Tumblr just sold for two dollars and seven cents, a half used Starbucks gift card and a cough drop with some fuzz on it.
I’m so mad because this worked
help me roger
Reblogging myself because
Reblogging myself because… what was that? Five minutes?
O_O
………my friend has made me curious
help me roger
Update: after I reblogged this someone messaged me offering me tickets to the sold out Hausu screening with a Q&A and autograph session with the director
let’s do it, roger
Roger helppppp
I need you Roger!
ROGER PLEASE
I accidentally paid my mortgage twice and need to pay utilities. cmon roger, do me a solid
Tell me something good Roger.
Thefabulous 2020: I left your jelly on the back porch.
Misanthrope 2020: Yup. Boi bye.
Spring 2020: Yes.Today
I’ve been cutting back on social media. I mainly use Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram is imperfectspring
Facebook send me a DM and I will give you my info.
over the Christmas holiday I found some house issues, they are not resolved yet. Ending one year and starting another with this hanging over my head has been a bummer. It has knocked me off my stride.
Starting this week I will try to get back on that horse and move along.
Apparently my dog sleeping is offensive while I continue to get followed by porn bots
That one way or another I am going to see the Northern Lights this year! I don’t know how or when, but I’m going to do it!
I have a date in 2 hours and I kind of don’t want to go…
Asked to postpone due to being tired from work, got called a fucking retard. 🤷♀️
Dodged a bullet.
I have a date in 2 hours and I kind of don’t want to go…
exitrowiron
and the more something is measured, the more it is managed
It took me 3 hours to write a cogent explanation of how I feel about the pandemic situation. I feel better having organized my thoughts and hope you find it helpful.
The horror of a pandemic is that there are no good options. There are no easy solutions, just shitty choices and shittier consequences. The way we’re navigating those choices is curiously influenced by our measurements and our instinctual, primitive decision making.
Let’s start with the measurements. I live in Minnesota where the rate of infection and death has been relatively modest. How modest? The Star Tribune reports the statistics each day on the front page in large print: as of April 17, 2020 there were 2,071 confirmed infections and 111 deaths. The national statistics are more sobering: 705,112 confirmed infections and 58,346 deaths. I’m not one who accuses the media of being aligned with the liberal elite or any of that other horseshit, but I do think the media has failed in one critical way - the media has failed to provide CONTEXT when reporting these figures.
Our primitive brains are bad at big numbers. Our brains are evolved for the kind of numbers you see on the savanna; the kind of numbers you would see in your tribe. More than you can count on your fingers, but not much more than that. Numbers bigger than that are alarming; they are inherently difficult for our emotional, fear driven, immediate-danger-avoiding brains to grasp. It’s difficult to make good pandemic response decisions because the numbers are too big for effective gut decisions. The best way to help our under-powered caveman brains is by adding context. Context, context, context.
Here is the context: in 2017 in Minnesota 44,361 people died (121.5 per day). Nationally in 2018, 2,839,205 died (7,778 per day). Think about that for a moment… nearly 8,000 people die every day; can you imagine if the newspaper headlines every day kept a running tally? These are large numbers but they aren’t in the headlines every day because we’ve become accustomed to them. Our brains don’t associate those large numbers with an immediate threat and they’ve become white noise. My point is, large numbers are scary. Large numbers without context are even scarier.
Our collective response to the virus is driven by more than just the large numbers however. We’re also disarmed by the novelty of the threat. Ironically, the virus is often referred to in exactly this way; the novel Covid-19 Corona virus. Indeed, our brains react strongly to all novel threats. From an evolutionary perspective it’s very helpful to react strongly to new threats. From a public policy perspective, however, it’s not as productive. In 2018 59,120 people died from influenza or pneumonia. The deaths were concentrated among the elderly (but not exclusively) and yet 54% of the US didn’t get a flu shot in the 2018-19 flu season. You’ll hear a variety of excuses for not getting a flu shot, but with the exception of those who are immune compromised, all the excuses are BS. The real reason is the regular flu is no longer a novel threat. There is a different flavor of flu each year and everyone other than Trump (and perhaps the governor of Georgia) knows it kills a lot of people. But it’s not a new threat and it hasn’t killed us yet (obviously) so most of us (not me) ignore the opportunity to get vaccinated. Again, this is an evolutionary relic, hardwired into the physiology of our brain, influencing our behavior. We are highly attuned to new, acute threats and very good (too good) at ignoring chronic threats. Examples of ignoring chronic threats abound - type II diabetes, climate change, and the runaway concentration of wealth in modern economies are just a few examples. My point is that even when we put the numbers in context, humans always react disproportionately to a novel threat.
