We’re literally paying tax dollars to make getting a ride more difficult and more expensive.

Excellent short piece.  From Taxpayer funded uber shortages: how worker welfare works against the general welfare by El Gato Malo.  

I agree 100%. this is a simple, testable hypothesis. so make a mental note and pay attention to the places where this happens.  I’ll wager you’re going to see this play out just as the theory predicts.

This will validate one simple thing: we’re literally paying tax dollars to make getting a ride more difficult and more expensive.

You’re paying to inconvenience yourself and stop the economy from adapting and recovering as it should.

 Coincides with a friend's argument which he has been making for a number of years - no matter what the States declared justification for a program or policy, the outcome is always to make life more expensive and harder for ordinary citizens.  

Read the whole thing.  I did like his illustration to the piece.

Click to enlarge.  

Offbeat Humor

Academics: “This paper addresses a gap in research that has been bedeviling scholars for years...”

The gap: pic.twitter.com/iO2BUuNz4s

— gal debored (@ckayerawlings) May 1, 2021

 

Nocebo

We all recognize the concept of placebos.  

The placebo effect, is said to occur when positive expectations improve an outcome.

I am not sure it ever occurred to me to think about the mirror concept, nocebos.  

A nocebo effect is said to occur when negative expectations of the patient regarding a treatment cause the treatment to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would have.  For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can suffer that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance.  The complementary concept, the placebo effect, is said to occur when positive expectations improve an outcome. Both placebo and nocebo effects are presumably psychogenic, but they can induce measurable changes in the body.  One article that reviewed 31 studies on nocebo effects reported a wide range of symptoms that could manifest as nocebo effects including nausea, stomach pains, itching, bloating, depression, sleep problems, loss of appetite, sexual dysfunction and severe hypotension.

Which one might extend to the media hysteria machine, always creating new political, economic, or scientific existential threat to stampede people into illogical or unreflective decisions.  We are living in a nocebo matrix where the mainstream media and academia work hard to create bad expectations about the future when in fact all people living in the world are far better off than at any time in history.

Data Talks

Related: Scientific papers are getting less readable: fewer common words; more jargon https://t.co/2pVxbbBi0k pic.twitter.com/ZQBEicfs8n

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) May 2, 2021

 

After my boundless wisdom and ranks of So many books

Anonymous epitaph for Democritus, the laughing philosopher, in the Greek Anthology 7.56

This was the source of Democritus’ laughter, as he would say immediately:

‘Did I not say, while laughing, that everything is laughter in the end?

For I too, after my boundless wisdom and ranks of

So many books, lie beneath a tomb as a joke.’ 

 

῏Ην ἄρα Δημοκρίτοιο γέλως τόδε, καὶ τάχα λέξει·

„Οὐκ ἔλεγον γελόων· ‚Πάντα πέλουσι γέλως’;

καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ σοφίην μετ’ ἀπείρονα καὶ στίχα βίβλων

τοσσατίων κεῖμαι νέρθε τάφοιο γέλως.” 

 

Cape Cod Evening, 1939 by Edward Hopper

Cape Cod Evening, 1939 by Edward Hopper

Clcik to enlarge.

History

The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius is an ancient Roman equestrian statue on Capitoline Hill, Rome. The statue was erected ca. 175 AD. Its original location is debated: the Roman Forum and Piazza Colonna (where the Column of Marcus Aurelius stands) have been proposed. pic.twitter.com/ja2bn7Celg

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) May 1, 2021

 

Though it was not yet practised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts of it.

From A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.  

But those were trifling things to what followed immediately after; for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in June the infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills rose high; the articles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth began to swell; for all that could conceal their distempers did it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts of it.

Parallels with today:

The desperate need for human interaction.

The desperate need for mobility.  Just as we were astonished to find shelves cleared of cleaners and paper towels and the like, in 1665 Londoners were even more dependent on their mobility to purchase needed goods.  No refrigerators so most homes would have had at most a couple of days of food supply which, absent helping neighbors, would lead to starvation. 

The abhorrence associated with shutting down the city.  Since 1665 we have feared government coercively shutting down our homes and the economy.  Apparently there is a well grounded atavistic urban populace memory of the consequences of shutdowns.  

 

An Insight

Your fear should not affect my freedom.

— Isabella Riley (@isabellarileyus) May 2, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Makes you proud to be British. pic.twitter.com/TlgVe6Ftgz

— George (@wappingraces) May 3, 2021