Food prices

This is Joseph.

There as a good article on rising food prices recently. In it, there was discussion of how a basket of goods had become expensive. Some commentators focused on the presence of Lindt chocolate: 

First, there’s a distinct “people on a budget don’t deserve nice chocolate” vibe to many of these comments, which I take umbrage with. Food shaming is pervasive on social media, whether it’s people yucking other people’s yums on a recipe post, commenting on what or how much they are eating, or acting like spending money on a pre-chopped salad kit is tantamount to burning down an orphanage.

And while I agree learning to cook is an important life skill and the best form of self-care you can engage in, there are lots of reasons people lean on convenience food — chief among them being convenience, which is right there in the name. Time is our most valuable finite resource, especially in a world that demands a lot of it.

You can see the chocolate below:

I see three bars of decent chocolate, of the type that people usually eat small pieces of mixed in with actual vegetables and lean chicken breast. I see a lot of bagels and some chips. This is a person who probably either lives alone or lacks the time to do a lot of cooking. I can totally see that. Meal preparation is labor intensive and it is easy to imagine reasons that one might not want to do a ton of it -- especially as time costs don't do a lot of scaling so it helps when somebody else can take a turn or do the dishes.

But finally, I want to argue that this is also the most counterproductive line of attack on this basket of good. Saving a small amount of money to buy the higher sugar/fat cheap chocolate seems like it makes this basket worse, not better. 

Finally, low food prices are a good thing. Full stop. High food prices mean hunger and, in a world of spiraling housing costs, budgets are not often able to handle new forms of inflation. We want people to buy  bar of Lindt chocolate (or any mid-range brand) and not feel like their budget is being stressed. It was once a sign of prosperity and political success for middle class working people to be able to afford decent food. 

That said, Mark covers the "how to shop effectively for food" beat much better than I and may well have some counterpoints. 

Disruption in Higher education

This is Joseph.

Right now Australia is the leader in education disruption. They are quickly shifting universities to a more corporate model. The introduction of hot-desking into a University is a huge change in how academic space is used.  What is amazing is how small the saving are ($11 million on a budget of $1.16 billion) and yet it completely changes the University as a place to do focused work. 

Ernst and Young has even sent out a plan for the university of the future in Australia. The goal is to switch to being a knowledge services provider. Of course, this crazily pits the higher education sector against Google, without getting what makes a University valuable. It is not just the specific skills, at least for most classes, but the learning of professional norms (think of nursing) and signaling (it is hard to get into challenging programs). There is a lot of money in higher education and I am sure that management consultants would like to get most of it. 

It is debatable whether you'd prefer the taxi system or the Uber system as a driver. But I am unaware of any Taxi owners who have amassed a 2.7 billion fortune in running a Taxi business. I suspect that one might want to think about exactly how the incentives align in these schemes. 

Senior Epidemiology

This is Joseph.

A blogger by the name of Noah Haber made this provocative graphic:

It took me a few minutes to identify everyone but the most interesting thing (besides a fairly clear phenotype) is that five of eight are appointed at Harvard University. Harvard has a strong public health school, but is it really that dominant? Is talent really so narrowly concentrated? Or is this an issue of power concentration like the way that four of the current SCOTUS justices come from Yale's law school and seven come from either Yale or Harvard. There are around 200 law schools in the US, it seems equally remarkable that talent is just that concentrated. 

The other schools are Emory, Penn, and Leeds. 

There is something to be considered here about the intellectual diversity in Epidemiology. It's true that it looks a bit better if you look at details but it is still not a great situation to have one school leading so much of the field. It opens vulnerabilities that we don't like.

Now, it is true that Noah's method of sampling could be debated. But it is a very curiously link to what appears to be the most important publications in the field. 

Is it time to step down?

This is Joseph.

So one piece of the covid-19 pandemic that has really surprised me is that it did not spur a reinvestment in emergency medicine. Like there is still dire strain on hospitals, but how is this unforeseen two years into the pandemic? One typically expects a long tail of an epidemic and the way to handle burnout is to expand capacity for a while so that everyone can recover. One month into a pandemic is an unforeseen disaster but weak hospital capacity two years in is a choice. 

