Monday, August 14, 2017

1876

Hey look, it's the chair and laptop from Friday, only reversed!

I keep getting angrier and angrier about this one the more I think about it. We start with an incredibly dumb observation (being careful to cite sources, because Randall is a stalwart fighter in the war against fake news, although the link is provided in the form of a PICTURE OF TEXT SO YOU HAVE TO TYPE IT IN BY HAND): people who live in places where the upcoming eclipse will be visible are likely to look up information about the eclipse. Wow! My mind has never been this blown! You'd think areas in the path of the eclipse* would be regularly exposed to news about it, or something!

Then we have yet another goddamn picture of Google Trends in a half-assed attempt to make some other stupid point. What are we supposed to get from this? That because more people are googling the eclipse than googled the 2016 election, there's going to be massive traffic jams because of everyone going on the road to see the eclipse? Even after all that googling, turnout for the 2016 election was 60%, compared to... 59% in 2012. That's no kind of increase at all. I'd almost think this was some kind of joke about reading too much into Google Trends, except that he's playing it so terribly, terribly straight.

What the hell kind of function is that supposed to be extrapolating, anyway?


*Ackchyually, the eclipse doesn't really have a path; it's the Earth that rotates such that a different portion of its surface is in the shadow cast by the moon throughout the event. How does it feel to be out-pedanted you poseur?

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  2652 Self-deprecation can't last forever; at some point you have to actually be good at your job