Modern Slavery (in the Big Apple)

V: "The slave whips himself harder than the master, in hope of destroying the whip."

me: Sounds like some cheesy line from Ayn Rand

V: The opposite. It is mocking you for working hard to make money to not have to work.

me: No. Ayn Rand would mock you for not being a genius who righteously crack the whip on the huddled masses.

V: Well, she grew up under a brutal, insane regime - I can forgive her some madness.

me: It's the same incalculated personal exceptionalism experienced by the privileged

V: You're feisty today

me: I'm just being exceptional

V: It's surprising how little money means to me anymore.

me: According to Bloomberg, the average millionaire feel they need $7.5 Mln to feel secure. I am guessing you already have that amount of money.

V: No, but I have become numb to it since my days of poverty.

me: Numb in your palatial suite eh? In the city at the center of the world while making six digits? I can see how it all could feel like a dream.

V: Numb to the misery of middle class slavery

me: You sound like a proper ibanker, for a moment I thought you were going to row out the galley slave analogy and complain bitterly about how you have to work ten hours a day and then go home to your penthouse.

There is no better form of self-aggrandizement.

Power and Prerogative

9:39 PM

V: I wonder how this Net Neutrality thing will pan out.It is interesting, because I have difficulty conceiving of the telecom industry as being particularly astute in any fashion.

But it's quite amazing so far how much they seem to have accomplished. Well, let's ignore the actual merit of the arguments for a moment. Let's just look at who is on what side. Content providers all want net neutrality, because this is how can ensure their own survival. This means Google, Netflix, Hulu, Facebook...

Carriers wants net neutrality done away with, because this could lead to all sorts of market advantages in terms of optimising revenues or pushing their own content businesses.

I guess this could be a skewed portrayal, but it does really suggest a different type of management. It suggests on one side you have a bunch of much more agile and competitive companies trying to ensure a level playing field - that they do not have to compete in terms of basic access but in terms of services.

It gives this feeling that these carriers are just these lumbering giants who can only think in terms of their monopolies. I get this same impression from how some big media companies seem to operate. That they almost begrudge the need to create a product. That it is this burden for them to have to actually make something so that they can transfer money from your wallet to theirs, and if they could just find a way to charge you directly without this unnecessary intermediary of providing a good or service, they would happily do so.

I think that companies of this sort actually can be very successful and profitable, but that it's not sustainable. This kind of operation does not lend itself to astute or clever action, so these organisations have no ability to actually compete on merit.

This is a very interesting political battle, because it is really a fight between two large corporate groups. It isn't the public against corporations (since we already know that the public almost always loses in these cases.)

You too can be good if you have enough money from perpetrating evil

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Is Lost to Tax Loopholes

I tend to treat organizations with purported good intentions with great skepticism, because it is easy to talk about those things when you have the money, money from tax evasion no less.

M01

me: Here is the operative anime formula: have a silly philosophical idea, inject some violence, add a boy meet girl situation and/or fan service. If that doesn't work then it means you haven't dialed it up far enough.

V: The counterpoint to anime structure is that regular western programmes are themselves so adolescent - western animated shows have no choice but be worse.

me: Really? Even for films like Toy Story?

V: Toy Story is good, but it is good children's entertainment. Calling something children's entertainment generally means it's bad, but that's only because this country doesn't care what it feeds its kids.

Houston, we hardly know ye

Trinidad

From Trinidad

Over the Gulf of Mexico

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

Port of Spain

From Trinidad

The two lane roads are narrower, yes, narrower. In my haste I forgot to take pictures of driving down Waterloo.

From Trinidad

Busy streets

From Trinidad

If one gets the impression that there are not enough pictures of the inhabitants then the fault is entirely one of the photographer

From Trinidad

The Red House

From Trinidad

The building where the Jamaat staged their coup in 1990

From Trinidad

Port of Spain by night

From Trinidad

The Lion House (Naipaul's ancestral house), Chaguanas

From Trinidad

lions

From Trinidad

Green mountains

From Trinidad

Green building

From Trinidad

Chaguaramas

His eyes always that of an outsider

V: I had a discussion with one of the traders last week about how he wanted to make sure his kids grew to respect hard work and the value of a dollar.

