Idiomwatch: Begs the Question

In modern usage, "begs the question" is "misused" more often than used in its correct/traditional meaning. Until recently, I was among the guilty. I, too, believed it means "begs (for) the question (to be posed)." I came to know that was incorrect (though I still think it has a lot of merit and utility). But I still did not realize the correct definition. I thought the real definition was "begs (off) the question", though I see now that doesn't quite fit, since begging off is active, versus passively trying to avoid the question. Wikipedia does note this usage.

The Wikipedia examples of the logical fallacy are not usages I commonly see.

Reminder Feature for Google Calendar

When receiving notifications (especially email notifications), include an option for "terminate any more notifications for this event". 

When I was in my teens, I picked up the idea of  "triple redundancy" as the NASA standard for fail-safe systems. The idea being, your backup also has a backup, so a catastrophic failure would require 3 (hopefully) independent things to fail at the same time. Without litigating whether this was actually a NASA design principle, or whether a more apt description is "triple failure, double redundancy, I can say the concept of redundancy made an impression on my youthful self.

Think about losing or misplacing your car keys. If you lose track of your primary key one day a month (1/30), adding a backup key takes that to once in 3 years (1/30^2). Add another backup, and you are at something like once over an entire lifetime (1/30^3 = 1/27000). And that is ignoring the fact that, once down to your second backup, you are probably going to be really, really careful.

Anyway, this week I experienced a rare quadruple redundancy failure--this time related to housekeys, not car keys.

We are having our siding replaced, so the garage keypad was removed (and resting inside the garage, where the workers left it). I idly noted that, as I walked out the garage, and walked to my car. What was I getting in the car to do? I was going to drop it off for service, and bike home. So that took out another source of access, when I returned home (via bicycle--that is how I minimize the pain of vehicle drop-offs)--no garage door remote. 

But I have never been one to rely on the garage for access, since if the power goes out (relatively more likely), or the opening system has a problem (even less likely), you are SOL. I keep a housekey on our keychains. BUT, we have a new car, and I haven't installed the housekey yet.

Still, I wasn't worried, because I also have a Tailwind smart garage door opener. I can easily open the garage door from my phone. Except it was this night my Tailwind chose to fail me (I think because of a required update). So had my wife not been at home, I would have experienced 4 system failures, resulting in lockout.

(I have since placed the keypad on the back deck, as a temporary backup, until the siding work is done.)

Inflation's Distorting Effects on Taxation of Interest

We've been in the era of 2% inflation so long that many of the distortions it causes have faded from memory. While reading up on iBonds, I remembered one of them: taxes are assessed against total returns, not real returns.

High-inflation example: 

• Inflation is 8%
• Your aggregate marginal tax rate is 32%
• You earn 10% interest (2 points above inflation)

So your after-tax yield is 6.8%--somewhat below inflation, so you are not even quite preserving your capital.

Low-inflation example:

• Inflation is 2%
• Same aggregate marginal tax rate of 32%
• You earn 4% (2 points above inflation)

Your after-tax yield 2.76%--somewhat above inflation.

Ordering Wine online Vivino

TL;DR

• I placed 2 orders to Vivino, for 8 bottles per order, each a mix of 2 different wines.
• There were under-$20 wines reviewed in the New York Times, and hard/impossible to find in St. Paul, MN.
• The retail price was competitive with the price listed in the article. Shipping was free. One order evaded sales tax.
• The delivery arrived promptly and was fully satisfactory.
• My cursory investigation suggests that buying directly from the distributor, to cut out Vivino's "middleman" profits, is not an option.

My (Limited) Experience

I've used Vivino (the wine rating/discovery app) lightly for a few years. I am a wine-lover but a dabbler.  I am not building a cellar and have a modest budget ($15-20 a bottle), so I really haven't gotten that much value out of the app, in terms of curation and discovery (and like many others, I consider the ratings nearly worthless, being crowd-sourced and utterly un-calibrated).

I finally got around to using Vivino to actually order wine, and I think that might wind up being my most valuable Vivino use case. I will frequently read some article in the general press--sometimes New York Times, sometimes the local paper--reviewing and recommending wines in my price range. I'm often curious to try what is recommended. The problem is finding it. The NYT stuff is almost impossible to find locally. And even the local stuff may only be available in a wine shop across town. That's way too much friction.

So recently I ran though a NYT article with recommendations. Of the 10 I looked for, I successfully found 4 on Vivino. Not bad. The prices were competitive, if not especially a bargain--never less, sometimes 5-10% more, than mentioned in the article.

Where Vivino shines is reasonable shipping cost. It appears that for < 9 bottles, they charge $15 flat rate. That actually isn't bad, for say 6 bottles. But it seems like there is a tipping point, I believe at the odd number of 9, where shipping becomes free. That makes Vivino a very convenient, price-competitive way to try and obtain wines that are not locally available.

And here's the thing--while Vivino doesn't support pure mix-and-match to get free shipping, it also doesn't have to be 9 bottles of the same wine. The way it seems to work is that Vivino has relationships with a number distributors. I don't know what that number is, exactly, but the same few kept coming up in my query vs the NYT list.

I don't have enough data to know if each distributor has their own requirements, but the two that fulfilled my order both seemed to set 9 as a breakpoint. As far as I could tell, any 9 bottles from that shipper could be combined to get the good price. I split my orders 4-5.

Both my shipments arrived promptly enough--4-5 business days--and were accurate. Very well-packed.

Comments About Vivino on Reddit

On Reddit, I have seen comments that put Vivino in the same category as DoorDash, and claim that they take a 15-20% cut. Given the competitive prices, I don't see how there is room for that much margin. But as a consumer, I am sympathetic to the idea that the aggregator should not eat the lion's share of the profits; I make sure to subscribe to anything I can directly, not through the Apple store.

So what I found interesting was that Vivino was absolutely transparent about who the distributor was. I looked up one of them on the web (Corkery Wine & Spirits). The price on their website was the same as Vivino, but then I noticed that they warned they only ship to 3 states (MN not one of them). I found this very curious, so I called them. I explained my situation, and they confirmed they only ship to those 3 states under their own name, but through Vivino they can ship elsewhere. I didn't try asking for a fuller explanation.

(The distributor for one of my two orders didn't charge tax for my state, giving Vivino an additional cost edge. I do not feel that this kind of online tax avoidance evasion is ethical or fair, so I don't consider this a pro for Vivino, but others may feel differently.)

Vivino vs Wine.com

Some Redditors speak more favorably of Wine.com, since they maintain inventory, rather than acting purely as a middleman. From the perspective of supporting your local wine ship, I don't see how this makes a difference. From the purpose of economic efficiency, I believe--for a highly fragmented market such as fine wine--maintaining inventory is unlikely to deliver net economic efficiency, and is instead a source of overhead and inventory limitations. The longstanding dream of online wine sales, after all, is to be able to buy any wine you hear of, for a price comparable to the normal brick-and-mortar retail price that prevails in its traditional physical distribution footprint.

In my limited experience with Wine.com, I found their inventory hit-and-miss, with a roughly similar hit-rate to Vivino (keep in mind, sample size with both is very small) . But I found their prices consistently on the high side--15-20% more than the typical retail price.

