US Election

[sTeamTraen]

However, the idiot scum depicted took the bait, hook line and sinker, threatening a meritless lawsuit, and thus drawing more attention to the billboards. The Lincoln Project's first response was simply "Nuts".format=jpg&name=large[/img]

Channeling General McAuliffe‘s response to the surrounding German forces at The Battle of the Bulge. That’s great. Telling Nazis to get f.cked in 2020.

I thoroughly recommend a visit to the area, especially the town of Bastogne, where you can drop in here for a coffee (sadly, being a French-speaking place, they have stuck an unnecessary apostrophes in there).

[AMS]

Looks like we have another round of covid superspreading, this time among Mike Pence's staff.

[Grumble]

Looks like we have another round of covid superspreading, this time among Mike Pence's staff.

Surely not? I am shocked.

[sTeamTraen]

However, the idiot scum depicted took the bait, hook line and sinker, threatening a meritless lawsuit, and thus drawing more attention to the billboards. The Lincoln Project's first response was simply "Nuts".format=jpg&name=large[/img]

Channeling General McAuliffe‘s response to the surrounding German forces at The Battle of the Bulge. That’s great. Telling Nazis to get f.cked in 2020.

I thoroughly recommend a visit to the area, especially the town of Bastogne, where you can drop in here for a coffee (sadly, being a French-speaking place, they have stuck an unnecessary apostrophes in there).

PS: I remember now that someone once told me that McAuliffe's initial message to the Germans was spelt "Nutz". Apparently they were never quite sure what it meant, due to the colloquialism but also the almost-German spelling.

[dyqik]

Another CoVID outbreak in the Trump admin, this time in Pence's office.

Penne is continuing to travel despite having been in close contact with those who have tested positive.

Meanwhile, the US has set records for new cases two days in a row.

[dyqik]

Of course, one long term danger is that the Republicans take away the idea that it was the pandemic that cost them the election, not their hateful policies or nominating Trump.

[Little waster]

As an aside if we are in the End Times then the Horsemen will be moving among us, seeking positions of power.

There may however be clues to their true identity.

According to some of the Apocrypha*, Pestilence is a slender pale man who will attract vermin, you know like flies and raccoons, that sort of stuff.

Incidentally, Famine is described as appearing as a bloated grotesque shovelling handfuls of chicken straight into his mouth from a bucket. In the iconography he is usually associated with a diseased orange thought to reference a famine-inducing blight of the citric fruit harvest in medieval Spain.

Silly superstitious people.




*the non-canonical Book Of Waster

[tenchboy]

I thoroughly recommend a visit to the area, especially the town of Bastogne, where you can drop in here for a coffee (sadly, being a French-speaking place, they have stuck an unnecessary apostrophes in there).

So you buy a P Ticket before heading off the WC?

[sTeamTraen]

I thoroughly recommend a visit to the area, especially the town of Bastogne, where you can drop in here for a coffee (sadly, being a French-speaking place, they have stuck an unnecessary apostrophes in there).

So you buy a P Ticket before heading off the WC?

Yeah, it's cheaper than paying cash at the door.

[Bird on a Fire]

Penne is continuing to travel despite having been in close contact with those who have tested positive.

Uh-oh spaghetti-oh! That's FUUUUU silly. He'll give his ma caronivirus at this rate.

[dyqik]

Mark Meadows (Trump's Chief of Staff) is on TV basically saying that they've given up on containing the pandemic.

Also, apparently a scheme to classify Santa and his elves as essential workers and give them early access to a vaccine in exchange for marketing the vaccine has collapsed:

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1320357043442749441?s=19

Never mind that there isn't likely to be a vaccine by Christmas.

[Martin Y]

It'll be all over by Christmas.

[Little waster]

Mark Meadows (Trump's Chief of Staff) is on TV basically saying that they've given up on containing the pandemic.

Also, apparently a scheme to classify Santa and his elves as essential workers and give them early access to a vaccine in exchange for marketing the vaccine has collapsed:

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1320357043442749441?s=19

Never mind that there isn't likely to be a vaccine by Christmas.

It’s nearly November of this endless shitstorm of a year and yet I STILL assumed that was some sort of satirical joke.

I never f.cking learn.

[EACLucifer]

Fascinating but grim to see how the unAmerican "Thin Blue Line" desecration of the Stars and Stripes - a flag code violating piece of hate filled nonsense that purportedly depicts "citizens" and "criminals" separated by police that was created to oppose Black Lives Matter - has gone from a minor presence, to equal weight with the national flag, to displacing it at Trump rallies.



If you came up with that flag as a fascist American flag for a sci-fi show, people might well think it was a bit too on the nose, and yet here it is, displacing the real national flag.

[Bird on a Fire]

Andrew Gelman takes a deep dive into 538's model (as best he can, given that it's closed source)
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ ... -forecast/

There seem to be some weird things happening in the tails of probabilities, with negative correlations between states - e.g. if Trump wins New Jersey he supposedly has a lower chance of winning Alaska.

Nate Silver responds that he thinks that's accurate. Sounds a bit unlikely to me - I'd say at most those correlations could be zero (ie independent, a Trump victory in NJ could be something weird happening in NJ, or a national swing, but I can't see how it would be correlated with support for Biden in Alaska).

