Author: Lisa

More on conspiracy theories and the Democratic Primary

Statistical analysis can make you suspicious — ‘black swan’ statistical outliers (which are still possible outcomes) and amazing coincidences where outlier possibilities are reality. Maybe it’s more fun to think about the conspiracy theory possibilities — there’s drama and intrigue. Whereas an unlikely occurrence happening because unlikely doesn’t mean impossible … that’s far less entertaining.

The Super Tuesday results are still not complete today. Where are results still pending? There are 115 delegates not yet allocated to a candidate. 13 of these are classed as “Democrats Abroad” — saying that the results for “Democrats Abroad” is outstanding because ballots are still in the post is reasonable. I’d expect a large portion of “Democrats Abroad” ballots to  be posted (although there are evidently like 400 in-person polling sites too). And I don’t know how “Abroad” they’re talking about — Canada? Germany? Australia? McMurdo Station? The ISS? I’m willing to remove these delegates from the Super Tuesday list (IIRC, their in-person voting spanned a week coming up to Super Tuesday too). Of the remaining 102 delegates, one is from a state where Biden is in the lead. Not quite 1% of the outstanding delegates are in a state where Biden is in the lead. Is it possible that this outlier is an amazing coincidence? Sure. But could the DNC be creating a narrative where Biden has a decent lead in the electoral count ahead of voting this coming Tuesday with the intent of influencing voters (some 60% of whom say electability is more important than the fact the candidate agrees with them about issues)? Hard not to go there.

State Winner Delegates Unallocated Delegates % Unallocated Biden Bloomberg Gabbard Sanders Warren
Alabama Biden 52 0 0% 44 0 0 8 0
Arkansas Biden 31 0 0% 17 5 0 9 0
Maine Biden 24 0 0% 11 0 0 9 4
Massachusetts Biden 91 0 0% 37 0 0 29 25
Minnesota Biden 75 0 0% 38 0 0 27 10
North Carolina Biden 110 0 0% 67 4 0 37 2
Oklahoma Biden 37 0 0% 21 2 0 13 1
Tennessee Biden 64 1 2% 33 10 0 19 1
Texas Biden 228 0 0% 111 10 0 102 5
Virginia Biden 99 0 0% 66 0 0 31 2
American Samoa Bloomberg 6 0 0% 0 4 2 0 0
California Sanders 415 61 15% 148 15 0 186 5
Colorado Sanders 67 27 40% 10 9 0 20 1
Utah Sanders 29 13 45% 2 2 0 12 0
Vermont Sanders 16 0 0% 5 0 0 11 0

ORC Agricultural Exemption and Commerce

While at a recent Zoning Commission meeting, they discussed how a use was judged to be (or not to be) agriculture vis-à-vis Township not having a right to regulate agriculture per ORC 519.21. The example of a greenhouse used to grow flowers was given — not agriculture. Which got me thinking about the false association between ‘commerce’ and ‘agriculture’ — flowers are absolutely included in Ohio’s list of agriculture. ORC 303.01 reads:

agriculture" includes 
 farming; ranching; algaculture meaning the farming of algae; aquaculture; apiculture;
 horticulture; viticulture; animal husbandry, including, but not limited to, the care and raising 
    of livestock, equine, and fur-bearing animals;
 poultry husbandry and the production of poultry and poultry products;
 dairy production; the production of field crops,
 tobacco, fruits, vegetables, nursery stock,
 ornamental shrubs, ornamental trees, flowers,
 sod, or mushrooms; timber; pasturage;
 any combination of the foregoing; and the processing, drying, storage, and marketing
 of agricultural products when those activities are conducted in conjunction with,
 but are secondary to, such husbandry or production.

So why wouldn’t a greenhouse used to grow flowers count as an agricultural use? Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) — a fairly wide reaching case — found that Mr. Filburn producing wheat for his own use (i.e. not selling it) still counted as commerce because he would have otherwise bought the wheat on the open market. Which is to say his wheat production was commerce because it was grown to allow him to avoid commerce. While Mr. Filburn’s production was not substantial, the cumulative action of personal-use growers would have a substantial impact on the market. Which was enough commerce to grant the federal government power to regulate his wheat production.

