The problem is it became a non-expert political issue where people who knew meme-facts based on their social bubble only really argued absolutist policies against stone wall opposition.
We needed people in a minmax mode arguing about specific levels of risk vs reward to set optimums, instead you had 0 risk folks screaming at 0 restriction folks screaming back with the middle entirely excluded. (We'll STILL get people on both sides responding here)
I was in NZ during COVID. I was adamantly pro-lockdowns. In hindsight, it was a very selfish view. It benefitted my family directly and I was more than happy to follow the rules and scoff at those that didn’t.
I won’t claim to know what the appropriate response level should have been back then. But it is very clear that the whole affair has hurt and damaged people and society irreparably. The only winners are the wealthy who scooped up assets at never-before seen interest rates.
Yeah the lockdowns have really damaged my mental health. And the mask mandates even more so due to ancient trauma (where I nearly suffocated and have very bad associations with breathing that feels obstructed). But that's a very personal reason that I understand couldn't be accommodated for back in those days.
I don't know if it was worth it or necessary but tbh I just try to forget the whole phase ever happened. For me it was a few lost life years and I'm still trying to get back to where I was mentally.
I do feel those things were really overlooked back in the day. But I'm also glad I'm not the one making such decisions which can't be easy.
The only thing I have an outspoken opinion about were the curfews we had here. Meaning the available time for things like shopping was more compressed and thus the shops were a lot busier than normal which was super counterproductive. And it didn't stop partygoers because they simply slept over.
Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem.
> The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner
What would we have been optimizing for here? GDP? Deaths? ICU Capacity? Lifestyle? Or would we weight them? If so would we take 2nd and 3rd order effects into consideration?
> An example graph, when restrictions should have been on or off left as an exercise to the reader
I lived in a country/state that did this during the pandemic. It wasn't a case of restrictions on, restrictions off. It was more a dialing back or ramping up of restrictions. If you look at other countries that did this you will still find the wave pattern. If I had to guess that is related to immunity after exposure. What would change however is the height of the peaks. With it's political/media landscape I don't know if the approach you suggest could have been applied effectively in the USA. Ultimately what drives cases/deaths is human behavior and the virus itself. Those who thought covid was an issue were taking precautions regardless of the restrictions.
> The disease didn't go away, we just at one point decided we were done with restrictions even though conditions didn't change.
This is a gross simplification of the whole pandemic. If I was to narrativize it I would say that over time as exposure to the virus increased it became less deadly so the vast majority of the people who were already prone to dying via covid had done so already.
> The problem is it became a non-expert political issue where people who knew meme-facts based on their social bubble only really argued absolutist policies against stone wall opposition.
This is more a comment on the political/media landscape than the response to covid itself. People have to operate within the system. If they present any sort of nuanced idea then they are persecuted by roughly 50% of the population whose narrative it infringes upon.
> We needed people in a minmax mode arguing about specific levels of risk vs reward to set optimums, instead you had 0 risk folks screaming at 0 restriction folks screaming back with the middle entirely excluded. (We'll STILL get people on both sides responding here)
The WHO was very clear at the beginning of the pandemic about the risks of the virus. For wealthy countries whose hospitals were "lean and mean" a high number of cases would cause immense pressure on these hospitals resulting in otherwise avoidable deaths not just from covid but from other things that would result from a limited ICU capacity. By this I mean life saving operations getting cancelled because there was no capacity in the ICU. It's also worth mentioning the restrictions pared with the financial aid allowed people to stay at home and not engage in any risk taking activities.
To summarize I think it's easy to arm chair quarterback the response to the pandemic. It's like most of politics. We sit here watching what is effectively a shadow puppet show but are left clueless to what is really going on because if we did know we can't be trusted with the secrets, or wouldn't be able to understand the data, or would object to a course of action as an emotional response, even if what is presented is truthful and the most optimal solution to a problem. The "masks are ineffective" narrative at the beginning of the pandemic was a classic example of this.
>Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem.
These sorts of statements are far too often as a justification to dodge responsibility used by those who at the time just poured more virgins into the volcano in a obviously vain attempt to change the weather (or whatever metaphor for "clearly not gonna work but ideologically convenient" you want to use).
