Tennis

Most folks follow tennis, at least at the Majors (and possibly, the Olympics), and are aware of the, now past, kerfuffle when computerized, e.g. Hawkeye, line judging put all those folks out of a job. Now, it seems, something similar is happening in medchem. It's a fascinating read, even if you don't get all the jargon.

As mentioned more than once, I started undergraduate as a chem major, but that didn't last long thanks to a 1940's vintage PChem lab. But since then, I've always wondered about the process of determining the structure of molecules. Clearly, it was possible decades ago before X-ray methods were available, since we still know what water looks like at the atomic level.

At one point in time I happened on a piece written, I assume, by a coding guru which boiled down to: 'software has eaten the world'. Which asserted that writing code was the key to Tomorrow. Well, not so much. Even in its current lame version, AI is possible not because of new Nobel level software algorithms, but because the EE folks have managed to generate logic and memory at densities never contemplated. So, sorry coders, but your lame century and a half old correlation programs now can converge on something resembling "truth" thanks to prodigious amounts of CPU, GPU, and memory. Now, if only AI could just intuit like Einstein.....

Stupid Is As Stupid Does - part the fourth

Today's dead trees NYT has an "interview" betwixt David French and Neil Gorsuch. More like a softball game, thus more fun to make fun of.

Whether either knows it, all that's accomplished is making certain that Gorsuch is just an Evangelical Radical Right Wingnut hack. But enquiring minds already know that. But the "interview" does contain some stunning words of idiocy.

What do we lose in that process? We lose juries. Juries are wise, right?

Well... not necessarily. And, as anyone who's watched even a little bit of L&O knows, there is a very positive side of a plea bargain: the perp's allocution. A jury verdict of guilty does not carry an admition of guilt. A plea does. That's why there are plea bargains. And that's why prosectutors go to Hell and back to make the plea penalty so much less than the verdict exposure: they, and the victim (most always) want the admission.

You're absolutely right that in an increasingly complex world, we need experts. There's no question about that. At the same time, our system of government is premised on the idea that we the people — those are the first three words of our Constitution — are sovereign, and we are entitled to govern ourselves.

And here is the crux of the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts vast stupidity: the sub-GED majority in the shithole states get to govern, comfortable in the beliefs like bleach, hydroxychloroquine, and such snake oil are the God Given Cures for Covid, and, further, that any future disease cure is their remit.

And, herein, he reveals the depths of his stupidity:

And I think if you go back and you look at what Madison and others had in mind, it could be summarized by the wisdom of the masses, that concept. You know, Francis Galton, who's a cousin of Darwin, went to a county fair in England, and there was a "guess the weight of the ox" contest. And he observed all the experts and their guesses on the weight of the ox. But then he also summed up all the guesses of ordinary people. And he found that the average of the ordinary people's guesses was more accurate than any of the experts.

It gets better. If you read the wiki on this "experiment", it is not the case that the Masses were more accurate than the experts, only that they agreed to a minuscule difference. IOW, ole Neil lies, if only by saying that the median/mean of the crowd is "more accurate than any of the experts". Well, yeah, that's the nature of stats.

Only the truly innumerate would buy such a pile of shit. It's called The Small N Problem, and figures quite prominently in drug clinical trials. In a nutshell (repeated in various ways over the course of these missives), if you have an estimate of a parameter twice, once with a small sample size and once with a large sample size, the large sample size will almost always be closer to the true value. Always. The Phase II trial will have up to a few hundred (cherry picked) patients, will often show that Drug X is a miracle. Then, on to the Phase III trial which will have much more, as much as 10 times the number of patients. The efficacy measure plummets, sometimes so much that Drug X is abandoned There is no wisdom of the crowds, only stupid rubes being conned by conmen.

So, based on a bit of stupidity from a 19th century conman, we should embrace the Governance of the sub-GED cabal?

Toward the end, French tries, not very forcefully, to pin Gorsuch down to what "text, history and tradition" really means. He won't admit that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts are using that non-Constitutional code for extreme reactionary justice driven by their simple greed for reactionary power. "Party like it's 1829!" Just what the sub-GED cabal wants.

Finally, near as I can read, French does not tell Gorsuch that there's not really "too much law" compared to 1800 just because the USofA is much larger, land and population and complexity. 99.44% of what the Law has to deal with didn't exist in 1800. So, yeah, there's more Law on the books now.

