Still here. I kind of wish I had something more meaningful to say in the last big thread, but I really feel like I have to speak up here. Have I mentioned that in the before times, my commute took me through Lafayette Square?
Baltimore protests surprisingly peaceful, on the parts of both protesters and cops.
I suppose organized protest vs spontaneous uprising explains part of it. Or maybe it was just luck.
The organizers there are probably more experienced than in most places.
Last night the super friendly stray cat Odile is obsessed with came back, looking significantly thinner than the week before. We went ahead and took him in (though I moved toward this sooner than I should have and got some nice scratches as a result) and shut him in the bathroom to quarantine him from the other cats, who promptly worked together to bust down the door and free him so the three of them could romp, which they did. The vet said since they've had their vaccines we should do whatever separation works best for us rather than keep it total. He ended up sleeping in my bed and they've all been getting along weirdly well. There's growling on all sides, but no one takes it personally.
Politically-personally, things are tough. Mara and Selah both cry at bedtime about not wanting to be killed. Mara went into hysterics when I had to drive to the pharmacy 90 minutes before curfew last night because she was so afraid something would be wrong and I'd be trapped and arrested, though I'm hoping that I came back will have made an impact. Lee hadn't mentioned any of what was going on to Selah over the weekend because she was too upset by it, so I ended up being the one who talked her through it even though her immediate first question was "how did they kill him?" And then Lee called yesterday to talk to me because SHE was distraught and didn't think she had anyone but me she could talk to who'd understand. Odile, who grew up in Oakland, has been scared and angry and immediately volunteered to go chat with Lee directly so she could at least share what she's thinking and feeling with another lesbian of color, so they're doing that tonight. And she HATES Lee, which tells me how extreme her own emotions are right now.
I feel worn thin and I'm tired all the time, but the unemployment system finally got updated to include the COVID phrasing so that I can finally get approved and get paid. I'm not sure what will happen about the two months between when I last worked and when this went. (The sticking point is that I'd had to say that no, I wasn't available to accept full-time work because I'm doing full-time childcare, which then bumped me into ineligibility. And now that question allows me to give the accurate answer and I think it will actually go through this time and I'll get paid, which would be great.)
Stayed up well into the small hours last night keeping watch on the alley from my window. Our neighbors were watching the front. There's a combination of actual white supremacist activity and rumor/fear, so of course some of what is being reported is just...stuff, nothing sinister. I feel like most of the blocks/neighborhoods in near south have some kind of patrols now - I've definitely seen other people out.
Lots of suspicious looking cars without plates - one super jacked up truck that you have to see to believe which is obviously not a new car or rental or something, a bunch of others that don't look like new cars or rentals. The police have announced that they've stopped a number of them and found them to be full of "tools of violence" unspecified. People have been finding fire-starting stuff in alleys around the metro, and while some of it might just be trash, I have seen two photos of molotov cocktails plus various small bottles of gasoline. There was at least one mortar shell thrown in the street over north - someone found the casing and many, many people reported the explosion. People have had various confrontations with armed white men.
People have literally been putting out small fires and driving off arsonists - not on like, every block, but well enough documented and often enough to be concerning. There are still businesses being set on fire at night, although last night seems to have been pretty quiet.
I am hoping that things will cool down a little to give the city and fire department more bandwidth to respond. I think the police are actually trying to get some of these people, which is a pleasant surprise.
Last night at about 1:30, there were three cars together that drove through my alley, shortly followed by five national guard humvees and then one more car. It was pretty creepy. I haven't slept nearly enough the past couple of nights and am pretty beat. I took vacation yesterday thanks to my sympathetic boss but am going to try to get up and work a bit in a few minutes.
Please know that there is actual stochastic terrorism by white supremacists here. It's not made up, it's not "outside agitators", it's channers and so on coming here on purpose to terrorize people. This is getting relatively little coverage, which makes it a bit maddening - I'm plugged in enough to neighborhood stuff to be sure that it is happening.
oh frowner i am scared & heartbroken & absolutely believe you & doing what i can to at least get people to focus on the relevant facts. it's totally completely inadequate but - solidarity & love.
