New rule: any pollster who’s wildly off must go live in Indiana until the next election
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Interesting to see the patches where Trump is outperforming himself from 2016. Assuming Biden is overall more appealing, it’s a measure of polarization.
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* more appealing than Hillary that is
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Time for the bourbon goggles
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Well already seems clear it won’t be the blowout repudiation of Trumpism that beating Hoover’s 1932 margin of defeat (59-472). So my most favored outcome is already off the table. Dammit this was the one record I wanted Trump to own.
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Poll reporting seems more like quantitative aesthetics than statistics. Like how investment firms try to price IPOs to produce a nice pop. Each side is sandbagging its own candidate a bit to produce a satisfying pop with the final outcome. Underpromise-overdeliver or some such bs
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Owning this typo. I’m calling it Fusheruan statistics from now on.
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Nate Silver my man, your “plausible” hedges won’t save you from cancelation if this thing blows up in your face. Fusheruan statistics is as much on trial here as mediocrity and Trump.
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We have CNN on mute and wife is doing a pottery class on zoom so I have a surreal sound track going on that’s all about pottery techniques and commentary on art styles.
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After she fires this pot she’s making I’m calling it the Doomscroll 2020 pot.
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Ooh I know, it’s going to be the 2020 unholy grail. I’ll tell her to glaze it blue or orange depending on who wins
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In my totally scientific gut poll, based on tracking doomscroll visuals of I’m now leaning towards conclusion that it’s gonna be Trump. City-state world here we come. Siege urbanism.
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Was waiting for the right moment in this thread for the obligatory doomscroll gif, specially dedicated to
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read image description
ALT
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** spins up speculative execution thread on 4 more years of Trump **
Analysis starting point for me has always been: one term for Trump could be the madness of a passionate crowd leveraged by electoral college. Two terms is a cold, level-headed, decisive mandate for illiberalism
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Since India has also taken a decisive turn towards illiberalism in the last decade, if Trump wins, I’m going to officially identify as ideologically homeless.
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Okay my illiberal-world rest-of-life plan starts with building Dark Age robots.
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Not kidding. One reason I have gotten back into maker/diy stuff is that the mainstream of humanity has, for the moment, chosen the bozo timeline. Tech is a better bet for a meaningful life.
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Now that a landslide is basically off the table, it doesn’t really matter who wins. A narrow win would merely be a rearguard action to buy us more time, not moral validation/mandate for a counter-reformation. The world is clearly locked on its current course for ~50 years not 5.
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Implications
- Climate action is now purely up to businesses
- Avocado politics is the future. Wherever you see the phrase “climate refugee” read “climate war”
- 100% of political agency for liberalism will come from control of tech. Like guild navigators. Spice!
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We are officially into our Dark Age. That’s not all bad. Cozy web renaissance. I’ve been exploring this potential future since 2013.
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So one thing is how little has changed on the ground despite so much change in the national consciousness. The map looks the same as 2016 so far, and it’s down to the same states: PA, MI, OH etc. Nobody in power has learned anything but it feels like I have. Same scene, new eyes.
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The structural biases are so huge, a change in consciousness means nothing in some ways, everything in others. Now we know. The electoral college and gerrymandering are too much to overcome.
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If you’re decisively left of Red America, it’s time to accept politics isn’t the answer. It’s merely a domain where you run interference to buy time to exercise other modes of agency.
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The notable thing is: nothing’s changed for Trump’s America either. He was going to make their lives great again.
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The nice thing is, this time around I’ve been prepared for exactly this contingency. This is what Project is about 😎
A personal Second Foundation for a Dark Age.
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Previously on the doomscroll
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“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” H. L. Mencken.
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Commercial break. At least our Dark Age TV lineup is lit.
Brought to you by for Mayor of NYC. The mayor who will bring you the first Asimovian Cave of Steel in 2030.
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Things to look forward to tomorrow
- Breakfast burrito
- 50% reduction in scenario planning complexity for us futurists
- Grand narratives are back. Dark age!
- Can think long-term again
- Great Weirding officially over, and into the Permaweird
- Anthropocene Whiskey Sour
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The long arc story for the last 20 years has been urban vs rural. Every passing year, city-state future looks more real.
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Underlines why Covid is so huge. In one sense it explodes the geopolitical foundation of urban political power. OTOH thatvoower itself is demographic not location-based. it is unclear what it will mean if the urban world floods out into the hinterland like a dam bursting.
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Biden’s randomly making a statement. Sounds confident and doughty. Rallying the troops saying he feels on track to win this.
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Weirdly hypernormal. This is unfolding similarly to every election night I’ve stayed up tracking since 2000. Yet feels completely different.
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Since this is a livetweet of the election I must capture this inevitable inflammatory tweet. Now *this* is different from every other election.
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Arizona is possibly going to make it off my crap list. I’ve enjoyed all my visits to the state and it’s certainly good for astronomy.
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So looks like in Michigan and Pennsylvania the disproportionate early voting by democrats might cause a sharp shift in a few hours. They’re currently lagging on counting those. So double blue latency: cities and mail-in. Question is if it will be enough.
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Van Jones on CNN just made basically the same point I did a few hours ago, so I guess this is now a basic normie take
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Well already seems clear it won’t be the blowout repudiation of Trumpism that beating Hoover’s 1932 margin of defeat (59-472). So my most favored outcome is already off the table. Dammit this was the one record I wanted Trump to own.
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But just in case you think nothing is different: storefronts all over big cities are boarded up and prepared for riots, several friends have left the country, and others are prepping go bags. Belief it’s not the same is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Naive to pretend all is normal.
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There’s serious mechanism-complexity related uncertainty but still looks like Trump has more combinatorial pathways than Biden despite Arizona flip.
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Remember in 2016 Trump won 304 electoral votes. That’s 34 votes Biden has to reclaim from somewhere. Looks like 11 in the bag so far, 23 more to go. Residual structural bias favors Biden (cities/mail-in) but Trump has more scenarios.
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