Ryusenshi wrote:I'm voting Macron, personally. I don't particularly like the guy, but I don't have much of a choice.
It's obvious that Le Pen will win the first round, the only question is who is going to be second. I dread to see Fillon vs Le Pen on the second round: I'd be forced to vote for Fillon, and I really don't want to vote for Fillon. I voted for Chirac once, that was enough.
Hamon is too far behind. Let's not even talk about Mélanchon. The only one that can beat Fillon is Macron, and it will be a close race. I don't like Macron, but he's someone I can get behind. So I'm voting for the lesser-of-two-evils between him and Fillon.
Besides, Macron doesn't really have a strong party behind him for the legislative elections. He can't govern without help from one of the major parties. If the legislative elections favor the left wing, he will have to govern to the left.
I understand your reasoning but I have seen enough recent polls giving Macron the lead in the first round to say that LePen won't necessarily be first in the first round.
I can't believe you still trust the polls.
I've heard that so often that I'd love to see the polls turn out to be perfectly right this time.
(My money is on both Mélenchon and Le Pen being higher than expected. I expected that Fillon would turn out to beat Macron; but I'm not so sure now.)
Travis B. wrote:
If you don't trust the polls, what do you trust? Your own intuition? And how is that supposed to be more accurate than a proper scientically-conducted poll?
Don't you know that just because the polls were wrong by 5% in the case of Brexit and by 3% in the case of Clinton, Le Pen's gonna win?
The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.
If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.
I'm not sure what the margin of errors on those polls are though.
In any case, both Clinton-Trump and Brexit were close-run things, unlike the second round of the French presidential, where there would need to be at least a 10% swing towards LePen for her to even be close to winning against Macron.
I find subnational polling is generally more accurate, and is, in any case, more relevant to US presidentials.
The problem has been the media's lack of interest in informing people about the polls. They say "95% of polls have shown Clinton in the lead, so Clinton is almost certain to win the election!" - which is, obviously, bollocks. Nobody, looking at polls showing Clinton a couple of points ahead with a couple of points margin of error and 10% still claiming to be undecided, with both candidates being historically unusual, and with a structural disadvantage in the electoral college, should have seen that as a certain victory for Clinton (or a 90% victory, as many did). That's not a problem with the polling, that's a problem with basic understanding of polling.
[There was a point after pussygate and the first debate when I thought Trump was finished for sure. But by the time of the election, after the Comey letter, is was clear that it would be very close]
538, for what it's worth, interpreted the same poll as giving Trump about a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Which is probably a fair reflection, given how tiny and fortuitous his win was (he needed to narrowly win a whole precise series of states, and he did - but if each result was so close in the end, statistically there must have been a high possibility of a few thousand votes going the other way here or there and losing him the election).
With Brexit, the remarkable thing was how good the polling was. Given that there was no previous referendum to compare to, and that pollsters were flying blind when it came to turnout rates as a result, and given that there were big differences between individual polls depending on methodology (particularly online vs offline), the margins of error were huge, and the fact they came within a couple of percent of the final result is actually pretty impressive. Again, the media may have ignored all the Leave-favouring polls and taken a series of narrow poll wins for Remain as proving that Remain was 100% certain to win... but that's not a problem in the polling, that's a problem in the media.
The one election where the polling recently was completely wrong was the '15 General. It's an interesting case, because the core of a lot of the polling there was the unprecedent Ashcroft poll series, which supplied more polling information about individual constituencies than ever before. And it turns out those polls were right. Unfortunately, they asked two different questions that got two different answers, and pollsters made the wrong assumption about which question was most important. More generally, parliamentary votes like our general elections are far, far harder to poll than nationwide single-seat elections or referendums - particularly when, as now, the party system is in chaotic flux. [We have an electoral system designed for two parties, but we have five major parties, plus two locally-significant minor parties (not coutning NI). To confidently predict the final overall results, you need to model bilateral swings between each pair of relevent parties in each constituency, which is, frankly, a bugger.
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
My parents fought again. I'm too tired to get detailed about it, but it got physical this time. We went out for an outing, and my mom decided to get drunk as hell (we're talking barely able to walk straight, making no sense, and slurring all her words). Eventually she accused my dad of looking at another woman (he wasn't), threw his coffee at him, and the two got into a slap-fight and then they started headlocking and choking each other. We drove home with the two of them screaming at each other, and at the end, my mom left to her car presumably go for a drive even though she's incredibly drunk.
