UKMT April 2020 - The Betacoronavirus and the Virgin Atlantic

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT April 2020 - The Betacoronavirus and the Virgin Atlantic

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Bardeh posted:

I resubbed the other day on Omega too, but I'm at the end of ARR and I'm faced with 100 boring fetch quests before the first expansion and I just...can't. I'm considering paying for the skip - is Heavenward that much better that's it's worth it?

It really is. Also, you�re now through the worst of the ARR stuff - 2.1 and 2.2 are fairly boring, but nowhere near as bad as the leadup to ~~Tidus~~ Titan or the crystal hunt for Garuda, and things ramp up in quality from there. (Also you�ll now have blue quests available to unlock about 20 new dungeons and an alliance raid tier to go through while you do them.) Then there�s a really big jump in quality at the start of HW.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2020 11:02

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:34

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Bobstar posted:

What was the name of the thing where you read about your own subject in the newspaper, laugh at how wrong it is, then read the other things?

Gell-Mann amnesia.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2020 18:35

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Jose posted:

Lol cool

https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1245425321068953608?s=19

Yeah, now would be a pretty good time to stock up on seeds if you're the sort of millionaire that has somewhere to plant them. The EU is going through similar issues, so we're probably going to be a bit hosed for fresh fruit and vegetables in a month or so.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2020 20:08

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

MeinPanzer posted:

Why is it so hard to believe that China was both extremely, brutally effective in its handling of the outbreak and also willing to fudge the numbers?

I believe that they were basically transparent during the worst of the outbreak, because it didn't hurt them to acknowledge the reality when they were actively being seen as taking aggressive action to combat the spread of the virus. They did, however, quietly announce recently that despite their widespread testing, their figures have not accounted for asymptomatic cases up until basically this week.

But where they have a major incentive to fudge the numbers -- and where, mark my words, Western governments will do the same -- is in the current phase, when the curve has been flattened and there is an ambient eagerness for everyone to get back to work and normal life. Again, given the abovementioned fact that they were not tracking or quantifying asymptomatic cases, it is impossible to imagine that active cases are as few as the government claims.

This has also been fleetingly confirmed by snippets of information coming out that the same mechanisms that inhibited initial action -- local officials wanting to cover up the spread in order not to hurt their economic quotas -- has again kicked in, with the result that some areas are reporting more honestly than others.

The thing is, if you go to the coronavirus thread and look back a day or so you�ll find people like Nurge claiming that China has somehow magically covered up hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths across the country, that they�ve successfully prevented all word from getting out because :umberto:

, and that this hasn�t turned into a country-wide epidemic killing millions more per day because ???. I think that�s the sort of absurdly transparent bullshit people are speaking out against. I�m perfectly happy to believe they�re fudging things on a smaller scale.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2020 10:12

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

I'm pretty certain that if I let go of my schedule altogether then I'd be on a 28-hour day.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2020 13:45

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

That's actually natural, IIRC if you take away environmental cues most mammals settle into a 26ish hour cycle.

Doesn�t work super-well when you�re in online D&D games with friends, though. (I know, trap sprung...)

# ¿ Apr 2, 2020 14:08

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

"I just want to be able to stop thinking about Brexit", I said, holding my cursed monkey paw.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2020 20:26

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

blunt posted:

Is workfare still a thing? Because if so ... Oh boy.

Don't worry, transitioning to a centrally-planned economy is only socialist if you give the workers rights.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2020 20:32

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Junior G-man posted:

Also get ready for PeasantBadge! Your personal identification that You Are Cleared For Work!

So how long before employers start hiring only PeasantBadge holders, and how long before people start ~~having to infect themselves or die on the streets~~ making the irresponsible choice to break the lockdown?

e: oh my loving god I didn�t even see they were talking about wristbands as an option. How can they not see that will instantly start a black market?

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Apr 3, 2020

# ¿ Apr 3, 2020 10:22

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Azza Bamboo posted:

A lot of tears itt. Also "if you're not with me then you're against me" thinking.

Oh boy I wonder why that could be

Could it have anything to do with how the people who weren't with us behaved over literally the entire course of Corbyn's leadership

# ¿ Apr 4, 2020 11:35

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Disgusting Coward posted:

That's the thing that keeps striking me as of late. I know "Just A Flu Bro" is an eye rolling meme at this stage, but it basically kinda is. It's a slightly pepped up flu. It's the cold, with muscles. A disease that the majority of folks might not even notice they've contracted. Yet it's become this world-threatening, society buckling motherfucker purely because everything's been run so shoddy and cheap for so long. We can't test people because the tests are shoddily-made poo poo. We can't handle all the sick people because the NHS has been slashed to the bone. Doctors and nurses gonna start croaking because eh fuckit why would we need PPE. We can't hunker down because we gotta send folks out to make Number Go Up, and their jobs still require hella manpower because eh fuckit automation's expensive. It's going to gently caress up people who, by rights, should shake it off because public health is a luxury society never bothered investing in, and looking after yourself is only for wealthy folks. We didn't get on top of the Bojo Buggerer 4 months ago because eh, don't wanna offend the Chinese money or harm the tourist trade. We don't have a vaccine because the research didn't seem profitable so nobody bothered their arse. There's no slack or resilience in anything, because that would require expenditure and effort. Clap for the NHS tho! Pray for Bojo! Look, here's the Queen to make reassuring noises!

