“El Kabong @El_Kabong81
I see someone switched the NPCs to War Mode this morning.
The true believers are assmad, but the ones who think whatever their phones tell them to are going full Conan.”
Yes, we have a degenerate and corrupt elite. Yes, we have tech oligarchs working to destroy freedom of speech and thought. Yes, we have largely unreconstructed communists organizing riots and attacks on federal property. But above and beyond all that we really do have a significant portion of both the general public and our decrepit elites who simply believe whatever their phones tell them to believe.
And yeah, I’m sure the same sort of folks believed whatever the New York Times or CNN told them to believe. But they used to not get that message until the next day, or at least for a few hours, and there was a space where they had a chance to think for themselves. Now they’re strapped 24/7 into a feedback machine that rewards goodthink and punishes badthink.
I shudder to imagine the level of catastrophe that will be necessary to wake them up.
Mike
As I get closer to retirement I keep asking myself why I should care about what is happening. The economic collapse that will eventually happen as a result of our profligate spending, the increasing governmental control over our lives and loss of personal freedoms, the continual unrelenting societal degradation and downward spiral towards socialism and thought control…by the time this all gets to full bore I’ll hopefully be in my 90’s and beyond caring. If the younger generation is so brainwashed that they don’t fight back, then why shouldn’t I say “screw them”. They are ones who will live their whole lives with this crap, not me.
Now….if I could just get rid of this damn conscience.
MBunge,
There is a different situation, along similar lines, that worries me more. It’s Madison Avenue meets Politics meets the media meets Conflict.
Whether one is cravenly pursuing revenue, votes or eyeballs; a very effective approach is to gin up conflict. If none can be found, make some. This isn’t news. Advertisers have done it for years. Politicians have done it for years. Newspapers, broadcasters, sports teams, Coke! Pepsi!… Now we have phones in our pockets or purses and screens in our homes, cars, airports, gas station pumps, restaurants, schools, sporting events… screaming at us all day, everyday. In addition to humans crafting ads, news items and political campaigns for maximum rage there are also millions of AI programs running continually; billions of instructions a second constantly tweaking what we see and hear to consume more of our money and time*.
*And those programs have figured out rage and conflict are great motivators to convince we humans to part with our time and money.
Oh by the way. Word is that Durham is resigned before the new AG is sworn in. BUT he is keeping his role as Special Counsel. Since he is no longer part of the Justice Department he satisfied the requirement that a Special Counsel must come outside of the government. Let’s see how this plays out.
Another multiplier is that analysis of the social graph is not just useful to taking out critical goat herder terrorist network interlink nodes when generating new Hellfire Missile orders for your donors — it also allows one to find the optimal nodes where cut-from-whole-cloth sentiment is best injected into networks. Hence ‘Influencers’.
All these subtleties aside, we humans are simply not evolved to handle constant bombardment of information. We are also not evolved to handle daily interactions with hordes of strangers (let alone foreigners).
Gutenberg —> Rivers of Blood
Yellow Press —> Rivers of Blood
Social Media —> Trans Carbon Neutral Starships + Ponies!
The “stealership” saga continues.
Got a text today … your car is ready for pickup. We have “financing plan” available for the repairs. (car is under warranty)
Go and pick car up. Make it 1 mile … check engine light comes on!
Burnt rubber back to the stealership … FIX IT!
The best or nothing. I’m starting to think nothing!
Word is that Durham is resigned before the new AG is sworn in. BUT he is keeping his role as Special Counsel. Since he is no longer part of the Justice Department he satisfied the requirement that a Special Counsel must come outside of the government. Let’s see how this plays out.
I am Spartacus:
I’ll take “Spineless Kabuki” for $200, Alex.
I’m getting to Leonard Cohen’s last few albums at last. I put it off because it was a stretch to get used to his voice so low you can hear the clicks of his vocal chords. And perhaps because I didn’t want to think about him showing so much age…
Those later albums were near-universally praised by critics. Top ten lists of the year and all that. The albums are good but IMO not that good, other than the undeniable possibility that the current competition is so weak. Plus, of course, the albums are phenomenal for a man in his late seventies, going into his eighties. He worked to the very end, folks
I like this song, opening “Popular Problems”:
_____________________________________________
I’m slowing down the tune
I’ve never liked it fast You wanna get there soon
I wanna get there last
It’s not because I’m old
It’s not the life I led
I always liked it slow
That’s what my mamma said
Huxley – “I’ll take “Spineless Kabuki” for $200, Alex.
