The Communication Cube


After i go the JBL Headphones now a week, my opinions are a bit shuffeld:
Sound is great, and the option to change the bitrate to take care of your hearing situation (good soundquality/stable connection/Video Mode)
But you need an App to run it on your Audio Device, this might be a reason why i ditnt got it to work on Pyra..
 
software freedom conservancy

Can't say I'm a fan.


commercial companies
would defend the GPL if someone contravened it

xD
 
After i go the JBL Headphones now a week, my opinions are a bit shuffeld:
Sound is great, and the option to change the bitrate to take care of your hearing situation (good soundquality/stable connection/Video Mode)
But you need an App to run it on your Audio Device, this might be a reason why i ditnt got it to work on Pyra..
As long as the bitrate is high enough for it to sound good to your ears, I don't see a problem.
 
Elsa became a hurricane. Should still be a hurricane when it hits Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Cuba should weaken it though, so that it's a tropical storm by the time it gets to Florida, if it does come close to Florida.
 
Then there's the charities that manage to be scumbags without any help.

 
You know, another sign that this hurricane season could be worse than last year is that last year's first hurricane didn't form until July 25th, with Hurricane Hanna. Elsa became a hurricane 23 days earlier than that this year.
 
[Corporations] are just machines to generate profit for the shareholders.
Correct. This is capitalism. But you need to remember why it is what it is.

I'm sure you'll all correct me when I'm wrong, I'm neither an historian nor an economist. America was fucked in the 1930's. It was the Great Depression and people were killing themselves. Americans don't normally do this. It was bad. Keynesian principles were decided upon to reboot the economy and stock markets were fundamental to this approach. Also fiscal and monetary policy but anyway. The idea behind stock markets is all about democracy and individuals having a choice. Collective decision making. Individuals vote for the companies they think are good by buying the stocks and get to share in this profits (or losses). It's all about decentralization. No single person or entity decides which companies live or die. The idea is that masses will prevail and select the right companies and the crappy ones will be starved of capital and disappear. Great idea. It's was a win-win situation for individual investors and companies sharing funds and profits for decades as stock markets and innovation spiralled upwards.

Things are different now. The vast majority of stocks are owned by corporations and investment vehicles not directly by private individuals. So the democratic argument doesn't hold much weight. Don't get me started about why corporations are throwing cash at the stock markets (lack of R&D ideas & low interest rates - because the tech cycle is waning - face it). Also there is less appetite for the risk associated with long term investing. Average stock holding period is like 2 weeks and then there's all the intra-day trading and HFT driving prices too. So fundamentals like profits, products, management structure, etc. are much less relevant than Elon Musk tweets or just trying to anticipate what other market participants will do. Then there's the stock indexes and massive passive funds, which just focus capital on the biggest names, adding considerably to economic polarization.

So stock markets are broken. Everyone is just trying out group-think everyone else, really.

The overarching goal is to raise standards of living, creating jobs and wealth. This has happened. Keynes knew that capitalism would not be so desirable when there was heavy competition but not much gain. Like now. Innovation is down. The majority of really big gains to be had from digital technology are already here. There will be a few more big ones to come but they will be very expensive (eg machine learning curing cancer) and won't be sweeping benefits to society.

Keynes thought the benefits of capitalism would no longer be worth the downside of intense competition by approximately 2030. So he was off by a decade or two.
 
I was just thinking about an NDE I read about once that was slightly frightening. It was said God was perfect, which is good. It also said that the universe is startlingly imperfect and is only held together by constant corrections from God. It said if God were ever to make a mistake, which he never has, the universe or people's souls could disappear.

My favorite NDEr Sandi said that God started out imperfect, but quickly made himself perfect, for the sake of protecting creation. I wonder if he ever messed anything up in his early days.
 
I think the main one is the story of the biblical flood.

I especially remember that one because it involved a being that was more powerful than god, Piotr the Plumber.

Also in modern day news. The ocean was on fire.

 
I'm sure you'll all correct me when I'm wrong,

I can't. I know nohing of economics and is one of the fields I've never wanted to learn, for me it's just a branch of theology.

The idea behind stock markets is all about democracy and individuals having a choice. Collective decision making. Individuals vote for the companies they think are good by buying the stocks and get to share in this profits (or losses). It's all about decentralization. No single person or entity decides which companies live or die. The idea is that masses will prevail and select the right companies and the crappy ones will be starved of capital and disappear. Great idea. It's was a win-win situation for individual investors and companies sharing funds and profits for decades as stock markets and innovation spiralled upwards.

Things are different now. The vast majority of stocks are owned by corporations and investment vehicles not directly by private individuals. So the democratic argument doesn't hold much weight. Don't get me started about why corporations are throwing cash at the stock markets (lack of R&D ideas & low interest rates - because the tech cycle is waning - face it). Also there is less appetite for the risk associated with long term investing. Average stock holding period is like 2 weeks and then there's all the intra-day trading and HFT driving prices too. So fundamentals like profits, products, management structure, etc. are much less relevant than Elon Musk tweets or just trying to anticipate what other market participants will do. Then there's the stock indexes and massive passive funds, which just focus capital on the biggest names, adding considerably to economic polarization.