It's all just bloody ridiculous. I think I might go vandalise a Wetherspoon's.

To be fair, the reason it's really loving the NHS isn't the 1-2% who die from it, it's the 10-20% who need to be hospitalised. That's way worse than a pepped-up flu. Also vaccines specifically take 12-18 months minimum because a) they're hard to make, b) you have to grow them and that takes time, and c) they need really thorough testing because if the vaccine makes 1% of people go blind and you give it to the whole population then welp.

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Apr 6, 2020

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 22:57

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

If I hear any clapping, I'm firing up the dancing pallbearer music at max volume.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 11:01

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Katty! posted:

I've had like 8 days in class this semester between strike action and closing for the virus, now all I'm getting are powerpoint slides with audio recorded over them. naturally I'm still expected to pay the full fee

Sincere question, not trying to dig at you: what do you actually want, beyond for the coronavirus to not be happening? I'm a computer science lecturer, and from where I'm standing all the options look poo poo, but powerpoint slides with audio looks the least poo poo. Livestreaming lectures is far more trouble than it's worth in most cases, since even in CS we can't rely on our students having a stable Internet connection right now, or even a free schedule if they're caring for others, and despite our best efforts there was never much interaction with the audience in lectures anyway. From our end we're spending more time on teaching now rather than less, since (again even in CS) most of us have never done online lectures before, and you don't have to do multiple takes or try different encodings or deal with the university's godawful video upload system with a live lecture.

Also worth noting: the management of just about every UK university that's not Oxbridge is visibly making GBS threads themselves in terror at the implications for their finances. We get most of our money from tuition fees - particularly from international students - and enrolment of new first years is going to dive off a cliff in October. Hiring freezes and even layoffs are fairly common in the sector right now. I'm pretty sure management couldn't refund anyone's fees if they wanted to. (Of course, the obvious answer here is for the government to step in and help, but lol if you think that's going to happen under the tories.)

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 21:38

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

OwlFancier posted:

It's hard to see anything happening unless the universities face some consequences, if they're going to sell education as a commodity they can't be immune from consequences when they fail to provide it. And they also can't be allowed to use staff as human shields for their lovely governance.

But I don't think that just levying 30k of debt on everyone who wants anything other than the most basic job, regardless of whether they actually get anything out of it, is an acceptable end state, the consequences have to kick in somewhere, the money has to be going somewhere because it's sure as poo poo not going to the people who work at the universities.

Can I just point out that no-one working at a university ever loving wanted to sell education as a commodity to begin with? Credit for that idea goes to Blair, Cameron and Clegg.

e: As for where the money went, I think mostly the government cut the teaching budget to match so we never got much (if any) extra money to begin with. In terms of what waste I can see now, mostly the existence of upper management and their fetish for shiny new buildings.

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Apr 7, 2020

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 22:02

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Kin posted:

Granted my Uni might have just been poo poo, but almost all of my mathematics lectures were us just copying down what the lecturer wrote on the blackboard, which they themselves were copying from their notes from previous years. We literally spent about 15 hours a week manually copying formulas and stuff. The economics ones weren't much better as they simply regurgitated what was in the prescribed textbooks. It was like routine for them and when i resat one of the lectures one year it was weird because it was a little like groundhog day.

There was even one year where i skipped all of the economics classes, didn't even do the coursework or final exam, and was all but guaranteed a fail. Over the summer i just read the course textbook and then aced the re-sit which gave me a passing mark. Kind of put things into perspective for me.

I'm not really dissing on universities and whatnot because education is important, but if a class is essentially just churning out knowledge from other sources, what is the justification for the crazy high fees? Do other universities and other courses have more engaging teaching methods or is it secretly about the social network you build up at university which is the real thing that propels you into the next stage of your life?

