We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results.

Jason Tate Oct 11, 2016

You’ve heard of the “margin of error” in polling. Just about every article on a new poll dutifully notes that the margin of error due to sampling is plus or minus three or four percentage points.
But in truth, the “margin of sampling error” – basically, the chance that polling different people would have produced a different result – doesn’t even come close to capturing the potential for error in surveys.
Polling results rely as much on the judgments of pollsters as on the science of survey methodology. Two good pollsters, both looking at the same underlying data, could come up with two very different results.
How so? Because pollsters make a series of decisions when designing their survey, from determining likely voters to adjusting their respondents to match the demographics of the electorate. These decisions are hard. They usually take place behind the scenes, and they can make a huge difference.

If you’re interested in polling at all, this is a really great article.

Dah Dah Doo Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Doo Dah La Ti Mi Fa La So Fa Mi

Jason Tate Oct 6, 2016

John McPhee, writing in the New Yorker:

Do I remember when I had my first drink? Absolutely. We were playing football at the corner of Prospect Avenue and Murray Place. I was ten years old. We’re talking whiskey. I have no idea what kind. This was pickup, sandlot, no-pads, tackle football on a vacant lot that was owned by Princeton University. We played there often. One day, somebody showed up late, carrying a bottle he had discovered in a building on the college campus.
He was one of us—our age, our pal, our teammate—but he had an advanced sense of the people up the street who were no longer in grade school. The bottle was three-quarters full. The football game went into a long time-out.

It annoys me how good of a writer he is.

President Trump’s First Term

Jason Tate Oct 3, 2016

New Yorker:

Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained, “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.” The idea is inspired by Reagan’s first week in the White House, in which he took steps to deregulate energy prices, as he had promised during his campaign. Trump’s transition team is identifying executive orders issued by Obama, which can be undone. “That’s a problem I don’t think the left really understood about executive orders,” Moore said. “If you govern by executive orders, then the next President can come in and overturn them.”

Terrifying column.

Cool App: Rocket

Jason Tate Sep 28, 2016

Rocket is a cool little app that lets you quickly add emoji in the same style as Slack — anywhere on your Mac.

Goodbye, Yellowcard (Encore Episode 133)

Jason Tate Sep 28, 2016

On this week’s episode of Encore I bring in special guest Craig Manning to discuss the final Yellowcard album and say goodbye to the band. Yellowcard have been a part of the formative years of our lives, and on September 30th they will release their last album. We discuss what the band’s meant to us, our favorites in their catalog, and then go track-by-track through the new album to talk about we like, don’t like, and how it stacks up with the rest of their discography. I think it’s safe to say that we’re going to miss this band quite a bit.

Barack Obama and Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Ultimate Exit Interview

Jason Tate Sep 26, 2016

Vanity Fair:

OBAMA: It’s always dangerous to amend the words of Abraham Lincoln, but let me see if this is a friendly amendment. I actually think, when you’re young, ambitions are somewhat common—you want to prove yourself. It may grow out of different life experiences. You may want to prove that you are worthy of the admiration of the demanding father. You may want to prove that you are worthy of the love of an absent father. You may want to prove that you’re worthy of other kids or neighbors who were wealthier than you and teased you. You may want to prove that you’re worthy of high expectations. But I do think that there is a youthful ambition that very much has to do with making your mark in the world. And I think that cuts across the experiences of a lot of people who end up achieving something significant in their field. I think, as you get older, that’s when your ambitions become “peculiar” …
GOODWIN: Oh, well said, sir. We can amend Lincoln.
OBAMA: … because I think that at a certain stage those early ambitions burn away, partly because you achieve something, you get something done, you get some notoriety. And then the particularities of who you are and what your deepest commitments are begin expressing themselves. You’re not just chasing the idea of “me” being important, but you, rather, are chasing a particular passion.
So, in my case, you could analyze me and say that my father leaving and being absent was a motivator for early ambition, trying to prove myself to this apparition who had vanished. You could argue that me being a mixed kid in a place where there weren’t a lot of black kids around might have spurred on my ambitions. You could go through a whole litany of things that sparked me wanting to do something important.
But as I got older, then my particular ambitions started cohering around creating a world in which people of different races or backgrounds or faiths can recognize each other’s humanity, or creating a world in which every kid, regardless of their background, can strive and achieve and fulfill their potential.
And those particular ambitions end up being rooted not just in me wanting to prove myself, but they end up being rooted in a particular worldview, a recognition that the world only makes sense to me given my life and my background if, in fact, we’re not just an assortment of tribes that can never understand each other, but that we’re, rather, one common humanity that can meet and learn and love each other.

I loved this entire interview.

When a Crackpot Runs for President

Jason Tate Sep 18, 2016

Nicholas Kristof, at The New York Times:

There are crackpots who believe that the earth is flat, and they don’t deserve to be quoted without explaining that this is an, er, outlying view, and the same goes for a crackpot who has argued that climate change is a Chinese-made hoax, who has called for barring Muslims and who has said that he will build a border wall and that Mexico will pay for it.
We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No, especially when he’s a presidential candidate.

