So it’s settled: Democrats keep the senate ( thank you Masto for saving me from waiting till December to confirm this point ) & Republicans take the house. I’m not sure why people are making a big deal ’bout this: I remember for most o’ summer people were predicting this same outcome, save maybe that Republicans would’ve had a much mo’ formidable win till a bunch o’ troll Republican polls came round & 538 for no logical reason @ all let their trolling pollute their polls. Or maybe that’s not what happened. ¿Who cares? Polls are a waste o’ time.

Moreo’er, I’m not sure why Democrats are hopped up on so much copium ’bout the official fascist party doing less well than expected. Many have compared these midterms to the 2002 midterms wherein Republicans beat historical precedence & kept the house & regained the senate despite having a newly-elected president 2 years earlier, the only time such a thing happened other than in 1934 with FDR, which many credit to 9/11 “bringing the country together”. “Ne’er forget” Americans seemed to have forgotten so soon that we had a 20’s version in 2021 with 1/6, ’cept the difference is that whereas Democrats had nothing to do with 9/11, Republicans had much to do with 1/6. If anything, one should expect that Democrats should have succeeded better this year than Republicans did in 2002, but I guess inflation is mo’ important than protecting e’en the flimsy ’scuse for democracy the US has. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: Americans who are willing to trade democracy for the sake o’ cheaper prices deserve & will get neither.

1 thing e’eryone acknowledges: a house as split as they are will be hopeless @ keeping the government functioning, — & if the Republicans are able to agree to pass bills, they definitely won’t pass any bills that help people, as their outright expressed philosophy to governing, as designed by Newt Gingrich, is to make sure things don’t go well under a Democratic president to ensure he doesn’t look good, which, coupled with the aforementioned historical fact that the opposite party o’ the president always takes the legislature, means that the US legislature spends half its time deliberately trying to fail — which means things, specially the economy, will continue to plunge for the vast majority o’ Americans, leading to further apathy toward democracy — since what the US calls “democracy” is clearly dysfunctional — & thus further tolerance o’ fascism. Democrats cheering o’er their only minor failure gainst a party that committed treason gainst their own country don’t see any reason to feel concern o’er this ugly situation. Proof that moderate liberals still lack any understanding o’ politics, I see many huff & puff on high-voltage copium that the Republicans taking the house will actually be good for Democrats, since they’ll spend 2 years being failures ( letting people become mo’ miserable, which I guess is just cracked eggs for our long-term omelette ), & thus the people in all their enlightenment will realize what failures the Republicans are & vote gainst them. ’Course, this is based on the delusion that the average American is as politically nerdy as them & e’en knows what the house is. As established, Republican policy is to deliberately do badly under a Democrat president ’cause they know that the president will be blamed, just as Biden has been blamed for the uncooperative senate being unable to pass much in the past 2 years. The assertion that a blue wave is coming in 2024 is pure wishful thinking, specially since e’en liberals admit that Democrats will struggle to keep the senate in 2024; so e’en if Democrats do win back the house, but lose the senate, it’s the same problem, ’cept then if a supreme court justice dies Republicans will refuse to give Biden his judges.

& speaking o’ the supreme court, they, the most powerful instrument o’ government, who can single-handedly shut down any government policy they like with no appeal & can, thru creative use o’ this, effectively create their own laws, also with no appeal, will be ruled by Republicans for decades thanks to their strong majority & lifetime reigns, & are currently working on further dismantling the “Voter’s Rights Act” & will soon rule on whether or not Republican legislatures can o’erride their voters in terms o’ electoral votes. These unsavory facts also don’t come up during liberals’ current party. For instance, we have this laughable article by “political theorists” ( hacks ), who claim, “The 2022 midterm election was expected to be a referendum on Joe Biden. It’s closer to say it was a referendum on the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court lost”. ’Cept anyone with the slightest understanding o’ American politics realize that the supreme court can’t lose elections they’re not under — they can do whate’er they want with no repercussions, which is why they can do things like refuse to recuse themselves in cases involving their family members & judge in clearly biased ways to help said family members.

I should add that while moderate liberals like to emphasize the effect the Dobbs judgment had on the midterms, they don’t acknowledge that the Democrats’ weak loss means that there is no chance that Democrats will be able to pass a bill legalizing abortion — which means that the end result is still a loss for liberals.

So, yes, if one is delusional & believes that nothing has changed, Democrats’ weak loss should seem astounding & a good sign for the future, given that nothing changes. But those paying attention & knowing ’bout the mechanisms Republicans are setting in place should be able to see that howe’er li’l Democrats lost the current battle, they already lost the longterm war. & while Democrats may not have lost by that much, democracy has definitely lost.

The only truly positive sign is that Republicans, in their utter lack o’ consistency other than their desire for winning & having power, have taken a sudden turn gainst Trump & are starting to favor DeSantis, which could lead to a civil war that could hurt Republicans’ chances o’ winning presidency, a’least, in 2024 ( granted I’m doubtful o’ either being able to beat Biden in 2024 — Trump already lost in 2020, after all ). This is too bad, since Trump made a good point that he was the 1st president in a “long period” to go “decades, decades” without war in his 4 years o’ president. Any president who magically turns 4 years into “decades, decades” has to be impressive.

But I’m not so sure: as established, Republicans only care ’bout winning, not ideological purity, &, having such a lack o’ independent thought ( as evidenced by all the Washington State Republicans being clones o’ each other & the fact that Republicans just spew the same unfunny dadjoke memes where’er they are ), so they’ll probably just vote for whoe’er the Republican candidate is, regardless o’ who it is, e’en if not Trump.

¡Ne’ertheless! Regardless o’ the actual consequences o’ this election, Republicans are anusaching ’bout it, & thus it is our satirical duty to dunk on them. That’s right, this year we’re not going to waste our time looking in @ Daily Kos… ¿who else did I look in @? ¿The Nation? ¿r/politics? Democracy Now’s ’bove vulgar racehorse shenanigans & Counterpunch should just have ’nother copypaste article ’bout how e’ery election is just a victory for capitalism. Anyway, we’re not interested in seeing these freaks jerk themselves off o’er this minor win. We want to see some moaning & groaning. Thus, I must dig deep into the sewers that is rightwing media.