The polio vaccine had about 40% of the rate of events of the placebo and even lower levels of paralytic polio. it did exactly what covid-19 vaccination was doing -- reduced the rate of disease and was even more effective against severe disease. But there was a long tail (15,000 paralytic events in the 1950's, 100 in the 1960's, and 10 in the 1970's). So it isn't unexpected that there will be a long lag.

The question is how long do we keep up vigorous public health measures. Now, I do want to make one important distinction. There are some measures, like better ventilation, that have positive externalities (e.g., student learning) that probably make them worthwhile whether or not covid-19 is freely circulating. I would not be adverse to better air in classrooms, both for the sake of learning and because all respiratory diseases are unpleasant. 

But what about the restrictions on travel? The need to constantly provide tests at the border and quarantine after air travel, despite the presence of large reservoirs? Or the smaller class sizes? Limited indoor events for children? Social isolation? it has been more than a decade since somebody failed to light a shoe on fire and we still take shoes off in the airport. Will we add mandatory testing for an extinct disease to what we do when we cross borders in 2050?

That said, I think we need to expect to live with the disease for the immediate future. It not only has the original reservoir (back in China) from which it might return from, but it has been highly successful at jumping to other animal species.  We are not going to be able to prevent it jumping back from (for example) deer, even if the absolute risk is low for any given infection. 

Consider these tweets from Akiva Cohen:

Now Akiva is a lawyer and not an epidemiologist, but there is a reasonable point here. At some point we accept risk as a part of living. For motor vehicle crashes that is 38,000 per year. Covid-19, averaged over the 21 months of the epidemic, is currently running at about 10 times that rate  but at some point we'd expect the death rate to drop to car crash levels and it might be time to start thinking about how we get there as soon as plausible. 

Our annual Toys-for-Tots post

A good Christmas can do a lot to take the edge off of a bad year both for children and their parents (and a lot of families are having a bad year). It's the season to pick up a few toys, drop them by the fire station and make some people feel good about themselves during what can be one of the toughest times of the year.

If you're new to the Toys-for-Tots concept, here are the rules I normally use when shopping:

The gifts should be nice enough to sit alone under a tree. The child who gets nothing else should still feel that he or she had a special Christmas. A large stuffed animal, a big metal truck, a guitar or a keyboard, a large can of Legos with enough pieces to keep up with an active imagination. You can get any of these for around twenty or thirty bucks at Wal-Mart or Costco;

Shop smart. The better the deals the more toys can go in your cart;

No batteries. (I'm a strong believer in kid power);*

Speaking of kid power, it's impossible to be sedentary while playing with a basketball;

No toys that need lots of accessories;

For games, you're generally better off going with a classic;

No movie or TV show tie-ins. (This one's kind of a personal quirk and I will make some exceptions like Sesame Street);

Look for something durable. These will have to last;

For smaller children, you really can't beat Fisher Price and PlaySkool. Both companies have mastered the art of coming up with cleverly designed toys that children love and that will stand up to generations of energetic and creative play.

* I'd like to soften this position just bit. It's okay for a toy to use batteries, just not to need them. Fisher Price and PlaySkool have both gotten into the habit of adding lights and sounds to classic toys, but when the batteries die, the toys live on, still powered by the energy of children at play.

 

Why the SCOTUS stuff is so annoying

This is Joseph.

I have been giving the SCOTUS justices a hard time for making bad decisions. But part of the problem is that the system is badly designed for current conditions. Consider this tweet:

There are a number of badly designed elements. One key issue is that the design of judicial review is not ideal in the United States. It is true that reviewing a law for constitutionality is important. It might be more important to do before the law is passed and not in the context that it has already injured people. It also doesn't always have the greatest history: Dred Scott v. Sandford held that the framers had not intended to include persons of African descendant as citizens. This sort of ruling makes it clear why a constitution needs to be a living document. 

