GET OUT: US politics November 2020

Even if he locks himself in the fenced-off house on Tuesday to hide from dealing with the fact people hate him, he'll be bored as shit by the end of the week - after a month of adoring rallies! - let alone in three months' time when his term ends. He'd rather flounce off saying he needs to return to his business and the White House is a dump than actually concentrate long enough to foment a civil war.

oh - wait - is Mexico paying for this fence?

Leave him there and get on with the business of government from literally any other building in DC. I hear there's a hotel with the name of a prominent tax avoider above the door, right across the street. Requisition that and move on.

though I do think about how elections are different than other random events

an election is not a random event in any way

Haha he stranded people again. The third time this week. Pathetic on so many levels, not the least of which is the people still falling for it.

It seems to me that concepts like "random" and "error" are used in different ways in different contexts without much qualification, leading to a bit of confusion.

A thought experiment / toy example: You have a big sack filled with 10,000 balls; for the sake of argument, let exactly half of them be blue and half of them red. You then repeatedly -- say, once a day -- run "polls" in this "electorate", by shaking the bag thoroughly and picking out 100 balls without looking, and then counting the blue-vs-red proportion of the drawn balls. Now, over time, the results will in all probability fluctuate around a 50/50 proportion, even if a given single poll may be quite a bit off. However, there is a chance that, by pure luck, a large majority of the polls show a blue majority, and that the results seem to fluctuate around, say, 57/43 over the horizon you run your polls. The probability of this happening gets smaller the larger the number of polls, but such random effects can seem surprisingly persistent (because the human mind is bad at probabilistic intuition, and the apparently endless number of actual polls is not statistically a large one).

So, even granted that an election is not a random event (some might like to dispute this, though), the poll results we have seen are to an extent random outcomes, and saying that the future election result has a random component is just a kind of shorthand for saying that given our observations, the future result has an amount of uncertainty. (This usage is a legit disagreement in statistics: roughly, frequentists balk at calling anything but "actually" random events random, while Bayesians happily model subjective uncertainty by probabilistic maths.)

As for "errors": If you had inadvertently made your 5,000 red balls slightly heavier than the blue ones, so they tended to move towards the bottom of the sack with shaking, you might end up with a consistent 57/43 Blue result for a different reason. This would be the equivalent of e.g. poor demographical weighting. This is a very different effect than the random polling effects described above, but it seems both are sometimes referred to as "polling error".

The big boy told his Florida crowd at a rally yesterday that he'd fire Fauci if he wins on Tuesday,

I hear there's a hotel with the name of a prominent tax avoider above the door, right across the street. Requisition that and move on.

No need, as it already belongs to GSA. And the tenant has been requesting a break on the rent.

So it's more likean eviction than a requisition.

Pretty clear with this third instance of the same problem that they’re deliberately leaving their supporters out in the cold to save money https://t.co/ReVxOJNwBO

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 2, 2020

Thanks, anatol. The vagueness of the word random had always bothered me and I’m a bit clearer now. Haven’t decided if I’m a Bayesian or a frequentist.

these next couple days, or possibly much more, are gonna be real rough going

And marvelous.

Alfred I've seen some perverse posts in my time but wow

optimism is serious kink

Alfred, tell me you'll be on the political threads on Tuesday night with a drink (or two) in hand.

You can count on it, PBKR.

Friends, I've entered a Zen state. I'm past the anxiety. I'm text banked, gone to rallies, done my part.

Aww, yeah!

New @CookPolitical: our FINAL House outlook is a Dem net gain of 10-15 seats, with anything from 5-20 seats well within the range of possibility. View our final ratings: https://t.co/wcfAZ8REga

Solid/Likely/Lean D: 229
Solid/Likely/Lean R: 179
Toss Up: 27 pic.twitter.com/WcdnWJLG16

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2020

Meantime....

