Here's an amazing fact.

The 10th President of the USA was born in 1790. His grandson is still alive.

That really is amazing.

When you account for life expectancy between 1790 and now it just doesn't seem possible. The odds must be in the hundreds of millions to one.

Let's guess that the grandson is doing really well and has just hit 102 so was born in 1920. That's plausible today although obviously unlikely.

That means the father and grandfather had to have their respective children at an average age of 65.

That makes it seem more plausible although just surviving to 65 was hard enough then, never mind having a kid. The wives must've been significantly younger to have successfully conceived and given birth back then. Quick Google check shows the current record for a women giving birth is just under 67. Oldest known father at time of birth was 92 so no problems there.

Presidential life expectancy would obviously be higher than average but still.....

I had a look

His grandfather had his father when he was 63

His father had him when he was 75

And he is now in his 90s

[" one country could experience an ecomonic crash or a 'black swan' event and a FIAT currency could also experience a big drop."]

I agree that now some institutional investors have got involved then it means that BTC certainly has a lot more potential to be a legitmate asset, but I have some thoughts

" one country could experience an ecomonic crash or a 'black swan' event and a FIAT currency could also experience a big drop."

You don't get more of a crash than 2008. That led to sterling falling by about 30%, the Brexit result lead to sterling falling by about 16% - those were big financial shocks

BTC has fallen by 25% in Jan 2021, 21% in Feb 2021, nearly 20% in March 2021, 21% in April 2021, 70% in May 2021 - a more bullish end to the year but still a 12.5% fall in Sep 21 and a 14% fall in Nov 21

You might need to hedge against fluctuations in the solid FIAT currencies but big shocks might happen twice a decade - you'd be lucky at the moment to get that down to twice a year with BTC

You might pay banks for piece of mind but you don't pay for stability - the stability comes from the underlying economy and monetary and fiscal policies of the country it's attached to - that's why the US dollar and the Euro are reserve currencies around the world and not the Argentinian peso. If a FIAT currency is fundamentally weak - you just avoid it. And personally I think you primarily pay banks - because they provide a service, it might be a lot easier now with the internet; but it's still a service they're providing.

Going back to business - how does that work?

If you want to buy a shipping containers worth of, completely legal, product from Europe to the US. Say the value of that product is currently a million dollars

Do you pay the equivalent in BTC when you sign the contract? When it actually gets shipped? When it arrives? 30 days from when the invoice arrives?

Because depending on timing you might actually pay half a million dollars worth of BTC for it - or 2 million dollars worth of BTC for it

How could either side of that transaction work on any kind of financial planning with that level of uncertainty?

A lot comes back to an idea I've repeated in this thread - is there a record of how much Bitcoins have been used for actual transactional purposes anywhere?

The more BTC is used to actually buy things - the more stable the value will be, and the more stable the value will be - the more people can actually use them to buy things.

At the moment I'd guess it's a tiny amount, but it should at least be something that is measurable.

.... If you want to change pounds to dollars, you can shop around but you are going to lose a few % everytime you change it. Perhaps not a big deal for a few trips to the Rhino in Vegas, but if you are a business then this kind of thing adds up.
...

But - unless all your suppliers are using BTC then at some point you need to convert BTC to $ (or £'s or whatever)

If you did that on the 21st Jan 21 you'd get about $22,500 per BTC
But if you did it on the 21st Feb 21, you'd get nearer $41,000
on the 21st May you'd get $26,000
and on the 21st June you'd be down to closer to $22,500 again

All the upswings are good for profit - but how could any reasonable company cope with that volatility?

Surely the few % lost from standard banking transactions is going to work out less in the long term than the massive chunk that could be lost from BTC suddenly halving in value just as you need to get FIAT currency to pay a supplier?

I find the whole crypto world rather baffling (perhaps I’m just getting old and I’m a bit ignorant).

Couldn’t central banks launch their own crypto currencies and kill the market ?
..

They could - and they would - if it was worth it

The market cap for all cryptocurrencies has doubled to nearly 2 trillion dollars from 2020 to 2021

The liquidity of the "normal" currency market is about 40 trillion dollars

I'd guess over 99% of the people buying cryptocurrency are just buying it as a speculative instrument so the actual demand for it is a fraction of that.

EDIT: if it wasn't clear part of my point was that if a central bank launched a stable cryptocurrency - very few people would buy it, because nearly all of them are buying it for speculation. And if the central banks launched a cryptocurrency which wasn't stable - then what would be the point? Central banks aren't concerned with just creating speculative financial instruments.

Oops - at least I remembered to put wet suit in the other parts instead of swim suit.

You do make a reasonable point about route finding - it's really difficult to swim in a straight line even when you can see the way you're meant to be going.