’Course we can’t go an election without a li’l conspiracy theorying:

THEY DID IT AGAIN! Two massive unexplained ballot drops gave Gretchen Whitmer the lead in Michigan – They ran a ‘Drop and Roll’ in Michigan pic.twitter.com/VIxjQVYgdh

— ✨️💫Emmy💫✨️ (@brixwe) November 10, 2022

¡Gasp! ¡Look @ those tall lines! ¿What does it mean? ’Course, anyone halfway literate in graphs — which, tragically, doesn’t include Republicans — will clearly see that Whitmer had the lead long before those circled parts & that the jumps applied to both candidates, so they’re nugatory, anyway.

Anyway, this person, who claims to be “[j]ust an average Joe who loves God, America, Airplanes and Racing”, but apparently doesn’t love reality, had this special scientific insight:

Straight lines are ALWAYS man made. They do not occur in nature, and they NEVER occur normally in reliable data results. If you do see a straight line its a red flag and a sign of human intervention.

— SuperDaveMc (@SuperDaveMc) November 10, 2022

Straight lines are just like dinosaur bones: Satan put them there to tempt us.

Meanwhile, living bowtie, Tucker Carlson, babbles incoherently ’bout the votes taking too dang long to be counted:

Officials in Arizona told CNBC today that they are “prepared to work through Thanksgiving and possibly Christmas as well.” That means results by New Year’s in a race that was held in early November. That seems late. How late is it? Well, by comparison, the results of the 1862 midterm elections, which were tabulated by candlelight without machines or even electricity in the middle of a raging civil war, were clear before the end of the week. That was the entire country. Arizona is a single state, which, by the way, is a fraction of the size of Florida, which, as you may have noticed, counted its votes in less than a day—so did Brazil, an entire country.

1st, considering states are counting votes simultaneously, there’s no difference ’tween the entire country counting votes vs. 1 state; 2nd, votes are still being counted by hand; 3rd, the US has mo’ than 10 times as many people as then; 4th, elections were corrupt & run by boss machines back then, so it’s laughable to use the notorious 1800s as an example o’ good elections. ¿Would he rather have elections like the 1876 election, where it was decided by backdoor agreements?

That seems embarrassing, if not like a full-blown emergency. Counting the votes isn’t some added extra you get from government if they have a surplus, like fighting climate change or bringing equity. Counting the votes is a core function of government, along with law enforcement, maintaining the roads and keeping the border secure.

Since the new government doesn’t form till January, I’m not sure why taking an extra week is a problem, nor how it indicates any suspicious activity. If anything, it indicates higher standards. Handling voting for an entire country o’ 300 million in just 1 day is the stupidest idea in the world & is bound to lead to errors. If Democrats wanted to steal the election, ¿why would they bother prolonging things? ¿What good does that do? Like, we already have well-established examples o’ ballot stuffing in the country from the aforementioned 1800s boss machines & the mid 1900s, & they didn’t involve election delays ’cause the perpetrators were smart ’nough to realize that you can stuff ballots in just 1 day & that looking suspicious for no extra benefits is a dumb idea.

Efficient elections are the reason you pay taxes, but Arizona doesn’t seem to have them.

It most certainly is not why I pay taxes.

Don’t ask, commands CNN. If you’ve got questions about this or any other election, no unauthorized questions. Instead, watch CNN or if you don’t have cable, simply trust your local officials.

I’m not sure who Fox News is eluding to that I should trust. I’m totally sure Fox News are advocating for anarchism, since there’s absolutely no one I can trust, & therefore valid elections are impossible now. It’s not as if we have organizations that o’ersee these elections & that there’s too many people in these organizations to keep a tight lip on the conspiracy. Keep in mind, e’ery terrible thing the US does gets leaked thanks to organizations like WikiLeaks, but this vote steal is as tight as any government scheme e’er produced — well, outside o’ Bush doing 9/11, ’course.

Speaking o’ Bush, ¿is his Proust-loving speechwriter writing Carlson’s script? “If you’ve got questions about this or any other election, no unauthorized questions” is right up there with “you won’t get fooled again”.

They’re doing their jobs. They’re doing it right. Really CNN? Can we get a little more reporting on that? How right are they doing it?

Yes, I expect exact mathematical figures on the objective unit o’ rightness & the precise % o’ rightness. If it’s not ’bove 80%, which electionologists have measured to be the minimum level o’ rightness to reach the natural rate o’ rightness, then it’s not right ’nough & Trump instantly becomes president, as per the constitution.

¿Was CNN really constantly badgering their drooling watchers, “The elections are going fine. We swear no conspiracies are going on”? ¿Do they also host weekly segments informing their brilliant viewers that JFK’s assassination was not, in fact, an inside job? “We’re going to have to rate that Biden is an alien trying to steal your blood with his fluoridated water is a ‘Pants on Fire’ debunked fact”.

It’s pretty funny, but we digress.

I mean, it’s only funny if you’re an idiot & find basic civic mechanisms confusing.

Then there’s the most amusingly stupid explanation of all: bad candidates were the problem. That’s all over Twitter. All the Twitter pundits are telling you now the candidates were subpar and that was the problem. Candidate quality matters. Well, of course, strictly speaking, that is true. The quality of a candidate does matter, but really, how much does it matter? Well, let’s see. Joe Biden got elected president two years ago from his basement. John Fetterman became a U.S. senator last night. Does anyone think John Fetterman was a quality candidate? Is that why he won, because they had quality candidates on the left? Do the voters of Pennsylvania really want a brain damaged candidate who’s never had a real job? Did they think he was more impressive than the guy who spent his career doing heart transplants? Probably not.

I take back what I said ’bout the scriptwriting thing: there’s no way a literate human wrote this babbling. ¿How the hell can someone sound so befuddled while robotically repeating the same memes as e’ery other conservative clone? “¿Do people really not want to support a party who calls stroke victims ‘brain damaged’ just ’cause that party is full o’ repulsive toxic waste in flesh form? That can’t be right — must be ballot-stuffing”.

OK, I can’t stand reading this anymo’. ¿Has Living Bowtie always been this incoherent? It’s amazing that “brain-damaged” Fettuccineman sounded mo’ articulate during his fracking question than Bowtie has thru this whole article. ¿Who the hell can tolerate watching this e’ery day?

