Going to give a "you gotta hand it to her" to someone I am very, very disinclined to give a "you gotta hand it to her."
Meagan McArdle responding to MattY on Twitter.
MattY: It does seem noteworthy that the huge increase in the power of our matching tools has coincided with a *decline* in marriage rates, people having less sex, etc
McMegan: It would be better for young people to meet their life partner the way I did: in Matt Yglesias' back yard.
At least he doesn't let her into the house.
I am getting to feel self-congratulatory about the afternoon-sun-blocking exterior shutters I recently built for the house. Temperatures by the bay are bearable so far, but I worry about our friends farther inland, and the possible hurricane (?!?) seems like pretty bad news.
Davis and Sacramento sound absolutely horrifying.
Yes: venturing east of the crest of the Berkeley Hills does not seem to be in the cards next few days
Eh. For middle class people it isn't that much worse. Staying inside in air conditioning (where possible) for 105 degree heat is not very different from staying inside in air conditioning (where possible) for 113 degree heat.
Also the peak heat is only the afternoon and evening. We were outside this morning until noonish when it hit the low 90s, which is what we're used to.
Deep shade on grass is twenty to forty degrees cooler than in the sun on concrete. Swimming is the same. We'll go to a big splash park tomorrow in the mid-day or the river in the morning.
For housed people, it is mostly like a snowstorm or heavy rain that traps you inside for a few days. I'd rather have pleasant evenings in the backyard, but that'll have to be next next week. Most exposure is from the car to the building, like when picking up Steady. A few minutes of 109 degrees is doable, like (I presume) dashing through snow to get inside.
For unhoused people, everything is about shade and hydration and not being on concrete.
I watered the trees extra going into this. My veggies are done in the garden, dead and removed. But the sunflowers are going strong.
My theory is that everything above 105 feels the same. It feels like being baked in an oven and it doesn't feel MORE like being baked in an oven when it is hotter.
When it was 120 degrees in Woodland Hills in the summer a couple years ago, my brother and I went for a walk around the block. It felt real hot, but not distinguishable from, say, 105 degrees. However, when I got back from the walk, I sweat heavily for about 25 minutes, which I would not expect from a walk in 105 degrees.
Anyway, it is hot, but if you live in heat you sweat and drink a lot and sit still in the shade and are kinda acclimated. It isn't spontaneous combustion.
Outdoor work is early to get done before the hard heat starts. So is outdoor recreation.
You forgot to add "but it's a dry heat".
In preparation for fall outdoors stuff, I've purchased Swedish trousers.
8: I went for a 90 minute walk in high 90's heat on a bike path. I got pack to my car and really had to pee, so I only had a few sips of water but I was so dehydrated I had to drink some water with an electrolyte tablet before pee8ng. Then I guzzles water with a saltstick.
We're having smoke. Some is locally crafted, but most is imported from Idaho and Oregon.
Went out on the river anyway, for a 3 hour tour. It wasn't bad.
On the whole I think Megan is right, and the point about concrete is very important. But I think 120-130 F is actually different, although maybe we have different senses of what an oven feels like? I can't remember how much I've said about spending the summer of 1998 in Furnace Creek in Death Valley, but it was the hottest summer on record until like 2015 -- there was a day, July 18 according to Google, where it hit 129 F. I'm not sure how clearly I remember living through it, but I do remember noting to myself that that was a survivable temperature -- you didn't get burnt to a crisp within minutes stepping outside, although it would be very unwise to try to exert yourself for more than about five minutes. It screwed up my sense of what "really hot" meant for decades. I do remember that it felt exactly like being in an oven, and also that acute feeling that bad, bad things would happen to me, specifically to my skin and eyes and then to everything further in, if I stayed out there. 105 is definitely bad, but IME it's not quite the same existential emergency.
As crises go, I am more worried about Pakistan, but the fucking hurricane winds + low-rain lightning storm scenario is indeed the stuff of nightmares. I actually haven't had a wildfire nightmare in a while.