The only other fix to that I can think of apart from prescription goggles is doing the event with someone who promises not to leave your side while swimming.  Looking up to check where the marker bouys are is probably what most of the people doing breast stroke were doing when I did one - that is probably a pretty good compromise; crawl for a bit - switch to breast stroke to check you're still going in a straight line - then keep switching.

Good crawl technique would also help with the stamina - because then you don't expend any wasted energy. If you get the breathing right, then finesse the movement - it makes it a lot easier to go a lot further.

.... :| maybe more like Eton Dorney Sprint distance triathlon

I could just about do that, but would probably have to practice open water swimming and not sure my bike would cut it.  Do all people swim front crawl and have road/racing bikes or do you get all sorts at the back?   My cousin in Australia does proper ironman (or woman) stuff and some crazy long distance ocean swims.  Must have it in the DNA somewhere.

...

The one I did was the London triathlon, it's hyper organised and really set up well for first time triathletes. https://livetotri.co.uk/london/event-overview/

Any bike is okay and any swimming stroke is okay. But it's probably easier to just sort out your crawl because it makes life a lot easier; and it's usually just breathing that people have to fix.

I "believe" that this is basically true of every triathlon event but I've only strictly experienced the London one. Plus the London one being known for being good for beginners would make me assume that it would have a higher proportion of people having to revert to breast stroke and a higher proportion not having fancy bikes.

If I do another one I'll be perusing the previous years photo's and results because my only aim is to not come last and I certainly wouldn't be entering anything unless I was sure I wasn't going to be embarassed by either my equipment or my finishing time

NB: the reason I'd want to do the Eton Dorney second is because London insisted on wearing a wet suit for the swimming part - that makes it physically easier but it's a hassle. Eton Dorney means I'd lose time on the swim because it would be without swimsuit, but I'd be quicker on the bike because - no hills.

Well played Dooby.

I think exercise at any level is probably the greatest single physical and mental health improvement scheme available, especially when you realise that the only thing you need to improve upon is your old self.

This is very true.  I am a natural at mathsy stuff, and OK in a swimming pool or on a bike, but have always found distance running difficult.  ...

I'm the same on all parts of this - but you could also add short and middle distance running.

My main problem is I tend not to do things without motivation - in the past I did a few swimming events because I liked swimming, but the only way I could motivate myself to do running was with a longer term goal of doing a triathlon.

So I did a 5k run, a couple of 10k runs, an unsually distanced 5 mile run (although I mainly did that because it finished in the London Olympic Stadium) and a half marathon.

After that practice (with a few swim things in the meantime) then I was able to do a triathlon (albeit a bit of a turbo one)

That was in 2015 and I've pretty much failed to find a new target to motivate me yet.

Maybe when everything is back to normal I'll make more of an effort to work out another 5 year plan.

Ironman 70.3?

.... :| maybe more like Eton Dorney Sprint distance triathlon

Well played Dooby.

I think exercise at any level is probably the greatest single physical and mental health improvement scheme available, especially when you realise that the only thing you need to improve upon is your old self.

This is very true.  I am a natural at mathsy stuff, and OK in a swimming pool or on a bike, but have always found distance running difficult.  ...

I'm the same on all parts of this - but you could also add short and middle distance running.

My main problem is I tend not to do things without motivation - in the past I did a few swimming events because I liked swimming, but the only way I could motivate myself to do running was with a longer term goal of doing a triathlon.

So I did a 5k run, a couple of 10k runs, an unsually distanced 5 mile run (although I mainly did that because it finished in the London Olympic Stadium) and a half marathon.

After that practice (with a few swim things in the meantime) then I was able to do a triathlon (albeit a bit of a turbo one)

That was in 2015 and I've pretty much failed to find a new target to motivate me yet.

Maybe when everything is back to normal I'll make more of an effort to work out another 5 year plan.

Here's the range of answers given. (Ignore the first 3 or 4 replies).



https://twitter.com/xclaudius/status/1418026819845074948


So what is the correct answer, & why?


How on earth did 26% of the people who responded think the answer was 13?

In my world, we have a sequence for performing the various calculations required.
Brackets, (powers) Of, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. We were taught it as BODMAS. **

So, 2x4 = 8
8 + 2 = 10.

Some may claim that the process should be left to right, which gives 2 + 2 = 4, leading to 4x4 = 16. The people who claim this are wrong.

I have no idea how anyone gets an odd number as the answer.


** That Twitter thread refers to PEDMAS, which is just a new way of saying the same thing. Parentheses, Exponents, …

I thought the answer might well be 10 - but didn't think it was obvious.

These sort of questions on social media usually revolve around an ambigiously phrased question - i.e. they're written badly to provoke people into arguing about it - but this is incredibly straightforward and I was very confused by Tikays image.

