This comment says it better than I could. The debate was a disaster for Biden. Which sucks.

ITT: People not understanding probabilistic forecasts.

Nate Silvers models are not perfect, but pretty close. You can do retro analysis on them to see. If someone with a 5% chance to win actually does win, that doesn’t mean the model was wrong… That just needs to actually happen only 5% of the time.

Getting elections"wrong" as people are talking about here shows they don’t really know how these models work. If you haven’t looked at the retrospective analysis on these results, then you are likely unqualified to declare that they are useless or wrong.

Saying polls are garbage is a straight bad take. The differentiation between polls is immense, and people treat them like they are just one thing.

They do adjust, and if you don’t know that I’m not likely to believe you have the knowledge to say they are bad.

Polls are still very indicative. Democrats are not magically beating them by 9 points. That’s just flatly untrue, unless you are just rolling every poll together with no regard for methodology, funding source, sample size, or track record.

Starting with a declaimer of being fairly far left…

Biden is not looking like he has a winning chance. He’s barely leading in national polls, but those polls are misleading, as, because of the senate, democrats typically need to win by 2.5-3 points in order to have a shot at the electoral college. So he’s behind there.

He’s behind in several key states where he needs to win. If you count states where he’s down 2 points or less, he BARELY has enough to win. Can’t miss a single state.

The debate hurt Biden. This is not a logical contest, it’s a popularity one, and Biden is not doing well. I think he’s done some great policy things, but that’s not how people vote. Democrats have to learn that it’s not enough to be “right” if you’re going to lose elections.

There is a sizeable gap between “beyond a reasonable doubt” in terms of a very specific law, and things that are gross/immoral.

People keep questioning the timeline as a defense… They might not have known until 2020. It’s normally against internal company policies to just look through people’s DMs. It’s not like someone’s job is to rifle through them. They probably were made aware of it, and then took action.

That’s speculation on my part, but if Twitch sat on it for 3 years, shame on them too, but that doesn’t so shit for this guy. It was still not ok.

The monetary incentive was to pay out his contract so they didn’t have a VERY public story about a VERY high profile streamer inappropriately messaging a minor with their service. That could be super damaging for Twitch. So they likely paid it out to try and bury the story.

Mountain Goats right?

I mean you’re not entirely wrong, but you’re a little wrong. Just because they added levels later doesn’t mean you were correct… These games have road maps, and they don’t quickly change gears. There’s math and analytics that go into all of it.

I think you’re stretching when you say “around a few people”. There’s more money in 10,000 people spending a bit than 10 spending a ton. It’s a gradient. The top 10 spend a lot, but not enough to morph your road map for. Especially when the companies own multiple properties. Better to get them transitioned to a new game within your umbrella than disrupt the entire content road map.

There’s also far worse stuff than that and way harsher criticisms. You’re getting closer with the “changing the prices” bit, but it’s even worse than that, imo.

It’s the reason I left working at one of them as a data analyst. I’m not speaking in generalities or that interested in debating here… I know precisely how the calculations for these types of things are done because I used to be on the team that did them.

Not this game, but a different one. The whole industry operates very similarly.

Adding thousands of levels for 1 whale is unlikely to be profitable. That’s a lot of development cost for content that likely won’t be seen. Pointing to other games by the same studio is a much better idea if you can get them to make the transition.

I’m never sure how to approach crypto on these platforms, because it’s rare to get a nuanced take.

I’ve moved past bitcoin to ethereum, I think it answers a lot of the criticisms.

I try not to get caught up on whether or not it’s a currency, store of value, or most other definitions. I just approach it from, is it a good product?

I’m in the middle on things such as money laundering or criminal activity. On one hand, the ledger system makes it incredibly easy to trace back transactions if someone ever messes up. On the other it serves a similar function as cash except you don’t have the physical weight, which is non trivial to transport. I know some criminals have to have used it successfully.

Crypto is hard. There’s so many goddamn scams and stuff like NFTs that could be a good idea if they got the weight of enforcement, but there’s no real enforcement mechanism. We have silly slips of paper that say whether we own things, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we could make them digital with the right implementation. But those silly slips of paper hold the weight of law behind the. NFTs have no one to enforce anything, thus are useless.

I’m always afraid to open this up on this platform because there’s so many non nuanced takes, and people writing just the same criticisms. I’m hoping to have a good discussion, and I’m open to other opinions on it. But I haven’t found an argument that makes me think Ethereum is a problem or something to avoid. It’s certainly risky, but I think that risk is justified to the level of which I hold it.

Totally agree with others about therapy. When I went, I used it as a sort of emotional dumping ground. My therapist helped me through some pieces but honestly listened a lot. I know the payment part of therapy is viewed negatively… I viewed it as a huge positive. I’m paying this person and so it doesn’t have to be an equal conversation. If I need to vent for 45 minutes straight, I can do that, and they are compensated for that time.