My baseline from growing up in Tucson is that the difference between 105 and 115 isn't necessarily something you'll feel from just standing outside for a few minutes, but does register with a) exertion, of course; b) is it tolerable to stay outside if you're in the shade; c) how quickly do you run through a 32-ounce Gatorade; d) how many midday hours have to be written off entirely; e) how quickly does a parked car turn into an inferno and is it actually possible to un-inferno it if your A/C isn't great. I don't remember that we ever had issues with the grid going down in hot weather, but that was before the brave deregulated future arrived.
15 is a great example of the difference between above- and below-the-rim attitudes toward heat in the Southwest. None of those things were considerations when I was growing up in Albuquerque, which is similar to Tucson in a lot of ways but not these. This may be changing now. A certain amount of warming is now just baked in.
I keep on fantasizing that large scale carbon removal, enough to make the world net carbon negative, is going to be possible, and weather like this isn't locked in forever. But of course it is at least for decades.
I might as well weigh in here. It regularly gets to 110F to 115F and + here from around June through August, and well above 100 from May through October. It's been around 120F more than a few times here. And it's not always a dry heat, the humidity comes around sometime in early to mid-July and lasts through August into early September. Imagine 110F-115F with 60%-80%. It's absolutely unreal. But everything here is air conditioned and they do it very well. There's even an outdoor park or two with outdoor AC. And outdoor work stops from around 10AM till 4PM from June through mid-September though I still don't know how they do it. I used to take outdoor walks with Pola in June, July and August during the lockdown but we met at around 3AM and finished by 6AM. I was still drenched with sweat, especially in August. I can't imagine what the coming decades of global warming is going to bring to this region.
8: One winter in Moscow taught me that the converse is not true. This Louisiana kid thought that after a certain point, it was just cold and whatever, but no. I found out that -20°C is a hell of a lot colder than -10°C, that -25°C is noticeably colder still, and that goddamn, you can even feel the difference between -25°C and -28°C.
Fortunately, I did not have cause to go anywhere the Russians considered actually cold.
Yeah, there's a point where it hurts to breathe in the air because it's cold.
And the parts of your face that aren't covered by a balaclava or whatever never really adjust to being exposed at a certain temperature. For me, that was about -20 regular. But it's probably not that after 30 years away from the prairie.
Of course, I used to be able to work outside for a whole day when the high was over 100. At the end of the day, I'd have to sit in the air conditioning for a couple of hours before I could eat.
I'm moving from somewhere where it gets into the 90s and occasionally 100s every year but where much housing, including mine has no A/C to somewhere that's slightly hotter on average but frequently does have A/C, including the new apartment where I'm moving. Seems like an ok deal for me.
If he's being followed by a Truss, I guess that means Johnson was an inguinal hernia.
I think DC's summer this year was actually cooler than the last few years. Maybe it's just my imagination of course or I've become desensitized to it, but I think we had the air conditioning off more and fewer scary heat days than I remember from let's say 2014-2020.
We were in Spain for 10 days in August, and that was noticeably hot, and air conditioning was rare or just turned up hotter than I'm used to. Can't put numbers on it from memory, but Cassandane kept talking about things shutting down for "siesta" in the mid- to late afternoon and I could understand why.
One of my memories from my year in Israel as a kid was that adults demanded quiet from neighborhood kids during siesta hours.
Honestly, Jewish kids don't seem that loud here.
24: Do you think this is wrong for any reason?
I'm not sure that, metaphorically speaking, British voters don't want their intestines to be in a bag with their nuts.
27: Yes, it's odd -- even as a Jewish person I tend to stereotypes Jews in the US - but in Israel, in a classroom with only Jews, they are just a bunch of kids, some pretty quiet and others very loud.
19: I had this exact experience the first time I went to Toronto in the winter and realized the furthest north I'd ever been previously during the winter was DC and I had no earthly idea what real cold actually was.
@1
I do not understand Matt Yglesias. He somehow manages to be so obnoxious that even when I agree with him, I hate myself for agreeing with him.
At a tactical level, his whole schtick appears to be promoting technocratic, left-center opinions in a maximally schmuck-baiting way, so that he can then mock the baited schmucks for internet points.
Everything he says is covered layers of knowingness and irony. But as was rightfully said of the alt-right, doing something ironically is still doing it.
Maybe he ironically set someone up with McMegan.
