[Cyberyeti]

shyams, on 2021-January-06, 06:51, said:

It was the trending article on BBC website yesterday --- https://www.bbc.co.u...siness-55530721

Thanks, not clear if it's the same both ways, but TNT etc seem to be adding the charge in both directions.

[y66]

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Quote

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Posted online with permission at poets.org

[y66]

Shauna Farnell at NYT said:

After Jessie Diggins crossed the finish line of the Tour de Ski cross-country race in Val di Fiemme, Italy, she collapsed onto her belly with arms and legs splayed on the snow, body heaving. A grueling eight-stage race held over 10 days, the Tour de Ski is the World Cup cross-country ski circuit’s marquee event and, by most accounts, its toughest.

No American had ever won the 15-year-old event until Diggins did so on Sunday.

And in Stage 3 of the tour last week, she and her teammate Rosie Brennan finished first and second in a 10-kilometer freestyle pursuit, becoming the first Americans to take the top two spots on the podium in a World Cup cross-country race. Two days later, they did it again in Stage 4’s 10-kilometer individual freestyle race.

https://www.nytimes....896ed87b2d9c72a

[y66]

From NYT Weekly Quiz:

Quote

Dutch customs officials this month seized a ham sandwich from a British truck driver entering the Netherlands by ferry.

“Can you take the meat and leave me the bread?” the driver asked.

“I’m sorry,” the officer replied.

What event caused the officer to confiscate the sandwich?

[Winstonm]

Wasting away in Consequencesville
Searching for a different Brexit result
Some people claim that the EU is to blame
But I know,
It's my own damn fault.

[Winstonm]

Read this the other day: Libertarians are useful idiots for Conservatives; Conservatives are useful idiots for autocrats.

[y66]

Matt Yglesias posted an excerpt from a story his grandfather wrote about MLK 50 years ago. So good.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2021-January-18, 10:02, said:

Matt Yglesias posted an excerpt from a story his grandfather wrote about MLK 50 years ago. So good.

I'm about two-thirds of the way through the article but I will get back to it.. In March of 68, the date on the article, I was finishing my first year as a faculty member, my younger daughter was five months old, I was working at an extra job (probably against university rules but I had student debt I wanted tom pay off), in short, I did not have all that much time to follow politics. But I remember thinking that King was making a mistake. There is a lot of talk of goals and tactics in the article.

MLK was surely no more interested in my views on his approach than I was in his views on entropy problems in ergodic theory. But we can all have opinions on either.

It's a very good read.

[y66]

A mistake in prioritizing the goal of doing more to help people in need or mistakes in strategy? It seems to me we often have consensus on goals but then when we do stuff to achieve them, we end up with win-lose outcomes which undermine the goal.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2021-January-19, 06:57, said:

A mistake in prioritizing the goal of doing more to help people in need or mistakes in strategy? It seems to me we often have consensus on goals but then when we do stuff to achieve them, we end up with win-lose outcomes which undermine the goal.

The goals became very general, I think that causes problems. But I will take a couple of items from the article.

From the third page:

Quote

When Young put the phone down, I asked if S.C.L.C wasn't getting into radical working class politics. He looked puzzled. II don't know about that. I am doing what I joined the ministry to do", he said, and quoted Jesus about preaching the gospel to the poor.

One response could be that Jesus ended up on a cross. Or another response is that Trump supporters also quote Jesus. But perhaps the correct response is that when you don't answer a question, the non-answer becomes an answer. Yes, the S.C.L.C. was getting into radical working class politics. This will appeal to some, but it also might, for example, help a guy named Nixon get elected.

The article also speaks of his shift on the Viet Nam War, first opposing it (or, as I recall, not much discussing it) because of priorities and then making opposition a main part of his program. Well, of course, one might say. But it diluted his message by spreading it out.
I'll say a few words about my own thoughts back then, and again I believe I was one of a great many.
In 1956 I was thinking of joining the Navy after high school graduation. I planned on college, but how? I got a scholarship, so off to college with a student deferment.
Fast forward to (I believe) 1966. I had both a student deferment (I was still in grad school, family issues had slowed progress) and a parental deferment. Until the deferment was revoke, as it was for many. Off for a physical. I passed, and was classified 1-A.
So now? A faculty member that I was friendly with (we had gone canoeing, for example) relocated to a Canadian university so that his teen-age son would not have to serve. I was asked a few times what my plans were. Simple. Not volunteer, go if drafted.
Summary: I had to think through what I would do about the war and me. Having decided, I was not all that interested in thinking more about it.

