FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
7d ago
No white person needs to be personally concerned, outside of what ought to be standard prep for a hurricane or blizzard, food and water and batteries and gas in your car and whatnot. We won't see significant violence, but I wouldn't be shocked by minor disruptions to supply chains or travel.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
7d ago
The whole calling of states thing is a mix of exit polling, turnout analysis, guesswork about the outcomes in other similar areas, and early results. It's a lot of sausage making, it's normally correct, but it has a tenuous relation to concrete facts.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
7d ago
The single most amazing play I've ever seen live.
Eagles managed what should have been a comfortable win against the Jags, quite possibly ending Doug P's career as a head coach. It was a game with amazing moments, and weird ones, and lots of iffy or bad calls, but probably came out in the wash in the end. People are back to calling for Nick to get fired. His decision making wasn't bad so much as inconsistent, sometimes playing aggressively sometimes playing scared.
The most frightening thing for the Eagles was the Brotherly Shove being stuffed multiple times. If that play isn't automatic, Hurts loses his single biggest weapon as a QB. On the other hand, this was the most encouraging performance I've seen from Hurts all year in terms of his biggest weakness: targeting multiple receivers. Hurts isn't all that bright or a quick processor, and under pressure he tends to default to his favorite WR, either Brown or Smith depending on the day, and ignore the rest of the team. This week, Smith, Brown, Barkley, and Calcaterra (TE2) all got involved, and Dotson, A. Smith, Wilson, Gainwell, and erstwhile FB Van Sumeren all got a target. If Hurts can learn to spread the ball around and trust his receivers, this offense will hum, especially with Dallas Goedert expected back from injury soon.
Rookie Johny Wilson had his first TD reception, which was one of his first if not his first NFL reception, called back on a soft OPI call. Which marks back to back weeks that an Eagles rookie has had a solid TD called back on a soft penalty: Will Shipley broke off a long TD run in garbage time against the Bengals only to have it called back on a hold that was mostly unrelated. If the pattern keeps up, expect Ainias Smith to score a TD on a beautiful jet sweep only to have it called back for illegal formation against Dallas next week.
Speaking of Dallas: did you know that if you fake a punt and try to pass the ball, that the gunners on the outside can't benefit from DPI calls, because under normal circumstances they're blocked? Everyone I know didn't know that, but instantly said "gee that makes sense." Apparently, the Cowboys didn't know it either. If your intended receivers are the gunners, they are never gonna get the ball. Dallas falls to Atlanta, and might lose Prescott for multiple weeks as well.
The Eagles are entering the most crucial week of their season. Dallas in Arlington on Sunday, followed by a quick turnaround to the Redskins at home on Thursday. Dallas might be giving up on social media, but a couple cheeky wins under Cooper Rush and they're back to .500, and they'll play the rivalry game hard. Meanwhile the Redskins are rolling behind rookie Phenom Daniels, and getting them on a short week is gonna be a big test. Win both games, and the Eagles are likely carrying the NFC East. Lose one, and they're fighting for a wild card but likely to make the playoffs. Lose both, and we're back to fans making lettuce-vs-Nick Sirianni jokes. At their best, both games are winnable. At their worst, both games will be thrown away. Should be exciting either way, go birds.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
7d ago
This is, of course, leaving aside things like voters who just don't get the joke.
Puerto Ricans in PA, apparently offended by the "floating Island of Trash" comment, interpreted Trump's use of garbage trucks in his rallies as doubling down on the comment calling them trash. Being unaware of the interplay of Biden saying "no, you're the trash!" to the MAGA base, which Trump was then slur-reclaiming by using garbage trucks, voters simply took it as:
Pacheco saw Trump’s decision to pose in a garbage truck at a campaign stop in Wisconsin the following day as an additional insult. “If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” Pacheco asked.
That's some great median voter energy right there.
A Tuesday Morning Black Pill: What's the Margin for Error on an Election?
TLDR: Pennsylvania is the most likely deciding state for this election. In the last two elections running, both featuring Trump, the deciding margin of votes has been so small, that in any other context in which untrained people filled out a form, we would expect more than that quantity of people to fill out the form wrong. Have a nice day.
NOTE: This entire post is premised on the idea that the results are more-or-less actual results.
Greetings from the swing township of the swing county in the swing region of the swing state. What's been on my mind lately, but which I can't find anywhere: what's the rate of people filling out their ballots incorrectly? What's the error rate? Not spoiling their ballot or otherwise destroying it so that it doesn't count, but voting for the wrong person. The voting equivalent of walking to the fridge, pouring yourself a glass of milk, then putting the glass in the fridge and carrying the jug to the breakfast table. I'm looking for the people who walk in saying "I plan to vote for [A]", walk in and mistakenly fill out their ballot for [B}, then turn it in and walk out thinking "I voted for [A]!"
