Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

Still, getting a job is a problem because no one wants to hire someone my
age, especially after they see my web site, and so I'm going to run out of
money in a year or so.

This is from the recent news thread.

I was thinking about something similar tonight. There's been a lot of great material posted on this site and on this forum over the years, but overall it garners very little attention. Here's a great topic that had only 520 views: http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 02&p=28023
What Humans Can Learn From The Mice Utopia Experiment

On some of the similar "doomer" sites I notice people read and comment on, the author will beat on the same concepts again and again, spelling them out in really simple terms. Whereas we bring up many complex topics, discuss them in dense fashion, and then move on to another that is unrelated.

On this thread it can't really be identified if there happened to be thousands of people who were interested in a particular topic or group of posts because they are all lumped in and counted together.

So what I did tonight was look through all of the short topics that aren't in this thread to find topics with the following characteristics:

• Very few posts
  Relatively high hits
  A fairly obscure topic that involved some degree of complexity
  A topic I contributed to, so would have some familiarity with and understanding of the subject matter

What I found was this: http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 477&p=6522
10-Sep-10 News -- Venezuela moves toward food rationing
This topic had four posts and 2,563 hits, so for some reason multiple passers-by were interested in this.

It puzzles me a bit as to why any potential employer would care one way or the other about someone running a site like this. Perhaps they want somebody who is only interested in software and it is perceived that something like this could take away from work time and be a distraction for co-workers when they inevitably discover it.

[Higgenbotham]

In 2011, I wrote how the news that IBM's Watson supercomputer bests human champions on Jeopardy! advances AI significantly, because it shows how, within a few years, computers will be able to "read" everything on the internet and learn from it. Today, IBM has Watson-based applications in multiple industries, from retail to healthcare. IBM also has a program to allow developers to incorporate Watson into mobile phone apps.

IBM Sales and Profit Dropped 14% in Third Quarter
By STEVE LOHR OCT. 19, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/techn ... .html?_r=0

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/st ... financials

But can IBM do this and make money?

[Nathan G]

Still, getting a job is a problem because no one wants to hire someone my
age, especially after they see my web site, and so I'm going to run out of
money in a year or so.

This is from the recent news thread.

Just as a thought, and not to sound critical at all, but maybe John could hand the site over to someone else, perhaps younger and with more money?

[John]

> Just as a thought, and not to sound critical at all, but maybe
> John could hand the site over to someone else, perhaps younger and
> with more money?

Sure, that's not critical or offensive at all.

I've approached a couple of academics about taking over the site, and
taking over further theoretical development of generational theory and
Generational Dynamics, but only got silence in response.

[aedens]

http://exiledonline.com/escape-from-cri ... m-ukraine/

Each zone is a swirling cesspool of coruption just as we where warned long ago. Finally, the Governor here
fired the DEQ in public water services. My point being the percentages who are making effective change
as thousands are effected again. Hard enough locally to see things get done. They raise the property taxes to address
the homeless and we just poke them with a stick to see if they are alive. Nothing new, but do try to understand
once they get in office they will do what ever it takes to keep it. As I was told some years back the river of
souls heading to hell has indeed over flowed the banks. I guess it gets to the point they took the nature out
of man and now he has no nature. Sure we all understand red tooth and claw here but I for one think the key
to the pit has been unlocked. Looking at the numbers is a fools errand since really we just comment on the lower and upper
control limits to opinions of avarice. Ask Cicero how that worked out with the educated.

As I conveyed before, the reason my wife quit public education was harassment. Best line ever was your biased, your married.
The time She said the hedge around America has fallen.
Psychopaths are naturally attracted to positions of power, and they will overwhelm anyone with a conscience, who plays by the rules and has good intentions. Our traditional standards of morality have been displaced by doctrines which do not even recognize the existence of values.
I myself had all sorts of fun in college with moral nihilism being distinct from moral relativism, which does allow a moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but does not assign any static truth to values of a moral statements, and of course moral universalism, which holds moral statements to be objectively true or false. Insofar as only true statements can be known, moral nihilism implies moral skepticism. Working Corporate as I do that translates to goal seeking and modeling contrivances of group think with a side dish of best practice once and awhile.
Currently another perfected software program to solve the problems of the Empire, and may I add very elaborate and post dated.

Attribution Bias can be painful. As Epicurus told Alexander why are you standing in my sunlight. He found another to catalog his findings along the way....

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/ ... ustry.html
http://www.mintpressnews.com/depleted-u ... er/193338/

The addage the sulution to polution is dilution has never been more real. We witness unspeakable horrors as your vote counts we are told..

[Higgenbotham]

Finally, the Governor here fired the DEQ in public water services.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/m ... /78027052/

As I conveyed before, the reason my wife quit public education was harassment. Best line ever was your biased, your married.