I will not bet against you.
Hello. I had another thought about the Sapir-Whorf thing. It occurred to me while fixing a ham sandwich today that perhaps math could be thought of sometimes as a congenial setting for strong Sapir-Whorf. I was thinking of things like the difficulty or even impossibility of realistically describing certain physical phenomena like normal vectors in EM fields, or the areas of types of shapes, if one lacks the mathematical elements (i.e. “words”) required. Calculus concepts, things like that. Given that I sometimes feel a need to take remedial calculus to understand some stuff that I (try to) read, this thought has gestated.
Philip Sells:
When they get the kinks out of Age Regression Bio-Therapy, I’m gonna name my band, “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.”
My fans will be called Whorfheads.
@Philip Sells:
Calculus you say? How about Newton’s Notation vs. Leibniz’s Notation for doing differential calculus? L won out because by far the better Language.
Laplace Transform in Classical Control Theory is good example of the right language tool for the job.
Funny story or maybe not funny.
Senior year in high school I took Trig/Calculus class. The Eddie Haskell of the class took the teachers answer book to the homework questions. Then he took a second one! We all were getting the homework done … perfectly. Not so good on the test.
Then several of us got called into Assistant Principles office. He told us … look i know one of you took Miss iforgethernames answer book. We just want it returned no questions ask just return it.
So we decided and Eddie said no problem I’ll put ONE back. We still have the second one.
Funny part is Eddie didn’t need the answer book. He was a wizard at this stuff.
Phillip Sells,
Although I don’t recall either video mentioning Sapir-Whorf, they both explain how most all languages on Earth developed words for colors in the same, chronological order, with blue being the last to be distinguished and named. It seems to coincide with your idea about math while making your sandwich. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5N0C4GaTkM&feature=emb_logo
Vis a vis these United States and 2021 do you expect the DJIA, S+P 500 and/or NASDAQ to undergo a correction? If so, about how precipitously do you guess the fall will be, percentage-wise?
What about the very hot housing market? Will that run continue to continue? Or is housing also do for a correction?
Gold? Silver? Crypto?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I’m warning a homeowner friend in San Francisco, who is considering a move, to put the possibility of a correction in that market into his mulling.
I expect real estate to vary according to location. Those cities getting migrants from places like NYC, SF will stay hot for a while longer.
Rufus, I looked at one of those videos the other day. The debate that took shape in the comments around the issue of the Greek words for blue was interesting.
Rufus:
Cow dung futures, until cows are banned. After that we will be running the economy on unicorn flatus which has more promise than fusion energy and no waste.
When covid19 started to get traction I bailed out. I was convinced it was going to get very bad … VERY BAD. But what happened? Markets found a bottom then clawed back to new all time highs. In my younger days I would have embraced the correction and went all in. Always had time on my side. Today I don’t have that luxury.
I’m still convinced there is a real correction coming. Who knows how much. What i do know markets don’t care who the president is. They only care … can business make money or even more important can they make money in the future… always forward looking. I don’t see Bidens policys being business friendly. So we’ll see what happens.
Gold … no idea
Silver … no idea
Crypto … scares the bejebass out of me. I guess it’s because i don’t understand it. Where is the value?
jack,
Regarding crypto, you wrote, “… I don’t understand it.” AND “Where is the value?” Your follow up question shows that you do understand it! 🙂
You’re right, the scary thing about crypto is it has no value. But, if you really want to be scared; how is that different from fiat currency, the paper bills in your wallet? Some cryptos are better than others, but in regards to Bitcoin, it is designed to get harder and harder to mine over time. The more coins that are discovered, the longer it will be between new coin discoveries. And, this is really important, there is a finite limit. Like gold (and unlike fiat currency the U.S. treasury prints), it is a precious object.
What seems very odd regarding Bitcoin and other cryptos is there is literally nothing tangible. The fact that one can hold a $5 bill makes it “feel” safer. But, as we have seen all too frequently lately, but Treasury can create more and more bills whenever it wants. And, similarly to crypto, it often doesn’t even bother to print bills, it just transfers ones and zeros to banks.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Bitcoin is how stable and traceable it is (ownership is indisputable, it can’t really be forged), but it’s extraordinarily fungible and is completely untethered from any government or governing body.
Years ago I had a friend move to San Fran. They paid $340k for a dump. I mean a 2bedroom shack that didn’t even have 220v electrical system. I couldn’t believe it.
At that time in Texas you could buy a 4/5 bedroom new home with acreage for that money.
