For Later Reference

I didn't write this, I don't take credit for it, I don't know who originally wrote it, I found it on a forum somewhere.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

to get any real sense of where it should be, gotta look back to about 2000 before the previous recession, because there was never really a full recovery of that shit.

it can safely be called 64%.

because the BLS never bothers to cite exactly how it calculates it's numbers or the bases unless you dig like a motherfucker, i am forced to derive the bases.

from the above link citing 58.5% participation for June (P), and the 153.7 million total labor force size (L), it's possible to get the base (B) which they are using.
B = L/P, resulting in B = 262.735 million.

now assuming the 64% participation rate, this means that the adjusted L should be 168.15 million (quite a bit larger than the 153.7 which is being cited, 14.45 million to be exact)

so, U3 is "unemployment, but not underemployment, not distressed workers, etc.", it's basically safe to go ahead and say "these are the people who have absolutely no work at all and are fucked", and that number for June is 9.5%, or 14.6 million people who are currently fucked.

U6 includes the zombie workers who used to have actual jobs but now work at walmart or flip burgers. that number for June is 16.5% or 25.36 million.

what happens when we toss in those missing 14.45 million people?

U3 becomes 17.3%
U6 becomes 23.7%

if you dont like the 64%, you can fiddle with the averages however you want to, but the simple fact is that "participation rate" has never fallen this fast since 1948, has never seen 4 years of dropping and has never seen this rate of dropping.

attribute it to whatever you want to, but the simple fact is everything is fucked, its not getting better

Two Android App Reviews

Touiteur

I was on the hunt for a new Twitter client when the official one stopped serving me notifications. (To that end, I am a little unhappy at the news that the official Twitter app will be baked into Android 2.2, presumably with no way to uninstall it, just like you can't uninstall the Facebook app). I installed Touiteur because the name amused me, but I ended up liking it enough to pay for the pro version.

What I like: You can set a person's tweets to show up against whatever color background you want, making it easy to breeze through the timeline at high speed without missing tweets by the people you actually know in real life. Composing tweets is done via an editor that pulls down from a bar at the top of the screen, so you can write a tweet no matter where you are in the app. The interface in general is highly polished and a joy to look at.

What I don't like: Today I had to reinstall Touiteur because it decided that I wanted to see 20 copies of the most recent tweet in the timeline. This may have something to do with the fact that an update was just pushed out today? Touiteur also has to be set to use the supported APIs for retweeting instead of the old method; by default it will just copy a tweet and stick "RT" in front of it. You can't tap directly on links in Touiteur, either. You tap on the entire tweet, then tap Links from the pop-down menu, then the link you wanted. I guess this problem could be solved by making the text a little bigger, which I wouldn't mind, but it doesn't seem to give me the option.

So it's a little rough around the edges, but really the worst thing I can say about it is it takes me, on average, three tries to spell the name right.

Handcent SMS

People kept telling me I should install Handcent, so I did. And then I uninstalled it 20 minutes later.

What I like: Uh... it did not crash once in the short time I used it?

What I don't like: It doesn't really offer anything over the built-in SMS client except for the ugly Mac-inspired "speech bubble" layout. In fact, the whole thing looks like an iPhone app, which wouldn't be so bad except it completely breaks Android UI conventions.

So it's an ugly, ugly app, but worst of all it has no reason to exist. This review's a little short because, like I said, I only used Handcent for about 20 minutes.

I'll probably do more of these. Look for reviews of Swype and Dolphin Browser HD soon-ish (no promises).

I have to be to court for jury duty in less than five hours

[3:04 AM] Me: my eyes are super-irritated from i dont even know what
[3:04 AM] Me: but i'm too lazy to go up and look at them in a mirror
[3:04 AM] Me: so i just used my phone to take a picture of my eye
[3:05 AM] AzraelNewtype: ...
[3:06 AM] Me: and now i'm tweeting the picture i just took
[3:06 AM] Me: i love technology

Trying to decide whether to buy a Nexus One outright at $530 or sign a two-year contract and pay just $180 up front

PROS:

• Saves $130 in the long run
• No contract
• Smaller phone bill every month ($60 vs $80)

CONS:

• $530 is a LOT to spend up front for a phone
• That's basically all I got

This Is It: The Absolute Dumbest Blog Comment About Healthcare Reform

I've read some borderline-insane word salads against the healthcare reform bill, but this is the internet. That shit doesn't faze me anymore. But this comment is special, because I cannot for the life of me understand how a person intelligent enough to string these words together could look at what he had written and not feel profoundly ashamed of himself.