I lived in Michigan, then Wisconsin, and now Texas. Michigan and Wisconsin entered a dark age decades ago. Nobody at the Wisconsin DNR was ever held accountable for the 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak that sickened 400,000 and killed 100. It was hush-hush and remains so. Years later, with little fanfare, the director was called by the new governor, summoned to another state office building, and fired without explanation to the citizens. Texas hasn't entered into a dark age yet, so it is completely different. The bizarre workplace behaviors I described as being commonplace in the "Generation-X culture vs Boomer culture" thread don't occur in Texas, so far as I have seen or heard. People are fully engaged in their work. Crosstimbers asked, "I've been working in mixed sex environments for 21 years and I've never experienced those types of games and never been accused of sexual harassment. What kinds of environments do these take place in? Obviously, some people don't have enough work to do or enough discipline to do it." Dark age environments would be my answer. Your wife was obviously in a dark age environment and the Michigan DEQ's management of the Flint water system is consistent with dark age behavior. The reason any Michigan or Wisconsin state officials were fired could well be that they didn't cover up the problems well enough, as bizarre as that explanation can seem. The article linked above points to the attempted failed cover-up. "Keep a lid on him (or it)" was a common expression in Wisconsin state government.

I would suggest to anyone to take a pause and contemplate 400,000 severe pathogen related illnesses from a public water supply of a major city that is regulated by state officials who are charged with the responsibility of keeping the water pathogen free and ask yourself if there is not something that has been wrong up there for a very long time. Whether it's that or 10,000 other things you don't know about.

The Free Press reported Thursday that records obtained by the Michigan ACLU and Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards show that elevated lead levels in Flint's drinking water would have spurred action months sooner if the results of city testing that wrapped up in June had not been revised by the DEQ to wrongly indicate the water was safe to drink.

They'll do "better" next time with a better cover-up. Lesson learned.

[Higgenbotham]

> Just as a thought, and not to sound critical at all, but maybe
> John could hand the site over to someone else, perhaps younger and
> with more money?

Sure, that's not critical or offensive at all.

I've approached a couple of academics about taking over the site, and
taking over further theoretical development of generational theory and
Generational Dynamics, but only got silence in response.

I believe that the content of this site gets discussed in universities and government behind closed doors. I believe the thread we just finished on the singularity will be discussed in that type of venue somewhere. I believe it will be dismissed outright among polite company because it states the unthinkable, not due to a debate about its merit or lack of merit.

[aedens]

We will drown in platitudes. The basis of logic is a effective tax rate we surmised at twenty percent
for the unwilling to come out of the rain.

http://stevemuratore.blogspot.nl/2013/1 ... on-of.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-0 ... so-hostile

The point we emphasized was the management of scarce resources and the simple question if it took six cents a mile to build
with tax why cannot you maintain at eight? The rot is terminal but we hear the mantra of look its a opportunity to build
enclaves that truly embrace the point twenty percent want your dead letter, well dead and also decapitated. The Office is termally
dark ages as you suggest and I would use the term insane ideologues. The science is understood as the ferals cancel each other
masking a totalitarion insurgence funded by our equity. Do complex systems always implode as Jared Diamond
suggest is saying the river can never runs to the sea. At least locally the water "issues" are being observed with the micro beads bans
and countless other poisoned with lead or worse as we have seen. They knew what was left behind as the rot claimed the very
people tasked with the myriad complications we have seen in our careers.

[Higgenbotham]

The point we emphasized was the management of scarce resources and the simple question if it took six cents a mile to build
with tax why cannot you maintain at eight?

I thought I had discussed the road builders lobby but search shows I haven't. The basic question put forth, as I recall, was why tear up the interstates every 6-8 years to lay down fresh asphalt when properly reinforced concrete can last 30? The answer appeared to be the money pipeline to the governor's office. The question was in the context of the cost to the taxpayers due to commuting delays that were 4 times as prevalent as necessary.

I would suggest to anyone to take a pause and contemplate 400,000 severe pathogen related illnesses from a public water supply of a major city that is regulated by state officials who are charged with the responsibility of keeping the water pathogen free and ask yourself if there is not something that has been wrong up there for a very long time. Whether it's that or 10,000 other things you don't know about.

Perhaps 9,999 now.

Or why not light rail?

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquar ... 64274.html

No wonder then that Walker is grabbing headlines with his efforts to halt the Obama administration's plans to build a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison. Instead, the Republican politician is on a quixotic quest to have Congress redirect the $810 million to repair Wisconsin roads and bridges - even if most believe the dollars will end up going elsewhere.

All told, road builders poured out $128,859 to help Walker.

[Higgenbotham]

I would also add that I'm not saying that concrete has more merit than asphalt in the specific situation of heavy truck traffic in a northern city subject to weather extremes, or that light rail has more merit than repairing roads. I'm not in a position to know and so far as I can tell there has been no attempt made to find a definitive unbiased answer to those questions which takes all costs that are borne by everyone into account. All that really seems to be known is that a money pipeline to the governor's office seemed to dictate the decision-making process.