[johnu]

Texas Politician Alienates Twitter Users By Suggesting E.T.s Need Religion

I don't think I need to clarify that this was a Republican politician

Quote

IF aliens are real, salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way they enter Heaven.

[thepossum]

 Winstonm, on 2020-July-17, 07:44, said:

IMO, this twisted apology for libertarian philosophy is itself enough to refute it.

I wasnt making an apology for anyone's philosophy. Just discussing aspects of my own. Sorry it seemed so twisted

But in a nutshell, nobody has a right to tell me what to do unless what I am doing infringes someone elses rights

[Winstonm]

 thepossum, on 2020-July-27, 02:54, said:

I wasnt making an apology for anyone's philosophy. Just discussing aspects of my own. Sorry it seemed so twisted

But in a nutshell, nobody has a right to tell me what to do unless what I am doing infringes someone elses rights

Consider your position - you can't make me - isn't that the same cry of the adolescent trying to exercise independence? One would hope that after adolescence full maturity would teach the lesson no decision is truly made in a vacuum, that each of us has an affect on everyone else, either directly or indirectly.

That lesson then teaches that no one is telling you what to do - you allow yourself to be governed. That is maturity.

[thepossum]

 Winstonm, on 2020-July-27, 07:36, said:

Consider your position - you can't make me - isn't that the same cry of the adolescent trying to exercise independence? One would hope that after adolescence full maturity would teach the lesson no decision is truly made in a vacuum, that each of us has an affect on everyone else, either directly or indirectly.

That lesson then teaches that no one is telling you what to do - you allow yourself to be governed. That is maturity.

Grow up Winston. How old are you? I will stop graffiting my neighbours fence ok

But seriously Winston if you saw my definition of my ideal philosophy I wouldnt actually be able to do very much at all. In fact if anything I take too much notice and consideration of other people's rights. It tends to hold you back in life sadly

[jjbrr]

Artemis and Celeste

[y66]

Lebanon Is Exhausted by Lina Mounzer at NYT

Exhausted is the word. How much more can people take?

[Winstonm]

The goal of the Republican party has been fulfilled - to crush Labor:

Quote

Adam Smith said, "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations*…always the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention….loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and…becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become…."

* AKA known as Labor.

[y66]

Desperate to Leave Beirut, Young Lebanese Are Also the Ones Fixing It

Quote

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The scooter engines snorted out, and Sara el-Sayed swung herself down to the pavement outside the third damaged building she had visited that afternoon, two carpenters in tow.

Upstairs, a woman’s blown-apart doors needed fixing. Cigarettes and cellphone in one hand, pen and paper in the other, Ms. el-Sayed jotted down dimensions as the carpenters measured empty door frames and shattered windows.

She has taken this up as her job now: volunteering to hammer together as much of the splintered city as she can before leaving it — hopefully for good.

Six days after the explosion that crushed much of Beirut, a Spanish master’s degree program in interior design notified Ms. el-Sayed that she had been accepted, a long-held dream come true.

When she leaves, she will be done with all of this, she hopes: a government whose incompetence appears to have led to the blast; a corrupt political system young Lebanese blame for aborting their futures; a country where the middle class is sinking into poverty as the politicians slow-walk economic reforms, and where the only way to survive seems to be a second passport, a job or a graduate program somewhere else.

Many Lebanese were already looking for such escape hatches before the Aug. 4 explosion. An exodus now seems inevitable.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Protests Erupt After Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies Fatally Shoot Black Man During Bicycle Stop

Ever asked yourself why these headlines never seem to read Bike Riding White Man Fatally Shot? Come think of it, when was the last time you even heard of a white man or white woman stopped by police for bike-riding violations?

[Zelandakh]

 Winstonm, on 2020-September-01, 08:40, said:

Ever asked yourself why these headlines never seem to read Bike Riding White Man Fatally Shot? Come think of it, when was the last time you even heard of a white man or white woman stopped by police for bike-riding violations?

