Reverie

“What if after you die, God asks you: ‘So, how was heaven?’” - Vishal Lahsiv

“If you invested $10,000 in bitcoin in 2010, you would have $710,458,109 today.” (internet) But who in their right mind would have done that? And how would you have held on? This is great stuff, the essence of envy and greed urging you to jump in on their Ponzi.

We are coming off the 100^th month anniversary of this economic cycle, the third longest ever and almost double what is normal.

I have been reading about the origins of the revolution in Boston. This is a remarkable time and the Revolution a more remarkable event. Some many peculiar conflicts. And what were those guys doing on the green in Lexington? It appears that the whole Liberty movement--which was quite separate from any Independence movement--got taken over by rural French and Indian War vets. Astonishing story. And who were the militia and the citizens most worried about? A Cromwell figure taking over the militia and the country.



In the $14 billion U.S. mattress market, online mattresses only made up $300 million in sales two years ago; this year, sales may reach $1.2 billion.
Many of the on-line mattress analysts are paid commissions.
A mattress industry analyst recently told Freakonomics Radio: “You have to be a strong marketer to be in the mattress industry, because they’re really selling identical, rectangular slabs.”

I watched "Rupture" with Noomi Rapace. If it could fly a flag, it would be a plague warning. This is a terrible waste of your time and could be harmful. Avoid.

According to Alphabet Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt, the single most desired robotic function desired in large surveys is kitchen cleanup.



A study suggests that being left-handed is a particular advantage in interactive sports where time pressures are particularly severe, such as table tennis and cricket -- possibly because their moves are less familiar to their mostly right-handed opponents, who do not have time to adjust. "The data suggests that the heavier the time constraints are operating in a sport, the larger the proportion of left-handers," said the study's author, Dr Florian Loffing of the University of Oldenburg in Germany. "We are less used to playing lefties, and [so] might end up in not developing the optimal strategies to compete with them." While it is thought that about 10-13 percent of the population is left-handed, it has long been noted that in certain interactive sports there is often a surprisingly high proportion of left-handers playing at elite levels.



Some Uber customers report being billed in roubles for taxi journeys they had not taken in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Homicide Det. Sean Suiter, the Baltimore police detective who was fatally shot in the line of duty last week, was scheduled to testify in a federal case against officers indicted earlier this year, the Baltimore Police Department confirmed Wednesday. The killer is unknown.

A strike in Italy's Amazon distribution hub was planned.


Opponents of the "Net Neutrality" laws of the Obama administration object that their repeal could pave the way for tiered internet service and pay-for-play premium access to internet consumers. A summary from an advocate of the repeal of Net Neutrality: "Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers.
So what are the costs to the rest of us? It meant no price reductions in internet service. It could mean the opposite. Your bills went up and there was very little competition. It also meant a slowing down in the pace of technological development due to the reduction in competition that followed the imposition of this rule. In other words, it was like all government regulation: most of the costs were unseen, and the benefits were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class."
So is "Net Neutrality" having someone else pay for what you get?





African governments are demanding action after slave trading was caught on tape in post-Gaddafi Libya.





There is a strange anti-free market argument abroad, that of "sustainability." This sounds, and is, global warming in drag but has an oblique thrust as well. Sustainability as a concept is not new and is championed by some good and admirable thinkers--Abby and Wendell Berry come to mind--but there is a subtle mental shortcut necessary: Surplus must be curbed. Sustainability implies excess, as in "wretched." But it also is close to subsistence, it is production without wealth. Or trade. Nothing is less like us. I know this brings up the dreaded "naturalistic fallacy" objection--why do we have to be limited by how we have behaved before. But there are some realities here. The question is always what is basic and what is culturally layered on and slough-able. But I think growth, expansion, improvement and the participation in the interactive social structure is as much of what we are as altruism.

The wolf does not knit.


Compared to 1986, the inflation-adjusted cost of a turkey dinner today is more than 23% cheaper, and 31% cheaper measured in the “time cost” for the average worker.

Estevadeordal and Taylor(2008) find that, on average, countries that engage in free trade reforms see considerable accelerations in economic development relative to the control group, such that the income per capita of the liberalizers is 25% higher after a quarter-century.

Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious Trump Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower.




She's back. Who is.....this woman?




There is a coffee house chain in Washington whose baristas wear bikinis. The city is trying to outlaw them, arguing that the women are risking inciting violence against themselves. Now I am having a lot of trouble explaining the behavior of these Weiner/Weinstein guys but this solution sounds compatible with the Koran.

American students consistently are outperformed by Asian students, especially in math. A study by Sadoff raises some interesting and disturbing questions. She offered students from China and America cash rewards for test performance. The Chinese had no improvement--no difference in performance, the Americans did much better when given a financial incentive.

One could wonder and talk about those results all day.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-gay-rainbow.html

The Gay Rainbow steeleydock.blogspot.com There is a lot to think about in the gay pride rainbow flag; there is more there than they know.   Color has been a signal in the gay...

I am fascinated by the criticism of "cultural appropriation." It demands a stasis and rigidity that does not exist and denies the dynamism of dialectic conflict and resolution that I know the critics of "cultural appropriation" admire. But one of the geniuses of the species sapien is its ability to hold contradictory positions without too much emotional turmoil.

This idea that young girls are taught deference in childhood that becomes a risk in adulthood could be expanded. Why, for example, do males lead in the dance?

An asteroid--named “3200 Phaethon” after the Greek God Phaethon, son of the Greek sun god Helios– will come within two million miles to Earth on December 17. It is three miles wide--pretty big, as the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs is believed to have been six miles wide. It appears to have been larger but chopped up by previous close passes to the sun.

Google Home will answer the question "What's the temperature inside?" with the temperature in the city of Side, Turkey.

"If y'all, this is how I feel, if y'all think I did it, I know that I didn't do it so why don't you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what's up." This is what Warren Demesme said talking to the police after he voluntarily agreed to be interviewed over accusations he sexually assaulted a minor. Citizen Demesme later sued that his rights to a lawyer were denied; the state said that only an unambiguous request for a lawyer need be heeded. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled against the good citizen because a "lawyer dog" does not exist.

The CIA is releasing tens of thousands of files and videos from bin Laden’s compound today, except his DVDs of ‘home on the range’ and ‘ice age: dawn of the dinosaurs’ and his copy of final fantasy vii, because those are copyrighted.

"Home on the Range?"

Pope Francis has requested a debate over allowing married men in the Amazon region of Brazil to become priests. Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the president of  the Episcopal Commission for the Amazon, according to a news report in Brazil

reportedly asked Francis to consider ordaining so-called viri probati, married men of great faith, capable of ministering spiritually to the many remote communities in the Amazon where there is a priest shortage, and evangelical Christians and pagan sects are displacing Catholicism.
Monsignor Erwin Krautler, the secretary of the Episcopal Commission, has also suggested that the bishops attending the synod in 2019 on the Amazon, now being prepared in Rome, should consider ordaining women deacons as priests. 
Pagan sects?



In a twitter exchange with a Clinton aide on Friday, former secret service agent Dan Bongino threatened to reveal new details about Bill Clinton’s 26 documented trips aboard notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express." 
The disingenuous righteous with the bit accidentally caught in their teeth.

AAAAAAaaaaaannnnnnddddd.....a graph:
more efficient use and better conservation of water.