Seconding 6 -- that's just awful and stressful and heartbreaking.
All sympathy for Thorn as well. That also sounds awful and stressful and heartbreaking.
Yes, Thorn, that sounds really awful in an entirely different way. I remember how scary some only-sort-of-scary events were to me as a child and I think how much worse it must be for children now that it's actually very scary things that the adults can't just smooth/reason away. I hope the new cat is a little bit of a distraction for everyone.
~~
On another note, the neighbors' cat is obsessed with trying to come into our house. If it's outside and you go out the back door, it will race through the neighbors' yard, gracefully leap the fence and try to get in. It doesn't like me very much - alone among cats; I am generally a cat-whisperer - because I have had to discourage it with sharp cries and leaping into its way.
Does it want to be either friends or enemies with your cat, maybe?
And that sounds absolutely awful, having people terrorizing your neighborhood.
4 and 5 are both harrowing and awful. I'm so sorry, you guys.
Almost as if rioting is a bad idea. Anyway, stay safe, benighted no-longer-first-world residents.
Seconding 11.
Things are fine here. I finally gave M a haircut. It took over an hour, but he was watching The Long Goodbye so he didn't mind. He was happy with the results and very complimentary about my haircutting skills. Although he did also say that his hair looked like Geraldine Ferraro's. I understand that that is not unambiguous praise.
Where should I be donating money to help in re protests? If you have a better idea than Nationwide Bail Fund, please advise. Thanks.
Who will be litigating all the First Amendment violations?
God-willing, Biden's attorney general.
Alive and well still. We had a very well attended, well organized protest this weekend put on by the college NAACP branch; they were very clear in communicating the plan and rally proceedings, provided snacks and bottled water to all, etc. It went off without a hitch, and was praised the next day by the mayor.
So I'm in the weird position of not liking our mayor much, mostly for policy priorities and budget reasons, but he's a lame duck now and he had both an effective COVID response and handled the protests well. Brand 2020 is so different than the 2016-2019 versions; I'm afraid that I'll miss him when he's gone. Our Mayor elect has been worse about lining up with Fox News framed positions, and he was the former police chief, so this may be a closing window of local political sanity.
5: That sounds horrible, and rumor has it that yours isn't the only city being patrolled after curfew by white supremacists. I wonder if that's part of the implicit threat; see, even POC need the police to protect them from the KKK.
4: I'm glad that the pharmacy trip went well and hope that quiets the worst of their fears. And yay to new cat distractions and a purr filled foot warmer!
Who will be litigating all the First Amendment violations?
The ACLU. This is their core function and why they exist.
They were even founded in 1920, in response to the Palmer Raids.
Anyway, we're still doing fine here. I cut my hair on Saturday. It really needed it.
seconding both halves of 17. The idea of these arseholes driving around thinking this is the war they have been promised for so long is terrifying as well as horrible.
The ACLU should be pretty flush right now, which I'm glad for.
I appreciate the sympathy but it's like this every time I have to tell the kids about another killing so that part is pretty familiar. It kicks up other kinds of fears and sadness too, missing parents, incarcerated relatives. Nia has been watching protest videos and news on YouTube, but the younger two don't search it out but still can't avoid it.
The curfew for our town was just lifted. I think the only reason it was in place was fear that protestors would escape across the river to our town when the curfew kicks in over there.
It's election day here in Montana. All mail, but people with issues can go to the elections office. I don't think there's much doubt about most of the races on the Democratic side, but polling is thin, and there are always surprises. Turn-out is high, and that might be about the Governor's race on the Republican side.
I've got a role in ours -- same as 4 years ago, I'm putting on our county delegate selection convention. It's on Thursday: we'll need pretty solid results tomorrow, so I can do the math to figure out how many county delegates each candidate gets. The planning assumes that we'll have Warren delegates -- she just might get 15% of the vote in the county. I've been watching the pre-registrations as they come in -- Warren is ahead of Sanders, barely, both a little north of 25%. That's not all that representative of the electorate, I don't think. Our county party executive committee is definitely not representative: 7 Warren, 3 Biden, 0 Sanders. We don't serve the kind of gatekeeping function you see in big cities, though, so whiners (and we have them) are hard pressed to find examples where our make-up has affected anything. (The whiners all assume that we're Biden partisans, in the pay of corporate interests. Lot of dark humor about why our checks are late).
