Reverie

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.--Adam Smith

Good morning.

Watched some of the Pirates last night. Marte hit an ominous home run; he looks bigger again.

Last Tuesday, the long-awaited final season trailer for GoT arrived and was viewed 81 million times across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube combined in its first 24 hours.

MacDonald on the recent college cheating kerfuffle: 

The celebrity college-admissions cheating scandal has two clear takeaways: an elite college degree has taken on wildly inflated importance in American society, and the sports-industrial complex enjoys wildly inflated power within universities....None of this could have happened if higher education had not itself become a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense....Colleges should return to their true function: passing on, from one generation to the next, the inheritance of Western civilization. Students who do not yearn to immerse themselves in that legacy should find something else to do after high school, and professors who are not interested in preserving it should find another line of work.

Warren Buffett is the greatest investor of all-time. In the 20 months leading up to the dotcom peak, Berkshire Hathaway lost 45% of its value. 45%. The NASDAQ 100 gained 225% over the same time.  

From an article on the evolution of housing influenced by technology and the astonishing efforts being made: Airbnb and WeWork were early to capitalize on the demand for community, with one changing how we travel and the other redefining the modern office space. Co-working companies like WeWork, as well more targeted providers like The Assembly, The Wing and The Riveter, offer speaker series, classes and other free member events aimed at building connections. Airbnb, once focused only on lodging, has broadened its platform to include community-building shared experiences.
Shared living and hospitality startups are also investing in community to attract and retain customers. StarCity provides dorms for adults, Common and HubHaus rent homes intended to be shared by roommates and Ollie offers luxury micro apartments in a co-living environment. These companies are leveraging technology to foster in-person connections. For example, Common uses Slack channels to communicate with and connect members, and HubHaus uses roommate matching algorithms.

Within the hospitality sector, Selina offers a blended travel lodge, wellness and co-working platform geared toward creating community for travelers and remote workers, complete with high-tech beachside and jungle-side office spaces. Meanwhile, experience-driven lifestyle hotel company Life House connects guests through onsite locally rooted food and beverage destinations and direct app-based social introductions to other travelers.

According to data from the state’s Department of Labor, in 2018, full-service restaurants in NYC recorded a -1.6% job loss, which is their first recorded annual job loss in nearly two decades.

After a quarter century, ecommerce’s spread is slowing, 80% of 2018’s gains belonged to Amazon, and (in the U.S.) the top five online retailers own 64.7% of sales  

The road to wealth for a nation is quite simple. Use your resources wisely. By resources, I don’t just mean the traditional natural resources of fertile land, oil, and minerals, but the know-how, education, ingenuity, and drive of the people. Using your resources wisely means giving the people the incentive to work hard, to innovate, and to take risks. And opening your market to trade to allow your people to leverage the skills of the people in other nations. All rich nations where even the poorest people are relatively affluent have the rule of law, secure private property, relatively open borders to trade, and relatively free markets internally.--Russell Roberts.

This observation is usually overlooked, especially the notion that a nation's people are the wealth, not the burden, of the State.

This is the Vogelherd horse carving, the oldest of its kind. Sculpted from mammoth ivory this little horse is part of an originally more rounded representation with longer legs and tail. The head is complete and still shows the engraved mouth, nostrils and eyes. The ears are alert and the neck arched. The mane, back and sides are marked with crossed diagonal incisions. 4.8 cms wide; 2.5 cms high; 0.7 cms thick. Found in Germany. Believed to be 32,000 to 35,000 years old.




                                                         Reverie

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs is a slogan first used by Louis Blanc in 1851 (although an earlier version of the saying appeared in Étienne-Gabriel Morelly's The Code of Nature) and popularized by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. The principle refers to free access and distribution of goods and services

In December, 2018, the average time a purchased stock was held was less than one second.

When I was in medical school, the definitive epidemiological study was the London study showing the disparity of the life expectancy between London and country residents. Londoners lived much shorter lives, a fact easily explained by smog. Settled science. Unfortunately for the narrative, the distinction disappeared when corrected for smoking. I mention this in the wake of a furor over marijuana laws. Some entrepreneurial reporter has a new book on the dangers of marijuana and is being lambasted. But to a segment of the population, the safety of marijuana is settled science.

There has been an uptick in traffic on the blog. The most read article was this one, from 2012:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/sinister-and-distaff.html

The DJIA has changed over the years. Gone from the Dow are former household names such as Goodyear, Alcoa, Eastman Kodak, Bethlehem Steel, and Union Carbide. In their place are the likes of Apple, Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, Nike and Pfizer. Governments must not be allowed to pick favorites, to protect Kodak and Union Carbide--and perhaps suppress Apple and Pfizer. Strangely it is in the preservation of dying workplaces where Progressives are the most "conservative."

Every time someone threatens to run as a third party candidate, the system stirs like a Kraken. Before anything else, the two party system 's primal urge is to defend itself.

Canadian and American fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian strategic bombers heading for the North American coastline. "Nuclear Chicken." These fools play with our lives.

Texas discovered that 95,000 people identified as noncitizens had voter registrations. 58,000 of them voted in one or more Texas elections.

According to Real Clear Politics, Trump's favorability ratings now stand at just 41% — near-historic lows.

70%-75% of the progress people make in terms of their weight will be down to diet, and only 25%-30% relates to exercise.  

Scary numbers. According to the new GAO report, government priorities have shifted dramatically from defense to health care and retirement.  In 1969, defense represented 45% of federal outlays; Social Security and health benefits were 19%. For 2019, defense's share is 15% and the health care-Social Security share is 49%. By 2029, the defense share is projected at 11%, the health care-retiree share at 56%. This is not philosophical, it is demographic.