Well there was this case...

[Winstonm]

 Zelandakh, on 2020-September-01, 10:45, said:

Well there was this case...

By my count it was 9-2 against the police - I'm certain that being outnumbered to that degree they surely feared for their lives but no guns drawn. How curious.

[y66]

Paging Captain Ahab ...

Kana Inagaki, Katie Martin, Robert Smith and Robin Wigglesworth at FT said:

SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars’ worth of US equity derivatives in a move that stoked the fevered rally in big tech stocks before a sharp pullback on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in tech stocks during the past month in huge amounts, contributing to the largest trading volumes in contracts linked to individual companies in at least 10 years, these people said. One banker described it as a “dangerous” bet.

The aggressive move into the options market marks a new chapter for the investment powerhouse, which in recent years has made huge bets on privately held technology start-ups through its $100bn Vision Fund. After the coronavirus market tumult hit those bets hard, the company established an asset management unit for public investments using capital contributed by its founder Masayoshi Son. 

Now it has also made a splash in trading derivatives linked to some of those new investments, which has shocked market veterans. “These are some of the biggest trades I’ve seen in 20 years of doing this,” said one derivatives-focused US hedge fund manager. “The flow is huge.”

The surge in purchases of call options — derivatives that give the user the right to buy a stock at a pre-agreed price — has been the talk of Wall Street in recent weeks, as the sheer size of the trades appears to have exacerbated a “melt-up” in many big technology stocks over the summer. Shares in Tesla soared 26 per cent in under a week to September 1, while Amazon and Google parent Alphabet gained about 9 per cent.

One person familiar with SoftBank’s trades said it was “gobbling up” options on a scale that was even making some people within the organisation nervous. “People are caught with their pants down, massively short. This can continue. The whale is still hungry.”

The options boom means that the US stock market remains vulnerable to further bursts of volatility, according to Charlie McElligott, a strategist at Nomura. “The street is still very much in a dangerous space, and that flow is still out there,” he said in a note on Friday, adding that this leaves the market open to swings higher or lower.

The overall nominal value of calls traded on individual US stocks has averaged $335bn a day over the past two weeks, according to Goldman Sachs. That is more than triple the rolling average in 2017 to 2019. The retail trading boom has played a big part of the frenzy, but investors say the size of many recent option purchases are far too big to be retail-driven. 

Unusually, single-stock call trading volumes have surged beyond the average daily volumes of calls on the broader US stock market, and are almost as high as the level of trading in index puts — which give the buyer the right to sell at a pre-set price and act as a popular form of insurance against stocks falling. 

The size and aggressiveness of the mysterious call buyer, coupled with the summer trading lull, has been a major factor in not only the buoyant performance of many big tech names, but the broader US stock market, according to Mr McElligott. This week he warned that dynamics around options meant the heavy purchases forced banks on the other side of the trades to hedge themselves by buying stocks, in a “classic ‘tail wags the dog’ feedback loop”. 

This also helped explain the unusual sight of the US stock market climbing in tandem with the Vix index — often referred to as Wall Street’s “fear gauge” — and meant that equities were fragile and vulnerable to the kind of sudden setback that erupted on Thursday. “The equity volatility complex is acting ‘broken’ and indicative that ‘something’s gotta give’,” Mr McElligott warned in a note shortly before the Nasdaq fell 5 per cent. 

One banker familiar with the latest options trading activity said Thursday’s market pullback would have been painful for SoftBank, but he expected the buying to resume. A larger and longer-lasting stock-market decline would be more damaging for this strategy, and would probably involve rapid declines, he added.

The options buying comes alongside $10bn in public investments SoftBank is targeting through its new asset management arm.

According to a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, SoftBank has bought stakes of nearly $2bn in Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Tesla — investments that are partially funded by cash from its $41bn asset sale programme that was triggered by a collapse in its share price during the Covid-19 market turmoil. 