’Cause you get mo’ clicks by endlessly repeating yourself, he continued this shtick in a microfiction that seemed like ’twas AI-generated titled, “Democracy is a faith-based system… but who could believe in this?”. Democracy is not faith-based; legitimate democracies involve o’ersight from independent, international organizations like the UN. The fact that an American would say something so stupid shows how Americans know nothing ’bout democracy, which is why they have their idiotic electoral college & senate system & have made their system so that the legislative branch, the most important branch, is the most dysfunctional, while the supreme court, the least democratic branch which is just appointed for life, is the most powerful. ¿Guess which side is adamantly gainst independent o’ersight o’er US elections? So, ’gain, the big question: ¿who are Americans s’posed to trust when it comes to elections? The obvious unstated answer Fox News wants is that Republicans get complete control & can declare elections howe’er they fit like Putin. Those are the only 3 options, since Carlson acknowledges that he doesn’t believe a bipartisan solution is possible: Republicans control the election system, Democrats control the election system, or they’re o’erseen by objective, independent outside sources like e’ery other democracy.

Living bobblehead, Nick Fuentes, friend o’ Republican legislators Paul Gosar & MTG, was much blunter with his solution to the problem:

When you look at these things like abortion, it’s popular. And you can thank the Jewish media for that. Abortion is popular, sodomy is popular, being gay is popular, being a feminist is popular, sex out of wedlock is popular, contraceptives — it’s all popular. That’s not to say it’s good. That’s not to say I like that. Popular means that people support it, which they do. It sucks, and it is what it is, but that’s why we need a dictatorship. That’s unironically why we need to get rid of all that. We need to take control of the media or take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe or force them to play by our rules and reshape the society.

r/conservative, who spent most o’ the past 6 years stanning for Trump, have now turned round & are blaming him for their loss, since as anyone who has e’er met conservatives know, they hate personal responsibility for their own failures & will literally rewrite history in their head & pretend they always hated Eurasia & loved Eastasia.

On the other hand, you have this discussion revolving round the fact that gen Z went all in for the Democrats, which, save for 1 or 2 people calling for some vague new Reagan to “inspire” people, whate’er that means, generally leads to the most sane conclusion: Republicans should just stop being Republicans.

Modern Voltaire, hoardpepes, who hoarded all the pepes, so you know he’s wise, has this rebuttal:

I agree with hoardpepes: I have no reason to care ’bout founding American values or rights like slavery & the right o’ the supreme court to nullify anything any o’ the other branches do by mere whim & have no reason not to prefer free shit. Maybe if Republicans started offering free shit ’stead o’ garbage like shit that people in the 1700s — who had no taste — like people would like them for once.

But while many are blaming Trump, The Federalist has someone else to blame: ¡time to ditch Mitch McConnell!. The entire basis o’ the criticism is that McConnel didn’t follow Newt’s patented “let shit burn” policy & didn’t refuse to raise the debt limit, which The Federalist themselves acknowledge probably would’ve just led Manchin & Sinema to agree to a Filibuster change to prevent a shutdown & didn’t stick to his principles ( as if McConnell e’er had principles ) & didn’t stick to his threat to sabotage the chip bill, which nobody took seriously, since the businesses that pay Republicans like McConnel benefited from the bill. If anything, Republicans who like to complain ’bout China taking our jerbs & the precariousness o’ Taiwan should be embarrassed they hadn’t passed the chips bill themselves under Trump. As it turns out, McConnell is only gangster when he has a senate majority ’hind him. ¿Who’d have thought?

But who really deserves the most blame are the mean ol’ media & how unfair it is to say mean things ’bout conservatives, their best friends, so says The Federalist in an amazingly incoherent piece:

A Democrat Party that props up an elderly man with obvious signs of mental decay to run as the party’s presidential candidate cares only about power. And voters casting their ballots for the same man, or the even more cognitively challenged Democrat candidate who just won the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, see only one thing: the “D” next to the candidate’s name.

I love how e’en in the article trying to whine ’bout how e’eryone else slanders them as being shitheads the writer couldn’t avoid being a shithead & mocking someone for having a stroke. The secret to why people voted for a man who had a stroke that left them with temporary mental weakness rather than a TV-show host who is just naturally stupid is that they have this thing called “empathy”, a foreign concept to Republicans who would rather whine ’bout their, & only their, problems, as if they matter. If you have to whine ’bout how nobody likes you, that just gives people mo’ reason to dislike you.

The establishment press likewise plays for team Democrat, and conservatives won’t change that even if they nominate the most milquetoast moderate candidate willing to don a scarlet R.

Theoretically, since Republicans haven’t done that.

Enter stage right, 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Proof o’ the point: they had to spend multiple paragraphs going all the way back a full decade to find a Republican who is halfway believable as a “moderate” Republican. That’s Romney, the same man who made fun o’ his fans for wearing cheap raincoats & slandered 47% o’ the population as entitled, while flip-flopping on most issues. So, yes, he was moderate to the point o’ standing for nothing & was an asshole to e’eryone else. Shocking that nobody liked him.

The 2012 presidential contest also showed that the Democrat Party, its loyal members, politicians on the left side of the aisle, and the press don’t really care about a candidate’s demeanor either. Then-vice presidential candidate Joe Biden’s clownish behavior during his debate with his Republican counterpart, Paul Ryan, went ignored in the main, and the media continue to overlook Biden’s bullying behavior.

¿Why are we still talking ’bout 2012? I’m sorry Jr. Paul “I Don’t E’en Realize Rage Against the Machine Are Leftists” Ryan got fucking slayed by Biden harder than Eminem slayed MGK, but if you can’t handle a debate, stay out o’ the rap battle. That’s not bullying, that’s doing your job.

[Ignore paragraph o’ Big Hunter’s Emails]

Younger conservatives who didn’t live through the Reagan presidency can be excused for thinking Democrats are open to the right kind of Republican. But for those old enough to remember the ’80s, “come on, man.”

As the r/conservative forum & the recent voting results showed, younger conservatives are a mo’ endangered species than mountain gorillas.

The left trashed Ronald Reagan until Democrats needed to destroy George W. Bush, at which time the Gipper became the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever to serve as a Republican.

