Betting question for anyone. Fanduel has Bengals at plus 4 at -108 and Rams minus 4 are -112, so slight lean in the betting on Bengals. At what point does the lean get big enough so that the point spread changes? Or is ti more art than math?
It's a good question. One thing I will say is that the casinos aren't totally averse to gambling - they will sometimes let the action grow bigger on one side if their bookmakers like a position strongly enough
Alas, I agree with the laments of Adam Chandler ("Sports Betting Is Ruining More Than Your Bank Account") and Ross Douthat ("We Aren’t in Vegas Anymore") on the deleterious societal effects of the meteoric rise of app-based sports gambling:
The halftime show (obvious exceptions like Prince) is just the shittiness of the Grammys/VMAs condensed into a more bearable 12 minute package. The ads are pretty much targeted directly to uncles and are usually like someone from 90s SNL reprising a dead-horse character whose quotes the lamest people on earth have yelled at you for decades but he's visibly 30 years older and, like, eats a chip while Foreigner plays. It's kind of easy to opt out.
When I see things like that deranged tweet they always make me think of Trotsky. While facing his imminent death due to his arch-enemy having an assassin bury an icepick in his head, he still writes the line "Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full."
Say what you will about Trotskyism but I'd rather sign up for the politics of that quote than the politics of "normal sucked balls."
I was going to write a thoughtful comment about why I think Tracie Hunt's tweet is correct and not the best example for the "Covid as Liberal 9/11" post, but I decided to not do that and instead prepare for a long hike on this beautiful Sunday morning. Have a good day, readers!
Funny you should highlight a Leonard Cohen piece this week. I'm in the middle of a biography of Cohen right now. It's given me a new appreciation of his music.
The "normalcy sucked balls" tweet is wrong in at least two ways. First of all, as Freddie correctly notes, just because you want to be able to socialize freely doesn't mean you want to "cover up cracks" in society. I don't want to "cover up cracks," I just want to return to my in-person karate practice (Zoom karate just isn't the same) and visit my parents in Canada for the first time in over two years.
But secondly, the tweet implies that the people who want to return to normalcy are privileged, elite oppressors. Don't working-class people want normalcy too? And I'm not talking about the protesting truckers in Ottawa; I'm talking about a single mother who relies on her child's school not being shut down due to Covid.
Ironically the person I know who is most aligned with the “normalcy sucked balls” worldview, and who in fact shared this very tweet, is independently wealthy and has no job.
Not having a purpose in your life tends to lead to a lot of misery, and for a lot of people, a job is a ready-made purpose. (the problem comes when your job is obviously useless bullshit, which yeah, is a lot of modern jobs) Unemployment isn't just bad because of the lack of money, it's because you no longer have a reason to get up each day.
See Pascal and his thoughts on diversions. Eric Hoffer also has some chapters on this in The True Believer, about how the bored and the unemployed are more ripe for joining a mass movement than the struggling poor.
Do the Teamsters(TM) and CPC really back the working-class in a working Capitalist system? WSWS is all about lockdowns, but WSWS, CPC, and the Teamsters * represent the Marxist drive to overthrow the Capitalist system. Whereas the truck drivers are independent members of the Capitalist system, and value their independence.
* The Teamsters are organized for large trucking companies, and against the independent operators.
COVID has exposed huge, gaping cracks in capitalism and especially our relationship with work and employment. We shouldn't go back to normal when it comes to work, but luckily it looks like we won't be. I somehow doubt that's all our moronic tweeter (but I repeat myself) is talking about tho.
Freddie, on your old blog you once wrote about the importance of correct terminology, such as not confusing socialism with social democracy. I thought that piece was excellent and agreed with the advice. I'm thus annoyed by your continued insistence on using "liberal" to mean something entirely different than what it has always meant, as codified in any dictionary.
For example, Oxford Languages (the one used by google) says this:
noun
1. a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare.
2. a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
So whatever today's speech-suppressing wokesters are, they are not liberals. Liberals (by definition!) are people who believe in (among other things) free speech.
Next you'll be claiming that what "woman" "has always meant" is XX chromosomes, a womb, menstruation, and more estrogen - not merely an internal feeling like Lia Thomas (Penn swimmer record-breaker, who takes estrogen?) has.