And that is before shipping. I haven't used Wine.com in a few years, so I did some quick investigation. It looks like their shipping price for 6 bottles is about $4.50 per--nearly double Vivino's $2.50. At 12 bottles, the per-bottle price decreases to about $3.25. It seems to very slowly decrease with volume from there. But clearly they are going for the Amazon Prime approach, by offering a $60 annual fee to get free shipping. Which is not a bad deal. 

Venmo Feature: Advanced Functionality for Splitting the Bill

Venmo has a split-the-bill feature, where the user can assign payment amounts. It's a good start. But a common use case is multiple people go to a restaurant, one person pays, and the payor doesn't know who ordered what. The basic functionality I would like to see:

• Attach a copy of the bill.
• Enter a total amount, invoke the split request.
• Each user examines the bill, calculates their share of the base bill. Venmo apportions tax & tip.
• Venmo keeps track of the total reimbursements received.
• Venmo provides reminders for parties who haven't responded.

Advanced functionality:

• If total is off by more than a set amount (e.g., 10%, above or below), Venmo notifies all users.
• Venmo scans receipt, and lets users click on their line-items.

Email Is Better than Texting

 

(Mainstream) Reasons email is better

Option to use a full-size monitor and real keyboard (yes I know Mac users)

Much easier to bring someone into the conversation mid-stream

Subjects are helpful

Vastly better search

(Mainstream) Reasons texting is better

Many people have developed bad habits about email, and tend to ignore/postpone 

I. Hate. Organized. Gambling.

Alarming and depressing article on the explosive arrival of app-based sports betting. I hate organized gambling. I hate it intellectually--it is the triumph of hope over math. I hate it aesthetically--the trappings of gambling, from garish smoke-filled casinos to grimy OTBs to convenience store lottery lines--is soul-crushing. I hate its social effects. And now, also hate it for overshadowing the sporting events themselves.

Keyless Entry Strategy for iOS or Android

I recently installed a Tailwind iQ3 smart garage door opener. It is very impressive, pretty simple to install, and downright cheap at $60. Just the fact that it will alert you if the door is left open at night, and if desired, will automatically close the door, if probably worth the price.

It also eliminates the need for a keypad. In my experience, keypads are a hassle and a bit of security risk. Because the code is typically very hard to change, people don't change it often, or use the temporary code feature. 

You can open the door remotely, which comes in handy in various situations, such as your neighbor wants to borrow some tool in the garage when you are away on vacation. Even better, you can assign opening privileges to other Tailwind app users. Great for guests, or families with more than 2-3 garage users, who would otherwise need to obtain extra garage door modules for their car.

Which brings me to my main point. While the sharing privileges feature is great, it comes with the substantial friction of each guest user having to install and provision the Tailwind app. It would be SO much better if this were nearly frictionless--i.e., if it were built into the mobile OS.

(Note: I know that a garage-oriented view of home access is a very suburb-centric viewpoint. There is a clear analog with smart door locks, more on that in a moment.)

Apple or Google should acquire Tailwind, and partner with the lock industry, to build keyless entry access-sharing into the OS. 

Apple is probably the more obvious candidate, at least in the US. If this were an Apple-only feature (think iMessage), it provides a distinct source of competitive advantage and lock-in through network-effect. Given that households in the US that have garage doors, and can afford smart locks skews upper-income, this fits well with Apple's customer base. Moreover, Apple's good image regarding security in general should transfer well to this use case.

I think the immediate first step is acquiring Tailwind (who I believe is the market leader, certainly the functional leader), and making it Apple-only going forward. The smart garage door market is new enough that I think that a play for total dominance is realistic.

The door lock market is much more established and fragmented. It also has a heavy decorative dimension. So I am doubtful that a total domination play is viable. Instead, Apple could move quickly, and leverage domination of the smart garage market, to establish its standard, open for adoption by heterogenous door lock manufacturers.  

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NOTES

As a consumer, I would ideally prefer to see an industry standard. But from the perspective of business strategy, it seems like a great opportunity for Apple. Also, I am doubtful about the standards-based approach happening any time soon.

A consumers should never rely solely on anything electrical, let alone "smart", for critical access. I cringe when I talk to someone whose only access to their house if via the garage door opener. So always carry a housekey--that applies to smart locks as well. But for many use cases, you can tolerate the pretty low risk of an electrical outage. E.g., if you have a weekly housecleaner for 10 years, and there is a 25% probability that once over those 10 years, the power will be out, and they won't be able to get in--that doesn't seem like a crisis (unless of course Murphy's Law strikes, and it happens to be the day before you are planning a big house party!).

My Original Covid "Modeling"

I recently came across some back-of-the-envelope modeling I did early in the Covid ordeal (05/18/2020). Conclusion was that the duration of "Flatten the Curve" was a theoretical minimum of 214 days. I didn't even bother posting it at the time, because it seemed to depressing.

The core assumption underlying the model was that a large percentage of the population was going to get Covid, it was only a question of when (my working figure was 60%). Then the next key metric requiring an assumption was--what proportion of Covid patients would require hospitalization? My guess at the time was 10%. This turned out to be way too high (by a factor ~5X), although per this paper, I think that was a figure that was circulating at the time.

Anyway, from there it was just a matter of calculating how many "inventory turns" of hospital beds would be required to cycle the entire Covid population through, and how long an inventory turn required (on average). My guess for duration (5 days), turned out to be very low, so partially offsets the high guess for proportion of population infected.

Keep in mind that 214 days is the theoretical best. It assumes the rate of Covid sickness is perfectly optimized, never exceeding hospital capacity (which would imply excess deaths), but never leaving any slack (to ensure the shortest possible duration).

Optimization is always hard, but optimizing rate of acquisition of a novel disease is impossible. So the real-world outcome probably would have been both excess deaths, and still a duration of longer than 214 days. That is, if the 10% of Covid patients require hospitalization assumption had been accurate. Thankfully that was not the case.

0.0028	Hospital beds per capita
0.5	% devoted to Covid patients
0.0014	Steady-state hospital beds
0.60	proportion of population who gets Covid
0.10	proportion of sick requiring hospitalization
0.06	Proportion of population requiring hospitalization at some point
42.9	"Turns" of beds, to cover entire hospitalized population
5	Duration of hospitalization
214	Total days required to work through entire population, if curve flattening is perfectly optimal.

I Can't Help It, I Hate the Placebo Effect

I know it is wrong, but in my heart of hearts, I detest the placebo effect. I prefer a world without this kind of statistically noisy pseudo-magic. So I take guilty pleasure in reading this article, which casts doubt on the belief, developed over the last 70 years, that the placebo effect can be an important clinical tool.

The "open placebo" stuff, especially, is hard for a devout rationalist to stomach.

The reason it is a guilty pleasure is because, also in my heart of hearts, I know that I should applaud anything that helps. If placebos and open placebos improve clinical outcomes and reduce suffering, that is a good thing.

Comments on Crypto

I'm a hardcore crypto skeptic, borderline hater. Regarding digital currencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, I don't see what real problem they are solving--outside of enabling criminal activity in general, and ransomware spectacularly. 