( Laughs ). This kind o’ pathetic hero-worship is sad. ¿Could you imagine a leftist calling Obama “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever”? ¿Which side is antigovernment ’gain?

Yeah, Reagan was so kind & warm when he hired an administration that made gay jokes ’bout AIDS victims, & had been in so many scandals that there’s a Wikipedia article dedicated to it, including bank bailouts long before Bush made them famous & the infamous Iran-Contra scandal, wherein his administration illegally funneled weapons to fascists in Nicaragua, leading him to have the name “Teflon Ron”, since no matter how many illegal things he did, conservative media still refused to criticize him, since they have no standards, evidenced by their choice for “warmest” president.

And now Bush has been remade the consummate statesman. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

No, Bush is still reviled e’en by conservatives as a war criminal who tanked the US economy.

So going back to the 1st paragraph:

Donald Trump is neither a kingmaker nor the palace’s HR director charged with hiring the next court jester. He didn’t make the Republican Party, and he didn’t destroy her fortunes.

This is wrong. Thanks to shambles Bush left the Republican party in, Trump was necessary. After all, his only competition were Jeb Bush & Ted Cruz, candidates that nobody liked. Most conservatives predicted Clinton would win long before the conservative primary finished. It was only when Trump made his surprise win that the Republican party bounced back.

’Course, a large part o’ that bounce back is ignoring history, so it’s no surprise that The Federalist is trying to ignore history, since it’s the only way to make the Republican party look good after Trump broke what he resurrected.

Democrats have since refurbished this strategy by preemptively branding any potential Republican opponent the spawn of the current evil-incarnate titleholder. We saw this with Democrat and media attacks on Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, which began while Trump still resided in the White House and long before DeSantis rode the only true red wave to victory on Tuesday.

Yes, they preemptively attacked DeSantis for no reason whatsoe’er, who had no connection to Trump. That’s why Trump endorsed him in 2018, after all. & it’s not like Democrats attack DeSantis for things he does, like that Disney fiasco or Martha’s Vineyard fiasco.

Conservatives need to vacate their state of denial and accept that the Democrat Party and its politicians, voters, and paramours in the press will attack and reject any Republican put forward. And so will faux Republicans; in fact, that is how you can recognize them.

Awesome, then we’re in agreement on something.

They will push false scandals, misrepresent positions, peddle narratives to the disadvantage of Republicans, brand negative news about Democrats as disinformation, demonize the person and his (or her) voters — and they will never like us or vote with, or for, us.

Note that nowhere in this article has The Federalist provided any evidence o’ any “false” scandals. In fact, this entire article lacks any evidence @ all that is not incestuous links to themselves, which lead to mo’ sourceless thinkpieces, nothing e’en coming close to resembling sources. The only exception is a link to The Week, which they argued gainst as “incorrect”, but don’t go into details for why it’s “incorrect”. This writer would get an F @ my high school for their utter incapability o’ backing up their claims. They literally think they can say “nope, this is wrong ’cause I say so” & that it matters. No wonder nobody takes you guys seriously.

So support your candidate of choice, but realize that come 2024, to the polarized Democrats and their media mouthpieces, the Republican presidential nominee will be either Trump or Trump 2.0.

Cool, their solution is to sit round & pout & do nothing.

If they really wanted to make Democrats look bad, all they have to do is write, “Look @ how pathetic we are & Democrats still lose to us half the time. Imagine how pathetic that makes them”.

When I checked out Fox News, it seemed like they were mo’ interested in such hardhitting stories as “Miami OnlyFans model covered in bruises after stabbing beau to death: photos” & “Texas fire dog unlocks door after officials get locked out”, tho they did have some nice yellowbaiting with “TikTok is ‘China’s digital fentanyl’”. The real news here is that the FCC are such boomers that they don’t realize people can get round federal bans by using VPNs & Tor. If they truly wanted to ruin TikTok, they should convince Elon Musk to buy it.

Nothing Newsmax said ’bout the election is interesting, but they do whore out their own documentary for 1/6, where they whiteknight the people involved in the attempted insurrection & complain ’bout their mistreatment, which, if true, is the tastiest karma considering the mistreatment Republicans wrought gainst middle-easterners in Guantanamo Bay, a prison that Republicans like to pretend doesn’t exist.

Real crimes were committed by protesters on Jan. 6. Yet, in the aftermath, the political party in power weaponized the Department of Justice, FBI, and other agencies — leading to unprecedented civil-rights violations of U.S. citizens who engaged in those protests.

¿How ignorant or dishonest do you have to be to call 100 or so people being mistreated “unprecedented civil-rights violations of U.S. citizens”? ¿Have they ne’er heard ’bout black people? “Like, yeah, all those lynchings were bad & all, but they’re nothing compared to a few white people not being able to clip their nails”. The only thing that makes this “unprecedented” is that it’s white conservatives being fucked for once; Republicans are fine when black people are mistreated all the time or Vietnam protesters or

I thought ’bout diving into the cesspool Truth Social, but they want my email & phone #, & fuck that. This may ’splain better than the midterms why their shares are falling fast.

Meanwhile, we have this perfect example for why nobody should take Twitter pundits ( or any pundits ) seriously when they make grand armchair theories ’bout what will win elections ( which makes one wonder why they’re giving this amazing advice ’way for free on Twitter & not charging millions for this priceless advice ):

pic.twitter.com/GLZgSgn9Nj

— ChudsOfTikTok (@ChudsOfTikTok) November 9, 2022

For the record, I actually know the 1 true trick that works for winning elections, which is to promise to have the government subsidize free Taco Bell e’ery Friday to e’ery American citizen ( when elected blame conflicted legislature for the failure to pass the Taco Bell bill ); show up as a wrestler on WWF, the World Wildlife Fund; stand up gainst half-assed remakes o’ classic video games; & spend e’ery presidential speech talking ’bout what small penises & vaginas e’ery other politician has. I am awaiting my Pulitzer now.

On totally-not-a-nazi Ben Garrison’s site, Tina Toon drew this wonderful political drawing that should be put up on the fridge right ’long with their 3rd-grade math quiz. It’s nice to see people artistically influenced by that person who did the Sonichu comics.