This brings us to the issue of measurements. The axiom, “What gets measured gets managed” (wrongly attributed to Peter Drucker) is most definitely true. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is reported with such accuracy, precision and frequency that it is often mistaken as THE measure of the health of the economy (an error which Trump encouraged until very recently). Numbers are influential when reported that way and any number which is widely reported and frequently updated most definitely gets managed. This is true even if managing the number in question has deleterious unintended consequences. Again, this is true of the stock market. The DJIA is NOT an effective comprehensive measurement of the health of the US economy, yet it is widely revered as such and it’s performance is stimulated and protected in ways which are often harmful to actual health of the overall economy. My point is that when it comes to public policy, the numbers we can easily measure and report each day and therefore manage the shit out of are almost always the wrong numbers and trying to optimize these numbers can have very harmful unintended consequences. The important things to measure are always harder to measure; they change slowly over time and are very difficult to influence (again think of your weight, the environment and the distribution of wealth).
We’re also influenced by who we see and hear. Today we hear from health experts (doctors, nurses, Dr. Fauci and the CDC, etc.). These are all people who have dedicated their career to extending the lives of others at any cost. You can’t expect the CDC to balance their recommendations to save as many lives today as possible with the longer term societal consequences. That’s not the team they play for. It would be like asking a tax accountant to consider the benefits of tax simplification. If you really want to have a balanced discussion on this issue you need to have a few historians and economists sharing the microphone with Dr. Fauci and unfortunately no one ever wants to hear from a historian or economist.
This is where we are today. A novel threat has so focused our attention on managing and minimizing the large, frequently reported out of context numbers of illnesses and deaths that we’ve incorrectly assumed that our responses won’t cause an equal or greater amount of longer term misery, illness and death. Our instinctual reaction is reinforced by only asking for the advice of those whose life mission is minimizing short term illness and death. It is naive to think that shutting down the economy for weeks or months won’t have equal or more serious health and morbidity consequences. But it is true that those consequences won’t be measurable, certainly not in daily newspaper headlines.
I’ve seen the memes accusing politicians and the rich of deciding the economy and their fortunes are worth the death of 2-3% of the population. My argument is not about protecting the economy for the sake of the economy or the rich. My argument is that there are no good options and we can’t pretend that lowering the Corona virus deaths at all costs now won’t have worse long term misery, illness and morbidity consequences over the long term. (If you don’t think trashing an economy and creating runaway inflation doesn’t have health and morbidity consequences just spend a few minutes reading about Venezuela.) Our current flatten-the-curve-at-all-costs strategy primarily benefits the old (the most at risk of the virus) while endangering the health and wellness of the young over the long term. I definitely don’t fall in the young camp so I’m not saying this in my own self-interest. I’m not a historian either but I can’t recall a successful society making a similar choice.
I absolutely loathe the idea of being associated with the kind of people who are currently shouting about the cure being worse than illness. But if I really examine what’s driving my emotional response to this situation (which I’ve tried to explain above), I can’t help but agree. (Though you won’t find me blocking the entrance to a hospital like the militia morons on Michigan.) If you’re a politician who is actually trying to lead, you’re really screwed right now, because there are no good options. Either way you will be legitimately criticized for the consequences of your decision and only one of those choices has consequences which can easily be measured in the next election cycle.
What’s going to happen next is what has to happen. Some time soon the Fed is going to run out of bullets. States and municipalities are constitutionally prohibited from running deficits and can’t afford >25% unemployment compensation claims AND falling tax revenues for very long. In a complete vacuum of federal leadership (even within constitutional limits), states will cobble together policies allowing most businesses to reopen and most people will go back to work, albeit with masks and as much social distancing as possible. We will hope that the last few weeks has increased our ICU and ventilator capacity and advanced our treatment protocols enough to avoid a rebound in fatalities. This is the unavoidable reality.
My closing thought is that the process of discovering the unavoidable necessity of reopening the economy is sadly, a bit like finding out that Santa isn’t real. Most kids figure it out on their own and can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that their parents didn’t just sit them down and tell them the truth. I remember feeling embarrassed and naive. I kind of feel like that now. The Trump administration should have done a better job preparing for a pandemic, starting by not firing the team put in place by Obama. But it’s too late for that. Now we’re just left with shitty choices with shittier consequences. Let’s at least have an adult conversation and stop hoping that Santa is going to make it all go away with warm weather, or hydroxychloroquine, the wall, international travel restrictions or whatever other snake oil Trump is selling.