It comes from, of all places, the not-normally-political Lifehacker:

Forget about the "healthcare bill". Everyone please take a look at the process that passed it. Does any of this smell like a dictatorship to you? Consider that if you did not like "Bush's War" you did not have to participate in it. But now I am compelled to buy an insurance product? What next? Poor folks can't buy cars so now we ALL have to buy cars?

I don't even know where to begin. I must have missed the option in TurboTax to get back the portion of my taxes they spent on the war.

Just so we're clear:

Imperialist military adventures? -- NOT A DICTATORSHIP

Trying to get more people insured? -- BASICALLY HITLER

And I don't understand at all the point he's trying to make with the car thing.

I'll tell you what you can do with those potatoes, Part Deux

Russets this time. Take one (or more likely three or four) and cut it in half lengthwise. Take each half and turn it so the cut side is facing up, then slice it into thirds lengthwise, producing three "Western Fry" wedges. But you're not going to stop there: cut them in half.

When all the potatoes are cut, dump them in your largst mixing bowl and toss with olive oil. (And it doesn't take much. 1-1/2 tsp per potato is plenty; just enough to make the potatoes shiny.) Sprinkle on LOTS of kosher salt (always more than you think you need when salting potatoes) and a decent amount of black pepper and whatever else you think is appropriate (OLD BAY) and toss again.

(Oh yeah, you should have been preheating your oven to 350°F while you did all that.)

Dump out the potatoes in a single layer onto a baking sheet and cook for about 15 minutes, then flip them and cook another 15.

Serve with ketchup. Yes, ketchup. Don't ever let anyone tell you ketchup is low-class. It has its uses. For one, it's the only appropriate condiment for fries, except for (sometimes) malt vinegar.

Alternatively, I guess they're good enough to eat plain.

Me, talking about the experience of calling my bank to have THREE non-sufficient funds fines reversed shortly after the new year

[At the time I was between temp assignments, and the amount of the fines added up to about a third of the last paycheck I would receive for a (then) unknown amount of time.]

It was actually one of the more humiliating experiences of my life, having to literally beg these people for my money back.

(To anybody curious, they refunded 2 of the 3 fines.)

Snippet

[A Snippet is just a bit of interesting text I copied from elsewhere on the internet, often the Something Awful forums. I do not claim to be the original author, but I usually failed to write down any attribution whatsoever. If you see something you wrote, post a comment and I will credit you.]

"i just don't understand who all the people losing their jobs and health insurance are if not any of these people

like when a conservative demagogue proudly boasts we have the best health system in the world, shouldn't these people at least pause to think about some close friend or family member who has been completely screwed by the system (even if they themselves haven't) before cheering wildly in agreement"

What I made for dinner

First I roughly chopped the last good onion I had in the cupboard. I say "roughly" because I still don't know how to cut an onion such that I end up with pieces that are all nearly the same size. Then I sweat the onion in half a stick of melted butter for a few minutes, then whisked in 3tbsp of flour to construct a pretty basic bechamel sauce with 3 cups of milk.

I cooked an entire pound of elbow macaroni even though half would've been enough, and I didn't stir them enough so a bunch stuck to the bottom of the pot, which, despite being the largest pot I own, was not large enough to prevent boil-overs.

I browned a pound of ground beef in my poorly-seasoned cast iron skillet. I'm still scraping bits of burnt beef off it.

When the bechamel was ready I stirred in most of a 12oz block of shitty mass-market cheddar and seasoned it with spices that were in that cabinet when we moved in 21 years ago.

In the end I realized that I had put a lot of work in, and dirtied a lot of pots and pans, to make something damn close to Hamburger Helper.

Games that offer commentary on the player isn't exactly a new concept

Earthbound has this house you can buy, near where you start the game. It costs way more money than you could reasonably accumulate by such an early point in the game, and the only way to make enough money to buy it is by doing a ridiculous amount of grinding.

But what's in the house once you finally buy it? NOTHING. Nothing of value, anyway. The house, with its exorbitant pricetag, is there to punk you out for being an obsessive nerd.

I love that.