Valuable stuff. I'd seen someone on Quora going on about how "Benford's law proves 'fraud'", so if it comes up again I can post a link to that.
I'm sure it'll lead to a retraction and apology for the mistake.
Benford's Law is a classic example of where someone with decent intelligence picks up on An Idea from an article they've read in some upper-mid-brow publication and decides this means they now have an advanced degree in it. There are a number of assumptions that must be met before you can apply it to a situation, but they don't get nearly as much coverage in said upper-mid-brow outlet.
This is also basically Dominic Cummings' entire model of everything.
Something something hammer something something nail
Speaking of awful people not conceding, Martha McSally still hasn't conceded to Captain Mark Kelly in Arizona, even though he leads by quite a bit more than the number of ballots remaining to be counted.
Valuable stuff. I'd seen someone on Quora going on about how "Benford's law proves 'fraud'", so if it comes up again I can post a link to that.
I'm sure it'll lead to a retraction and apology for the mistake.
Benford's Law is a classic example of where someone with decent intelligence picks up on An Idea from an article they've read in some upper-mid-brow publication and decides this means they now have an advanced degree in it. There are a number of assumptions that must be met before you can apply it to a situation, but they don't get nearly as much coverage in said upper-mid-brow outlet.
This is also basically Dominic Cummings' entire model of everything.
I don’t know anything about election fraud but I’ve done a metric sh.t-ton of forensic accounting reviews and this question comes up all the time there.
Benford’s Law is a buzzword in that field and standard audit and data analysis software such as ACL has such analysis built in as standard functionality. Board members also love it when we mention having used it as part of our approach as it makes them feel good about having recognised a word.
But. If the analysis does flag up possible anomalies in the data, it only really serves as a pointer for where to dig. We always end up digging around in the transaction layer anyway. If it doesn’t flag up anything, that might simply mean that the naughty people have been clever or lucky or both, in which case we follow our noses - and decades of experience - and burrow through individual transactions anyway.
So yeah. Interesting and fun and the graphs look pretty, but it’s only ever a really preliminary starting point.
And when it starts to slide
Let it go
Leave it behind
I've been back to it three times now, cracks me up every single time.
I typed in losers.com by accident and ended up at the Official A.F.C. Fylde Website which had me confused for a bit.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
sTeamTraen wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:40 am
The new (or renewed) President has to be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on 20 January. I really don't see how that's going to be Trump.
There is no requirement for him to be sworn in at the Capitol by any particular person at any particular time. It's just tradition. For example, if 20 Jan is a Sunday this formal oath taking is on Mon 21st.
The office leaves Trump at noon on 20 January. Biden becomes President at the same moment. He cannot formally execute the office until he has taken the oath, however, as it's part of the constitution that the oath be taken. Typically the oath happens a couple of minutes after noon.
If Trump has tanks surrounding the Capitol on 20 January and justices locked up, Biden can simply take the oath somewhere else in front of any notary public. Coolidge was sworn in by his dad. Any federal judge would be a suitable witness.
Presumably Trump could also take the oath at the same time, in front of any corrupt notary public.
Don't forget that when Lyndon Johnson was first inaugurated, it was on Air Force One, stood next to Jackie Kennedy, giving the oath to judge Sarah T Hughes, the first woman to inaugurate a president. The story is pretty incredible as well: https://time.com/5457324/lbj-swearing-in-sarah-hughes/
1280px-Lyndon_B._Johnson_taking_the_oath_of_office,_November_1963.jpg (274.72 KiB) Viewed 3160 times
Grumble wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:31 pm
Is Trump trying to do a coup d’etat? Persuade me that he isn’t.
A coup d’tw.t probably.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Trump doesn't ever try one single thing. He simultaneously tries a dozen things and goes with whatever works. He's trying a coup in the same way that he's trying to set up a new TV network - without any planning or strategy, but if it works he'll take it.
Grumble wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:31 pm
Is Trump trying to do a coup d’etat? Persuade me that he isn’t.
Majority of the population know he's lost, and most of his lawsuits are things like "the poll watchers feel they were distracted by the use of a PA to make announcements" or "the poll watchers felt initimated because there was lad there, they were in awe at the size of him, absolute unit", while he has to prove that the election results were actually wrong. Remember, Bush v Gore involved a margin of a few hundred in a single state, and it was trying to get the votes recounted that failed, not trying to set aside the original count.
EACLucifer wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:32 am
The destruction of democracy in the USA must be resisted by what ever means are required to resist it - even insurrection and war if it came to it
Insurrrection and war are not democratic processes (except in the fantasy of some 2nd amendment nutters), so that's a variant on the "we had to destroy the village to save it".
EACLucifer wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:32 am
The destruction of democracy in the USA must be resisted by what ever means are required to resist it - even insurrection and war if it came to it
Insurrrection and war are not democratic processes (except in the fantasy of some 2nd amendment nutters), so that's a variant on the "we had to destroy the village to save it".
