Good morning. Hello. How are you? #612
Hectic morning, Doctor's office, supercilious CVS man, Emily Oster and the "economic style of reasoning," factory floors, Moderna vax for kids, Grimes felonies, Kestrin's win, Licorice Pizza
Good morning! Hello! How are you? Sorry we are running about 90 mins late this morning. Busy morning. I had a doctor’s appointment, Emma had an eye doctor’s appointment, had to go to CVS to get medicines from the supercilious faux-polite bald guy who’s really quite insufferable. Drives me crazy, that guy. Really need to move everything else over to the nice local pharmacy. Also had to get a red pepper for my mother in law because I forgot to put it in the online grocery delivery. EXCITING STUFF.
Did anyone in Boston go to the Nick Cave show the other night? Can you give me a quick report? How was it? It was not Bad Seeds, correct? Nick, Warren and… a couple singers? Kinda like the one he did at Town Hall back in, god, 2004 or so? I’m looking at the setlist and not super excited, though I do love it when he does “God is in the House” at the piano. Still, sad to miss my first Nick tour in, like, thirty years or so?
Doctor was good. She had no news about what happened to my old doctor, who mysteriously disappeared. And if she did know, well, she is a very good liar, which I’m gonna say I appreciate in my doctor. Yes I am so strong and healthy.
Blood pressure was same as it always was — just under the worry zone, technically fine, but technically fine like your older brother leaning over you saying “I’m not touching you.” Cholesterol fine, Wegovy prescription renewed, she was great. She is now my new doctor. Now I have a recipient in MyChart to send messages too again. Jane coincidentally has an appointment with her next month so I guess we’ll make her Jane’s doctor too. So long, Dr. Paul, you were swell.
Doctor’s office was pretty safe. COVID protocols were decent. One dumb old guy was like “yeah I’ll put my mask on do you want me to put on a hazmat suit too? A scuba suit? heh heh he.” Like he complied but had to make sure he was a dick about complying. This, I know for a fact, is a bad approach to life because I routinely do it with my wife.
“Do you want to bring this laundry basket upstairs for me? Filled with laundry of yours that I washed?”
“I absolutely do not want to do that but I will.”
Congrats Rick, you did the chore and managed to get zero credit for it.
Also, dude, you’re in a medical facility, where people go when they’re sick. Why would you not welcome the opportunity to lessen your chances of catching something gross. You don’t know! You don’t know if that old woman next to you has the plague!
Jesus.
I love how this reads as totally paranoid, even after a pandemic proved all the germophobes right.
Protean Magazine, with which I am not familiar, had a very good “takedown” of Emily Oster, the economist-turned-parenting-advice-turned-epidemiologist from whom people love to send articles around. She’s always kind of bugged me since that book about “the family firm,” but I could never put my finger on it. Before reading this article, I would have been surprised to learn that she received funding from Peter Theil and the Walton Family (also what is it with these people having a job, getting tons of grants, and still charging for their Patreons and Substacks?), but after reading it, it makes perfect sense. The article links to a great essay by Emily Popp Berman, an economist with whom I have historically been much more in agreement, talking about the “economic style of reasoning,” or the act of “following the data” at the expense of common sense or precaution. The article contrasts this with the “precautionary principle.” The difference would be, for example, in banning a new chemical until science conclusively proves it’s safe, which we absolutely do not do in this society, vs allowing all chemicals until it’s conclusively proven they’re not safe, which is what we do, which is why half the nation’s waterways are polluted with PFOAs.