By all means after fact have an enquiry into the response and how it could have been better but don't do that without first acknowledging the uncertainty that was present at the time.
I just want to add that there is always a latent chaos / anarchy in people ready to jump at any oportunity to convince others to follow them. Doomsayers introducing themselves as messiahs. They are any combination of pseudoscience, religion and conspiracy. All this in addition of the normal political power struggles.
>Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem.
I wrote the following July 2020:
>And with all of this money being injected into the economy, we are absolutely going to get an enormous amount of inflation... eventually. You could see it as already happening with the valuation of the stock market.
And in January 2022:
>It’s time to admit defeat and plan for what that looks like and stop pretending like anything at this point is going to make this virus go away. It’s here, it’s going to kill about one person in a thousand of those left, and if you choose to not get vaccinated that’s your choice and if you’re not young you’re taking a significantly higher risk of death.
Not so much hindsight as "what I've been saying all along".
>We sit here watching what is effectively a shadow puppet show but are left clueless to what is really going on because if we did know we can't be trusted with the secrets, or wouldn't be able to understand the data, or would object to a course of action as an emotional response, even if what is presented is truthful and the most optimal solution to a problem.
This is a bunch of nonsense. What was happening was quite transparent. The science was out in the open in papers and government statistics for anyone with scientific training to read. Politicians were caving to polarized public opinions on both sides to take advantage of and encourage their chosen pole.
Those of us talking about moderation and common sense reactions were demonize by one side or usually both depending on the venue. Nobody in leadership had the balls to lead and try to make people understand a middle path based on reason.
People STILL fall into their previously chosen polar opinion and refuse to accept that moderation was the correct and untaken path.
Not so much hindsight as "what I've been saying all along".
It was a dynamic situation and it sounds like the only things that you were optimizing for in your mind was inflation and covid deaths whiles ignoring second order effects and data that likely wasn't available to the public.
You are like a person who kept telling everyone it was 12:00am but it wasn't, then when it finally became 12:00am and everyone agreed you jumped up and said "See guys it's 12:00am why didn't anyone listen to me! I was right all along!".
It's a bit rich to blame all the inflation on the financial response to the pandemic without taking into consideration the effect the pandemic had on logistics or considering what would have happened if the government didn't spend enough. Also it's probably worth mentioning that the Fed operates independently and is tasked with only financial functions.
> The science was out in the open in papers and government statistics for anyone with scientific training to read. Politicians were caving to polarized public opinions on both sides to take advantage of and encourage their chosen pole.
No argument here except to say it's one thing to know the science and it's another thing to act on the science.
> Those of us talking about moderation and common sense reactions were demonize by one side or usually both depending on the venue. Nobody in leadership had the balls to lead and try to make people understand a middle path based on reason.
If there is one thing I know it's that common sense only exists when people share the same values and assumptions. Why for example was it acceptable to you that 1 out of 1000 people died of covid? Why not more? Why not less?
>It's a bit rich to blame all the inflation on the financial response to the pandemic without taking into consideration the effect the pandemic had on logistics or considering what would have happened if the government didn't spend enough. Also it's probably worth mentioning that the Fed operates independently and is tasked with only financial functions.
The treasury spent an extra $2 trillion which the Fed facilitated the creation of and your response is "what about logistics??", hindsight isn't 20/20 for you and sky isn't blue it's a ham sandwich. It is pointless discussing this with people like you, this is why we can't have nice things.
So with your 20/20 vision and your ability to see into the future what was the exact dollar amount at the time that you thought should be enough to stop a total meltdown of the US economy? Using logic and reason how did you come to the exact dollar amount that would emotionally appease investors and business providing them with enough "investor confidence"?
The timescale you are looking at is very small. The federal reserve has a dual mandate to have maximum employment and stable prices. What would have happened on a longer timeframe to employment and prices if every other country effectively backstopped their economy but the USA didn't?
It's like you don't know why the fed even came to exist or have any knowledge about the great depression or just fail to recognize how catastrophic that the pandemic was to the USA economy or the world economy as a whole.
