Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

When it comes to the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), I've always been torn between being very concerned about the laziness of many of the proponents, and feeling the urge to promote it to stop all the fucking nonsense.

I mean, I feel the same vibe from the young MMT believers as the one I get from the cool liberal arts kids back in the 1970s-80s who basically used pop postmodern philosophy as an excuse not to study Hegel or Kant or Descartes, to be an lazy ass who doesn't produce anything or contribute to the society in any way. The idea shared by a LOT of the MMT-ers, if not exactly by the MMT scholars, that a state doesn't need taxation to fund itself - that taxation is only for inflation control - is just an Art Laffer-esque delusion. You MUST tax people to fund the state. There's simply no way around it.

But on the other hand, you STILL see center-left politicians in the UK talking about "managing public spending the way I would my family budget," and Dutch liberals and German Ordoliberals scolding other Europeans' "lack of fiscal discipline." The MMT may be the poison that the world still needs.

[miscmisc]

OK, I realized that I had consistently misspelled Sinema's first name in this thread, but consider that to be the manifestation of my utter disrespect and contempt for that woman, or more broadly what she represents.

[miscmisc]

Again, this thread is pretty nice. No one has jumped on me for badmouthing The Sopranos yet.

In any other place calling the show a "mediocre Franzen novel" causes an earthquake that can destroy a whole city. You would be attacked from both the "smart" demographic who love to use the word "deconstruct/deconstruction" in every other sentence and the kind of dumb jocks with toxic masculinity.

Most people like that show, but if you don't, keep that opinion to yourself.

[miscmisc]

People talk a lot about the vaccine efficacy "waning," but what about the exposure factor, meaning the frequency of exposure?

I mean, let's say there are 100 people, and half of them are vaccinated (50), and the other half unvaccinated (50). And let's say 4% of the vaccinated and 40% of the unvaccinated get infected in one serious exposure event. That puts the vaccine efficacy at (20-2)/20 = 90%.

Now, what if they were exposed twice? Then the vaccine efficacy would be ((20+12)-(2+1.92))/(20+12) = 87.75%. Down by 2.25%.

Three times? ((20+12+7.2)-(2+1.92+1.8432))/(20+12+7.2) = 85.30%. Down by 2.45%.

And so on and on.

Is that "waning"? No it's not. The calculation was done on the assumption that the true vaccine efficacy itself does NOT wane. You simply get the illusion of waning because of the repeated exposure.

The Israeli data showed a lot more "waning" than the British stats. Could that have something to do with the fact that people behaved differently in those countries, under different policies? I know my Israeli friends were partying every weekend after they got vaccinated.

You would think the studies address this question, but as far as I know, they haven't, presumably because it's either difficult or impossible to do so. I mean, how can you distinguish them? Easier said than done.

That's why I still take the whole waning theory with a grain of salt. Or to be more precise, I do suspect that it wanes over time, but have my doubts on the accuracy of the numbers in those studies. 

[miscmisc]

People don't care because they think life is cheap over there to begin with or something, but Russia's total inability to fight Covid-19 is simply astonishing. Their official stats are nonsense. They must have lost a staggering number of lives already. They haven't managed to contain the virus even once, and we are talking about a country who managed to produce an okay vaccine earlier than anyone else. It's been a nonstop Covid winter with no break/pause to speak of. Russia and Brazil absolutely stand out in terms of that. Look at their graphs going straight up. The US, as atrociously bad as it has been, at least had some clear *waves*, ups and downs, some evidence for some effort.

What a broken society, but we all knew that.

[gols]

Oct 6, 2021 13:14:37 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Again, this thread is pretty nice. No one has jumped on me for badmouthing The Sopranos yet.

In any other place calling the show a "mediocre Franzen novel" causes an earthquake that can destroy a whole city. You would be attacked from both the "smart" demographic who love to use the word "deconstruct/deconstruction" in every other sentence and the kind of dumb jocks with toxic masculinity.

Most people like that show, but if you don't, keep that opinion to yourself.

We will let you off for one bad take

I loved the show when I watched it, but I was pretty young then. I may well watch the prequel film though.

PS thanks for keeping up the posts misc.

[K1power]

Oct 6, 2021 13:14:37 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Again, this thread is pretty nice. No one has jumped on me for badmouthing The Sopranos yet.

In any other place calling the show a "mediocre Franzen novel" causes an earthquake that can destroy a whole city. You would be attacked from both the "smart" demographic who love to use the word "deconstruct/deconstruction" in every other sentence and the kind of dumb jocks with toxic masculinity.

Most people like that show, but if you don't, keep that opinion to yourself.

I never really understood that. You can hate something I love and vice versa and it's fine as long as we don't get obnoxious about it.

Take Denis Villeneuve's and Martin Scorcese's anti-Marvel comments that everybody completely got bent out of shape and defensive about. Sure, I generally think filmmakers shouldn't criticize other people's work and it's entirely possible they made these comments to gain some attention for their own upcoming projects, but I do think they're being honest about their opinion. I like Marvel- and other comic book films, but it's hard to deny that a lot of them feel like they're made from stencil to the point where you can barely tell who directed them. It's a formula that works, but it's also very safe and not everybody's cup of tea. Just like anything else, really.

Saying Villeneuve and Scorsese are idiots who don't know what they're talking about is insane to me. All of this is obviously just my opinion as well, but Villeneuve and Scorsese's work stands head and shoulders above any comic book film. Again, I'm saying that as a fan. That's not to say intelligent people can't have dumb takes. They certainly can, but generally speaking I do tend to take their opinion more seriously than some random butthurt idiot shouting on the internet.

