Open Thread 235

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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. In this week’s news:

1: We’ve made it through the original twelve Book Review finalists. I’m busy the next few weeks and want to keep the free Friday posts, so I’m adding four more: Exhaustion: A History, God Emperor of Dune, 1587, and Kora In Hell. I chose these through a combination of reader preference, my preference, and wanting to showcase some unusual genres of review. I realize this is annoying to other finalists who will have to wait longer for a smaller chance at a prize, so I’ll double the amount of all monetary prizes as compensation.

2: The statistics team behind TuringElect, “a new project to build Bayesian forecasts for the 2022 midterms”, is looking for a media partner. If you’re in media and you want an electoral model kind of like what 538 is doing, get in touch with them. They’ve also got interesting stuff like this analysis of exactly when the US polarized. You can also email cdp49@cam.ac.uk if you’re interested in sponsoring or volunteering for related open source work.

3: Reminder: if someone here asks a question, it’s a bannable offense to comment something like “the answer to this is obvious” or “I can’t believe anyone could not know the answer” without providing the answer.