My impression is that many of the proponents fall into 2 or 3 camps. One camp is the promoters--they have something to sell. Maybe because they are also a believer (Camp 2), often because they are a huckster. Another camp is the deep believers. These seem to be libertarian types, who have some very deep-seated dislike of any form of centralization. They see currency independence a crucial step in some form of idealized, Atlas Shrugged-ish elimination of the need for individuals to have any need for government. Then the third camp are speculators. They see the meteoric rise of crypto and are drawn in by the justifications. The difference between the deep believer camp is that the financial payoff is what gets their attention; the belief follows.

So there is another strike against cryptocurrency--the company it keeps.

There are a number of crypto supporters who jump in to say that the tech is about much more than currencies. But I never hear even vaguely convincing examples(1). People talk about smart contracts, but they seem very vague, it isn't clear to me how they practically improve on "dumb" contracts (other than the satisfaction of removing a "middleman", even if that doesn't save money or have any tangible benefit), and it seems like they assume away the enforcement problem.

Then there are NFTs! The first time I read about them, I thought it was an elaborate tech in-joke. NFTs are screaming "The Emperor Has No Clothes"--setting aside extreme niche, hobbyist uses, that could probably also be accomplished with traditional commercial centralization (e.g., being able to prove were an early backer of some Indie artist). 

I've listened to podcasts on the topics, to see if I can find out what I am missing, and they usually just convince me more. I should admit, I am at some risk of "motivated reasoning", especially regarding NFTs, because their promoters talk about creating "digitial scarcity". As if scarcity can be a social good! I hate scarcity, I want abundance!!!! 

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(1) Granted, it in principle it could be that time will find great use cases, even if nobody is citing them now. E.g., Friendster or even FB didn't foresee the power of the news feed. I will still keep my bet.

Service to Facilitate Cash Offers for Houses

NPR had an interesting story on a trend where companies enable consumers to make cash offers for houses, rather than having a mortgage-approval contingency. This makes their offer more appealing to the seller, since it reduces risk. Even with a pre-approval, many things can go wrong. My mother was a real estate agent, and as a youth, hearing her stories of deals falling through due to a buyer's buyer's buyer failing to qualify for a mortgage, I often wondered that the whole system didn't wind up in gridlock. Cash offers do eliminate that problem.

I'm not sure what to think. When I evaluate a new business process innovation, I want it to make the overall system more efficient. Usually, that means taking cost out of the system. For instance, mortgage securitization adds an extra step in the process (packaging the loans), but those transaction costs are outweighed by the efficiency of capital allocation (no geographic disconnects between mortgage demand, and funds available to lend).

The question the interviewer should have asked, but didn't, is what is the net additional cost to the buyer, to get the backing of the company that "fronts" them the cash?

I can think of ways this might add efficiency. One source of efficiency is simply compressing the time-to-closing (another benefit of cash offers). The longer the time-to-closing, it could be more likely there are inefficiencies such as temporary housing, temporary storage, or the pending sale house standing empty. It's not completely obvious though--closing too fast could bring complications of its own. Of course, just because you make a cash offer doesn't mean you have to close fast--the cash buyer could offer the seller flexibility, fast or slow, whatever they want. So it seems like there is surely some efficiency there.

 The existing mortgage underwriting process is cumbersome and time-consuming. So maybe there is some efficiency through vertical integration and better sharing of information? Maybe the cash sponsor is adding value as a trusted advisor (that part in the NPR story about not letting the customer offer more than they think the house is worth).

Make Congressional Representatives Less Parochial

A few years ago, this idea came to me that the US, collectively, might get a better Congress if it were less parochial. My proposal was that some fraction of Congress should be elected by randomly assigned national constituencies.

I have a refinement, or alternative, to that idea. I would like to see some fraction of each member to be elected by a randomly assigned national constituency. Off the top of my head, 20% national constituency seems like a good number.

That would preserve local representation, while introducing a national constituency large enough to be a powerful tie-breaker.

Viruses do not necessarily evolve to be milder story

Zeynep: Viruses do not necessarily evolve to be milder...Evolution is not a teleological process, bad match for a story-telling species' brain. Things seem to make sense—the just-so story...

The whole thread is right-on, but as someone whose bete noir is the human weakness for a good story, I love the second sentence. 

Adoption of e-Delivery for Documents

Companies would like customers to opt for e-Delivery of bills, statements and other documents. It saves the company a non-trivial amount of money, and is environmentally beneficial. 

Sometimes a user concern is that they will lose access to the account, perhaps because they (unwisely) chose a work email address (don't get me started). Or the e-Delivery notifications will go into their spam folder. Or they are just bad at email.

I can think of a good mitigation. If a consumer hasn't accessed a company's online portal in, say, 6 months, that should trigger a paper delivery of the next document (bill, monthly statement). Included in the paper document should be an explanation, and the option to convert to paper by scanning a QR code. That also might be used as a way to regain access to their online account, in the event that is the problem (subject to security considerations). 

The remote-controlled assassination of Fakhrizadeh marks a scary precedent

While I don't mourn the death of a top Iranian nuclear weapons scientist on the merits, the manner of his death is deeply troubling. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by a remote-controlled, AI-assisted machine gun. It was undoubtedly a given that such an event would happen sooner or later, but it is nevertheless a horrifying precedent.

The advent of remote control assassinations is the immediate concern, and that is plenty bad enough. But imagine what kind of carnage could occur if one, or a few, of those were let loose in a crowded public assembly?

I always assumed respiratory viruses were primarily airborne

Must have been a case of being right by dumb luck, but my mental model of respiratory viruses (influenza, colds) was that they were primarily transmitted by inhaling particles in the air--not by having projectile droplets land on your facial orifices.

 

Tournament Codenames

I love the board game Codenames. The online version is even better, because you can add your own words. However, I have ideas for a more intense version of the game.

The normal game is a ton of fun, but the fun mostly comes just from the guessing. There are limited tactics and very little strategy. Often the margin of victory is decided by a single turn.

My solution is to make the guessing process richer. Typically in my experience, 2 word guesses dominate. I would like to see more 3's, and even the occasional 4. But the way the standard Codenames works, that is nearly impossible. So here are the changes I would make:

Expand to a 6x6 grid

This will give substantially more opportunity for finding multiple connections.

Eliminate 1 Strike You're Out

To encourage guessing higher numbers, and to counteract the increased chance for false matches that will come with more cards in the grid, tweak the rules to allow the turn to continue after a wrong guess. I think some experimentation will be necessary to find the ideal. I toyed with the idea of 1 wrong neutral guess being allowed, but I am thinking maybe it should be just 1 wrong guess (after all, a wrong guess that exposes the other teams card is worse than a neutral). It would be prohibited to guess more answers than remaining cards (e.g. if your team has 3 cards and other team has 6, you can't guess 5 to get extra bites at the apple, you can only guess 3 or lower).

In conjunction, I would eliminate the "continuation guess" that is currently allowed, if you don't successfully use all guesses from a prior turn.

Possibly Decrease the Number of Neutral Cards

I'm not sure about this one, but something to consider--will draw out the gameplay, allowing strategy and superior play to accumulate in a clear victory, rather than chance and which team happened to go first.

I am calling my proposed version "Tournament Codenames".

Run government like a business?

GDPR cookie notices are a failed experiment that should be rescinded. Yet they remain.

It is sometimes asserted, often by political amateurs, that "government should be run like a business". While I  mostly view such statements as mindless sloganeering, there are occasionally situations where it is instructive.

