That first $1,200 check was obviously based on gross income from US federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, for 40 hours a week, for a month: $1,160

What is this $600 amount based on?

The first was "fuck it, give em a month of minimum wage income. No, I don't give a fuck if it's $4 higher in their state."
So: $600. 2 40-hour weeks at $7.25 is $580.

Which is close enough that it *could* be what this number was based on
"Here's 2 weeks of minimum wage income for free, ya fucking plebes" does seem fully believable.
But, it doesn't seem as convincing. Deliberate gesture of cruelty, yes. But they'd try to gussy it up somehow.
It'd seem more plausible if they picked $600 not thinking of 2 weeks of minimum wage labor, but some other standard.
If you were a ghoul deserving to be tried for crimes against humanity, how would you justify that $600 amount?
In 2020, the Federal Benefit Rate for SSI is $783 per month.

People on SSI are expected to live off a bit more than two weeks of minimum wage income each month.

https://t.co/NBoxyTDkVk
So, you'd think they'd anchor on $700 or $800, as those are numbers close to a similar number already in use in a similar context.
But no, they chose to give a one-time payment $183 less than the monthly income you get on SSI.
In 2021 this monthly SSI amount will increase to $794

https://t.co/AW0O9Pas2y.
It *does* seem like the amount was calculated for maximum fuck-you-plebes cruelty.

More from Anosognosiogenesis

So I've mentioned the sharpie test and the tueller drill.

Another reason you are dead within 1.5 seconds of encountering your first fast zombie, is adrenaline.


Most people who get attacked with a knife and survive to talk about it, say they never even knew a knife was there.

Or that they'd been stabbed, until after the fact.

In many cases, they think they'd just been punched, and are completely surprised

One reason the adage is "the winner is the one who dies in the ambulance, not the gutter," is because it's entirely possible to receive a fatal wound, not realize it, and then inflict a fatal wound on the other guy without *him* realizing it.

A dozen times within 30 seconds.

The marker drill teaches how you *will* get cut, fatally, without realizing it.

In full adrenaline freakout, this is even more pronounced.

More from Government

Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.