Logistically, it's a zoom, and I need 7 co-hosts, and 3 caucus leads to staff the thing. Mostly everyone is identified and trained, still missing the Sanders lead (repeated attempts to reach the guy with the campaign who's in charge of this have not yet been successful.) but there are a couple of days yet.
On Friday, it's the statewide platform convention. I tried to get a sentence endorsing BLM in by the amendment deadline yesterday, but the politics of having all the right folks weigh in pushed us past the deadline. I might try for something in a plank committee, if someone in another county has proposed anything. AIMHMB, the politics of the platform convention, and state party governance as a whole are maddening. Every county gets the same number of votes, for platform, and the election of officers (including, this time, our DNC super-delegates). Whether they have 1,000 people or over 100,000. So while as an actual electorate, we're an urban party, at least a little diverse, for platform purposes, we're just plain white and rural. The rural counties are scared as rabbits that some urban county is going to propose something that'll cost votes. My heavens, their candidate might lose 75/25 instead of 65/35. Meanwhile, here we are with the actual votes, and the money candidates all come to collect, and what we get from our rural friends is heavier on the envy, fear, and suspicion than it might be.
Delegate selection isn't as heavily gerrymandered, but is still a bit rotten: if you do the math, we'd get 34 delegates to the state convention, but the rules impose a 30 delegate cap for any single county. We're the only county affected by this cap. The county immediately to our west would get about half a delegate, but there's a floor of 1. Unless more than one candidate gets 15% of the vote, in which case (and this is likely this year) they'd get 2, or even 3.
I am also suffering from lack of sleep, tho not as bad as Frowner. My sister has been having some rough days with pain, and is trying to find a PCP who will prescribe strong enough painkillers. My friend who is always having problems seems to be doing a bit better. Back last week when the police station was still standing, she explained to her biracial 8 year old daughter about what was going down, and asked if she was interested in going to the protest, or would that be too scary. Daughter's response: "I'm not scared, I'm PISSED!" So they attended for a couple hours in the daytime. I dunno. I really should have taken my own advice and bought guns a few months ago.
Up at 3 am for another walk at 3 am with Pola.
No time to read the comments. I hope all are safe, and thinking of Frowner and Natilo.
That, or you've...reduced the social distance.
"pola" just makes me think of this movie (which Barry's probably seen, come to think of it). I hope Pola isn't your sister, Barry!
the ref is pola negri, neb! think https://images.app.goo.gl/1yQ4bXoZLsWMcq7u5 mmmmmm.
Well, I hope Pola Negri isn't Barry's sister, too.
chronologically that seems challenging, but someone better than i at maths might be able to work it out.
Maybe it's like in the Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn and Arwen are first cousins despite the 2,500 year age difference.
Lord of the Rings is the longer movie, but Sexy Beast feels longer.
I would just like to mention that my 13 and 15 year old boys now say "that's what she said" at least a few dozen times a day.
I just thought I'd note that after reading 35.
I edited 35 because it was even more absurd a set-up penis-joke under the first rendition.
The scene where Gollum bites off the ring is very different.
"What is this shrivelled up hairless pink thing doing?!"
NMM to Steve King's Congressional career (as of Jan 2021).
Just put the ring into the Crack of Doom already.
And back home again, 4.5 miles this time. The water was murky so we didn't see many fish and no pipefish (which has jokingly become our fish) but we did see a Great Blue Heron up close. We're going grocery shopping together in a couple of hours.
I have to admit I'm having trouble following all your euphemisms.
35 What? Sexy Beast is under 90 minutes long (as I've said one of the two canonically perfect lengths for a film) and it moves.
