Prelude to the Apocalypse

[EmperorIng]

Money is imaginary you know.

I sure wish I could tell my debt collectors that; I know you are joking but obviously money is all too real for working people. That and in general while there is such a thing as a "healthy" amount of debt, too large of a debt becomes crippling (see: Greece; see also: Chicago Public Schools, "liberal" stronghold of nepotism, tax hikes, and $800million in the hole ~ at least they'll [always] be the first ones to shriek "think of the children!" once someone shuts them down). I'd like to skip that part of a country's history where it becomes a debtor nation beholden to austerity measures (now complete with rioting!). Better the government stop propping up bad banks -and continue to pretend money is imaginary- and we deal with short-term fallout rather than long-term collapse.

Ted Cruz doesn't pander hard to the religious right?

Point to me the section in the article that BM described as "inexcusable" that is religious pandering. Cruz went to the evangelicals hard in Iowa (and likely elsewhere); that much is certain - though he also had 12,000 people in Iowa working for him to ensure a victory by capitalizing on any major issue people there were concerned about. Politics is full of pandering anyhow; like that whole "free college" thing some candidates keep on talking about. However, it's strange to hear Bullet talk about the right's demonization of the left while gleefully taking part in much of the same (Ha, isn't that's what is losing elections?*). It strikes me a bit hollow.

I think there's a place to argue for conservatism (how about a smaller and less bloated, inefficient government for one) without being lumped together with caricatures willfully perpetuated by corporate media, pundits, and bloggers - who value polarization and agitation over rational policy-making.

*more fun Illinois stuff: our recent governor election showswhat happens when you hide behind the whole "but Dems are for the people! Republicans hate the poor!" shtick, but the voters see right through you; too bad I live in a place stupid enough to still drink the Kool-Aid.

Does trump really expect to (re)build the boarder wall and make Mexico pay for it?

He's explained that the "making Mexico pay for it" either comes from taking the Mexican government to task legally for its violations of trade agreements, or just the money you save by ending NAFTA (the free-trade agreement that disenfranchises Americans in favor of cheap labor). Who knows whether or not the "Wall" would exist or be [physically] feasible; border control is one of his shouting points. Interestingly both Sanders and Trump speak out against the abuse of H1B visas which allow for easy exploitation and suggested mandatory higher wages for those visa holders. Food for thought!

[BulletMagnet]

For someone who talks about how the political right sets up false boogeymen and stereotypes about the left, and how damaging and wrong it is, I detect a noticeable lack of restraint when the shoe is on the other foot.

Two things I'll state in response: 1) Just to put it out there, I admit I find it hard to hold my tongue when it comes to anyone profiting from the misery of others, but especially when someone tries to justify it with a patina of piety, and 2) The admittedly pithy comment I made above, I would wager, doesn't represent the views of the majority of conservatives (religious ones included), but rather their elected leadership. Seriously, ask any of the violently anti-Obamacare Republicans in office (basically all of them) what they'd replace it with, and they stare at you blankly and say, in one way or another, "What's wrong with the system we already had?"

Essentially, they see absolutely no problem with people having to choose between paying the rent and just getting to the doctor's office, let alone affording whatever he prescribes once they get there; if you can't afford it, too bad, the market is perfect and that means you're lazy/stupid/evil/etc. and deserve whatever you get. In case you didn't see it, the Ted Cruz quote that recently took up residence in my sig is from one of those exchanges (though Cruz slipped in a "getting rid of government would have put so much money in your now-dead relative's pocket that he totally could have afforded health care, honest" bit of venom); so yeah, while I definitely wouldn't lump the likes of him in with the honest-to-goodness churchgoing folk who not only pray but also try to help others in more concrete ways, people like him, in my view, deserve no such consideration, and those who put him in office would do well to reconsider whether whatever spiritual advantage he claims is worth the incredibly cynical actions he's taken while blatantly exploiting the former as an excuse. Seriously, would Jesus (y'know, the one in the Bible) even remotely approve of pretty much anything he advocates?

