Incentives and Coronapanic

by philg

In response to Recycle Chinese and Soviet anti-landlord propaganda to bolster support for Rochelle Walensky’s rent moratorium order?, Mitch wrote:

So getting vaccinated and slowing the spread increases one’s chance of having to pay rent. The incentives are not well aligned.

(The government says nobody has to pay rent in an area where COVID-19 transmission is occurring (90 percent of current renters covered). And they say that getting the vaccine will stop transmission (except that it doesn’t, according to the same government). Thus, it would be financially irrational for a community of renters to get vaccinated.)

“New Rule Raises Question: Who’ll Pay for All the Covid Tests?” (NYT) also raises a question of how people will respond to economic incentives:

Among the employers taking a different approach is Rhodes College in Tennessee: It will require unvaccinated students without a medical or religious exemption to pay a $1,500 fee per semester to cover the costs associated with a weekly coronavirus testing program.

To avoid paying $3,000 per year, in other words, an unvaccinated student need only get some card stock to feed into a laser printer and create his/her/zir/their own vaccination record. HIPAA would prevent the school from calling whatever “healthcare professional or clinic site” is written down on the record, right? In any case, on my CDC card, the clinic site information does not contain the full city/state nor any contact info. A college would have to be very motivated indeed to try to determine whether a vaccination card is genuine. The vaxyes service checks the lot number against the date of administration, but presumably this would also check out fine if the student copied the information from a virtuous friend who actually got the shots:

An initial review to ensure a match personal identification and vaccine card, vaccine dates make sense, lot numbers, and possible fraud markers.

If colleges want the unvirtuous to admit their thoughtcrime and unreasonable resistance to government pressure, wouldn’t it be smarter to offer the testing at no charge? Then the only incentive to forge a vaccine card would be avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of weekly testing, not $3,000 in cash on top of that.

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How the Taliban can fund and run Afghanistan forever

by philg

“The Taliban Have Claimed Afghanistan’s Real Economic Prize” (NYT):

How exactly the Taliban plan to keep all systems running, in one of the poorest countries of the world that depends on more than $4 billion a year in official aid and where foreign donors have been covering 75 percent of government spending, is an urgent question. The state’s bankruptcy has tempted some Western donors into thinking that financial pressure — in the form of threats to withhold humanitarian and development funding — could be brought to bear on the new rulers of Afghanistan. Germany already warned it would cut off financial support to the country if the Taliban “introduce Shariah law.”

But those hopes are misplaced. Even before their blitz into the capital over the weekend, the Taliban had claimed the country’s real economic prize: the trade routes — comprising highways, bridges and footpaths — that serve as strategic choke points for trade across South Asia. With their hands on these highly profitable revenue sources and with neighboring countries, like China and Pakistan, willing to do business, the Taliban are surprisingly insulated from the decisions of international donors. What comes next in the country is uncertain — but it’s likely to unfold without a meaningful exertion of Western power.

One reason foreign donors inflate their own importance in Afghanistan is that they do not understand the informal economy, and the vast amounts of hidden money in the war zone. Trafficking in opium, hashish, methamphetamines and other narcotics is not the biggest kind of trade that happens off the books: The real money comes from the illegal movement of ordinary goods, like fuel and consumer imports. In size and sum, the informal economy dwarfs international aid.

For example, our study of the border province of Nimruz, published this month by the Overseas Development Institute, estimated that informal taxation — the collection of fees by armed personnel to allow safe passage of goods — raised about $235 million annually for the Taliban and pro-government figures. By contrast, the province received less than $20 million a year in foreign aid.

In other words, Afghanistan is in some ways like a super filthy version of Switzerland.

Also interesting, Antonio Garcia Martinez on recent events:

… the cream of American society and the flower of its finest universities, can only understand the world as projections of the country’s own domestic neuroses. Our current elites, whether in media or politics, squint at the strange peoples and languages of whatever international conflict and only see who or what they can map to their internal gallery of heroes and villains: Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?

