this week i

note new stream of government revenue could be disbursed as alaska-style ubi.  national debate focused on where all this tariff money's going please
 
foremost among concerns that keep me sans tattoo
in nightmare i'd conceive an even funnier sleeve
how rude i would awaken to my inkspot aforetaken
so we'll just have to laugh like we already do
 
count carbonation as volcanic eruption of maslow's pyramid, abundance reigns, basic thirst slaking dazzles.  are dramatic sigh echos more or less so?

fail to spoonerize the comedy of the tragmons.  the commedy of the tragons?  the comedy of the stratagems?  the graveyard of forgotten reminders

conference prepped.  postcard fell from pages of pbs acquisition.  the things you learn are always yours, our existence quite far from zero-sum

 

attended sixty-ninth spring show: bannockburn comes together.  neighborhood kids singing measles to the tune of peggy lee's fever very magnificent

 

read ottolenghi simple by yotam ottolenghi

    * scrambled harissa tofu
    
    * beefsteak tomato carpaccio with greek onion and ginger salsa
    
    * hot, charred cherry tomatoes with cold yogurt
    
    * sweet potato mash with lime salsa
    
    * puy lentils with eggplant, tomatoes, and yogurt
    
    * soba noodles with lime, cardamom, and avocado
    
    * fish cake tacos with mango, lime, and cumin yogurt

 

5/8

this week i

published on prescription drug plan enrollment of rural elderly and disabled americans before charm city welcome.  two views of our national aquarium, my eyes fixed on ceiling corner.  400 years of unchanging gutenberg technology till baltimore linotype.  trouble ahead, trouble behind
 


 

disembarked in james river geneva, aviator sunglasses from the amtrak chassis.  whose experience will you be heightening today?  when last cockroach consumes final lichen / no grander earthly feast will there have been but after one salad, two beers at the pizzeria: can i interest you in dessert? / yes, one pepperoni please  the more scientific literature i read, the more i know our fates etched in the stars.  will neural networks out-triangulate myers-briggs with categorical precision?  type abcdefghijtuvwxyz so we expect a goth phase of two to thirteen years with 95% confidence
 







 

read how to carry out a literature search for a systematic review: a practical guide by lauren z. atkinson & andrea cipriani

how to develop the search protocol

'grey' literature (informally published material such as conference abstracts)

a paradigmatic example demonstrating the importance of capturing unpublished data is that of turner
et al (2008), who showed that using only published data in their meta-analysis led to effect sizes for antidepressants that were one-third (32%) larger than effect sizes derived from combining both published and unpublished data

the prisma (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses) statement was developed to standardise the reporting of systematic reviews (moher 2009).  the prisma statement consists of a 27-item checklist to assess the quality of each element of a systematic review (items 6, 7 and 8 relate to the quality of literature searching) and also to guide authors when reporting their findings

pico (population, intervention, comparator and outcome)

a balance between the sensitivity of a search (an attempt to retrieve all relevant literature in an extensive search) and the specificity of a search (an attempt to retrieve a more manageable number of relevant citations) is optimal

in both medline and embase an 'explode' command enables the database to search for a requested term, as well as specific related terms

variable retrieval of content (due to regular updating of google algorithms and the individual's search history and location) means that search results are not necessarily reproducible and are therefore not in keeping with replicable search methods required by systematic review


 

read who is poor, how poverty has changed, and why it matters: poverty measurement in the u.s. and its implications for policy by jeehoon han, bruce d. meyer, and james x. sullivan

small samples in current consumption datasets make it difficult to construct poverty statistics at the subnational level

information on resource sharing across cohabitors is not collected in the current population survey, although resources or cost-sharing provided to a family by cohabitors may be substantial.  the treatment of cohabitors has become more important in recent years as the fraction of households with cohabitors present has risen

all of the major poverty indicators in the u.s. rely on survey data

in 1995, only 36 percent of food stamp dollars paid out to families were not recorded in the cps.  by 2020 that figure had risen to 55 percent.  in 1995, only 15 percent of unemployment insurance dollars were missed, but by 2020 that figure had reached a shocking 62 percent of the over half a trillion dollars paid out that year

the observable characteristics of those with very low income strongly suggest that income is mis-measured for this group.  for example, those with income below 50 percent of the poverty cut-off appear better off than those below 100 percent, and many families with extremely low reported income in surveys are actually well off in consumption terms..this evidence is particularly worrisome for measures that focus on deep income poverty or extreme income poverty