The GDPR cookie notices are the worst. No actual consumer benefit, huge inconvenience. If cookie notices were a business proposition, they would have been canceled within the first month. But somehow, the governmental forces that brought us the GDPR can't seem to find a path to fixing what is obviously broken.

Assortive effect of online dating

How much do online dating services to "the big sort"? By no means am I thinking only of political beliefs. Education, income, religion, interests--it seems like this might be a big consequence.

Design Idea: Kickstand for Watering Wand

 Beth bought a nice watering wand recently. Mostly it is meant for hand-held use, to shower small and medium-sized plants. However, it has been so dry this summer, that I need to water a newly-planted tree. I don't want to stand there for 10 minutes by the tree. Instead, I tried to set the wand on the ground, upside-down, to provide a nice, distributed shower to the tree near the drip line. It didn't work great, though, because the want wanted to flip over, and bury its nozzle in the grass.

The idea that gave me is that the wand should have a simple kickstand bracket attached, to allow it to better lay upside-down.

Probably too niche a use case to be very marketable, but would be a nice improvement.

My Personal Dating of Climate Change "Tipping Point"

A nexus of events this summer makes me feel like climate change is upon us, and from this date onward, the world is in the "after times". Once in a millennium European floods, floods in Henan China, a(nother) very bad U.S. wildfire season underway, combined with my own personal experience of the hottest, driest summer in my 20 years in MN all adds up to this feeling.

Of course my impression is somewhat subjective, anecdotal and personal, but the climate has been building toward this for a while. I think it is a good bet that, 25 years hence, if I am there to look back, I will agree that this is the point at which climate change became undeniable, and not distant, based not on science and modeling, but on personal experiences.

Billionaires and Income Tax Rates

There has recently been a major controversy about the amount of income taxes paid by the ultra-wealthy. This is based on data leaked to ProPublica. There has been something of a backlash, with many commenters (including those in agreement with the billionaires-pay-too-little spirit of the article) pointing out that income taxes are based on income, not wealth. While technically correct, these comments often miss the point--are the ultra-rich paying their fair share of income tax?

I can think of a few angles to look at when assessing this question:

• Capital Gains rate is ~half of the rate for ordinary income.
• Richer investors can borrow against investments with substantial accrued capital gains. This allows them to have their cake and eat it too, by getting present liquidity, at low interest rates, while preserving the long-term deferral.
• Tax-lot harvesting can allow investors to greatly reduce realized gains.

But most significant is deferral of capital gains. This amounts to a "loan" from the IRS, for as many years as a taxpayer holds an appreciated asset. In the dozen or so conversations I have stumbled across, none of them have examined possible modifications to the tax code that would "correct" for this phenomenon.

The term is "Lookback Taxation" of capital gains. Basically, it makes certain assumptions about the accumulation of capital gains, and when they are finally realized, it retrospectively applies taxation, to offest the benefit of deferral.

Was German Almost Official Language of US? (no)

I myself have fallen victim to the urban legend that, at one time, German almost became the official language of the US. In hindsight, the idea seems preposterous. I think I may know why it sneaks through the sniff test on those of us who should know better: another surprising (I think closer to true) fact is that German ancestry is possibly the largest single category in the US. If one is already aware of that fact, the assertion about language may slide by the reality-checking circuits.

(I am not convinced that German is really #1, either as predominate ancestry or even as a component. I suspect that is English, but for historical reasons there is little self-awareness / self-identification of English ancestry--being a WASP is probably the proxy--it is very likely underreported.)

Breakthrough Is a Bad Choice of Words

TL;DR: "Breakthrough infections" is a misleading term, let's not use it. Not sure what the ideal term is, maybe post-vax infections.

***************

I wish we would stop referring to cases where fully vaccinated people get Covid as "breakthrough" infections. That term has strong suggestion that the primary cause of infection is that a variant strain of Covid has become fully vaccine-evasive. 

Variants do muddy the water a bit, but let's set them aside for a moment. No vaccine is 100% effective. The wide range of available Covid vaccines are quite effective, with the predominant ones used in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, being an astonishing 95% efficacious. Which, reminder, means not that 5% of vaccinated people are destined to eventually get Covid; but rather, the incidence of getting Covid will be 95% lower in vaccinated people.

So, variants aside, the efficacy rate indicates that there will always be some fully vaccinated people who get Covid. Why? The vast majority of the time, it is because, for one reason or another, the vaccine did not generate an adequate immune response. Sometimes because the person is already immunocompromised (more likely if elderly, or if on immunosuppressants, or perhaps exposure to a massive viral load), but also sometimes happens for other reasons to younger, healthy people.

My point: in those cases, nothing has been "broken through" by the nasty Covid virus. Rather, there was no strong defense in place, Covid waltzed right into their body. No breaking was required. This no more involves breaking-through than a non-vaccinated, immunologically "naive" person getting Covid.

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Okay, now about the variants. It is true that some of the variants are better able to evade the immune response of vaccinated people. But the immune response in general is not like a levee that is either breached or holds (excellent article from Zeynep that explains this). And the immune response from the vaccines is particularly massive. So while variants to-date may be somewhat more likely to cause a breakthrough post-vax infection, that is incremental--it is not the main explanation, and hence it is misleading to refer to it as a breakthrough phenomenon.

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Another thing that should be emphasized is that even when breakthrough infections occur, the severity is markedly less. Many are entirely asymptomatic, and found only by random testing. Others are very mild. The efficacy of vaccines against severe Covid and death is stunningly high, in the 99+% range. That gets back to the flawed levee analogy, and also maybe the nature of Covid variants, as compared to other things, especially the familiar disease-resistant antibiotics. It it much less all-or-nothing. A person with a weaker response, or a variant that is more vaccine-evasive, usually involves far less risk of a dire outcome than for an unvaccinated person.

So variants are worrisome, but not cause for panic. Of course, the more people that get vaccinated, the less change for variants to emerge. 

In the meantime, let's stop referring to post-vax infections are "breakthrough".

Gift Card Breakage

Gift cards must be the most profitable thing that many retailers sell, what with the breakage. Even without breakage, gift cards are a great deal for retailers (assuming they are sold at face value). They have guaranteed business, and an interest-free loan for the interval between issuing the card, and it being redeemed.

So from a consumer protection point of view, I think there should be regulations to lessen gift-card breakage. What seems simple enough would be to email the purchaser of the gift card, if it hasn't been used within 2 years, and offer them the option of a refund or re-issue.

I suppose that raises potential privacy issues for the recipient--especially if they lied and said they used it, because they were too embarassed to admit they lost it.

Maybe the best thing is just to eschew gift cards altogether.

Will Vaccine Status Become a Requirement

I am curious to see if vaccine status requirements (e.g., vaccine passports), becomes a major thing in the US. For employment, for travel, for entry into events, etc. So far I haven't personally heard of companies that plan to require it. I suspect it will eventually become an issue, unless we get supremely lucky and the current level of vaccination really does brings the virus fully to heel. 

I suspect employers are temporizing. Waiting for others to go first, and waiting for justification--e.g., a company experiences a widely-reported outbreak amongst unvaccinated employees. When/if that happens, I predict a bandwagon effect of employers making it a requirement.

I would like to think the example of other countries, less infected by vaccine conspiracy theories and (mostly) right-wing anti-scientism, could help steer the US in the right direction. But given the many other issues where that hasn't happened, that may be wishful thinking.