[shyams]

 y66, on 2020-September-04, 09:04, said:

Paging Captain Ahab ...

Quote

SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars’ worth of US equity derivatives in a move that stoked the fevered rally in big tech stocks before a sharp pullback on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in tech stocks during the past month in huge amounts, contributing to the largest trading volumes in contracts linked to individual companies in at least 10 years, these people said. One banker described it as a “dangerous” bet.

The aggressive move into the options market marks a new chapter for the investment powerhouse, which in recent years has made huge bets on privately held technology start-ups through its $100bn Vision Fund. After the coronavirus market tumult hit those bets hard, the company established an asset management unit for public investments using capital contributed by its founder Masayoshi Son.

Now it has also made a splash in trading derivatives linked to some of those new investments, which has shocked market veterans. “These are some of the biggest trades I’ve seen in 20 years of doing this,” said one derivatives-focused US hedge fund manager. “The flow is huge.”

The surge in purchases of call options — derivatives that give the user the right to buy a stock at a pre-agreed price — has been the talk of Wall Street in recent weeks, as the sheer size of the trades appears to have exacerbated a “melt-up” in many big technology stocks over the summer. Shares in Tesla soared 26 per cent in under a week to September 1, while Amazon and Google parent Alphabet gained about 9 per cent.

One person familiar with SoftBank’s trades said it was “gobbling up” options on a scale that was even making some people within the organisation nervous. “People are caught with their pants down, massively short. This can continue. The whale is still hungry.”

The options boom means that the US stock market remains vulnerable to further bursts of volatility, according to Charlie McElligott, a strategist at Nomura. “The street is still very much in a dangerous space, and that flow is still out there,” he said in a note on Friday, adding that this leaves the market open to swings higher or lower.

The overall nominal value of calls traded on individual US stocks has averaged $335bn a day over the past two weeks, according to Goldman Sachs. That is more than triple the rolling average in 2017 to 2019. The retail trading boom has played a big part of the frenzy, but investors say the size of many recent option purchases are far too big to be retail-driven.

Unusually, single-stock call trading volumes have surged beyond the average daily volumes of calls on the broader US stock market, and are almost as high as the level of trading in index puts — which give the buyer the right to sell at a pre-set price and act as a popular form of insurance against stocks falling.

The size and aggressiveness of the mysterious call buyer, coupled with the summer trading lull, has been a major factor in not only the buoyant performance of many big tech names, but the broader US stock market, according to Mr McElligott. This week he warned that dynamics around options meant the heavy purchases forced banks on the other side of the trades to hedge themselves by buying stocks, in a “classic ‘tail wags the dog’ feedback loop”.

This also helped explain the unusual sight of the US stock market climbing in tandem with the Vix index — often referred to as Wall Street’s “fear gauge” — and meant that equities were fragile and vulnerable to the kind of sudden setback that erupted on Thursday. “The equity volatility complex is acting ‘broken’ and indicative that ‘something’s gotta give’,” Mr McElligott warned in a note shortly before the Nasdaq fell 5 per cent.

One banker familiar with the latest options trading activity said Thursday’s market pullback would have been painful for SoftBank, but he expected the buying to resume. A larger and longer-lasting stock-market decline would be more damaging for this strategy, and would probably involve rapid declines, he added.

The options buying comes alongside $10bn in public investments SoftBank is targeting through its new asset management arm.

According to a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, SoftBank has bought stakes of nearly $2bn in Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Tesla — investments that are partially funded by cash from its $41bn asset sale programme that was triggered by a collapse in its share price during the Covid-19 market turmoil.

It looks like markets (and market makers?) are working hard to ensure SoftBank doesn't cash out on their large gambles. Nasdaq is down 8% in two days.

[kenberg]

 Zelandakh, on 2020-September-01, 10:45, said:

Well there was this case...

