Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

He may never have reached Asia as planned, but one cannot discount the sheer will required to make his journey. At the age of 41, he defied naysayers across Europe and led four voyages across an uncharted ocean in wooden sailing ships that were not designed to take on the punishing waters of the Atlantic.

In what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ voyages enabled the exchange of plants, animals, cultures, ideas (and, yes, disease) between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Once the Europeans were able to reach nearly all parts of the globe, a new modern age would begin, transforming the world forever.

Some historians have taken the position that while brutal, Columbus was simply a product of his times and being a figure of the 15th century should not be judged by the morality of the 20th-century.

Buckle up Buckaroo ... we are entering unchartered territory. As much as I don't want to think it, I don't see it being any kind of pretty ...

You know, I read a recent interview with John Oliver where he is very emphatic that his show is "comedy" and that, despite what people want to read into it, he is not making political statements. I think if I had watched this video before reading that interview I would have scoffed (as others here already have). But it's pretty clear to me now that he and his writers know exactly what they are doing.

Basically, this video is the result of John Oliver saying, "You know, when you think about this history of racism in American cinema you can find some pretty fucked up stuff. How can we make a joke out of that?"

It's not designed to be an actual literary critique, it's meant to use the facts to play up a punch line. I'm pretty sure John and his writing crew know that "The Last Samurai" does not refer to Tom Cruise's character (i.e. just because the character is trained how to use the sword and armor does not automatically make him a samurai), but it's easy to see how they can make a joke out of the ambiguity of the title and Americans' tendency for self-centeredness (I'm sure there are people in the U.S. who think the title does indeed refer to Cruise's character).

I actually don't have a problem with actors "playing outside their ethnicity" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). I'm reminded of the recent controversy about the video game Uncharted 4 which has a white actress voice-acting the role of a black South African character. The Creative Director responded to the controversy by pointing out that a white character is voiced by a black actor in the same game, and that the decisions were made based on the choosing the best actor for the role--not on what the actor looked like in real life (read more about the story here).

As CG progresses and digital characters become a norm, I think this is an issue that's only going to get greater in the film industry. In our demand for political correctness will we demand that the actors physically resemble the characters they are portraying onscreen? That seems a bit absurd to me. But so too is the idea of excluding people for consideration from roles based solely on the color of their skin.

Your video, Uncharted 4 Gameplay, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Unknown.

If the ECB pulls ELA, the Greek banking system goes belly up. Again, consequences unknown, but Deutsche Bank for instance didn't seem particularly stable during the last months, so the denial of any contagion risk might have been premature. Additionally, Draghi is tasked with maintaining the stability of the Euro and taking away Greece's last lifeline might just be too far out of his mandate, even for him. Keeping ELA up without increasing the limit will achieve the same result within days though.

If Greece fails to make its payment to the IMF tomorrow, it's at the discretion of Lagarde whether she pulls the plug. Info has been somewhat contradictory, but there should be a 30 day window before the board has to call it a default.

If a default is triggered this week, it's up to the ECB and the EC again. They have shown unwillingness to let things go bust, all the recent months of muddling through should be testament to that.

They cannot have a failed state within Europe without feeding right into the anti-European parties on both ends of the spectrum; they cannot throw Greece out of the EZ; they cannot revitalise the Greek economy without doing a 180 against their own ideology; they cannot let Syriza pull Greece out of the shit without encouraging Podemos. It's an impasse alright.

Should the Greek people vote against the proposal, a proposal that is no longer on the table, it'll be back to negotiations. Should they vote in favour of it, and should it still be available to them at that time in the first place, Tsipras might even get a majority for it in parliament, but Syriza will blow apart right then and there. The left wing cannot agree to further enslavement.

If, however, everything goes sour and Greece does indeed exit the EZ, introduce a new Drachma, the whole shebang, then we're in uncharted terrorities. The situation in Greece would deteriorate even further, given how much they rely on imports, especially of fuel. And the EU, already shaky from the tens of thousands of bodies floating in the Med, the falling standard of living for tens of millions and the sustained unemployment of an entire generation; this fecking union cannot turn the cradle of democracy into a failed state and survive. The governments might be ok with it, but the French people would rip this shit to shreds one way or another, and rightfully so.

Loved the experience (story, characters, dialogue, world, atmosphere, etc), but the gameplay was terrible. The design of the game mechanics was fine (the crafting system was nicely done), but the mechanics were very poorly put together leaving it feeling clunky and becoming so damn infuriating. Not as infuriating as appalling mess that was Uncharted 3, but not of the quality of other games.
If the other aspects of the game weren't so damned good, I'd have returned it well before finishing it.

The image not supposed to make sense-The image is quite non-linear and the attraction or repulsion to viewing it may be an indication of aspects of one's psyche best left uncharted.

The Last Crusade - best Movie + Computer Game combo ever!

Anyhow:
What would have made this clip really epic is if he had bad things to say about Uncharted too, and it would all be cut in context of the "Crystal Skull" thingy that some (fools) claim to be an Indy movie.

There are Three movies made featuring Indiana Jones, and Two featuring Mad Max.

Yeah, he was playing the most recent uncharted and they were asking him about comparisons to Indy.