Another is that life tenure, coupled with this much power, makes it very easy to for the court to go wrong and (obviously) judicial remedies are not going to happen. Judges are not, as a class, going to decide that they violate the good conduct rule in making rulings. Further, it creates a sense of ownership over the seats that is simply odd. Tenured professors have jobs that also have strong protections, but a university could be closed (we can't close the federal judiciary) and more professors can be hired to balance out older colleagues. A fixed number of seats is very different. Look at Ruth Bader Ginsberg's last wish: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed". The people arguing that this wish should be respected were mad. This job did not belong to her and her views on it being filled have nothing to do with what should have happened. Now, you can argue the precedent after Scalia (4 years old) should have been respected -- that is at least a coherent argument. But the argument from the officeholder is just a private viewpoint, of no more importance than any other. 

Power is corrupting and making the most powerful branch of government a life tenure post in a democracy is dangerous. Courts are beginning to interfere with routine business: congressional subpoenas take months to resolve as courts are used for delay, immigration policy is blocked by nationwide exemptions, and laws like the ACA are rewritten as part of the judicial process.  

In this context, the decision by Stephen Breyer to resist resigning is bad, but the real issue is how the institution corrupts incentives. It is a seniority based system so the job is best at the very end of one's career. This shifts toward gerontocracy. But it is also a system where Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in at 48 and could easily live to the same age as RBG (87) serving for 40 years or so. That is a terribly long time to not have future input into the role. The issue is systemic and not just bad individual decisions and I have much more sympathy for Breyer when I see it as a system failure. 

The real question is what is next? It's clear this is where we were going since Bork whether you see it as an issue of Ronald Reagan for nominating an extremist or congress for pushing back. One way or the other, the norms were broken and the slow slide began. Now the question is what next? Will be see an FDR era shift to judicial moderation? Or will the system keep cracking? 

Checking in on over-the-air television beat

These are some of the new OTA superstations you can now pick-up with a set of rabbit ears here in LA. It is a very partial list. I limited it to 2020/21 launches from major media companies in billion dollars or above valuation range (with one possible but unavoidable exception can't leave out Weigel). Several stations from smaller companies were excluded and even with the constraints mentioned I probably missed some examples.

 Weigel

    MeTV Plus (2021)

ViacomCBS 

    Fave TV (2021)

NBCUniversal

    LX (2020)

Nexstar (formerly Tribune)

    Rewind TV

Ryman (Opry Entertainment Group)

    Circle (2020)

Entertainment Studios (The Weather Channel et al.)

    TheGrio (2021) 

E. W. Scripps Company (which bought out the innovative Katz)

    Defy TV (2021)

    TrueReal (2021)

    Newsy (2021)

Tegna (formerly Gannett)

    Twist (2021)

I have no solid numbers on this but it's my impression that growth, while leveling off a bit, remains fairly steady and the industry appears to be very stable with close to a hundred percent survival rate among major players (compare that to the cable at this point in its history). It is also worth noting that, with the exception of Ryman, all of these companies already had one or more terrestrial superstations before these new launches. Twelve years in, no one appears to be looking to get out. 

 There's a big and interesting story waiting to be told about digital over-the-air television. It's part of a still bigger and more important one about why the press somehow collectively decides to focus on certain subjects and narratives and to ignore others. 

The rise of the Trump-over-the-Pope faction of the Catholic Church has been one of the most fascinating and disturbing developments of the past few years.

I know we have to be careful discussing the sincerity of faith-based beliefs, but it is extraordinarily difficult to find any passage in any sacred text that supports a religious exemption that just applies to Covid-19 vaccines, particularly when the head of your religion has come out as pro-vaccination. 

Catholic Priest Fr. Ed Meeks of Towson, MD said in his sermon this past week that vaccine mandates are contrary to the teachings of Jesus: “No earthly king or president or public health official .. gets to dictate what we put into our body, into these temples of the Holy Spirit.” pic.twitter.com/rrU31PvTUh

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 29, 2021

It's even more obvious when you listen to the clip ("or billionaire technocrat") that the source of this position isn't the Pope or the bible; it's Trump/OANN/Tucker Carlson, and to the extent that this stand is religious, the religion is no longer Catholicism. 

MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2021

"Why does he mean more to you than us?”

I come from the buckle of the Bible belt and I stay in touch with friends from back home. Nothing here is that new to me, but even if you've heard this story before, this retelling is worth your time. 

What I want to single out here is the way that MAGA and other movements can use members' deeply held (and often reasonable) beliefs to bring them in and then, once they are completely immersed, indoctrinate them into a new worldview that often directly contradicts some of those initial beliefs. This is not a simple process. It happen slowly and stealthily and its effectiveness is not limited to the stupid or the gullible. I've seen smart, reasonable people -- the last ones you'd expect -- get sucked in.  

Of course, more often it is the first ones you'd expect, cruel and foolish people with longstanding reactionary tendencies. The closer to the door they start, the easier it is to get them in the temple, but even the most likely recruits are changed by the indoctrination, made less empathetic, more childish, more paranoid and yet more credulous.   

From the Washington Post:

Like other families with split political affiliations, they had some yelling matches after Trump took office, especially over the former president’s immigration policies. Claire was a Canadian-born Catholic drawn to the Republican Party by her fierce opposition to abortion, and Trump had won her over with promises to champion her position. Celina, Laurie and their three younger siblings skewed left despite their conservative upbringing in South Dakota. They had never felt such disdain for a politician before.

By the end of the Trump administration, the bounds of their political disagreements had shifted, Laurie recounted, becoming at once more intense and also less about policy and legislation in Washington. They had learned to live with their disagreements over abortion. Now it felt like they were occupying different realities altogether.

Over the course of 2020, amid a presidential election, racial justice protests and a pandemic, the five siblings began to trade increasingly worried text messages and emails about some of the things Claire was saying and posting on Facebook. There were comments they noticed about child trafficking and sacrifice, a key theme of the extremist QAnon ideology. There was her vitriol toward Pope Francis, whom she had referred to as “the anti-Pope.” After Election Day, they took turns pushing back on a stream of disinformation Claire posted online, including the unfounded claim that the CIA murdered U.S. soldiers abroad to help cover up voter fraud.

...

“Why is this important enough to compromise your relationships with your kids? Why does he mean more to you than us?”

This is a topic that could launch a thousand graduate theses, so we need to come back to it, particularly what happens to an area when conservative media reaches critical mass (we will cover this). In the mean time, one closing thought: cults and cons exist because people believe they would never fall for a cult or a con.

Tuesday Tweets -- Special Edition

I'm planning on coming back and filling in some ideas about how things got this bad, but I think the overall pattern is pretty obvious without a lot of comment. I will say that I taught high school for years and comparing the DC press corps to a HS lunchroom is deeply unfair to the kids.

The mix is always basically the same, a combination of trivial facts/debunked charges and "people are saying" journalism. When the Democrat happens to be a woman, you can also count on a healthy dose of misogyny as well.

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) December 5, 2021

Herd mentality certainly plays a role (and is a huge problem for the press in general). Internalizing criticism from conservatives is also a major factor, but there seems to be more to it.

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) December 5, 2021

Or Angus King: pic.twitter.com/LUCRWIATLp

— Shower and General Bathing Advocate 💛🐝 (@NCdogs4Hillary) December 5, 2021

We have twenty years of Harris's job history which is almost impossible to reconcile with this narrative, particularly given Hohmann's reporting is heavy on unsourced rumors (starting with the first sentence), unnamed sources, editorializing ("uneven," "awkwardly"), and bitter ex-employees from almost a decade ago. 

Then there's the cookware scandal.

And Kamala spent $350 of her own money on a copper pot. In the era of Trump, Republicans spend oodles of taxpayer money, Democrats spend some of their own money. https://t.co/vdcd3TU2Yj

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 29, 2021

And it gets worse.

You CANNOT be serious.
— J. McEnroe https://t.co/bRmWgWmsJx

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) December 7, 2021

Former aides say that VP has long been careful about security — w/ some describing it as prudent & others suggesting it’s a bit paranoid.
A former aide from AG days said when a person arrived for a meeting, staff were instructed not to allow them to wait in Harris' office alone.