The same idea goes, more or less, for the Social Security thing you mentioned; at the moment, only the first 100K or so you make has any SS tax taken out of it, and any money made beyond that pays zero into Social Security. As such, an incredibly easy way to shore up the trust fund (which, in case you forgot, was sacrosanct until Reagan decided to raid it to pay for some of his upper-end tax cuts) is simply to raise the cap; off the cuff I'm not sure if anyone's done the math on exactly how much higher it'd have to go to keep things solvent for x amount of years, but when we're talking people who have that much money, seriously, does it particularly matter? Do the rich, as pretty much every Republican leader argues, really have absolutely zero obligation to the collective welfare of the country they all claim to love so much, right up until they're mildly inconvenienced and start moving their balance sheets overseas?

[Strikers1945guy]

I do always love it in American presidential elections it seems like every presidential candidate has had god "tell them to run for president " and people don't think they are bat shit crazy. Isn't god worried about more important things like the upcoming superbowl or planning his next hurricane? How is it that someone other than the pope gets this kind of luxury? I guess when the demographic is still so enshrined in store age beliefs you kind of have to pander to them but it seems pretty cringe worthy.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, you've answered your own question - lots of Americans don't like them Papists. Of course, among those who do, they'd not mind if their candidate got a special calling.

Seriously though, just imagine the shitstorm if a candidate announced not that they were Catholic - or a Jew - or a Mormon - or even a Muslim - but an atheist! Americans seem to like atheists even less than the Mormons and Muslims.

[Xyga]

Believe in Dog.

"- in Dog we trust
- ok. what breed ?"

[Strikers1945guy]

Seriously though, just imagine the shitstorm if a candidate announced not that they were Catholic - or a Jew - or a Mormon - or even a Muslim - but an atheist! Americans seem to like atheists even less than the Mormons and Muslims.

Sad but true. He's an atheist he doesn't have teh morals! !

Look at all the crazy atheists running around looting and killing everyone !

If god tells you to run for president, you tell the world this, then you go on to lose the election is that not god trolling you ?

[Ed Oscuro]

Believe in Dog.

"- in Dog we trust
- ok. what breed ?"

Pit bulls! I really want to know who originally said this:
"I never trust a person who doesn't like dogs, but I always trust a dog when they don't like a person."

Wasn't George Carlin.

[Strikers1945guy]

Believe in Dog.

"- in Dog we trust
- ok. what breed ?"

An institutionalized pit bull with a criminal record.

[Rob]

planning his next hurricane?

I have it on good authority that the government creates all hurricanes. God just likes to watch the carnage.

[Strikers1945guy]

planning his next hurricane?

I have it on good authority that the government creates all hurricanes. God just likes to watch the carnage.

Could be. I'm very jealous of the area you live in though, beautiful place.

God always seems to get involved in sporting events, which is a shame. "I'd like to thank god for letting us win the superbowl." Oh geez I thought the entire team actually played the game, but it seems god had the upper hand all along ! Wish god would drop me a text with the winning lottery numbers but oh well.

[quash]

God can be such a trickster. He's told basically everyone that they're his chosen people, but by now we should all know that God is, indeed, a Yankee.

[Ed Oscuro]

planning his next hurricane?

I have it on good authority that the government creates all hurricanes. God just likes to watch the carnage.

Could be. I'm very jealous of the area you live in though, beautiful place.

God always seems to get involved in sporting events, which is a shame. "I'd like to thank god for letting us win the superbowl." Oh geez I thought the entire team actually played the game, but it seems god had the upper hand all along ! Wish god would drop me a text with the winning lottery numbers but oh well.

Well, there's always prositution to blame:

''Instead of getting mentally ready for the Broncos,'' another Falcon player said, ''we were talking about Eugene [Robinson]. The Broncos beat us, but anyone who says what happened to Eugene was not a factor is lying.''

This time around, Eugene should've given his speech to the Broncos, not just the Panthers!

[Mischief Maker]

[BryanM]

I do always love it in American presidential elections it seems like every presidential candidate has had god "tell them to run for president " and people don't think they are bat shit crazy.