I think it's very easy to ignore one's own privileges. He talked about how he had to work from being a poor boy to where he was and so on and so forth, and he had a lot of pride in having accomplished what he has. But this does not seem quite correct. Because if he were urban minority poor, I think he could have worked just as hard but still ended up nowhere.

Similarly, I should thank my background for the advantages it has given me. If I were white, I'd probably belong to some unimpressive but competent professional class. A good amount of my analytical skills are a direct result of my background, I think.

me: Yes, the consequence of being an outsider

V: Actually, that is it exactly. If I were not an outsider, I wouldn't have such a strong desire to rebel intellectually, and I would be much less curious and much less analytical.

...

V: Being an outsider means that even if it's easy to make friends, it's still very easy to remain dis-integrated.

me: I'm not so certain I want to become fully integrated

V: Why not? It's lonely otherwise.

me: You can be integrated and lonely

V: Really?

me: Is that not a possibility?

Happy New Year!

Avatar

11:49 AM

V: ... the natives present this unified cultural force, right? We're supposed to support their choice to retain this primitive culture that is close to nature, because it's presumably the most environmentally intentioned.

But this seems flawed, because they are hunters and gatherers. They don't seem to farm, but they are still predators, despite whatever pseudo-religion they practice after their kills. (Unfortunately, it's never explored whether the killed creature really appreciates or cares being dispatched in such a natural spiritualist fashion.)

These hunting techniques the native aliens use could potentially be extremely ecologically damaging. In fact, I would suggest that, given their primitivism, they probably have a very poor understanding of preservation.

Though our own ideas may not apply to this world, which seems to be full of movie-style predators. Predators without behaviours realistic to earth animals. Like, completely omnivorous across all species. Like a grizzly bear eating snails.

Yeah, this is a pretty shite alien planet. Yeah, this is still neocolonialism. It fails to really understand nativist resistance.

12:49 PM

V: Wow, this movie is so bad. A decent sign of a bad movie is probably how many lines of dialogue are devoted to `woo!' `yeah!' `nooo!'

Also, I guess, in the end, it's the white man's burden to help the natives. And they are lost without him.

Man, I wish this movie had been made better. And it would have been pretty easy to do.

1066

"A thousand years ago, a great war came to Middle Earth, the Anglo-Saxon name for the world of people.

Three kingdoms fell into battle, the victors would change England forever.

Then English, led by the newly crowned King Harold Godwinson.

The Normans, their Duke William of Normandy, eager to extend his territories.

The Vikings, fearless, warlike, and fronted by the great King Harald Hardrada..."

link

Singular purpose

The Rise of the New Global Elite

F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.

11:01 PM

V: This article talks a lot more about finance high-rollers than industrialists. In fact, I would suspect a lot of these stereotypes are applicable only to finance high-rollers.

I am skeptical how much the world of finance really means in the short or long term.

... for all this article talks about idea festivals and idea makers and thought leaders and whatever. Well, what was the last idea that you heard come out of one of those? That wasn't just, hey, I have an idea, why don't I go network with a bunch of people so I can hob-nob and make money?

I think Taleb makes the point that people who are successful almost always attribute their success to some remarkable quality of their own personalities - some individual exceptionalism - even when such success could just as adequately be explained by pure chance.

I guess there is just a continuation of the same excesses of past plutocracies. This sense of personal exceptionalism, singular purpose - the pretenses of culture and nobility.

The Last Psychiatrist

Are Chinese Mothers Superior To American Mothers?

"...[it] is really a summary of her episode of MTV Cribs. "Welcome to my home, yo, let me show you my gold toilet. It's for peeing and flushing the coke down when the heat comes in the back way."