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) December 6, 2021

The political side of my feed is like, “LOL Bluetooth-phobia, how crazy!!!” and the tech side of my feed is like, “Yes, there are known security vulnerabilities in Bluetooth technology and of course a high level target like the VP shouldn’t use AirPods.”

— Nu Wexler (@wexler) December 7, 2021

The context for all of this is a history of misogynistic coverage of Clinton and Warren. The vagueness of the charges, the constant implications of being distant or unlikeable, all of this has a disturbingly familiar ring.

All of which gets more attention than what appears to be a billion-dollar laundering scheme for bribes

Have been working on a post on this and glad O'Brien is on it. Trump's social media SPAC is basically an invitation to foreign bribes. Given Trump's track record no one looking for a financial return wld invest in this company. Only as bribes. https://t.co/bEDsnGQcjF

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 6, 2021

Just got boosted...

No ill effects so far, but I'm using this as an excuse to take things easy and sit in the California sun. See you Tuesday.

.
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Elon Musk may not fully grasp the magnitude of the problem

"All in all, more than 500 such "fragmentation events" have created nearly 130 million bits of debris in Earth's orbit. Those chunks of debris zip around the planet at more than 17,500 mph, or roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet"https://t.co/EURV2ug9ql pic.twitter.com/bc3s6YgkpD

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 20, 2021

If you're the type of person who closely follows science and technology stories (and since you're reading a blog originally named "Observational Epidemiology," I'm thinking you probably are), you've probably been hearing about the Kessler Syndrome and Musk's Skylink and its imitators could have on this potentially disastrous event. It even got the big narrative treatment at the New Yorker.

Before we dive in, there is one aspect of the story that has been widely misreported. 

From Scientific American (2019):

The benefits of mega constellations would be manifold. Blanketing the entire planet with high-bandwidth, low-latency, always-on Internet access means ships out at sea, high-flying planes and people in remote, undeveloped areas (even Antarctica!) will suddenly be connected as never before. “Connectivity is just not [currently] available to everybody,” says Mike Lindsay, a space mission designer at OneWeb. “Half the world lacks an affordable access point to broadband Internet.”

"Manifold" in this case basically meaning one.

We've had satellites delivering broadband internet for about a decade now from companies like Viasat. They use geostationary orbits which means they can cover the entire world with a handful of satellites. The only significant functionality that these enormous low-earth orbit constellations bring to the table is low latency (or ping time), something you want to have for videoconferencing and especially for gaming. It's an embarrassingly small upgrade given the government grants, investor capital and, most of all, potential consequences. 

From Business Insider [emphasis added]:

SpaceX has permission from the US government to launch nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites through 2027, though it's asked to launch 30,000 more for a total of nearly 42,000. In either case, SpaceX is on track to form a "megaconstellation" that outnumbers all prior spacecraft ever launched by humanity. If 3% of the maximum planned Starlink constellation fails, that could mean 1,260 dead, 550-pound satellites the size of a desk aimlessly circling the planet. A 2.5% failure rate could mean more than 1,000 inoperative spacecraft.

There were about 3,200 nonfunctional satellites in Earth's orbit as of February, according to the European Space Agency. Many of these dead spacecraft regularly threaten to collide with others and create a space-debris crisis. In mid October, for example, satellite trackers flagged a "very high risk" close pass between a dead satellite and a discarded rocket body, with one company calculating a 10% chance of collision. (Fortunately, they didn't.)

SpaceX says its satellites will naturally deorbit, or burn up in Earth's atmosphere, if their propulsion systems don't work. But that process can take up to five years, according to Starlink's website. In the meantime, defunct satellites rocket around Earth faster than a bullet, with nobody to steer them away from other spacecraft that may fly in their path.

SpaceX did not acknowledge Business Insider's requests for comment. However, in filings to the Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX has downplayed the risk, stating that it "views satellite failure to deorbit rates of 10 or 5 percent as unacceptable, and even a rate of 1 percent is unlikely."

