Huh.

The immediate, most obvious bias is that he has one hand full of chocolate bars, and the other hand with only one silver bar.

If I were in that situation...

My ignorance about the value of silver and how to identify it would come in to play. I have no idea how much 1 oz of silver is worth, and I still have no idea when it's 10 oz.

Taking the chocolate bar would cost me nothing. It's easy to tell it's real. It looks like he's got lots, so I don't feel greedy. It's consumable, so it won't take up any space. And hey, free chocolate!

Taking the silver has added work and uncomfortable emotions attached. I still don't trust this stranger I met on the street. IF the silver is real, I have no clue how much it's worth. AND I'm still stuck with this lump of metal that I can't do anything with unless I find someone to sell it to. Since I've never sold silver before, I expect to get ripped off. I don't know if I trust a coin shop like the "WE BUY GOLD" people to treat me fairly, and selling online is a hassle. It will probably sit in my house for weeks. Best case scenario, I earn some money after jumping through a few hoops. Worst case scenario, I feel cheated and have a bad day.

Honestly, presented the way it is in this video, and not knowing the worth of the silver, I would probably have taken the chocolate too. (Though... I don't actually like milk chocolate. I probably would have just said "No thanks!" and kept walking.)

8:18 – "Germany is very financially responsible".

The clip makes a few good points, twists others and omits some central issues. But I want to comment on the quote above most of all, because it forms the basis for all kinds of arguments and recommendations.

The claim that Germany is financially responsible stems from what has been paraded around domestically as the "schwarze Null" (black zero), meaning a balanced budget. Given how focused most economic debates are around the national debt or the current budget deficit, it shouldn't come as a surprise that not running a deficit evokes positive responses in the public. If there has ever been an easy sell, politically, it's this.

However, it's not that simple.

For instance, the sectoral balance rule dictates, by pure accounting identity, that the sum of public balance, private balance and external balance is 0 at all times. In case of Germany, this means that the balanced public budget (no surplus, just a fat zero) requires a current account surplus of the same size as private savings – or an accumulation of private debt. For someone to run a surplus, someone else has to run a deficit. In this case, foreign economies have to run a deficit vis-á-vis Germany, so that neither the German government nor the German private sector have to run a deficit.

The composition of each sector is another topic entirely, but the point remains: no surplus in Germany without a deficit in the periphery. If everyone is to be like Germany, Klingons have to run the respective deficit.

My question: is it financially responsible to depend on other economies' deficits to keep your own house in order? Is it responsible to engage in this kind of behaviour after having locked yourself into a monetary union with less competitive economies who have no way of defending themselves through currency devaluation?

Second point: capital accounts and current accounts are two sides of the same coin. If Germany runs a current account surplus of X%, it also runs a capital account deficit of X%. Doesn't explain anything, but it's the same for the countries at the other side of these trade imbalances. Spain's current account deficit with Germany meant a capital inflow of the same size.

Let's look at EuroStat's dataset for current accounts. Germany had run a minor current account deficit during the late '90s and a small surplus up to 2003. From then on, it went up, up, up. Given the size of Germany's economy within Europe, that jump from 2% to 7.5% is enormous. Pre-GFC, the majority of this surplus went to... yap, PIIGS. Their deficits multiplied.

Subsequently, capital of equals size flowed into these countries, looking for investments. No nation, none, can absorb this amount of capital without it resulting in a massive misallocation, be it stock bubbles, housing bubbles, highways to nowhere or lavish consumption. Michael Pettis wrote a magnificent account (Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73) of this and explains how Germany handled a similar inflow of capital after the Franco-Prussian war: it crashed their economy.

As Pettis correctly points out, the question of causality remains. Was the capital flow a pull or a push?

The dataset linked above says it all happened at just about the same time, in all countries. It also happened at the same time as Germany's parliament signed of on "Agenda 2010", which is the cause of massive wage suppression in Germany. Germany intentionally lowered its unit labour costs and undercut the agreed upon inflation target (2%). German employees and retirees were forced to live below their means, so the export sector could gain competitiveness against all the other nations, including those in the same currency union. Beggar-thy-neighbour on steroids.

Greece overshot the inflation target. They lived beyond their means. But due to their size, it's economically negligable. France stayed on point the entire time, has higher productivity than Germany and still gets defamed as the lame duck of Europe. Yet Germany, after more than a decade of financial warfare against its fellow members of the EU/EZ, is hailed as the beacon of financial responsibility.

Mercantilism always comes at the cost of others. And the EU is living proof.

It isn't defining other peoples relationships. It is defining something tangible based on a universal. But that's an old subject between us.

And I didn't coin the Nazi reference, nor the cockersucker one, in that those were oldie but goodies from Stewart himself as he made fun of conservative pundits, as was implied by the previous paragraph--almost spelled it out actually.

Also, you had quoted Chaos and I was saying directly to him that he had implied it was learned behavior. Now I am not sure...did you think I meant the Stewart video?

