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berlinerbaer

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Posts posted by berlinerbaer

  1. Random immunology questions... Can someone explain why people are fretting so much about antibody levels when the B cells responsible for making them last the rest of your life? Is the concern that low initial levels during infection would allow the virus to gain a foothold before antibody levels rebound? Can the virus suppress antibody production?

  2. 5 hours ago, Zhorn96 said:

    Wtf… multiple reports emerging that Wilcox turned Oregon down after interviewing and being offered the job.  Someone look in the sky for flying pigs cause I know the world is crazy now

    My first guess would be that they tried to lowball him and he said no, but this is Oregon. Duck fans would flip if they found out the school wanted to go with a B coach to save a few mil a year.

    More likely is that Oregon wanted some concessions from him, like who to bring on as assistants, who to recruit and how, the exact technique in kissing Phil Knights' ass, etc. Lots of pressure in Eugene, and Wilcox heard Duck fans booing when Cal almost pushed that game back in October into overtime.

    In the pigs fly department, there are vague suggestions filtering down from the insider boards that Wilcox actually got concessions out of Cal. Not just an extension for himself but some sort of lasting commitment to the program, maybe a relaxing of the admissions requirements now that the team leads the conference in APR and maybe something pertaining the grad school and the portal. 

  3. Oregon has chosen to prioritize recruiting over all else, essentially doubling down on the Cristobal strategy. Time will tell if Lanning is a better coach than Cristobal.

    It's odd because the high water mark at Oregon was with Chip and Helfrich, guys really good at the Xs and Os. It worked because the program basically attracts top talent regardless of who is running things.

    The OC hire is critical. 

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  4. On 11/23/2021 at 2:47 PM, Ojo Rojo said:

    Most.  Not all.

    I envision it sort of like the scene in Lord of the Flies where Jack's tribe sees the naval officer and realizes what they've been doing is crazy.

    An then the naval officer turns back to look at his warship.

  5. 10 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

    Wilcox can recruit.  Chip can't.  Or doesn't like to.  And recruiting is the lifeblood of Oregon. And any school really.  If Chip goes, we need a relentless recruiter to go toe-to-toe with Lincoln.

    Wilcox is sucking shit through a straw at Cal, admittedly a recruiter's nightmare. Chip kicked ass at Oregon, a school that recruits itself.

    I can't tell who really is the better recruiter but it doesn't matter. If down to those two, Oregon is going to go with what worked before.

  6. 4 hours ago, Uncle Nate said:

    Tech hiring Tim Deruyter to be the new Defensive Coordinator.

    I think this is a great hire for us.  Time to try a real attacking defense on the South Plains and rid ourselves of the bend-until-you-break styles we've been using for the past 20+ years.

    In his first year at Cal he took a unit long neglected by Sonny Dykes and made them dominant. The defense is still decent now that he's been gone a couple of years but the change is noticeable.

    Good hire. Hopefully now you have a HC who won't let the offense go to shit.

  7. 1 hour ago, SDG said:

    Cals fully vaccinated so what's the issue?  

    Cal is the issue. Cal and the City of Berkeley.

    The City insisted on testing the entire team after a few players tested positive before Cal played Arizona. That revealed many positive but asymptomatic cases. The University then forced those players into isolation for a period of time, despite some of them subsequently testing negative. I'm not sure if the overreach was team-wide testing, the isolation period, or both.

     

  8. 50 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

    I had a long cat post that I somehow lost on my iPhone. But yeah- you (or at least the bast majority of progressives) would shit on a plan like that coming from someone like Huckabee or Santorum or hawtley or Trump, and those are the types that would be most likely to suggest something like that because they understand the power of cracking that FDR coalition that ran the country for about 7 decades in the house and that guys like Reagan and W and Trump co-opted a bit with Regan democrats, compassionate conservatism and angry nationalism respectively. 
    I’ve had my money where my mouth is since the day I opened up my first business straight out of law school at 24 years old- everyone I’ve ever managed and employee has been on profit share and been treated like an owner in the organization (profit shares- productivity bonuses- solicitation of ideas for how things could work better/be better) because that’s they best way to incentivize human nature to make it a force for good as opposed to fighting it and getting steamrolled by it. This isn’t out of character for me. 
    It’s just not ever going to happen, nobody is suggesting anything like this, nobody ever will, so the best that can be hoped for is to elect the person likely to do the least amount of harm to the country. 