If 1% of its satellites did fail with no capacity to maneuver, the company said, "there is approximately a 1 percent chance per decade that any failed SpaceX satellite would collide with a piece of tracked debris."

The company also claimed that its practices "effectively eliminate the chance that such rates will ever occur."

SpaceX is not alone in pushing to launch large numbers of internet satellites. OneWeb, which the UK government recently purchased out of bankruptcy, has already launched 74 satellites for its proposed constellation of 48,000, while Amazon aims to launch more than 3,200 for its Kuiper fleet. It's unclear how many dead satellites those constellations might also leave in orbit.

...

If the space-junk problem gets extreme, a chain of collisions could spiral out of control and surround Earth in a practically impassable field of debris. This possibility is known as the Kessler syndrome, after Donald J. Kessler, who worked for NASA's Johnson Space Center and calculated in a 1978 paper that it could take hundreds or even thousands of years for such debris to clear up enough to make spaceflight safe again.

...

SpaceX has barely launched 2% of its planned constellation, but it has already had a close call.

In September 2019, the European Space Agency had to maneuver one of its spacecraft at the last minute to avoid possibly colliding with a Starlink satellite. The chance of that crash was 1 in 1,000. While that may sound low, NASA routinely moves the ISS for chances of 1 in 100,000.

The ESA said it had to move its satellite because SpaceX had "no plan to take action." SpaceX said it missed the ESA emails about the issue due to a "bug" in its communications systems.

Overall, close approaches like that seem to be happening more frequently.

"We are seeing recently a decided uptick in the number of conjunctions," Dan Oltrogge, an astrodynamicist at Analytical Graphics, Inc, where he uses a software that has been assessing conjunction data since 2005, told Business Insider. "And it looks to be very well aligned with the new large-constellation spacecraft that have been launched."

Five years ago at the blog -- the rise of secular evangelicals laid the foundation for the cult of Trump

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2016

Tom Hanks, creepy CGI Santa Clauses, and the theological canary in the coal mine

I've been making the point for a while now that the evangelical movement that I grew up with in the Bible Belt is radically different from the evangelical movement of today. I was aware that something was changing for a while, but the nature and the extent of the change crystallized for me when I read this 2004 article from Slate:

Next Stop, Bethlehem?
By David Sarno

The Polar Express is the tale of a boy's dreamlike train ride to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. Like all stories worth knowing, it's rich enough in image and feeling to accommodate many interpretations. Chris Van Allsburg, the author of the book, calls his story a celebration of childhood wonder and imagination. William Broyles Jr., one of the screenwriters of this year's film version, calls it a kind of Odyssey in which a hero undertakes a mythic, perilous journey of self-discovery. And Paul Lauer, who is a key player in the film's marketing apparatus, sees The Polar Express as a parable for the importance of faith in Jesus Christ.

Lauer's firm, Motive Entertainment, is best known for coordinating the faith-based marketing of The Passion of the Christ. Motive helped spread early word of mouth about the filmby holding screenings for church groups and talking the movie up to religious leaders. When The Passion took in a stunning $370 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film in history, Lauer and his cohorts got a lot of the credit. Earlier this year, Motive was hired by Warner Bros. to promote The Polar Express to Christians. But wait, is The Polar Express an evangelical film?

You'd certainly think so, considering the expansive campaign of preview screenings, radio promotion, DVDs, and online resources that Lauer unfurled in the Christian media this fall. This Polar Express downloads page includes endorsements from pastors and links to church and parenting resources hosted by the Christian media outlet HomeWord. There are suggestions for faith-building activities and a family Bible-study guide that notes, for example, the Boy's Christ-like struggle to get the Girl a train ticket. "The Boy risked it all to recover the ticket," the guide observes. "Jesus gave His all to save us from the penalty of our sins."

HomeWord Radio, which claims to reach more than a million Christian parents daily, broadcast three shows promoting the film. At one point, the show's host wondered excitedly if the movie "might turn out to be one of the more effective witnessing tools in modern times." Motive also produced a promotional package that was syndicated to over 100 radio stations in which Christian recording artists like Amy Grant, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Avalon talked about the movie as they exited preview screenings.