SO yeah. My dad also dropped the bombshell that he had intended on divorcing my mom after they got married but forced himself to go through with the marriage when she became pregnant with me. That certainly makes me feel great.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi. satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P
If I could make a conlang with a stem-root classification system like Ithkuil and a verb paradigm like Georgian, I'd be sooo happy. Honestly, I just want to make one conlang. I don't want it to be another Eragon-y, Tolkien-y European looking language. I want it to be original. I want a phonology that I'm proud of, a script that I could write all day, and I want to be able to make a couple daughter languages or proto-languages from it. I just can't bring myself to even begin. I've bought all of Zompist's books, studied history, learned different kinds of languages and read about everyone's conlangs looking for inspiration. I know I am inspired but I'm too much of a perfectionist. I just want something. I haven't created a single conlang yet. I've tried many times but I just want to start already.
What languages do you know about, Cunningham? I'd suggest looking at Australian languages: sufficiently dissimilar to Eurolangs, while not so dissimilar that it's hard to make it look good.
I got depressed and ate tons of sugar. Now sensation is deadened on two fingers of my right hand and I sometimes lose vision for half a second. I've really done it this time.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain
In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates
rotting bones wrote:I got depressed and ate tons of sugar. Now sensation is deadened on two fingers of my right hand and I sometimes lose vision for half a second. I've really done it this time.
Uh oh. Eating tons of sugar isn't supposed to do that. In particular, the losing vision part is, well, very worrisome. I honestly would go to the emergency room if I were you at this point. And have someone else drive you there.
Travis B. wrote:Uh oh. Eating tons of sugar isn't supposed to do that.
Thanks. For some reason, that's a relief to me. Is it the lack of sleep, then?
Travis B. wrote:In particular, the losing vision part is, well, very worrisome. I honestly would go to the emergency room if I were you at this point. And have someone else drive you there.
I know. I've been trying to motivate myself to do that for a while now. I will probably get around to it eventually.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain
In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates
90% of the psychosis is gone. Unfortunately, that leaves 10%, which is not going away nearly as easily as the 90%. So yeah, I am still hallucinating and having thoughts about poisoning, tampering, watching, etc. and am just generally a bit paranoid, just without the sheer constant intensity of my psychosis a month or so back. So yeah, now I can go about my daily life without constant psychotic thoughts in my head, but at the end of the day I still think people are going to poison what I eat and drink and are going to tamper with my tablet unless I keep them within arm's reach and line of sight at all times. To be honest, though, I find it interesting that my brain interprets cars' headlights at night as eyes watching me, as if the psychotic part of my brain doesn't realize that headlights are not eyes/cameras/whatever. Oh well. This is still better than nothing. I could still have one foot in being floridly psychotic like back in February, after all. (Really, the shred of insight I had was probably the only thing keeping me from being carted away to involuntary.)
Last edited by Travis B. on Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Travis B. wrote:Uh oh. Eating tons of sugar isn't supposed to do that.
Thanks. For some reason, that's a relief to me. Is it the lack of sleep, then?
No, lack of sleep does not cause this.
rotting bones wrote:
Travis B. wrote:In particular, the losing vision part is, well, very worrisome. I honestly would go to the emergency room if I were you at this point. And have someone else drive you there.
I know. I've been trying to motivate myself to do that for a while now. I will probably get around to it eventually.
Go to the emergency room. Now. People do not normally lose their vision like that, no matter how much sugar they eat or how little sleep they get. And the sooner you get there the less likely you will have a badcatastrophic outcome.
Travis B. wrote:90% of the psychosis is gone. Unfortunately, that leaves 10%, which is not going away nearly as easily as the 90%. So yeah, I am still hallucinating and having thoughts about poisoning, tampering, watching, etc. and am just generally a bit paranoid, just without the sheer constant intensity of my psychosis a month or so back. So yeah, now I can go about my daily life without constant psychotic thoughts in my head, but at the end of the day I still think people are going to poison what I eat and drink and are going to tamper with my tablet unless I keep them within arm's reach and line of sight at all times. To be honest, though, I find it interesting that my brain interprets cars' headlights at night as eyes watching me, as if the psychotic part of my brain doesn't realize that headlights are not eyes/cameras/whatever. Oh well. This is still better than nothing. I could still have one foot in being floridly psychotic like back in February, after all.