Until I clicked on the link and found that it was shared specifically because of what confused me - the correct answer isn't one of the options.

I think the funniest thing in that twitter thread was someone who not only tweeted that it was 'obviously' 16 but that essentially anybody who didn't get that answer was a moron and should go back to kindergarten.

When it was pointed out to him that in school they'd be taught the method which results in 10 he defended himself by saying that he knew how it was taught but that it was taught wrong and that was the problem with "math" that it was unnecessarily complicated.

what does "80% efficacy" actually mean?

Doesit men if 10 vaccinated people are exposed to the virus, 8 will get the diasease? or does it mean each person has 20% chance of catching the disease if exposed to it?

Like Marky says there are different efficacy levels for different things - but assuming it's just efficacy of catching the disease.

Science Wife says it's both simple, but not really simple.

The actual scientific meaning is that each person has a 20% chance of catching the disease if exposed to it

But in the real world that isn't quite how it works. Some people will still have a 90% of catching the disease while others will still only have about a 5% chance of catching it; and there are a bunch of other complications with working it out

So I suppose a more general definition is that the average chance of catching it after vaccination is 20%

...
Getting adults double vaccinated is obviously going to help massively, but we aren't doing that in 4 weeks...

There are about 50 million adults in the UK, so 2 shots each is about 100 million shots.

We currently have provided about 72 million.

19th July is 35 days away, if we can average half a million shots a day that would give a total of about 89 million shots

And obviously that will be split in some unknown way between partially and fully vaccinated, and is contingent on maintaining that average.

But maybe the idea is that it won't be totally completed but the remaining 10 million-ish shots will be to the least vulnerable adults so it will be "close enough"?

What does it mean when a seemingly normal and in context word is set within those square brackety things?

Example:

"Your wrists are locked in place by metal restraints, and [the] same applies to your ankles."

There might be other ways you could use it but the only convention I know of is that it means the person didn't actually say the bit in the brackets, the person quoting them adds it to make it clearer.

e.g.
They actually said
"Your wrists are locked in place by metal restraints, and same applies to your ankles."
but the person quoting them writes it as
"Your wrists are locked in place by metal restraints, and [the] same applies to your ankles."

If Matthew has his way, I wonder who will be next?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9583091/Liberal-commentator-Matthew-Parris-calls-blanket-ban-Travellers.html

On the more positive side there are people like this barrister laying into him https://barristerblogger.com/2021/05/20/the-evil-of-priti-patels-anti-gypsy-legislation/

On the negative side - a lot of the comments are... well, exactly as you might expect.

Is the data available for;

New cases who have been vaccinated?
New cases by age?

The number of cases after vaccination is basically monitored but not particularly reported on - because it's so low.

Here's a report on it https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/post-vaccine-covid-infections-deaths-rare-uk-study-finds-2021-04-30/
The numbers they found was out of 52,000 hospitalised patients there were 526 who had received at least one vaccine shot.

There would be 'some' more who got ill but weren't vaccinated but if trials suggest that a vaccine is 96% effective and all the data in the real world shows it's between 86 and 98% effective - there's not a huge amount of point in going out of your way to make it a priority.

The new cases by age is monitored but it's weirdly hard to find - this shows it in a download section https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/about-data#cases-by-age - but doesn't actually point to where the download is.

So it's clear that's around just not pushed to the front, and that's a bit less clear why. Plenty of the stats guys mentioned have covered cases by age and I frequently see education people refer to it - but I'm not quite sure where they're getting their data from.

[wildly]

Has the pandemic cost the UK government as much as they spent to bail out the banks in 2008?

Probably hard to say precisely but roughly speaking is it even close?

There are sets of wildly different figures for both

There are estimates of well over a trillion pounds for the banking crises - but that's basically idiotic. A trillion pounds worth of guarantees was provided by the government - but that's just a guarantee against a bank failing for example.

So when there are estimates which say £1.2 trillion (for example) - that actually means the government spend was more like £200bn (£0.2tn)

A journalist from the Guardian dug into it in 2011 and came up with a figure of £123bn - but that should come down by now as the shares in banks the government bought were generally sold for a profit (even if they weren't some money was recouped but from what I remember the reports were that they made a profit on them).

Reports of the costs of government spending on COVID vary a lot as well I've seen figures between £200bn and £400bn. £300bn and a bit seems a fairly consistent estimate - the national audit office gives the figure as £372bn

The NAO figure also includes figures for guarantees - but unlike the banks these might actually get paid out - a particularly relevant figure from the NAO is that the government have already spent £172bn

All in all it seems pretty likely that the COVID cost is going to be far higher than the 2008 cost.