What's behind headache inducing is that they're all thoroughly anti-Christian:

The bible is very, very clear that rich people are all going to hell. Jesus was crucified because he got pissed off at people basically worshiping money.

But we're just fine having the money changers run congress. Not a hungry guillotine in sight. How lonely.

Does trump really expect to (re)build the boarder wall and make Mexico pay for it?

We think he's joking about imposing sanctions on Mexico and destroying our relationship with them. Just using it to trick very stupid, very racist people into voting for him.

We think.

[Ed Oscuro]

Speaking of money-lending issues and religion, here's yet another stupid thought that has been rattling through my head for a while:

When you go to the store, you put your money down on the counter and you take away what you've paid for. But when it comes to banking, nothing is arranged that way. I can understand why some things might be set up with interest - but I don't understand why "customer protections" like the formerly opt-out-only overdraft protection keep building debits on accounts every day the account is overdrawn, instead of being a one-time fee as it's implied. The store doesn't come and put their hand in your pocket the day after you bought a Snickers, right?

Just as importantly, I think that the Muslim style "Halal banking" puts the lie to the argument that banks actually need to add even interest to loans, let alone funky terms. There are economic justifications for interest due to the future uncertainty of payoff and the debtor's repayment schedule, but I don't see how you actually need to do anything more than charge a lump sum for the service of getting a loan, which appears to be all that modern Islamic banking does. A loan's a pretty simple thing: Under the widespread system, you pay more in the long run for the ability to use a lump of cash you otherwise wouldn't have now. But with a Halal loan the creditor still gets compensation - just not one justified as time value of money or a fee to prevent people doing a smash-and-grab on the loan. Instead I suspect that they just get a lump sum for offering a service, just as a shopkeeper gets some money for offering a convenient place to meet up with your Snickers bars.

Microfinance, though I didn't read a lot about its Islamic connections when I was studying it, appears to have been one of the most successful means for impoverished people to get out of poverty, and it provides sustainable loans to the poorest in part due to having realistic expectations about returns and overhead, as well as focusing on the customers and not on the take-home bit.

Most mind-blowingly, in 2009 the Catholic Church issued comments showing interest in Halal-style banking to help fix world economic problems. In fact Catholicism traditionally bans usury too - it's obviously Jesus' wish that this be done - but has let that stipulation slide.

And likewise, some reading I did recently on Jewish philosophy of transactions suggests that religion might have the same inclination as Islam when it comes to transactions - in particular one of the concepts that guides Islamic finance is not selling what you don't own, which is interpreted to mean that middlemen can get lost. But this seems to be really close to the old Jewish story and interpretation of Esau selling or giving up his birthright seems to sometimes have been at the center of an argument that basically, once again, "you can't sell something you don't have," but apparently this analysis of the story has lost out.

[BryanM]

Compound interest is obviously an abomination. I guess people from the middle east are just better at understanding basic math than we are.

It's very, very difficult to understand basic math and support neoliberalism unless you just hate humans. Which is a fair perspective to have I suppose.

[MintyTheCat]

Trump: the man's simply a lot of hot air.

The best at maths: the chinese and the indians - the best people I ever met by far for Mathematics.

A good book to read would be the Number Sense:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Number-Sense-Cr ... mber+sense

The theory goes that as numbers get larger in western languages the names get longer and longer - like the way the Romans did things but compared to say Japanese the names get smaller for larger numbers - it is this factor that leads to speed in arithmetic.

10: ju ten zehn
100: hyaku hundred hundert
1000: sen thousand tausend
..

German never made much sense to my mind math wise - they insist on using the ',' comma as a decimal point and a full-stop for a comma which plays absolute bloody havoc when working with Matrices with German speakers

Strictly speaking, arithmetic is only one branch one Mathematics but yes, this is often one reason why people fail to appreciate compound-interest. If someone is great at speedy arithmetic they may not be able to do anything with algebra and indeed higher maths very quickly gets into algebra. Arithmetic is a tiny part of the subject. The word Algebra is derived from the middle-east and indeed a great deal of Maths came from the middle-east - cartesian coordinates eg.