Same holds true here — and I think flowers were used an an example because it’s easy enough to say “eh, it’s just flowers”. But my concern is that the Township is going to want to use the same logic to regulate other agricultural activities. The personal production of poultry products may not be substantial, but the cumulative production of everyone who has some egg layers in their yard would be substantial. Thus egg laying chickens that produce for personal use would still be considered commerce by the logic of WIckard v. Filburn. I think someone claiming agricultural use for flowers might have a bigger hurdle, but a sufficiently motivated individual may be able to use this argument to substantiate the agricultural exemption for their greenhouse.

Hopefully this is one of those situations where the government doesn’t try to have it both ways — if personal production is commerce in one case, it should be commerce in other (very similar) cases.

On technology, elections, and conspiracy theories

There are murmurs of a conspiracy to defeat Sanders (there’s also a president outright saying it). There is also push-back against these murmurs because diminishing people’s faith in the Democratic process suppresses voter turnout.

Questioning if this is a conspiracy is almost moot — did a bunch of people get together and plan this or did dozens of individuals achieve this state in an uncoordinated fashion? I don’t care. We’ve had a long run of elections that create legitimate doubt in how well the result reflects the will of Americans. And not just Clinton’s popular vote victory in 2016 — I’d go back to Gore, but I’m not terribly familiar with the American elections in the 80’s, and I wasn’t alive long enough to be aware of elections in the 70’s.

I watched news reports on Tuesday night announcing that Biden had won the popular vote across all of the states that had voted on Super Tuesday and had results to far. Except … California hadn’t started reporting yet. Cali has 30% of the delegates, and I am not interested enough to go check state populations to get a better number. But how meaningful is the popular vote stat with 30% of the vote outstanding? Delegate count too — I’ve been tracking delegate assignment based on NPR’s data, and a sixty point spread with 144 delegates from Cali unassigned (228 total unassigned across all Super Tuesday states) isn’t a huge blowout. I’ve also quite lazily started tracking by adding all of Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar’s delegates to Biden’s count — 687 to 531 is a much bigger spread, and the 144 from Cali aren’t going to close that gap (although delegates from Cali plus Warren’s 65 might do it). I don’t know if delegates in each of the states where Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar have delegates *can* be reassigned in the first round or if their delegates become like super delegates and only really count in the second round (or if their delegates can be reassigned at all). But this seems like the sort of research some media outlet should pay a reporter to perform. If Bloomberg can only reallocate a dozen of his delegates in the first round, the delegate count looks a lot different than it does when I’ve got all 58 of his delegates assigned to Biden.

Thirty years ago, it would have been difficult to recompute ranked-choice votes as candidates dropped out of the primary. But the one thing I think caucuses get right is that someone who puts their vote behind a non-viable candidate gets to reconsider and have their vote “count”. It would be algorithmically trivial to provide a full list of candidates. Pick your first choice. Now pick your second choice. Pick your Nth choice. You’re a huge Gabbard fan who wouldn’t consider voting for anyone else? Great, you get to abstain after your first selection. Would prefer Warren but consider Sanders a good second option, you can vote accordingly and abstain after your second choice. Don’t mind “voting” for any of the candidates? Then you can work your way through *all* of them. This is ideally suited for electronic ballots where your already-selected candidates can be removed from subsequent selection options. But so what if someone’s 1st through Nth choice is Sanders … he’s either still in the race & their 1st choice counts or he dropped out & they’ve abstained from voting. Maybe you voted for Buttigieg because you think he secretly harbors super progressive views but has the McKinsey experience to speak like a centrist. Your second choice was Warren, followed by Sanders, followed by no one. Buttigieg dropped out on Monday, and your vote is reassigned to Warren. She dropped out today? You voted for Sanders. Instead of allowing the individual candidate to decide where their delegates go, allow individual voters to decide. It would add an interesting nuance to primary coverage because the results of previous elections would effectively change as candidates drop out. But it would allow the results of the primary to better reflect what voters actually want. I’d extend this to the general election as well. Maybe it made you feel good to protest-vote for Stein. You could stop there and abstain on the second choice. Or you could pick a second preference.