income poverty rates are much greater than consumption poverty rates for the elderly

in 2020, two-thirds of those in the bottom income quintile of the elderly owned a home; conversely, for the bottom income quintile of children, 38 percent lived in an owned home

when out-of-pocket medical expenses are subtracted from income to calculate poverty, those identified as "poor" have higher consumption, more education, more rooms in their home and are more likely to be covered by health insurance

poverty has fallen sharply

for well-measured consumption to be an adequate proxy for total consumption its share of total consumption must be roughly constant, a condition that did not hold in the most recent year due to the pandemic

the most noticeable decline over this period is in consumption-based poverty for the elderly, which fell 25.7 percentage points (92 percent), and now stands at 2.2 percent

we scale income by (a + 0.7)k^0.7, where a is the number of adults in the family and k is the number of children

we may not have won the war on poverty, but we are certainly winning

 

 

read challenges with effective price transparency analyses by gary claxton, lynne cotter, and shameek rakshit

the amount of data made available by payers under the tic rule is massive

sometimes, it is quite easy to spot unlikely rates in these situations.  for example, neither a clinical lab nor a psychiatric hospital is likely to be paid over $270,000 for a heart procedure.  however, it can be more difficult for services that could be provided either in the hospital or in one of its affiliated parts.  these situations make it difficult to give credence to rates reported

easy to understand, but not necessarily easy to use

analysts averaging rates for unique npis may not realize that their results are skewed because they are inadvertently including the same provider multiple times

because the data contains no information on the local enrollment in each network, data users have no way of knowing which approach might be closer to the right one

rate structures differ

a problem for data users

the reporting of multiple rates for what otherwise are identical situations suggests that other factors may be affecting results that are not being captured by the reporting schema

turquoise health has estimated that as much as 60 percent of the reported rates may be ghost rates

it is hard to see any pattern in the reporting

payers are not required to lay out an explanation of the decisions that they made when constructing their in-network rate files

one of the weaknesses of price data as compared to claims data is that there is no way to know whether or how often a particular price is used.  this uncertainty is extended when a price is reported multiple times for different networks because, absent some external information on the relative enrollment in different networks, there is no way to know whether one network is somehow more important than another; in general, most people would be more interested in knowing the price for a service in a network that has 10,000 enrollees as compared to a network with ten enrollees

 

5/1

this week i

toured national academy of sciences.  unrelatedly, haiku to assasi triggerfish whose red butts, one assumes / evolutionarily / distinct from baboons'


 
 
drew but they're nice i swear and colosseum jumbotron simbacam debut
 


 
don't deny you'd also imagined agile young goat in tight white robe 270° into roundhouse kick when first heard karate kidsnow leopard cannot roar

am the garden that will not be tended & oh shit did i just capital bikeshare pedal over a dead rat both crossed my mind in not too distant linear time
 
might be suited by lenin-hating liberal bumper sticker, that v-bearded robespierre just wanted everything himself.  dive bar stale beer smells alright

 
let facts be submitted to a candid world
 
the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited


read the shooting of dan mcgrew and other poems by robert w. service
 
each man worked like a demon,
as prow to rudder we raced;
the winds of the wild cried "hurry!"
the voice of the waters, "haste!"
 
were you ever out in the great alone,
when the moon was awful clear,
and the icy mountains hemmed you in
with a silence you most could hear;
with only the howl of a timber wolf,
and you camped there in the cold,
a half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
clean mad for the muck called gold;
while high overhead, green, yellow and red,
the north lights swept in bars? -
then you've a hunch what the music meant...
hunger and night and the stars
 
and i know at the dawn she'll come reeling home
with the bottles, one, two, three -
one for herself, to drown her shame,
and two big bottles for me,
to make me forget the thing i am
and the man i used to be


read..
 
 
soon he became the center of the new york artistic colony that wished to study photography
 
brady photographed 18 of the 19 american presidents from john quincy adams to william mckinley.  the exception was the ninth president, william henry harrison, who died in office three years before brady started his photographic collection.  brady photographed abraham lincoln on many occasions.  his lincoln photographs have been used for the $5 bill and the lincoln cent
 
the father of photojournalism
 


representative democracy..a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors
 
an open critic of economics
 
an elitist rather than a racist
 
a nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid
 
the other magnificos of the eighteenth century
 
did not support the new deal
 
in 1931, the arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray for mencken's soul after he had called the state the "apex of moronia"
 
once called marriage "the end of hope"
 
he sometimes referred to himself in the past tense, as if he were already dead
 
america, where democracy, as defined by mencken, is "the worship of jackals by jackasses"
 
defining puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"
 
the "booboisie", his word for the ignorant middle classes
 
what real scientists do, which is to simply directly look at the existence of "shapes and forces" confronting them instead of (such as in statistics) attempting to speculate and use mathematical models
 
there are so few people on earth worth knowing

 