Most business studies and data analysis texts put the base assumed error rate on manual data entry at around 1%, though that feels like a round number bias more than a legitimate estimate. And, of course, election day is just about the worst case scenario for manual data entry! Even the best voters only fill out a ballot twice a year, more commonly it's somewhere between every two and every four, and for many voters it will be even longer. Millions of voters will be filling out this particular ballot for the first time, either because they have never voted before, or because the ballot layout has changed since they last voted. Voters will often be waiting in line for hours before they have the opportunity to vote, often at the end of the day after work. Mistakes will be made.
But it's impossible to measure under actual conditions, as it's impossible to distinguish voting by error from voting secretly (except under particularly egregious conditions, like tens of thousands of liberal Palm Beach Jews mysteriously voting for Pat Buchanan in 2000). It's totally permissible, to return to my platonic ideal scenario, to walk in wearing a "WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" T shirt and vote straight Republican once your wife isn't looking over your shoulder. America considers that not just permissible, but your right, and an important part of the system. The votes are immediately anonymized anyway.
But I've been unable to find anyone talking about plain voter error, any studies done under laboratory conditions to determine a likely percentage. Because, for the Cathedral construed most broadly, this idea is just too scary, it's too existentially dreadful: for some closeness of election, the result doesn't actually reflect anything but luck. A 1% error rate, which is the bare minimum and it is likely higher, would quite frequently swing an election as close as several swing states have been in recent elections. Our political parties have optimized us right out of democracy, the choice is so narrow that there is no real choice occurring. The result will likely reflect the will of the people only in the most tenuous sense.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
I don't and I physically can't. I'm too contrarian. At uni I became conservative, at a megachurch picnic I'm a bleeding heart liberal. It's in my nature. Even on the same issue, I'll always reflect the anti consensus over time.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
Isn't it already? I can't wait to be free of this election.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus.
Phaedo was deeply moving to me in the context in which I read it. Cratylus I... Honestly didn't get.
On audio I'm motoring through lonesome dove, which feels a lot like Master and Commander in terms of characters just DOING things constantly.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
You're not nearly cynical enough. Notice how everything feels pretty normal? The sky isn't falling, at least not any more than it was five-ten-twenty years ago? It's always like this.
The president is mostly, not a figurehead, but a directional leader at best. The administrative state (and the MIC which is typically not included in that category by Republicans for some reason) has at times stymied or snookered every president since JFK. We are constantly having this conversation, about every president in my lifetime.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
Hey Mottizens, what are your funeral plans?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
8d ago
There are no answers that aren't basic, or at best pretentious midwit, don't beat yourself up. I'll be even more fundamental.
-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.
-- On a summer day, go to a baseball game. Get a hot dog and a beer during the second or third inning, early enough at any rate that the game is still wide open to possibilities. At any MLB game it will be too expensive, but a local MiLB game will probably be just as good.
-- Learn your grandmother's favorite recipe, from her. The one with a lot of steps that aren't written down, that you have to do by guesswork and feel.
-- Stand in line for at least an hour at a dive/cart/stand. In college on a trip to Berlin we went to the cart that supposedly invented Doner Kebab. The line itself was a festival atmosphere, we were chatting with the people around us, the guy behind me was an Ameri-weeb who was a family guy super fan. It's an experience.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
9d ago
I drink a gallon of dairy milk a week and nearly always have oat milk in the pantry for coffee when I run out of milk. I prefer dairy, but I'm fine with oat or almond, and I can't not have milk on hand.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
10d ago
Sorry, should have explained more.
PFF is a company that puts together a numerical grade indicating the performance of every player based on experts subjective viewing of each game. It is meant to bridge the gap between the mostly objective stats (the QB threw the ball for X yards, the LB made Y tackles) and the totally subjective eye test which fans can only apply while watching the game, and even then only to players they pay attention to. PFF grades are meant to capture things like "the linebacker didn't make the tackle, but he filled the A gap forcing the running back to cut back and get tackled for a loss." It's a tool used to compare players, based on expert opinions.
If one bets on the outcome of an NFL game, one is mostly safe from match fixing short of a real serious operation, because the stakeholders all value the outcome of the game greatly, and the product is visible on the field so there's a good chance people might pick up on obvious point shaving over time. Betting on an objective stats, like catches or yards or sacks, is riskier for point shaving because it's somewhat possible for a team to force or allow certain statistical outcomes to occur without impacting the outcome of the game.