Other universities do have more engaging teaching methods, I think. I did maths at Cambridge, and most of the lectures were just copying things down, but that was OK because most of the actual learning happened via grappling with the exercises and then talking them over in one-on-two supervisions. In other universities I've been at, the courses seem to change lecturers and syllabi fairly regularly, and it was a fairly common sentiment that the ideal length of time to teach a course for is three years. (Less than that and you're spending all your time writing new lecture materials, more than that and it starts calcifying as you describe.) In the course I teach, I can't really interact with people one-on-one because it's a gigantic class, but I've tried to make up for it with lots of formative assessment - easy weekly quizzes with instant feedback combined with harder fortnightly problem classes, and in-class tests to get people ready for the exam. Also, a good lecturer has one huge advantage over a textbook, which is that you can be informal and point out the motivation of what's going on. So instead of teaching the proof of Theorem 5.7, you teach how to prove things in general, and how you would use that knowledge to prove Theorem 5.7.

Of course, there's a hell of a lot of bad lecturers out there as well, because it's quite rare to find someone who can both a) bend their mind into horribly unnatural shapes to solve incredibly complicated mathematical puzzles and b) successfully explain what they're doing to normal people. And universities are reluctant to hire people who can only do b), because people who can only do b) don't bring in any grant money, but people who can only do a) can still be forced into a lecture hall, and the idea of long-term consequences for poor performance isn't really part for the average vice-chancellor's mindset.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 22:26

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Katty! posted:

I guess since I'm in the middle of working on my dissertation and it's happened at a pretty crucial point I'm just a little highly strung and want to complain. I do agree with you that just emailing over some powerpoints is the best way to go - we tried some live lectures but a) I don't think anyone showed up, and b) it was mired with technical problems - though it does come after years of being told that simply reading lecture slides after the fact is no substitute for the real thing and that's why we pay fees lol

I suppose on a more general, fundamental (and totally unsolvable) level, I would prefer the content of my degree to be a little more than official proof that I'm good at reading things and then writing words down in a good enough order, but that's just the way it is. Comparatively I'm getting it pretty good, my fees are only ~�4,300 a year and my course directors are decent enough - anecdotally I've heard the responses by some universities, especially regarding accommodation, is absolutely dire. up until a week or so ago a friend's uni was trying to get them to pay around �2000 in rent for a place they had already left, and prior to this they were saying that the only way they could offer a refund is if they managed to get someone else to start renting the place. I can only imagine how many people are getting scammed by their landlords and universities themselves

Yeah, fees are a bad joke for universities that don�t put any effort in. I think well-presented slides with audio* and maybe a facecam give you 95% of the value of even the best lecture, and MOOCs can do that a hell of a lot cheaper and better than conventional universities. The only academic reason to favour conventional universities over MOOCs is stuff that can�t be done just as well virtually, which in STEM means labs, problem sessions and office hours. Well, that plus the fact that you need a piece of paper to get a job anywhere, even at the supermarket, and no-one trusts the MOOCs to give out the right sort of paper. (But relying on that to stay true forever would make us both assholes and idiots.)

* The audio is important! Without that you�re getting 20% of the value tops. With it the main reason to go to the lectures is psychological, establishing a daily routine to make sure you actually do go rather than trying to inhale the entire course from scratch the day before the exam.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2020 09:39

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Jose posted:

lol cool

https://twitter.com/peterjukes/status/1247685177465344002?s=20

As far as I can tell from the other coronavirus thread, the IMHE model is kind of trash - it assumes all lockdowns are equal, and that the results of our shoddy lockdowns can be modelled by looking at the results of China and South Korea's sensible lockdowns. Bonus, it's trash that's currently writing US policy!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2020 13:11

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Oscar Romeo Romeo posted:

I started doing this two months ago and how the hell do you do the back properly?

It's easy. You just need to rely on a little trick I like to call the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Don't worry, most other people are going to have a terrible haircut as well for exactly the same reasons.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2020 13:20

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

farenheit451 posted:

[delurk]
Given that we don't test/scan/quarantine arrivals from our airports (at least in England), and these places handle tens of thousands of passengers per day, and that our airports remain open, how does the thread feel how effective the stay-at-home policy will actually be?

I'm starting to think the entire thing (closing of things, prohibition of sunbathing, even the 2m distance) is just theatre.

Places like Taiwan have got on top of this. 5 deaths? How accurate is that. Places like that stopped all incoming flights didn't they? Or made arrivals having at least 14 day isolation mandatory.
[/lurk]

Testing and scanning at airports doesn�t really help much due to the long asymptomatic period - to cut off infections from that vector you�d need to implement a full quarantine like China. For anything short of that, the result is a linear growth of undetected cases. In the very early or very late stages that�s a big deal, because it�s the difference between having an outbreak/resurgence and not having one, but when you�ve already got a massive outbreak it�s irrelevant. Either the stay-at-home measures in place are already enough to stop exponential growth, in which case arrivals from the airport are still subject to those measures so you�re fine, or the number of cases is growing exponentially, in which case adding some small linear growth is throwing a few drops of kerosene onto a raging fire - it might technically be better if it didn�t happen, but realistically it�s not going to make any difference to the outcome.