And if the situation can’t be mapped, such as Afghanistan or the recent protests in Cuba, it’s utterly ignored for being just completely beyond human comprehension or concern.

This is the true privilege of being an American in 2021 (vs. 1981): Enjoying an imperium so broad and blinding, you’re never made to suffer the limits of your understanding or re-assess your assumptions about a world that, even now, contains regions and peoples and governments antithetical to everything you stand for. If you fight demons, they’re entirely demons of your own creation, whether Cambridge Analytica or QAnon or the ‘insurrection’ or supposed electoral fraud or any of a host of bogeymen, and you get to tweet #resist while not dangling from the side of an airplane or risking your life on a raft to escape.

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Archival properties of CD-ROMs after 20 years

by philg

As part of the move from Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State, I decided to dispose of all of the CD-ROMs that were lying around in the garage and hangar. These contained backups of long-discarded PCs, 600 MB drum scans that I previously considered too large to maintain on an NAS or local drive, etc.

Despite the crummy storage conditions (temps ranging from 0 degrees to 100 degrees F and high humidity at times), only 2 out of nearly 100 CD-ROMs were problematic for reading with the $75 ASUS Blu-ray burner purchased in 2015 as part of a new PC build. (Would all of you cryptominers please let me know when you’ve stopped so that I can refresh this 6.5-year-old machine?)

Among the scans, I found this one of an early coronascientist:

Here’s a Fuji 617 slide of an oil refinery in Benicia, California:

Check out the detail:

Not bad for old tech and a single image rather than stitched-together multiples!

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Never say never: Maskachusetts back in masks

by philg

Back in April, when we told friends and neighbors in Massachusetts about the decision to follow the reverse underground railroad to freedom (see Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children), they scoffed at the idea that Florida was a more reliable source of Freedom of Assembly, freedom for children to exercise without masks, in-person education, etc. COVID-19 was finished, vanquished by wise leadership and vaccines. They confidently predicated that, after the 15-month state of emergency officially ended on June 15, 2021, the residents of Massachusetts would never again be ordered to wear masks, to refrain from gathering, to keep children at home, etc.

From our former town:

Effective on 12:01 a.m. August 20, 2021, face coverings are required for all individuals aged two years
and above in all indoor public spaces, or private spaces open to the public…

(the schools, of course, decided months ago that children would be ordered to wear masks, even those children whose parents elect to experiment on them with an emergency authorized vaccine dosage calibrated for adults; this may be moot for urban schools, which closed down for nearly a year during the 2020-2021 coronapanic)

It is currently illegal to be indoors in Provincetown without a mask: “Provincetown Approves Indoor Mask Mandate To Stem Spread” (a bandana is okay when meeting new friends from Grindr!). The situation is similar out across the water: “Three Martha’s Vineyard towns issue mask mandate” (Boston Herald, August 17). How about staying home in the suburbs? Belmont went back into masks on August 9.

Keep in mind that the typical peak period for respiratory viruses in New England is still 3-6 months in the future. The above are the restrictions for the ordinarily flu/cold-free summer (and last summer was more or less COVID-free as well).

The “curve,” according to The Google:

The Leaderboard of the #Science-following Righteous:

(Florida, of course, has a much uglier curve right now, in what seems to be a pattern going forward of high COVID during the peak summer months. But the fact that the government hasn’t caved in to Karens’ demands for muscular orders and restrictions is confidence-inspiring. Unlike most other states, Florida does not pretend that governors’ orders and bandanas are a magic solution for preventing viruses from killing humans. The current COVID-19 wave in Florida is a good stress test for the residents’ and government’s commitment to children, education, freedom, and the Constitution.)

