Vaccine FOMO Is Real. Here’s How to Deal With It. (n.d.). Wired. Retrieved 29 March 2021, from https://www.wired.com/story/vaccine-fomo-how-to-wait-tips/

Ashraf, B. N. (2020). Economic impact of government interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic: International evidence from financial markets. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 27, 100371. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2020.100371

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, January 14). RT @jimtankersley: The Biden ‘American Rescue Plan’ goes big: $1.9T, incl almost every Dem stimulus priority under the sun: State/local… [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1349993219988328449

Farzan, A. N. (n.d.). Philadelphia let ‘college kids’ distribute vaccines. The result was a ‘disaster,’ volunteers say. Washington Post. Retrieved 26 February 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/27/philly-fighting-covid-vaccine/

Understanding the Outrage Over Altering Holiday Celebrations Despite COVID-19 Risks—By Daniel H. Stein & Juliana Schroeder Behavioral Scientist. (2020, November 23). Behavioral Scientist. https://behavioralscientist.org/understanding-the-outrage-over-altering-holiday-celebrations-despite-covid-19/

Tampa Bay Times. ‘Judge Denies Publix’s Request to Dismiss COVID-19 Wrongful Death Case’. Accessed 8 February 2021. https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/02/05/judge-denies-publixs-request-to-dismiss-covid-19-wrongful-death-case/.

the Guardian. ‘Shield Some and Let Others Carry on? This Covid Theory Is Dangerous, and Foolish | Charlotte Summers’, 29 December 2020. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/29/covid-theory-dangerous-health.

Gligorić, Vukašin, Allard Feddes, and Bertjan Doosje. ‘Political Bullshit Receptivity and Its Correlates: A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Concept’. PsyArXiv, 27 October 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/u9pe3.

Silk, Jennifer, Lori Scott, Emily Hutchinson, Celine Lu, Stefanie Sequeira, Kirsten M. P. McKone, Quyen B. Do, and Cecile Ladouceur. ‘Storm Clouds and Silver Linings: Impacts of COVID-19 and Daily Emotional Health in Adolescent Girls’. PsyArXiv, 2 February 2021. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hmsj8.

Anderson-Carpenter, K. D., & Tacy, G. S. (2021). Predictors of Social Distancing and Hand Washing among Adults in Five Countries during COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zy82h

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘RT @PsyArXivBot: Predictors of Social Distancing and Hand Washing among Adults in Five Countries during COVID-19 https://t.co/DHAjYHoS3a’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1366708059175849988

I’m a doctor in Illinois, we’re scared of running out of hospital beds. (2020, November 20). Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/im-doctor-illinois-were-close-running-out-hospital-beds-1548681

Holden, D. (2020, December 8). Opinion | What Has Lockdown Done to Us? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/opinion/covid-lockdown-isolation.html

Youyang Gu. (2021, February 24). When can we return to normal? Forget about ‘herd immunity’. Below is my estimate for the number of susceptible individuals over time, as a proportion of the US population. Looking at this graph, what is the best point to go back to normal? Christmas? Fall? Or Summer? 🧵 https://t.co/V4uiFk5YcP [Tweet]. @youyanggu. https://twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1364627872233750543

Dr. Tara C. Smith. (2021, January 23). A reminder: Especially among the elderly, some individuals will die shortly after receipt of the vaccine. What we need to understand is the background rate of such deaths. Are they higher then in the vaccinated population? We didn’t see that in the trials. Some data from @RtAVM. https://t.co/LJe9k1WJQC [Tweet]. @aetiology. https://twitter.com/aetiology/status/1352810672359428097

Seems like this would be a very common need: once you switch to a custom failure track, you want it to stay on that track until the end!!!

The problem is that in a Railway, everything automatically has 2 outputs. But we really only need one (which is exactly what Path gives us). And you end up fighting the defaults when there are the automatic 2 outputs, because you have to remember to explicitly/verbosely redirect all of those outputs or they may end up going somewhere you don't want them to go.

The default behavior of everything going to the next defined step is not helpful for doing that, and in fact is quite frustrating because you don't want unrelated steps to accidentally end up on one of the tasks in your custom failure track.

And you can't use fail for custom-track steps becase that breaks magnetic_to for some reason.

I was finding myself very in need of something like this, and was about to write my own DSL, but then I discovered this. I still think it needs a better DSL than this, but at least they provided a way to do this. Much needed.