Twas The Night Before Christmas

The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks

Secrets

The Elusive Underpinnings of U.S. Venturesomeness

"...Differences in the growth rates in the U.S. and other Western countries during the 19th and 20th centuries also raise questions about the degree to which the basic supply-side formula is a sufficient (rather than a necessary) condition for rapid growth. By historical standards, economic growth in the 19th century—when per capita incomes doubled—was unprecedented. But in the 20th century, incomes increased four times as rapidly as they did in the 19th century. Given the higher “base,” one might have expected growth in the 20th century to have been slower. Strikingly, the modern economy has also been less prone to lurch from exhilarating boom to devastating bust. In the 19th century, several depressions interrupted economic growth, whereas in the 20th century, apart from the Great Depression, downturns were relatively mild and short-lived—in spite of two great wars. Yet conditions in the 19th century conformed to the basic supply-side formula more closely than those of the 20th century. In the United States, government expenditures and taxes were extremely low—and, except during the Civil War, there was no income tax. There was no federal bureaucracy to impose minimum-wage laws, regulate health and safety standards, or resist monopolies and trusts. No Clean Water or Securities and Exchange acts had been passed. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs had not been conceived. And property rights—another mainstay of supply-side recommendations—were at least as secure, if not more so, in the 19th century than they are now.

Another puzzle: according to Solow’s groundbreaking research, technical progress rather than capital accumulation was the source of nearly 90% of U.S. growth in the first half of the 20th century. In the 19th century, capital accumulation made a larger contribution to growth than did technical change. Yet the new products invented in the 19th century were extraordinary. Inventions between 1850 and 1900 include the monorail, telephone, microphone, cash register, phonograph, incandescent lamp, electric train, steam turbine, gasoline engine, and street car, as well as dynamite, movies, motorcycles, linotype printing, automobiles, refrigerators, concrete and steel construction, pneumatic tires, aspirin, and X-rays. These may well overshadow inventions credited to the entire 20th century.

The smaller economic impact of 19th-century inventions suggests that they weren’t effectively commercialized; their widespread use was hampered by some combination of inappropriate features, high costs, poor marketing, or a paucity of venturesome consumption. Why in spite of a more congenial supply-side climate was this so? What changed in the 20th century that allowed the United States—and other countries with advanced economies—to extract more value from technological and scientific breakthroughs?
..."

The Venturesome Economy

The American Dream and delusions of the 'Real World'

8:34 PM

V: So this is basically the template of someone trying to become American middle or upper middle class from a (Chinese) lower class.

It's all very directed but without being introspective.

Like -
Go to school
Get a job
Get married
Save money
Buy a house
Have children

Each action is directed toward this singular goal but the actions are simultaneously very mechanical and automated.

It's a success story, but each part is just a fairy tale.

You study hard in school and get a PhD and get a job!

Might as well plant magic beans - it'll have just about the same effect.

...

There is a large limitation of perspective... a lot of self-delusion that can come from it, too.

When you finally get your break to the next level, you can very easily delude yourself into thinking it was all about the things you did.

That you finally figured out how the real world works.

On the watersheds of thought

I have often wondered whether people can change so suddenly and so drastically...

Or if these are the case of just never really seeing the person for who he or she is?

The Fall of French Cuisine

Some of the ‘declinists’ think that what would set France right is a good dose of Thatcherism and Chicago School economics, and Steinberger considers that this sort of remedy would do much to fix the national cooking crisis. Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, Reagan was elected president in 1980, and Mitterrand’s long reign began in 1981: ‘Insofar as the restaurant business was concerned, the United States and Britain unquestionably took the better route,’ Steinberger says, and this despite the fact that Mitterrand was a very great gourmand while Thatcher was of the ‘food is fuel’ persuasion and Reagan’s favourite foods were macaroni and cheese and liquorice jelly beans.

Down to the Last Cream Puff

Vahalla Rising

Among many things, good soundtrack.

Nordic landscapes can be so dark and brooding. It's a wonder how civilization emerged out of all the mist and bog.