Finally, the New York Post gives us the news we always wanted to hear: “Florida Man Makes Announcement”:

Think Murdochs are done with Trump? This morning's Foxnews website: lead story DeSantis (not Poland)–Trump's announcement is 3 levels down–underneath Fetterman and Madoff, next to the Gender Unicorn! pic.twitter.com/gjdgOKvF8T

— Tony Iovino (@TonyIovino3) November 16, 2022

But to those who worry that Trump may be too ol’ to run, being the same age as Biden, who was frequently lambasted for his age, when he became president, Fox News has you covered: “People age @ different rates”. So Fox News thinks Trump is a time-traveler. That’s nothing out o’ the ordinary for them.

Anyway, that’s all I can tolerate o’ this nuclear waste. Hopefully that will be all for any political content for… hopefully till November 2023, but I don’t think The Atlantic will be able to wait that long to release a stupid article defending water poisoning or paedophilia or something.

Whether the Democrats manage to eke out a hopelessly debilitated slight majority unable to pass anything ’cause 1 Democrat doesn’t like it or leave a slight Republican majority that will spend the next 2 years trolling Democrats & also not getting anything done, we can all agree that we have a victory for photography from The Rolling Stone:

I don’t know if they just take video & pick out the best clips or if they’re just that good @ getting the perfectly awkward photos, but chef’s kiss, either way.

& he has good reason to cheer ( I think that face he’s making might be cheering ): by his own count — since these are certainly not the #s anyone else sees in our mortal realm — he received 219 all-caps “WINS”, which are quadruple the value o’ lowercase “wins” & 175% the value o’ titlecase “Wins” & only 16 titlecase “Losses”:

This gives me the great opportunity to do what I neglected to do in 2020:

Apparently Boebert didn’t lose quite yet, & may end up winning, which means that all the news stories I read were full o’ lies. You can tell how shocked I am.

I have to say, beyond the pure joy o’ seeing conservatives angry, which, admittedly, is worth cheering ’nough, I don’t know why Democrats are so excited. It looks like Republicans may still take both the house & the senate, & the claims that the Republicans failing to do well during a year like 2022, when there should be a wave, & thus this means they’ll do e’en worse in 2024, shows a remarkable lack o’ self-awareness: if 2022 can be a ne’er-seen-that-before-greetings-from-Germany-kick-cancer’s-butt election year, ¿why can’t 2024? After all, e’eryone expected Democrats to cream Republicans in 2016 & they failed miserably. I don’t see how the outcome o’ this election means shit for 2024, other than mo’ Democrat governors & mo’ Democrats in state legislatures means electoral advantages for Democrats in future elections.

They called you cockroaches.

They called you cult members.

They called you extremists.

They called you terrorists.

Today, we call them losers!#RedWave

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 8, 2022

Boebert has been wrong ’bout many things, but she’s right here — we are calling them losers.

While it’s still round, I’m just going to put this here, which, 538, to their honesty, still keeps up, so we can laugh @ them if they’re wrong. Or, if they turn out correct after all, laugh @ the armchair theorists who constantly whine ’bout polls. Either way, we get to dunk on people.

But regardless o’ how relatively well Democrats do this year, we can still say a’least that New York Centrist Democrats known for pragmatism are utter failures. Considering this is the same wonderful state that gave us Trump, Rudi Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, or hell, e’en Hillary Clinton, since she deserves half the blame for the disaster that was 2016, I can’t say I’m surprised that they would find mo’ terrible politicos with which to self-own themselves.

New Republic points out what e’eryone knows, that most media are lame & let themselves get tricked by a tiny minority o’ whiny Chuds that inflation & crime which is higher in red states that didn’t e’en cut their police’s funds than in cities are the only things that matter & that abortion wouldn’t make a difference. They are definitely right ’bout media trying to make Restful Joe look like the most hated president since Andrew Jackson being ridiculous: only Republicans, who are contractually obligated to make e’ery Democrat seem like the worst that has e’er happened, & doomer nihilist far leftists, who just hate Biden mo’ than Trump ’cause they’re contrarian edgelords, give a shit ’bout Biden, while the vast majority o’ Americans couldn’t be bothered to have the weakest o’ feelings ’bout the president or e’en remember who the president is.

I received a wondrous omen yesterday when I decided, out o’ curiosity, to make my yearly peek into DailyKos & was greeted with this powerful combination:

I knew it’d be a suckerpop anime girl who would finally save US democracy.

All the signs indicate that the forewarned red tsunami — not the sexy communist 1, but the fake fascist 1 masquerading in blood — will not come, but that the house will turn red, but the senate may stay blue. To be truthful, I’ve mostly ignored the polls, since polls ain’t shit, & e’en mo’ than polls, I’ve ignored armchair-theorizing pundit hacks who mistake their own petty hatred o’ Democrats ’cause Sanders, given a role in the current Democratic regime, was robbed o’ his rightful primary victory lost ’cause most young people are dumb & lazy & don’t bother to vote in primaries with the general sentiment of ordinary Americans who don’t give a rats ass ’bout Sanders or socialism & probably blame some vague form o’ Sorosian socialism they were told is causing all this inflation by their favorite YouTube channel or they mistake the general sentiments of ordinary Americans as being sick o’ all this mean civility ’tween mildly patronizing Democrats & murderously crazy Republicans, ignorant o’ the fact that most Americans don’t give a shit, they’d probably love to see government officials bash each others’ brains out with hammers. If these liars truly believed in bipartisanship & bothsidesism, they would advocate for sacrificing Mitch McConnel’s wife to the hammer, too, but as it turns out, e’eryone lies when they say they support bipartisanship ’cause, as it turns out, bipartisanship is the dumbest thing in the world.

Much mo’ fascinating is the statistic I found that 60% o’ Americans have election deniers on their ballots, which is to say that only 60% o’ candidates have finally reached enlightenment & have realized that till the Engelsist Magical Socialist Party’s candidates win e’ery election, e’ery election is a fraud. I can only assume that when the deniers win they’ll attempt to insurrect themselves, since surely they wouldn’t only deny election results where they don’t win — no, not my honest pals, the Republicans.

Daily Kos tells me that the race ’tween Patty Murray & Smiley here in Washington was expected to be a tossup. Considering Smiley was a rando nurse whose blurb sounded like it belonged to an airport novel, not a politician, that is horrifying to hear. Luckily, like many things, the pundits turned out to be wrong & we can forget that Smiley e’er existed.