    Bro, Trump's criminal justice reform bill passed the House and Senate with total Democratic support. The only nays came from Republicans. Trump's CARES Act passed overwhelmingly.

    Dems will give a Republican president a win if it is good legislation. 

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  9. 6 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

    Back of the envelope math:

    There are 3.75 million babies born in the US.  Lets say you wanted to set up a scale where every one of them got $1,000 at birth no matter how wealthy the family, but that the poorest got $10,000.00 and the median got $5,000, and the bottom got $1,000.  Blended average of $5,000 per kid lets say. 

    3.5 million times 5 is 17.5 million.  Carry the 3 decimals and that's what- 17.5 billion.  That seems like dick all nothing to the size of our government right now.  If that earned 8% (annualized rate of return in the stock market over the past 50 years is 10.9%) that $10,000 would be worth $80,000 when a kid turned 27 years old according to the law of 72.  So- if you want to go to school you have $40,000 to spend and that's plausible that you could go to a state school, work part time and over the summer, graduate in 4 years and be debt free). Or, better yet you could join the peace corps or get a menial job that will hire an 18 year old, figure out what you want to do as an apprentice in life and be looking forward to $80k cash on the barrel head to help you buy a house or start a business with the skills you've been learning for the last year. Or maybe you've grown up enough to say- I think I need to go to night school b/c this is really what I want to do with my life.  Or trade school.  Or community college.  The possibilities are endless. I'd sure as shit have no complaint if someone laid something like this out with $18 billion a year going to this program.  I would think from a practical standpoint you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to vote for this.  And hell, if we are really ok with spending trillions then lets look retrospectively at all the kids that haven't reached 18 yet and say- what would this look like if we took 1 trillion the first year for this program and just gave it to every kid equally they'd all get $14,000.00 put into that account.  If you means tested it somewhat and gave more to the kids closer to 18 to put in their account you could probably scratch that one check and make that work for everyone under 18, and spend the low low low amount of $18 billion a year to keep it self sustained.

    Bam, every kid in America now would have a legacy, regardless of what color they are, where they were born etc.  And, I think you'd have widespread popular support for stuff like this. And it would be fair.  And it would improve lives.  

    So- 3 things if we are just giving away money that would make everything better and actually might have a snowballs chance in hell of changing a ton of lives over the course of the years:

    1) Make a payment that's an investment to everyone that's a kid now on a 1 time basis that would net them $40-$100k depending upon if they cashed out for school at 18 or some other investment later in life at 25.  $1 trillion dollar up front cost tag and 18 billion a year

    2) subsidize a mortgage for everyone that needs help for a subsidy.   Use the section 8 money for ownership instead of rent- that gets us already to 5.5 million families.  Say that the government will guarantee every mortgage for a house that's 80% of median value (that would be $216,000 house nationwide).  Everyone who buys a house for 80% of median gets a no money down note at 5% interest.  The government would probably actually make money on this deal!  People don't really default on their house notes- even for the worst of the worst mortgages that were subprime- in the worst of the worst home market the default rate was only like 18%- if you talk about all mortgages nationwide I don't think it ever got higher than like 2 or 3 percent.  What killed the economy in the housing crisis wasn't repo's- it was asshole types on wall street with their crazy fucking exotic schemes to bundle notes, leverage them and sell them.  If the US government ran a market for poor people that need help for this kind of housing and they rant that like George fucking Baylie at the savings and loan- any guarantee on these mortgages in the program would likely be a rounding error. It would cost nothing.

    3) Put all EITC into a portfolio that can be used only for major life events or retirement or something like that.  For all others allow them to use a portion of their social security money to put into this portfolio.  Don't change social security. This isn't a social security program- this is a legacy type program.  Match payments into this account the way that happens with a 401k up to a certain amount based upon income.  Give people that otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance at that. 

