I BET IT BECOMES A NET GAIN AS TECH GLITCHES AND HURDLES GET IRONED OUT: Working from home: Average productivity loss of remote work is 1%. “A report from research firm Valoir found that the abrupt move to working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has had only had a 1 percent reduction on work productivity. And more than 40 percent of workers would prefer to work remotely full time in the future.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 12, 2020
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Baseball Makes a Pitch to Return. “Looking at an empty baseball stadium will be strange, of course (unless you’re a Miami Marlins fan) but just seeing the players on the field could be a much-needed emotional salve for an aching country.”
AN IMPORTANT REMINDER FROM KIRA DAVIS: You Didn’t Shoot Ahmaud Arbery.
IT’S ONLY A MODEL: Our weird behavior during the pandemic is screwing with AI models.
It took less than a week at the end of February for the top 10 Amazon search terms in multiple countries to fill up with products related to covid-19. You can track the spread of the pandemic by what we shopped for: the items peaked first in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Canada, and the US. The UK and Germany lag slightly behind. “It’s an incredible transition in the space of five days,” says Rael Cline, Nozzle’s CEO. The ripple effects have been seen across retail supply chains.
But they have also affected artificial intelligence, causing hiccups for the algorithms that run behind the scenes in inventory management, fraud detection, marketing, and more. Machine-learning models trained on normal human behavior are now finding that normal has changed, and some are breaking as a result.
How bad the situation is depends on whom you talk to. According to Pactera Edge, a global AI consultancy, “automation is in tailspin.” Others say they are keeping a cautious eye on automated systems that are just about holding up, stepping in with a manual correction when needed.
What’s clear is that the pandemic has revealed how intertwined our lives are with AI, exposing a delicate codependence in which changes to our behavior change how AI works, and changes to how AI works change our behavior. This is also a reminder that human involvement in automated systems remains key. “You can never sit and forget when you’re in such extraordinary circumstances,” says Cline.
We don’t know how to model human ingenuity, and humans become even more ingenious during a crisis. So if you were hoping to AI your way out of a crisis, I have some bad news for you.
DISPUTED BY WHOM AND FOR WHAT REASON? Twitter to label disputed COVID-19 tweets.
I dispute the misleading use of “COVID-19,” which is the infection and not the virus. The virus is properly called the Wuhan Virus, for the mainland China city ruled by Chinese Communists where the PRC-sourced Sino-virus came from.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: How the 2020 Election Became a Referendum on China.
By turning 2020 into a referendum on Trump-to-blame-not-China, the CCP may put Biden in an awkward position because it’s a Democratic article of faith that the Donald is always to blame. A 2020 “China election” would vex allies because even those with no affection for Trump cannot afford to see China win.
The adage “take the high ground” applies to politics and it’s puzzling why the Democrats didn’t take “Reshore Hill” and become the champion of returning jobs to America before Trump did. Instead, reflex pushed them into instinctive opposition, tending to disculpate China and demand even longer lockdowns, even to their potential detriment. Seeing the danger, Rachel Esplin Odell and Stephen Wertheim ask in the New York Times: Can the Democrats Avoid Trump’s China Trap?
Read the whole thing.
May 11, 2020
CHANGE. LATE, BUT CHANGE: NY Nursing Homes Can FINALLY Turn Away COVID-Positive Patients, Must Report Staff Cases.
THEY SHOULDN’T BE PLAYING WOMEN’S SPORTS UNDER ANY LABEL: Biological Males in Women’s Sports Cannot Be Called ‘Males,’ Must Be Called ‘Transgender Females,’ Judge Says.
DUMB: Gov. Polis ‘very hopeful’ state’s campsites will reopen soon.
Camping is social distancing.
IT’S, YOU KNOW, THE THING: BidenWatch for May 11, 2020. “Still more evidence that Tara Reade complained about Biden surfaces, plus stories of just how extensively Beijing Joe pandered to China.”
JIM FANELL: Flynn’s First Firing in Days of Wonder. “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC), of which the FBI is a member, deeply feared General Flynn because of his attempted reforms as director of the underperforming Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which for $22 billion dollars per year was not able to recognize Islamic terrorism, assess the People’s Republic of China (PRC) being engaged in expansionism, or warn of other threats to the United States, even as those issues were discussed in newspapers around the world.”
LORENA GONZALEZ IS A GARBAGE LEGISLATOR: California Lawmaker to Tesla Founder: “F*ck Elon Musk” But His Reply Was Priceless.
BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID: Never Trumper Bill Kristol Posts Ghoulish Fantasy of Pelosi Becoming President This Year, It Does Not Go Well.
At this point maybe we should retire “NeverTrump” and replace it with something like “Formerly Closeted Democrat Who Wishes to Be Thought of as a Moderate But No One Is Buying It.”
It’s a little wordy, isn’t it?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: ‘OBAMAGATE!’ Monday Edition. “Obama is back in the daily news cycle, and this is probably the first time that the malignant narcissist isn’t happy about it.”
KARL DIERENBACH: Is it time for a new approach to coronavirus?
In New York City, an antibody survey found that 21% of the city’s population had been infected with the coronavirus. This indicates that over one and a half million of New York City’s 7.2 million residents under the age of 65 had been infected. Furthermore, approximately 78% of them had no underlying medical condition that puts them at risk from coronavirus. Around the time of the antibody survey, New York City had recorded only 58 deaths of people under 65 with no underlying condition.
In the U.S., 79% of coronavirus deaths are people 65 and older. In the 23 states releasing long-term care facilities data, 27% of deaths have occurred in such places. The Washington Post reports the share of fatalities in nursing homes may be 50%. In Colorado, the share is 50%.
Yet our reaction isn’t to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions. No, instead we decide to force over 214 million people under 65 with no underlying condition who are under virtually no threat from coronavirus to restrict their activities, socially distance from each other, and go into lockdown.
Instead of targeting the vulnerable population for assistance and infection avoidance, we shut down our economy.
Read the whole thing.
CAPITALISM: As Food Supply Chain Breaks Down, Farm-To-Door CSAs Take Off.
Images of some American farmers dumping milk, plowing under crops and tossing perishables amid sagging demand and falling prices during the deadly coronavirus pandemic has made for dramatic TV.
But it’s not the whole story.
“We had a reporter call here and say, ‘We want to see some produce rotting in the field and milk going down the drains,’ ” said Judith Redmond, a longtime farmer in California’s Capay Valley, northwest of Sacramento. “And I said, ‘Well, actually, that’s not what’s happening in the Capay Valley.’ ”
Redmond, a founding partner of the 450-acre, organic Full Belly Farm, is busier than ever trying to ramp up production to meet soaring demand.
Locally sourced food has been something of a higher-priced luxury, but for now it might be an higher-priced necessity.
ANSCHLUSS, SUDETENLAND, OR DANZIG? China tries to calm ‘nationalist fever’ as calls for invasion of Taiwan grow. “Loud calls on social media urge Beijing to strike while world is busy with coronavirus crisis, but observers say the authorities do not want to be rushed.”
Rushed?
ALSO: Indian and Chinese forces involved in fierce clashes along border region.