…

Some audience members—and a few Christian film critics—would argue that Santa Claus isn't necessarily a stand-in for Jesus Christ. Last month, Lauer told the Mobile Register that he sees The Polar Express as a parable, "not a movie about belief in God." But when Lauer speaks to a Christian audience, he tells a different story. Lauer told HomeWord Radio that when he asked Robert Zemeckis about all the biblical parallels he was seeing in the film, the director "winked and said, 'Nothing in a movie this big ends up in the script by accident.' " (Zemeckis was traveling and wasn't available for comment.)

This is a spectacular example of getting the pertinent details of the story right and yet completely missing the point. In another piece, the understatement of “Santa Claus isn't necessarily a stand-in for Jesus Christ” would be sharply comic but Sarno seems to be completely oblivious to the joke.

I know we overuse the clip of the minister gunning down Santa in the middle of a children's sermon, but it illustrates an important point.

[ Clip missing -- Unfortunately, CBS/Viacom has decided that fair use rules only apply to little people.]


Over the past few years the evangelical movement has abandoned the majority of its most deeply held theological beliefs (think of how doctrinal differences with Catholics and, even more notably, Mormons have been put aside). It is not at all coincidental the beliefs that were abandoned were uniformly inconvenient from a political standpoint. The conservative movement has both weaponized and secularized the evangelical movement with remarkable success.

Traditionally, evangelicals were more concerned with the potential corruption of their own religion (frequently to the point of paranoia) than with what others were practicing. Christmas was a particularly hot-button issue. In the eyes of several good Southern Baptist ministers, the holiday had become unacceptably commercial, cultural rather than religious, and, in many ways, pagan. Most of the music, imagery, and traditions had nothing to do with the nativity, the "reason for the season." Often, this general hostility toward secular Christmas celebrations focused on Santa Claus.

Like many religious practices, the no-Santa rule could look a bit silly when viewed from the outside, but there's nothing unreasonable about adherents of a particular faith wanting to maintain what they see as the original meaning of a religious holiday. Growing up, I found these attitudes and the little lectures that often accompanied them painfully annoying, but, even though I disagreed, I could see where they were coming from from a theological standpoint.

Now, evangelicalism is a religious movement stripped of its religious elements. There is no scriptural foundation for tax cuts for the rich, deregulating greenhouse gases, or Donald Trump, but those are the defining issue of the movement of today.

Of course, evangelicals are not monolithic. There are many within the movement, some in positions of authority, who object to these obvious deviations from their original core principles. There are indications that the resistance is gaining momentum, and it is entirely possible that in a few years we will have to rethink our assumptions about evangelical Christians and politics. For now, though, this is a cultural (social reactionary) and political (far right) movement, not a religious one, and trying to think of it in any terms that these is misguided.

"But real estate investing in the metaverse still is highly speculative, and no one knows for sure whether this boom is the next big thing or the next big bubble." Actually, I'm pretty sure I know.

Debra Kamin writing for the NYT. and making Mark Zuckerberg very happy.

Money in these digital worlds is cryptocurrency, as finance in the metaverse is powered by the blockchain — a digitally distributed public ledger that eliminates the need for a third party, like a bank. Anyone entering a virtual world can buy or trade art, music and even homes as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which are blockchain-based collectibles that are digital representations of real-world items. The NFT serves as proof of ownership and is not interchangeable.

And in recent months, the volume of transactions for commercial real estate in the metaverse has ramped up.

So... we've got crypto, NFTs and a virtual housing bubble. No red flags here.

The Metaverse Group has a real estate investment trust, and it plans to build a portfolio of properties in Decentraland as well as other realms including Somnium Space, Sandbox and Upland. The internet may be infinite, but virtual real estate is not — Decentraland, for example, is 90,000 parcels of land, each roughly 50 feet by 50 feet. Among investors, there’s a sense that there’s gold in those pixelated hills, Mr. Gord said.