Some parents are demanding their pediatrician's offices certify they do not accept non-vaccine-compliant families. Ideally that would be another lever to push for full vaccination, though it requires collective action on the part of the less-motivated majority, so I won't hold my breath.

Buses Are Under-Appreciated Mass Transit

I could have written this article! Including this:

Buses often fall down on the job—not because they’re buses, but because they’re slow. Buses are slow in part because city leaders don’t want to slight anyone and thus end up having them stop far too frequently, leaving almost everyone worse off. 

I remember riding the bus in college and being dumbfounded at how often riders pulled the stop chain. Quite frequently, they would have been much better off had they gotten off at the previous stop and walked.

The points I would add:

Historically, one problem with buses for the tourist or occasional rider, or even being in a different part of town, is knowing the schedule and stops. Happily, technology has obliterated that concern. Google Maps is shockingly good at mass transit.

Also with modern tech, we can also think beyond the big bus. I believe there is great potential in vans and minibuses to displace much of what Uber and Lyft do today. Especially if self-driving becomes reality.

Weird Driving Assist Incident

Our 2016 Subaru Forester has some driving assist features, including collision avoidance. If it senses that you are in danger of colliding with something in front of you, depending how dire the situation, it will warn you or even automagically apply the brakes.

The Forester is Beth's car, so I don't get much time behind the wheel, but there have been a couple of occasions where I was in the car and it kicked in, just slightly. In those cases, no actual collision was imminent, it was merely a case of a car pulling into our lane a bit aggressively. Still, it was impressive to see the feature in action.

Last summer we were staying at a cabin in northern Minnesota. It was part of a small "resort", accessed by a very long, winding drive. One fine, very sunny July late morning, I was piloting the entire family out for the day's excursion. Gorgeous, clear weather. Imagine my surprise, as we rounded the final bend in the aforementioned long driveway, when the trusty Forester ground to an abrupt halt!

It wasn't quite as sudden as a collision, nor was there any tell-tale sound of metal crunching. More like hitting a really big pile of sand, in the middle of the road, at 20 mph. Still, I was more than unnerved. I jumped out of the car, and looked in front--no pile of sand. I looked underneath--nothing hanging from the chassis.

As I raised my head in perplexity, it dawned on me...in front of the vehicle was a sharp, heavily shaded  turn. The woods in front of the car, combined with the brightness and angle of the sun, had fooled the driving assist cameras into thinking we were about to run into a proverbial brick wall!

Sleep-Deprivation is no way to run medical residency

Came across this in my tweetstream the other day. 

Father of modern surgery, William Halstead, invented the overnight call system. He thought it toughened the character. What we learned later was that his method for staying awake was cocaine. The entire on-call system for medical trainees is premised on cocaine dependence.

I have always thought the inhuman work hours expected of medical residents is mad folly. It is well-known that sleep deprivation drastically reduces performance. To the point where for some tasks even moderate sleep deprivation is equivalent to being over the (U.S.) limit for drunk driving. Why on earth would you want someone in that condition making medical decisions?

Oh, I know there are elaborate justifications. But the whole system reeks of a combination of self-interest (addicted to cheap labor), plus its-always-been-this-way-ism (accepting the clinical justifications as self-evident, my generation went through it, so why shouldn't yours). As in many questions of policy, it is useful to turn to empiricism. What do other places do? Studies suggest there are good alternatives.

For inspiration, consider working remotely. Many organizations and managers were against it, until they were forced, at the figurative point of a gun, to rely on it. Now, I think the large majority thinks it is viable, and many think remote work can be even more productive. Of course I'm not claiming that automatically proves a change of comparable magnitude would work for medical residency, but it is one more good argument for considering and experimenting with improvements.

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Postscript: I have my doubts whether the tweet is entirely accurate. The part about inventing the system is true, and so is the cocaine addiction. But it isn't clear that they go together. This Quora post claims they were not related. I generally would not like to rely on a Quora post for the final word in anything. But the original tweet contained no link, and in 10 minutes of searching, I found very little that make the cocaine-sleep deprivation-enabling connection. The one thing I found looked the likely source of the tweet. Nothing else made the link. Including this very detailed article of apparent first-rate provenance. None of which changes the fact that the US Medical Residency system is surely due for an overhaul.

Excellent Retirement Drawdown Calculator, Factors in Social Security and Pension

This calculator is fantastic. It takes care of a really hard part, which is factoring in years between "early" retirement, and time you start receiving Social Security and/or a pension. Also factors in inflation. For what it's worth, my investment rate of return assumptions are:

• Middle/Mildly Optimistic: 7% return, 2% inflation
• Moderately Conservative: 6% return, 2% inflation

Very important note--this assumes 100% equities. If you take a route that involves less market risk and lower volatility, you will likely have substantially lower inflation-adjusted returns. It also assumes that your savings are tax-sheltered; either retirement accounts (fully tax sheltered) or long-term investments (mostly tax-sheltered).

Assumed returns are over the very long term, mind you. Any time horizon under 10 years may well be less predictable (not that there are any guarantees of predictability--this is a build-your-own annuity). Also, as I write this (Feb 2021) the market has been so strong for so long, that I make a near-term adjustment. I assume zero market returns for the next 4 years. That could come either as a near-term correction, and then a return to more normal returns; or it could come as 4 years of stagnation. (DISCLAIMERS: these are just my own uninformed guesses that I bake into my model. Nothing magic about 4 years, either, just my guess/model.)

So to use the calculator, you need to have an idea of how much income you need/want in retirement, and also how much pension and Social Security income you will have (the latter can be looked up online). For instance, here is a model run using some nice round numbers:

This model is for someone who retires today at age 60, and waits until they are 67 to begin drawing Social Security. Here are the results (some intervening years omitted for brevity):

They will run out of money in 20 years, at age 80. 

A crucial aspect of the model is that it factors in inflation. This is absolutely essential. Even with the very low inflation we have been experiencing for many years now, over a decadal timescale inflation  has a huge impact. (Again, the model is only going to be good as your wild guess on inflation, but that is much, much better than ignoring inflation.)

Also crucial to remember: the calculator does not factor in income tax. So that $7000 monthly income could translate to more like $5400 post-federal and state income taxes.

For modeling how much savings you will have at point of retirement, there is another calculator in the family. As for determining your budget, that's an exercise for the reader, but I will offer a few things to consider:

• Don't forget, since you don't pay Social Security taxes from retirement income, your monthly income need is effectively ~7.5% smaller.
• Likewise, in retirement you obviously no longer need to save for retirement, so that is another chunk of your monthly budget to the good.
• If you have significant after-tax savings, the tax rate will be lower. In the case of Roth, tax rate is zero. In the case of regular, non-retirement-account savings, the LTCG is 15%, instead of your 22-24% federal income tax bracket (though I wouldn't be shocked to see that differential eliminated in the future).

Finally, a limitation of the model is that it doesn't factor in cost of health insurance, prior to being Medicare-eligible. And we all know that can be well into double-digits. It also doesn't factor in when you are done paying off a mortgage, which would also be very helpful.

