In other news... (humorous news items)

[Zamfir]

Man who jumped out of freezer and died was cold-case suspect

So beautiful

[Soupspoon]

Mummy won't let you eat it? Hard cheese!

[Sableagle]

I'm more concerned that the letter demands that he pay by the end of June, but appears to have been issued in July...

I take 06/09/2018 to be in September.

We arrived at a hotel 10 August and found no rooms. We learned the holiday company had cancelled a booking for 08 October.

'course, they didn't email "08 October" or "08/10 to 11/10," either of which would have made it obvious what they meant.

We ot moved to the Radisson Blu instead, not a terrible outcome.

Can't we just start using 2018:08:18::19:21:44 as standard format?

[Coyne]

Mummy won't let you eat it? Hard cheese!

Brucellosis, hmmmmmm....

I had that. Got it from a tick bite. It is not fun. Ultimately, I wound up in the hospital.

[addams]

Mummy won't let you eat it? Hard cheese!

Brucellosis, hmmmmmm....

I had that. Got it from a tick bite. It is not fun. Ultimately, I wound up in the hospital.

From a Tick Bite??
How did you know it was Not Lymes Disease?

Jeeze.
That sounds bad.
Are you Okay, now?

[Coyne]

Mummy won't let you eat it? Hard cheese!

Brucellosis, hmmmmmm....

I had that. Got it from a tick bite. It is not fun. Ultimately, I wound up in the hospital.

From a Tick Bite??
How did you know it was Not Lymes Disease?

Jeeze.
That sounds bad.
Are you Okay, now?

-EM rash, +undulant fever. I don't know. I was more healthy before the event (in 2012). If I am over it, it has still damaged my health, perhaps permanently...or perhaps I'm just getting old, who knows?

[ObsessoMom]

From a few days ago, but I just stumbled across it.

Prominent white supremacist scolded on video by his father
A livestreamed conversation with Jason Kessler, organizer of Unite the Right, was interrupted by his father when he yelled at Kessler to ‘get out of my room!’

Kessler was one of the main organizers of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer was killed when a self-described Nazi drove his car into a crowd of protesters. In the video, he was in conversation with Patrick Little, a neo-Nazi who ran as a Republican for the US Senate in California this year. Little’s platform included calling for the United States to be “free from Jews”.

Kessler and Little were deep in conversation about Orthodox Jews, when Kessler’s father cut in.

“Hey!” Kessler’s father can be heard to yell. “You get out of my room!”

“You got a drunk roommate there?” Little asked.

“Something like that,” Kessler responded. His dad then cuts in, saying: “I want this to stop in my room, Jason, this is my room.”

Kessler explains to Little that legal costs associated with last year’s Unite the Right rally meant that he had to move back in with his parents.

These new living arrangements appear to be somewhat fraught. Kessler complains that his parents watch “constant anti-German propaganda” on the History Channel. He also describes them as “cucked”, a derogatory term popular with angry young men on the far right.

[Sableagle]

[DavidSh]

At the end of the article:

The escape came less than a week after about 100 goats went on the lam in Idaho, munching their way through a suburban Boise, Idaho, neighborhood in an incident dubbed “Goat-a-Palooza 2018.”

The animals were later wrangled onto a truck by the firm We Rent Goats, which appeared to have accidentally set the animals free.

There is no known connection between the Hackensack and Boise incidents, Tynan said.

"…butt there may be"?

Now, a week later, I followed the link and saw that the livestock in NJ were actually in Hackettstown, not Hackensack. Much more plausable -- Hackettstown is decidedly rural, while Hackensack is much more urban.

[addams]

From a few days ago, but I just stumbled across it.

Prominent white supremacist scolded on video by his father
A livestreamed conversation with Jason Kessler, organizer of Unite the Right, was interrupted by his father when he yelled at Kessler to ‘get out of my room!’

Kessler was one of the main organizers of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer was killed when a self-described Nazi drove his car into a crowd of protesters. In the video, he was in conversation with Patrick Little, a neo-Nazi who ran as a Republican for the US Senate in California this year. Little’s platform included calling for the United States to be “free from Jews”.

Kessler and Little were deep in conversation about Orthodox Jews, when Kessler’s father cut in.

“Hey!” Kessler’s father can be heard to yell. “You get out of my room!”

“You got a drunk roommate there?” Little asked.

“Something like that,” Kessler responded. His dad then cuts in, saying: “I want this to stop in my room, Jason, this is my room.”