No doubt the housing market will be reginal with winners and losers.
I played this one many times. I’d buy at 5 sell at 6+ and paid a good dividend
nymt … New York Mortgage Trust Inc .. it’s sucking wind now!
I too think we’ll see regional ups and downs in housing. I was in the city of my birth, Chicago, recently. Downtown at lunchtime on a weekday. A tumbleweed wouldn’t have been out of place. It was astounding how empty it was. I spent a few hours there over a couple of days. Rode public transportation quite a bit. It seemed dead. Long dead. Hard to believe there won’t be a huge commercial real estate downturn in most big cities. And high priced residential real estate has to drop in those same areas.
But parts of Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, the coastal Carolinas… I don’t see why those areas will stop growing. Not only is the pandemic and blue government abuses pushing folks towards those states; we are in the beginning stages of the Great Baby Boomer Retirement push. Boomers will continue to downsize and move to warm places, or places with mountains and skiing, or lakes and rivers.
(Witness our very own, physicsguy!)
After being flooded with Harvey then this last cold snap mama is talking Florida big time. We have son that lives in Port Orange just south of Daytona and grand daughter in Orlando.
She’s thinking who’s going to take care of us when we can’t. They aren’t going to move here.
I think having Open Threads is a great idea.
jack,
My folks (who I am sure are quite a bit older than you and your Mrs.) finally appear close to doing the same. They are in a northern area with rough winters and rather remote. They are visiting my sister now, who lives in the south. I hope they make a move soon, before it becomes too difficult.
Have people wondered what it was like living in Soddom and Gomorrah?
Did they ever wonder what the angels and other powers thought as we dustified these human population centers?
Rufus, who on earth is buying any of the Gold Coast condos? I hear a considerable number of residents are exiting the scene. But they must be selling to someone, no?
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Beautiful place and day for a light lunch.
Your trip to Italy?
om:
Yes.
What I wouldn’t give to be there right now.
Italy? I thought it was Nebraska.
Or maybe some winery in the Finger Lakes.
Neo said it was Italy but actually Mt Shasta is just out of the frame on the right (4/1/2021). 🙂
buonogusto
A commenter at Ace’s has described one of the biggest problems facing us better than I think anyone else ever has.
http://ace.mu.nu/
“El Kabong @El_Kabong81
I see someone switched the NPCs to War Mode this morning.
The true believers are assmad, but the ones who think whatever their phones tell them to are going full Conan.”
Yes, we have a degenerate and corrupt elite. Yes, we have tech oligarchs working to destroy freedom of speech and thought. Yes, we have largely unreconstructed communists organizing riots and attacks on federal property. But above and beyond all that we really do have a significant portion of both the general public and our decrepit elites who simply believe whatever their phones tell them to believe.
And yeah, I’m sure the same sort of folks believed whatever the New York Times or CNN told them to believe. But they used to not get that message until the next day, or at least for a few hours, and there was a space where they had a chance to think for themselves. Now they’re strapped 24/7 into a feedback machine that rewards goodthink and punishes badthink.
I shudder to imagine the level of catastrophe that will be necessary to wake them up.
Mike
As I get closer to retirement I keep asking myself why I should care about what is happening. The economic collapse that will eventually happen as a result of our profligate spending, the increasing governmental control over our lives and loss of personal freedoms, the continual unrelenting societal degradation and downward spiral towards socialism and thought control…by the time this all gets to full bore I’ll hopefully be in my 90’s and beyond caring. If the younger generation is so brainwashed that they don’t fight back, then why shouldn’t I say “screw them”. They are ones who will live their whole lives with this crap, not me.
Now….if I could just get rid of this damn conscience.
MBunge,
There is a different situation, along similar lines, that worries me more. It’s Madison Avenue meets Politics meets the media meets Conflict.
Whether one is cravenly pursuing revenue, votes or eyeballs; a very effective approach is to gin up conflict. If none can be found, make some. This isn’t news. Advertisers have done it for years. Politicians have done it for years. Newspapers, broadcasters, sports teams, Coke! Pepsi!… Now we have phones in our pockets or purses and screens in our homes, cars, airports, gas station pumps, restaurants, schools, sporting events… screaming at us all day, everyday. In addition to humans crafting ads, news items and political campaigns for maximum rage there are also millions of AI programs running continually; billions of instructions a second constantly tweaking what we see and hear to consume more of our money and time*.
*And those programs have figured out rage and conflict are great motivators to convince we humans to part with our time and money.