/sarc
What "liberal" means, today, is what people who call themselves "liberal" claim to believe - including opposition to hate speech, offensive speech, and true speech about a reality that they don't like. Such liberals have taken control of language and twisted the meanings of some words so as to mean their opposite.
They've also created magik words like the n-word that a few Blacks can say but, racistly, no Whites can even utter to clearly refer to it without being accused of being a racist and cancelled. And anybody who opposes this racist cultural norm is called a racist.
The Enlightenment project of "progress" has meant there is never any consistent "normal" to return to - every year is different in some, usually significant, ways than the prior year. The issue is what cultural changes are better or worse. And for whom.
Conservatives, who genuinely want to promote long term social welfare, frequently disagree with progressive changers about whether the proposed policy is really better. Note that long term welfare might well be, and in fact often is, in conflict with short term pleasure measured short term welfare.
Getting a heroin fix, tonight (on Valentine's Day!), produces huge short-term "welfare", but becomes part of long term negative lifestyle with much less welfare.
The Denver museum has a Monkman installation that I think is one of the better contemporary pieces on display. I don't haven't been in a while so I don't know if it's set up right now. Certainly a lot better than those tacky Skoglund foxes.
Betting question for anyone. Fanduel has Bengals at plus 4 at -108 and Rams minus 4 are -112, so slight lean in the betting on Bengals. At what point does the lean get big enough so that the point spread changes? Or is ti more art than math?
It's a good question. One thing I will say is that the casinos aren't totally averse to gambling - they will sometimes let the action grow bigger on one side if their bookmakers like a position strongly enough
Alas, I agree with the laments of Adam Chandler ("Sports Betting Is Ruining More Than Your Bank Account") and Ross Douthat ("We Aren’t in Vegas Anymore") on the deleterious societal effects of the meteoric rise of app-based sports gambling:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/02/sports-betting-super-bowl/622058/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/opinion/super-bowl-gambling-sports.html
The halftime show (obvious exceptions like Prince) is just the shittiness of the Grammys/VMAs condensed into a more bearable 12 minute package. The ads are pretty much targeted directly to uncles and are usually like someone from 90s SNL reprising a dead-horse character whose quotes the lamest people on earth have yelled at you for decades but he's visibly 30 years older and, like, eats a chip while Foreigner plays. It's kind of easy to opt out.
When I see things like that deranged tweet they always make me think of Trotsky. While facing his imminent death due to his arch-enemy having an assassin bury an icepick in his head, he still writes the line "Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full."
Say what you will about Trotskyism but I'd rather sign up for the politics of that quote than the politics of "normal sucked balls."
If you can come up with 40 different but plausible but independent hypotheses from
one data set you deserve to publish a paper
Oops — my editor had the day off today — different, plausible but independent …
You can edit comments by clicking on the thee dots
Noted and appreciated
I was going to write a thoughtful comment about why I think Tracie Hunt's tweet is correct and not the best example for the "Covid as Liberal 9/11" post, but I decided to not do that and instead prepare for a long hike on this beautiful Sunday morning. Have a good day, readers!
I think it's correct in only one dimension: work.
Funny you should highlight a Leonard Cohen piece this week. I'm in the middle of a biography of Cohen right now. It's given me a new appreciation of his music.
Somehow that Cohen piece didn't do much for me at all. It's totally fine with me that it's not on his "greatest hits". The cover art was great, tho.
I think my fav is "First we take Manhattan"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTTC_fD598A
20 years of boredom ...
The "normalcy sucked balls" tweet is wrong in at least two ways. First of all, as Freddie correctly notes, just because you want to be able to socialize freely doesn't mean you want to "cover up cracks" in society. I don't want to "cover up cracks," I just want to return to my in-person karate practice (Zoom karate just isn't the same) and visit my parents in Canada for the first time in over two years.
But secondly, the tweet implies that the people who want to return to normalcy are privileged, elite oppressors. Don't working-class people want normalcy too? And I'm not talking about the protesting truckers in Ottawa; I'm talking about a single mother who relies on her child's school not being shut down due to Covid.
Ironically the person I know who is most aligned with the “normalcy sucked balls” worldview, and who in fact shared this very tweet, is independently wealthy and has no job.
