Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Nate Silver said Clinton had a 71% chance of winning, but that means he thought Trump had a 29% chance of winning. If a .290 hitter comes to the plate and strokes a single, no one is surprised.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Anyone who you talk to who was convinced that Rice would be the VP is someone whose opinion on politics you should take with a big grain of salt.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Nate Silver bluffed a lot of people into not needing to vote or to go third party, cuz she was going to win anyway. Real Clear Politics collected the actual polls and that showed toss up. We had President Obama and Hillary in Michigan the day before the election. When Obama was running we didn't see a candidate after September cuz it was over.

But yes on %- the guy who taught me most of what I know as a lawyer taught me that:

Client: what do you think is my % chance of winning.

Hank's mentor: You have a good chance, I've explained the strength and weaknesses, but there are too many variables to guess a %. Besides, if you lose you lose 100%.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Those people always beat the odds.

Re: Swing State Blues
 

I see people saying that this election is about the future of democracy in this country, and I get tired of that hyperbole. A hundred years ago, the country was commonly described as a democracy, but most people were disenfranchised. I think Trump and conservatism are hostile to democracy because they understand that they are a minority in the country, but I also think that if they get another four years, they can do real harm to democracy but are not an existential threat.

Where Trump and conservatism is a serious threat is to the rule of law. Our legal system only works because people see it as legitimate. Trump is delegitimizing it, and his Administration frequently refuses to be constrained by the law. Four more years of this will do real harm.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, home team is trailing by one run and a .290 hitter is at the plate. Is the game over?

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I voted for her. You're asking the wrong sock.

Re: Team Eradication 1, Team Herd Immunity Nil
 

The emails are continuing. I legitimately got an email that says this:

"While we value remote work, this pandemic established that in-office work will always be necessary . . . ."


However, in New York, everybody is telecommuting. The metro north parking lots are empty. The trains are empty. I see no reason anyone should risk their health working in a place that has not established safe protocols just to stroke somebody's ego.

But I am going to take the approach that I think underlies your post.

I could retire today. It would be a far less comfortable retirement than if I retired in 5-10 years. But I am not going to risk my health to stroke somebody's needle dick. Everybody faces risks, but even Walmart provides a safer work environment.

I am just not going to respond, continue to work from home and if the direct deposit stops . . . it's been a nice run. But no discussion, no responding.

"A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of the sheep."

Re: Swing State Blues
 

You have more faith than I that there will be another election in 4 years if he's re-elected. I think that's a realistic risk.

Re: Team Eradication 1, Team Herd Immunity Nil
 

Not only is it ridiculous for any law office to demand people come in to work, but it's counterproductive.

I can get done in surf shorts and a t-shirt in my home office the same amount of work I'd complete commuting to and from an office in half of the time. I had two offices at one point, and I never went to either except to meet with people, and even then I found that to be a waste of time.

I get the sales component of offices and in-person meetings. I'm told I'm pretty, I can speak convincingly, and I know how to close. I get that shit. People want to see and hear what they're buying. But after I'm done glad handing, Let Me Leave. Making me stay and hang out behind a desk saps my fucking soul.

I don't want to be in a fucking office with a bunch of people, sitting in artificial light, feeling like I have to get things done while I'm there. On my own schedule, I might work for a couple hours, then do a twenty minute erg piece, work again for an hour, then ride the bike a bit. This keeps the mind calm and allows creative solutions to complex issues to emerge in one's brain.

If I had a twenty for every time the solution to a complex legal question popped into my head while running on the elipitcal machine, I could buy several closets full of the highest quality corporate casual clothes people are compelled against their will to purchase to go to an office and hang out with old divorced dickheads and social invalids who have No Other Place To Be.

We aren't wired to live and die within office towers, artificially cleaved to people we'd never even look at, let alone speak to, but for a shared commercial endeavor. The lonely old men need to understand this. They need to grasp that some of us have internalized the rule that no one ever died wishing he'd spent more time at the office... and that it's a sad rule that no one should have to internalize.