USofA, 1800 -   5,308,483 
USofA, 2020 - 392,500,000  

Grow the fuck up, Neil.

By The Numbers - part the sixty fourth

Here's a factoid question: don't look yet. Since the inception of the Summer Olympics, how many sports have been contested in all games? I bet you don't know. I sure didn't. ...
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Only five sports — aquatics, athletics, cycling, fencing and gymnastics — have appeared in each of the 30 iterations of the Olympic Games. Others, such as croquet and karate, have had much shorter Olympic runs and were discontinued immediately after debut.

As some sports pundit (no link, alas) bemoaned, 'how did 3x3 basketball get added? more important, why did 3x3 basketball get added?'. And, BMX bicycle racing, boys and girls?

By The Numbers - part the sixty third

Here's a factoid question: don't look yet. Since the inception of the Summer Olympics, how many sports have been contested in all games? I bet you don't know. I sure didn't. ...
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Only five sports — aquatics, athletics, cycling, fencing and gymnastics — have appeared in each of the 30 iterations of the Olympic Games. Others, such as croquet and karate, have had much shorter Olympic runs and were discontinued immediately after debut.

As some sports pundit (no link, alas) bemoaned, 'how did 3x3 basketball get added? more important, why did 3x3 basketball get added?'). And, BMX bicycle racing, boys and girls?

By The Numbers - part the sixty second

Well, as the saying always seems to go: that didn't take long. Now, as gentle reader does know, I take my NYT in dead trees form, so while these missives have links to the cybertext version, I first see them on paper and generally a day later, or so. So it is with some high-lair-ity that I can report that what was mentioned in the last episode of this series

the sector is teetering on the edge overall

gets another example.

In 2006, the hulking office building at 135 West 50th Street in Midtown Manhattan sold for $332 million. Tenants occupied nearly every floor; offices were in demand; real estate was booming.

On Wednesday, it changed hands again, in an unusual online auction — for $8.5 million.

You can bet your bippy that Letitia will add that factoid as the case furls out. He He He.

It would be useful to know how many actual buildings wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 still owns (mostly mortgaged to the hilt, one suspects), not just NIL rights. We know that some of those have gone the way of all flesh. Here is what TRO admits (exaggerates) to. An independent report has a much shorter list. It's real fun to read. Reminds one of the curtain scene in "The Wizard of Oz".

Musk Ox - part the fourth

By now you've read about the plunge in Tesla's sales/profit and subsequent Musk backlash (for an increasing host of reasons). What seems to always take something of a backseat is the physics of EVs. All chemical batteries are temperature sensitive. Here's a graph EVs by state. You'll see that with only a couple of Blue State exceptions, EVs are in southern/warm states. You'll not get very far in Minnesota in January, what with having to use the battery to keep your fingers and toes warm, and run headlights (one supposes that all EVs do sport LED lights) a lot. It's also funny that warm, but Red, states like Mississippi don't do EVs. Of course, Mississippi and other warm Red states have piss poor incomes. A 20 year old F-150 is likely the preferred vehicle; Cybertruck, anyone?

Here's a breakdown of battery capacity by ambient temperature.

And, it turns out, above about 85°, EV batteries don't fair well. There's not only the chemistry, but also that most folk run the airconn max, and that does a number on the battery.

So, it seems that the Goldilocks area would be that swath from the mid-Atlantic to Commie California; not too cold and not too warm. IOW, the TAM for EVs is limited by physics. Damn physics.

By The Numbers - part the sixty first

This is high-lair-eeee-ous. There've been a couple of reports on wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's travails as a bidnezzman in the wake of Sleepy Joe's constipated debate performance and Kammi's picking up the baton. You can read about the latter in the "Kabuki" essay.

Now we find out how bad it is: wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 has lost $900 million in net worth just from the losses on Truth Social.

Jet Blue market cap: 2.2 billion Bongo Bucks
wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024: 5.1 billion Donnie Dollars

Jet Blue revenue: 9.43 billion Bongo Bucks
wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 revenue: 4.1 million Donnie Dollars

Them thar MAGAmorons sure couldn't find their bums with both hands.

Of course, we only know this because the root of 'Truth Social' is a reporting company. How much of a hit has his commercial real estate taken in the wake of Covid (the sector is teetering on the edge overall), and his golf courses? The latter are not, on the whole, money spinners.