It amazes me but debt is an industry and until the education system wakes people up and prepares them for life this evil industry will continue to make people suffer. Your bank manager and lawyer is best viewed as a type of Vampire and use them both with caution

[Ed Oscuro]

The Japanese numbering system has a major drawback when you go to 10,000 and beyond. The US "One million" would translate instead as "hundred ten thousands," which is a major hiccup in doing math with fairly normal sums.

English has a decent leg up due to the more widespread adoption of the rather elegant SI prefixes (even if they're sourced from all kinds of languages). I haven't seen the book, but I could believe that the mental practice of remembering one's place with a cumbersome "hundred" or so does slow things down.

[MintyTheCat]

The Japanese numbering system has a major drawback when you go to 10,000 and beyond. The US "One million" would translate instead as "hundred ten thousands," which is a major hiccup in doing math with fairly normal sums.

English has a decent leg up due to the more widespread adoption of the rather elegant SI prefixes (even if they're sourced from all kinds of languages). I haven't seen the book, but I could believe that the mental practice of remembering one's place with a cumbersome "hundred" or so does slow things down.

But that does not explain why orientals excel math wise. With Japanese being phonetic it is less symbols than say English - san is two symbols: thousand is eight.

Also note that English is not the only western language; I was thinking more about German at the time which gets big quickly.

I recall people struggling years back when I was in a japanese class, it was not so much an issue with Japanese but an issue in handling numbers; this notion that things are solid and concrete is incorrect.

To say 1.57K works for 1 5 7 0 - try saying it out loud then try saying it out loud in Japanese to compare.
It may well be that give that English and many western languages required less mental place-holding that orientals pick up some skills along the way as Japanese for example is highly componentised. English and German are too but the meaning is encapsulated in the words themselves, whereas kanji gives you exactly what you are referring to when written; you break it down into ideas. This works in latin and germanic derived languages too:

benefit
contraception
intravenous

Now compare that to their corresponding kanji.

This is only an idea and I could be completely wrong here.

I did find that I had less trouble handling symbols when I first studied Japanese having done plenty of symbol work in earlier study.

[Rob]

The best at maths: the chinese and the indians

No one can deny that they're the best at multiplying (ah-hyuck).

[MintyTheCat]

The best at maths: the chinese and the indians

No one can deny that they're the best at multiplying (ah-hyuck).

Not supposed to laugh... Very good and better than my "Trump", "fart", "hot air" quip

[GaijinPunch]

But that does not explain why orientals excel math wise. With Japanese being phonetic it is less symbols than say English - san is two symbols: thousand is eight.

A linguist could probably tell you but I think it has to do more with syllables, not symbols. Looking at it that way, san/sen is two syllables, 3/1000 is one and two syllables respectively. This is completely ignoring the fact that English is not phonetic, and spelling is a nightmare, but that's another story.

English (and likely most western languages?) marriage of the comma to the word makes far more sense than the Asian. This should be obvious. Not only that, but we can make sense of words up to octillion, etc., whereas Japanese you'd need straight up memorization. These numbers are not usually used, and scientific notation would kick in at some point, but that's not the best excuse. The true challenge is when trying to translate/interpret in a short period of time and it's a large number you're unfamiliar with: 23.12 trillion for example. At some point you can see it in your head if you practice enough. Pain in the ass though.

No one can deny that they're the best at multiplying (ah-hyuck).

I can't speak for Chinese and Indians' scores on other parts of the test, but Japanese' are notoriously low at the critical thinking aspect. The education system pushes memorization and little about thinking. This is likely due to the horrible assimilation they'll be introduced to days after they graduate high school and gets them ready to be a part of a huge cogwheel. Trump likes to say "hey, look, they're doing it better... we can too!" There is no metric to measure, but I'd challenge anyone that says there is a place on Earth more prolific at producing technology than Silicon Valley. Look at how much young money there is out there. There's only 2 ways to get that money at that age in Japan: inherit, or become an entertainer. I would assume the rest of Asia is similar, but that might suggest I'm a racist like Trump.