For this example, I might write something like this:

step :decide_type, Output(Activity::Left, :credit_card) => Track(:with_credit_card)

# Create the track, which would automatically create an implicit End with the same id.
Track(:with_credit_card) do
    step :authorize
    step :charge
end

I guess that's not much different than theirs. Main improvement is it avoids ugly need to specify end_id/end_task.

But that wouldn't actually be enough either in this example, because you would actually want to have a failure track there and a path doesn't have one ... so it sounds like Subprocess and a new self-contained ProcessCreditCard Railway would be the best solution for this particular example... Subprocess is the ultimate in flexibility and gives us all the flexibility we need)

But what if you had a path that you needed to direct to from 2 different tasks' outputs?

Example: I came up with this, but it takes a lot of effort to keep my custom path/track hidden/"isolated" and prevent other tasks from automatically/implicitly going into those steps:

class Example::ValidationErrorTrack < Trailblazer::Activity::Railway
  step :validate_model, Output(:failure) => Track(:validation_error)
  step :save,           Output(:failure) => Track(:validation_error)

  # Can't use fail here or the magnetic_to won't work and  Track(:validation_error) won't work
  step :log_validation_error, magnetic_to: :validation_error,
    Output(:success) => End(:validation_error), 
    Output(:failure) => End(:validation_error) 
end

puts Trailblazer::Developer.render o
Reloading...

#<Start/:default>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=validate_model>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=validate_model>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Left} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=save>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=save>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Left} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<End/:success>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Left} => #<End/:validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<End/:validation_error>
#<End/:success>

#<End/:validation_error>

#<End/:failure>

Now attempt to do it with Path... Does the Path() have an ID we can reference? Or maybe we just keep a reference to the object and use it directly in 2 different places?

class Example::ValidationErrorTrack::VPathHelper1 < Trailblazer::Activity::Railway
   validation_error_path = Path(end_id: "End.validation_error", end_task: End(:validation_error)) do
    step :log_validation_error
  end
  step :validate_model, Output(:failure) => validation_error_path
  step :save,           Output(:failure) => validation_error_path
end

o=Example::ValidationErrorTrack::VPathHelper1; puts Trailblazer::Developer.render o
Reloading...

#<Start/:default>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=validate_model>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=validate_model>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Left} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=save>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<End/:validation_error>
#<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=save>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Left} => #<Trailblazer::Activity::TaskBuilder::Task user_proc=log_validation_error>
 {Trailblazer::Activity::Right} => #<End/:success>
#<End/:success>

#<End/:validation_error>

#<End/:failure>

It's just too bad that:

• there's not a Railway helper in case you want multiple outputs, though we could probably create one pretty easily using Path as our template
• we can't "inline" a separate Railway acitivity (Subprocess "nests" it rather than "inlines")

I don't think we would/should really want to make this the "success" (Right) path and :credit_card be the "failure" (Left) track.

Maybe it's okay to repurpose Left and Right for something other than failure/success ... but only if we can actually change the default semantic of those signals/outputs. Is that possible? Maybe there's a way to override or delete the default outputs?

Koh, W. C., Alikhan, M. F., Koh, D., & Wong, J. (n.d.). Containing COVID-19: Implementation of Early and Moderately Stringent Social Distancing Measures Can Prevent The Need for Large-Scale Lockdowns. Annals of Global Health, 86(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.2969

ReconfigBehSci. (2020, October 27). RT @EricTopol: I wish all these déjà vu reports of ‘disappearing antibodies’ would disappear. That is not a problem. Https://t.co/upsTpR1fU… [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1321407869976256512

Yale SOM. (2020, October 27). Herd immunity is the end goal of developing a vaccine, @thehowie explains. But when government officials talk about relying on “herd immunity” as a strategy for slowing or stopping the Covid-19 pandemic without a vaccine, it’s a more dangerous approach. Https://t.co/aJ8VXos7zh [Tweet]. @YaleSOM. https://twitter.com/YaleSOM/status/1321150247503101956

Christina Pagel. (2021, February 23). 1. LONG THREAD ON COVID, LOCKDOWN & THE ROADMAP: TLDR: There’s a lot to like about the roadmap – but it could be & should be made much more effective. Because this will be tying current situation to the roadmap, I’m concentrating on English data Read on… (22 tweets—Sorry) [Tweet]. @chrischirp. https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1364019581971558401