Probably doesn't matter much, as the tail events we're talking about are very unlikely. But I thought it was interesting seeing someone try to reverse engineer the model's behaviour and unpick some of its details.

[Little waster]

So we’ve had:-

Adultery
Collusion with the Russkis
Leaking of state secrets
Abusing veterans
Dishonouring the war dead
Hating Christmas
And now flag desecration

There can’t be much left of the Republican Party by now, I expect they will soon announce that the continuation of the permanent war against EastAsia will be spearheaded by the new Oglivy tanks alongside our steadfast Eurasian allies.

[dyqik]

So we’ve had:-

Adultery
Collusion with the Russkis
Leaking of state secrets
Abusing veterans
Dishonouring the war dead
Hating Christmas
And now flag desecration

There can’t be much left of the Republican Party by now, I expect they will soon announce that the continuation of the permanent war against EastAsia will be spearheaded by the new Oglivy tanks alongside our steadfast Eurasian allies.

I'm expecting a "take people's guns (but only from _those_ people)" before the end of the week.

[Bird on a Fire]

So we’ve had:-

Adultery
Collusion with the Russkis
Leaking of state secrets
Abusing veterans
Dishonouring the war dead
Hating Christmas
And now flag desecration

There can’t be much left of the Republican Party by now, I expect they will soon announce that the continuation of the permanent war against EastAsia will be spearheaded by the new Oglivy tanks alongside our steadfast Eurasian allies.

I'm expecting a "take people's guns (but only from _those_ people)" before the end of the week.

That's got a long history in the Republican party, though.

I suspect some of those other things have been openly done before, too.

[lpm]

Andrew Gelman takes a deep dive into 538's model (as best he can, given that it's closed source)
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ ... -forecast/

There seem to be some weird things happening in the tails of probabilities, with negative correlations between states - e.g. if Trump wins New Jersey he supposedly has a lower chance of winning Alaska.

Nate Silver responds that he thinks that's accurate. Sounds a bit unlikely to me - I'd say at most those correlations could be zero (ie independent, a Trump victory in NJ could be something weird happening in NJ, or a national swing, but I can't see how it would be correlated with support for Biden in Alaska).

Probably doesn't matter much, as the tail events we're talking about are very unlikely. But I thought it was interesting seeing someone try to reverse engineer the model's behaviour and unpick some of its details.

Sounds right to me. If he gets really blue states then he would have to be doing Communist stuff like allowing abortion and fighting for racial equality, hence would lose Christian Extremist and white supremacist votes in the really red states.

[dyqik]

And if he was polling up there, the red states would probably vote against him on principle.


Meanwhile, Texas is currently tied in the 538 averages.

[dyqik]

Also, Putin seems to be putting distance to Trump in the expectation of a Biden win, by saying that the Hunter Biden stuff is nonsense.

I guess he (along with the pandemic) have already weakened the US enough that he doesn't have to worry about a big foreign policy push while the progressive left are pushing Biden, along with the work required to fix healthcare, deal with the pandemic and the economy, unpack the supreme and appeal courts, and deal with the corruption.

And having got rid of HRC and some of the Russia hawks in the GOP, Russia just isn't going to be in the radar except for Trump's corruption.

I think his climate statement last week might have been a minor overture to the non-hawk left as well.

[FlammableFlower]

So Pence is refusing to quarantine after the outbreaks in his staff (ironically his chief of VP staff is a big sceptic of the need for government action on the disease and is pro the idea of herd immunity... and so doing his bit in that cause now).

That could pan out interestingly.

[Woodchopper]

Andrew Gelman takes a deep dive into 538's model (as best he can, given that it's closed source)
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ ... -forecast/

There seem to be some weird things happening in the tails of probabilities, with negative correlations between states - e.g. if Trump wins New Jersey he supposedly has a lower chance of winning Alaska.

Nate Silver responds that he thinks that's accurate. Sounds a bit unlikely to me - I'd say at most those correlations could be zero (ie independent, a Trump victory in NJ could be something weird happening in NJ, or a national swing, but I can't see how it would be correlated with support for Biden in Alaska).

Probably doesn't matter much, as the tail events we're talking about are very unlikely. But I thought it was interesting seeing someone try to reverse engineer the model's behaviour and unpick some of its details.

Interesting. Among things that will bring an academic out in a cold sweat, pretty high up is "Andrew Gelman wrote a blog post about your work".

[dyqik]

On 538, it looks like they've removed Trafalgar from the polling averages.

This was after Trafalgar came out with a poll of Michigan that was 15 points more Trump than a slightly right leaning pollster using the same surveying method. Trafalgar also released their "crosstabs" for the first time, before deleting them, which showed nonsense like 30% of self-identified Democrats voting Trump and 25% of self-identified Republicans voting Biden, and seriously flawed push polling questions.

[lpm]

Jesus, Biden is really slumping in the polls today.

Not clear if it's just a freak day or the start of disaster.

He's plummeted from +10.7 in the 538 average to +10.4.

The slumping has continued to +9.1.

Despair, everyone. DESPAIR.

Mind you, before the 1st Debate and Trump's little visit from a coronavirus, Biden was +7.1 and fairly steady in the 6.5 to 7.5 range. So any reversion to mean type thing hasn't really happened. Trump had a sane 2nd debate and got better, but Biden retains part of his bump.