So stock markets are broken. Everyone is just trying out group-think everyone else, really.
I've never thought of a time in history when stock markets weren't broken.
I forgot the name, but I think some man won a Nobel Prize on economics on Information Assimetry (sorry, I just had to double that s). Individuals will never have enough knowledge of the market to play, the capitalists will play to plunder them.

The overarching goal is to raise standards of living,
yes
creating jobs and wealth.
No. Wealth is no worry and only acceptable if it helps living.
Jobs are something to eliminate, reduce or endure as a necessary evil for as short as possible.
Living is a goal, working is not a goal, although it's often a mean. It's not wrong that it's a mean, and one shouldn't be afraid of working. But it's terrible to focus on it as a goal. People end up working just for working and wasting their lives to just work.
They basically substitute work for live, because when working others tell you what to do and what to want. But work does not only waste time, and therefore life, it also wastes scarce resources (energy, materials) for things that are often not worth it.
Work should be minimized and welfare maximized.
That needs no argument, everybody does it quite naturally when they get enough power to can.
That is, although, easier said than done.

Keynes thought the benefits of capitalism would no longer be worth the downside of intense competition by approximately 2030. So he was off by a decade or two.
I had no idea Keynes had said that. Not surprising given my ignorance of economics.
 
I've been thinking about the danger posed by the internet. @Null linked an article about it, but it mostly focused on misinformation. I was thinking more about stress.

I think once we finally get some good information on suicide during the pandemic, we're going to find out it has a lot to do with people being online more. And part of this increase in internet usage will be permanent, leading to part of the increase in suicide being permanent too.
 
Jobs are something to eliminate, reduce or endure as a necessary evil for as short as possible.
I find this statement odd. I want to work and usually enjoy it very much.

Low unemployment is a key mandate. What it means is that people who want to work can.

Imagine wanting to work (eg to support your family) and not being able to. It's awful. IMO a factory job would be better than nothing. But hopefully the economy is diverse and there are a variety of jobs available to choose from.

Individuals will never have enough knowledge of the market to play, the capitalists will play to plunder them.
It is absolutely possible for individuals to successfully invest - for the long term - in the stock market. I know many people who bought Apple in the 90's, when it was the darling of creative types. They simply thought Apple computers were better and wanted in. I also know many people who blindly put their money in index funds a decade ago. Fundamental analysis works, but it requires effort and patience.

I would argue that now it's even easier for individuals to make money in stock markets, given the rise of zero-fee index funds.
 
I find this statement odd. I want to work and usually enjoy it very much.

Congratulations. Please cherish what you have.

Low unemployment is a key mandate. What it means is that people who want to work can.
I don't agree. People who work in useless things (and even more so those who work in damaging things) should be unemployed and paid a living subsidy by those who work in useful things. Or just everyone should get a basic living rent and then those who find a useful paying job be free to take it and pay taxes on their income.
Now this introduces a problem in how to decide what is useful. But that's no reason to not decide it at all and allow any atrocity as a job.

Imagine wanting to work (eg to support your family) and not being able to. It's awful. IMO a factory job would be better than nothing. But hopefully the economy is diverse and there are a variety of jobs available to choose from.
Been there, done that. It was worse when I worked in things that I knew would harm others (ok, it sounds too hard, it just hadn't the acceptable quality it should) than when I was unemployed.
The problem is poverty, not unemployment.
You might want to read David Graeber

It is absolutely possible for individuals to successfully invest - for the long term - in the stock market. I know many people who bought Apple in the 90's, when it was the darling of creative types. They simply thought Apple computers were better and wanted in. I also know many people who blindly put their money in index funds a decade ago. Fundamental analysis works, but it requires effort and patience.
It is absolutely possible to win at the lottery. I still advise not to play.
I find Apple quite unethical.

I would argue that now it's even easier for individuals to make money in stock markets, given the rise of zero-fee index funds.
LOL
 
Ok let's talk about bitcoin and the circumstances surrounding the birth of Marxism. You go first.
Post automatically merged:

Almost forgot: the downsides of globalization.
 
Bitcoin is energy wasteful. It basically replaces a central authority with a system of many competing against all others about senseless things and wasting energy. It's the right solution to the stupidiest problem.
Now again. Banks are gettiing so dumb that they're about to become worse than bitcoin. Which is quite a feat of itself.

Marxism was born out of work abuse. Implicit in capitalism.

Globalization is shit. It adds single point of failure to traditional capittalistic abuses. It works around democracy by replacing legitimacy with price.

Are people really interested in this ? It's going to become less and less creative.
 
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