Haslam, S. A., Steffens, N. K., Reicher, S., & Bentley, S. (2020). Identity leadership in a crisis: A 5R framework for learning from responses to COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bhj49

Cross-reference with Post article "The intellectual cesspool of the inflation truthers" and "ShadowStats"

Great Question

This is an easy question to answer from my perspective. For me (age 62) and most of my peers, their kids and their peers, we are NO better off than we were a quarter century ago! A large part is the change from Industrial/Manufacturing to Technology and the outsourced labor and manufacturing. America has changed, this is FACT

Powerful Headline (words) from a Washington Post article under Economic Policy. WORDS.....! Words..... When you study Legal Theory you learn that "words" play a significant role in all aspects of social order.

Controlling the rhetoric with consistent narrative

This statement simply implies the use of consistent narrative (story) to allow control of the rhetoric. Narrative can be viewed as believable while Rhetoric is a general pejorative. When the rhetoric is mis or dis-information the narrative must be credible.

Main stream media (MSM) has held a long-term standing across the world as being credible. This standing is eroding. It has eroded considerably over the last 25 years among critical thinkers and the general population has started to take notice.

I question everything from MSM especially when narrative is duplicated with identical rhetoric across known government media assets. History is a wonderful thing when searching for Truth. Events in historical time periods can be researched, parsed and studied for patterns based on future evidence and outcomes.

Information "Spin" is real and happens for one purpose, that purpose is to benefit a position, agenda, person, plan, etc., by manipulating (advertising, PR, propaganda) information. Spin is difficult to refute without hard facts. Spin has a short-term shelf life, but that is all it needs to chart a new course, set the "ball" in motion so to say.

History allows Truth to overcome Spin.

The Quest for Truth

The quest for Truth is everywhere and not limited to the economic topics linked here. This is just a topic that started a thought process where I had access to a convenient tool (Hypothesis) to bookmark my thoughts and research.

Primary thought is: The Quest for Truth. Subcategories would provide a structured topic for the thought. In this case the subcategory would be: US Economy, Inflation

The TRUTH is a concept comprised of inconsistencies and targets that frequently move.

Targets (data, methods, people, time, semantics, agenda, demographic, motive, means, media, money, status) hold a position in time long enough to fulfill a purpose or agenda. Sometimes they don't consciously change, but history over time shines light and opens cracks in original narrative that leads to new truth's, real or imagined.

Verifying and validating certain Truth is very difficult. Why is That?

The BMJ on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 18 February 2021, from https://twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1361179689130356736

21st Century Economics (USA)

Economic Theory of a Market Economy, Characteristics, Pros, and Cons

Americans and the World believe or want to believe that the United States is built upon a Market Economy.

Historical context validates a classic Market Economy theory as directed by our Founding Fathers and Constitution. We clearly do not have a pure Market Economy today (2021).

• To Big to Fail - (Bailouts)
• Farm Subsidies
• Political Influence (money, lobbying, tenure)
• Government Agencies
• Military/Industrial Complex
• Federal Reserve (Central Banking)
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Other

Most Americans lump (through education) the concept of economics and government together, into 3 basic categories; Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.

The U.S. is a Capitalist Nation with a corresponding market economy.

Is this statement Fact or Hypothesis ?

Can we still rely on textbook economic models in the 21st Century?

Boytchev, H. (2021). Why did a German newspaper insist the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was inefficacious for older people—Without evidence? BMJ, 372, n414. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n414

New Scientist on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 15 February 2021, from https://twitter.com/newscientist/status/1360844987521519618

Lu, D. (n.d.). England’s quarantine hotels won’t stop spread of coronavirus variants. New Scientist. Retrieved 15 February 2021, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2267688-englands-quarantine-hotels-wont-stop-spread-of-coronavirus-variants/

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 12). RT @NatureNews: The science behind how and when to give vaccines doses. Https://t.co/S75TXESOG9 [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1360489348223893505

Thompson, B., Baker, N., & Ledford, H. (2021). Coronapod: Is mixing COVID vaccines a good idea? Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00390-8

Patel, M. (2021). Test behavioural nudges to boost COVID immunization. Nature, 590(7845), 185–185. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00329-z

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 10). "Trying to appease both public health demands and the libertarian views of the free market has led not only to astronomical death tolls, such as in the US, UK, and Brazil, but to flailing economies. " 2/3 [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1359427735022694405

Given how the US Senate is composed and elected, why don't we mandate one male and one female from each state to better balance our representation.

