Looking at the data, we had three major spikes in caseload so far. The first was concentrated in the Northeast and I lived through it in NYC. Until things shut down and the volume went down it was pretty crazy...no one really knew how many people were going to get sick, hospitals were indeed overwhelmed and the city was digging temporary cemeteries. The second spike was more generalized in other parts of the country and for whatever reason the patchwork of rules and treatment improvements was able to keep hospital capacity to reasonable levels. This spike is way more generalized across the whole population and it seems like it's a throughput problem this time. Fewer people are dying for now because treatments are improving. Hospital stays are also shorter, and fewer people need to go to the hospital. (Either the first rounds got the most vulnerable, enough people are listening, and/or the virus is adapting to not kill its host.) But when you have even a small percentage of the population needing the services of a system not designed to cater to that level, all at once, you're going to have a problem.

Here in NY, they're planning for yet another round of insanity as all the idiots gathering for Thanksgiving and Christmas get each other sick. Ever since the beginning it's been all about reducing the influx and maintaining throughput without having to resort to measures like building more hospitals and finding healthcare workers from somewhere. Problem is since it's almost everywhere now, it's hard to move people around to keep up with the demand. Hopefully enough people will listen, people won't need hospital care, and we can hang on until most people are either infected or vaccinated.

When you think about it, this might be a good excuse for some dealers to take the money and get out. Car dealerships have an artificially subsidized market, in that you can _only_ buy new cars from dealerships. There's all sorts of business-owner-friendly rules in place (partially in the name of job protection...a service advisor or office clerk at a car dealer is a solid middle class job.) As a result, you'll have lowish-volume car dealers in lots of smaller markets that otherwise wouldn't support it. East Nowhere, IA might have Old Man Kunkleman owning Kunkleman Chevrolet that will sell the odd Cadillac to buyers who order them, but whose other sales are 90+% Silverados and Suburbans.

There are two problems with this model. First, electric cars don't have enough range or hauling capacity to be attractive to buyers in rural markets yet. This will take a while to get fixed -- certainly quite a while if we're talking really remote locations. Second, car dealers are franchises and need to constantly refurbish their locations up to "brand standards" every few years. Cadillac is following Mercedes and BMW and Lexus, and forcing dealers to invest in a country club level interior for service departments and a "high-end brand experience" selling environment. They want to get back into that market where people are leasing $100K cars and tossing them every 3 years -- that's where all the money is, not in selling a $40K Silverado that will go half a million miles. Smaller dealerships might decide this is a good time to stop selling Cadillacs if the perceived cost in outfitting the showroom isn't going to generate lots of sales. A rural buyer isn't going to care about the hand-stitched leather seats in the waiting room, the on-site masseuse or the putting green that these makeovers are going to require.

Electric cars are definitely the future, and if these dealers are smart, they'll hang on. Electric vehicles are going to be impossible for independent mechanics to repair at some point (just ask any BMW owner how much some of the single-source sensors and electronics cost, let alone the labor required to get at them....probably triple that for electric cars.) Dealers will make a killing in service revenue...but some might be on the edge of retiring anyway and would rather have the extra money.

One issue with having a "mental health emergency line" is that anyone using it is going to get involuntarily committed. When I say "committed" it's not to an inpatient mental hospital where you can rest and get treatment...it's to a psych emergency ward in a hospital. There are very few "mental hospitals" in the old sense of the word where you put mentally ill people until they were stable (or for life.) Once you have an involuntarily commitment on your record, it'll be there forever and show up in any background check an employer does. Employers use background checks as a cheap filter for applicants because they're so easy to do now. Not being able to work in the US leads to way more problems than whatever triggered your suicide attempt.

Work on the triggers that cause people to get into bad enough shape in the first place. One frequent cause of suicides is loss of the ability to work. I'm 45 and am hoping I can make it to retirement age without being laid off, because I've seen people in their 50s go years without any meaningful employment after losing late-career jobs. In general, society needs to stop holding up unrealistic idols of success and comparing everyone to them...I see this a lot in the tech industry, and all it leads to is depression and burnout from people who aren't total geniuses and incredibly lucky.

While they're not as predatory as, say, payday lenders or rent-to-own stores, these gig economy places are all definitely taking advantage of people. They love to tout that their workforce is free to do whatever they want, work as much or as little as they want, etc. But the reality is that all they're doing is externalizing the cost of goods sold to "independent contractors" who aren't in a position to do much about it.

It's surprising that DoorDash is even mentioning this in their IPO filing...my assumption was that Uber basically clinched the ability to treat their drivers as contractors when they won that referendum in California. But the reality is that these gig economy employers aren't good deals for people who have to use them to make ends meet full time.

One of the huge advantages China has over the rest of the world is an advanced society/economy that's under a lot of government control. Private industry gives you your advanced economy, but having private industry control a lever of power makes that lever less effective. All we can do in the US is lower interest rates and buy debt to stimulate the economy...the Chinese government can just decide which sector is a winner and allocate resources to it via their control of the monetary system. Look at what happened in the 2008 recession -- there was a massive created demand spike for infrastructure and construction that spared their economy from the worst of it. If we had tried that, there would have been way more complaints than there were about things like TARP and the auto industry managed bankruptcy,

I guess that's probably why the IPO was stopped, to prevent anyone other than the government from having control over the economy. If I understand it correctly, these finance apps have pretty much replaced cash and traditional banking in China for most consumers. That'd be a lot of control to give up!

