Links - 23rd July 2020 (1)

Wyatt Huey Long
Political compass: "Boot licker!" x4 (probably Stonetoss comic)

NHS spending data: necessary spend per person is falling and demand cannot be met as a result - "This looks like a steady increase, but it is not population adjusted... the data does not tell the whole story. The figures are in 2017/18 prices but that's adjusted by normal inflation. However, as the Institute of Actuaries have noted (and they're good with numbers)  medical inflation is higher than CPI... The number of expensive people in the population is growing: averaging by head doesn't give a true picture in that case... the right wing ideologues who have deliberately created this situation argue that all is well as absolute spend is rising. That reveals either remarkable economic illiteracy, or remarkable indifference, or both, on their parts. But however looked at the data also shows that they are wrong. And that's why it's worth noting."
i.e. While the NHS budget rose, once you account first for population growth, then for medical inflation and an ageing population, real spending per person fell

Canadian unlimited data plans ranked first among G7 countries: report - "unlimited data plans in Canada are actually a huge boost for people across the nation because they eliminate overage fees and bring up data consumption.Canada is in a particularly strong position among other G7 countries regarding PwC ranking it as the number one unlimited data offering considering its analysis across speed, latency, the price per GB and access.PwC finds that the Canadian plans from Bell, Rogers and Telus are expected to reduce overage fees by 80 percent by the end of 2020, increase subscribers’ overall data usage, increase overall data affordability by six percent and reduce the average price per gigabyte by 50 percent compared to 2018...
users with unlimited data plans watch a lot more video on their mobile devices. When the U.S. began offering data plans a few years ago, people generally used 89 percent of their unlimited data for watching videos. In Canada, Netflix and YouTube are the most popular video streaming platforms."
I wonder if they accounted for selection bias - those who switched to unlimited data are more likely to use a lot of it

Daily chart - Who are the biggest bullshitters? | Graphic detail | The Economist - "Bluffers seem to be everywhere: the share of Americans who believe that most people can be trusted has fallen from 48% in 1984 to just 31% today.A new study of the phenomenon has found that North America is especially prone to speaking bull... Canadian and American teenagers were especially likely to profess knowledge of these bogus topics, whereas the Scots and Irish were perfectly happy to admit their ignorance. In news that will shock nobody, in every country men claimed to be experts more often than women. The rich were more boastful than the poor. More surprising was the finding that immigrants were generally more likely to bluff about maths than native students were... blaggers over-estimated their own knowledge. They also tended to rate themselves highly when it came to gauging their own popularity, perseverance on academic tasks and problem-solving ability. The data suggest that they might not be consciously lying, but instead be weaving their own fantasies."
Interestingly Canadians were bigger bullshitters than Americans
Sadly this study was only carried out in the UK, Australia and New Zealand and North America

The economics of self-service checkouts - "it isn’t clear that self-service is an easy win for businesses.Self-checkouts aren’t necessarily faster than other checkouts and don’t result in lower staff numbers. And there are indirect costs such as theft, reduced customer satisfaction and loyalty... Wages represent around 9.5% of supermarket revenue in Australia, and reducing wages is one of the reasons proposed for the uptake of self-checkout.But from a business perspective, moving from “staffed” checkouts to self-serve machines isn’t cheap. A typical setup costs around US$125,000. On top of that there are the costs of integrating the machines with the technology already in place – the software and other systems used to track inventory and sales – and the ongoing costs of breakdowns and maintenance.But the biggest direct cost to retailers of adopting self-service checkouts is theft. Retail crime in Australia costs the industry over A$4.5 billion each year... everyday customers – those who would not normally steal by any other means – disproportionately steal at self-checkouts.Studies also show that having a human presence around – in this case employees in the self-checkout area – increases the perceived risk of being caught, which reduces “consumer deviance”. This is why retailers have been adding staff to monitor customers, absorbing the additional losses, or passing them on to customers in an “honesty tax”... people are less likely to steal from a human employee than an inanimate object. This is not only because they are more likely to get caught, but because they feel bad about it.On the other hand, consumers have plenty of justifications to excuse self-checkout theft, which is leading to its normalisation."

Supermarket self-checkout service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty: Empirical evidence from an emerging market - "SCS service quality positively influences loyalty through the customer satisfaction path"

An LAPD officer accidentally filmed himself putting cocaine in a suspect’s wallet - "Previously, Baltimore police officers were caught doing this — twice. That led the local prosecutor to drop dozens of cases involving the officers."
The "All Cops Are Bastards" group seems to have a high overlap with the "stereotypes are bad" group

'Epstein didn't kill himself' float rolls through Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans - "A third sign also named several other celebrities, including President Donald Trump, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin.There were other signs on the float that read,'I'm as innocent as OJ,' and 'Sorry Mum', which is believed to have alluded to Prince Andrew."

UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers - "Labour’s shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, said the demand for immigrants to speak English was “dog-whistle stuff”.“Most people who come here to work can already speak English,” she said. “But are we really going to block maths geniuses whose English isn’t great? It’s inhumane and damaging.”"
Apparently Australia and Canada are racist countries

Vice Media Raised Money at a Sky-High Valuation. Now the Bill Is Coming Due. - WSJ - "Vice, by far the largest new-media company, has struggled to turn a profit. It lost about $50 million last year, people familiar with its financials say. The company was targeting revenue of $650 million in 2019 but brought in roughly $600 million... Instead of growing, Vice’s revenue shrank and its losses mounted. In 2018, rather than become profitable, the company lost more than $150 million"
Get woke, go broke

America’s Hottest New Dating Sites: Business School Campuses - WSJ - "“I teach how to work well as a team, manage conflicts, solve problems,” he said, “and that’s what marriage is all about.”