(3) robert gottlieb, the art of editing no. 1 interviewed by larissa macfarquhar

vintage plastic handbags, of which he has a notorious collection

the editor's relationship to a book should be an invisible one

what we left on the cutting room floor still makes me blush

he's married to an actress, and he has a very theatrical manner

every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like ambulance on ambulances, the words everybody needs an editor

i can get people interested in robert moses once, but not twice

i was supposed to do a biography of fiorello laguardia

 it was really quite startling

the more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear

my life is reading.  in fact, i was about forty years old when i had an amazing revelation - this is going to sound dumb - it suddenly came to me that not every person in the world assumed, without thinking about it, that reading was the most important thing in life

you can't be the one who says, send him to hong kong at this point, let him have a love affair with a cocker spaniel


(4) the october crisis

charles de gaulle..standing on a balcony in montreal, shouted "vive le quebec libre"

trudeau replies, "just watch me"

a communique to police advising that pierre laporte has been executed refers to him derisively as the "minister of unemployment and assimilation"

in 1968-69, trudeau had seriously considered pulling out of nato

 

(5) the tasmanian tiger

both sexes had a pouch
 
the skull is noted to be highly convergent on those of canids
 
its olfactory bulbs were not well developed
 
the thylacine jaw was too weak to kill sheep
 
surprisingly feeble jaws
 
  

(6) the west african griot is a troubadour, the counterpart of the medieval european minstrel

an endogamous professionally specialised group or caste, meaning that most of them only marry fellow griots, and pass on the storytelling tradition down the family line

 

(7) toothpicks, targets, falchions, beards of all ages, vizards, spectacles!  sir what you lack

 although opium was difficult to cultivate and process, it was the perfect merchandise for maritime trade; it was compact and light, and stable enough to travel long distances in ships' holds

in bengal and bihar..millions died of famine in 1769-70, after productive farmland was transformed into poppy fields through coercion by the east india company

kipling toured the ghazipur opium factory in 1899, and wrote an essay about it.  orwell was born in bihar, where his father was a sub-deputy opium agent.  dickens's essay on opium in households words is a classic example of victorian both-sidesism..tagore wrote an article on what he called 'the death traffic in china'

 

(8) the longest presidential address in history

netanyahu brought trump a golden pager, in reference to the israeli operation against hizbullah; starmer arrived with a letter from king charles.  on friday, 26 february zelensky got out of his car wearing a black tactical sweater.  'oh, you're all dressed up,' trump said

 

(9) the china of 2008 has been transformed

in the late 1970s china generated less than 2 percent of the world's economic output.  in 2023 it accounted for roughly 34 percent of global manufacturing exports

consensus shatters

the new infosphere (a term that encompassed the as-yet-uninvented internet) 

 

(10) the greatest mass revolt in europe before the french revolution


4/24

this week i

argued peacock or turkey after 8-person meeting after mca boston after morning potatoes after evening pizza after ica boston en route to shroomami

he liked yellow, huh?




taste daily rooibos chai, peppermint, hibiscus, just one of three, nothing crazy.  exiting train station, some get in cars, some wander into the distance


read me talk pretty one day by david sedaris
 
if i wanted to spend the rest of my life as david thedarith, then so be it

"on the final day of the year we take down the pine tree in our living room and eat marine life"

i started in on an a cappella version of the latest oscar mayer commercial, hoping he might join in once the spirit moved him

my beret as tight as an acorn's cap

their artworks were known as "pieces," a phrase i enthusiastically embraced.  "nice piece," i'd say.  in my eagerness to please, i accidentally complimented chipped baseboards and sacks of laundry waiting to be taken to the cleaners

the art world was our conceptual oyster and we ate it raw

clutching the arm of the curator, shouting, "i just passed a lady in the bathroom and told her, 'honey, why flush it?  carry it into the next room and they'll put it on a goddamn pedestal'"

an epic shouting match in which we exhausted all our analogies

boys who had killed their brothers over an ice-cream sandwich

the meatloaf has been poached in seawater, or there are figs in the tuna salad.  if cooking is an art, i think we're in our dada phase

what i really want is a cigarette, and i'm always searching the menu in the hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable

angels, she said, were god's way of saying howdy

"i'm putting it on my to-do list as we speak"

"and who are we today?" my mother used to ask, leading to amy's "who don't you want me to be?"