38 My preciousssssssss!!!
So, we have prelim results -- maybe 80% of the ballots. Warren, with 2400 votes in this county, isn't going to get a delegate here for the state convention. Sanders, with 71 votes the next county over, gets a delegate there.
We'll know more tomorrow.
41 is a rare bright spot in this dark time.
Definitely. Nicer if he had been imprisoned or killed, but losing his job is still a good thing.
This is trivial compared to what other people are going through but the killer birch trees of Jesus college are having sex again and my eyes are streaming so badly I can hardly read the screen.
I really thought that link was going to be about something hilarious that was making you laugh so hard you were crying. I was hoping it was something about Falwell University or something.
26: Natilo - she might look in to finding a pain management clinic. I can't remember whether she moved to Minnesota or if she's in another state.
Nope. For a man who loves birch trees and the latitudes where they flourish I have a really unfortunate immune system.
55 There's something truly magical about a birch grove, but I guess not for you at this time of year.
55: Is it one of those things where city planners planted all male trees to cut down on those annoying acorns? That's what happened here.
Acorn season is the best. A good crunch really makes the day go better.
We went on a hike the past weekend and on two separate occasions, right when we entered a stand of a particular type of pine tree, my eyes and throat immediately started stinging. I've never had particularly severe allergies but this was immediate and strong. I guess it was a combination of a specific type of trees and whatever they were doing in their growth cycle last weekend.
Hey, Frowner, Natilio, and everyone who's fond of them: fundraiser for Uncle Hugo's. https://twitter.com/naomikritzer/status/1267882043117101056?s=21
57: I think that birches are dioecious. Do I mean dioecious? God knows. I can't even spell it. They have male and female flowers on the same tree. (googles) No, the word is monoecious. Dioecious is the opposite. Anyway you don't get male and female birch trees. They're all fully equipped.
The fruits of dioecious deciduous trees are delicious.
Just over 1,900 new cases reported here today. Testing has gotten over the 5,000 mark again.
And a fucked up thing, I went with Pola to a large grocery store, you have to show your green health status on the app to get in. Hers kept crashing every time she launched it. Her operating system is up to date. Another mutual friend also has a Samsung Android, the latest model, and she has the same problem. You basically need to show it now to get in anywhere now.
So remember when Trump pushed hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, and then the Lancet published that massive study that said the drug actually made things worse for COVID-19 patients?
Now looking like the study might be, er, fake news...https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine
66 is shocking but not surprising. Fake company. It's all a grift. It seems we can't do anything right.
The thing is, even if you rush and have all sorts of exceptions from the usual bureaucracy, it takes a long time to do a study correctly.
It's kind of surprising! Isn't the Lancet supposed to be, like, competent? Zeynep Tufekci on twitter was just saying that when the study came out a bunch of researchers basically went "uhhhhh...", but obviously that didn't stop it from having a massive effect.
I certainly don't know this stuff solidly, but my sense from the discussion of all those idiotic right wing hoaxes is that peer review doesn't do much at all to screen out dishonesty. If you're lying about your data, that's hard to catch.
It is, but not having your data available should be a red flag.
Not having your data, and having most of the people you claim to have gotten your data _from_ saying that they don't have that data, and they didn't give it to you.
Right, but it wouldn't be at all ordinary for the Lancet to have done that kind of checking.
70: Basically yes. Peer review can't catch if you've just made the data up out of whole cloth, or if your computer model is badly written. Papers don't always give access to the raw data, and even if they do peer reviewers are not expected to duplicate the analysis.
It can and should (but doesn't always) catch if your argument doesn't make sense, or if you've missed out some relevant development in the field, or if your result just isn't very interesting, or if you plagiarised it.
I notice Vox had part of the story a few days ago. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/29/21271944/coronavirus-treatment-hydroxychloroquine-lancet-study
I think? I could be wrong?
Obviously the paper needs to be retracted now, I'm just quibbling over whether it was incompetent of the Lancet to have let it through.
69 I guess so, I mean the Lancet is supposed to have high standards. It seems like we're witnessing the universal collapse of all of our institutions.
not having your data available should be a red flag.
