Happy St Patrick's Day!

[jcarmody]

The FIDE Candidates Tournament started this morning, where eight of the world's best (minus the actual world's best) will play a double-round-robin tournament to determine who will face Magnus Carlsen later this year in the World Championship match.  You can watch the only major event happening in the world! https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/fide-candidates-2020

[altenbach]

On a lighter note, I got up this morning at sunrise and saw this out of my side window. Especially significant since it also is St. Patrick's day. 😮 Statistically, this is a very rare sight in Southern California.

Couldn't get to the pot of gold, so I have to wait for my tax refund instead. 😄

EDIT: Somebody else with better view took this picture:

(Both rainbows are not perfectly circular because they had to be taken as panorama, moving the camera. There is some stitching involved)

[mcduff]

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@altenbach wrote:

On a lighter note,

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Since this is a lighter note, here's a theory

@altenbach -> reincarnated former Pony Express Rider

Theory Support

• His algorithms are light and fast
• He always mentions postage stamps, post cards, and sometimes business envelope sized code.

mcduff

[crossrulz]

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@altenbach wrote:

Couldn't get to the pot of gold, so I have to wait for my tax refund instead. 😄

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In the town I grew up in, a WWI vet decided to build a castle next to the Little Miami River.  A story goes that during the construction, he saw the end of the rainbow.  But there was no pot of gold, so he put a marker stating it was the beginning of the rainbow.

[altenbach]

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@crossrulz wrote:
But there was no pot of gold, so he put a marker stating it was the beginning of the rainbow.

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• Well, without obstructions, a rainbow is a full circle and there is no beginning or end.
• With obstructions, you could approximate it using a sausage model: two ends and no beginning. 😄

[Ben]

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@altenbach wrote:

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@crossrulz wrote:
But there was no pot of gold, so he put a marker stating it was the beginning of the rainbow.

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• Well, without obstructions, a rainbow is a full circle and there is no beginning or end.
• With obstructions, you could approximate it using a sausage model: two ends and no beginning. 😄

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Let me guess!

You had rain moving in that morning?

Re: the Kung Flu fallout

My better-half has been working from home since libraries are no "essential". That does not mean she has not had to do any real work. Her and her team have been scrambling to stop the computers from sending out nasty-grams threatening fines if people are not returning their books.

For myself, I live a semi-isolated life style...

Spoiler

If I liked people, why would I have spent so much time learning to talk to computers?

so things are running as normal. I had been concerned about acquiring truck loads of gravel but the landscape place I use are under contract to the water company and are therefore "essential".

I would life to ask for some speculation from Y'all if you are so inclined...

If you had to bet, when do YOU think the world will be getting back to "normal" ?

Ben

[LV_Pro]

First of all Ben, we would have to define a baseline of "normal".  If the crash of 2008 is any example, it will be a while. From the point of view of the pandemic, it can/will go one for a while, as first this "shelter in place for two weeks" is just to "flatten the curve" to try and give the hospitals, et al, a fighting chance to not get completely overwhelmed. Since here in the US we are already way behind the power curve in testing, protective gear (like nurses having N95 masks),ventilators and available hospital beds, I am pessimistic. On top of that having various "talking heads" giving wildly inaccurate information have made it even more difficult to get enough people to actually "social distance" means that it lessens the chance that it will achieve the "flattening of the curve" enough, meaning more people will die than otherwise. Scenes of O'Hare airport with thousands of people returning from overseas jammed together, because of incredibly poor planning, for hours waiting to get luggage, then clear customs, guarantees that those that were infected, (even if asymptomatic) would have the maximum likelihood of spreading it. Spreading the curve doesn't lower then number of people that get infected, it just spreads it out over time, in the hopes that 1) Hospitals will have bandwidth to treat the worst cases, 2) that we may have a vaccine ready before it has the next round.

[Jacobson-ni]

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@Ben wrote:

I would life to ask for some speculation from Y'all if you are so inclined...

If you had to bet, when do YOU think the world will be getting back to "normal" ?

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I enjoy speculation so here are my thoughts based on no evidence or expertise. I am hearing July-August but if I know anything about timelines then that means September. However, again based on no evidence or expertise, I would guess things will feel a lot less chaotic after 4 weeks based on the under-informed thoughts below.

In the US at least, we should have better testing capabilities which I think will make a lot of people feel less panicked. Dr Fauci was claiming on Sunday that we should start to see tests become more readily available near the end of this week and for production to ramp up pretty quick after that.

There also seem to be a lot of food shortages due to stockpiling but the Red Cross and CDC do seem to recommend having 2 weeks of food in your home so it's not like it's a terrible thing for people to be stocking up if they aren't going crazy. Unfortunately seeing food shortages probably just leads to more panic so that problem might just feed back into itself. Really crossing my fingers on this one but I haven't heard/read of real major concern about long term food supply issues and I've only really found information highlighting more short term problems with just-in-time food availability. I really can't imagine people continuously stockpiling for 4 straight weeks so I really do think that once people have that comfortable buffer we'll see a lot more food in shorter supply but still generally available.

Hospitals might still have a lot of issues handling the volumes of people but 4 weeks gives a lot of time to figure out logistics (even if it's not perfect). I've heard everything is already stretched thin so there is a lot of rightful concern about how much farther that can stretch however, economically speaking, I think we're generally pretty good at resource management so when there is a sudden change in priorities I'm optimistic that we'll shift quite a bit of man-power that way and it won't be a complete disaster.

The US executive branch has also had a nice change of tone recently and it seems like we're hearing a lot from Birx and Fauci which is big for me.

[Jacobson-ni]

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@Intaris wrote:

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@Jacobson-ni wrote:

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The silver lining was that the liquor store next door was well stocked and had a sale running for 15% off all Irish whiskeys so I have that taken care of.

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Nice. But, on Paddy's day I must enquire: Which one did you go for?

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Bushmill Black Bush

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Didn't Trump want to put huge import duty on all Whisk(e)y from Europe?

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He probably did, but he has probably said the exact opposite at some point as well.

[crossrulz]

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@Ben wrote:

If you had to bet, when do YOU think the world will be getting back to "normal" ?

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As already stated, what is "normal"?  As far as the pandemic, I'm actually expecting the warm weather coming to mostly end it.  So April/May timeframe and it will be over.  As far as the economic recovery, it will be a year or two before that ramps back up to where it was.

But what about more simple externalalities?  My company just turned off a lot of benefits such as game nights, doughnut Thursdays, etc due to this situation.  I fully expect those to stay gone even after the crisis.  But on the reverse, I am expecting a lot of people to insist on continuing to work from home.