Publicola
1mo ago
Nate wasn't heralding before the election that this 6% was the modal outcome, it wasn't really useful information.
I don't have links or citations, and most of his commentary was paywalled so I only saw the public-facing free posts, but as far as I remember, he very much made the point that the '50-50' odds didn't mean the final result would be a 50-50 split. His article on polls 'herding' very much pointed out that polls had a standard margin of error, and thanks to herding it was impossible to say if they would fall one way (polls systematically undercount Kamala's support, and she sweeps the 7 swing states) or the other (polls undercount Trump and he sweeps the 7 swing states). However, by far the most likely outcome was one or the other. I don't think he specifically called out the modal outcome (Trumps wins 312 EC votes) as such, but it was clear to me going in that the final result of the night would be a) very close in the popular vote and b) probably a blowout in the EC.
I was liveblogging the Election Night with my high school 'Government & Economics' class, and I sent them Silver's article on herding for the class to read beforehand, with this commentary:
There's a statistical concept called 'herding' that seems to be affecting many (most?) swing-state polls. Pollsters don't want to be wrong, or at least not more wrong than the rest of the field, so if their poll shows results that are different than the average, they stick 'em in a filing cabinet somewhere and don't publish them. The problem is, we don't know what those unpublished polls say, so the state of the race may be considerably different than the current forecasts -- either more in Kamala Harris' favor, or Trump's. It's very unlikely for this election to be a blowout in the popular vote (though a small swing in popular vote could result in a major electoral college win for one candidate) but be warned that the Presidential results may be quite a bit different than your current expectations.
I followed Silver's model closely, as well as Polymarket, and I was not surprised by the Election Night results. I understood that there was a lot of uncertainty, and that 'garbage in, garbage out' in terms of polls herding (and in terms of that Selzer poll), and I found myself highly impressed at Silver's analysis of the race.
And here was my commentary at the end of Election Night:
the polls were absolutely right about how close this election was. Trump's results tonight are very much within the 'expected error' for most polls -- he isn't winning by 5% or 10% nation wide. The polls indicated that Kamala was favored to win the popular vote by about 1%, but with 'error bars' of +/- 3% or so. Trump is currently expected to win the national popular vote by about 1%, which is a difference of 2%. That small amount is enough to push a bunch of swing states into his win column in the Electoral Vote count, but I want to emphasize that even though he's favored to win, and he almost certainly will win a huge majority in the Electoral College, this was still a nail-biter of an election.
By way of personal anecdote, I do almost all of my grocery shopping at Costco, and have done so for my whole adult life, all the way back to when I was a teenager living at home. For pretty much that entire time, until around 2016, 2 gallons of fat-free milk was priced at $4. I suspect it may have been a 'loss-leader', but $4 for two gallons of skim milk was the standard for years. Around 2016 or so, the price suddenly shot up -- I think it was $4.50 or maybe $5, still quite cheap but compared to the baseline a shocking price hike, especially given the price changed all at once (it had been $4 during my previous Costco trip). There was another price hike in 2020, during the COVID year, and ever since it's been going up and up and up. I know that there have been supply problems for milk, so they discontinued fat-free entirely [EDIT: in my area] except for one specific store, and a month or so back they started selling individual gallons of milk (Costco milk has always come in a 2-pack).
I just came back from my latest Costco run. 2 gallons of 2% milk cost $7.50.
I'm aware that milk is a single commodity, that Costco milk is cheaper than expected, that there have been supply problems for a number of reasons, all that. I am well aware that the plural of anecdote is not data. My point is to contrast the top-level 'this is my experience of inflation' vs. 'this is how the government is reporting inflation'.
In the last decade, according to my personal experience, milk has practically doubled in price -- a near-100% inflation rate.
In the last decade, according to this graph, the price of milk has gone up by about 33% in nominal dollars, but stayed perfectly flat in inflation-adjusted dollars.
It would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the government has been cooking the books for inflation.