Oh by the way. Word is that Durham is resigned before the new AG is sworn in. BUT he is keeping his role as Special Counsel. Since he is no longer part of the Justice Department he satisfied the requirement that a Special Counsel must come outside of the government. Let’s see how this plays out.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/scammed-breaking-john-durham-resigns-effective-february-28th-biden-ag-takes-office/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2021/02/26/u-s-attorney-john-durham-announces-his-departure-from-office-no-details-of-special-counsel-role-continuing/#more-208270
@Rufus:
Another multiplier is that analysis of the social graph is not just useful to taking out critical goat herder terrorist network interlink nodes when generating new Hellfire Missile orders for your donors — it also allows one to find the optimal nodes where cut-from-whole-cloth sentiment is best injected into networks. Hence ‘Influencers’.
All these subtleties aside, we humans are simply not evolved to handle constant bombardment of information. We are also not evolved to handle daily interactions with hordes of strangers (let alone foreigners).
Gutenberg —> Rivers of Blood
Yellow Press —> Rivers of Blood
Social Media —> Trans Carbon Neutral Starships + Ponies!
The “stealership” saga continues.
Got a text today … your car is ready for pickup. We have “financing plan” available for the repairs. (car is under warranty)
Go and pick car up. Make it 1 mile … check engine light comes on!
Burnt rubber back to the stealership … FIX IT!
The best or nothing. I’m starting to think nothing!
Word is that Durham is resigned before the new AG is sworn in. BUT he is keeping his role as Special Counsel. Since he is no longer part of the Justice Department he satisfied the requirement that a Special Counsel must come outside of the government. Let’s see how this plays out.
I am Spartacus:
I’ll take “Spineless Kabuki” for $200, Alex.
I’m getting to Leonard Cohen’s last few albums at last. I put it off because it was a stretch to get used to his voice so low you can hear the clicks of his vocal chords. And perhaps because I didn’t want to think about him showing so much age…
Those later albums were near-universally praised by critics. Top ten lists of the year and all that. The albums are good but IMO not that good, other than the undeniable possibility that the current competition is so weak. Plus, of course, the albums are phenomenal for a man in his late seventies, going into his eighties. He worked to the very end, folks
I like this song, opening “Popular Problems”:
_____________________________________________
I’m slowing down the tune
I’ve never liked it fast
You wanna get there soon
I wanna get there last
It’s not because I’m old
It’s not the life I led
I always liked it slow
That’s what my mamma said
–Leonard Cohen, “Slow” on “Popular Problems” (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVegcCcMNS4
Huxley – “I’ll take “Spineless Kabuki” for $200, Alex.
I will not bet against you.
Hello. I had another thought about the Sapir-Whorf thing. It occurred to me while fixing a ham sandwich today that perhaps math could be thought of sometimes as a congenial setting for strong Sapir-Whorf. I was thinking of things like the difficulty or even impossibility of realistically describing certain physical phenomena like normal vectors in EM fields, or the areas of types of shapes, if one lacks the mathematical elements (i.e. “words”) required. Calculus concepts, things like that. Given that I sometimes feel a need to take remedial calculus to understand some stuff that I (try to) read, this thought has gestated.
Philip Sells:
When they get the kinks out of Age Regression Bio-Therapy, I’m gonna name my band, “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.”
My fans will be called Whorfheads.
@Philip Sells:
Calculus you say? How about Newton’s Notation vs. Leibniz’s Notation for doing differential calculus? L won out because by far the better Language.
Laplace Transform in Classical Control Theory is good example of the right language tool for the job.
Funny story or maybe not funny.
Senior year in high school I took Trig/Calculus class. The Eddie Haskell of the class took the teachers answer book to the homework questions. Then he took a second one! We all were getting the homework done … perfectly. Not so good on the test.
Then several of us got called into Assistant Principles office. He told us … look i know one of you took Miss iforgethernames answer book. We just want it returned no questions ask just return it.
So we decided and Eddie said no problem I’ll put ONE back. We still have the second one.
Funny part is Eddie didn’t need the answer book. He was a wizard at this stuff.
Phillip Sells,
Although I don’t recall either video mentioning Sapir-Whorf, they both explain how most all languages on Earth developed words for colors in the same, chronological order, with blue being the last to be distinguished and named. It seems to coincide with your idea about math while making your sandwich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5N0C4GaTkM&feature=emb_logo
https://youtu.be/D1-WuBbVe2E
Speaking of investments;
Vis a vis these United States and 2021 do you expect the DJIA, S+P 500 and/or NASDAQ to undergo a correction? If so, about how precipitously do you guess the fall will be, percentage-wise?
