85%

My procrastination is getting worse, not better. I haven’t written in days. I spent yesterday’s therapy session on this, and it didn’t help. I wrote that sentence then spent 30 minutes on Facebook. This is getting worse. I’m going to procrastinate again, but this time with a purpose. I’ll be back after I meditate. I tried something I haven’t done in ages, a guided meditation. A neighbor is playing music and I needed something to help block it out. The mediation wasn’t as effective as it usually is, I still feel anxiety, but I’m improved and much more focused. Now I’m listening to classical music on WQXR and writing and that’s where my mind is. This is the guided meditation I used.

I’ve spent the last few days procrastinating which doesn’t give me much to write about. Did I at least cook something interesting? No, I’ve been living on the leftover pork loin. At least now I know that if I eat that three nights out of four I still enjoy it the third night. That means I’ll be buying it again. Yesterday I microwaved my dinner, even my baked potato. That’s remarkably acceptable. Sure, it’s better in the air fryer but there’s something to be said for having a delicious baked potato in just eight minutes. What my mother never learned is that the key to making a good baked potato is rubbing it with olive oil and salt first. Another tip I picked up is to not split it with a knife. Perforate it at right angles with a fork and squeeze it. I have no idea why it makes a difference, but it is noticeable. It might be that it breaks up the surface, allowing the butter penetrates better. The sensual memory of eating is good for my mental state. It serves the same purpose as meditating. This morning I had my simplest breakfast, bacon and eggs with an English muffin. It too makes me feel better and I never tire of it. I started using Aldi’s thick cut bacon and I’m spoiled. It’s better than their regular bacon. I used it up  today which means that I have to go back to Aldi. I’ve been doing that less frequently of late. I might stop there on the way home tomorrow so it will be just one extra public transit trip, not the two of making a special trip. I’ll be heading to Brooklyn for another porch concert. I’m trying hard to not be too cavalier about going out. There’s still COVID-19 going around and in fact it’s getting worse of late. We don’t have to all perfectly isolate, but we should all try to minimize our exposure. I’ve been in only two people’s homes since this started and one was to just use the bathroom while no one else was in the house. The other was just for a few minutes making a pit stop. I have not dined indoors out of my house and have eaten outdoors only twice.

Even now that I’m getting myself to write I don’t want to write the big science education piece I’ve planned. There are other things I have to do today. Instead I’ll discuss something I’ve touched on before, the difficulty people have internalizing probability. People conflate certain with probable with possible with improbable with impossible. Probabilities vary between 0 impossible and 1, certain. Our brains aren’t built to accept this. They want certainty. In 2016 FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 30% chance of winning the election. People rounded that down to 0. Now those same people look at his current 15% chance as winning as a tossup. It’s like thinking if a coin comes up heads one time it’s more likely to come up tails the next. It doesn’t work that way. People are guided by their hopes or fears then look for evidence to support what they already think. While looking for more data I see that Trump is down to a 14% chance of winning. That difference is meaningless. The polling average has Trump down by 10.1%. Before you say, “It had Hillary winning in 2016, you are right, it had her ahead by 3% and she won by over 1% of the popular vote, unfortunately where the votes came tipped the Electoral College the other way. We get the same error this time and Biden goes from a landslide to a comfortable win, like Obama in 2008.

Those being guided by their hopes see Biden with an 85% chance of winning and round it up to 100%. No, it means that about one time out of seven he loses. That’s close to the odds of losing at Russian Roulette. I’m not about to play Russian Roulette and neither are you. We need to improve those odds. 85% doesn’t mean be complacent. It means we have to work to make it closer to 100%. The odds of winning the Dems winning the senate is only 68%. That’s a bit more than 2 out of 3. We need to win the Presidency, House, and Senate to get anything done. Anything else just stops the decline. We’re talking about Russian Roulette with two bullets in the cylinder. Imagine that. Now you know how to feel.

I am so frequently frustrated by people who voice their hopes or fears as facts. Bring up Biden’s large lead in the polls and someone will invariably say, “but the state polls look bad.” They don’t. The tipping point state is Pennsylvania. That means that if every state were won by the candidate that is he is currently doing better than in PA, the winner of PA would win the electoral college. Right now, Biden is ahead in PA by 7.1% and has an 86% of carrying it. It’s not a coincidence that it’s just about the same as the odds of him winning the general election. That comes of it being the tipping point state. Biden has a 30% chance of winning Texas. That’s been a solidly red state for years. Right now, Trump is ahead there by only 1.7%, a normal polling error. Biden is twice as likely to win Texas, which would mean an electoral college landslide as he is to lose the general election.

I look at 2020 Election Forecast everyday to check on the state of the race. When it looks good I feel better, but it makes me want to work harder to win. I want to win decisively. Let’s make Trump the Herbert Hoover who the Dems can spend the next 30 years running against. Let’s force the GOP to reinvent itself into a more representative party, not the party of white identity.

Let’s get back to what I know best me. I have internalized the math and the numbers. It’s the lens I see through things. I’m as likely to blame things on innumeracy as prejudice. Innumeracy IS prejudice and visa versa. It’s not just numbers, it’s also words. When people misuse words, they make thinking more difficult. My current peeve is the people talking as if being in a militia and being a terrorist are mutually exclusive or synonymous. It’s neither. The Islamic State militiamen were terrorists. A militia is a form of organization. The militia movement is a real thing in the American Far Right. They aren’t all terrorists. They aren’t all killing people or even planning on it. Some of the rightwing terrorists are in militias, some aren’t. Why are people wasting their breath complaining that people are describing militias as militias? There is no shortage of things to be outraged at. Trump telling people that they need to liberate Michigan followed by his supporters in a militia planning in kidnapping its governor is a horror. It doesn’t make it less of a horror to describe them as militia.

OK, enough complaining. This started with me mediating, now I’m scolding people that are my political allies. It needed to be said and I wish I had found a better way of saying it. Now I have to get things done. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.