Mangela Lansbury

I think the iPhone SE is pretty dang cheap with a contract (a coworker paid $50 for it) but I don't know what Ireland is like.

When I had an android device, I always had the weirdest problems with things randomly writing to the tiny built in storage instead of the removable storage, or apps that were built to be completely unaware of removable storage, or whatever other weird problems cropped up that I can't remember. I remember it not being a problem often, but being very frustrating when it was. Also this was years ago, so it could have been fixed by now.

My friend won tickets to a Sunday night show and invited me to go with her. Any chance of starting earlier? I'll need to bounce between 5:30 and 6:00 eastern, so an hour to an hour and a half early.

I keep in contact with some of my exes, but I don't think any of any of them as friends. Whatever made us not work makes us not work. I'm going to be torturing myself by pretending that being friends is enough, or I'm going to be torturing them by making them pretend being friends is enough, or we're going to have fights, or we're going to continue to hurt each other intermittently in some other way. I don't have a bad relationship with a lot of my exes, but that doesn't mean I have to expose myself to a relationship that one of us already decided was fundamentally flawed in some way.

If you're super concerned about data privacy, you can get a Blackphone. (Do not do this, it is dumb) If you're moderately concerned about data privacy, you can get the iPhone 6 or SE and turn off iCloud. If you're largely unconcerned with data privacy, you can get an Android device. The choice of which operating system to choose largely comes down to a basic trade-off: Do you want stability and dependability at the cost of customization? Every iPhone that I've had has lasted far longer than any Android device that I've had, and I don't really miss the customization. I can just swipe up from the bottom of the screen to control whatever audio is playing, and calendar widgets have never been all that helpful to me because of the lack of actual information they display -- just tapping the icon for Fantastical shows me the information I need, but a widget never did. But ultimately, it is that basic judgment. iPhones let you do less with your device, but your data is more secure and the OS is generally more stable. Android devices let you do more to make your phone your own, but you sacrifice some security and stability. It's up to you to decide what's important to you.

Is that the episode where the psychic girl was dying because of some temple on a planet and the doctor couldn't fix her so Janeway found God and the psychic girl got better?

I would love to see that Sanders's campaign can perform detailed policy analysis. Also, I did a little looking around, and Sanders introduced this policy as a bill, and also introduced this policy as a bill, and also introduced this policy as a bill. None gained a co-sponsor, and all have languished in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Policy. These attempts ignore that the current regulations are generally doing their job (if this is behind the WSJ paywall, sorry, let me know and I'll... do something???), though at a slower pace and with less fanfare than progressives would like -- it's just not as fun to say GE is spinning off their GE Capital arm due to regulatory strain as it is to say JP Morgan has to split up because we damn well said so. Even Mother Jones, which is generally pretty solidly in Sanders's court, wasn't very charitable about the bill.

Clinton's platform is the status quo, yes. That's not no platform. It's the platform of tying your wagon to the guy with an 80% approval rating among Democrats. There's nothing wrong with that, either. It's not something I agree with, but it's perfectly valid to say, "This is working pretty great, right? I won't rock the boat too much -- the man who came before me did great a job of making things better, and the woman who comes now will keep on making things better in the same way." And saying that you're going to be more of the same means people already know what your policies are. Obama has done the work of establishing it for 8 years. That's why I can make assumptions about her policy like I did above, and feel pretty good about those assumptions being right. Continuity of government isn't an unimportant thing, especially during times of war. Running on that platform is unexciting, but it's solid. I give Clinton the benefit of the doubt because I expect her to fail, and I expect to see her failures coming. I don't give Sanders the benefit of the doubt because I want him to succeed, and he isn't telling me how he plans to do that.

There's a key difference between that vague plan from Clinton and Sanders's vague plans: You can talk about Clinton's in a way that you can't talk about Sanders's. "Take out ISIS's stronghold in Iraq and Syria." This probably means a robust offensive targeting Raqaa and Tal Afar. Let's talk about that. It's material. It's got enough grip to it that you can hold onto it and talk about what it means, and whether or not you agree with it. "Dismantle the global terror network." This probably means collaborating globally with all countries that are affected by terrorism. This is a little bit more slippery because our current counterterrorism policy is defined by a lack of policy, but it still has enough grip that you can talk about how this should look and whether or not you agree with it. This means pursuing things like the Iran deal to gain more allies -- or at least compatriots -- in fighting a global war against an ideology. This is something you can agree or disagree with. This is something you can talk about. "Harden our defenses at home and prevent attacks." This is a largely invisible part of our intelligence apparatus, so it's hard to talk about, but we can talk about it better in the wake of Hayden's biography and Snowden's leaks. Obama 1 was basically Bush 3, as far as domestic matters relating to this go. Considering how closely Clinton is tied to that transition, we can essentially look at Bush 5 now. We know what that looks like. We can talk about it. We can have that conversation. That policy declaration is meaty. It gives us food for thought. We can draw basic conclusions about what it will probably look like, and make an informed judgment about whether or not we agree with that. This is good, healthy discourse. Sanders's "too big to fail" policy is not meaty. It's a slippery subject, and it hasn't been given a shape, much less enough definition that we can hold onto it, look at it from different angles, and come to a conclusion about it. We can't really talk about what his policy would look like because all we know is that he wants to dismantle our central private banking structure. We don't know what his goal is (Dodd-Frank addressed the economic stability issue, so it can't be just that), so we can't talk about whether or not we like that. We don't know how he intends to go about it, so we can't talk about whether or not we think it would work. We don't know nearly enough about it to have these important conversations. Sure, you can say that Clinton shares this problem -- she's made statements about dissolving banks that are too big to fail as well -- but Clinton isn't making this her core argument. This is just a piece of her platform, not a core pillar propping the whole thing up. She doesn't have to define this clearly because it's not what she's built her claim to power on. But Sanders has built his claim to power on this, and he hasn't given us anything to talk about. He hasn't given us the tools we need to have a healthy, active discussion about his policy, and I think that's because he doesn't have them himself. I voted for Sanders in the primary, and I hope he wins the nomination and the presidency. I want him to succeed. I'm being critical of him because he needs to answer these questions.