For lockdown state children, from Disney+, Goofy in How to Stay At Home, Episode 1 of which is “How to Wear a Mask”:

Related:

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Elizabeth Warren’s plane at Oshkosh

by philg

Parked along the main drag at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) was a homebuilt airplane with Native American portraits airbrushed on the vertical stabilizer:

As we walked by on Day 1 of the event, I said to the kids, “that must be Elizabeth Warren’s plane.” On every subsequent day, we took the 15-passenger hotel shuttle van and, of course, it was always jammed. We would drive by this airplane once in the morning and once in the evening. Every time, our 5-year-old would shout out “Elizabeth Warren’s plane!” for all of the other hotel guests to hear.

(Note the stats on the plane. 2,700 hours to build over 5 years and 3 months. That’s perseverance!)

Coincidentally, at almost the exact moment that our 5-year-old was announcing the Senator’s airplane, I received a group chat message/photo from a friend who is taking his family around the National Parks: “I found Elizabeth Warren’s relatives.”

Related:

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Where does former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani go?

by philg

“Russia says Afghan president fled with cars and helicopter full of cash – RIA” (Reuters):

Russia’s embassy in Kabul said on Monday that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in, the RIA news agency reported.

“As for the collapse of the (outgoing) regime, it is most eloquently characterised by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan,” Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Kabul, was quoted as saying by RIA.

“Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” he was quoted as saying.

Where does Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai go to spend this cash? (And should Andrew Cuomo join him? Presumably any place that welcomes Ghani isn’t going to be too concerned about the things Cuomo is accused of.)

My guess: Belarus. The EU and the US already hate the government of Belarus. Immigrants enrich us culturally and economically, and no human being is illegal, but it is “warfare” when Belarus allows low-skill migrants from Iraq into the EU (see “Latvia and Lithuania act to counter migrants crossing Belarus border” (Guardian))

Related:

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Nostalgia for the old neighborhood

by philg

Discovered in the entryway of our old condo building in Cambridge:

I.e., one of the local righteous had taken the trouble to write “Please do not lock bike on tree — damages the bark” and then the additional trouble to place the note in a Ziploc bag (or maybe the recipient decided to preserve the note via Ziploc?).

I do not expect anyone in Florida to go to these lengths!

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Annals of Government Computer Programming

by philg

On August 4, 2021, the Web site for renewing a Global Entry card tells me that I can’t start the renewal process until September 28, 2020:

One for the textbook chapters on the merits of the IF statement…

The site did not get better. On nearly every page, before I started answering questions, I would be greeted with a banner at the top:

The plus side of coronapanic:

And the renewal might involve a “remote virtual interview”.

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What do we think of the American defeat in Afghanistan?

by philg

Our puppet government has folded and we now have to recognize that we achieved nothing after spending 20 years, 100,000+ Afghan lives, 3,000 American and European lives, and unknown $trillions (the spending will continue as U.S. soldiers sign up for disability benefits and Afghans immigrate to the U.S. and sign up for multiple generations of means-tested public housing, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.).

What will change going forward? Will we still be just as enthusiastic about wars we can’t win?

Related:

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Karenhood in Massachusetts measured quantitatively

by philg

After 40+ years of sitting at a computer and typing, my back is in no shape for packing and moving to the Florida Free State. A friend’s 16-year-old soccer star and some of his teammates have been essential to our sorting/discarding/packing process. The muscle turned out to have a quantitative measurement of Karenhood in Massachusetts. Neighbors in his suburban town called the police on 19 separate occasions after observing the high school soccer team practicing (outdoors) without strict mask discipline. (There were more than 19 individual calls to the police. In fact, during one practice 5 different Mask Samaritans called the police.)

The most dramatic COVID-19 team response was five town officials converging on the soccer field. Two coaches, two people from the public health department, and a police officer.

Very loosely related, from Coronavirus Rescue Team (May 13, 2020):

(I told the above story to a woman who lives in Concord, Maskachusetts, center of the BLM movement, at least to judge by the prevalence of lawn signs. “I was walking with my sister in a wide-open field with nobody around,” she said. “A car stopped and the driver yelled at us for not wearing masks.”)

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