Surrendering to a coup isn't peaceful, either. The response needs to be proportionate to the threat, and if that threat is that democracy will be overthrown without the use of force to stop it, then yes, force is both acceptable and necessary morally. The end results of fascism are too awful to allow it.
Meanwhile, the context which you decided to ignore, is that at the present situation, with worthless lawsuits used as a smokescreen for misinformation, then it is ok to shame lawyers for taking part.
Valuable stuff. I'd seen someone on Quora going on about how "Benford's law proves 'fraud'", so if it comes up again I can post a link to that.
I'm sure it'll lead to a retraction and apology for the mistake.
Benford's Law is a classic example of where someone with decent intelligence picks up on An Idea from an article they've read in some upper-mid-brow publication and decides this means they now have an advanced degree in it. There are a number of assumptions that must be met before you can apply it to a situation, but they don't get nearly as much coverage in said upper-mid-brow outlet.
This is also basically Dominic Cummings' entire model of everything.
As I said before, Cummings should not be allowed in the Business section of airport bookstores for everyone's sake (including his own)
For shiggles on Facebook, after a former colleague mentioned Benford's law I looked at the 2019 General Election results:
124637052_3523149164445669_1409952823346108528_n.jpg (10.93 KiB) Viewed 2970 times
Which isn't surprising because lots of constituencies will have maybe 15-35k votes for the main parties. A bit surprising that Labour looks a closer fit than the Tories or Lib Dems.
And then dyqik made the following statement - "it's not a scale free process, even locally, so Benford's law doesn't apply."... which is nice and concise.
Last edited by jimbob on Thu Nov 12, 2020 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Valuable stuff. I'd seen someone on Quora going on about how "Benford's law proves 'fraud'", so if it comes up again I can post a link to that.
I'm sure it'll lead to a retraction and apology for the mistake.
Benford's Law is a classic example of where someone with decent intelligence picks up on An Idea from an article they've read in some upper-mid-brow publication and decides this means they now have an advanced degree in it. There are a number of assumptions that must be met before you can apply it to a situation, but they don't get nearly as much coverage in said upper-mid-brow outlet.
This is also basically Dominic Cummings' entire model of everything.
As I said before, Cummings should not be allowed in the Business section of airport bookstores for everyone's sake (including his own)
A simpler idea would be to ban the business section of airport bookstores.
While Trump's campaign are misrepresenting the futile lawsuits they are filing*, he is grifting using them. Dozens of begging texts and emails are asking for recurring donations to an "Official Election Defence Fund", but donations under $8k actually go 60/40 to a new Trump PAC and the RNC
*Ok, there is one that could actually flip a state, but it requires over a hundred and fifty years of precedent to be set aside, and opens up a massive can of worms in every state where anyone can vote by mail. The rest, though, are things like "no your honour we aren't alleging fraud, just a procedural problem with a tranche of ballots that don't even equal one percent of Biden's margin"
dyqik wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:11 pm
After Fox/News International publications have told Trump that Biden won, Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson is also now moving that way.
I wonder if he'll take it as well as he took the news from Fox?
There's rumours going round that Trump's planning rallies to try and argue the toss with the election, and use them to attack Fox in the hope of setting up his own rightwing media empire, although quite a large pinch of salt is required, as this requires self awareness and planning Trump lacks.
ETA: His recent tweets yelling about Fox apparently having bad ratings and whining they apparently were the difference between 2016 and 2020 does fit with him going after Fox, mind you.
2ETA: And trawled the replies of a four day old tweet and liked every tweet attacking Fox and praising Newsmax and OANN, too.
EACLucifer wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 6:24 pm
2ETA: And trawled the replies of a four day old tweet and liked every tweet attacking Fox and praising Newsmax and OANN, too.
I presume that everybody who doesn't work for OANN calls it "ONAN".
Something something hammer something something nail
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
dyqik wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:11 pm
After Fox/News International publications have told Trump that Biden won, Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson is also now moving that way.
I wonder if he'll take it as well as he took the news from Fox?
There's rumours going round that Trump's planning rallies to try and argue the toss with the election, and use them to attack Fox in the hope of setting up his own rightwing media empire, although quite a large pinch of salt is required, as this requires self awareness and planning Trump lacks.
I had a look at his tweets today.
There are many. Pretty much all promoting OANN and some other "news site" that I haven't heard of before and already forgotten the name of. If I had to guess what his plan was after inauguration, I'd say it would be joining one of them, rather than setting up his own. After all, mostly what he wants is his name out there being seen so it can be branded, so why bother to do the leg work when someone's already done that for you? A few regular hours of programme a week on an existing channel that was seemingly set up to support him is all he needs for that.
And of course Twitter and the rest of the media will give him free advertising by watching every minute and letting everyone know how outrageous his word vomit is.