Not having a purpose in your life tends to lead to a lot of misery, and for a lot of people, a job is a ready-made purpose. (the problem comes when your job is obviously useless bullshit, which yeah, is a lot of modern jobs) Unemployment isn't just bad because of the lack of money, it's because you no longer have a reason to get up each day.
See Pascal and his thoughts on diversions. Eric Hoffer also has some chapters on this in The True Believer, about how the bored and the unemployed are more ripe for joining a mass movement than the struggling poor.
The protesting truckers are definitely working-class. It's dumb to pretend otherwise.
They are, but their actions have been denounced by working-class organizations like the Teamsters and the Communist Party of Canada:
https://communist-party.ca/freedom-convoy-a-dangerous-movement-for-the-working-class-but-useful-for-the-ruling-class/
https://teamster.org/2022/02/teamsters-denounce-freedom-convoy-blockade-at-canadian-border/
Do the Teamsters(TM) and CPC really back the working-class in a working Capitalist system? WSWS is all about lockdowns, but WSWS, CPC, and the Teamsters * represent the Marxist drive to overthrow the Capitalist system. Whereas the truck drivers are independent members of the Capitalist system, and value their independence.
* The Teamsters are organized for large trucking companies, and against the independent operators.
Those organizations have lost their way, sadly. WSWS still believes zero COVID is a possibility lmao
Life is far from perfect, but I still miss a lot of things from the before times.
I miss the collaborative parts of my job and the camaraderie of my co-workers. Teams and Zoom just isn't cutting it anymore.
I miss my summer interns. Getting a couple of bright, high school kids, teaching them Python and then putting them to work was very fun and rewarding.
I miss teaching WordPress classes to aspiring entrepreneurs at the SBDC.
And, of course, there are a list of things that I've never done or haven't done in a long while that COVID has inspired me to try.
COVID has exposed huge, gaping cracks in capitalism and especially our relationship with work and employment. We shouldn't go back to normal when it comes to work, but luckily it looks like we won't be. I somehow doubt that's all our moronic tweeter (but I repeat myself) is talking about tho.
Freddie, on your old blog you once wrote about the importance of correct terminology, such as not confusing socialism with social democracy. I thought that piece was excellent and agreed with the advice. I'm thus annoyed by your continued insistence on using "liberal" to mean something entirely different than what it has always meant, as codified in any dictionary.
For example, Oxford Languages (the one used by google) says this:
noun
1. a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare.
2. a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
So whatever today's speech-suppressing wokesters are, they are not liberals. Liberals (by definition!) are people who believe in (among other things) free speech.
Next you'll be claiming that what "woman" "has always meant" is XX chromosomes, a womb, menstruation, and more estrogen - not merely an internal feeling like Lia Thomas (Penn swimmer record-breaker, who takes estrogen?) has.
/sarc
What "liberal" means, today, is what people who call themselves "liberal" claim to believe - including opposition to hate speech, offensive speech, and true speech about a reality that they don't like. Such liberals have taken control of language and twisted the meanings of some words so as to mean their opposite.
They've also created magik words like the n-word that a few Blacks can say but, racistly, no Whites can even utter to clearly refer to it without being accused of being a racist and cancelled. And anybody who opposes this racist cultural norm is called a racist.
The Enlightenment project of "progress" has meant there is never any consistent "normal" to return to - every year is different in some, usually significant, ways than the prior year. The issue is what cultural changes are better or worse. And for whom.
Conservatives, who genuinely want to promote long term social welfare, frequently disagree with progressive changers about whether the proposed policy is really better. Note that long term welfare might well be, and in fact often is, in conflict with short term pleasure measured short term welfare.
Getting a heroin fix, tonight (on Valentine's Day!), produces huge short-term "welfare", but becomes part of long term negative lifestyle with much less welfare.
The Denver museum has a Monkman installation that I think is one of the better contemporary pieces on display. I don't haven't been in a while so I don't know if it's set up right now. Certainly a lot better than those tacky Skoglund foxes.
I've been stream-of-consciousing the first half of the sweaty chouette: https://www.notion.so/yevaud/the-56th-superb-owl-0cd82377f7e7471ca31048a12c3a185c
The game and the commercials have both been disappointing so far.
Damn, Adam Tooze (https://adamtooze.substack.com/) just name dropped “Trillions” too.
Gonna have to get it now.