[quash]

And where do a good portion of Silicon Valley's tech workers originally hail from?

[Ed Oscuro]

Great comments GP!

The latest figures from Intel show that Asian males are an "overrepresented minority." That doesn't tell us a lot about the fit of Japanese culture to the US economy, though.

Another thing that should always be on our minds is that a lot of tech startups fail or just grind along. Even a company like BackBlaze, the data backup firm, basically just kind of grinds along at the moment. It's doing fine but our expectations that every company is going to be like Facebook (and even that Facebook is going to continue to be Facebook...remember Yahoo?) are problematic.

[Strikers1945guy]

So just as a general query as Im Canadian and just follow this stuff from a distance... who would you all be voting for come November?

Anyone ever listen to Michael Savage on the radio? Guy is kind of bat shit crazy but I end up agreeing with a lot of what he says. Usually covers American politics. Hilarious at times.

[quash]

The latest figures from Intel show that Asian males are an "overrepresented minority." That doesn't tell us a lot about the fit of Japanese culture to the US economy, though.

Another thing that should always be on our minds is that a lot of tech startups fail or just grind along. Even a company like BackBlaze, the data backup firm, basically just kind of grinds along at the moment. It's doing fine but our expectations that every company is going to be like Facebook (and even that Facebook is going to continue to be Facebook...remember Yahoo?) are problematic.

Who has these expectations, exactly? Certainly nobody that's from, or has spent a significant amount of time in Silicon Valley. Hedgefund bros are constantly trying to cash in on designed-to-fail startups, and the well-meaning idiots with too much money end up wasting years on companies that go nowhere. More on this here.

There are so few Japanese in the Valley that they are hardly even worth mentioning. It's mostly Chinese, Koreans and Indians who come to work in tech. "Overrepresented minority" is probably the most polite spin on "nearly half of our workforce" I've ever heard.

Let's of course not speak of the awful public services in the area, scattered pockets of crippling poverty and the upward trend of companies opting for less expensive areas (most recently, Toyota and Raytheon).

Don't kid yourself; Silicon Valley is only great if you're playing the game. Hardly a sustainable model and hardly a place worth considering any kind of long term investment in.

[BulletMagnet]

Michael Savage

Ah, yes, he of "Hispanics will vote for Trump because they won't take orders from a woman" and "PTSD sufferers are weak narcissistic losers" and "Obama is like Pol Pot" and "the CIA wants to steal my DNA". "Kind of batshit crazy" doesn't begin to do him justice.

[Strikers1945guy]

Michael Savage

Ah, yes, he of "Hispanics will vote for Trump because they won't take orders from a woman" and "PTSD sufferers are weak narcissistic losers" and "Obama is like Pol Pot" and "the CIA wants to steal my DNA". "Kind of batshit crazy" doesn't begin to do him justice.

He's got a lot of followers ! Could be the case where many like myself get a good laugh out of his rants. The odd gem of wisdom does fall from his mouth but it seems more accidental than anything.

[GaijinPunch]

And where do a good portion of Silicon Valley's tech workers originally hail from?

Where do the majority of them hail from? More specifically, where do the high level managers and execs (EG, the decision makers) hail from?

Let's of course not speak of the awful public services in the area, scattered pockets of crippling poverty

Congrats: you've just described every urban area of the United States - I can name at least one that I've lived in notably worse than Silicon Valley but I'd assume more than half fit the bill.

and the upward trend of companies opting for less expensive areas (most recently, Toyota and Raytheon).

When has moving to cheaper areas never been a trend? Silicon Valley specifically has been shipping programmers to farms in places like Austin for upwards of a decade.

[BryanM]

who would you all be voting for come November?

The guy who wants to turn us into Super Canada or nobody.

The Trumpreich doesn't need my vote to ascend to power if the unthinkable happens.