Publicola
1mo ago
You're right, but also that specific Selzer poll was a massive outlier from pretty much all other polls, and Nate Silver admitted that upfront, which I really respect.
Publicola
1mo ago
Decision Desk HQ has called Pennsylvania (and the election) for Donald Trump. I'm pretty sure this means we're 30 minutes out from the results being announced on most major news networks.
I don't really have commentary, except to say how impressed I was at how close this election was, and how accurate most polls were. Trump's results tonight are very much within the 'expected error' for most polls -- he isn't winning by 5% or 10% nation wide. The polls indicated that Kamala was favored to win the popular vote by about 1%, but with 'error bars' of +/- 3% or so. Trump is currently expected to win the national popular vote by about 1%, which is a difference of 2%. That small amount is enough to push a bunch of swing states into his win column in the final Electoral Vote count, but this was still a nail-biter of an election
Publicola
1mo ago
In previous elections, I always kept the 538 liveblog refreshed as I followed the election results. Now that it was purchased by ABC/Disney and Nate Silver went independent, I'm not sure if there's a point. I'll follow Nate's substack (but most posts are subscriber-only) and twitter, but I expect it won't be nearly as high-quality.
ElectionBettingOdds (another past favorite) seems to be glitching out for me, or at least causing my screen to freeze -- perhaps too much traffic? I am planning to keep my eye on Metaculus and other prediction sites, but not sure how useful they'd be either.
On Reddit, /r/moderatepolitics tends to be tolerable -- it's the best of a bad lot, as far as politics subreddits are concerned. The top posts seem to lean heavily Democratic in the last month, but I've encountered a bunch of pro-Trump and pro-Harris shills in the comments, and the overall split is much closer to 50/50 than any other subreddit I've found.
Basically: if anyone knows of high-quality liveblogs or election news roundups, let me know!
Publicola
1mo ago
Not because of his policies, but because of the culture war. Every day they could lead with "You won't believe what Trump has Xeeted now".
Huh. Is that your own neologism, or is that the word we're using for what was formerly known as 'tweeted'?
Also, missed opportunity there for Elon Musk to have named the site 'Y.com' -- then he could have trademarked 'Yeeted'.
Publicola
3mo ago
My first sight of Starlink was almost transcendental. I had no idea what it was -- I had to look it up afterward -- but I was immediately put in mind of the sci-fi stories of Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms and humanity making its home in the stars.
How long did the Uvalde shooting story last in the news? How long did Sandy Hook Elementary stay in the spotlight? Both cases involved controversy, to put it mildly. The incompetence of Uvalde PD rivals even the Secret Service's vaunted inability to pour water from a boot with instructions on the heel.
The 'stochastic terrorism' stuff is always a reach -- it's never a commentary on the perpetrator, but on the rhetoric of your outgroup. The Pulse nightclub shooting was blamed on homophobia until it became clear that it was a terrorist attack. Media bias means that the people in charge of news (90% leftists) likes to make a story about their outgroup, no matter how implausible the tie-in, but has no appetite for doing the same to stories about their ingroup. How long did it take after the Trump assassination attempt for Biden to double down on calling Trump a danger to democracy?
Let's say the roles were reversed -- let's imagine a world where today Kamala Harris dodges a literal bullet by half an inch on live TV, and the shooter turned out to have the internet posting history of Thomas Matthew Crooks. 1) How quickly would the attack be blamed on right-wing extremism, and how persistently would that blame 'stick' once more facts were in? 2) How long would the story remain on the 'front page' of media outlets? 3) How long would the story and its many many permutations (e.g., gun control, Secret Service incompetence) last in the news cycle? 4) How long would the story survive in the public consciousness, off of the front page but still in regular media references (e.g., whenever Trump says anything that could be interpreted as a call for violence?)
The answer feels almost self-evident. The only real question would be, by what margin would Kamala Harris win in November?
I'm always kind of confused by this confusion about why the story died down, what else was there to talk about?
Yet somehow there's never a shortage of 'something else to talk about' in those other cases.