31: I still remember growing up with the weather guy was like "exposed flesh will freeze in less than five minutes." I did in fact freeze the skin off my ears, but that was when the cold front was a bit of a surprise and I was on foot in a blizzard.
Russian cold, updated ?
https://twitter.com/quikmaaz/status/1563528932850221060?s=21
My baseline from growing up in Tucson is that the difference between 105 and 115 isn't necessarily something you'll feel from just standing outside for a few minutes, but does register with a) exertion, of course; b) is it tolerable to stay outside if you're in the shade; c) how quickly do you run through a 32-ounce Gatorade; d) how many midday hours have to be written off entirely; e) how quickly does a parked car turn into an inferno and is it actually possible to un-inferno it if your A/C isn't great.
Everyone mocks Florida, but it never got much above the upper 90s when I was growing up. Probably a dry heat, who can say.
They call them meteorologists. I'm pretty sure Florida has a moist heat.
My theory is that everything above 105 feels the same
I think this is wrong! I haven't spent a ton of time in super heat, but was in Phoenix for a 115 degree day, and of course I've been in Chicago lots, and I think people don't appreciate that temp is pretty damn linear, and the difference from 100 to 120 is as noticeable as the difference between 80 and 100. Similarly, 0 to -20 is a huge difference, and -20 to -40 is the difference between uncomfortably cold for any length of time, and dangerous in seconds.
Time is a flat circle, temp is more like three wavy lines.
Primary election is one week away. Debate is Wednesday. This thing could go either way.
I think many of us will never quite recover from the discovery that meteorologists do not actually spend a lot of time studying meteors.
(See also: ontology, the study of birds. Palaeontology is the study of dinosaurs, palaeo- means old as in "palaeolithic", therefore ontology is the study of things that are like dinosaurs but not old, i.e. birds.)
Being and Birdiness, An Essay on Phenological Orthology
Phenomenology is of course the study of Sandra Bullock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nMAbc2jftY
It was a hard knock to learn that "thesaurus" was not the quintessential dinosaur; but then again, it turned out Webster's Dictionary did not have to be returned to Webster and we could keep it.
I spent a lot of yesterday morning dipping in and out of the pool, and thinking about how I finally need to get AC installed in my condo. At least it faces east, with low eaves, so it cools off okay by the early evening. I don't know how much it affects my unit that it's on the top (fourth) floor.
Much more annoying is my work situation. It's a fine, modern office building, with AC, but the AC is floor-wide and doesn't sufficiently account for the window-sun warming up my office. It might be as much as 85 in here!
During the heat wave here in the summer, which was very long even if the peak was only a few days, it was regularly 100F or so in my home office. Even once the outside temperature dropped, because my windows face roughly north west and there's quite a lot of glass, it can get really warm. There's no possibility of AC, so it's just a case of living with it, sadly.
Also, we have a rule against bringing in your own electrical equipment. Yes, that includes fans.
I suppose it is in my control whether I come in in long sleeves.
ttaM, I put darkened cling window film on my windows and it made a big difference. There's no adhesive; you can peel it off for winter.
If the film is too opaque, the police you pull over the building.
Why is Boris Johnson comparing himself to General Grant's favorite horse?
| just had a screening colonoscopy. They lowered the age a couple of years ago.. Doctor took out a small polyp which she suspects is hyperplastic (not a cause for concern). I'm not worried, but now she will code it as diagnostic, so I'll get a bill. Gotta love the American healthcare system.
I thought at one point that ACA plans meant it should not be recoded, but that might be if you follow up on a stool test. The rules are different for Medicare.
The blanket consent they made me sign said that I authorized the sale of de-identified data (including images) to commercial entities. I'm fine with it for education but not commercialization. Since I it's electronic, you can't cross it out. Again, gotta love US healthcare.
My apartment has gone over 90F today, according to the thermostat. Still a couple more hours of sunlight and outside air temperatures that are hotter than that. If I weren't packing for a move, I'd go into the office for the air conditioning but the commute eats too much time.
Idle question. Are we going to have another winter where 2,000-3,000 people die of covid everyday or is there enough immunity/most vulnerable already dead to keep things in line even though no one is taking precautions?