Why Are College Students So Afraid of Me? - WSJ - "Few things upset American college students more than being told they aren’t oppressed. I recently spoke at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. I argued that American undergraduates are among the most privileged individuals in history by virtue of their unfettered access to knowledge. Far from being discriminated against, students are surrounded by well-meaning faculty who want all of them to succeed... The protesters drowned out my response before filing slowly out of the room, still loudly announcing their victimhood and leaving dozens of seats empty that could have been filled by students who had been turned away for lack of space. (The protesters had hoped to occupy the entire auditorium before vacating it, so no one else could hear me speak)... a senior claimed that I came to Holy Cross to “discredit, humiliate, and deny the existence of minority students.” In fact, I came to urge the entire student body to seize their boundless opportunities for learning with joy and gratitude.The maudlin self-pity on display at Holy Cross doesn’t arise spontaneously. It is actively cultivated by adults on campus... faculty and administrators at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., convened a therapeutic “scholars” panel to take place during another talk of mine. The goal was to inoculate the university against the violence that I allegedly represented... Students and faculty were then invited to join in painting “self-care” rocks.This craft activity, in which participants write feel-good messages on stones, was originally designed for K-5 classrooms. It may not be what parents paying Bucknell’s $72,000 annual tuition and fees had in mind... The interim associate provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion said that the administration’s willingness to let my talk proceed shows that it values free speech more than the community’s trauma... student journalists had claimed that “‘free speech’” merely amplifies “hate speech,” and that hate speech such as mine was intended to “attack students of color” and “survivors of sexual assault.” An English professor cheered them on. The Bucknell Faculty and Staff of Color Working Group urged colleagues to support those whose “first-hand experiences with injustice” at Bucknell were “invalidated and perpetuated” by my arguments.Bucknell’s Democratic Socialists of America organized a protest at which participants—in between chants of “Hey hey! Ho Ho! Heather Mac has got to go!” and “No justice! No peace!”—were encouraged to share their personal experiences of injustice at Bucknell. Sadly, there is no available record of what the protesters came up with. Students who can be persuaded to see oppression on an American college campus—where traits that still lead to ostracism and even death outside the West are not just tolerated but celebrated—can be persuaded to see oppression anywhere. The claim that American universities, and the U.S. in general, are defined by white supremacy is the one unifying idea on college campuses today, in the absence of a shared curriculum dedicated to civilization’s greatest works. And that idea is spreading. School systems across the country are training teachers and administrators that colorblind standards and the work ethic are instruments of white privilege. Any private institution without proportional representation of minorities and females is vulnerable to attack, since bigotry is the only allowable explanation for the lack of sex and race “diversity.” The promiscuous labeling of disagreement as hate speech and the equation of such speech with violence will gain traction in the public arena, as college graduates take more positions of power. The former managing editor of Time has already advocated in the Washington Post for allowing states to define and penalize hate speech; potential censors wait in the wings.Certain ideas are now taboo in the academy—above all, the idea that behavior and culture better explain socioeconomic disparities in the U.S. than bigotry. A Bucknell student protester claimed that my sin is to force “this elementary conversation about whether structural racism even exists.” Most Americans are eager and ready for a post-racial country. The perpetual invocation of racial oppression on college campuses and beyond, however, keeps race relations fraught."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "The problem with cutting interest rates is as you said before, you know, you cut interest rates, it’s not going to make me go on a plane, not gonna make me go do anything, spend any money. They really need to think of more targeted measures. More, you know, fiscal policy, interest rates are a waste of time."

Phil Libin - "I was just on a Zoom call that ended automagically after 40 minutes because the organizer was on a free tier. This is the single greatest advance to meeting productivity that I’ve ever seen. Would pay extra for this feature."

Tmastt - Reloaded - Posts - "We no longer go for looks. We go for maturity, stability, loyalty and peace."
"If only you had this mindest before you became a single mom"

70% vs 91% Isopropyl Alcohol: Which Rubbing Alcohol Disinfects Better? - "70 percent alcohol is probably more effective than 91 percent for disinfecting—depending on what kind of germs you’re trying to kill... lower percentages, like 70 percent, have more water in them. Turns out, the water is actually an important ingredient here. Basically, a 90 or 91 percent alcohol solution is too powerful in some cases: It fries the outside of the cell before it can get into the inside and kill the actual germ. 70 percent alcohol is just the right proportion of water and alcohol to zap the entire cell... this rule of thumb only applies when you’re attempting to fend off bacteria. Alcohol’s effectiveness against viruses depends on the unique virus. Viruses with an envelope structure—including the flu virus, the common cold, HIV, and the new coronavirus—can be deactivated by alcohol solutions (like hand sanitizer) of 60 percent or more, while others like norovirus won’t be effectively targeted by any concentration of alcohol. (Hand-washing helps to physically remove every type or virus and bacteria from your hands, and is an important part of any hygiene routine.)... If you’re cutting raw chicken on the counter and want to effectively disinfect the surface to prevent cross-contamination of E. coli and salmonella bacteria, you’d want to opt for 70 percent alcohol. But if you’re trying to disinfect a surface that might have viruses lingering on it—for example, if someone in your house has the flu—any dilution of alcohol will work as long as it’s above the recommended 60 percent.In any case, it’s important to focus on hygiene practices like thorough hand washing (20 seconds of scrubbing each time!) and targeted hygiene (regularly disinfecting high-traffic hand-contact areas in your home, especially if someone sick has touched them)"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, America's Health Insurance Hell - "Chinese media have rolled out positive footage about volunteers in Hubei, helping those who are homeless. The government has sought to assure people that they have a handle on the situation. Anyone who claims otherwise has been punished."