Kessler explains to Little that legal costs associated with last year’s Unite the Right rally meant that he had to move back in with his parents.

These new living arrangements appear to be somewhat fraught. Kessler complains that his parents watch “constant anti-German propaganda” on the History Channel. He also describes them as “cucked”, a derogatory term popular with angry young men on the far right.

Yep. I agree with Sable....

umm....MaMa Bear?
That creep doesn't make a profit every time we click on the tour of his R.V..
Does he?

Maybe, the other one's parents can send him to a Pray Away The Nazi Camp
(ech) Thirty is a little old to be growing up.

But, but...Nazi aren't born that way.
Are they?

The only Nazi I know are still deep in The Closet.
Except one. She's in denial.

[sardia]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/busi ... study.html

a counterintuitive finding captures the public’s imagination, taking on a life of its own. In time, the facts become too interesting to check.
Eventually, science corrects itself. After 40 years, three determined economists, thousands of lottery winners and reams of detailed data have revealed a more reliable but less romantic truth: Money really does help people lead a more satisfying life. Another study also surveyed 29 paraplegic accident victims, finding them to be less happy than other people. Yet many popular accounts of this study describe it as if it supported the opposite proposition, that people adapt to personal tragedies.

Turns out that winning the lottery doesn't curse you to unhappiness, and that you don't adapt to adversity (like becoming a paraplegic). You just feel less happy.

You still shouldn't buy a lottery ticket, but if you win one anyway you'll be happier. You won't go crazy and spend it right away either.

[Xeio]

That "what doesn't kill you..." sentiment was always bullshit, but nice to see the science to prove it.

[commodorejohn]

It's definitely possible for people to overcome difficult circumstances in impressive ways, and more power to 'em - but yeah, the pop-psych feel-good bullshit version of that aphorism has become so prevalent in the last thirty years that it's nice to see someone properly calling it out.

[orthogon]

You still shouldn't buy a lottery ticket,

Citation needed.

[CorruptUser]

You still shouldn't buy a lottery ticket,

Citation needed.

Odds of winning the mega millions lotto: 1 in 300 million
Odds of dying in car accident from round trip to gas station 1 mile away to purchase ticket: 1 in 40 million

[Grop]

Therefore one should walk to gas station. Or drive there as part of their usual driving.

[pkcommando]

And if you buy a second lottery ticket, your odds of winning increase by 100%!

[Tyndmyr]

Logically, one would wish to buy at least eight lottery tickets per trip, then, to balance out the risk.

[Sableagle]

Should you choose eight very different sets of numbers, to maximise your chances of winning something, or choose the same numbers eight times, to maximise your personal share of the jackpot should you happen to get it?

[Tyndmyr]

All different sets.

Choosing the same numbers over and over again will maximize your share in the case of a split jackpot, but not all prizes are split, and even among those that are split, each additional ticket with the same number provides less value than the prior.

[Zohar]

Also a win of $10 million is not that different from a win of $100 million. Obviously that's a lot of money, but in both cases you'd be pretty happy.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, I'll take ten times the odds of a ten times smaller prize any day, if we're talking those numbers.

That said, I don't play the lottery, so my odds are pretty minimal.

[Sableagle]

Yeah, I'll take ten times the odds of a ten times smaller prize any day, if we're talking those numbers.

That said, I don't play the lottery, so my odds are pretty minimal.

Your odds of winning over 10⁶ quid on the UK lottery this year are not significantly worse than those of someone buying a ticket for it every week.

[Tyndmyr]

Probably just as well. I understand the UK is several miles away, raising my chances of a car accident if I drive there for a lottery ticket.

[Zamfir]

On a related issue: what do people here think is the optimal size for a lottery prize? The thrill is that you can imagine what you'd do with the money, and be excited while the possibility is in the air. On the other hand, the higher the prize the smaller the chance, and this reduces excitement because it becomes more and more theoretical.

I feel like there are some sweet spots:
- very low prizes, casino-scale. Maximum excitement because the winning chance is visibly real even if the prize is money you could just spend directly without winning.

- order-of-magnitude your cash savings cushion, perhaps a tad higher. Not life-changing money,but now you can dream about buying something that you can't really afford to buy today.