For medical research it's not uncommon, apparently - hospitals often impose NDAs on researchers who use their patient data. And, as LB said, peer reviewers aren't trying to find fraud - if the author says "we got this data from hospitals" then peer reviewers tend to believe them.
One of the authors of this is an IRL acquaintance:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.130161v1
Hopefully he hasn't faked his data.*
* kidding
The red flags that the reviewers should have picked up are: implausibly high patient numbers for some countries and regions; authors without much of a record of publication.
I think it was some failure of the editor. The finding may well be right if somebody does a real study.
Journals compete with each other for "Impact." Publishing a paper that gets lots of press is helpful to the journal, so the editor might have had too much of a ficus on that.
80: This is The Lancet though. They confer status to a paper, not the other way around.
The impact factor for JAMA is creeping up on them and NEJM is higher.
Not that I've had my name in any of them.
the editor might have had too much of a ficus on that.
Explaining why quality control has gone to pot.
I don't know how the editorial office of a first rate journal works, but I know plenty of professors who insist on having a paper rejected by NEJM before sending it to someone who will publish it.
In my head, I pronounce NEJM like "Sejm".
The UK now has more deaths/capita than every other non-micro nation except Belgium, which apparently is much more liberal with counting care home deaths than any other country.
Huh. Why did they get so bad? From what I heard, their plan wasn't as bad as Sweden's.
I am sitting here in the worst-affected bit of the entire country; one in every 400 male residents has died of COVID over the last two months. (Female, closer to one in every 500.)
Sweden's plan was to have a lot of cases but limit *deaths* by emphasizing keeping nursing homes safe. It hasn't exactly worked, but it may be doing a better job limiting deaths (as opposed to cases) than the UK.
My honourable friend has produced a remarkable statistic.Yet it would appear that His Majesty's first ministers are still more at risk from disgruntled madmen than from this microbe. Safer to remain in one of the lesser offices of state.
Looking it up, I see the U.K. deaths per capita isn't very much higher than Italy or Spain.
Sweden's plan was to balance so far as possible deaths now, in the first wave, against deaths later, in subsequent waves, and from the effects of economic disruption and of other diseases going untreated. We won't in the nature of things know for a few years whether this was the right way to think about the problem. It's a bet that the vaccine won't turn up in time to rescue us.
OTOH, the first Mrs Werdna who has worked as a nurse for the last 30 years, said right at the beginning that the right thing to do was to let the old die off. Not a sentimental women, really.
re: 95
Yeah, although the death rate in the UK is slowing down less quickly than Spain and Italy, and it remains higher.
95: I mean, given that I reported this fact as soon as it became true (within a day, anyway), that's exactly what you'd expect, wouldn't you?
But the trend is for the difference to widen. The UK's death rate hasn't declined nearly as much as those other nations. It's also somewhat helped by a change in reporting of some sorts in Spain that decreased the total number of deaths about a week ago.
Stats for UK, Italy, Spain, and Sweden over time:
total deaths per capita
new deaths per capita, 1 week moving average
Pwned, but I'll claim a value-add of having graphs that aren't meant to look like they're on old newsprint.
Less facetiously, I have my graphs on linear axes; unfortunately, the FT, DIVOC-91, etc. all still default to logarithmic, which is less appropriate now that we aren't in an exponential phase (outside of Brazil). This is especially so when normalizing by population and looking at new cases/deaths. Since it's normalized, the scales are similar. By looking at new cases/deaths, we're looking at derivatives--that's fine if you're exponential, since the derivative of an exponential is itself exponential, but if you aren't, the logarithmic axis can easily make a factor of two look tiny, which is a pretty big deal when looking at a derivative.
96: I don%to agree with her, but I appreciate the honesty.
Schools here can open July 1, which is good if they want to celebrate Canada Day.
Someone in DC should call 911. As I understand it, there seems to be a goon squad of some kind pretending to be federal officers but refusing to wear any identification, or even say what agency they are pretending to be working for. I'm sure the DC police will be able to get to the bottom of this.
104: they've been there since yesterday.
re: 100
Yours makes clearer that the UK may be rising again, too.