"it's a typewriter," i say.  "you use it to write angry letters to airport authorities"

"we saved your ass in world war ii"

i find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.  why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?

if a person who constantly reads is labeled a bookworm, then i was quickly becoming what might be called a tapeworm

the card reported the amount of water used every year in hotel laundry rooms and suggested that, in having my sheets and towels changed on a daily basis, i was taking this precious water directly from the cupped hands of a dehydrated child

caution: gorilla statues may be hot

whenever the conversation turned to the subject of fairs and amusement parks, i'd wait until my companions had finished their mediocre anecdotes and then, at just the right moment, almost as an afterthought, i'd say, "i once saw a girl fall to her death from one of those rides"

french milk, which comes in a box and can sit unrefrigerated for five months, at which point it simply turns into cheese and is moved to a different section of the grocery store

"but not the whole thing.  i stopped after the first few bites"


4/17

this week i

insist on tyrannosauruses rex if you insist on attorneys general.  horsebeach, md windier than blossom kite festival.  start & end quotes assunta's two


we don't put anise in our pizzelles, we put vanilla in our pizzelles

everybody said, "your nephew is so handsome" and i said, "that's because he looks like me"
 
oh lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?
i'm counting on you lord, please don't let me down
prove that you love me, and buy the next round
oh lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?
everybody!
 
this was your idea
no, no, no, i wanted to do this for two nights
 
 
they've been dating for a few months.  not while he was reporting to her
 
ugh he's incredible without trying
 
 

your life is a vacation

 



4/10

this week i

overnighted with descendents of liberation fighters against hereditary parliamentarians.  classroom view from whitney balcony & two edward hoppers (self, soir bleu), then house finch, five new yorkers, two reporters, one attendee asked me, "why are you doing this?"  an excuse to visit north jersey, i said in my head.  "this isn't new jersey transit," amtrak conductor scolded passenger who had boarded the wrong train thus trapped till philadelphia





 

 
 read cuba by alberto korda.  bronx zoo

 the victory of the revolutionaries, the barbudos (bearded ones) who came down from the mountains to take over the cities
 

 in 1959, americans in cuba controlled 75 percent of commercial transactions and owned 90 percent of mines and telecommunications
 
they even tried to poison the mouthpiece of his snorkel
 
 
soviet navy vessels escorted by submarines came into contact with warships of the us navy.  china had just attacked india in the himalayas.  was this the start of world war iii?
 
  
 
 
the russians hadn't thrown such a party for anyone since the first cosmonaut yuri gagarin returned to earth
 
 

 

4/3

this week i

visited rosemarie, same age as disney's snow white, the pope, and the national mah jongg league.  she dreamt with frank of the five wives she could not find way back across field of upturned earth after open house tour, realty search.  construction site worker gave directions & then she woke up.  she never has her cell phone when she needs it.  in south jersey, they're putting skittles in the water ice, leaf-blowing away golf course rain puddles

attended john wanamaker grand court organ, seven at survey stats seminar.  quango: the world is his haunted house business cards.  not a pizza oven
 
 
 
 



read treasure island by robert louis stevenson

 the sort of man that made england terrible at sea

his wandering, guilty, and hunted life

"i wish i had put his eyes out!" cried the blind man

i'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when i might be rolling in a coach!  if you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still

hungry as a hawk

for what would they risk their rascal carcases but money?

mutiny, it was plain, hung over us like a thunder-cloud

the hispaniola still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the jolly roger - the black flag of piracy - flying from her peak

a sound in their voices which suggested rum

captain smollett made no change in his arrangements.  if the mutineers succeeded in crossing the stockade, he argued, they would take possession of any unprotected loophole, and shoot us down like rats

my only plan was to take french leave

"one more step, mr. hands," said i, "and i'll blow your brains out!  dead men don't bite, you know"

shiver my timbers

"very pretty wrote, to be sure; like print, i swear.  your hand o' write, george?  why, you was gettin' quite a leadin' man in this here crew.  you'll be cap'n next, i shouldn't wonder.  just oblige me with that torch again, will you?  this pipe don't draw"

"we'll all swing and sun-dry for your bungling"

the thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors.  their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them

he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the hispaniola under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had first intended, laden with crimes and riches

"so you've changed sides again"

great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold

3/27