PSA: Upgrade Your Under-Microwave Bulb

I recall a Blondie comic strip decades ago, where the punchline revolved around Dagwood falling prey to a door-to-door salesman, who convinced him to "stock up" on refrigerator lightbulbs, in order to get a big volume discount on a pack of a dozen. Being a youngster of perhaps 8 years, and having recently absorbed the concept of "volume discount" when shopping, I asked my Dad why that was, apparently, an idiot move on Dagwood's part. My father of course explained that refrigerator lightbulbs, only being in use for minutes per day, tend to last for years*. So Dagwood had just purchased a lifetime supply, and then some.

I myself have replaced a few refrigerator bulbs over the years, though I expect never to do it again, now that they have converted to LEDs. And on that note, microwaves. The typical suburban over-the-stove microwave includes a little 40W bulb, to shed light on the stovetop. Setting aside the silliness of measuring light in watts, 40W is really quite dim.

Until a week ago, I had never given the bulb or its replacement much thought, beyond mentally deploring its dimness. I can't recall ever having needed to replace one (just lucky timing, with moves and microwave replacements, I don't think we have ever had a microwave longer than 8 years). Until last week, when I finally experienced a burned-out microwave bulb.

I automatically went down the path of looking for a compatible LED. That wasn't hard, search yielded many 4W LEDs advertised as equivalent to a 40W incandescent. BUT--why settle for equally dim? Why not find a compatible form factor with higher lumens (brightness)? A little more searching turned up 7W equivalent replacement bulbs--so more like 70W. Still far from really good lighting, but a big step up from 40W dimness.

When they arrived, though, I immediately spotted accursed Murphy hovering in the vicinity: the new bulbs had the same base size, but they were about 1cm longer. Uh-oh. My initial attempt to fit it in was like a square peg in a round hole. While there would be (barely) enough clearance for the fully-screwed-in bulb, there was no room to maneuver to get it to the screwed-in state.

I really thought I was done for, but I persisted. And eventually managed a rare and surprising triumph over Murphy. What I discovered is that, like a semi backing into a seemingly impossible space, if I made just the right combination of moves, I could get it to fit. Those moves were:

• Turn the bulb sideways (perpendicular to the receptacle).
• Raise it all the way to the top of the enclosure--higher than the receptacle.
• Then rotate it 90 degrees, so base is lined up with receptacle.
• Finally, ease it into the receptacle, using every micron of space to get the first thread to take.

I have no idea if other microwaves will have this problem, nor if the solution will work with other microwaves. Just sharing in case it helps. The replacement bulbs are so cheap, it is worth trying just for the 75% increase in lumens.

Here is what I bought, for $13. Slight ironic coda: it's a two-pack.

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*We are talking the old, pre-LED, pre-CFL incandescent bulbs that generate lots of heat, and fail regularly, with typical usage lives of about 1000 hours. I suspect the cold operating temperature may have contributed to perception of long bulb life, in equal part as infrequent use.

Can't Believe Day Trading Is Back

I observed the foolishness 20 years ago, in the original 90s dot-com bubble. If you don't know better, and want to believe, I suppose it is easy enough to confuse a broadly rising market with being a skilled stock picker. Compounded by the ever-greater convenience, pandemic-driven doldrums, and gambling-like-thrill.

After 11 years of using Android phones, I decided to try iOS. The hardware is very good, if pricey, but still questioning that decision from a software standpoint. My favorite bridge and crossword apps are unavailable. My favorite keyboard, Swiftkey, is available, but works differently in ways I hate (mainly no symbols available via long-press). Many other things.

But the gap that is driving me nuts at the moment is an Alarm Clock app. I have gone though a few on Android, but have always been able to find one that is 90% of what I want. Key features are:

• Gentle alarm (this should be table stakes, but many lack it)
• for extra credit, ability to tune the gentleness of the gentle alarm
• Ability to set an alarm for a specific date, in advance
• Skip Next shortcut option. Very convenient in 2 common use cases, related to recurring alarms:
• Holiday or PTO tomorrow, want to do a one-time skip of recurring alarm (an even better implementation is "Skip Until __").
• Wake up before alarm, want to silence it proactively.

Part 1: Smart Trainers Turn Your Road Bike into a Versatile Home Exercise Bike

Cycling has been my primary form of cardio for 30 years. I started riding the exercise bike in a health club in my early 20s, and continued through many moves and many different clubs. About 15 years ago, I became a committed road cyclist, but in the 4-5 cold months, I continued with the ex bike at the gym. Fellow cyclists would sometimes ask me if I used a trainer indoors, but I wasn't interested, I liked the electronic exercise bikes.

Although a dedicated ex bike user, I was never fully satisfied. I liked variation, and the offerings were not great. The original Lifecycle had a "random" mode, which I don't think wasn't really random, but offered more variety than almost anything else I have encountered since.

Well, fast-forward to Covid times, and I have become a trainer convert! Some weeks ago, I ordered a Saris M2 smart trainer. A smart trainer is controlled by a device (app on your phone). When riding in ERG mode, it makes you ride at the effort you signed up for. Start pedaling slower, and it increases the resistance. And you can create any profile you want.

There are three somewhat distinct types of app-driven stationary cycling. One is the augmented reality approach, where you cycle through an imaginary route, and the resistance matches the topography. Another is competition, where you ride a virtual road race. The third, the one I personally use, is more mundane; you simply pick a program, and the resistance shifts accordingly over the course of the ride. Just like my Lifecycle from 30 years ago--except I get to create the program.

Like so many things cycling, the apps are pitched toward the super-serious cyclist. The claim to analyze your performance and present optimized training plans. I suspect there is a lot of hype in there, but it is easy to ignore. I just created a bunch of different programs I like, and I have plenty of variety.

(see Part 2 for my tips on getting started, including some important accessories.)

Building distributed tech hubs to drive economic prosperity

Devolution of infotech in the US away from Silicon Valley/San Francisco is a topic I've been sporadically obsessed with for a while. So absurdly ironic that the industry which makes things virtual has such a strong value on physical centralization. This article covers the issue, hoping that Covid-driven remote work arrangements break the cycle. I sure hope so...though I do remember a similar sentiment at the dawn of the internet, but perhaps we weren't ready then. 

So many benefits to geographical diversification:

• Ability of employees to live where they want--both in a different part of the metro from the office, and different metro entirely (or not in a metro per se).
• Diffusion of entrepreneurship, wealth and concommitant benefits to other parts of the country--some of which really could use it.
• Optimization of the labor market, both for employees and employers
• Savings to employers on the high cost of office space. Savings to employees on 
• Savings of time can benefit employees and employers. As a 10+ year full-time-telecommuter, that was my rough philosophy--I get half the time saved, employer gets half the time saved. 
• Nuances, such as the fact that (salaried, mostly) employees can adjust working hours to match their personal productiivty. Even for jobs that have core hours, you can decide whether to "stay late" to finish a backlog, or come back to it when you get a second wind at 10:00pm.

Before It Became a Hell-Hole, Bosnia Was a Peacful, Multi-Ethnic Place

The Equilibrium Principle

Covid stats are through the roof. Sad, but predictable, if one understands equilibrium states. The average person, I think, isn't equipped to have a mental model of how a highly contagious disease works. The USA went into "lockdown" in March and April, just in time to prevent exponential spread from getting out of control. It worked. The curve was flattened.