My problem isn't necessarily that Sanders got anything wrong in that interview, but that all of his policies still seem like they're pulled from a Freshman comp 101 class. He says he wants to renegotiate NAFTA, PNCR, TPP, etc., but doesn't say how he's going to convince people to agree to something that's necessarily going to be worse for them, or how he's going to compensate for the strain on foreign relations, or even exactly what his demands would be. This naive approach to foreign relations is repeated when he moves to Israel -- sure, he's willing to say that the Israeli settlements are illegal and that he thinks that Israel should pull out from settlements on Palestinian land, but then he says that the Palestinians shouldn't be able to bring Israel to the ICC, and he refuses to say that he would act with any force about settlements in any kind of conversation with Israel. So what's the meaning of saying you think Israeli settlements are illegal if you don't want the words to have any power? Why say something if you're not confident enough on it to act? I think this kind of half-formed idea theme is echoed in his too big to fail rhetoric as well. How does he plan to counteract the downward push that restructuring a fundamental part of the American financial system will necessarily have? Why should I have faith that Bernie Sanders, who doesn't have a great track record when it comes to staffing, will be able to name a Secretary of Treasury who is highly capable and will handle the immense power that Sanders wants to vest them with well? How big is too big to fail -- is it half a Lehman Brothers? Is it 95% of a Lehman Brothers? Have the protections put in place by Dodd-Frank lowered risk enough that it's 150% of a Lehman Brothers? What's the number -- or even, what's your definition of too big to fail? Is it "able to incur an amount of debt so large that its inability to pay would adversely affect the economy-at-large?" Or is it willing to incur that debt? Is it going to be rigorously defined with facts and figures or loosely defined with a kind of you know it if you see it attitude? If you can't define it now, how do you intend to come up with that definition in the future? Basically, Sanders has really great ideas. I want to see him as president based solely on his ideas. But pretending like his ideas are fully developed, well articulated, and deep policies isn't doing anyone any favors -- least of all Sanders himself.

I've hit an extremely frustrating roadblock at work that has me really bummed out. I work in healthcare quality -- an administrative role where you pull data to see where there are improvement opportunities, and then explore how to implement the necessary interventions to improve the value of healthcare that the institution provides, with value being defined as patient outcomes over cost. I'm also a bit of an LGBTQ+ activist, so I've been trying to combine these two things into a concerted effort to improve trans* healthcare because there is a whooooole lot of improvement to be done there. The roadblock that I'm hitting has everything to do with data. To kick off an effort, you have to pull data to show that there is a gap that needs to be bridged. For a lot of projects, this is pretty simple. When someone has a chronic condition, there's an easy way to identify the population; someone will have charted them as having hypertension, diabetes, asthma, etc., using ICD-10 diagnosis codes and you can run a query and get a whole host of data about that population. When someone has a specific surgery, you can query the electronic health record system for patients who have a specific CPT procedure code and pull a lot of data about that. There's a ton of work that actually goes into getting the data and medical data warehousing is incredibly complex, but the process itself is fairly simple to conceptualize. There is no easy way to pull data about trans* people. Our system of electronic health records was built with two genders in mind, and there is no good way to code trans* health related episodes of care. The powers that be have decided this isn't an issue, as is apparent by the CDC lumping transwomen in with men who have sex with men in almost all of their public health studies. The best that you can really do is the ICD-10-CM (it stands for International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification, and international standard for putting diagnoses into electronic health records) codes in the F64.* class -- Gender identity disorders -- but these are often unused because trans* health is discriminated against to an extraordinary degree, and if you aren't socially transitioning yet you might not want the explanation of benefits or bill that comes to your house to have on it that your visit was coded for the treatment of a gender identity disorder. The patient might also ask their doctor to not lump them in with that because they don't have gender identity disorder -- this is valid and common. This lack of a codified, standard approach to treatment makes it impossible to gather reliable data on trans* populations. There is no good way to gather information about trans* health issues the way that you can gather information about cisgendered health issues. Because the health data warehouse is constructed in, frankly, a transphobic way, I cannot pursue pulling together a concerted institutional effort to improve trans* healthcare. I am unable to identify specific gaps that can measured with specific metrics to gauge statistically relevant and accurate improvement. I'm at a total loss for how to keep pursuing this. My institution isn't providing any help. This is something that I really care about and really want to make happen, but my efforts just keep being frustrated by the very structure of the system I work in. I'm going to keep trying, but right now I'm feeling extremely discouraged. I have a meeting with the team that's helping with the one trans* health project I've been able to cobble together this week, and it's an incredible and experienced group of people that I'm hoping can point me in a new direction because I feel like I'm at a dead end.