How might we fairly do this to ensure better ethnic and socio-economic representation as well?

Wenham, C. (2021). What went wrong in the global governance of covid-19? BMJ, 372, n303. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n303

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 10). "Trying to appease both public health demands and the libertarian views of the free market has led not only to astronomical death tolls, such as in the US, UK, and Brazil, but to flailing economies. " 2/3 [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1359427735022694405

‘Why wouldn’t I get it?’: The experts leading the battle against COVID anti-vaxxers. (2021, February 7). https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-02-08/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-misinformation-inoculation-theory/13125164

Henley, J. (2021, February 4). A quarter of people in France, Germany and the US may refuse Covid vaccine. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/04/covid-vaccine-refuse-france-germany-us-quarter

Sure... blame Facebook!

I'll bet dollars to donuts that she doesn't vote to regulate Facebook in any way during her tenure.

Note that not a single Republican voted to advance the COVID-19 relief bill in the Senate.

They failed us miserably on Epiphany and now they've failed us again on Caldlemas. Miserable that they consider themselves Christians.

Senate 50-50 split

A good overview of what the elimination of the filibuster might mean to the Biden administration and the Democrat party.

Why do they punish the rest of us (can't even add a thumb up reaction) just because someone was "talking too much" or something on this issue?

Roko talks about democracy having a practical function (effective government via peaceful transfer of power) and a spiritual function (keeping the peace by persuading people that they are being represented).

Overturning an election would undermine the spiritual function. This creates an incentive for the loser to swallow the loss, even if he has been cheated, so as to preserve the spiritual function of democracy.

Even though fraud claimers say a small amount of votes can sway the election, this isn't the case for this election. Even swinging Georgia or Pennsylvania to Trump still results in a Biden win.

Democrats were already on the trajectory of losing blue-collar whites by the end of the 60s.

I assume they locked it in reaction to someone posting something unrelated / off-topic.

Some of this reminds me of the insularity and abusive practices of the Hasidim in the recent documentary One of Us. I think there are more pockets of people living like this than most people admit or we as a society should allow.

I also think there's a link to Fukuyama's growth of politics here which is highlighted by Jonah Goldberg's Suicide of the West.

IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. ‘COVID-19 and the Labor Market’. Accessed 6 October 2020. https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13683/.

Fischer, Sean, Kokil Jaidka, and Yphtach Lelkes. ‘Auditing Local News Presence on Google News’. Nature Human Behaviour, 21 September 2020, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00954-0.

Liu, Zihan, Drake Van Egdom, Rhona Flin, Christiane Spitzmueller, Omolola Adepoju, and Ramanan Krishnamoorti. ‘I Don’t Want to Go Back: Examining the Return to Physical Workspaces During COVID-19’. Preprint. PsyArXiv, 21 August 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/un2bp.

Belmont, William, Bruce Sacerdote, Ranjan Sehgal, and Ian Van Hoek. ‘Relief Rally: Senators As Feckless As the Rest of Us at Stock Picking’. Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2020. https://doi.org/10.3386/w26975.

Burke, Marshall, Anne Driscoll, Jenny Xue, Sam Heft-Neal, Jennifer Burney, and Michael Wara. ‘The Changing Risk and Burden of Wildfire in the US’. Working Paper. Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2020. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27423.

Cho. S. J., Lee. J. Y. Winters. J. V., (2020). COVID-19 Employment Status Impacts on Food Sector Workers. Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved from: https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13334/

On the Effects of COVID-19 Safer-​At-Home Policies on Social Distancing, Car Crashes and Pollution. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13255/

Six-​Country Survey on COVID-19 (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13230/

Elsewhere there’s the claim that McDonalds fries are cooked in some amount of beef fat in processing. Warrants further vetting.

(My previous account annotation.)

"No really. Where is the beef?"

Is it vegetarian? A look at the ingredients.

Wedding Directory

Charles, N. E. (2020, June 17). Increased mood disorder symptoms, perceived stress, and alcohol use among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rge9k

Puthillam, Arathy. ‘Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences’. Preprint. PsyArXiv, 10 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5w7du.