By contrast, all the stay-at-home stuff is intended to make every person who gets the virus give it to fewer people. That massively slows down the growth rate of the infection. If you�re lucky it slows down enough that on average each infected person infects fewer than one other person, in which case the outbreak shifts from exponential growth to exponential decay and you�ve successfully avoided the herd immunity scenario where 80% of the country get it. But even if you�re not lucky, you still slow things down enough that fewer people have it at once at the peak and the country gets a little less hosed than it otherwise would.

The big problem is not that we�ve kept the airports open - as long as you�ve banned non-essential travel, and as long as the outbreak�s still going, it genuinely doesn�t make sense to close them yet. The big problem is that our stay-at-home measures are lukewarm poo poo with unclear rules and uneven enforcement. It�s basically enforced by the honour system, and a whole lot of non-essential workplaces are still open and still requiring their employees to come in. Right now I�m fairly sure we�re still on track for most of the country to get this thing, with the aging tories spreading it far and wide in one final act of spite towards their descendants.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2020 09:37

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Vitamin P posted:

I'd argue it's that Online is a legitimate subculture that evolves and that language organically permeates more than it's me fulfilling an emotional need or some highbrow poo poo, but I do consciously know that the most obnoxious, authoritarian shitlib posters on these forums do unironically believe in the contagion theory of political discourse and that poo poo is cancer.

"Reeeeee" and "cucked" aren't "online culture", they're specifically 4chan poo poo. The first one is a slur against autistic people, and the second one is used exclusively by the alt-right.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2020 00:54

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Vitamin P posted:

Absolute bullshit, there were lots of people on this very forum that correctly noticed the name Change UK was funny as gently caress stop lying, and if 'reee' is a specific reference to autistic people then it's news to me I've only known it as animalistic frustration noise reference.

Oh yeah, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that you get called out - by different people - every single time you use the word. That makes sense. Also,

Angepain posted:

Also on the CUK front, while I'm not entirely sure i'd defend all of the specific jokes made about Change UK, there is some difference between noting that an organisation made up of supposed brilliant communicators has accidentally named themselves after a terrible word and casually using that word to describe a distantly related politician in a different context

# ¿ Apr 12, 2020 01:14

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

I think my favoured method would be guaranteed jobs without guaranteed work. So, you get your guaranteed job doing useful work, with a guaranteed salary, but if there's not enough work that actually needs doing then you work for less than five days per week while still drawing full salary. That seems like it would be fairly easy to ratchet into UBI in the long term.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2020 11:49

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

sassassin posted:

This will be a fine way for middlemen (job providers) to get their cut of tax payer money.

There is work that need doing in this country. We have to bring in fruit/veg pickers from the continent every year because our society can't support seasonal workforces on the wages they pay. UBI solves that issue. Employing them for the rest of the year is just pageantry and additional paperwork. It doesn't address the underlying issues just paints a normative veneer over the top.

Sorry, I was unclear - I was thinking of the guaranteed jobs as being provided by the government, building infrastructure and similar, so there wouldn't be any middlemen.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2020 13:32

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Yeah, the time you use a garlic press is if you�re cooking multiple batches for the freezer and you want to use half a head of garlic or so. Otherwise you�re better off either chopping it (if you want noticeable chunks of goodness) or grating it (if you just want the flavour).

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 11:23

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:34

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

The Question IRL posted:

So I saw this tweet being liked by a few journalists I follow on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/MarkPaulTimes/status/1251979157552205824

And reading the linked article, the Swedish Epidemiologist just sounds mad. Even without having to listen to the video of what he's saying to see if he's being taken out of context, just saying that Covid 19 is pretty mild and the fatality rate is probably only 0.1% just seems completely at odds with the whole worlds experience.

Then researching how Sweden is doing led me to this article.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swedish-coronavirus-no-lockdown-model-proves-lethal-by-hans-bergstrom-2020-04

This quote was probably the most telling.

I say this because I've seen a few people touting Sweden as some model that we should be copying and that Herd Immunity over lockdown is the way to go.
But what came out of the news this week is that Herd Immunity may not work. Or at least, that just because you get it, that you don't become immune to it, which seemed to be the basis for the UK's initial strategy.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/no-evidence-people-who-have-survived-covid-19-have-immunity-who-994757.html

Wouldn't that be the pinnacle of irony? BoJo gets Covid 19, is hospitalized by it, survives it. Goes back to work, then gets it again.

As far as I know, there's absolutely no reason to believe reinfections are possible on any significant scale within the short amount of time we've had. There might be one or two freak cases, or they might just be false negatives on tests, but either way it's irrelevant to 99.999% of the population. The real problem is if the immunity is temporary, and it goes away after a year or so (before we have a vaccine).

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 12:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT April 2020 - The Betacoronavirus and the Virgin Atlantic