I have nothing intelligent to say. Get well soon.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain
In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates
Travis B. wrote:No, lack of sleep does not cause this.
Didn't think so. Can't think of anything else. Oh well.
Travis B. wrote:Go to the emergency room. Now. People do not normally lose their vision like that, no matter how much sugar they eat or how little sleep they get. And the sooner you get there the less likely you will have a badcatastrophic outcome.
Okay.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain
In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates
Travis B. wrote:90% of the psychosis is gone. Unfortunately, that leaves 10%, which is not going away nearly as easily as the 90%.
It's too bad you're still stuck with some psychosis (and here's hoping it'll go away/become more manageable in time), but that's pretty good, comparatively speaking!
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.
Travis B. wrote:90% of the psychosis is gone. Unfortunately, that leaves 10%, which is not going away nearly as easily as the 90%.
It's too bad you're still stuck with some psychosis (and here's hoping it'll go away/become more manageable in time), but that's pretty good, comparatively speaking!
Well it is easy to say how much better things are now compared to then considering just how bad things were at the time. But that does not mean that things now are not annoying or unpleasant - just that they are not overwhelming. And yes, annoying or unpleasant is certainly an improvement over overwhelming, but that should not dissuade from thinking that things can be better than that too.
That's true. Sorry if I minimized what you're currently feeling! Upon rereading what I wrote, I realized it wasn't as... encouraging, I guess, as I'd meant.
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.
alynnidalar wrote:That's true. Sorry if I minimized what you're currently feeling! Upon rereading what I wrote, I realized it wasn't as... encouraging, I guess, as I'd meant.
This can be seen in both a glass half empty and a glass half full fashion. Right now I am seeing things in a glass half empty fashion, i.e. things still suck even though they suck much less - but one could also see it in a glass half full fashion, i.e. things are much better than before. Of course, it is much easier to see things in a glass half full fashion when seeing them from without, because one isn't being annoyed by such things oneself, whereas when experiencing them oneself it is easy to see it in glass half empty fashion, because trivial annoyances, no matter how trivial, are still annoying when one is experiencing them oneself.
Well... the delusions are finally really disappearing... but I managed to get sick, which resulted in three days of feeling like utter shit, and I still am not where I was beforehand, and now I am hallucinating more intensely than I have in weeks.... but even then the hallucinations don't bother me too much, and I don't feel completely awful anymore.
Usually I have a cycle of daydreaming that i would go through:
natlangs
conlanging
conworlding
planning never-going-to-happen cycling trek
politics
alt history
history
past/future convos and general drama
men
the end of the world
...
but right now I am just completely turned off by all of it and it makes me uncomfortable. My thoughts would usually keep me company but now I feel alone, naked, bored, bitchy.
I want to be interested in something right now.
Does anyone else ever get this feeling?
cunningham wrote:but right now I am just completely turned off by all of it and it makes me uncomfortable. My thoughts would usually keep me company but now I feel alone, naked, bored, bitchy.
I want to be interested in something right now.
Does anyone else ever get this feeling?
I'm stressed to the max with life so yea, my hobbies have taken a hit. I often feel unmotivated to do things I once enjoyed until I have more concrete answers about my future and less on my plate.
For my rant: Damn it, Trump, I'm supposed to hate you but I agree with what you did in Syria. Argh.
Viktor77 wrote:For my rant: Damn it, Trump, I'm supposed to hate you but I agree with what you did in Syria. Argh.
I don't think Trump was in anyway involved in the actual decision making. More like "Mr. President! Assad! Chemical weapons! Bad! We strike! You great!".
I hate feeling sick. I caught laryngitis or something so i've been coughing and phlegming all week, and stressing because i wouldn't have had time to go to the doctors if i didn't take the day off on wednesday. And if I take a day off work i won't get paid for it because my company's a bit shitty like that.
I've just kind of lost track of time, i'm floating through it a bit. and i have work tomorrow morning, fucken great...
and it's put paid to all the grand plans i had this month to go on a long cycling tour of japan. why do i always get sick at the wrong fucking times?
also i'm still recovering from a skiing accident two months ago - feel like my body's falling apart..........