Publicola
4mo ago
Class Prep - Great Books
I'm a teacher (high school history/literature) so my 'tinkering projects' are mostly in the class design/class prep category, which is kicking into another gear due to how soon the school year starts up. I'm designing two different 'Great Books' classes, one for ancient lit, the other for ancient/medieval, so that's been most of my focus for the past week. I've mostly finalized the books we'll be reading, but my goal for the next few days is to finalize the specific reading assignments for each week (I plan the year ahead of time) and specific discussion questions to cover each week.
Re: 'Ancient Literature', the plan is to start with Homer's Iliad, then the Book of Job (from the Bible), then Sophocles' Antigone, then Plato's Republic, then Virgil's Aeneid, and ending with Augustine's Confessions. I was hoping to include some Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in there, but I'm not sure it'll fit. Also wanted to include Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, but there's probably not enough time and it'd fit better with next year's Medieval Literature class anyway, even though Boethius is still Late Antiquity.
Re: 'Great Books' (covering ancient/medieval), I'm looking at Antigone, Republic, Confessions, Consolation of Philosophy, then Dante's Inferno and one of Shakespeare's plays. Still figuring out whether I can fit another book in there.
If anyone has good discussion/roundtable questions for any of these books, feel free to send them my way.
Publicola
4mo ago
Civilization IV is usually considered the best in the series, for good reason. I strongly encourage you to try it. It's on Steam, and every once in a while it goes on sale for $6.
I very much second this recommendation, though I prefer the GOG version as it is DRM free and works a bit more seamlessly with mods. It pretty regularly goes on sale for $7.50.
Civ IV has some of the greatest history-simulation mods of any game I've encountered, starting with Rhye's and Fall of Civilization that came packaged with the final expansion pack (Beyond the Sword), with several still in active development (Dawn of Civilization, RFC Europe, and Sword of Islam). I've also heard rave reviews for an ancient history mod (Pie's Ancient Europe), as well as a dark fantasy RPG (Fall From Heaven) that somehow works seamlessly within the Civ4 engine.
Publicola
4mo ago
This was mentioned earlier (I think in this megathread), but the Vance interview clip was from a couple of months before Pete Buttigieg finalized the first adoption.
Publicola
5mo ago
Okay, I'd really like TheMotte to talk me down from crazy-town and conspiracy-ville.
Exhibit A: Secret Service was warned of an Iranian (or Iran-backed) assassination threat against Trump (Source)
prompting a surge in resources and assets, according to the officials
Which means that the Saturday shooting represents a high-water mark in Trump's security detail.
Exhibit B: Secret Service snipers spotted Thomas Crooks in position on the roof 20 minutes before the assassination attempt. (Source) Per the article's timeline:
5:10 p.m. Crooks was first identified as a person of interest
5:30 p.m. Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder
5:52 p.m. Crooks was spotted on the roof by Secret Service
6:02 p.m. Trump takes the stage
6:12 p.m. Crooks fires first shots
Which means the Secret Service knew there was an active threat, 10 minutes before they allowed Trump to take the stage. This is separate from the 2-minute 'crowd pointing at guy with gun on roof' warning where the Secret Service failed to move Trump off the stage.
Exhibit C: Secret Service has stated that 'local police' were supposed to be responsible for covering the American Glass Research (AGR) building. However, both the county (Source) and city police (Source) have denied that they were so assigned.
Apparently, there were local police -- including snipers -- inside an adjacent or conjoined building in the complex (Source), but no one's been identified as responsible for the building itself or the roof itself. I've heard unsourced rumors that a SWAT team was supposed to be assigned to the specific roof the shooter used, but instead congregated within the building due to the heat (Source) but there's been no confirmation.
<><><><><><><><>
I know my Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
However, at this point I'm gaining an appreciation for Grey's Law:
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
If the wildest conspiracy theories and worst nightmares were true, if US Secret Service did deliberately set out to create a hole in Trump's security to allow him to be assassinated... what would they have done differently? How much more could the USSS have f***ed up their protection before we'd be comfortable drawing a line between 'smoke' and 'fire'?