Other fun races — ¡wheeee!:

The 1 e’eryone had been looking @, to the point that apparently a New Yorker tried to vote for Dr. Oz: unsurprisingly, real candidate whose only major electoral flaw was having a stroke, & thus having their clearness o’ speech only slightly better than the average Republican, beats clownshow TV doctor.

Famed nutjob Lauren Boebert who was infamously accused o’ s’posedly leading tours thru the capitol before 1/6 lost to who cares, all that matters is that she lost.

Many are noting that wacky Trump-favored candidates like Oz are losing in places where a sane Republican would’ve won, which leads me to reconsider e’eryone’s claim that Democrats deliberately funding these crazy candidates was typical bad Dem strategy.

I still fret that I didn’t make optimal use o’ my most recent Halloween Break, including wasting a day working on that weird Voter’s Pamphlet post that wasn’t that clever; but I can a’least feel better that I didn’t waste the most important day, Halloween itself, publishing the most revolting form o’ COVID-denial apologetics from 1 o’ the most deranged economists — & we’re talking ’bout economists, the realm that gave us such serious ideas as that forcing woman to let incels rape them ( or giving incels sexbots ) is the same as income redistribution — in the world.

That article is “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty”, written by some economist named Emily Oster, who I will ’ventually show you has o’erthrown Noah Smith as emperor o’ troll economists.

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes.

I want to remind you that this is s’posedly an “economist”. I spent COVIDtime reading books, which you can do very easily inside, ’cause that’s how you learn ’bout things, something this “economist” should have tried.

We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself.

Which are much less effective than masks made by actual professionals, which was as shocking for me to find out as that time I found out that professional doctors are much better @ treating diseases than some rando next door who “read some things online”.

We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.

¿So this person’s family are such idiot-savants when it comes to visual abilities that they can see a tiny hand signal before them, but not full-sized humans approaching them?

¿What relevance does this ridiculously contrived fable have to do with anything?

Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

Check off on the bingo card, “Makes up bullshit exaggerated story wherein the protagonist runs into Jack-Chick-worthy strawmen who want to disembowel anyone who doesn’t obey the tribal ways o’ The Mask”. I live round Seattle, 1 o’ the most leftwing places in the US, & people didn’t say shit if they encountered someone without a mask ­— probably ’cause they presumed they were right-wing extremists & didn’t want to hear them start ranting ’bout the Illuminati. E’en if most people round you do think you’re assholes for not wearing masks, they were probably smart ’nough to realize that yelling @ you wasn’t going to magically make you not assholes anymo’, but would probably make you dig your heels in further — as the existence o’ this article proves.

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking.

I’m going to need a big, fat, fucking citation needed for that. ( Fun fact: if you compare newspapers like The Atlantic to my stoner blog you will find to your shock & horror that I oft cite sources mo’ than they do, ’cause newspapers oft like to just coast on their pretend authority than follow basic academic standards ).

Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway.

Yes, that’s ’cause you weren’t wearing real masks, you fuckface.

But the thing is: We didn’t know.

“¡It’s Fauci’s fault my family were all hopeless dumbasses!”.

I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID.

If she had any self-awareness, such reflection would have been, “Wow, it sure is impressive that they hired me to teach a class on a subject I know absolutely nothing about. The US sure is a meritocracy”.

We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.

Read: “I wasted my class’s time & money talking ’bout shit that has nothing to do with science”.

To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high.

This writer shows herself to be just as ignorant o’ linguistics as biology: a consensus is universal — it’s an inherent part o’ its definition. If it’s not universal, it’s mere majority, not consensus.

2nd, e’en a fervent supporter o’ democracy like me has the awareness to realize the unfortunate truth that objective, materialist science isn’t based on fucking elections. The fact that the average slackjawed moron, fed junkfood misinformation like The Atlantic, thinks children have magic COVID immunity doesn’t make it true, anymo’ than the fact that 81% o’ Americans believe there’s an invisible man in the sky who runs e’erything makes it true. Americans are dumb: their opinion is worth less than a coin flip.

Nowhere does this “economist” e’en try to look into alternatives that could serve both problems, which would’ve been real compromise, ’cause that would require some semblance o’ curiosity & independent thought, which almost all economists lack. People ( read: right-wing hacks ) assume that falling education came from children not being physically next to each other, & not the lack o’ preparedness or lack o’ resources from skinflint governments drugged up on the religion o’ “Fuck the Poor” capitalism. Hell, the psychological trauma o’ COVID could’ve by itself caused the decline; there’s no proof that the decline wouldn’t have happened if schools didn’t close, or that it wouldn’t have been worsened by children’s fears — whether based on realistic facts or exaggerated — o’ getting COVID themselves. Indeed, the fact that schools that stayed closed longer didn’t have worse effects than those that didn’t & the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics’s own conclusion on the data imply this. This is specially since the worst effect was on math, which is the subject that should need physical presence the least & can most easily be handled with computers. Also, Americans have always been hopeless @ math — which is amazing when you consider what a STEMlord country it is & that Americans are e’en worse @ liberal arts like sociology, philosophy ( I can’t name a single good American philosopher ), &, as seen here, economists ( also no good American economists — all the English greats, like Adam Smith, Keynes, & Joan Robinson, are from the UK, while we’re stuck with Paul Samuelson, Milton Fucking Friedman, & Paul Krugman, which is like comparing bands like Nirvana & Alice in Chains to Nickelback & Creed ).

But, yeah, it would have made mo’ sense to cost mo’ lives so Americans can become slightly less terrible @ math.

Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.

This is the lamest o’ Appeal to Perfection fallacies e’er. Either way people were @ risk, so this was a case o’ the “least bad scenario”. The FDA themselves continued recommending the J&J vaccine as better than nothing. Only a mental child would think that during a deadly pandemic nobody should e’er have risks or make mistakes when rushing e’er.

Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

Also an unproven claim & irrelevant: people who are “working in earnest” but know they know nothing o’ biology are still dangerously irresponsible. If I hijacked a a tank “for the good o’ society”, nobody’s going to give a shit how earnest I am, other than whether or not to have me sent to an asylum.

Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.

This is straight-up my parody o’ centrists, O’Beefe: “Look, 1 side says that murder is necessary, the other side says that it is merely sometimes useful” ( who, relevantly, would later turn out to be the equivalent o’ the alt-right ). I swear to you that US-brand centrism is the biggest mental cancer in the world.

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat.

I can’t fucking believe this tremendous misunderstanding o’ how both objective reality & humans work. That’s right, all ideas are a guessing game: people who used their knowledge o’ biology, which is based on peer-reviewed studies & centuries o’ information, just “guessed right”. When I make a website @ work, it’s not ’cause I studied programming for years & know how the web works; I just happened to be lucky that day & can maybe feel the reason to gloat for my good gut instinct. This is the kind o’ idea only someone with no knowledge or skill in anything could think — pathetic & spiteful. The idea that this smug asshole trying to manufacture a “truce” when her side is clearly the wrong side o’ history is accusing people who were trying to prevent deaths o’ just wanting to gloat is colossal projection.

Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.

“Me, for instance”.

All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet.

Yes, policies that are life & death for millions is just culture war bullshit, but empty civility & decorum are vital.

& you yourself are writing on the internet. But sure, it’s e’eryone else who’s a crybaby.

These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive.

You’re right, but you decided to write this article &, e’en mo’ perplexing, The Atlantic decided to publish it, so here we are.

And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing.

No, but it is a mental failing, &, mo’ importantly, insisting you’re right with whate’er disarray o’ propaganda articles you wrote or whate’er inklings you made up in your head when you know you have less knowledge than experts who spent decades studying this subject is a moral failing, as you’re putting your pride as a “free thinker” ’bove actually helping society.

Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.

This is completely contradictory: by this writer’s own perspective, all decisions are based on luck, there is no free will, & therefore whether or not we move forward is out of our control, just as whether or not taking a vaccine was apparently a coin flip. In these times o’ uncertainty, whether or not “treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others” prevents us from moving forward could be right or could be wrong, & those o’ us who think that insulting idiots like this writer will help us “move forward” could be right, & if we’re not, well, we’re not to blame, ¿’cause how could we know? ¡There’s too much uncertainty! I love this implication that complex sociopolitical philosophical issues are far simpler than hard, materialist sciences like biology. Yes, this idiot’s simplistic, trite moralizing is rock solid, but how viruses & vaccines work is pure witchcraft.

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty.

¿Why not? ¿Is officially pardoning an insentient disease any worse than Roger Stone? No, ’course not — they’re the same thing.

We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation [—]

As we will see, this writer is 1 o’ them.

[—] while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.

Nope, ’cause they had a very easy choice: listen to the people who did have knowledge. Their preference for listening to charlatans o’er actual scientists is a social failing, & the kind o’ person who makes this mistake is going to make the same mistake ’gain & ’gain & will continue to be a burden on society, evident by the fact that this idiot, having not been content to cause harm in the world by their idiocy, is still writing articles.

Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips.

¿What? That’s a very hard accomplishment, since your family’s hiking tricks made no sense other than that you were bored & couldn’t be bothered to read real science.

But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go.

Keep in mind, e’en if we accept the assertion that the spread o’ COVID outside is mitigated by wind ( which is not the same as impossible ), we’re comparing the mistake o’ killing people to the mistake o’ not letting people enjoy the beach. The latter is sad, but hardly criminal. The fact that this writer thinks people who might have cost people time in the rays might have just as much to apologize for as people who helped people die is deranged & I’m amazed that this writer can have such lack o’ sense o’ shame that she can show her face in public, much less write for a newspaper, without having to wear a paper bag o’er her face. ( ¿But are paper bags truly effective @ protecting disgraceful people from their deep shame? There’s a lot o’ uncertainty ).

Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.”

Note that she only argued that kids were not @ high risk, so she made this recommendation with the full consciousness that she was putting teachers, specially ol’ teachers, @ risk o’ dying, & therefore, it is, in fact, accurate to call her a “teacher killer”, since she admits right here to knowingly recommending a scenario that would lead to mo’ deaths o’ teachers. But, ’gain, since COVID-deniers have no free will due to all that magical postmodern uncertainty, she can’t be a teacher killer, or anything, truly, since e’erything is in our minds.

It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high.

It is much mo’ important that we pay our respects to the dead feelings o’ this rich, spoiled fauxeconomist who has no place writing ’bout biology @ all than the people who died, declares virulent narcissist.

And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

Then maybe you shouldn’t have written this article.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

“Anyway, fuck the millions who died & the millions mo’ with lifelong health problems. Let’s focus on my personal bugbear”. I specially love how irrelevant high-dosage tutoring vs. extended school years is & how it’s focused on “cost-effectiveness”, rather than efficacy. Any halfway knowledgeable economist should know that the US wastes their money on the stupidest shit right & left & that any talk o’ “cost-effectiveness” is futile.

Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up.

Yes, let’s try to solve a problem by deliberately refusing to examine the roots o’ said problem. To be fair, that is how economists typically try to solve economic problems, which is why they suck @ that, too.

Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach[.]

They can start by recommending all their patients to stay ’way from The Atlantic & only read actually informative news sources.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well.

There’s a reason this 2nd sentence isn’t a standard saying: it’s complete nonsense. It’s only doom for the jackasses who made these “mistakes”. After all, ostracizing these people & news sources will create disincentives from fostering misinformation in the future, thereby making it less likely to happen in the future. You’d think an economist would know that, but as we’ve discussed many times, economists only understand personal responsibility when it comes to lowerclass people. Normal people should, ’course, be fired for bad results, but when an economist makes “mistakes”, we shouldn’t fire that economist from e’er writing for our paper, but continue giving them opportunities ( & thereby taking that opportunity from others ), despite doing nothing to merit it. This is the kind o’ meritocratic capitalist system that economists like this, who benefit quite well from it, strangely support a lot.

This writer has been very vague & evasive ’bout the “mistakes” that some nebulous people made. Let’s turn to Abigail Cartus, Ph.D, MPH & Justin Feldman, Sc.D, MPH @ Protean for background:

But despite its prominence, Oster’s work on COVID in schools has attracted little scrutiny—even though it has been funded since last summer by organizations that, without exception, have explicit commitments to opposing teacher’s unions, supporting charter schools, and expanding corporate freedom. In addition to grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Walton Family Foundation, and Arnold Ventures, Oster has received funding from far-right billionaire Peter Thiel. The Thiel grant awarded to Oster was administered by the Mercatus Center, the think tank founded and financed by the Koch family.