There's enough immunity at this point that we'll probably be okay. The bivalent boosters should help limit whatever winter wave we get.
I'm wondering about that too. Like should I get one now or wait to maximize immunity during the holidays?
If you compare the non-winter middle of 2021 with 2022 so far - say April-August, so both periods post-vaccine - the deaths do seem to be significantly dropping.
Nationwide deaths down 35% (88k to 58k)
Far West: -8%
Rockies: -18%
Southwest: -37%
Plains: -16%
Great Lakes: -40%
Southeast: -48%
Mid-Atlantic: -30%
New England: +22%
In the two winters so far (call them Nov-Mar to account for lag), we had 314k deaths, then 226k. Of course that's before/after vaccine. Applying the Apr-Aug % drops from above, which are both after, a straight trend would get us down to 155k this coming winter. Not good! But not getting worse.
Really not good. That would be a huge increase over current death rates. About 1,250/day if evenly distributed.
When are people thinking about getting the bivalent booster? I had covid in early May, so if I assume the winter wave is over at the end of February then maybe I want to get the booster halfway between in late September or early October?
I'd be really shocked if we saw a wave like last winter. That was caused by essentially a brand new pandemic (Omicron) and not just driven by seasonality.
I'm kinda grumpy about the naming, we somehow have this situation where all variants within Omicron are called Omicron even when they're quite different from each other, while all the variants within OG covid get different names (alpha, delta, etc.) which makes them sound like they're a similar phenomenon to Omicron. We should have called Omicron COVID-21.
Heaven help us if Omicron-like new strains happen every two years...
What if there's always a new variant?
I'm kinda grumpy about the naming, we somehow have this situation where all variants within Omicron are called Omicron even when they're quite different from each other, while all the variants within OG covid get different names (alpha, delta, etc.) which makes them sound like they're a similar phenomenon to Omicron.
I don't know, all the Omicron variants evolved from the original Omicron whereas the older variants all had totally different origins from each other. The naming conventions we've ended up with may not be satisfying but they're logically consistent and phylogenetically accurate.
I think the branding has been bad from the start. "Covid" is boring and begging people to prove they can get it so they can beat it. It should have been called something like "New-monia" or "The suffocator."
Is there any reason to wait for more data before getting the vaccine or is it likely not to change any assessment? I'm only about five weeks from recovering from Covid so I'm waiting until at least October regardless. My parents are closer to eligibility though they timed their latest boosters differently.
As I understand it, the bivalent vaccine is actually getting the studies other Covid vaccines got, but is being rolled out via the methods used for flu vaccines.
I don't think there's any particular reason to wait for more data. They're doing the studies but all indications so far are that the bivalent is likely to be safe and effective.
I guess since I'm no longer magnetic enough to have a spoon stay attached I should just get a new shot now.
You mean convenient. I hardly needed to use pockets.
But emphasizing the phylogentics over the morphology(?) like that isn't what we usually do with naming disease strains. We give Flu A H1N1 and H3N2 different names because immunity to one doesn't give good immunity to the other and so you need both in the vaccine cocktail, but if I remember right H1N1 is paraphyletic (i.e. the others nest within H1N1 in the phylogentic tree).
Omicron is just way way different from all the others and that's why vaccines don't protect you from catching it. Infection rates for Delta for people vaccinated for wild-type were really low, because Delta and wild-type were small variations on basically the same thing.
Well, I'd be curious about timing. I've never had COVID and got a 3rd shot in December.
I'd prefer to get my flu shot on a different day, b/c I've had pretty strong reactions to the Covid shot. I was sick as a dog with Pfizer #2. I got a Moderna booster and was just completely drained.
I usually get my flu shot in the beginning of October but flu seems to be kind of off cycle.
I haven't heard anything from work, so maybe I'll wait for my pharmacy to have it in stock and go ASAP.
When is everyone planning on getting their flu shot?
But emphasizing the phylogentics over the morphology(?) like that isn't what we usually do with naming disease strains.
Yeah, that's true. It happened kind of randomly this time but isn't typical. Naming of diseases/strains/pathogens is kind of an incoherent mess in general.