Swedes tend to be fairly dispassionate about these things. I was just listening to an interview with Anders Tegnell the chief epidemiologist [https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7487415] where he says that the great disadvantage of entering your lockdowns all in one go, as opposed to measure for measure is that you don't then know afterwards which of the the measures you took actually worked, and which were just theatre. That quite a lot of people may die in the course of establishing this doesn't cause him to beat his breast.
This is entirely consistent with my [and the first Mrs Werdna's] experience of Swedish doctors.
DIVOC is my favorite. I like the log version for the big picture, and the linear for actual numbers. It shows 358 new cases in MA yesterday, compared to a high back on April 24 of 4946. (That might have been a statistical outlier, as MA changes the reporting rules every now and then.) R0 is about 1.0.
Up at 3 am again for my walk with Pola. Not going to the marina this time as this necessitates driving and with her tracking app crashing and a 3 year $55,000 fine hanging over our heads for not installing it and police checkpoints for same making it risky we'll walk around the neighborhood.
Why not pull a Xavier de Maistre next time?
And back again, another 5 miler. Low humidity but it was 93 out when I got home. Tomorrow we'll go to the marina again.
Swedish doctors are psychopaths.
Update on my lockdown facial hair growing hobby, it's no longer a full blown biker horseshoe mustache. It's nearer a Wild West/Mexican style. I could probably go for a walrus after this.
115: Goo goo ga-joob!
In the hospital waiting room, biding my time while Ace gets her tonsils and adenoids out. And the turbinates are being reduced.
I guess it's probably best to medical people do that. But my wife cut my hair so we could avoid contact with others. There were YouTube videos on how to do it. Just saying.
Over 1,550 new cases reported here today, testing close enough to 5,000 I guess. Muddling through.
omg. So this hospital was recently sold. It used to be overtly religious, but now, they just read scripture over the loudspeaker for the morning pause to pray. Not just a moment of silence or whatever.
"Two or three years ago, it was just another snake cult."
Local county only 14 here. Trending upward, but slowly.
Boringly OK here except that my productivity has dropped alarmingly, only partly from following 400 comment threads on Unfogged. Thanks for the Lord of the Rings subthread. I think I woke my teenager one room away when I read 34. Thanks for the reporting from Frowner and Natilo, and best wishes to everyone close to the chaos.
34 is true. I read the appendices.
128: I think the "62 times removed" bit is important.
Genetically, sure. But not in estate law.
We are OK-ish.
My wife has been informed that she might be getting made redundant. They are definitely closing her shop, but they may relocate her to a different one, or just cut her loose. This sucks, somewhat, as we were early in negotiations to buy the flat next door, and had agreed the sale, so next step was mortgage. I'm assuming "I am losing my job in 3 months" is not a good look on the mortgage application.
Otherwise, pretty good. Been losing weight again. Not back to where I was pre-Christmas, but I've lost about 6 or 7 weeks of lockdown weight. I've been quite productive for work, and I'm working on some relatively interesting things, so it could be worse.
xelA is still obsessed by reading Harry Potter, but is being more of a shit about home learning than he was mid-lockdown.
That sucks. Sorry to hear about it.
Are houses getting cheaper? I would think they should be, but I don't know how you check when the market isn't really functioning.
It appears not, maybe because interest has gone down.
135 to 133. Also may not apply outside the US.
I did see something about rents dropping in San Francisco, but that's something different. Also, the rate for a one bedroom apartment is still more than enough to make a mortgage payment on two houses here.
The house we're trying to buy has come down by about 11% from the asking price last autumn. On the other hand, the house I'm selling, which is is much smaller and cheaper, has lost about 5% of what I might then have asked. Of course a lot of that is the Brexit dividend. And then there is the effect of trashing higher education on the housing market in a university town, though that should be less in Cambridge than almost anywhere else in Britain.
Up at 3am again a bit hungover for yet another walk around the marina with Pola.
Good luck ttaM!
And back again, only 4.2 miles this time but it's 6 am here and already 95 degrees outside.