Everyone's saying he doesn't have the attention span or business acumen to do something like this, but he doesn't need that. All he needs to do is slap his name on an existing right-wing news source, produce even more divisive content than Fox's talking heads do, and his Twitter Army will follow the Dear Leader wherever he leads. He could even just do a joint venture with RT and not have to invest anything because they're already up and going; I highly doubt Putin would complain.

One thing people are underestimating is just how under Trump's spell his followers are. I'm definitely left-leaning but not an ultra-liberal. but even "normal" people should take notice of this. The thing that's bothered me the most over the last 4 years is not the policies or the 2 AM tweets or the reputation damage the US now has, but the way he's changed everyone's tone. People want to be told they can be assholes, and he's clearly signaling that. His followers love that he insults people and doesn't make any attempts to filter what he says, because they feel that they would do the same if they were in his position. People in his circle desperately want the ability to "say what they feel" and IMO want to return to some crazy idealized 1950s version of the US.

So yeah, I think he'll be successful. From Day 1, he told his followers that they shouldn't listen to anyone but him, that he's the Dear Leader, that everyone else is fake news. That's only going to help him launch his service -- even the least tech savvy of his followers will learn whatever they need to learn to set up the streaming service and have him and his buddies beamed into their living rooms.

On one hand, I can see an argument for this. WFH is kind of a luxury compared to being forced to drag yourself into the office 5 days a week. I thought of this at the beginning of COVID -- there's bound to be a "class war" brewing over those who get to live in WFH luxury vs. those that have to be at work or are being forced back to their worksites by micromanaging Agile collaboration fantasy fanboys. That is, Microsoft or FAANG employees get a privilege that employees of Joe's IT Shop and BBQ Pit don't.

On the other -- this sounds like a way to force employers to force employees back to work. I just took a job that, while commutable, is a horrible commute to do 5 days a week. The only reason I was able to even consider the position was COVID plus the opportunity to WFH part of the time. There are so many forces at work here -- commercial landlords, automakers, city-center business owners servicing all those commuters, and of course micromanagers who need their people back at their cafeteria tables cranking out work under their direct supervision. The other question is where this tax goes...is it just used to make up for the loss in sales tax/fuel tax revenue?

Whether or not it's critical, more cooperation with other countries is better than less. Saying "America First" doesn't make sense in a word where (a) practically all non-food consumer goods are made in other countries, and (b) there's not enough subsidies and tax breaks in the world that will bring domestic manufacturing back. We saw with the pandemic how quickly those just-in-time supply chains the MBAs love fall apart when you have a public health emergency. Even for that reason alone, let alone the humanitarian reasons, it makes sense to cooperate on public health problems.

China's dominance may be an issue -- it is true that they're economically colonizing big chunks of the developing world (Africa, South America, etc.) But turning inward doesn't solve that problem either. Hopefully the next election cycle will see some concrete ideas on how to correct imbalances instead of jus doing knee-jerk things you think the Twitter Army likes to hear.

Apple is copying the BMW or Mercedes model, which isn't shocking given how big the Venn diagram overlap is here. German cars are certainly still repairable outside a dealership, but there are enough single-source parts and expensive diagnostic tools to discourage it. They don't want you buying a new S-class Mercedes for 6 figures one time, they want you to pay thousands a month forever and just swap them out every 3 years. If you need a repair, just bring your leased car back to the dealer (like the Apple store.)

The goal is likely not to make money repairing (although they do compared to 3rd party shops) -- it's probably to ensure the phones get swapped out for new ones regularly so they don't have to support "old" ones.

"Big Tech" just kept rolling right along during COVID; they just kicked their workers out the door and sent them home. Basically, any industry that was deemed an essential service is faring much better than things like in-person retail, restaurants and other service businesses that need presence.

It's similar to what happened post-WW2 where the US mainland was mostly unscathed and Europe/Asia were a mess. There's no other outcome than to have the unscathed company/economy do extremely well. What will be very interesting to see is what happens with China. Who knows what they're doing to control their population to prevent COVID from speading again, but they're doing it. I'm in the airline industry and the reports are that domestic Chinese traffic is basically back where it was where the rest of the world is 30 or more % down still. If their control holds, they'll be in a much stronger position than they were and might end up the dominant global economy not too long from now.

Same thing goes for Big Tech. If people are used to shopping online now, retail is dead. If people won't travel for business anymore because Zoom is cheaper than a $10K last minute airline ticket, then travel is dead. If people don't have any money to do anything fun because the vast majority don't work for Big Tech, entertainment is dead. People aren't seeing the knock-on recession(s) that will be happening once the stock market gets done ignoring reality.

Social media and the internet in general was supposed to be this liberating force that enabled rational discourse among different groups. Because of the algorithmic nature of these advertisers' products you basically get echo chambers for fringe factions as well as a huge massive platform for spreading conspiracy theories.