Acceptance of a differing taste is a foreign concept to a lot of people and discussions about art preference are as pointless as discussions about food preference; you like what you like and no argument in the world will change that. But I feel like I'm preaching to the choir anyway.

[miscmisc]

Ultimately you cannot really explain why you like/love a particular work of art, what caused the particular chemical reactions in your brain.

What's interesting is the human attachment to their own preferences. Hell, it may be even more superficial than that as the word "preferences" suggests something far more rational than it probably is in actuality.

At the very basic level, for example, the fact that you had a quarrel with your wife in the morning might have been a very crucial factor in your "preferences" of that particular day. Or even whether you had a coffee or not. But in retrospect you cannot know how much effect those things had on your perception. The sensation of your disliking/hating (or liking/loving) the stuff now is so strong that there is just no separating different factors in retrospect that were actually at work. All you can do is justify the whole sensation, only after the fact.

We are so attached to our own personal sensations, yet constantly seek for others approving of them. And then we form tribes based on those "values," and would go so far as to kill for that.

[miscmisc]

When you can lie utterly childishly this way and disrespect our intelligence, well, what can I say? These people have a big problem. I'm getting concerned about the future of the UK, and its relationship with Europe. Not necessarily talking about war and stuff here, but this is pretty bad, really, even by The Telegraph's standards. Won't end well.



"Once Britain was out of the EU, the Eurocrats should've interpreted the changed circumstances. Instead, they chose to play hardball, failing to grasp that the power they thought they could exercise over Britain wasn't real."

Complete bullshit like this with no care in the world.

I told you that the UK was absolutely humiliated in the trade negotiations with the EU. I explained why in detail, and even expressed my feeling sorry for Britain.

But these clowns kept saying the opposite, the clever British elites outwitting the continental dullards. And needless to say, no one apologizes for having been wrong, ever.

[miscmisc]

I'm getting increasingly nervous about live-action Cowboy Bebop by Netflix. When it comes to that show, well, it's personal. I can happily live with the modified details like Spike being East Asian and Jet being black, and the opening looks very, I don't know, respectful to the original, but man. It's not going to "ruin" anything, so it would be fine even if it bombed, but I just hope that it's gonna look like a real show, and not a bunch of actors just cosplaying Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed.

[miscmisc]

So true.

Some of the things that smartphones symbolize - such as, most notably, the instant connectivity - go against our conventional, basic aesthetics on story-telling on many different levels. We'll have to overcome it, but I don't think we are there yet.

[K1power]

Oct 12, 2021 13:28:36 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

I'm getting increasingly nervous about live-action Cowboy Bebop by Netflix. When it comes to that show, well, it's personal. I can happily live with the modified details like Spike being East Asian and Jet being black, and the opening looks very, I don't know, respectful to the original, but man. It's not going to "ruin" anything, so it would be fine even if it bombed, but I just hope that it's gonna look like a real show, and not a bunch of actors just cosplaying Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed.

Netflix has a horrible reputation when it comes to live action anime adaptations. In fact, pretty much all of Hollywood does. They have a long history of completely butchering awesome source material.

I remember you mentioning having some sort of involvement with Cowboy Bebop years ago so it's only natural that you have some level of curiosity for this adaptation, but I definitely wouldn't get my hopes up.

John Cho seems to be serious enough about the project, but I don't think he has any involvement aside from being part of the cast.

[miscmisc]

John Cho is like 50, right? Spike is supposed to be 28 or something, but Cho can look significantly younger than he actually is.

Keanu Reeves was trying to make the live-action version for many, many years, but it pretty much died in the Hollywood graveyard. It was just not practical to begin with, though. We never thought it would happen anyway. I think many people were relieved that it didn't happen, but now it's happening in a different town in different hands. I'm certainly curious, but, well, very nervous too.

[gols]

Oct 11, 2021 8:21:35 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

When you can lie utterly childishly this way and disrespect our intelligence, well, what can I say? These people have a big problem. I'm getting concerned about the future of the UK, and its relationship with Europe. Not necessarily talking about war and stuff here, but this is pretty bad, really, even by The Telegraph's standards. Won't end well.

"Once Britain was out of the EU, the Eurocrats should've interpreted the changed circumstances. Instead, they chose to play hardball, failing to grasp that the power they thought they could exercise over Britain wasn't real."

Complete bullshit like this with no care in the world.

I told you that the UK was absolutely humiliated in the trade negotiations with the EU. I explained why in detail, and even expressed my feeling sorry for Britain.

But these clowns kept saying the opposite, the clever British elites outwitting the continental dullards. And needless to say, no one apologizes for having been wrong, ever.

I don't read The Telegrpah for obvious reasons, but as the paper of the Holy Brexit this seems like standard stuff.

But yeah the UK is a joke country now and getting worse. If only I spoke another language...

[miscmisc]

Yeah, The Telegraph does what The Telegraph does, but the UK and EU were never equal parties. No shit indeed, but did they really understand that? I felt that even Remainers weren't quite aware of the extent to which the deal significantly favored the EU position.

Everything that has been happening post-Brexit is a logical/natural consequence of the deal, signed and ratified, which the UK government trumpeted as a geopolitical triumph.

Y'all know I know the Eurocrats very well. They wouldn't mind a trade war.

I mean, this one, below, is pretty bad. Utterly cringeworthy, and also dangerous. This is the kind of a speech that a representative of a rogue state would make.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/lord-frost-speech-observations-on-the-present-state-of-the-nation-12-october-2021