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From Nextdoor.com: Berkeley vegan jogger wants carnivores to close windows when cooking

https://www.ktvu.com/news/vegan-runner-asks-neighbors-to-close-windows-when-cooking-meat-with-offensive-odor

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Mar 5, 2020Liked by SGBear

Somewhere in today's DBD someone (Cugel?) suggested that turnout is not as high for the 2020 Democratic primaries as their 2016 Democratic primaries. So I did a little checking by way of wikipedia.

For states that held primaries in both years turnout is very definitely up with one exception that I can find - Oklahoma has seen a drop of about 9.5% in turnout from 2016 to 2020 (335,483 in 2016 vs. 303,977 in 2020).

The highest turnout differences -

Virginia - 68.67% (785,041 vs 1,324,148)

South Carolina - 45.12% (370, 904 vs 538,259)

Tennessee - 38.52% (372,222 vs 515,619)

Texas - 37.04% (1,435,895 vs 1,967,768)

Between 10% and 20% increase -

New Hampshire - 17.96% (253,062 vs 298,523)

Vermont - 16.68% (132,256 vs 157,815)

North Carolina - 15.63% (1,142,916 vs 1,321,598)

Alabama - 13.97% (398,157 vs 453,763)

Massachusetts - 11.83% (1,220,296 vs 1,364,604)

It is worth noting that Colorado and California haven't reported complete numbers yet. In Colorado's case, it would be mixing apples and oranges - Colorado held caucuses in 2016, a primary in 2020.

California's incomplete returns suggest a huge dropoff from 2016 on the order of about 35%. There are only 10% precincts outstanding and ~2.99 million votes have been tallied so far. Compare that with about 5.17 million votes in 2016.

The total vote results vary widely, to be sure. But the increase seems to portend an enthusiasm to vote. "Enthusiasm" such as it is, may be building on the Democratic side in this election year.

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Mar 4, 2020Liked by SGBear

Fire Starkey Alert

Sexy Sax Man Poster Exists, World Not Such a Bad Place

https://io9.gizmodo.com/sexy-sax-man-poster-exists-world-not-such-a-bad-place-1842070240

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Notice from the Staff:

We know of the email notification issue right now. We’re in contact to see what is possible to change. There also seems to be a bug regarding scheduled posts that were working through. If you would not want to receive emails unclick email newsletter on the My Account page for the time being. Appreciate the understanding folks!

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OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY

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PRO

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CAL

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*sings* "Good Bye Super Tuesday, Who could hang a flyer on you...."

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My mom called me yesterday - as her primary care physician is unavailable I took her to Sutter urgent care in Berkeley. 2.5 hour wait in a tiny room filled with coughing people wearing masks. Left immediately and today she went to a neurologist, everything looks OK - could have been fibromyalgia. Voted or someone that is no longer on the ballot. If I had waited 24 hours I would have voted for Biden. Oh well.

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This is a test. Howdy, all.

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Some re-shuffling of the deck chairs as far as positions go. One thing I'm curious to see is how the secondary performs without coach Alexander. If I recall, Daniel Scott played very well in the bowl game as Davis was out.

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Are any of you in the Fbook group Subtle Asian Traits? Some people in the group put together a guide to COVID-19, and so far, they've translated it into Simplified and Traditional Chinese: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Ho02N8lKuv2H7XShOTpDmeHp38xdgJAe8jNQm5HkTM/edit?fbclid=IwAR1R3FqvLdfOa_yCJVaTAuvTxLal8iffwZM7U5i7VCecxOqycbIKRAkT5UU#

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I am dealing with a cold that started last Friday and blew up on Sunday night. I hate this. I am getting better, so I hope to be able to go back to work tomorrow.

During the last three days I did the prep and filed my taxes. We're getting a small refund from the Feds and California. I changed our withholding last April when I realized that for 2018 I would have to pay about $1,700 to the IRS. That was an effect of the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. And my withholding remains high because of it. Bastards.

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Listening to Swedish stoner metal and editing documents in a vain effort to keep up with the flow of work - gross

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Email from the bank:

The U.S. Federal Reserve cut policy interest rates by 50 basis points this morning, citing the evolving risks of COVID-19 to economic activity. This is the first time the Fed has changed policy rates between scheduled policy meetings since the 2008 financial crisis.

To us, the Fed seems to be acting in support of its previously communicated commitment to “sustain the expansion.” While this action doesn’t directly help with virus containment, it may help lessen the extent to which fears will weigh on markets. And given the lack of inflationary pressures, we think there’s relatively little harm in the Fed taking such steps.

Chairman Powell also emphasized in his press conference that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are still strong. But with the overall effects of the outbreak remaining “highly uncertain,” it made sense to take preventative measures to limit any disruption to financial conditions. We wouldn’t be surprised to see more from the Fed should the situation worsen.

We continue to believe the path of the virus and realized economic consequences will be drivers of market volatility in the coming days and weeks. But we are reminded from pandemics like SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu and others that pandemics rarely leave lasting macroeconomic impacts. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and share insights with you as we have them.

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My work is limiting travel to and from the Level 3 countries right now (China, Iran, South Korea, Italy). Some misinformed person decided to block entry to someone with a Chinese passport, even though that person has been in LA for three years and was flying here from LA.

As for all the people making their own sanitizer, I assume that means bathtub moonshine.

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On the plus side, I am not a carrier monkey for infectious disease. At least this time. Was in Vancouver a couple weeks ago and someone at our site had gotten back from Italy and fallen ill and was in the office while I was there. Cue 2500+ people working from home, the site deep cleaned top to bottom and an eventual negative test. Yay

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