And if Hanlon's Razor does bears out and it was in fact merely incompetence... then we apparently live in a world where this is the best the US Secret Service can do while on high alert, actively preparing to defend their protectee against an Iranian-backed assassination attempt. Which leads me to wonder, how vulnerable are the rest of US leadership to enemy agents?
If there are this many layers of "they dropped you on your head as a baby, didn't they?" when the Secret Service has direct warning of a major threat, what the hell kind of protection does the President have, or the Vice-President, or any of the other notable names with a USSS detail?
If the US Secret Service was 'security theater' in the same vein as the TSA, what happens when the curtain is pulled back and everyone sees that the Wizard of Oz is just a sad little man in a booth? Should we expect to see more -- and more successful -- assassination attempts with actual muscle behind them in the near future?
And why in the name of all that is holy does Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle still have a job?!
Publicola
5mo ago
...The wiki article on the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda is tough reading.
The original UNAMIR mission was given a mandate under Chapter VI, meaning its role was exclusively to maintain a demilitarized zone and to negotiate peace after the earlier civil war. When the genocide began, the UN ignored the urgent requests of the force commander to expand its mandate (it waited 40 days before providing the go-ahead to "provide security" to refugees) but instead withdrew 90% of its local forces (drawing down from 2500 to 270) and ordered the remaining soldiers to prioritize the evacuation of foreign nationals.
UNAMIR also assisted with the evacuation of foreign nationals; a group of Belgian soldiers, who had been sheltering 2,000 Rwandans at the École Technique Officielle, were ordered to abandon their station to assist in the evacuation. After the Belgians left, Hutu militants entered and massacred everyone inside.
The protection of Tutsi refugees in Amahoro Stadium seems almost entirely incidental to the UN soldiers defending their own HQ.
On the other hand, the UN Security Council did authorize a French army (officially a 'multilateral force' with 2468 French soldiers and 32 Senegalese soldiers) to set up a 'safe zone' in SW Rwanda under the name Operation Turquoise. This military mission was officially intended to stop the bloodshed, but mainly served to delay the advancing RPF (Tutsi) army from ending the genocide in the 'safe zone', as well as providing supplies for the mass migration of Hutus into eastern Zaire, which set up the humanitarian crisis (and ongoing border conflict) that resulted in 'Africa's World War' a few years later.
At some point I really need to write up an effortpost about France and the Rwandan Genocide. Where the UN and US can be shamed as merely feckless, France was astonishingly brazen in their embrace of villainy. It takes a special kind of moral monster to sit next to Tutsi refugees fleeing a genocide as you evacuate the country, only to kick them out at a Hutu border checkpoint so you can watch them be butchered mere yards away from freedom. Appalling is far too weak a word.
Publicola
5mo ago
As far as I understand, the UN (and the French peacekeepers in particular) were famously useless during the Rwandan Genocide, and their major contribution was in setting up refugee camps in DRC (then Zaire) for fleeing Hutu genocidaires after the Burundi invasion ended the genocide.
In other words, they did little to shelter people from the genocide, but mostly sheltered the people who had committed the genocide.
If that's wrong, I'd appreciate the fact-check. My opinion of the UN places them somewhere between people who talk in the theater and malaria, so I'd be delighted to find that they're not quite as contemptible as I had thought.
Publicola
5mo ago
#ReadAnotherBook and all, but liberalism has fallen a long way from 1997 when Fictional Liberal Hero Dumbledore confidently intoned that "fear of a [word] increases fear of the thing itself;" and you knew the really good guys because they weren't afraid to use the no-no words, they said what they meant and meant what they said. Now the left-wingers would be in support of not using the "V-word" because it "re-traumatizes" the victims and their families.
I'd never considered this take on 'You Know Who' before, and I find it utterly fascinating, especially in light of how Rowling backtracked in Book 7 and made Voldemort a literal Taboo where saying the name would summon a small army of 'Snatchers' to attack you and imprison you.