The way of thinking is so pervasive on both the right and the left in America that it’s hard to even talk about it, because people so completely equate it with “common sense” that they can’t see the biases built in. The analogy I use is the factory floor. Even a pure capitalist understands the need for safety on the factory floor, because the risks are huge but also quantifiable. If someone is injured, your whole production line stops. You incur massive losses from goods not manufactured. You’ll probably incur OSHA fines, your insurance premiums might go up, to say nothing of the potential lawsuits. It is a very large amount of money, so the default “economic style of thinking” is, in this case, essentially the same as the “precautionary principle,” and many factories say “safety first,” “zero tolerance for risk” and whatnot. They do not see this as at odds with their version of “rational thought” because the risk number is huge. But really, they’re acting that way because the risk number is huge and quantifiable. in other instances where the risk number is definitely huge, but not quantifiable, the zero-tolerance approach is still the rational one, yet most “economic school of thought’ people do not see it that way, because their data-driven approach cannot facilitate an unknown number. This isn’t exactly my critique with Oster but I do think it’s prt of it, and it’s something that has been bugging me about the “smart” portion of the “open us up” advocates. They’re data-driven, which is fine, that’s their choice. But the way they act as if the precautionary principle is irrational, or they can’t even grasp it exists, well, that’s maddening.
Some good news on the COVID front, apparently Moderna is imminently going to seek emergency authorization for their vaccine to be approved for use for children under five. This is very exciting. Emma has been saying for a while that Moderna was the dark horse and they were probably going to beat Pfizer to the finish line and it turned out Emma was right. Also, a month or so ago Emily Oster santimoniously asked if you’re still waiting to release your kid out into the world I would ask you what you’re waiting for. The answer is a vaccine. Or even better, no pandemic! It is so endlessly maddening that this is now an unreasonable thing to expect of the richest most poewerful country in the history of humanity.
Ed Yong: “America Is Zooming Through the Pandemic Panic-Neglect Cycle.” Read this if you want to get very very upset but also feel like you’re not crazy.
In other news, apparently renowned pop artist Grimes hacked, DDOS’d and blackmailed Hipster Runoff into oblivion and rather than viewing this as the felony with no statue of limitations that it is, she views it as an act of empowerment and I’m gonna go ahead and say that seems a bit shocking and sociopathic to me.
The other thing I have to report is that it was a very exciting breakfast day yesterday. We finished a carton of eggs, a package of veggie sausage and two sticks of butter: the stick I keep in the egg carton so that my wife does not mess with my egg butter when she’s cooking (see? Nuptial self-sabotage runs strong in this one) and the one we keep on the counter in a butter dish for the waffles. Just so many new things. Also there was no Vital Times in the new carton of Vital Farms eggs and I am shook it’s a real breach of quality control from an otherwise impeccable company.
Also I would like to thank award-winning director Kestrin Pantera for what proved to be some of the most valuable advice of the pandemic: You can just wash out your soap dish with water and it dries very quickly. This woman has time to offer such advice as well as go and win the Narrative Spotlight Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival. Congrats, Kestrin, that is amazing. I cannot wait to see this film.
We finally watched Licorice Pizza last night and it was absurdly good despite its problems. I mean, that guy was super racist and that is totally what the 70’s were like, but I will defer to others in the evaluation of whether it was racist to depict such things in a modern film. I am not an expert on that topic and will just listen. But my god, in other aspects, just an amazing film. I do kind of wish he captured coming of age in the 70’s in another town besides LA, but I guess PTA was blessed with growing up there instead of Alaska. It’s a shame because it gives the film a bit of a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood vibe when it really could have been more of a Linklater affair, Slacker meets Boyhood meets Everbody Wants Some!!. Meets his own Inherent Vice. Meets Harold and Maude. I don’t know that makes it seem kinda derivative and it was, and a bit meandering and a bit too set-piecey patchwork, but i still found it impressive, when I wasn’t squirming.
Okay gotta get going wanna catch up on things today so I can get my treadmill time in and my map flashcards and my 750 word and Quicken updates and checking my work stats and covid stats and reading my newsletters and all of my neurotic daily chores before work gets too busy. W Hotel Lobby playlist this morning. I think of the video to Orbital’s “Are We Here” almost once a week since it came out. I wish I could get that video in 4K it is a masterpiece. Really ties into my favorite motto “after enlightment, the laundry.”