- 'retire tomorrow' money. Not even that you necessarily want to retire, but you could stop worrying about money, probably the most common lottery dream. Subquestion: is the optimal amount a "retire comfortably" amount, or is it "retire in luxury"? Many people seem to take the second as lottery goal, but I think there's an argument for the first.

-more money than everyone around you. The point of the lottery is to get rich, so why aim lower?

- the highest amount, screw the odds. You're not going to win anyway, so maximize the dream.

[LaserGuy]

- the highest amount, screw the odds. You're not going to win anyway, so maximize the dream.

I kind of think this one might be optimal in terms of... mmm... net happiness gained from the exercise assuming that you never win? Like, in virtually every case, you're probably not going to win regardless. So the fun in the exercise is mostly just in terms of what you would do if you suddenly had X dollars. X being really big is the only point where the speculation can actually get beyond the level of "I'd pay down my credit card debt/student loans/mortgage and if there was money left over maybe I'd have a fancy dinner".

[Sableagle]

On a related issue: what do people here think is the optimal size for a lottery prize? The thrill is that you can imagine what you'd do with the money, and be excited while the possibility is in the air. On the other hand, the higher the prize the smaller the chance, and this reduces excitement because it becomes more and more theoretical.

I feel like there are some sweet spots:
- very low prizes, casino-scale. Maximum excitement because the winning chance is visibly real even if the prize is money you could just spend directly without winning.

- order-of-magnitude your cash savings cushion, perhaps a tad higher. Not life-changing money,but now you can dream about buying something that you can't really afford to buy today.

- 'retire tomorrow' money. Not even that you necessarily want to retire, but you could stop worrying about money, probably the most common lottery dream. Subquestion: is the optimal amount a "retire comfortably" amount, or is it "retire in luxury"? Many people seem to take the second as lottery goal, but I think there's an argument for the first.

-more money than everyone around you. The point of the lottery is to get rich, so why aim lower?

- the highest amount, screw the odds. You're not going to win anyway, so maximize the dream.

Depending on culture and local prices, perhaps:

- Pub dinner

- Holiday

- Car

- House

- Switch to part-time work in a job you like

- Retire whenever you fancy it

- Your own personal island nation

[Tyndmyr]

On a related issue: what do people here think is the optimal size for a lottery prize? The thrill is that you can imagine what you'd do with the money, and be excited while the possibility is in the air. On the other hand, the higher the prize the smaller the chance, and this reduces excitement because it becomes more and more theoretical.

I suspect lottery boards have considered this to some degree, and the existing range takes into account various forms of thrill, publicity, etc. Certainly, megamillions ticket sales spike when the jackpot is high, so to some degree, people seem to value the jackpot more even when comparing between fairly ludicrous numbers.

On the far side, we have the roulette wheel, where folks can select from a range of odds on the more probable side of things. Also seems popular. Overall, having a wide variety of bets seems to stimulate interest by feeling different, even if it really isn't so different at all.

Personally, I don't mind a raffle, particularly for a charity. Toss in five bucks, maybe have a shot at a prize in the high hundreds, low thousands, and the knowledge that the profits are mostly going to some decentish cause? That's fun for me. There's got to be some prize to make it interesting, but a modest scale keeps the odds reasonable.

I have trouble viewing the jackpot in particularly long-odds cases as a reasonable outcome. It the odds are many million to one against, why worry about it? Sure, it's fun to play "what if", but I can do that without needing to spend any money on a ticket whatsoever. Just change the postulated mechanism from "lottery" to "previously unknown rich uncle" or whatever. There you go, a reason to chat with your buds about the nifty things you might do if you won a few million, without having to bother with actually buying a ticket.

[sardia]

There was some cool research into savings based lotteries, where you got a ticket if you deposited some money into a savings account. Every month, the bank pays out to a winner from interest payments. The savers get slightly reduced interest, but an incentive to save as well. Big Lotto was not happy about it, and had it killed in the legislature. I think only a few credit unions can still run them.

[SuicideJunkie]

Personally, I think the $1000/week for life thing was/is? pretty ideal, although it clearly depends on how old you are now.
The continuous amount means it is enough to retire immediately if you hate your job, while being small to maximize odds and brush off moochers.

Not enough for me to buy a ticket, but for annual gifting events involving some type of lottery cards from distant relatives, it would be my preferred flavour.

[Tyndmyr]

There was some cool research into savings based lotteries, where you got a ticket if you deposited some money into a savings account. Every month, the bank pays out to a winner from interest payments. The savers get slightly reduced interest, but an incentive to save as well. Big Lotto was not happy about it, and had it killed in the legislature. I think only a few credit unions can still run them.

