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Anastasis

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Anastasis

  1. 13 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    How exactly is taxing others to send your kids to a private school libertarian? I’m not saying that makes it bad, just doesn’t strike me as aligned with libertarian principles.

    At the moment, I'd be more than happy to be able to direct just a portion of my personal ISD tax obligation to providing an educational environment for my children that does not require them to be subjects in an epidemiological experiment.

     

    Shit, atm I'd be ecstatic if TEA and the feds would just stay out of it and allow the local districts to drive the protocols.   

    • Like 1
  2.  

    6 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Vouchers aren't libertarian. 

     

    https://www.cato.org/policy-report/julyaugust-2019/libertarian-pioneers-school-choice

     

    School choice certainly is a pretty common theme. Vouchers are one mechanism for that. And as a parent of three children in public schools, I would certainly like to kick TEA and the feds to the curb right now and have an option for funding an educational environment for my children in line with my values and beliefs, rather than wrongheaded government dictates. And I imagine a lot of people across the political spectrum right now, faced with a similar dilemma, share that perspective. 

  3. 3 hours ago, TXSG8R said:

    School choice is the R's trojan horse for school vouchers.

    I think that there are lots of parents right now, across the political spectrum, who would like the option to use vouchers that could be used to fund education options for their children more in line with their personal beliefs regarding how their children should be educated in an environment less beholden to state and federal officials and the funding whip they deploy.

    BuT tHeRe iS nO pLacE fOr LibErTariAn iDeaS dUrinG a pAndEmic!  

    • Like 1
  4. 2 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

    They sent a postcard to the house to "verify me" which I ignored, and they activated my account anyway.

    Yeah, I don't want it linked to my address.  I have a reputation to uphold. 

  5. 6 hours ago, Js1 said:

    Would be pretty cool if the Texas Supreme Court didn't block Austin and other Texas cities from implementing paid sick leave.  Then maybe people would have stayed home from work and Texas' numbers wouldn't be terrible. 

    Didn't realize that City of Austin didn't provide City of Austin employees with paid sick leave.  That's shitty, but not sure it is really going to drive the COVID numbers.  

  6. 4 minutes ago, tchookem said:

    Since March, 2 of the 5 places I've ventured to outside my neighborhood are Walmart and Home Depot. I've been waiting 7 days for my test results.

    But South Austin's mom's house was one of the other three, so all bets off. 

    • Like 2
  7. 16 hours ago, Brothahorn said:

     

    All Black Lives Matter!!! Demand the same justice for this man as you did for George Floyd. Or be a hypocrite. It's what libtards do best.

     

     

    NYC has gotten really aggressive enforcing their mask ordinance. 

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
  8.  

    8 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

    Friend works for a non-profit. Deals a lot with Volunteers and they have had quite a few close calls. Bosses who work in the back and are isolated have told them that they will have to use their PTO if they are exposed. One person has used theirs and was told to stay at home, no pay for 5 (yeah I know) days. They have people who refuse to wear masks coming and going, and when they asked for safeguards and protocols to be put in place were told to basically suck it up and get back to work and not even think about insurance.  

    They work with a very vulnerable population and it is only a matter of time before one of them is positive. Sucks there is no recourse for them. 

     

    That's pretty fucking heartless. My company gave everyone a special PTO bank of additional 40 hours to deal with workplace transitions to WAH (childcare related issues and other transitioning issues). There is also a COVID quarantine PTO bank that has been set up for employees that test positive (up to two weeks of leave provided, with ability to extend after two weeks if justified).  

     

  9. 7 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

    I think my preference would be split pool, sick rolls over every year, and it is paid out if there is separation from the company (and paid out yearly if there is a roll over cap). I haven’t actually worked in that system, so I’m not sure what drawbacks I’m not seeing are. 

    That seems reasonable to me. 

  10. 31 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

    Shit, I've never even worked anywhere where employees got true "sick days."

    "Feeling sick? Well, feel free to dig into your PTO balance that you've been accruing at a snail's pace all year." 

    Definitely a good idea to put employees in the position of choosing whether to go into work sick or risk missing out on that Cancun trip they were planning.

    An undifferentiated PTO bank allows the employee more flexibility, but requires that the employee take into consideration things like "hey, I might get sick and need to save some amount of PTO as a buffer." 

     

    Obviously, a pandemic is a unique situation, and flexibility needs to rule for the time being.  But I strongly prefer a combined PTO pool will accrual that rolls over. 

    • Like 3
  11. 16 minutes ago, Sam Lin said:

    Note that from a tax standpoint, you really want to do the opposite. Hold your long holds in your fully-taxed trading account so you pay the lower long-term capital gains tax rate on those gains, and do your short trades in Roth, so you don't have to worry about short-term vs long-term capital gains tax for your short trades.

    Just to be clear, I am using short and long in terms or market direction not in terms of how long I will hold a position. 

  12. ^ Intriguing, looks like they have a narrow market for specialty type drugs. I try to swear off biopharm and related stocks because somehow they fucking eat my lunch time after time again, but this might be worth a stonky play. 

     

    I am on tilt right now, and thinking about playing my accounts off each other.  While I blow up my trading account on short positions (DOW short etfs and SPY puts) thinking about going ultra long in my relatively small roth and IRA accounts.  Basically trading money from taxed accounts to tax advantaged accounts. If I am going to blow up my shorts, might as well transfer into the other.  I think I have a diseased brain. 

    • Like 1
  13. 1 minute ago, BradInATX said:

    Also keep in mind to your point, and you may have already considered this, that fewer people dying could actually bump up the average stay.

    Yep, agreed. Shifts in the case mix (age, especially).  Maybe better treatment with some of the steroid data guiding treatment?  Hard to tell from the data alone, really need boots on the ground insights to flesh it out.  

  14. 7 minutes ago, BradInATX said:


    The 7-day hospitalization average in Austin MSA is actually flattening. Not that we're okay to just hang around 75 new admits per day, but going from sharp upward spike to flat is moving in the right direction.

    austin7-8.jpg

     

    First thing resembling good news in awhile. But we need it to keep bending until it's pointing down.

     

    This suggests to me that length of stay appears to be increasing.  Rate of new admissions flattening, but total census still rising, which may be a good thing. Maybe @trauma babe or another front line health care professional can provide their insight. Better to be in a bed than dead, or something. At least until we run out of beds. 

    This should be concerning to all of us though.  This is the age distribution for (newly?) hospitalized pts week ending 07/05.

    TC-hospitalizations-070820.jpg

     

  15. A few things jump out to me in above.  Age distribution of cases, strong shift to younger age range. Race and ethnicity fairly steady, shift appears to be driven by increased "unknown". Hospitalized numbers are not fucking good at all. Geographic distribution appears more concentrated. Symptom onset information is very lagged as it comes from patient interviews, but we see a spike corresponding in the 3-5 day window after you know what.  That spike will probably lessen as all the new cases are traced out. I fucking hope when I pull a cap on 08/08/2020 it looks a lot better.  Football season lol. 

    • Like 1
  16. 3 hours ago, Hookah Horns said:

    Fortunately there is just the thing in development: synthetic antibodies. If successful it could be used prophylacticly or after infection. Not as good as an effective vaccine though because the antibodies would only be in your system for a month or so, but it might give us a bridge to vaccines. 

    If you are responding to the anti-vax portion of his post, you are taking about reaching a group of people who think that Bill Gates is genetically encoding the mark of the beast into their DNA through a viral vaccine vector. You are not going to reach these people with your fancy antibody talk.  Write them off and move on, we have more pressing needs at the moment to worry about like maybe getting them to wear a fucking mask in the mean time. 

    • Like 1
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