Jurgis

Personally, I am quite skeptical about nostalgia driven "classic" releases. People tend to remember their first/old favorite MMO through rose colored glasses. The grass was greener, the monsters were bigger and the clan/guild friendships were brighter. Most of this cannot be captured by classic releases. You go to your old favorites and they feel dated since game mechanics/interface/etc is moving on. I assume Blizzard did not just roll out the old code/graphics, since that would likely be big disaster. Assuming they tried to adjust for the "classic" content and modern game features, the big question is whether they struck a right balance. Disclosure: I played WoW beta and danced when world ended. I did not play WoW after that. Played DAoC, GW, GW2, LOTRO, Age of Conan, Neverwinter, Blade and Soul, and some others. Just started playing Destiny 2. Still playing Warframe.

The argument for some form of trade tariff isn't specific to China, which just happen to be the biggest trading counterpart with the most impact. So sure, it will go somewhere else, but should be taxed too. The argument is to slow down the structural changes that deeply impact people's livelihood, so they will have time to adjust. Years ago, Buffett proposed some form of import voucher to lessen the U.S. trade deficit at that time, which would have much more draconian impact than just a tax. And critics have long complained about the lack of a coherent U.S. industrial policy. So this argument isn't made simply because of Trump. He's an ass, but as Munger would say, he's not wrong on everything. It's also not true that the same low income people are impacted. Different people are impacted differently. How else do you explain the coast / inland political divide! The argument was always there, and regardless of who the next administration is, it will no longer be easily dismissed, as it shouldn't be. You probably have the heart in the right place, but I don't think the Trump gang does. But it is applied specifically to China. And likely won't be applied to (m)any other countries unless they get in fight with Trump for whatever reason. Furthermore, if the goal was Midwest industrial revival and if the method to achieve this goal was tariffs (I still think the method would not work, but hey), surgically aimed tariffs that are aimed to specific products across the globe and not to wide variety of products from single country would have a better chance to work. I also think that the situation with manufacturing in US is way more complicated than the simple China-screwed-us narrative proclaims. You should look into the manufacturing statistics in US rather than just watching Netflix documentaries. Even if after looking at statistics you still think that manufacturing in US is in trouble and should be supported, you'd probably should ask yourself what happens when that supported manufacturing all goes automatic and still does not employ the 45 year olds who were fired. And how much of the Midwest trouble and income inequality was caused by automatization and industry shifts vs. China. In other words, you and the populace are being mind f**ked by Trump and co. * This thread belongs in politics section long time ago. ** How nice I'm probably the only free trade person left. Gonna get hit both from the newly nationalist right and from the left. *** That being said, yeah "Screw China!". But because of Hong Kong. Not because of Trump's p371s.

Time to move this thread to politics section?

China tariffs won't rebuild Midwest manufacturing. Manufacturing will just move to other cheap countries. The only effect is going to be price increases for US customers that will mostly hit the same low income households. It's interesting to see how propaganda works. Majority of people (even on CoBF) had no issue with China 3-4 years ago. Now everyone's anti-China with very good arguments for it.

Living near Earth will make you shoot blanks. Tin foil hats doesn’t work, those in the know wear u-metal body suits. Like one of these Faraday suits, Can I rent Faraday suit for a day? I'll charge it on my card.

Civ VI: Donald vs. Xi I've got tariffs! I've got tariffs! I've got nukes and tariffs! I've got nukes and tariffs! I've got space program, nukes, and tariffs! I've got space program, nukes, and tariffs! I've got Greenland, space program, nukes, and tariffs! ... ... ...

Living near Earth will make you shoot blanks.

My tariffs are bigger than yours!

IMO it's a great disservice for both climate change and electromagnetic radiation effect studies to lump them into a single article. The author should have compared 5G to killing kittens.