Just got my bivalent shot this morning. I've been lucky enough to not be infected, and last got boosted in November, so this is my immune system's first known exposure to Omicron-style spikes. I didn't see a good reason to wait.
I'm getting my flu shot and my booster shot on Friday.
80: Yeah, absolutely agree there's no reason to wait in that scenario.
80: My regular Wegmans pharmacy hasn't gotten shipments yet. Nor have the doctors. Where did you go? All things being equal, I'd prefer a Moderna shot.
Also, did you bring your vaccine card with you?
I work at a hospital, and I haven't seen a single e-mail about the bivalent vaccines, including whether they will be required. I suspect we haven't gotten any shipments.
84: Yeah, I haven't seen any sign locally that anyone has them yet. The vaccine clinics all seem to still just have the original versions.
I'm not really that invested in the whole scandal, but this thread is very good at explaining things. Plus, I want to enroll in the Chris Pine school of looking like I want to be somewhere else.
That was me. Link via the other place.
We just had our candidates debate. I think I did somewhat better than my opponent, but everyone in the room had already chosen their candidate and the zoom feed was so bad that I doubt anyone outside the room was watching. So, a whole lot of work and worry for very little impact. I guess people were entertained.
Good luck, RPL!
Getting my booster tomorrow, along with my flu shot. Last booster in April, but otherwise am like Nathan@80.
Go RPL!
88: at least you already have the correct pseud?
Also in vaccination news, the chaps have come up with a $3 malaria vaccine - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62797776
I think this means that, despite its having produced four grotesquely crap prime ministers in a row, Oxford's continued existence is still narrowly a net positive.
Worrying news from Balmoral today.
Imagine having a career in which your first chief advisor was Winston Churchill and your last was Liz Truss. I suppose they're bookends of a sort - they're both alcoholics, and they both switched parties from Liberal to Conservative.
re: 95
I didn't know she was rumoured to be an alcoholic.
The difference is that I'm pretty sure Churchill never had an extramarital affair with his chancellor. Though if he had, who could blame him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Wood
"Secretary of State for Air" is a great title.
Should have brought it back with a different portfolio during covid.
Will you be concerned if I go offline for a while?
Via Twitter, someone points out that HM's reign covers 30% of the entire history of the US.
Finally, the opportunity for a FFP NMM post
In retrospect, this is a badly missed opportunity, since it was pretty clear when I woke up this morning that she wouldn't last out the day. There was nothing I did in my first 5 hours awake I couldn't do now, but there's one thing I cannot do now that I could have done then.
Alas.
Since this is the check-in thread: I don't know if this is an effect of aging or what, but I feel like I now have days when every joke or wisecrack that pops into my head is mindbogglingly unfunny. It's the same wit-machine as always, but turning out failure after failure. I've really never had this subjective experience before. (Obviously my jokes fail at a normal rate in general, but this is more like a lengthy streak of WTF punchlines that I somehow have the presence of mind not to say.) Maybe I've been isolated enough for the last few years that I'm devolving? Has this happened to anyone else?
That sounds like exhaustion or similar. Take care of yourself.
To me it sounds like a depression thing, insofar as they likely are still funny and you're disconnected from the part of you that feels warmly towards jokes.
My wife and I were counting on getting the omicron booster, and Kaiser says that they'll start making appointments this week. Of course, that meant that we were taken down with our first Covid over Labor Day weekend - her on Saturday, me on Tuesday. I've been very lucky so far with mild symptoms - it's more exhausting for her, so she's getting a couple of long naps a day.
Counting down and waiting for isolation to ease this upcoming weekend.
Sorry to hear that, Mooseking. Hope you both recover easily.
Is crunchy rice a thing or do I have to admit I made a mistake?
Good wishes Mooseking (and queen)
110: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice
This is more raw than scorched. I don't recommend it. I put in more water and cooked it more. It's passable.
Bivalently boosted as of this evening. Arm hurts quite a lot only a few hours later, but that seems to be my usual experience.
The malaria vaccine is brilliant, and I'm pleased with the Oxford-Serum Institute partnership for manufacture. Excellent program at Oxford. Wonder what's next in their sights.
Good luck, RPL!