I realize that my approach can be described as not adequately addressing the ills of society, thinking too much about my own issues. A family tradition perhaps. In December of 1941 I was about to turn 3, my father was 41, my father considered joining up after Pearl Harbor, my mother talked him out of it, using my existence as an arguing point. People start by addressing their own needs. Not all, but a lot of us.

Early on, King's agenda had specifics. And they were easy to support. Later, it was much more general. Also on the third page, the author imagines a Rip Van Winkle awaking from the 1930s and asking "Do you think the world owes you a living?" The answer he sees from King is "Yes". I think that the most you could get from most people is "You have to be more specific. Maybe I can support something specific. I cannot support a broad claim that the world owes you a living".

Back to Jesus. If I am not mistaken, he had a much larger following after he died than he had before.

I guess I'll add on a bit more. An effective way to get support is to present it as (excuse the slogan) win-win.
If people believe that learning skills and joining main stream society is apt to work, they will probably do it. Many, not all. They obviously benefit, and it is equally obvious that society benefits.
So, specific proposals that encourage this is apt to have broad support. But being specific, at least not being hopelessly broad, has a lot going for it.

[y66]

I also got stuck on "owes".

[kenberg]

MLK did a lot. But then things sort of collapsed. He got shot. of course. But fifty some years later we still have many of the problems he hoped to address. I think we have to do better than just say "Oh, people are so awful" or "Americans are so awful" or "Ken is so awful".
Sometimes a program gets support. sometimes it doesn't.
And, of course, sometimes it should get support and sometimes it shouldn't.
We need to do a better job of supporting the worthwhile programs.
Obvious to the point of triviality, sure.
But still, some thought is needed.


People, most of us, are not really bad, not horrible anyway. But we also don't spend all or even a sizable portion of our time with being self-sacrificing in service of humanity.
I think there are quite a few things out there that could be good for everyone. Educational opportunity is high on my list. Education broadly speaking. Easier said than done, sure. But very important.
There will always be a fifth of the population in the lowest economic quintile. But if education is available a person can look around and say "Hey, I think I can do better".
That's the hope anyway.

So King was a positive force. But there are problems to address.

[y66]

kenberg, on 2021-January-19, 15:09, said:

MLK did a lot. But then things sort of collapsed. He got shot. of course. But fifty some years later we still have many of the problems he hoped to address. I think we have to do better than just say "Oh, people are so awful" or "Americans are so awful" or "Ken is so awful".
Sometimes a program gets support. sometimes it doesn't.
And, of course, sometimes it should get support and sometimes it shouldn't.
We need to do a better job of supporting the worthwhile programs.
Obvious to the point of triviality, sure.
But still, some thought is needed.


People, most of us, are not really bad, not horrible anyway. But we also don't spend all or even a sizable portion of our time with being self-sacrificing in service of humanity.
I think there are quite a few things out there that could be good for everyone. Educational opportunity is high on my list. Education broadly speaking. Easier said than done, sure. But very important.
There will always be a fifth of the population in the lowest economic quintile. But if education is available a person can look around and say "Hey, I think I can do better".
That's the hope anyway.

So King was a positive force. But there are problems to address.

One of the coolest things I've ever seen was at a pro basketball game in a DC neighborhood that former Caps owner Abe Pollin helped get back on its feet. A lot of fans, most of them black, brought their kids. At halftime, the kids sitting in front of me opened their backpacks and started doing their homework. That blew me away. I clearly remember feeling that the black middle class in DC had fully put the days of the riots that followed MLK's assassination behind them and were leading DC into the future. I felt that again when my cousin and I visited her alma mater in the Edgewood neighborhood, which is also Nancy Pelosi's alma mater, as we sat on a bench drinking coffee watching all of the young women coming and going to classes, and again when I picked up my son and his future wife years ago at the end of the NYC-DC bus line in the Shaw neighborhood which was ground zero for the riots -- it was about 9 PM, the streets were lit up by store fronts and packed with people outside enjoying the scene in numbers that used to be common in Georgetown. Of course, it's not just DC. My sister lives in Atlanta and the same things have been happening there for decades. I don't see this happening in Baltimore. I suspect this has a lot to do with economic opportunity which nobody is entitled to but definitely something everyone deserves a fair shot at.