Awww. That seems like the worst outcome.

Gambling is horribly corrupt in general, though. A ton of the laws around it are all about protecting the profits of those currently running the market. A savings incentives program seems like a great way to use incentives.

Personally, I think the $1000/week for life thing was/is? pretty ideal, although it clearly depends on how old you are now.
The continuous amount means it is enough to retire immediately if you hate your job, while being small to maximize odds and brush off moochers.

Not enough for me to buy a ticket, but for annual gifting events involving some type of lottery cards from distant relatives, it would be my preferred flavour.

You can buy an annuity, if you want, so you should be able to easily convert a fixed lump sum to a similar payout if you like. Just a thought in case you accidentally end up cursed by getting a few million all at the same time.

[emceng]

The price of a powerball ticket doubled a few years ago because they learned more people play for larger sums. No one seems to care about a $30 million jackpot anymore. When it hits $300 million, all the local news stations talk about it.

[Grop]

Probably just as well. I understand the UK is several miles away, raising my chances of a car accident if I drive there for a lottery ticket.

Once again, you should walk to that British gas station. Walking is apparently safe. And who knows if that lottery has discovered the existence of the internet?

[Sableagle]

It has, but in March next year we're disconnecting from the European internet and building our own, which is going to be better and cheaper to run and will make us all rich when you foreign beggars come and plead with us to let you pay for access to it because we're Britain and we're awesome ...

... according to Boris Johnson.

[Soupspoon]

There was some cool research into savings based lotteries, where you got a ticket if you deposited some money into a savings account. Every month, the bank pays out to a winner from interest payments. The savers get slightly reduced interest, but an incentive to save as well. Big Lotto was not happy about it, and had it killed in the legislature. I think only a few credit unions can still run them.

https://www.nsandi.com/premium-bonds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond
But then we're a pinko commie nanny-state, over here, not The Land Of The Free (As In Speech, Definitely Not As In Beer)

[Isaac Hill]

I suspect lottery boards have considered this to some degree, and the existing range takes into account various forms of thrill, publicity, etc. Certainly, megamillions ticket sales spike when the jackpot is high, so to some degree, people seem to value the jackpot more even when comparing between fairly ludicrous numbers.

Large jackpots make lottery pools, where several people each buy a ticket and agree to split the winnings if any of them hit, more appealing. A $10 million jackpot means your $2 ticket gives you 1 chance at $10 million. A $100 million jackpot and 10 person pool means your $2 ticket gives you 10 chances at $10 million.

Some of my coworkers did a lottery pool a few years ago. They offered to let me in, but I said no. Maybe I'd've felt bad if they won and everyone but me quit. But, I might've been able to leverage my position as the only employee who knows anything about our work into a promotion/raise to train their replacements.

[idonno]

Personally, I think the $1000/week for life thing was/is? pretty ideal, although it clearly depends on how old you are now.
The continuous amount means it is enough to retire immediately if you hate your job, while being small to maximize odds and brush off moochers.

Not enough for me to buy a ticket, but for annual gifting events involving some type of lottery cards from distant relatives, it would be my preferred flavour.

$1,000 a week might seem like enough to comfortably retire on but, with 3% inflation, 10 years from now that will be worth less than $40K a year and ten years from then it will be worth less than $30K a year. If there is some major inflationary event, you are really going to wish you hadn't left the job market. It is better to use a lump sum to buy assets that produce the revenue and naturally adjust for inflation.

[SuicideJunkie]

$1,000 a week might seem like enough to comfortably retire on but, with 3% inflation, 10 years from now that will be worth less than $40K a year and ten years from then it will be worth less than $30K a year. If there is some major inflationary event, you are really going to wish you hadn't left the job market. It is better to use a lump sum to buy assets that produce the revenue and naturally adjust for inflation.

There's no need to leave the job market. But you can afford to quit the job you hate, and even then, knowing that you *could* walk away from it will dramatically improve your working conditions.
No reason you can't take your time to find a nicer job after quitting.

[orthogon]

On a related issue: what do people here think is the optimal size for a lottery prize? The thrill is that you can imagine what you'd do with the money, and be excited while the possibility is in the air. On the other hand, the higher the prize the smaller the chance, and this reduces excitement because it becomes more and more theoretical.