One state I am a bit curious about is Texas. Our forecast has been pretty skeptical about Biden's chances there, expecting Trump to close well. But instead Biden got a decent run of polls there this weekend and it now it has him within ~1 point. https://t.co/486ZZ385cV pic.twitter.com/efAeDAaXaX

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 2, 2020

i'm with Alfred on paper, and have really done okay at not spiralling into anxious news- and poll-following as i might well have done (given my track record). all signs point to a solid Biden win, maybe a blowout, but the memory of 2016 is in my body, my shoulder muscles, my stomach --- my brain is not driving the car right now. i just have to pass the time and get through these days. substances will likely be involved, tho i regret to say aperol has never quite landed with me.

Good morning!

I'm past Aperol, honey. I've got Fernet, Ramazzoti, Averna, Lucano, you name it.

Biden has passed the "clearly favored" 90% mark in FiveThirtyEight's forecast

Alfred do you know Sfumato? It's rhubarb-based and hence politically apt.

I only have time for barbs.

Tipsy, have you had Zucca? Just wondering how they compare.

GUYS, you’ll never believe what NYT did today on front page—it sent reporter to a deeply red state to interview white, middle aged men abt how much they love Trump! https://t.co/2ou7wyoZwu

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 2, 2020

That headline...it's an Onion thing, right?

Was a diner involved?

i'm trying to get through training class knowing I care little about it, esp tomorrow.

someone give me a non-sequitur (work-appropriate) phrase to insert at some point of the training.

jesus i was going to make a joke about antifa burning his tractor and then i got to this:

"For his part, Mr. Rempel refuses to speculate about a motive, but here in Henderson, a certain fear is being whispered: The fire-starters are aligned with antifa, coming from the cities to attack their way of life."

beyond fucking parody

amari xposts

WmC I have not, but Imbibe says Zucca is a bit sweeter. Sfumato more or less tastes like wet dirt, in a good way.

I am going to work an anecdote about a Mr Rempel into my class today, thanking u

xposts re: NYTimes

NPR also this morning, as I was making breakfast for kids, seemed to be spotlighting Trump voters telling their stories of why they're voting for him.

Sudden relapses of both-sidesism as the stress levels rise and our legacy media can't handle the pressure

both-sidesisms might even be due to pressure from Editors wanting to retain a broader base of readers.

in other words, the typical chickenshit bullshit in the industry. hey editors, they don't love u hoes, you're fake news.

antifa hates the tractormen for their freedoms

Antifa burned my tractor/
because I doxxed a crisis actor

xps ty!

bg's post for new board description

Trumpers in mistaking their voracious coprophagia for a universal trait shocker.

No, you cracker POS, this is quality attributable only to you and yours because your brains are fucking broken.

Meanwhile in the Land of Schadenfreude:

From @WSJopinion: It was a serious failure for me, as a public figure, to go maskless at the White House, writes @GovChristie. I paid for it, and I hope Americans can learn from my experience.

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 22, 2020

Early vote total now 95 million, fully over double the entire 2016 early vote total. The last possible milestone of 100 million by tomorrow morning is in reach.

but it's like george washington used to say: "if you can't beat em cheat em"

I'm past Aperol, honey. I've got Fernet, Ramazzoti, Averna, Lucano, you name it.

Barf. In anything more than small doses in cocktails, amaros (and the herbal like) can go jump in a lake. I think tomorrow night feels like a beer (or wine) night to me. Easier to drink more, a pint/wine glass lasts longer than a coupe, no preparation necessary, and if things go well I can toast later with the good bourbon.

there is no way I'm going to spend the day after Election Day hungover

I think tomorrow night feels like a beer (or wine) night to me. Easier to drink more, a pint/wine glass lasts longer than a coupe, no preparation necessary, and if things go well I can toast later with the good bourbon.

Don't misjudge me. More than Negroni grosses me out. A bracing way, though, to prepare for wine.

*more than one Negroni

Amaro Nonino on ice with a slice of orange is very easy drinking!

Four Roses.

Spent last post-Election Day hungover at work, and I'm still feeling it. That's why I took Nov. 4 off.