(For the life of me, I have no idea what Rowling was thinking with this plot point. It seems obvious that the Taboo was intentionally foreshadowed in earlier books -- Voldemort is identified as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, after all -- but it's more a little brain-bending to realize that Rowling wrote Dumbledore as absolutely insistent that Harry should always always used Voldemort's name and that there is never any reason to fear a name and that other wizards are funny and weird at their fear of even hearing Voldemort's name. My pet theory is that this was part of 'Dumbledore wants to set Harry and Voldemort on a collision course so the prophecy could be fulfilled ASAP', like the Philosopher's Stone obstacle course in Book 1, but that just opens a whole new set of questions.)
Publicola
6mo ago
In order for this to continue to be profitable, the territory under the yoke of slavery had to continually expand, which perhaps explains the growth of rabid pro-slavery ideology of politicians from these states in this era who started to justify slavery as a moral good).
Can you expand on this? I can understand your later argument (that expanding slavery = increased profits from the slave trade), but why would expanding slavery be necessary for the profitability of existing cotton plantations?
In general, I think you're missing the massive impact of the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath -- the genocide of all white inhabitants of Haiti by Jacques Dessalines created an existential fear in the South (shared by both slaveholders and yeomen farmers who did not participate in slavery) that abolition would result in the bloody death of everyone they knew. This fear was periodically amplified by the German Coast Rebellion, Nat Turner's Rebellion, and the attack on Harper's Ferry. This is why Jefferson wrote his famous letter to John Holmes, calling the Missouri Compromise a "fire bell in the night" and "knell of the Union". The most important quote from that letter gets a lot less attention than it deserves:
The cession of that kind of property [slavery], for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle[trifle] which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
That was his entire argument against immediate abolition, and in favor of gradual emancipation. This thinking also led to the proposed solution: to spread slavery further and further into the western territories. The reasoning goes: the more evenly distributed the slave population was, the less concentrated the slave population in the Deep South was, the less the risk of a genocide when they are inevitably freed. That at least was the initial reasoning -- the cognitive dissonance between 'slavery must end' and 'we must spread it' led to the rise of racism (i.e., slavery isn't bad because the slaves deserve to be treated this way, whether 'Curse of Ham' or genetic inferiority) as well as an incredibly paranoid totalitarian treatment of slaves in the South (e.g., the ban on teaching slaves to read/write was specifically due to Nat Turner being a literate black who was inspired by reading about the Haitian Revolution).
In other words, the political extremism of the South was motivated less by the greed of the plantation class, and more by the overwhelming fear of a slave revolt. Whether that fear was justified is debatable -- though at least John Brown thought the fears were justified, as his final message asserted that "the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood" -- but the fact and reality of such fears is I think undeniable.
Publicola
6mo ago
It is difficult to overstate how absurdly perfect Rittenhouse's actions were, and how minimal the ambiguity was due to the abundance of clear video evidence. The fact that he was still charged and tried for murder despite the well-established facts was profoundly radicalizing for me, and I imagine for many other Reds. Rittenhouse should not be accepted as a minimum standard for what legitimate self-defense looks like. He is an example of how even complete, obvious, absolute innocence will not be accepted by the Blues as a tribe.
I really really don't want to engage in 'chan' behavior, so I'm going to try to write something more than just pointing at your paragraph and saying 'this'. But seriously, this.
The more I found out about the Rittenhouse case, the more I felt that someone really needed to give that kid a medal. Running away from attackers at every turn, only firing in the last possible resort, firing the fewest number of shots possible to end the threat, with nigh-immaculate aim at every step (e.g., shooting the bicep of a man pointing a handgun at him), and with precisely zero bystander casualties. He did everything right.