But betting on PFF grades, you have no protection against PFF just getting the grade wrong. Or theoretically of PFF just fixing the result. And certainly not from PFF being biased, liking the vibes of one player instead of another.
In the same way, when you bet on Trump winning 30% of black voters, you're betting on an exit poll showing that Trump got 30% of the black vote. Especially when you get deep into smaller samples like minority vote count. So much depends on the pollsters secret sauce, how they weight different sample sizes to balance it towards what they think the truth looks like. You have no protection from the pollster making an error, or just shrugging and saying "idk maybe it's an outlier."
Now probably the market for those bets is small enough that it won't matter, it won't make sense to put the fix in. But it wouldn't be hard to do, and the bettor would have zero protection against it.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
Exactly. That kind of jerk off fantasy is intensely boring for me.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
Because it's boring and cheap.
The only thing to talk about at that 0point is internet tough guy shit that always sounds like twelve year old boys playing with Legos. "We have all the money so we're gonna win" "Oh yeah?! Well what're you gonna do when we cut off the water supply?"
I have no interest in reading a bunch of internet guys brag about their experience with Gorilla warfare.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
11d ago
I got out to see the local college do a production of Pierre, Natasha, and the Great Comet of 1812. It's a sort of rapid mishmash of an episode in War and Peace, fun in that it's one of my favorite books, and the music was enjoyable. The college kids did a fair job, especially for a fall semester performance with several obvious freshmen in key roles.
Dolohov and Anatole were great, as was Ellene, who commanded every scene.
But like Hoffmeister, the casting disappointed me. Pierre, while a talented singer, was ruined by woke casting. He was skinny. Pierre MUST be fat. The entire character is based in his size. He should ideally be noticeably tall while also being chubby, the kind of guy that looks harmless when he slouches but when he rears up you realize he's a bear of a man.
The ginger cast as a Pierre did his best, but his efforts to emote and over-act being drunk and sad didn't work because it made him seem frail, where if he were fat moving awkwardly could still portray robust strength. This interacted poorly with the script, which did a poor job communicating age when using a student cast. Anatole and Dolohov refer to Pierre as "old man" sarcastically, despite being his age, but frail skinny Pierre just seemed ancient. The communication between mid twenties Pierre and teenage Natasha is meant to be more intimate and frank than that between Natasha and Marya Akhrisimova, but that's not clear in the casting. Pierre's confrontation with Anatole was confusing, in the book it's clear that once roused Pierre tosses the young rake around and roughs him up, even though he'd been a genteel cuckold to that point.
Andrey was also cast weakly, but that's a tough one in the script, especially at school: he only gets one real scene, but he needs to be charismatic, upright, and dream hot for the love between him and Natasha to work.
Overall I had a great time. One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite works. I think if I were reworking the script I'd try to make economic relationships clearer, but that's probably tough. But the driving aspect behind a lot of the plot is Natasha Ellene and Anatole all need to marry rich.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't betting on winning/losing demographic groups just a bet on exit polling? Or will it resolve based on county/precinct level voting data correlated across the country?
It just feels like betting on an NFL players PFF grade.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
All the best people are. Go birds.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
I'm just trying to resolve a prediction from sometime I respect between
"Butch Coolidge will lose his upcoming match because his opponent is an up and coming star and too fast for an over the hill has been"
And
"Butch Coolidge is going to lose his upcoming fight because I saw him come out of Marcellus Wallace's joint and tuck a packet of cash into his jacket."
Both are predictions based on knowledge, but reflect very different observations.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
So you assume that "staying out" of Israel-Palestine would lead to Israeli victory, rather than the collapse of Israel absent constant American support?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
So No, it's not assuming a mostly legitimate election, it's assuming a high probability of a stolen election?
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
Rereading the introduction, they're in a proposed order of writing which seems to be pretty idiosyncratic to the editor and is not universally accepted.
Still honestly very freaky to me. I'm not superstitious but I'm a little stitious.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
Is this assuming a mostly legitimate election?
I don't mean to interrogate you, I'm just curious how one reaches that assumption. I'm less comfortable with Trump than you, and I'm thinking Kamala basically did her job of losing gracefully for the Dems.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
12d ago
Dude.
If you're a camp counselor and you're even considering raping the kid, you should not endeavor to teach the kid a sport. That is NOT the normal dilemma faced by a normal tired dad.
Has there been any major legislative push to achieve this in the past four years?
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