I suspect lottery boards have considered this to some degree, and the existing range takes into account various forms of thrill, publicity, etc. Certainly, megamillions ticket sales spike when the jackpot is high, so to some degree, people seem to value the jackpot more even when comparing between fairly ludicrous numbers.

On the far side, we have the roulette wheel, where folks can select from a range of odds on the more probable side of things. Also seems popular. Overall, having a wide variety of bets seems to stimulate interest by feeling different, even if it really isn't so different at all.

Personally, I don't mind a raffle, particularly for a charity. Toss in five bucks, maybe have a shot at a prize in the high hundreds, low thousands, and the knowledge that the profits are mostly going to some decentish cause? That's fun for me. There's got to be some prize to make it interesting, but a modest scale keeps the odds reasonable.

I have trouble viewing the jackpot in particularly long-odds cases as a reasonable outcome. It the odds are many million to one against, why worry about it? Sure, it's fun to play "what if", but I can do that without needing to spend any money on a ticket whatsoever. Just change the postulated mechanism from "lottery" to "previously unknown rich uncle" or whatever. There you go, a reason to chat with your buds about the nifty things you might do if you won a few million, without having to bother with actually buying a ticket.

This kind of stuff is what I was getting at with my "[citation needed]". Roulette and fruit machines with low odds and decent payouts are popular, but only because of a combination of the addictiveness of gambling and the innumeracy of gamblers. To my mind, there's no point playing something which pays out so often that you're practically certain to end up close to the expected outcome, i.e. coming out behind.

As I see it, high-odds gambles such as lotteries are different, in that you probably aren't going to win in your lifetime, but you might win once, in which case you've beaten the odds. So any concept of the "expected outcome" is meaningless - it's a bit like saying that the expected outcome of Russian Roulette is one sixth of a bullet in the head.

[Sableagle]

... it's a bit like saying that the expected outcome of Russian Roulette is one sixth of a bullet in the head.

Did the Russians ever play Russian roulette?

In the original telling, however, the game was a little different. The earliest known use of the term is from “Russian Roulette,” a short story by Georges Surdez in the January 30, 1937, issue of Collier’s magazine. A Russian sergeant in the French foreign legion asks the narrator:

“Feldheim … did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?” When I said I had not, he told me all about it. When he was with the Russian army in Rumania, around 1917, and things were cracking up, so that their officers felt that they were not only losing prestige, money, family, and country, but were being also dishonored before their colleagues of the Allied armies, some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, anywhere, at the table, in a cafe, at a gathering of friends, remove a cartridge from the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head, and pull the trigger. There were five chances to one that the hammer would set off a live cartridge and blow his brains all over the place. Sometimes it happened, sometimes not.

Call it a fine point, but to me five bullets is a different proposition from one bullet. The former is basically suicide, with the empty chamber offering fate a little wiggle room. The latter is a game, albeit a sick one. Both versions are played in Surdez’s story, but it’s no surprise the game variant stuck in the public mind.

Dear Cecil:

Just a little data to compound matters regarding the revolver in Surdez’s short story. The standard service sidearm of Russian officers in 1917 would have been the Model 1895 Nagant revolver, produced from 1895 through WWII. It is a seven shot revolver, so the odds in any Russian roulette would have to reflect 6/1 rather than 5/1. Further, the Nagant loads from a loading gate on the right side, whereby one cartridge at a time may be inserted or removed. The cylinder does not swing out, and there is no way to dramatically “snap it back in place” as Surdez writes. Fine points, but they reflect on the accuracy of the storytelling if a first hand account is being claimed. The revolver action that Surdez’ sergeant is describing is that of a double action Smith & Wesson, Colt, or similar revolver. Take it from an ol’ military surplus collector, Russians used Russian weapons.

— Dennis Thompson

Dear Cecil:

Just read the column on Russian roulette. Several comments were made about revolvers, including the Russian M1895 7-shot Nagant revolver. All those comments are correct IF the Nagant was the revolver in question. One person even commented that “Russians use Russian weapons.” BUT before the adoption of the Nagant (a BELGIAN design!) the Russians used a 6-shot .44 top break revolver manufactured by Smith & Wesson. If the officer in the story was using the older model gun (and many remained in use even after the Nagant came into use), the ratio would indeed have been 5:1 and since the gun has a hinged barrel/cylinder assembly, it would be possible to dramatically snap the gun shut. Hope this clears things up.

— Howard Major