To be clear, I don’t think there is any threat from the US welcoming many more refugees. The US is very large and is fairly good at integration and the welfare benefits aren’t generous enough to attract many of those who are unlikely to contribute much to society.

It’s a completely and utterly different story for small-population, demographically-declining countries like Sweden.

In other words, the US can take a million refugees in no problem, even if their anti-Englightenment beliefs make some areas of some cities worse.

Sweden cannot take a million anti-Enlightenment refugees in and expect to survive it long-term. It just simply cannot. The same is true for many other European countries.

Sweden will not be a good place to live in 30 or 40 years, especially for women. The same might be true in many other European countries in the medium term.

The US faces no such threat, at least not from refugees. Climate change, now that is a whole different story.

What in the hell?

What kinda mook doesn’t put in a buy-stop order when short selling?

A mook who has no fucking clue what he’s doing, that’s what kind.

I don’t feel the least bit of sympathy for this guy. He’s the one on the other end of my trades whose money I’m taking. If you’re going to play games like that, you better know what you’re doing or you’re going to be poor right quick. And I’ll have your money and be wishing you good luck on retiring to that Frigidaire box.

Sold a few stocks short. Lost very little money, made a large net gain overall. The reason is buy-stop orders.

A hard lesson, but if you are gambling understand the stakes. (This guy was gambling. What I do is not gambling.)

It’s funny how people who are “naturally fat” eat in my presence in an eight hour workday period more than I eat in an entire 24 hour period. Far more.

Just observations from work.

One guy consistently eats more calories in cookies alone than I eat in a day, of anything.

One guy’s “lunch” is as big as two of my dinners.

Etc.

Not intending to single anyone out. But I do observe what people eat because I have the data, but I also want to observe data in action.

Yes, strange how people who are “naturally fat” seem to have to eat so much more than I do to be that way.

Hmm…..

I’ll be very sad when Thunderbird dies.

I fucking HATE webmail. So, so ungodly slow and search also works so horribly.

And the interface changes every couple of weeks. And of course they are mining your data harder than a coal baron.

Webmail is a bad solution to a bad problem. When Thunderbird dies, send me a damn physical letter.

What you get when you invite anti-Enlightenment people into your country en masse.

I don’t think there is much direct threat from refugees as far as terrorism goes, at least not first-generation refugees.

No, the real risk is the worsening environment for women that inevitably results.

Sweden will be a very, very different place — and far worse — in 30 years.

I’d urge any Swedish women (especially) to beat feet while you can.

Intel’s 72-Core ‘Knight’s Landing’ Xeon Phi Supercomputer Chip Cleared For Takeoff.

For some context, for vector-based tasks at least it will soon be possible for a regular person to own in a single box more computing power than existed in the entire world in 1970.

Heck, it already is, and at least for a while it was possible for less than $200, at least for the previous generation.

Of course then you have to know what to do with it….

I got a pushy note from a recruiter today. It annoyed me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have recruiters contacting me every few days with real job prospects. As an American, this is wonderful. Most people are not so lucky.

But good lord they can be pushy prats.

This one was particularly bad: basically demanding a new copy of my resume, filling out some forms, etc. Note that they already have pretty recent info on me. They just want me to do their work for them.

So this is the response I sent back:

Hello, thanks for contacting me. I don’t need a job. I already have two at the moment. But apparently you need to fill a position. That’s great.

But you already have all of this information and I’m already in high demand. For this reason I don’t waste time sending personal information out applying to mystery jobs to unknown parties, especially in response to those who send demanding letters requiring me to do a lot of work. This is not, might I add, how you are likely to find top employees.

If you have a specific job that you think I might be interested in and could possibly be well-suited for, pitch me that particular job. I’m not in a place in my career where I am desperate for work. I am good at what I do and I take pride in it. So it follows that I will only work with employers that meet my standards  — and for me to determine that, I need to know who they are in advance.

If this is not acceptable, please remove me from your list. If it is acceptable — great. We can work together. Thank you.

Yes, I know 100% that will get me nuked from this recruiter’s database. It is both a bit arrogant and dismissive. That’s the whole point — even though everything in the letter is true.

I just don’t have time for that anymore, and if it makes someone think (I know, probably won’t), all the better.

And now I have a form letter I can send out to all these sharks.

Why is everyone wringing their hands over the greater coverage given to the Paris vs the Beirut attacks?

It’s completely obvious why people in the Western world notice what happens in Paris more — there are far more cultural connections to Paris than Beirut in the US. Heck, Paris is one of the few overseas cities that many Americans have visited. Many millions of  Americans slept through French class in school. How many took Arabic? I’ve never seen a public school that offered Arabic classes, though there must be a few. But every school nearly offers French.

Do I care what happened in Beirut? Of course. It’s a horrible tragedy. But I have no cultural connection to Beirut. And even though I lived in the Middle East for a while, I don’t have any deep understanding of the region and I don’t speak or read Arabic. I have no context for anything that happens in Beirut nor could I easily obtain this without years of difficult study.

The same is true of most Americans and most Westerners.

The left is always so eager to blame racism for everything to burnish their reputation and gain empathy status points when more pedestrian explanations are this time (and often) more correct.

To put it in computer design terms, Paris is an easily-accessible interface with many affordances; Beirut is a command line interface without tab completion and with no man pages.

That’s really all it is.

What indeed was Bloomingdale’s thinking?

As usual, I interpreted the ad completely differently than everyone else, apparently.

I thought it was clear from the woman’s head being turned away as if laughing at a joke only she has knowledge of and the man’s vaguely confused/dazed look that the woman was implied to be the one having done the spiking. It never occurred to me that anyone in this particular ad would think the man had been the one slipping a mickey.

That doesn’t make it any better, though.

But everyone is talking about the ad so it worked, right?

When will we finally discuss Brussels?

Note that it is not Islamophobia to not wish women to be treated like cattle, and to be rightly avoidant and disdainful of cultures who do wish this.

And if wanting equal rights for women makes me Islamophobic, and recognizing that importing large numbers of men who will gladly take those rights away from women who are already present if given the chance and the political power also makes me Islamophobic, then well hell I guess I am Islamophobic.

In many areas, the liberal left is full of just as many fairy stories as the ridiculous right.