He has four coins. @ 1:14 he palms it. If you watch it at 0.25 speed, you can just see the edge of the coin between his fingers.

He's very good. Especially for his age.

He doesn't seem the type to go for camera tricks, I'm thinking "stackable" coins maybe ?

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The whole first part is magnets and steel coins
https://youtu.be/3J3fHUtdI78

Passing arm through table
Foot pedal glass top slide

https://youtu.be/m7-cv_7totc

I'm not clear what you mean by compartmentalizing & general friends bit exactly but..

Yes, human tend to gravitate towards distinct groups.
The terms coined would be In-groups or Out-groups.

In terms of society, people who socialize in non-normative ways are stigmatized as part of an Out-group. Any fringe culture.

e.g. - Those weirdo who can only make friends online.


However, for all us interweb nerds. Befriending stranger online IS the norm.

So we become the In-group, and those cocky extroverted socialite types are the Out-group.

This is effectively what's happening when you try to merge two circles of friends and they awkward reject one another.


So more or less.. no, "general" wholly inclusive friendships or In-group are not a thing.

You would all need one common thread.
Somewhere those threads would begin to divert too much and that circle would close ranks.

Hence, why Utopia is impossible.

Cool idea tho.

He was arrested for trespass, because he didn't leave when he was told to leave.

A business has control over their property, which includes the parking lot.

As far as judges go, you can flip a coin, one day this, another day that.

Judge probably doesn't go down to the local quickie mart and see beer cans that people throw out, condoms, people complaining that someone is in the parking lot playing their stereo too loud, just hanging out etc.

See, another example of some "i-can't-possibly-racial-insensitive-whatsoever-because-THIS-guy-agrees-with-completely-sheltered-rose-tinted-worldview" - *deep breath* - Bullshit!

[phew, these polite euphemisms for "racist" are getting out of hand now]

Unfortunately, the term "culture appropriation" is a misnomer.

The term coined should be Cultural MISappropriation and refers to shit like Blackface.

Something this was trendy, open mockery. Also, fairly lucrative.

This White Party video is a highly significant point of discussion and is important satire for all white folks to think about & discuss because..

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW MOST COLORED PEOPLE FEEL.
[I would know, cause this is exactly how i feel]

So yeah..

Tactless, suggestively snarky comments, with a Token to parrot and espouse believes that confirm your bias.. -_-

Is simply "mild" racism in action.
It's Denialism. It's Victim-blaming.

"Stop complaining. We're all equal see. Can't we all just learn spanish & twerk our butts, as one."

And let Americans sweep all that other extremely racist shit under the rug for another 150 years?!

Fuck no.

I think she does it here because that is her experience -- to random people that she meets, they immediately identify her as "Asian", but nothing more specific than that. Plus, the talk seems to be delivered to a group of mostly, well, Asians. There are massive cultural differences between subgroups for sure, but on the other hand I'm sure they do share some common experiences due to being someone readily identifiable as "Asian" in a Western country.


...And I think you're wrong about no-one referring to Germans, French, Italians, English, etc. as "Europeans". I think LOTS of Americans do that if they see someone who is white and doesn't have an American accent, but they can't identify their particular home country.

And as an example on the other side of the coin, as a white American living in Thailand, I get Thais asking me these same sorts of questions ALL THE TIME. "Where are you from", etc., just like Nat described as happening to Asians in the west. Heck, in Thai the word for any western foreigner (non-Thai) is "farang", which most likely has roots in the way Thais heard and tried to repeat the word "France" as said by early French visitors, who were some of the first westerners to visit the country. In Thai, "France" is said like "fah-rang-sey" or "fah-rang-set", and most people think that the word "farang" for any westerner comes from that. So, if I go out with my British friends, the Thais will refer to all of us as "farang", which is basically like calling us "Frenchie". My Brit friends tend to take a bit more offense to that than I do...

But in all seriousness, I don't find being called a "farang" offensive. It is basically never meant as an insult, and in my opinion westerners calling Chinese / Japanese / Thai "Asian" isn't either. It can get annoying, but annoying isn't exactly the same thing as offensive.

I've seen a variation on that trick before. The blue sheet is "dental dam" or something similar, a very stretchy rubber that goes transparent when it's pulled really tight.

Poke a coin into the bottom of the dental dam, stretch the dam so the coin pushes through, sort of like a mushroom. It appears to be on top, but in reality there's a very thin layer of transparent rubber on top of the coin. The right kind of pressure and the bottom coin just pops out the bottom of the sheet.

Voila. Magic!

(search "dental dam coin trick" for lots of examples, the usual one is to pop the coin into a glass)

Pfft. The coins are attached.

Myth busted.

Sweet debate! Sweet coin! Sweet, kissable, oh so face fuckable lady in more detail than EVER. Why must they spend so little time inspecting that face, and so much time on the leaves??

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