I think the issue of cramming algebra to kids who are not interested in it is relatively minor in the education picture (although still important). The much bigger issue is teaching kids who have little to no background/motivation/parental supervision/parental role models/peer support/supporting environment/etc. skills that would allow them to make something productive from their lives. Possibly to ambivalent or even hostile kids. This is very hard to do and it's not surprising that even best intentions and programs don't work (like Bill Gates discovered). I think it depends on where you are at, which school district, and sometimes even the school. As was highlighted in the article link by LC, there are NUMEROUS children (and families & culture) who do not value education. Some might say that they are even hostile towards education. So why force them to do something they don't want/appreciate? Society is spending billions & Billions & BILLIONS on this. Why not make education voluntary? Promote it, work with community leaders, run PSA announcements like "Mr. T says Don't be a FOOL, STAY IN SCHOOL!". Let ANYBODY who wants an education in the system. Work to educate them to the best of their capability to learn. HOWEVER, the student has a duty to be reasonably well behaved, show up the vast majority of the time, attempt to do the work to the best of their ability, and so on. If they mis-behave or don't want to be there, that is fine. If a child mis-behaves, they are EITHER out of the system OR if the parent consents, they will be disciplined and if the behavior is bad enough, they are sent to remedial classes where they will dealt with appropriately. If the child & parents don't care, why should we? Why should burn precious capital in a futile gesture? Perhaps most importantly of all, why should we allow trouble makers to sabotage OTHER children's education? Change is desperately needed! What about the children who are mis-behaving because their home life is a catastrophe and their parents don't care about them or their education? What responsibility, if any, does society at large (via its government) have towards those children? Should public schools be, in part, an effort to try to help those children overcome the handicap of parents who don't care? Or should we just wash our hands of them? I'm no education expert, but I agree that more money probably won't help teach someone who doesn't want to learn. I believe it's in our best interest to make an effort because otherwise these future losers will be a drag on all of us, whether through crime or going on the dole or being charismatic enough to get a job & then being extremely crappy at it. It's like healthcare. A healthy, competent & motivated populace is better for all of us (in the US & the entire world). I also really think that elements of philosophy & psychology should weigh in as well in an attempt to try & get youngsters to understand the difference between reality & delusion so they don't grow up to be mouth breathing Fox news sheeple. Many will never get it but that's humanity. What Doo said. +1

I ordered a six pack of juice in glass containers from Amazon 3rd party. UPS ground got this damaged-returned-to-sender five times in a row. From 4 different senders. I guess I should not care since I get refund from Amazon and someone (UPS?) is eating the cost. I just want my juice. :'( #FML #FWP

If they live paycheck to paycheck, they should probably not have a pet. OTOH, for majority of the big ticket vet items, the solution is not pet insurance, but rather putting the pet to sleep. Yeah, I know I'm gonna get hit by compassionate pet owners again, but $5K for your fluffy could save at least 10 children in Africa. Or 10 healthy just born fluffies that are being put down every day.

I think the issue of cramming algebra to kids who are not interested in it is relatively minor in the education picture (although still important). The much bigger issue is teaching kids who have little to no background/motivation/parental supervision/parental role models/peer support/supporting environment/etc. skills that would allow them to make something productive from their lives. Possibly to ambivalent or even hostile kids. This is very hard to do and it's not surprising that even best intentions and programs don't work (like Bill Gates discovered).

From what I heard from friends, xenophobia even in engineering is still pretty high. My married-to-Japanese fluent-in-Japanese friend got interviews in some Japanese cos, but there were interviewers who were visibly uncomfortable with the foreign white man...

IBKR has "a relentless drive to give back to the customer via lower prices and better service as the business scales."? Wake me up when they remove inactivity fees for accounts below $100K. My bank has better fees than IBKR. Edit: IBKR - the company that cannot correctly fill a simple tax form, has to be told to fix it, and then takes couple weeks to file amended one. And has the same errors next year. Perhaps they should scale more to improve their service?

But China is gonna occupy HK, take over all ports, and broadcast propaganda over loudspeakers. Everyone will wear grey, condemn Western bourgeois conspiracy and salute chairman Mao Xi. The proletariat will be protected by the laser beam wielding space station that will be called "死星". The Force will be with them always.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-financial-education-wont-solve-the-15-trillion-student-loan-crisis-2019-06-27?mod=mw_latestnews

I think if you want a system that connects to first responders (police/fire dept), you'll likely get ADT or whatever other old brands are. If you want local/cloud/AI monitoring only with DIY setup, then probably get one of the new systems. Full scale ADT is likely (much?) safer, but also more prone to false positives and costs if police/etc is called on a false positive. There's quite a bit of ADT hate based on that. Though this is anecdotal.