A Back-Up Thomas (Encore Episode 132)

Jason Tate Sep 15, 2016

This week’s episode of Encore is with special guest Deanna Chapman. (Thomas is on vacation and watching football games and stuff.) On this episode we talk about how the music scene has changed over the years and what first drew us to it. I’m always curious about what brought other people into this music scene, how it differs today, and the role technology and social media has played in shaping it. We also talk about Batman: The Animated Series, some of our favorite apps, Apple Music/Spotify/Bandcamp, and other fun stuff.

As always, thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy.

How Breitbart Conquered the Media

Jason Tate Sep 12, 2016

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing for The Atlantic:

Events on Friday threw that thesis into doubt. Hillary Clinton made a claim—half of Donald Trump’s supporters are motivated by some form of bigotry. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it,” she said. “And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.” Clinton went on to claim that there is another half—people disappointed in the government and economy who are desperate for change. The second part of this claim received very little attention, simply because much of media could not make its way past the first half. The resultant uproar challenges the idea that Breitbart lost.
Indeed, what Breitbart understood, what his spiritual heir Donald Trump has banked on, what Hillary Clinton’s recent pillorying has clarified, is that white grievance, no matter how ill-founded, can never be humiliating nor disqualifying. On the contrary, it is a right to be respected at every level of American society from the beer-hall to the penthouse to the newsroom.

A must read.

Inside the Republican Creation of the North Carolina Voting Bill Dubbed the ‘Monster’ Law

Jason Tate Sep 11, 2016

The Washington Post:

Critics dubbed it the “monster” law — a sprawling measure that stitched together various voting restrictions being tested in other states. As civil rights groups have sued to block the North Carolina law and others like it around the country, several thousand pages of documents have been produced under court order, revealing the details of how Republicans crafted these measures.
A review of these documents shows that North Carolina GOP leaders launched a meticulous and coordinated effort to deter black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. The law, created and passed entirely by white legislators, evoked the state’s ugly history of blocking African Americans from voting — practices that had taken a civil rights movement and extensive federal intervention to stop.

This article makes my blood boil.

The Trumpster Fire Burns Bright

Jason Tate Sep 8, 2016

The Washington Post:

Fifteen months after he announced his candidacy for the presidency, we’ve almost run out of ways to describe what Trump represents. He is, without a doubt, the most dishonest candidate to run for the presidency in modern history, and perhaps in all of American history. It isn’t even close, and that should be beyond dispute by now. It isn’t just about his habit of stating alleged facts that are demonstrably untrue, and continuing to repeat them even after it’s been pointed out that they’re false, though that’s part of it. It’s also about the sheer volume of unreality he delivers, as though he’s trying to drown us all in a river of bull that moves so fast that truth itself begins to seem almost irrelevant.

Review: Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues

Jason Tate Sep 6, 2016

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on September 6th, 2016. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.

It’s here.

It’s time.

I’m going to do a first listen thread for the upcoming Jimmy Eat World album, Integrity Blues. A couple of thoughts going in: I usually try and listen to an album three times or so before doing a first listen thread, so I kind of have an idea of what I wanna talk about on each song. But because it’s JEW, and because a lot of people have been waiting for this one, and because they’re my favorite band, I’m going to do this having only listened to the album once all the way through.

I’m clearly very bias with this band, they’re basically my favorite band ever, so you should know that as well going in … like, there’s no objective way I can listen to these guys, so I’m not going to even try.

My first over-arching impressions is that this album is very Futures-esque in a lot of ways. Layers, dark, big huge pop-rock. But it includes some Invented and CTL themes as well. I think that by and large this is what I love best from the band, and I think recording with JMJ was a fantastic choice. That big huge sound just works so well with this band and on these songs they really sound big, polished, and it’s almost a complete 180 from Damage in how it sounds.

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind at another time, and this isn’t really a “review” as much as it is me going through and listening to an album and just writing down my thoughts on it while it plays.

Interview: Jason Vena of Acceptance

Jason Tate Sep 6, 2016

Acceptance are back and have spent the last year working on a new album. I recently had the chance to talk with lead singer Jason Vena about getting the band back together and what lead to that decision, the differences in the music industry from when the band first broke into the music scene to now, and what the new songs are going to sound like. We also talked about the entire process of recording this album, how the band is taking their time through the process, and why it took ten years for Jason to once again feel like he had something he wanted to say musically. Our full conversation can be found below, only lightly edited, and make sure you pre-order the band’s upcoming album if you haven’t already.

Read More “Jason Vena of Acceptance”

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun

Jason Tate Sep 5, 2016

Remember for the past 15 or so years whenever someone would bring up climate change and some jackass would talk about how it wasn’t real, or that it was no big deal? They were wrong.

Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.
Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.
These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

The Republic of Wolves – “Northern Orthodox” (Song Premiere)

Jason Tate Sep 5, 2016

The Republic of Wolves have been teasing new music over the past week and today we’re excited to bring you a brand new song from the band called “Northern Orthodox.” You can stream that below. The band has described their new music as trying to revisit a darker and heavier sound and explore that side of their influences. Mason described the song by saying:

“Northern Orthodox” is the eighth chapter of a story that will hopefully be told in full on our upcoming full-length album. It’s also our first song whose musical composition was inspired entirely by a dream.