cleetus

Wonder why this has taken so long? On several occasions, I've gotten calls from my own cell number - which seems pretty crazy - and then that leads to more calls because sometimes real people call back after missing the robocalls. At first I took screen shots because I couldn't believe it, but it's happened frequently enough that the novelty wore off.

I worked for a retail clothing company called Steve & Barry's which was very much like The Office. One year the bonus was a novelty 5 pound Hershey chocolate bar. I ended up with 20 pounds of chocolate because several people in my department had no idea what to do with them. Another year they gave Miracle on 34th Street DVDs and popcorn because earlier that year we opened a location on 34th St in Manhattan. There were no bonuses my third year because the company filed bankruptcy and downsized.

At company-wide meetings, stand out performers were given 'top-banana' awards, which if I'm remembering correctly were actually bananas. I think one of my buddies actually kept his on his desk and let it rot until some poor cleaning person threw it away.

The company would order pizzas for lunch to encourage people not to go out, but charged a dollar a slice. Leftover pizza was wrapped individually in tinfoil, frozen, and available for sale the next day, still for a dollar. I remember several rounds of company wide emails chastising people for not paying for frozen pizza.

Shortly after that first bankruptcy filing, the company filed again and liquidated. Steve and Barry were bought out after the first filing and will never have to work again.

I think part of that is "Moneyball" has tended be more successful over the course of a 162 game season rather than the 5 or 7 game series of the playoffs where there can be a lot more variation in outcomes.

I also think the analytics quickly caught on across the league so the A's advantage was short lived. Now pretty much every team is very heavily invested in it.

These links discuss "news diets" as a counter to the problem of news as low-quality information and/or information pollution:

http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when....

http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/

And here's a similar recent discussion on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099

If you're a baseball fan, the book 'The Glory of Their Times' mentioned in the NYT article is a phenomenal read. It's the recollections of about 20 players about their playing days in the early 20th century, and is a reminder of why the game is so special.

There is a Bob Ross channel on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc

I moved from Dallas to Minneapolis and was certain I would feel safer walking and biking because of it's reputation as a bike friendly city. In Dallas, it seemed somewhat understandable to me for drivers not to except to see pedestrians and bikers because there just aren't that many of them - the city is so spread out. But the drivers in Minneapolis are straight up entitled, aggressive, and dangerous in high foot traffic areas. Right turn on red and and stop signs are treated as roll throughs, and only if there isn't oncoming traffic. I felt safer as a pedestrian living in NYC than I have in either Dallas or Minneapolis.

I think maybe a better question is not if markets are fully efficient, but if markets are more efficient than the alternatives. I read the Cassidy book years ago, so I might be misremembering, but I don't think that was something he spent much time discussing. I don’t think many would argue that markets can't fail and aren't fully efficient - he spent the entire book demonstrating that.

The idea that regulators have the ability to design, implement, and maintain laws that correct or protect from market failures without producing unintended consequences, perverse incentives, significant costs, or market distortions more severe than the original market failure was not sufficiently addressed, from what I remember. Despite their problems, markets tend to be dynamic, adaptive, and innovative, while regulations tend to be rigid, slow, and reactionary. I don't know what the answer to market failure is, but I found the book unsatisfactory in that regard.

I can only consume so much information, and most of the news is presented as low-quality information or information pollution.

The 24/7 news cycle makes the quality problem even worse.

Here are two more similar links:

http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when...

http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/

Pathos, jades, and other succulents are pretty easy. I water them once a week and repot once a year.

I find myself using Amazon so rarely now that it probably makes sense to drop Prime. It used to be the first and only place to look for something - I knew they would have it and it would be cheaper than anywhere else. Then it used to be that it might not always be cheapest, but it would be close, and at least it would be easy to find and delivered quickly. Now it seems like there is so much crap to sort through, half the time what I'm looking for isn't there, and if it is, it's probably overpriced or a counterfeit. Maybe I'm just an outlier.

I did the same thing and encourage friends and family to do it too. News is generally presented as low-quality information that should be consumed as rarely as possible. Here are two good write ups on quitting the news:

http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when...

http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/

Also, the 'research' tag is misspelled 'rersearch'

At least for me it's comfort - I don't like my boney knees knocking into each other.

Searching youtube for ice skating on black ice led me to apetor a while ago - one of the few channels I subscribe to. There's something strangely soothing about how goofy this guy is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1Q2jwEX11U&list=PL73A6AD7F0...

Kenji Lopez-Alt, Serious Eats, and Bon Appetite are great recipe inspirations: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqJQ_cXSat0KIAVfIfKkVA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6S5a3MQtr_PSWZxysXkOCg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w

apetor has goofy videos of him ice skating and swimming that can be soothing in an odd way: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnK83dqyPvFo6GX0rCwn8A

Growing up there I remember hearing that there was some problem with the tunnels being too narrow and the cars not fitting - but that was probably more local folklore than anything else.

Cincinnati is pretty hilly - not San Francisco or Seattle hilly - but enough that I would think developing any sort of system would be pretty expensive and difficult.

Big fan of the app clozemaster. Duolingo was great to begin with, but now seems so slow and has ads after every lesson. Clozemaster has a lot more variety in terms of vocab.

And it offers lots of different languages:

https://www.clozemaster.com/languages

A Mind for Numbers - Barbara Oakley

I spent a lot of time studying, but not learning effectively.

Bon Appetit's It's Alive is pretty humorous and well-edited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng2zOFADe0s&list=PLKtIunYVkv...

I'm a big fan of Kenji Alt Lopez's cooking videos, especially the POV ones: https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt/videos

And RStudio is an incredible IDE that can help ease that transition.

My boss is an incredibly smart guy, but he worked in consulting for 15+ years and sometimes cannot view data from outside of an Excel perspective. It can be frustrating to have him think that every problem is a vlookup and pivot table from being solved. I think it's easy to become a bit myopic with Excel. It's like if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

My feeling is that most criticisms of finance are based on a combination of a lack of understanding of what finance is and does, and indignation about how much money some people in the industry get paid. It's any easy target. Absolutely there are 'questionable people' in it, but are programers focused on getting users to click on more ads or spend time on a given app any better? Is tech really saving the world? There is so much more to tech than that, and most people in tech don't feel that's a fair representative of what they do. I think finance is similar, but I don't work in it so maybe I'm wrong...

He was an amazing pitcher.

http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/84592/roy-halla...

Spruce Moose!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZJsla2TG6E

I can't believe that's real!

Stop flying

I stopped getting calls after that! I was humored that they often called it 'IRS' rather than 'the IRS'.

For the space constrained, the Joule is a good bit smaller.

https://anovaculinary.com/anova-precision-cooker/specificati...

https://www.chefsteps.com/joule/specs

For my 30th bday, some friends and I walked around the perimeter of Manhattan. It took just over 20 hours, but that's mostly because we stopped several at bars along the way.