, the United States crossed 50,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. It is now the worst-hit region of the world: with half of continental Europe���s population, it now has 3/4 as many daily deaths https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest.

My guess���which is worth very little, as this is far outside my wheelhouse���is that because of undercounting the true number of deaths that would not have happened so far but for coronavirus is half again as many: 75000. If you are also willing to guess that one percent of those whom the virus brushes past close enough that they develop at least temporary resistance to it, that means that two and a bit more weeks ago���as of April 7, say���7,500,000 Americans may have been acquiring at least a temporary immunity. That means that each day two and a bit more weeks ago about 3,600 additional Americans were acquiring the disease that will kill them, and that 360,000 new people were in the process of their immune systems��� becoming aware of the virus and making antibodies in response.

Other countries have managed to achieve enough social distancing to put the number of virus cases on a downward trajectory, and have promise of in a month or two or three getting to a state where they can keep the virus rare via test-and-trace-and-isolate and wait for the one year, two years, three years, or more before humanity���s virologists work miracles and develop a vaccine.

Italy and Spain are down from 700 confirmed deaths a day to 500. Germany, Canada, and Turkey appear to be turning the corner at between 100 and 300. Ireland looks unlikely to get above 50. Australia is at 1. Austria is at 12. Denmark is at 10. Greece is at 4. Hong Kong is at 0. Japan is at 30. New Zealand is at 2. Norway is at 7. South Korea is at 2.

The United States as a whole has not. New confirmed cases each day have been about the same at roughly 30,000 for three weeks now. Testing for coronavirus per day has been about the same at roughly 150,000 for three weeks now. The share of those tested for whom the test comes back positive for the presence of coronavirus has been the same at about 20% as well.

The United States thus appears to have flattened the epidemic: the current R[t], the average number of new cases to which someone infected spreads the virus, is no longer much greater than one���the epidemic is not growing. But by the same token R[t] is not less than one: the epidemic is not dying away, even slowly, but continues to burble along.

Ultimately���if humanity���s virologists fail to work miracles and invent an effective vaccine���this virus will have an attack rate, I am told, that is perhaps likely to be 70% of the U.S population: 265 million people. If it were to have a 1% mortality rate, that would not be the perhaps 75000 deaths we have suffered so far, but 2.65 million. And that is if the health-care system does not collapse under the strain of a wave of cases and the death rate rise from 1% to 3%, which would be not 2.65 but 8 million dead.

If the epidemic were on the decline, we could begin to plan for what the next stage should be: test as many people as possible for virus and antibodies as often as possible; hand out green armbands to people with antibodies who are presumably resistant; have them do the human-contact jobs; keep people who do not have green armbands masked and more than six feet from one another; wipe down hard surfaces where the virus might lurk, and then wipe them down again. Then employment and the economy could recover and the cases could be kept down, so that the virus is a tragedy to the few who die and their relatives and friends and an annoyance to other Americans, while we wait for the miracles in the forms of effective antiviral treatments and a vaccine.

But the epidemic in the U.S. is not on the decline.

Perhaps the U.S. will make a renewed effort to increase social distancing, and get the epidemic on the decline. But that does not seem the way to bet right now. President Trump���s confidant and chief mouthpiece, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, goes on TV to sneer at the idea of test-and-trace as a goal https://www.thewrap.com/giuliani-calls-covid-19-contact-tracing-ridiculous-we-should-trace-everybody-for-cancer-video/ and to demand that the FDA fast-track approval for clinical trials of biotech company Celularity���s stem-cell therapies. All Stat News reporter Adam Feuerstein will say about this is that there are ���critics��� and ���fears of political meddling��� https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/31/rudy-giuliani-wants-fda-to-fast-track-a-stem-cell-therapy-for-covid-19-critics-see-political-meddling/.

President Trump and Vice President Pence both egged on Georgia Governor Kemp to relax Georgia���s social distancing measures https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-approved-georgia-gov-kemp-s-plan-reopen-early-president-n1191621, and Kemp today, April 24, reopened businesses like bowling alleys, gymnasiums, and tattoo parlors https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/us/georgia-coronavirus-reopening-businesses-friday/index.html. Trump then denounced Kemp for ���opening too soon���.

Trump also called for experimentation on how to fight coronavirus by injecting people with Lysol and Clorox https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-slammed-for-touting-sunlight-uv-light-bleach-as-possible-covid-19-treatments-during-briefing and using strong ultraviolet light���the last of these being how the behavior-altering parasites were killed in the 1967 Star Trek Episode ���Operation���Annihilate!��� https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_--_Annihilate!. All that New York Times reporters Dan Levin and William Broad could bring themselves to say was that Trump was theorizing ���dangerously, in the view of some experts��� https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1253637064396070912���thus implying strongly that there were other experts who were open-minded and agnostic.

Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, now thirteenth and rising among the fifty U.S. states in coronavirus cases per million, claims that social distancing does not work because in South Dakota���s hotspots ���99% of infections��� are happening not in workplaces but in people���s homes among people ���liv[ing] in the same community��� same buildings��� same apartments���. A spokesperson for Smithfield Foods backed her up with respect to Smithfield���s employees: ���Living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family���. Noem denounced people in other states ���giv[ing]��up their liberties for just a��little bit of security��� while stating that she ���believe[s] in our freedoms and liberties.��� https://www.foxnews.com/media/gov-kristi-noem-vows-to-keep-south-dakota-open-becomes-public-enemy-no-1-for-the-left-amid-covid-19-crisis.

She also, with the approval of President Trump and Vice President Pence, launched a statewide clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-dakota-implements-statewide-hydroxychloroquine-clinical-trial-for-coronavirus-treatment.

The American public sphere is broken. And so is the American political and governance system.

With the calculated political decision last January of the Republican U.S. Senate caucus that they should pretend that President Trump was not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors warranting his removal from office, the U.S. lost its final chance to have a rational policy response to the coronavirus epidemic.

We will not just burble along with things as they are���something will change, for good or, more likely, for ill. But as long as we continue to burble along, the country will continue to suffer about 4000 true coronavirus deaths each day and about 20% unemployment as, each day, 400,000 new people begin developing at least temporary immunity to the virus, and we thus each day come 0.2% closer to achieving nationwide herd immunity.

http://delong.typepad.com/files/ps-coronavirus-stasis.pdf

https://www.icloud.com/pages/0QfvZtT8...

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