I honestly don't know if US-style democracy is capable of surviving this. It worked when the crazies (on either side) were kept to a dull roar and largely left to socialize with themselves. Honestly, the more different-thinking groups stayed away from each other, the better. Take something non-political like the anti-vaxxers or the people who say the COVID vaccine will contain a tracking device so Bill Gates will know where you are at all times. Back in 1791, there was no concept of someone being able to shout out random crap and have it heard by every citizen via the all-seeing all-knowing computer in their pocket. We shall see what happens. Even if the election result is far off of rounding errors and could never be decided by absentee ballots, I expect this will take weeks to settle and possibly years to recover from (if we do.)

I'm actually going to be working for a smaller tech company in my next job, and stories like this make me wonder whether that was a good idea. I assume this company is one of those small startups that locks their employees in the office 90 hours a week, so you're bound to self-select for former frat bros and similar ultra-extroverts.

Even so, this brings up 2 key issues -- 1, thank you very much for giving a concrete real-world example of how a "pick out any face in a crowd" tool can be abused, and 2, sales directors need to be put on a leash. I don't know what it is about sales, but in big and small companies alike pretty much everyone in sales management is the biggest jerk imaginable. I guess it's because they feel they bring in the money and can do whatever they want because of that. I've seen companies just sweep behavior under the rug from top salespeople and sales executives that would get any other employee instantly fired. It would be interesting if IT had a similar arrangement where we just didn't have any rules and stuff like DWI accidents in company cars at some sales conference were celebrated (just for an example...)

That's actually very interesting. I always thought there was a special "famous people Twitter" and other similar services that had many-factor auth, huge password complexity restrictions, etc. I guess not. What's amazing is that this guy could have easily posted something crazy that moved the financial markets or set off a panic.

Anyone who knows -- how do social media giants typically handle famous people accounts? I imagine that almost all of them are controlled by a social media manager of some kind. Are there no other security features than regular accounts?

One thing I don't think a lot of people realize is that politics has never really been an acceptable topic of conversation at work. In blue-collar professions you would see it "discussed," but you would not see the professional ranks airing their grievances. Large companies will ask^Wforce their management to make favorable political donations, and unions will endorse candidates, but that's about it.

I remember reading about this going on at Google, where people were using internal communication channels to start political fights. The only things I can see different here are (1) the age of average employees and ease with social media, (2) the fact that Google employees pretty much live at the office and have all their social interactions within the workplace, and (3) maybe the high percentage of autism-spectrum people who might not get that picking a fight over politics doesn't usually have a good ROI. Every place I've ever worked, big or small, young or old, has neve considered politics a good topic of conversation. You run the risk of alienating everyone you work with, which is never good for team cohesiveness. I may think we should look into adopting a more European-style welfare state to combat the offshoring and automation of millions of jobs, but that's not going to go over well in my ultra-conservative workplace.

Civil political discussions are dead -- we might as well stop trying to force them in a place we depend on for our income.

I live in an outer suburb of NYC, just barely within sane commuting distance. Pre-COVID, there would have been no way that even the salary differential would allow me to take more interesting jobs that NYC companies offer...we're talking a solid 3 hours a day of just train/subway commuting. While I was sitting home working for my less-interesting local employer, I realized that maybe this was less of a blocker now and started looking. I'm starting a new job with an "in the city" employer next month. Of course, I'm banking on being home most of the time and they're cool with that so far...but it's amazing what a difference being able to work anywhere you want opens up. Even going in 2 days a week would be a massive improvement from when I did the commute thing daily, back before Teams/Slack/whatever.

WFH has its flaws, I agree. And Google is a famously all-inclusive employer where they offer you high pay and massive on-site resources (meals, wacky office space, etc.) in exchange for your soul 80+ hours a week. An environment like that, which selects for people who thrive in that kind of "lean into your work, all for the company" workplace, is bound to have at least some people complaining about productivity. I'm older and have a family, so I have a lot of WFH distractions and have to do some strange off-hours because of it. But younger people stuck alone in their tiny $5000/month San Francisco or NYC apartment might have isolation issues too. At the same time, you have millions of middle managers in companies everywhere who are absolutely lost because they can't micromanage their employees anymore...these folks and some executives are pushing hard for a return to the traditional 5-days-in-the-office work arrangement. Then again, how much time do workers get back not having to sit in horrible Bay Area or NYC traffic day in and day out? I know I'm working more just because I don't have the 30 minute drive to and from work.

I think the long-term fix will probably settle somewhere on the hybrid side. Employees who are in demand are going to demand flexibility, and employers are going to demand some face-time back. Work like I do (a mix of talking through designs followed by a lot of intensive work and research by myself) is particularly suited to this model. Pull everyone in the team in 2 days a week, then let them bang out the solo or small-team chunks of work the rest of the week. One thing I worry about is the class system this will set up -- everyone who gets to work from home vs. workers who have to come to their workplace, regardless of job skill level. (You can't be an ER doctor from your guest room, nor can you be a barista.)