¡Le shock! ¡An economist accepting bribes awards for their studied work from rich, “libertarian” organizations — which, in their hate for government involvement, obsessively spend their money on influencing government; “laissez-faire” isn’t French for “rich people control people like dictators” for no reason — to give false authority to pseudoscience that benefits them! ¡But Volcker told me that the only asset economists had was their credibility! Well, Oster sold hers for a quick quid.

Note that liberal fascist The Atlantic ’gain gives a voice to someone under the patronage o’ the far-right — “liberal” media @ its finest.

Still, that’s hardly the worst thing one could —

But the headline statement in the new AAP report is the oft-repeated mantra that “no amount of alcohol should be considered safe in pregnancy.” Media reports have seized on this statement to renew a debate about the dangers of light drinking during pregnancy. Rather than acknowledging the obvious dangers of heavier drinking and working to address the circumstances that lead to it, we are back to discussing whether pregnant women should be shamed for having a half a glass of wine on their anniversary—or any old night.

To me, this highlights the very real downside of recommendations like this one, which do not involve any nuance. The bottom line is that while there is clear evidence of the dangers of heavy drinking—especially binge drinking—in pregnancy, the same cannot be said for low levels of alcohol consumption. As even the AAP report acknowledges, there is consensus on this issue. A large share of OBs in the U.S. report telling their pregnant patients that some alcohol is fine.

That is from Time magazine, by the way, which is, coincidentally, also 1 o’ the worst newspapers in the US. Unsurprisingly, the only academic source I could see who bothered to comment on this obvious troll had strong disagreements.

OK, that was a weird opinion to die on her sword for, but —

Emily Oster re-examines the stats on AIDS in Africa from an economic perspective and reaches a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about the spread of HIV on the continent is wrong.

O… O, dear god, no…

[T]to understand this you need to think about health the way than an economist does — as an investment. So if you’re a software engineer and you’re trying to think about whether to add some new functionality to your program, it’s important to think about how much it costs. It’s also important to think about what the benefit is. And one part of that benefit is how much longer you think this program is going to be active. If version 10 is coming out next week, there’s no point in adding more functionality into version nine.

I want to note that she isn’t e’en right ’bout software versioning here: for most software, version 9 would continue to receive updates, mainly security updates, for plenty o’ time after version 10 comes out, ’cause people don’t all update to the next version right ’way. Some can’t ’cause new versions usually introduce incompatibilities with other software. Considering the newsworthy controversies o’er decades-ol’ Windows operating systems finally having their support ended e’ery time it happens, I’m surprised she didn’t know this.

But your health decisions are the same. Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that’s a costly investment in your health.

I wish I were surprised, but, yes, this truly is how many economists think. This is what happens when economists think economics is nothing but math & whate’er gut instincts they come up with, ignoring all other sciences. Yes, eating a cookie ’stead o’ a carrot is just like having sex with someone who might have AIDS, ’cept all the many biological ways it’s completely different.

Actually, despite what many online have been gossiping ’bout, this talk isn’t ’bout how spending money on AIDS treatment is a waste o’ money, but spending money on AIDS education is a waste o’ money compared to… decreasing trade — which is, admittedly, a shocking admission from a mainstream economist, who usually consider trade to be the best thing e’er fore’er. There seems to be no talk o’ decreasing spending on the general problem o’ AIDS in Africa. TED Talks probably demand far higher taste than vulgar The Atlantic & Time, so she couldn’t go full mask-off ( pun not intended ).

That said, the talk does end rather tastelessly:

But more than anything, you know, I’m an academic. And when I leave here, I’m going to go back and sit in my tiny office, and my computer, and my data. And the thing that’s most exciting about that is every time I think about research, there are more questions. There are more things that I think that I want to do. And what’s really, really great about being here is I’m sure that the questions that you guys have are very, very different than the questions that I think up myself. And I can’t wait to hear about what they are. So thank you very much.

I have ne’er seen someone so excited & eager ’bout people dying o’ AIDS.

Anyway, her arguments are debatable, considering the simplistic assumptions in this admittedly short talk —

O, ¿what’s that, Forbes?

This shift in focus raises the question: Is treatment the right solution? In my work I have assumed that our goal in the face of the epidemic is to maximize life. In other words, to save the most years of life with the funding available. Once I decided this, the cost-benefit calculations that economists are so familiar with told me how.

As cold and callous as this may sound, after comparing the number of years saved by antiretrovirals with years saved by other interventions like education, I found that treatment is not an effective way to combat the epidemic. It may be that my conclusions are best laid aside in the name of morality and compassion. But in making the tough decisions about how to spend limited resources, we should understand the economic consequences of our choices.

Ah, here we go. Now, Forbes, they allow you to go full sociopath. There can be no nobler death than to sacrifice yourself to capitalist efficiency, specially if you’re poor.

That’s obviously a wrenching question. But if we choose treatment, we must know what we are giving up. The tradeoffs are there whether we want to face them or not. What economics can do is tell us–in numbers, in black and white–what we give up and what we gain.

We recently developed a simple, easy solution: give up dumbass loser Elon Musk throwing his money down the drain on Twitter so he can shitpost Bill Gates pregnant memes, pour Twitter down the drain like rancid milk, & give that $44 billion to AIDS treatment. I love how economists try to contrive these imaginary tough decisions as if the world doesn’t waste 99% o’ its resources on the dumbest shit. Economists would make their jobs a lot easier if they just recommended giving up shit like Elon Musk — hell, that’s a win-win.

Anyway, I’m intrigued by this new development o’ 4chan Science, clearly meant purely to troll & bolster itself on its clickbaiting audacity rather than any serious thought ’hind them. I thought the era o’ edgelordism might’ve been o’er, but I was wrong. ¡There was just too much uncertainty! Hopefully we can agree to an amnesty toward those who mistakenly believed that the era o’ edgelordism was o’er & that ’twas safe for us to leave our homes without being subjected to cringe.