What about the very hot housing market? Will that run continue to continue? Or is housing also do for a correction?
Gold? Silver? Crypto?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I’m warning a homeowner friend in San Francisco, who is considering a move, to put the possibility of a correction in that market into his mulling.
I expect real estate to vary according to location. Those cities getting migrants from places like NYC, SF will stay hot for a while longer.
Rufus, I looked at one of those videos the other day. The debate that took shape in the comments around the issue of the Greek words for blue was interesting.
Rufus:
Cow dung futures, until cows are banned. After that we will be running the economy on unicorn flatus which has more promise than fusion energy and no waste.
When covid19 started to get traction I bailed out. I was convinced it was going to get very bad … VERY BAD. But what happened? Markets found a bottom then clawed back to new all time highs. In my younger days I would have embraced the correction and went all in. Always had time on my side. Today I don’t have that luxury.
I’m still convinced there is a real correction coming. Who knows how much. What i do know markets don’t care who the president is. They only care … can business make money or even more important can they make money in the future… always forward looking. I don’t see Bidens policys being business friendly. So we’ll see what happens.
Gold … no idea
Silver … no idea
Crypto … scares the bejebass out of me. I guess it’s because i don’t understand it. Where is the value?
jack,
Regarding crypto, you wrote, “… I don’t understand it.” AND “Where is the value?” Your follow up question shows that you do understand it! 🙂
You’re right, the scary thing about crypto is it has no value. But, if you really want to be scared; how is that different from fiat currency, the paper bills in your wallet? Some cryptos are better than others, but in regards to Bitcoin, it is designed to get harder and harder to mine over time. The more coins that are discovered, the longer it will be between new coin discoveries. And, this is really important, there is a finite limit. Like gold (and unlike fiat currency the U.S. treasury prints), it is a precious object.
What seems very odd regarding Bitcoin and other cryptos is there is literally nothing tangible. The fact that one can hold a $5 bill makes it “feel” safer. But, as we have seen all too frequently lately, but Treasury can create more and more bills whenever it wants. And, similarly to crypto, it often doesn’t even bother to print bills, it just transfers ones and zeros to banks.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Bitcoin is how stable and traceable it is (ownership is indisputable, it can’t really be forged), but it’s extraordinarily fungible and is completely untethered from any government or governing body.
Years ago I had a friend move to San Fran. They paid $340k for a dump. I mean a 2bedroom shack that didn’t even have 220v electrical system. I couldn’t believe it.
At that time in Texas you could buy a 4/5 bedroom new home with acreage for that money.
No doubt the housing market will be reginal with winners and losers.
I played this one many times. I’d buy at 5 sell at 6+ and paid a good dividend
nymt … New York Mortgage Trust Inc .. it’s sucking wind now!
I recently saw my first Bitcoin ATM in the wild, https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-atm/
jack,
I too think we’ll see regional ups and downs in housing. I was in the city of my birth, Chicago, recently. Downtown at lunchtime on a weekday. A tumbleweed wouldn’t have been out of place. It was astounding how empty it was. I spent a few hours there over a couple of days. Rode public transportation quite a bit. It seemed dead. Long dead. Hard to believe there won’t be a huge commercial real estate downturn in most big cities. And high priced residential real estate has to drop in those same areas.
But parts of Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, the coastal Carolinas… I don’t see why those areas will stop growing. Not only is the pandemic and blue government abuses pushing folks towards those states; we are in the beginning stages of the Great Baby Boomer Retirement push. Boomers will continue to downsize and move to warm places, or places with mountains and skiing, or lakes and rivers.
(Witness our very own, physicsguy!)
After being flooded with Harvey then this last cold snap mama is talking Florida big time. We have son that lives in Port Orange just south of Daytona and grand daughter in Orlando.
She’s thinking who’s going to take care of us when we can’t. They aren’t going to move here.
I think having Open Threads is a great idea.
jack,
My folks (who I am sure are quite a bit older than you and your Mrs.) finally appear close to doing the same. They are in a northern area with rough winters and rather remote. They are visiting my sister now, who lives in the south. I hope they make a move soon, before it becomes too difficult.
Have people wondered what it was like living in Soddom and Gomorrah?
Did they ever wonder what the angels and other powers thought as we dustified these human population centers?
Rufus, who on earth is buying any of the Gold Coast condos? I hear a considerable number of residents are exiting the scene. But they must be selling to someone, no?