Personally, I felt that Rittenhouse would have been a prime example for progressives to use, to persuade conservatives towards a greater skepticism of police and especially of prosecutors. Something like:
The prosecutorial misconduct was so brazen, against a baby-faced defendant whose innocence was confirmed by every angle of every video taken that night... how do you think police or prosecutors would have treated an innocent man with a more ambiguous case, or a less immaculate background, or a less appealing face?
That's a lay-up, and now we can have a conversation about prosecutorial discretion, qualified/absolute immunity, and 'anarcho-tyranny' -- reforms far more palatable and meaningful than 'defund the police'. But no, we had to have a conversation about how Rittenhouse crossed state lines (seriously, how was that the major talking point?) or how he shot three black guys (two of the three were white, and the third's identity only became public knowledge months later).
Publicola
7mo ago
This is a great response, except for:
How snail-brained gullible are you exactly?
Despite the rest of your post being high-quality and very thought-provoking (which is why I gave it an upvote), I'm seriously inclined to also click the 'report' button for antagonistic/unkind. Taking Red Lobster's press release at its word (or at least assuming that the all-you-can-eat shrimp is partially responsible for their losses) is fine, especially in service of introducing a discussion-worthy topic for conversation.
OTOH, the OP taking Red Lobster at its word is a bit ironic, given the broader point about a low-trust society.
Publicola
1yr ago
Not sure who to tag, but... mods, would it make sense to create a Megathread for all Israel-Gaza war posts? I get the feeling that this conflict will continue for some time -- if not the 'hot' phase of war, then certainly the aftermath -- and I would personally prefer to see this community's response in one spot rather than as responses to the latest intermittent comments that get posted here.
Publicola
1yr ago
I teach a Chronicles of Narnia class for middle school, and I recommend & assign students to read the books in publication order:
- Lion, Witch Wardrobe
- Prince Caspian
- Dawn Treader
- Silver Chair
- Horse and His Boy
- Magician's Nephew
- Last Battle
Publicola
1yr ago
As opposed to the Romans, who were quite fond of the Christians they murdered...?
Publicola
1yr ago
I'm the same, though in my case 'recently' means within the last 24 hours; when I was checking the site yesterday there were no such formatting/column oddities. (To clarify: by default the comments now take up about 1/3 of my screen, with the other two thirds reserved for a single comment thread that starts at the top of the page, above the 'The Motte Needs You', by the 'New'/'Top' drop-down. If I minimize that single comment thread, it shrinks to taking up only 1/4 of the screen, with the other 3/4 used for the normal set of comments). No idea what's going on or why.
Publicola
1yr ago
From what I can tell, the two women ended up paying Avellone a seven-figure settlement, which is just... wow. At least $1 million for an out-of-court settlement, plus lawyer's fees paid by the accusers... Avellone must have had some bombshell evidence that would have made a court case a complete cake-walk. So at least the women in this case did pay the piper, even if it wasn't jail time.
Publicola
1yr ago
If it it 'standard operating procedure' for 'average Christian peasants', can you show me another example of a dog saint? Or do I need to point you to the many many irrationalities of our modern secular world before you'll agree that the plural of anecdote is not data, and that you can't generalize from a single example that was notorious even in its own day?
You're definitely missing the Social Conservative faction, as well as the Right-Libertarian group (e.g., the rumors about Ron Paul). You're also missing whatever group Tulsi Gabbard belongs to -- she's close to but definitely distinct from the 'podcast bro' set.
Also, by my reckoning the Neo-Cons are mostly out of the GOP (they broadly became the '#NeverTrump' set), so most of the 'Old GOP' who's left are better identified as the 'Establishment GOP'. The GOP establishment includes a number of 'lanes' -- you do have deficit-hawks and fiscal conservatives, but you also have the 'Rockefeller Republicans', and yes, a bunch of 'interventionists' who want America to be more proactive in combating Russia, Iran, China, etc., and propping up NATO and Israel and our other allies. (I would distinguish these from the Cheney-esque Neo-Cons; the interventionist group has been around a lot longer than the group responsible for our 'nation-building' in Iraq and Afghanistan).
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