And I’d be remiss to avoid pointing out that direct representation isn’t the impossibility it used to be. In 1790, getting the near four million Americans together to read through legislation and vote was an inconceivable undertaking. Getting the near 63 million Americans together in 1890, or even he 250 million in 1990 would have been an insurmountable task. But the technology is available today to do this. What impact would getting rid of the Legislature have on the Democracy in our system? Direct representation is a technical possibility. Yes, there are problems that would need to be addressed. Security. More importantly accessibility. As much as it may seem otherwise, 100% of Americans don’t have a smartphone in their hand. Requiring access to relatively costly technology could be seen as an attack on the rights of poorer individuals. Or individuals who aren’t technically savvy. You can use a computer at your free, public library – maybe the public libraries have extended hours during the voting season. Maybe there are secure Internet kiosks set up in town halls across the country. Maybe broadband access gets better funding. Maybe there’s additional funding for community education to teach people how to engage with the direct representation platform.

Even without changing the entire structure of government, I think the IRS should create a new class of tax-deductable donation restricted to federal government agencies. “Donations” to the agency are a 1:1 reduction in tax owed. The ‘donation’ process is inline with filing taxes — not like I need to cut a 4k check to NWS and then wait for my 4k refund check. I pay 10k in taxes? I could earmark 4k to the EPA, 4k to the Dept of Education, 2k to NOAA (hopefully there would be enough granularity that I wouldn’t need to select Commerce), and be done. I could allocate 10k to the military. I could spend hours agonizing on how I think my tax money would best be apportioned. Or I could just pay my taxes without any of these deductions and *that* is the money Congress would have available to budget. This idea, ironically, implements a populist version of “starve the beast”. And maybe I’m wrong and trillions of dollars would still pour into Defense and EPA would be left unfunded. But it would provide a way for citizens to clearly show their priorities. It could, if constructed properly, provide an end-run around the Hyde Amendment. *Your* federal dollars *didn’t* get used, but someone else could volunteer *their* federal dollars.

Disillusionment

The exit polling where upward of 60% of voters say it was more important to nominate a candidate who could beat Trump than someone who agrees with them on issues … that’s pretty unbelievable to me. But it’s especially odd that “dude who can beat Trump” is also the dude who wasn’t dragged through the mud as a tangent to the impeachment trial. Anyone want to guess what this year’s “but her emails!!!” will be?

Parliamentary systems

Reports are Warren’s reassessing her continued candidacy too. Sad to see her leave the race, but I’d love to see her and Sanders form a combined ticket.
It would make the American election process a little more like the Parliamentary systems (no one has the needed majority, you start negotiating with other parties to develop a unified platform until some combination has enough sway) if candidates in the primaries would slot themselves into administrations as people drop out (not just VP, either — pick someone to head State, Education, HHS, etc).

Super Tuesday

In a way, it seems like reporting is being built to fit a narrative. A woman on one of the afternoon radio shows in Cleveland was on some iteration of The Real World. I remember her talking about how the producers pick a narrative for each contestant — who is the villain, who is the underdog, who is a slob. They then go back over the hundreds of hours of footage and edit together a show that fits their narratives. The reality is that everyone had emotional breakdowns or left a dirty plate in the kitchen. She was picked as clingy. I remember her talking about how she was trying to call her boyfriend. There’s some way they allocate phone time — I don’t know if you get a few minutes whenever or if you’ve got a window. Whatever the method, her boyfriend kept not being available when she’d call. And that was it for her opportunity to contact the outside world. They didn’t show the attempts to call that led up to her breaking down after missing him. And, as a one off, breaking into tears because one cannot talk to one’s partner does sound clingy and codependent.