The biggest number for total global fiscal support I found was $14 trillion, but that was only from before mid-2020.
Most countries created a whole lot of new money and even if yours didn't, unless you're very economically isolated from the rest of the world the inflation hits you just the same.
In practice such an event is rare, and I would expect there to be enough shielding to avoid it from interfering with the electronics. The fact that there is no hard evidence is why it's hard to argue against this clickbait claim, since technically they could be right.
The cosmic radiation that reaches Earth's surface consists mainly of particles that cannot be stopped by thin shields (e.g. muons or other particles with very high energies), otherwise they would not have passed through the atmosphere.
So shielding is not a solution that can be applied in a vehicle. You need something like an underground bunker to be sure that no cosmic radiation can penetrate it.
The only reason that makes rare the events caused by cosmic radiation is that if those particles can pass through shields that means that in most cases they will also pass through the electronic devices without being absorbed and causing malfunction.
They are for large infrastructure projects, especially at large organisations.
It takes companies 3-5 years for migration of these products, all of which are not CapEx funded and so get minimal resourcing without prioritisation by leadership.
Not for Oracle's "everything but the kitchen sink" unlimited enterprise licenses for large (Fortune 200) organizations that, like a buffet, encourage you to "eat more" to get a "better value." Which works great until you true-up after 10 years and your annual license fee skyrockets. Which is of course Oracle's plan. But, what I've been seeing happen instead, and this is purely anecdotal, is these companies are getting tired of paying tens of millions of dollars per year to Oracle as CIOs are under ever-increasing pressure to cut costs. So they're wary of allowing themselves to fall further into Oracle's clutches and in fact they're looking at how to get themselves out of this situation.
TL;DR - these 10 year enterprise deals with Oracle allowed companies to save money in the short run and get predictable annual licensing fees. It also bought them time to get more of their application portfolio off of Oracle so when it comes time to re-up they'll negotiate those fees down.
I think it’s bold to assume that car manufacturers are happy importing X,000 cars a year. Their ultimate objective is to sell as many cars as humanly possible. A “release valve” for the automotive lobby is just a way for them to infiltrate a region so they can entrench themselves into citizens psyche by using manipulative marketing tactics, building a coalition from within. I am from the US and I don’t think Europe should allow the import of any large non commercial vehicles
Look at the numbers. What would you expect if Individual Vehicle Approvals represented an actual bridgehead for manufacturers? You’d expect noticeable growth over the past decades. But it is still a rounding error.
If this were a strategy to make Europe soften regulation, it hasn’t worked. Rather, the opposite is true. The ratcheting of regulation is actually so stringent manufacturers have to worry about cars sitting unsold for too long. Right now there are a lot of unsold cars in Europe that come 2026 will be unsellable. Because they won’t meet requirements. And these are cars that meet 2025 regulations. Not pickups from the US that have to be approved individually.
Yeah, I don't think the "release valve" is the correct metaphor. This is more like a crack around a door frame that you can get a lever into in order to eventually pry it open.
Well I'm a dumbass! LOL!
In my defense , I've never seen those cars in real life before. I saw all the Flock cameras everywhere and just assumed they were something the police were using.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll go ahead and give myself 10 minutes in the corner of shame.
They’re saying that Oracle has issued a lot of debt (like $60Bn) to fund their AI/datacenter commitments. Where as other companies, like MSFT, are using the cash in their balance sheet, and startups are using the cash they’ve gotten from investors
Future investors can negotiate liquidation preference and participation terms that will give them a bigger part of the pot than their % ownership during a “liquidation event” I.e. basically any outcome other than an IPO will trigger those rights
But aren't the terms of a SAFE that you'll get the same terms as the best terms (MFN) offered to investors in the next round, up to a cap?
Seems like you get just as diluted by future rounds as the professional VCs that will make up the next round, if you get the same terms?
FWIW I don't think angel investments make any financial sense but see them as a minor chance of upside and a significant way to help and connect with people.
Sure. But "liquidation events" are not the events that give you the wins. The point of angel is to get in while the company is cheap. Dilution is part of the math.
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