Then we came out of lockdown, with mixed results. Overall though, while Covid numbers were bad enough, they remained well short of exponential. Mask usage--which has vastly out-performed expectations--very likely helped, as did good weather.

As the months wore on, a combination of complacency and fatigue set in. Complacency, that Covid, while still a problem, seemed to be bubbling along at a bad but tolerable level. Fatigue, for all forms of social isolation, including mask-wearing.

And then in the blink of an eye, the combination of change in weather, resumption of college, and the fatigue has got us in the worst state yet. 2 months ago, my pessimistic scenario was that we might be in 70% as bad a situation 2 months from now, in the depths of winter. Given that in many places we are close to maxing out ICU capacity, I can hardly bear to think of how bad it could be come January.

Covid Questions I Would Like to See Answered

Why Haven't There Been More Outbreaks at Health Clubs?

How Likely Is It That a Sleeping Partner Will Catch Covid?

Does CPAP Help Prevent Getting Covid?

What Is the Equation for Viral Load Over Time?

Charisma: More of a Negative

Given the incidence of narcissism in very important leadership roles in the US and around the globe, I believe organizations should get more deliberate about screening for narcissism,” she tells Quartz. One way to do that: Contact several people who have worked with the candidate in the past, but were not named as references by the applicant. “Finding out what the candidate’s true track record is in terms of developing people and giving them credit for accomplishments is essential. Narcissists will over-claim credit and are significantly less likely to help other people develop as leaders,” says Chatman.

I think charisma is a more a negative than anything in leaders (political, business, religious). Yes it can be powerful. But more often it may be a sign of personality problems--present or future. Greatness, let alone workaday competence, comes in many packages. It is a human weakness (understandable, but a weakness nevertheless) that we are so drawn to judging on quickly identified characteristics such as charisma, appearance or life-story.

(The article only mentions Trump in passing. I can't imagine why they chose his picture for the lede. 😅)

Why I Am Trying iOS After 11 Years of Android

I was an early adopter of Android. I pre-ordered the second-generation Android phone, HTC Magic, mid-2009. I have long been pro-Android, anti-iPhone/iOS. For a few years, I even taught Community Ed classes on Android and deciding if you need a smartphone. I have never purchased any Apple product of any kind for myself. So why did I just pre-order an iPhone 12? 

Cost

The most I have ever paid for an Android phone is $450. That was for my current, 3-year-old Essential PH1. The idea of paying $600 for a phone that might last 2 years or less has always been hard to swallow. When the iPhone X came out, with Apple testing the $1000 price point, I was more sure than ever that I would never own an iPhone. 

But then the next year Apple did quite an about-face. They released the unheralded, under-appreciated iPhone XR for $300 less than the prior year's flagship. And by most measures, the XR was a small but solid upgrade, rather than an "economy model". And finally Apple increased the bottom-tier memory to 64 Gb, which I think (fingers crossed) remains adequate.

Then last year's iPhone 11 really got me thinking. At $700, it was $50 less than the previous years' XR, while again being a modest upgrade. 

The clincher on price is the fact that our carrier, T-Mobile, seems to have established a very reliable pattern of offering very generous trade-ins for even 3-year-old iPhones. $300 the last couple of years. Since my goal is to keep a phone for 3 years, that means, after the initial purchase price of $800, the replacement cost is $500 every 3 years. Not dirt-cheap, but very tolerable, especially if you don't hate the phone the last 9 months.

Battery life

iPhones always had decent battery life, due to Apple's tight control and integration. But for a long time, Apple seemed very satisfied with just being above average. Every generation, instead of improving battery life, they held it constant, choosing instead to make devices ever-thinner. Totally a case of style over substance.

But the XR changed all that. The XR even had slightly better battery life than the pricier XS! I noticed my wife (not the most careful person about obsessively charging her phone) could routinely go all day without worrying about power! 

I have grown very sick of devoting mental cycles to considering the state of my phone's battery. Battery life is definitely a weak spot for the PH1, which in many other ways is a good Android phone. The whole time I've owned it, I keep it on battery saver. Mostly that works okay, but it messes with navigation and things like my Tile bluetooth tracker. Last year's follow-up with the iPhone 11 appears to have cemented Apple as a battery-life standout (though I fear the iPhone 12 may be a small regression, probably blame 5G).

iOS Parity

Areas where Android had a clear lead have finally disappeared or diminished. Such as ability to select default apps for things like browsing, mail, navigation. Also multi-tasking and inter-app communication. 

Screen size and ratio

I was all-in from Day 1 that larger screen sizes are a big win. I had a Samsung Vibrant, which had one of the largest screens at the time (all of 4"). But Apple stubbornly, smugly stuck to small screens, claiming that it was better, because your thumb could cover most of the screen area. Totally a BS post-hoc justification, of which I was (and still am) contemptuous.

Even when iPhone went big, with the iPhone 7 Plus, it still had comically huge bezels, for a very poor screen:body ratio. That was another thing I was into from early days--minimum bezels, most screen for the size. A big part of the reason I got the PH1.

But finally, with the iPhone X, Apple started putting the pieces together. I say started, because for one thing, the iPhone X was too long and thin. And as mentioned before, at $1000, too expensive. But also as mentioned, one year later, they totally fixed those problems with the XR.

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So that takes care of the negatives that till now had kept me very uninterested in the iPhone option. Now on to the positives. 

Hardware

Even at my most anti-iPhone, I envied the hardware. The smooth, fast, performance from full vertical integration. Innovations that almost always "just worked", and usually led the way for the industry (Touch ID, Face ID). Consistently phenomenal cameras and screens. Great waterproofing.

This is in contrast to the highest-end Android OEM, Samsung--king of the gimmicks. Samsung is a great manufacturer, and they have produced some great phones, but they are inconsistent and unpredictable. Many Samsung-originated innovations are features in search of a need.

Tired of one-off problems

The fragmentation of the Android world is a drag. Especially if you are on anything but the Samsung flagship, any problem you have is hard to pin down. Is it your unique phone or configuration? Not that the iOS world is perfect, but if you have a problem, you also likely have lots of company. Meaning that a fix is more likely to be forthcoming, and if not full-on fix, a much better chance of finding a reasonable work-around.

Updates

Apple has long shone in this department, and Android has long lagged. The Google phones have done reasonably well, Samsung is I think getting better, but the lesser OEMs often don't even ship with the latest version, so the one upgrade you get is just to go to the latest version--12 months late.

Apple's one little black mark was that older phones that were nominally supported were sometimes crippled by the upgrade, because they simply lacked the hardware to run the newest iOS well. My impression is that recent iPhones are so damn fast that this is no longer an issue. That is certainly the sentiment in the iPhone 12 reviews--the performance improvement is not noticeable today, but is nice insurance against future upgrades.

Curiosity

I've been all-Android so long, I am curious to see how the other half lives. My impression is the apps are better. Possibly more expensive, but better. 

Overcast (podcast App)

On the subject of apps, as a heavy podcast user, having a great podcast app is important to me. I have tried a few on Android, and they are all fine, but none seem great. iOS has a podcast app, Overcast, that gets rave reviews. I listen to the developer's podcast, and have recommended it to my iPhone-toting friends and family. But I have never actually used it, because it is iOS-only. So I am looking forward to trying Overcast, and saving time with its Smartspeed feature that eliminates silences.

