Stevie > Recent Status Updates

“Whatever parents teach their sons about fairness, integrity, and sincerity is undermined in a “bro” culture of peer policing and Animal House celebration. …”Compelled to conform”…, “Cut off from their families, for example, boys are more susceptible to the marketing pitches of a porn industry that distorts human sexuality and love.”

In another crosscultural study, Stony Brook University anthropologist David Gilmore found that various practices of misogyny, which he terms a “male malady”, are best understood as a manifestation of the struggle to suppress whatever men perceive about themselves as femininez He wrote, “Men who hate women hate themselves more.”

“In 2017, China abruptly announced that it would no longer accept large quantities of plastic waste from rich nations like the United States. At the time, China was importing $18 worth of solid waste. China’s rejection of waste was part of a broader health and environmental problem.”

“In almost all grocery lists of man’s environmental problems is found an item regarding oxygen supply. Fortunately for mankind, the supply is not vanishing as some have predicted.”

Researchers have found that the production of beef in Brazil is at less than half of its potential, which could be massively reduced. Brazil’s lesser known Atlantic Forest,far more of which has been lost than the Amazon, could benefit enormously.”
“There is enough land for large scale restoration of the Atlantic Forest, the “the hottest of hotspots...

Agribusiness is 25% of Brazil’sGDP and its what got the country thru recession,” said Nepstad. When soy farming comes into a landscape, the number of fires goes down. Little towns get money for schools and, GDP rises, and inequality declines. This is not a sector to beat up on, it’s one to find common ground with.

“None of this is to suggest that rising carbon emissions & climate change bring no risks. they do. But we have to understand that not all of their impacts will be bad for the natural environment and human societies...”

“But if we are to protect the world’s remaining old-growth forests, we’re going to need to reject environmental colonialism and support nations in their aspirations to develop.”

“Its bullshit.” Dan Nepstad, IPCC

According to an Oxford Univ. ecologist who studies them, Amazon plants consume about 60% of the oxygen they produce in respiration, the biochemical process whereby they obtain energy. Microbes which break down rainforest biomass, consume the other 40%. So, in all practical terms, the net contribution of the Amazon ECOSYSTEM to the world’s oxygen supply is effectively zero.

Pielke then shows normalized hurricane losses for the same period. Normalized means that Pielke and his coauthors adjusted the damage datato account for the massive development of America’s coastlines, like Miami’s since 1900. Once this is done there is no trend of rising costs.

The experts agreed in their unanimous Hohenkammer Statement that climate change is real and humans are contributing to it significantly. but they also agreed that more people and property in harm’s way explained the rising cost of natural disasters, not worsening disasters.

So a sucker problem would make us tend to believe that mathematics led to these beautiful objects, with exceptions here and there such as pyramids , as these preceded the more formal mathematics we had after Euclid & other Greek theorists. Some facts: architects (or what were then called Masters of Works) relied on heuristics... and almost nobody knew any mathematics...

The barbell technique remedies the the problem that risks of rare events are incomputable and fragile to estimation error... For antifragility is the combination of aggressiveness plus paranoia.

“If you put 90% of your funds in boring cash (assuming you are protected from inflation) or something called a “numeraire repository of value”, & 10% in very risky, maximally risky, securities, you cannot possibly lose more than than 10%, while you are exposed to massive upside. Someone with 100% in so-called medium risk securities has a risk of total ruin from miscomputation of risks”-On Seneca’s Barbell

They discovered that famine was more severe in areas with higher food production in the period before the famine began, meaning that it was govt policy of food distribution that was behind much of the problem, owing to the inflexibility of the procurement system. And indeed, a larger than expected share of famine over the past century has occurred in economies with central planning.

“It’s much easier to sell “Look what I did for you” than “Look what I avoided for you.” Of course a system based on performance exacerbates the problem...The true hero in the Black Swan world is someone who prevents a calamity and naturally because the calamity did not take place, does not get recognition.”

The Democratic side of the U.S spectrum favors hyper-intervention, unconditional regulation & large gov’t, while the Republican side loves large corporations, unconditional deregulation and militarism-both are the same to me here. They are even more the same when it comes to debt. Both have encouraged indebtedness which causes fragility and kills anti-fragility

On Switzerland-“It is not true that the Swiss don’t have a govt. What they don’t have is a large central govt or what the discourse describes as “the govt” - what governs them is entirely bottom up, municipal of sorts- near sovereign mini states united in a confederation... this bottom up form of dictatorship provides protection against the romanticism of utopias.”- The last remaining city state.

Someone who did not find something is providing others with the best knowledge. He is central part of the process...In order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic. There is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive likewise, there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur.

When you don’t have debt you don’t care about your reputation in economic circles- and somehow it is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one. Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

When you don’t have debt you don’t care about your reputation in economic circles- and somehow it is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one. Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

The world as a whole has never been richer, & it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.

“My experience is that money and transactions purify relations; ideas & abstract matters like “recognition” and “credit” warp them, creating an atmosphere of perpetual rivalry. I grow to find people greedy for credentials nauseating, repulsive & untrustworthy”

#9: ... But if you try it, you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. If you really understand a person in this way, if you are willing to enter his private world and see the way life appears to him, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it his way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or personality."

#9: ... But if you try it, you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. If you really understand a person in this way, if you are willing to enter his private world and see the way life appears to him, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it his way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or personality."

"Measures that aim at reducing variability and swings in the lives of children are also reducing variability and differences within our said to be Great Culturally Globalized Society."

"The tradition has been to think that aging causes bone weakness (bones lose density, become more brittle), as if there was a one-way relationship possibly brought about by hormones..." "It turns out"..."that the reverse is also largely true:loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and for males. loss of fertility and sexual function."

"It is quite perplexing that those from whom we have benefited the most aren't those who have tried to help us (say with "advice") but rather those who have actively tried-but eventually failed - to harm us."

..."When you don't have debt you don't care about your reputation in economics circles- and somehow it is only when you don't care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one. Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most who need them the least."

"I had a vivid illustration of domain dependence in the driveway of a hotel in the pseudo city of Dubai. A fellow who looked like a banker had a uniformed porter carry his luggage. ..."
" About fifteen minutes later I saw the banker lifting free weights at the gym, trying to replicate natural exercises using kettlebells as if were swinging a suitcase. Domain dependence is pervasive."