A bit apropos the US legal system discussion, I've just read the "You have the right to remain innocent" ( https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01DAD218W&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_GqxuDbGTPDB3D&tag=raimonwebsite-20 ). It's a short book which can be shortened to two sentences: 1. Do not talk to the police 2. Clearly request a lawyer and do not say anything until you get one. Two interesting parts: 1. Everyone is a criminal. Actually everyone is guilty of terrorism with chemical weapons. Just read the appropriate law (or the book). 2. Claiming the fifth is now pretty much treated as an evidence of guilt with Supreme Court precedent no less. ::) This is all limited to US. Your rights might differ in your/other countries. I'm not a lawyer.

I would like my next car to be electric. I look at https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/10/tesla-model-3-67-of-us-electric-vehicle-sales-in-2nd-quarter/ and pretty much despair. Tesla is the only company that sells e-cars really. Everyone else is just pretending. I know about the Tesla issues. I might prefer to buy from established company with a wide long term service network. There's really nothing. Nothing. Maybe the situation will change in coming couple years, but I could have expected the change "in couple years" in 2016-2017 and I would have been wrong. I might have to buy Tesla regardless.

Yes.

Right. Just remember that even if you buy bond at par value, your downside can be 50% or more if either you won't keep the bond to maturity or it defaults or inflation destroys your terminal value. But sure, buying at 2x par adds to risk. I just omitted that since return calculations become more complex.

First of all: thanks for taking the time to explain this. Intuitively, this made no sense to me. Why should an instrument with half the "payout" be worth twice as much? But I guess I'm confusing the terms yield, coupon rate, and perhaps discount rate. I guess this would be similar to, or is in fact the same, as lowering the discount-rate in a present-value calculation? with a small enough discount-rate, the present value would be arbitrary large. I would probably be foolish to use that number to do any investing, though... But what is the definition of "a bond yielding 1%" here? Is the calculation: a $100 bond with a coupon rate of 1%, priced at $200, is priced to be yielding 0.5%? That kind of sounds like saying "I value this stock at twice <whatever price>, because I believe the p/e multiple should be twice as high". Which I guess is the same, since half the current discount-price means twice the price current price. Still... stocks can grow into their valuation (the e can increase), while the coupon rate cannot. Even if I get the math here (and please correct me on the above ramblings if not), not sure I get the sanity of it. I'm not saying it's sane, but there might be reasons why it's not completely insane either. thepupil gave some examples of why someone buys even negative yielding debt. Presumably if there's a choice of buying negative yielding debt and the debt yielding 0.5%, the buyer would buy the latter one (all else being equal of course - this is simplified example). All else being equal, you're likely to put money into a bank that pays you 0.1% rather than bank that pays you 0.01% even if neither 0.1% nor 0.01% are meaningful in terms of returns. Finally, assuming you knew that rates will go down to 0.25% in the future, you'd probably buy the bond that yielded 1% yesterday driving its price up 2x to 0.5% yield today. You might say "this is insane". But people who did it at 7% are laughing all the way to the bank. Then the people who did it at 4% are laughing all the way to the bank. And even people who did it at 2% are right so far. At some point the buyers will be wrong. But I doubt you or people on CoBF really know when this will happen and how. Still not saying this is very sane, but is it completely insane? I'll let others argue for and against. 8) Here's Bloomberg's argument of why this might be sane: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-08/the-non-weirdness-of-negative-interest-rates?srnd=businessweek-v2

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/disney-fires-shot-at-netflix-with-13-a-month-streaming-bundle Non-investor personal view: - Not gonna buy DIS bundle, since I don't watch sports and I hate ads, so Hulu part is worthless. - Might sub to Disney+ for Marvel/Lucas opportunistically to watch what I have not seen and then unsub. Although might just watch through Netflix DVD service.

So.... the bond itself "should" yield close to (actually less than) nothing. But when I (as a random person with no financial skill) look at my pension-savings, I see that this presumably super-safe investment is up 10% in a year. Is that part of the "bubble"-factor here? Let's say you have bond priced at 100 yielding 1%. Let's say you believe that this bond should be priced to yield 0.5% based on similar assets/whatever. What would be the price of the bond based on your expected yield assuming perpetual bond for simplicity? Yes, 200. What is the yield difference of such bond when the price goes from 180 to 190 (up approximately 5+%)? Yield at 180 is 0.55% Yield at 190 is 0.526% So for yield drop of 0.025%, the bond price goes up 5%. You can call it bubble or whatever, but that's the math. Clearly the math also applies in the other direction (what should be the price of the bond that currently is priced at 200 and yields 0.5% if you believe it should yield 1%? Yeah, 100.) It gets more complicated for non-perpetual bonds, but I hope you got the picture. 8)