heheheheheheheheh heh

I see a not negligible amount of Sanders supporters saying that Clinton might be facing trial over her e-mails before the election, so I don't think that coverage is invisible.

So, I was trying to find something somewhere that did a deep dive into Clinton's media coverage over lunch today. I hear a lot of Sanders supporters talk about how the media loves Hillary so much, and I've never really gotten that impression but didn't have data to back it up. The best I could come up with was a 538 piece from September that shows overwhelmingly negative coverage of Clinton's campaign. Does the claim that Clinton has disproportionately positive coverage have any real support, or is it just your typical self-reinforcing anti-establishmentarian mindset?

That just makes me want to listen in the hopes that Griffin does what one of my GMs did to a player who played way too evil for his alignment -- which is just declare one day, "Change your alignment. Paladin, you are free to react as is necessary for your character."

This is a good song (video is NSFW) and also life motto

All those Droopy McCool x Samwise Gamgee x Leisure Suit Larry fics belong on the dark web.

I finished Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond this week. It is really good. I picked it up because the author gave a talk on it at a local bookstore, and he was incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. I highly recommend it. Probably one of the most damning things from the entire book is that we do have a functional and robust public housing program in America, and we spend a lot of money on it -- but it's only for home owners. If you can't save up the many thousands of dollars and have the credit score you need to buy a home, you can't participate in it. The mortgage interest tax deduction alone was roughly equivalent to all spending on public housing programs in 2008. When you add up all the home ownership programs from 2008, you end up with a sum of money in excess of the combined budgets of the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education, Veteran Affairs, and Justice for that year. This is a good sample of what the book is like: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out

Isn't the only difference between cottage pie and shepherd's pie that you make a cute little thatched roof pattern on top of cottage pie???

I went to a meeting today with the stated topic of "Cost Models for Mitral Valve Replacement" -- super boring topic, I had no idea why I was going, didn't want to do it, but whatever, I went. It turned out to be way more interesting than any finance presentation has any business being. Medical institutions are facing the problem of not knowing what their costs are. The hospital I work for straight up can't say how much it cost them to treat a patient. They can track money in and money out, but the actual, real, comprehensive costs of things are a complete mystery. So when you go in to have a heart valve replaced, there is generally no tracking of the cost to the institution -- what the room costs, the time of the nurses, the time of the PharmD's, the time of the doctor, the time of the surgeon, etc. A lot of institutions track these things using measures like the relative value unit, which is just this kind of meaningless, garbage number used to track time, and they know it's garbage but still use it. It was a 90 minute meeting of a dude standing in front of a room full of people, telling us all he had no idea what he was doing and explaining the many ways in which the work he does is bad. Super interesting, even though a lot of the nitty gritty of the accounting stuff went over my head.

I think it's important to temper that view of Clinton with someone like Coates's view of Sanders. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-liberal-imagination/425022/ I think examining Sanders's policies with the same scrutiny that people apply to Clinton's ultimately results in a very samey kind of approach. He's still incrementalist, and still avoids things that are too divisive. He talks a big game about some things, but his real, actual policy -- as I've come to understand it -- is lackluster.

As someone who doesn't watch/listen much of anything Giant Bomb related, this is the most egregious Dan Sin that I've heard so far.

Hey, as a Jewish person, I'm more offended by your attempt to use the Holocaust to excuse Sanders's gaffe (which isn't even that huge a gaffe, but is still a gaffe), so to each their own. And I'm not being disingenuous. It's just really hard to see the point you're trying to make about Sanders saying "when you're white, you don't know what it's like to live in the ghetto" by bringing the Holocaust into the discussion. It's very confusing.

So what you're saying is that Jewish people -- many of whom are white -- do, in fact, know what it's like to live in a ghetto? In direct contradiction to Sanders's statement that "when you're white, you don't know what it's like to live in the ghetto?"

There's a nice juxtaposition here, between Coates saying that Sanders is betraying his radical name and the fact that Trump's solution to racial inequality addresses the problem on the merits of class -- namely, an opportunity gap and an employment gap. Sanders's position is certainly more robust, but Trump's proposed solution has a similar shape. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trumps-plan-solve-the-racial-divide