Repairability

The few times I have looked into repairing Android phones, it has been cost-prohibitive. Like a car that has light damage but is nevertheless "totaled". In the case of the PH1, that applies even to replacing the battery. By contrast, iPhones have a pretty good record for cost of basic repairs, such as screen or battery replacement.

Fareed Zakaria Even Likes the Same Books I Do!

I've loved Fareed Zakaria for a few decades, going back to the days of his Newsweek column. So I was delighted to see he was a guest of another podcaster I also really like, Ezra Klein. The episode did not disappoint!

Highlights for me:

[America has] A degree of local variation that you see almost nowhere else.

Definitely is a pet topic. I think most of the arbitrary variation between states is unnecessary and pointless. It's a fine line, I know. "Laboratories of democracy".  Or these days, a few states are the bulwarks of democracy. But maybe if we didn't have so much crazy local variation, we wouldn't be in the dis-united position we are in.

America compared to what? America as least bad hegemon.

Zakaria isn't one to whitewash America's history or foreign policy. But he does make the vital observation that the behavior of most great powers, let alone superpowers, isn't good. That should never be an excuse, but it is a reason for a modicum of American pride and optimism.

The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay

This was the bonus. Klein always asks guests to recommend 3 books. The rules of recommendation are totally open, but typically guests recommend non-fiction books related to the topics of conversation. Zakaria's third pick was one of my favorite books of all time, Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. (Klein also seemed to have read and enjoyed it.)

Simplism, Denialism, Populism

 I can add "simplism" to denialism and populism as horridly destructive -isms that are currently very prevalent. Though I suspect the Venn diagrams for simplism and populism are 95% overlapping. Unsurprising to see sloganeering called out as a hallmark.

Economizing on your Amazon Audible Account

PSA on some things to make Audible more cost-effective. I had an account for maybe 6 months, and decided it was too expensive. I initiated an online cancellation, and the offered me a few different deals. One of them was $99 up-front for a year's worth of credits. Considering that at the normal $16/month price, a year costs $192, that is about a 50% discount. That's a deal-maker, so I took it ($8.20/book).

But did you know that you can gift Audiobooks? So if you only need a few books a year, several people could split the cost of one account.

We will see if this sweet deal gets extended when my year is up!

Tweet from a Canadian: I've voted in every Canadian election since I was 18 and I've never registered for shit. "Voter registration" is voter suppression. Just to clarify for the pedants, yes I'm technically registered but the gov does it automatically. I've moved 6 times in the last 10 years and never had to lift a finger to register myself.

I love this tweet for a couple of reasons, beyond the fact that it illustrates a sensible that I agree with. It illustrates a couple of my favorite beliefs. One, a different kind of American nationalism. A kind that values American citizenship, and what is best for America, far, far above state politics and policies. The privileges of American citizenship should follow seamlessly, wherever one relocates in the country.

Second, the value of empirical inquiry into how it is done in other places. The US, like any government, would be wise to cast a broad net of intellectual inquiry, look for what works elsewhere, and consider how it might be applied here. Completing your income taxes is another good example. Or, uh, firearms regulation.

Ireland Lacrosse Bows Out Of 2022 World Games So Iroquois Nationals Can Play

Great story of extraordinary sportsmanship. 

Face masks Phase II

KN95 Notes

CDC testing results (scroll down, expand + sign to see list).

CDC updated results

Here are some articles on fakes (1,2,3). They are on Medium, so I can't be 100% certain of the author's bona fides.

I have been using Purism for 5 weeks. They were originally on the approved list, as of 09/22/20 on the "no longer authorized" list. But they did very well in the original testing, so I think the no longer authorized means that they didn't quite meet the highest standards, but they are still much better than any random paper or cloth mask. They go in and out of stock. When available, I have seen them 20 for $40. They passed the "blow out a flame" test and the "holds water" test. They are durable, and have held up very well to repeated wearings. The ear loops are definitely on the tight side (I have a really big head), but that is more a feature than a bug, b/c they have to be tight to be effective.

Do not be put off by the price. $2 per may be very inflated compared to pre-Covid prices, but well worth it. Honestly, given how quickly paper masks deteriorate, these may be cheaper in the long run. I have one that I keep in my car. I have probably donned and doffed it 50 times, and it is still in great shape. 

I also bought some Holodeal, when Purism were out (just to have more--I have been handing them out to family). They seem equally good, but I have less wearing experience, and couldn't find the brand rated. Price about the same.

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In the USA, we have more or less gotten to the point where most evidence-oriented individuals understand that face masks help stop the spread of Covid 19.

But not all face masks are equal in effectiveness. It certainly *does* seem the case that even make-do face masks have significantly over-performed. But we are past the extreme shortages of PPE, and KN95 masks--arguably as good as N95, so long as they are genuine--are available.

I have been using KN95s for over a month. They seem very good. I subjected my batch to a few of the tests to detect counterfeits, they passed. They are maybe 20% harder to breathe through. The an offsetting benefit, at least for me, is that they form a peak in front of the nose. Whereas the flat masks seal against my nose when I inhale.

A well-fitted N95/KN95 is theoretically a total Coronavirus barrier, whereas make-do masks inhibit viral load, but don't reduce it to zero, so they buy time, but cannot absolutely prevent transmission.

My point is--let's not rest on laurels. Let's up mask-wearing to the super-effective masks.

(A bonus--although they are more expensive, they are much higher quality, so last through many, many wearings. Unlike the cheap ones, which tend to break a strap the first time I fiddle with them!)

Covid-19 Risk Is Respiratory

It is shockingly hard to get people to absorb basic public health facts related to Covid-19.  Most fundamentally, that is is 95-100% RESPIRATORY. So handwashing and face shields can't hurt, of course, but the risk is that they are a distraction that creates a false sense of security(1). Zero surprise that this Swiss case investigation found face shields didn't confer much protection, while masks did. 

Another point that has been massively and unnecessarily confusing is the idea that "the (sole/main) reason to wear masks is not that they protect the wearer, but that doing so is a pro-social act to protect others". While the protect others part is certainly true, I am baffled as to the belief they don't also protect the wearer(2). Good to see this article take on that point.  

(1) The false sense of security factor was, I believe, one of the reasons masks were originally downplayed by some public health experts. Best of intentions, probably, but clearly a devastating mistake, in hindsight. 

(2) It may come from the established practice in some countries, mostly east Asian I think, of wearing masks when one is sick, yes, in order to protect others.

Hoarding by Marquee Art Museums

In this recent episode of his terrific podcast, Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell starts to explore a topic that has always bothered me: the fact that marquee museums typically have vast storerooms of artifacts that are seldom, if ever, displayed. I don't want them to be sold to private collectors, but wouldn't everyone be so much better off if they were viewable in second and third-tier museums?

(I say "starts to explore", because that is the intro to the episode, but then it segues into an examination of hoarding behavior, the NY Met merely serving as an attention-grabbing example.)

Orange Wine?!

Pretty interesting article on "orange wine". When I saw the headline I first thought it referred to a fruit wine. I am down on fruit "wine" of course. "Down on" as in fruit wine:real wine::margarine:butter. I.e., I would never buy or consume it, at any price, if I had the alternative of the real thing!

But orange seemed such an improbable fruit for fruit "wine", that I took a second look, and realized it was more like "Rose++".