“Imagine if you came to New York when it was farmland, and you had the option to get a block of SoHo,” he said. “If someone wants to buy a block of real estate in SoHo today, it’s priceless, it’s not on the market. That same experience is going to happen in the metaverse.”

Last week, Tokens.com closed an even larger land deal in Decentraland’s fashion district for roughly $2.5 million. The company, which says the real estate transaction was the largest in metaverse history, plans to develop the area into a virtual commerce hub for luxury fashion brands, à la Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Kiguel estimates his portfolio in the metaverse is valued at up to 10 times more than its purchase price, and much of the reasoning will sound similar to anyone who has ever bought or sold real estate.

“It’s location, location, location,” he said. “A parcel of land in the downtown core, which has a lot of visitor traffic, is worth more than a parcel of land in the suburbs. There’s a scarcity value.”

I get the feeling I should say something now, but I'm pretty sure anything I could come up with would just be gilding the lily.

Why I despair sometimes of improving things.

This is Joseph.

This is German Lopez:

Part of the issue here is that "criminal justice reform" is a huge area, ranging from "defund the police" to using research to improve police effectiveness (e.g., smart version of foot patrol). Painting it all as radical (in the spirit of defund the police) disguises some really sharp critiques. How would the foot patrol reform advocates react to a spike in crime? Hiring more officers and deploying them more efficiently to reduce crime doesn't seem to be an obviously dumb or ineffective answer. 

Do we need reform? Well, the George Floyd killing suggests that there is at least some possibility for improving police performance when dealing with minorities and suspects. When you look at the level of public outrage that it created, it is hard to argue that a status quo that enabled that to happen doesn't have at least some room for reforming police procedure. There were four officers present; the other three could have been trained to intervene in a way that George Floyd survived and was able to have his case heard by a court. 

Or what about more modest reforms? For example, should overtime count as part of one's peak earnings for determining pension benefits? There are a lot of professions (e.g., teachers, professors) where this is not the case and a lot of money could be saved by not having officers in their last few years working massive amounts of overtime. Overtime is expensive, it could be invested in having more officers serving, and tired people make mistakes. If pensions are too low than that should be addressed directly, shouldn't it? 

Police reform is a large area and a lot of these measures would reduce crime. For example, more officers instead of overtime would increase total resources and leave more capacity for a surge. Careful training in safe takedowns saves money from lawsuits, protects civilians, and enhances public trust (which can make investigations more effective). Further, reforms like instituting heavier foot patrols in high crime areas might deliver wide ranging benefits, over and above the additional costs. One thing that is often neglected is that smart reform often involves spending more money. When you reform and improve any institution, it is far harder to do it while reducing costs -- just look at military reform for some rich examples

Finally, if crime really is spiking then this is showing a limitation of the current system. We aren't investigating counterfactual cases where there is a reform -- I am not aware of any major reforms that are ongoing in places with crime spikes. Many of the reforms listed above would have more officers on the streets by trying to spend money more efficiently. Maybe this is worth trying? And surely it counts as police reform? 

Great example of sarcasm in chart form

Jamie Powell of FT Alphaville points us to this wonderful Twitter exchange between Cameron Winklevoss and Joe Weisenthal.

Here's Powell:

Literal bitcoin bros the Winklevii have made a habit over the past five years of making statements that simultaneously make you question how they got into Harvard, and yet also understand how Zuck allegedly nicked the idea for Facebook off them.

Who, for instance, can forget their assertion that bitcoin was a better store of value than gold because Elon will eventually mine an asteroid full of the shiny stuff, leading to a ruinous supply/demand imbalance?

But we’re not sure even that compares to this tweet from Cameron Winklevoss on Wednesday about yet another subject that every bitcoin bro is suddenly an expert on: inflation.

So do you acknowledge, therefore, that inflation was 0% since 1986

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) November 24, 2021

I did a quick chart to look at the last 35 years of inflation pic.twitter.com/15HNtoJdJJ

— e pluribus unum (@jedgarnaut) November 24, 2021