We all perform so much better when left to work at our own pace. Particularly A Personalities, which, though I'd love to claim I wasn't, I unfortunately am. I've been up since 7 and already knocked off four of the eight things I needed to do today. Why the fuck do I need to get dressed, hop in a car, burn gas driving to work, wasting at least an hour of time, and then get arranged behind my desk, talk to a bunch of people I don't want to talk to, and do all of it within a building with an atrocious fossil fuel footprint?

My pet theory on offices is that people who like to avoid having metrics applied to them love to be in offices. They can act important at meetings, make political allegiances, gossip, and find ways to climb the ladder while the rest of us who actually create the dollars do the real work.

This attitude, along with intentional acts (refusing partnership and completely shifting careers/practice areas a few times), has cost me millions. I understand that. But it's also cost my employers. Had they allowed me to work as I felt like working, they'd have gotten a lot more out of me. Instead, they always want you to make it your life - make you do it the way they did it.*

I'd rather die.

________
* There's a hazing element to it. Old fucks demanding the kids suffer as they did. Well, count me out of that shit. I never hazed anyone when I was in a fraternity, and as I recall it, the guys who got off on doing that shit were always the biggest tools and losers. Maybe I'm nuts. It just seems that anyone who wants to make anyone else act a certain way, or exert power over another person, is somewhere between deeply strange and sociopathic.

Re: Team Eradication 1, Team Herd Immunity Nil
 

O.K., fine. Not everything you say is completely wrong.

Re: Swing State Blues
 

I agree. But I think a silver lining is that people are now looking around and saying what you just wrote. Trump caused people to examine the problems with our democratic republic, and in doing so, astute people have realized we live in a quasi-oligarchy, and what existed before Trump was elected was not much different economically than what has existed since. Pre-Trump and post-Trump worlds aren't much different for the poor and middle class except as to those adversely or positively impacted by his trade polices. The "rigged" economy Trump promised to fix remains largely "rigged." Only some of the beneficiaries have changed. It was a neoliberal world before and it remains one today, regardless of our PT Barnum POTUS's populist posturing. (How about that for alliteration?)

Again, did anyone really see it as legitimate? BLM didn't arise out of police brutality and draconian sentencing of minorities enacted under Trump. The rule of law was the rule of property protection for the moneyed classes long before there was a Trump Presidency.

People should not see the rule of law as legitimate because it is not truly legitimate. At the higher rungs, it's political. The target who can make an AUSA's or DA's political career gets prosecuted; the shlub engaged in insider trading gets a civil penalty. The connected banker with huge political clout gets a pass under the "Holder Doctrine;" the trader or hedge fund guy whose prosecution involves some novel theory an ambitious AUSA wishes to test has his life ruined. It's selective (this is excused as creating "deterrence value"), and what's selective is not legitimate. At the lower rungs, it's all the justice you can buy. The rich kid gets probation; the poor kid does time.

It's an archaic adversarial system, and the federal courts are rigged with decades of precedents that make it near impossible to win. It's indistinguishable from China's system - you're guilty when charged. It's just a question of whether you plead out for a few years, or foolishly avail yourself of your rights and do a decade when you lose.

I see this is as a feature, not a bug. Our adversarial system is capricious, political, and biased, and its penalties are medieval. It needs to crash and be not only be rebooted but rebuilt.

Re: Swing State Blues
 

No offense, but that's silly.

Re: Team Eradication 1, Team Herd Immunity Nil
 

He called himself pretty. Don't you feel just a little threatened by that?

Re: Team Eradication 1, Team Herd Immunity Nil
 

Actually, a very funny head of HR at a place where I was in-house called me that. She'd actually tell me to shut up when I spoke during meetings. "Did I ask you to speak? Sit there and look pretty." Probably the only HR person I truly respected and thought was super-talented. She always knew more than I did, and she never let me forget it.