In reality, I was doing the same thing to friends and family, but I’d only get 30% out at any given time, and so I just spread it around. Getting therapy helped me lessen the amount I needed to vent (some techniques help you work through things) and also have me a central location. It made me a far better husband and friend.

Almost upvoted because I thought this was The Right Can’t Meme

Not a professional, but studied it in college. It’s mostly to either fill in gaps or loud noises.

One thing you can often do is get a “noise print” of the room, and you can isolate someone’s audio basically perfectly. From there you can create a room tone and slap it under the entire track. Now if you need to mute or something you just cut the talking track and the room noise carries over.

If you don’t get a good room tone, say you want to use someone looking at the camera, but the director was talking. If you try to filter out the directors voice, it’s likely going to sound weird because some of the tones overlap with the room. So you mute it and slap the room tone over and you’re good. They often get too much, because room tones vary ever so slightly. If you get a tiny half second sample, unless you get very lucky you’ll pick up that something is repeating or sounds weird. If you have 10-20 seconds you can loop that no problem.

This hurts to read.

I know it’s satire, but this is like… 5% more satirical than actual beliefs on the topic at some points. The helping the poor section in particular.

They’re not perfect, but they’re not complete bullshit.

I can’t explain it all in a comment, but, like most things, there are good polls and bad polls. Saying polls are bullshit is like saying car mechanics are incompetent because some of them are.

If you read up on polls and their methodology, and read more then headlines, you can start to discern good ones from bad ones.

Most people don’t realize margin of error and how close elections are. There hasn’t been that large of polling errors in the last several elections. 2016 was larger than normal, but still within pretty explainable ranges.

Good polls are worth paying attention to, and proclaiming they are all bullshit is just a flatly bad take. There are a lot of shit polls that are politically motivated to make candidates look good or bad, but there are good pollsters doing good work. But you have to know what to look for. Not all polls are equal.

Not a lawyer, but I really doubt it. As has been used before, his lawyers can argue that he really does believe he’s being treated unfairly, so of course he would speak out. Or the route that it’s protected political speech meant to rile up his base. I mean if January 6th wasn’t stochastic terrorism, it leaves space for this kind of thing.

I don’t like Trump either, but anything legal around speech is pretty difficult. I’m quite shocked the Carroll case actually landed against Trump, but you can see how egregious it had to be. He’s talked about jailing all kinds of political people for all kinds of reasons. If you don’t do something the first time, then it can be used as justification that he’s not doing anything different. Is it a shitty argument? Sure. But in court, it’s effective.

I would share similar feelings.

Andor is great because it’s largely disconnected. They don’t rely on any big major cameos, there’s hardly even Jedi or Force involved. It’s just a standalone story in the same universe. Honestly, the same things that made Rogue One great make Andor great.

I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, unless you wanted more Skywalker Family Space Drama.

Andor was the anti Star Wars series. It was the best written series of all time in Star Wars terms. The dialouge was not just good, it was fucking captivating. Almost every star wars film or show the script is usually mediocre at best and has to be overcome by the actors.

Andor had multiple scenes that left me in awe of the great writing. Maybe it’s because my expectations were low… But damn it was good.

I read the first few words as soft candles and was so confused.

I agree… Trump also has a superpower of gathering attention. The dude loves it even when it’s all bad. It’s a massive gift to Republicans because they can do crazy shit but Trump takes all the air time.

Trump is very skilled at absolutely wrenching attention away from everything else, even if he looks like a baffoon. Haley does not have that gene.

Corruption, demeanor, and leadership.

She doesn’t have dozens of lawsuits, she’s not a loose cannon who will say anything at any moment (I can only imagine how awful Trump is in meetings with foreign leaders, and his lawyers don’t even let him speak in court because he’ll get himself in even more trouble), and she can get people around her to believe in things more than her own selfish means.

I get that you wanted policies, but things like this are important too. Haley wouldn’t be headlining every day with some dumb shit she said on Twitter.

I feel oddly like I’m defending Haley… I’m not. Her border policies suck, she’ll seek to pardon Trump if elected, and I don’t see her doing shit on gun control either. Economically she’ll do the same as Republicans in that she’ll grossly underfund programs and then use their underfunding as justification for closing them, and do nothing to help the average person with tax breaks (those are for companies and upper class only).

I hear you in terms of her policies being shit, but calling the worst President in our lifetime the same as a below-average Republican candidate is just equivocating and makes people less likely to hear what you have to say. There’s a lot of Republicans who are sick of Trump and do believe he’s a threat to Democracy, but when they hear that people think Haley and Trump are the same, it reinforces Trumps worst messages.