gdubs

79 ms·

871.
by gdubs 7y ago
Because people are going to have to keep paying for services they no longer get value from. Someone has to clean the house, watch and educate the kids, etc.
872.
by gdubs 7y ago
"This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor." -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, 1968 Do we need to rescue the airlines? I'm gonna guess that's pretty essential to the economic recovery at l
873.
by gdubs 7y ago
Yes, but in the Bay Area it's not uncommon to have household workers – cleaners, nannies, etc. Something like this would allow people to continue to pay those folks who are not working now, and have no other form of income or assistanc
874.
by gdubs 7y ago
Midway through HBO’s Chernobyl it struck me: this was the start of the fall of the USSR. I guess that’s obvious, but the dominant narrative growing up was that the US outspent them militarily and it bankrupted them. But it was so eloquen
875.
by gdubs 7y ago
Anthony Bourdain (RIP) loved weird exotic food — he talked about it at length in his books. The weirder the better. (Not for me; I went vegetarian about 5 years ago.) These wildlife markets are a particular problem. But virologists (see: Pa
876.
by gdubs 7y ago
There are a lot of businesses out there that are non-essential services, that will be hit hard by this. Someone still has to shop at the local bookstore when this is over, because those people – even with direct stimulus – will be strugglin
877.
by gdubs 7y ago
Maybe a lesson learned from all of this is that being rich can't buy you herd immunity, and the health of millions of uninsured people will affect your life. And when overwhelmed hospitals are triaging in the moment based on who has
878.
by gdubs 7y ago
UBI, Tax Cuts, Social Safety Net – these are all different approaches to solving actual problems. Are politics full of pork and cynicism? Sure. But at the end of the day _something_ needs to be done, and it would be more constructive to hav
879.
by gdubs 7y ago
To put a finer point on it, a fully funded safety net is a good idea before moving money into investments. Enough to cover basic expenses for, let’s say, a year. How long exactly depends on your risk tolerance. Not a financial advisor, stan
880.
by gdubs 7y ago
We need fiscal stimulus, and we need it yesterday. Time to put money in people’s pockets.
881.
by gdubs 7y ago
I commented on one of the other threads that I personally think this strategy is nuts. I compared it to Dr Strangelove, but really I was thinking of the beginning of “Fail Safe” when the Kissinger-like figure argues that nuclear war could b
882.
by gdubs 7y ago
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this sounds “Dr Strangelove” level bad. Like, phenomenally cavalier. They need to release the data and assumptions they’re basing their simulations on, because this will affect the entire world, not
883.
by gdubs 7y ago
In life we deal with things we never could have imagined. But the anticipation of something, or waiting on the edge of the unknown can be even worse. One thing that consistently helps me when I feel a loss of control is to clean and organiz
884.
by gdubs 7y ago
So, It seems that China did some things very wrong in the beginning, but then took some big actions to turn things around. There was a long form piece in the Wall Street Journal last weekend that looked at the timeline. It seems that in the
885.
by gdubs 7y ago
Sustainable grazing can lead to carbon sequestration — so it’s a better alternative to factory farming — but what really needs to happen is a mass conversion of pasture back to natural forests. The argument that meat is somehow a better use
886.
by gdubs 7y ago
Sure, here's a compressed animated GIF: http://gregorywieber.com/assets/images/art/3d-cells.gif
887.
by gdubs 7y ago
This is very cool. Also, the resulting images remind me of Susan Kare's icons for the original Macintosh – or more specifically, her "Steve Icon": https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s
888.
by gdubs 7y ago
As the joke goes, a trillion here a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about some real money! But in seriousness, the next week is a critical time in the world. I remember sitting in an airport when news of Lehman Brothers c
889.
by gdubs 7y ago
I guess the financial crisis was a whole decade ago now, but the consensus back then was that if we wanted to avert a full blown depression, we needed to move fast, and be bold. None of those programs listed sound frivolous to me, given w
890.
by gdubs 7y ago
I think there’s a simpler explanation which is that governments are comprised of people, and people are — to borrow a phrase — predictably irrational. We consistently prioritize the short term over the long term. Take Climate Change. There’
891.
by gdubs 7y ago
Like most things, there are shades of gray and it’s not black and white. China made some critical missteps early on in silencing doctors who spoke up about a novel virus. They also downplayed the crisis to avoid bad news around the New Year
892.
by gdubs 7y ago
Animals are absolutely a primary vector for infectious disease. No, there's no definitive evidence as of yet of patient 0, though the cluster of early cases in China had strong connections to the wet market in Wuhan. It's not nece
893.
by gdubs 7y ago
The past several weeks have been a critical time in US, and the lack of testing — I believe — will be a scandal when the dust settles. People are bringing light to the issue, but we’re also living in the moment and trying to gear up for the
894.
by gdubs 7y ago
Another way to put it is that Coronavirus is forcing people to realize that we’ve been papering-over weaknesses with easy money for quite some time. That said, “economists have predicted 5 out of the last 3 recessions” — people have been wa
895.
by gdubs 7y ago
I have to agree about the “risk is low” comment. It’s based on a snapshot in time. And besides the hand-waving about an evolving situation — well, it’s the evolving situation part that’s the risk.
896.
by gdubs 7y ago
That’s a good thread. The obvious concern is low income families. However, the calculus is whether they’ll be more devastated by the short term closures — or a much longer, much deeper recession if the virus spreads unchecked in the West.
897.
by gdubs 7y ago
Santa Clara county hasn’t closed schools yet, but are preparing for remote-learning should closures happen. If you’re a parent in Silicon Valley, then you’re probably aware from the district emails. From what I’ve parsed, it sounds like the
898.
by gdubs 7y ago
No need to invent hypotheticals when we’re dealing with an actual, unfolding crisis. The cost of closing schools, canceling events, etc, for several weeks would have been very disruptive and expensive. But it stood a chance of containing th
899.
by gdubs 7y ago
They announced today that a faculty member of the Stanford School of Medicine tested positive: https://www.ktvu.com/news/stanford-educator-tests-positive-f... Don’t have the link on hand but there was a study floating
900.
by gdubs 7y ago
Relatedly it was announced today that a faculty member at the Stanford school of Medicine tested positive: https://www.ktvu.com/news/stanford-educator-tests-positive-f...

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