I may have picked this up wrong but I think HIS company was only dealing with the money side of things. So, though he was working with the people breaking the rules he wasn't the one breaking them. That said, due diligence would have discovered that THEY were breaking the rules. BUT if I were him I would have been cool with that cos, you know, Nietzsche et al. (joke). So if this was the case an he didn't have a moral objection then I agree that his mistake was the personally owning the account and not the participation in the first place.

And you should ALWAYS start sentences with conjunctions and CAPS LOCK something.>> ^MilkmanDan:

He talks as though his key mistake was personal ownership of the paypal account, but I think that really just focused the fallout on him rather than across multiple business entities. His key mistake was breaking the TOS/EULAs of the accounts that he was (re)selling, and rolling the dice that Blizzard would never catch on.
They did catch on. Personally, I think it is very difficult to prevent this sort of thing and that your best bet is to either just live with it, or change in-game things to make the motivation for it less enticing. Star Wars Galaxies had accounts for early jedi unlockers (being able to play as a jedi was originally a very rare thing) sell for multiple thousands of dollars also. Since jedi as a class was so attractive and so rare, you'd have to expect that such account sales would happen -- that is just bad design, assuming that you want to prevent such activities.
Still, it is hard to fault him too much since this was relatively uncharted territory. And, it makes for quite an interesting story!

>> ^MilkmanDan:

He talks as though his key mistake was personal ownership of the paypal account, but I think that really just focused the fallout on him rather than across multiple business entities. His key mistake was breaking the TOS/EULAs of the accounts that he was (re)selling, and rolling the dice that Blizzard would never catch on.
They did catch on. Personally, I think it is very difficult to prevent this sort of thing and that your best bet is to either just live with it, or change in-game things to make the motivation for it less enticing. Star Wars Galaxies had accounts for early jedi unlockers (being able to play as a jedi was originally a very rare thing) sell for multiple thousands of dollars also. Since jedi as a class was so attractive and so rare, you'd have to expect that such account sales would happen -- that is just bad design, assuming that you want to prevent such activities.
Still, it is hard to fault him too much since this was relatively uncharted territory. And, it makes for quite an interesting story!


I'm certainly not saying the guy is blameless, but his business existed because there was a need to be serviced. Buy an account, or gold, or use wowglider etc, the end user is risking their account. The whole industry is a grey market and the first rule is buyer beware.

I have no sympathy for people who pay for accounts and get them banned. They know (or should know) what they are getting in to and that they risk loss of the account. I guess it would be hard for a business to write in to it's legal stuff "Your account could be banned at any time due to your or our fault, so suck it and see!"

He talks as though his key mistake was personal ownership of the paypal account, but I think that really just focused the fallout on him rather than across multiple business entities. His key mistake was breaking the TOS/EULAs of the accounts that he was (re)selling, and rolling the dice that Blizzard would never catch on.

They did catch on. Personally, I think it is very difficult to prevent this sort of thing and that your best bet is to either just live with it, or change in-game things to make the motivation for it less enticing. Star Wars Galaxies had accounts for early jedi unlockers (being able to play as a jedi was originally a very rare thing) sell for multiple thousands of dollars also. Since jedi as a class was so attractive and so rare, you'd have to expect that such account sales would happen -- that is just bad design, assuming that you want to prevent such activities.

Still, it is hard to fault him too much since this was relatively uncharted territory. And, it makes for quite an interesting story!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Uncharted, Movie, Nathan, Drake, Marky Mark' to 'Uncharted, Movie, Nathan, Drake, Marky Mark, Wahlberg' - edited by chilaxe

No doubt ADSR would produce some great science, but it wouldn't address chemistry issues, or any other important issue any better than a LFTR project. It seems to me that it just introduces large amounts of extra complexity and cost. Particle accelerators are big unreliable machines, hence the need for 3 of them for redundancy and they could well reduce safety if something goes wrong. They are not even particularly suited to breeding, as they produce protons which as the name suggests are charged and so need to be very high energy to hit a nucleus and cause fission. The cynic in me says the whole idea was cooked up by the nuclear energy industry to ensure costs could be kept high, and so turn them and their friends in other energy industries a bigger profit (or even just a profit?). My understanding is also that between the various stockpiles of fissile we have, and high breeding ratios from early LFTRs startup fuel should not be a big issue.

I wish you all the best in your learning, I can think of few endeavors more worthy of changing your life's direction >> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Spacedog79:
The ADSR or "Accelerator Driven Sub-critical Reactor" is unfortunately a massive waste of time. Why not build a properly configured LFTR reactor and it does just the same thing and you don't need to build 3 large particle accelerators to do it.

I agree in one sense, but in another, the chemistry of the LFTR might prove impossible to solve (though this is hardly even a fear atm), so divesting in a "less" effective way to fission isn't a complete waste. Also, you could use this just to breed thorium which would be handy if you hand thousands of thorium generators to start up (you need a good deal of U233 to start the reaction as Thorium is only fertile, not fissionable). This also would be a good way to burn up waste before we get a highly functional LFTR's with the ability to siphon in fission products. In the end, no road should be left uncharted when the end result maybe the salvation of the energy crisis and a life like star trek
I play to dedicate most of my laymen efforts over the next couple of months in learning more about fission for use in determining if I want to drop my life for what is it now and pursue nuclear physics. Pretty sharp turn from where I am now, but I almost feel morally compelled to do so.