First and foremost, really way first and way foremost, I really enjoyed the video. I still have memories of the "big kids" teaching me to ride a bike when I was five or so and then the freedom that came with that. And, years later, my granddaughter was telling her young friends, "My Grandpa taught me to ride". For many years my primary criterion for rating cites was on how bicyclists were treated. Granddaughter turns 28 soon.

Of course the video is part of a social/political discussion. It is a portrayal of how we would like things to go. Ok, I would prefer the cyclists not be stopped for this minor transgression but they were stopped and then it proceeded smoothly. That's what we want.

We all have a role to play. In a marriage, if one partner can only see the errors of his/her spouse then they are headed for a divorce. The video shows what is good, with everyone acting responsibly, we need to have more of it.

[y66]

Today is for nachos by Sam Sifton at NYT:

Quote

Good morning. How are you? You getting enough sleep, or sleeping all the time? You eating enough, not enough, too much? How’s your stress level? You feeling optimistic? Or the opposite? I watched the sun rise the other morning and asked myself those questions. I found I could not answer them. And I can’t be alone in that. We’re caught in the continuum between what was and what will be, and it’s dizzying. We’re all in, all the time.

What I know we can do: shrug and head into the kitchen. It’s different in there, or it can be. We can enter unsure of ourselves and the state of the world, assemble an array of ingredients and then put them together into something that brings pleasure both in the making and the consumption, and that’s not nothing. That’s healthy.

That’s nachos, for me. I love Priya Krishna’s version, Indian-ish nachos (above) that she makes with her mother, Ritu, with cilantro chutney, tamarind drizzle and chhonk, a sauce of melted ghee, cumin seeds and red chile. I love my own game-day nachos as well, and have come around strongly to Mark Bittman’s Greek-style version, too. Loaded nachos? Short-rib chili nachos? On a Monday night in the midst of a pandemic, with the West on fire and an important election looming, nachos are a kind of tranquilizer, good for the soul.
See

[Winstonm]

This may explain a lot.

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Brain-Eating Amoeba Found in Texas Town’s Water Supply

[y66]

Fun read:

This Year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry Honors a Revolution

Video of Doudna after getting the call. https://news.berkele...77501c-45443718

https://www.nature.c...586-020-02765-9

[y66]

Fun conversation (2019) between Mark Zuckerberg, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison. The ratio of interesting questions to interesting answers is high.

[Cyberyeti]

Bizarre incident, Dutch metro train overshoots buffers and is saved by a sculpture.

https://www.mediatv....XsARLkEhbWSprMc

An extremely fortunate fluke

[y66]

Of possible interest: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Tyler Cowen discuss how the online encyclopedia will maintain objectivity in polarizing times.

https://conversation...es/jimmy-wales/

Quote

Jimmy Wales used to joke that choosing to build Wikipedia on a non-profit, non-advertising model was either the best or worst decision he ever made—but he doesn’t joke about that anymore. “If you think about advertising-driven social media…it's driven them in many cases to prioritize agitation and argumentation in a negative sense over education and learning and thoughtfulness.” In his now ceremonial role, Jimmy spends a lot of time thinking about how to structure incentives so that the Wikipedia community stays aligned on values and focused on building an ever-improving encyclopedia.

Jimmy joined Tyler to discuss what happens when content moderation goes wrong, why certain articles are inherently biased, the threat that repealing section 230 poses to Wikipedia, whether he believes in Conquest’s Law, the difference between “paid editing” and “paid advocacy editing,” how Wikipedia handles alternative accounts, the right to be forgotten, his unusual education in Huntsville, Alabama, why Ayn Rand is under- and over-rated, the continual struggle to balance good rules and procedures against impenetrable bureaucracy, how Wikipedia is responding to mobile use, his attempt to build a non-toxic social media platform, and more.

Quote

How do we construct systems and models and procedures and processes in the community that strive for maintaining our values in the long run and building something that we value?

Good question.