[Winstonm]

I think it is critical to remember that white Americans did not have to endure viscous beatings by state and local police just to gain the rights that are taken for granted

[y66]

The Third Thing by Donald Hall in which he answers a question that some visitors to his New Hampshire farm asked: "It’s really pretty here” (“in Vermont,” many added) “with your house, the pond, the hills, but . . . but . . . but . . . what do you do?”

[y66]

Just got an email from the Post Office telling me stamps I ordered on Jan 2 and received the following week have been shipped. I hope these guys aren't involved in vaccine distribution.

[shyams]

Today the exploits of the reddit /r/wallstreetbets made it into the mainstream media.

It's crazy what a bunch of testosterone-crazed "small-time traders" can do to the market. Unlike those times when hedge funds gang up to bleed a stock through concerted (not collusive) actions, this time around it's the turn of these hedge funds to bleed.

This is going to end badly, most likely for the small-time traders who (in search of the ultimate hit) could land up bankrupting themselves.

[shyams]

shyams, on 2021-January-27, 13:48, said:

Today the exploits of the reddit /r/wallstreetbets made it into the mainstream media.

It's crazy what a bunch of testosterone-crazed "small-time traders" can do to the market. Unlike those times when hedge funds gang up to bleed a stock through concerted (not collusive) actions, this time around it's the turn of these hedge funds to bleed.

This is going to end badly, most likely for the small-time traders who (in search of the ultimate hit) could land up bankrupting themselves.

According to various reports, the establishment is now ganging up to protect the rights of the hedge-fund class. When these random day-traders to arrive on the scene with little experience and then set about hurting the actual ruling class, the first thing they did was to go crying to the regulators.

If I may generalise & extrapolate, this is yet another sign that people (especially Americans) have very strong feelings about the striking wealth disparity in the USA. This became especially more clear during the pandemic; millions of normal Americans got poorer, hundreds of thousands were bankrupted, hundreds of thousands lost their lives even as the billionaires saw their wealth grow by over US$ 1 trillion!

[Cyberyeti]

shyams, on 2021-January-29, 01:57, said:

According to various reports, the establishment is now ganging up to protect the rights of the hedge-fund class. When these random day-traders to arrive on the scene with little experience and then set about hurting the actual ruling class, the first thing they did was to go crying to the regulators.

If I may generalise & extrapolate, this is yet another sign that people (especially Americans) have very strong feelings about the striking wealth disparity in the USA. This became especially more clear during the pandemic; millions of normal Americans got poorer, hundreds of thousands were bankrupted, hundreds of thousands lost their lives even as the billionaires saw their wealth grow by over US$ 1 trillion!

The Germans burned the hedge funds best, they got their teeth into VW, who bought the shares up themselves and forced the price way up.

[shyams]

More on the "small-time traders" vs multi-millionaire/billionaire hedge fund owners saga.

1. Yesterday, the company that owns the trading platform which was mainly used by all these reddit/r/wallstreetbets traders decided to unilaterally ban their own customer base from trading in some specific stocks.
* This effectively released the pressure (at least temporarily) on the hedge funds. And the stock prices of many companies targeted by these "small-time traders" dropped sharply during normal trading hours.
* The CEO of the trading platform came up with some flimsy excuses as to why they are banning these trades. I guess it is within the realms of possibility that Wall Street insiders leaned on the firm to act immediately "or else".
* Surprisingly enough, these actions to break the back of the hedge funds has gained so much positive goodwill from numerous sources that some law firm decided to slap a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the customers and against the company for their arbitrary actions.

2. Now Janet Yellen is being dragged into the controversy although most Dems on this forum likely did not come across this news. It seems one of the mega hedge funds that actually stepped in to save the other (smaller) hedge funds has paid $ 800,000 to Yellen in "speaking fees" over the past 3-4 years since she retired from the Fed. (Fox news story linked here)

Although I am not interested in the "recuse yourself" storyline being pushed by Fox, the point about her objectivity on the matter does at least deserve some critical attention. Prima facie I would believe she's done nothing wrong here; however, the Biden administration might benefit by displaying a standard that they are not infected by "the swamp".