Differential, even handing Biden delegates for all those who endorsed him {and I haven’t bothered to verify that those delegates *can* vote for Biden}, is 146 — although Warren has 51 and is evidently taking a day to reassess, so hopefully she’ll drop and endorse Bernie well ahead of next week’s primaries. But even with a 150 point spread, 300 delegates from California are not assigned. Ignoring Cali, there’s a narrative that Biden won handily. But Cali’s pretty big to ignore. The reporting was similar coming out of Iowa too — Buttigieg won – he is so far ahead in SDE’s. Oh, he lost the popular vote pretty significantly *and* the delegates are pretty evenly split. But *facts* got lost with the logistical problems and then New Hampshire voting.

Can they drag out the California results for a week so Michigan goes to Biden because he’s ahead (if upward of 60% are saying they are voting for ‘someone who can beat Trump’ v/s ‘someone who agrees with them on issues’ … seems like ‘ahead in the polls’ would sway a lot of voters). Or does showing Sanders trailing motivate younger people to get out and vote in the coming weeks (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/04/super-tuesday-bernie-sanders-youth-votes-fell-short-compared-2016/4947795002/). It’s easy enough to sit home if you think you’re guy is winning — and I’m certain it’s a lot easier for retired people to take some time and vote compared to someone working two jobs and taking care of their kids — but if the race is close?

If the political parties wanted to design a system to diminish faith in the ability of people to select who leads the country, the ability of people to push the direction political parties go … Republicans have gerrymandering, but the Democrats have this primary process.

MySQL: Moving Data From One Table To Another

Our OpenHAB persistence data is stored in MySQL. There’s an “items” table which correlates each ItemName string to an ItemID integer. There are then Item#### tables that store persistence data for each item. If you rename an item, this means a new table is created and previous persistence data is no longer associated with the item. For some items, that’s fine — I don’t really care when the office light was on last month. But there’s persistence data that we use over a long term — outdoor temperature, luminance, electrical usage. In these cases, we want to pull the old data into the new table. There’s a quick one-liner SQL command that accomplishes this:

INSERT INTO NewTable SELECT * from OldTable;
e.g. INSERT INTO Item3857 SELECT * FROM Item3854;

You can drop the old table too:

DROP OldTable;

But I run a cleanup script against the item list so often don’t bother to remove tables one-off.

ESP8826 (12e) Multisensor

We’d set up a prototype multi-sensor with an environment sensing kit that Scott picked up at MicroCenter a few years ago. There’s a little LCD display … but we wanted to report readings back to our OpenHAB server. Which required a network connection. Checking out prices for network cards to add to the Uno … well, it wasn’t a cheap add-on. But we found these ESP8266 modules that support 802.11b/g/n and provide the memory/processing for small programs. At about 3$ delivered, that was exactly what we needed.

I ordered a bunch of components to make multi-sensors – pressure sensors, luminescence sensors, temperature/humidity sensors. The sensors connect into a CP2102 ESP8266. The device is powered by a couple of 18650’s in a little box — another buck. There’s some miscellaneous wiring and a little breadboard, too. The total cost for the multi-sensor is about 8.50$. We could add a vibration sensor for another 0.50$, a PIR sensor for 2$, and a UV sensor for 2.50$. That’s 13.50$ for 7 different sensors — and we don’t need seven sensors everywhere.

I kind of want to make a weather station too — add a water level sensor, a precipitation detector, and a wind speed sensor. Those are surprisingly expensive! I want to check out the process to build your own anemometer. But I’d probably buy a nice Davis Anemometer 🙂

Connecting to a WiFi network with the ESP8266 is really easy:

  • Add a library to the Arduino IDE —
    • In the Arduino IDE preferences, select File>Preferences menu.
    • In the “Additional Boards Manager URLs” field, add ‘https://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json’
    • Select the Tools > Board menu and open the Boards Manager. Search for “esp8266” and install the platform.
    • From the Tools > Board menu, select the appropriate board. I ordered the CP2102 ESP8266 module, and we’re using “NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module)” as the board.
  • Configure the WiFi network connection details in your code
  • Compile
  • Upload
  • You’ve on the network!

We’ve used an MQTT library and send sensor readings to our MQTT server.