     

    Bam- now everyone that wants to owns a house, every kid has a legacy to go to school with or start a life with and everyone owns something throughout the course of their life.  And it doesn't cost all that much money compared to what we blow all the time. 

    This is just back of the napkin math and off the cuff thoughts as I'm sitting here avoiding work and trying to solve the problems of the world. I'm sure it could be fine tuned and made much better.  But-- and this is important- it would actually improve lives permanently and we could probably get 80% buy in from the population.  But no, we aren't looking for programs on a basis of "will they work and will they affect a meaningful change" b/c we are so fucking short sighted and we'd rather tear each other apart over all sorts of stupid shit.

    This all sounds good to me but candidates have proposed something in this general ball park and nobody's been chomping at the bit to vote for it besides progressives. Andrew Yang comes to mind but so does Joe Biden and the child care payments that have been going out for the past several months after the latest stimulus package. No hypotheticals needed. That's real world stuff you can point to.

    And guess what? Biden's approval is in the gutter. No, not because of the payments, but at least in spite of them.

    It tangentially reminds me of Obamacare and how the Dems got nuked from orbit electorally the following year, except that was a direct cause and effect. But guess what? It's the law of the land. It was an irreversible step in the right direction.

    I like good policy too, way more than I like the teams that come up with them. If we could possibly get election reform as well as some real lasting action on climate change this term (BIG if), I would really take the sting out of the Republicans taking control of Congress and the presidency in 2024.

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  10. 23 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Well, what did kind of happen is that Democrats did used to rely on a very ignorant portion of the electorate that could be pandered to by promising "stuff."  The proverbial "free shit army."

    Trump co-opted big chunks of the "free shit army" and a whole other very ignorant portion of the electorate, not on the grounds that they would get any free shit (never did anyway), but instead just by demonizing and blaming others for the plight of the free shit army, while continuing to cornhole the free shit army at great depth and speed.

    At least the free shit army tried to vote in their own interest.

    People forget, but Trump did more than pander to the "free shit army".

    He ran a populist campaign. Yeah, that included racism and grievance but he also told everyone he wanted to tax the rich and "drain the swamp". Those are progressive policies. He co-opted the left as much as the right. Politically savvy considering he was running against a centrist. He then took corruption to heights never before seen.

    Not specifically responding to you, just pointing this out.

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  11. So the Dems get blowback because of their fringe who want acceptance of inequality and equal rights but Republicans don't feel any repercussions from theirs, despite theirs basically staging a violent coup last January, trying to kidnap a sitting governor, and drowning in conspiracy and misinformation, among other things?

    Ok

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  12. 56 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    What does that even mean? What are you suggesting people do? 

    He is making an argument that is growing among the Right. Climate change denial is becoming unpopular, so the next argument isn't whether it's occurring, or even if we are responsible. The next few decades are instead going to be spent arguing about whether we make all cars electric and go to renewables by 2040 or just surround Florida with a giant seawall. Or if not all of Florida, at least The Villages. 

    The argument is that it will all be a black swan that nobody saw coming, and that all we can do now is hold back the sea and install bigger air conditioners in our F550s, at least for the people who can afford them, while sticking with coal since at least now a whopping 5% of the emissions are successfully being captured.

     

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  13. 7 minutes ago, Voldemort86 said:

    Hearing that oregons map is finalized. Can we get a breakdown of it?

    This dude runs a Youtube channel on electoral commentary and such. Here's his breakdown on Oregon and Texas.

    Oregon analysis starts at 3:50. Texas at 7:43.

     

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  14. Fivethirtyeight up with an informative piece on this map. Basically every representative is in a safer district except Vicente Gonzalez in TX-15, and he's retiring. That seat alone will determine whether Texas is 25-13 or 24-14.

    Can't overlook the effect that uncompetitive House races will have up and down the ballot. This new map will really hurt turnout.

     

     

    Texas new map.png

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