So far the only completely sensible take on the European refugee crisis is from Slavoj Žižek.

Have there ever been any countries that voluntarily (rather than involuntarily) destroyed themselves by allowing nearly-unrestricted immigration from those with incompatible values? I can’t think of any instance in history. But we’re about to watch it happen.

It’ll be interesting to watch it play out in Sweden, Denmmark, Norway and a few other Western European countries who do that to themselves.

When you invite a load of young men who hate and fear women and modernity into your country en masse, nothing good is going to come of that long-term. It just can’t.

Liberal fantasies of singing kumbaya by the fucking fire make that more certain, not less.

About Windows 10, it’s appalling how unfinished it feels.

It’s sort of like a student project concept of an OS interface. It fails where it should be strong, and provides loads of things no one needs or uses.

It just feels so incomplete, lacking in any polish or utility — it’s the worst of both worlds: both ugly and non-functional.

Thank the gods for Classic Shell. I’ve donated $50 to that project since it’s been around. One of the most productivity-enabling software projects ever created.

What do we ‘know’ about investing – but can’t prove with stats?

That psychology, sociology and and assiduously studying what people are thinking is just as important as any quant pseudo-math, if not more so.

Economics is really just psychology and sociology translated into monetary terms, and pecuniary issues just cannot be abstracted into the realm of pure math. It’s just more physics envy which is detrimental to many fields, economics included. While statistical techniques are useful, they are merely a start. The most important aspects of investment just cannot (and maybe can never be) captured statistically. Most of the time it’s just useful as a post hoc analysis.

In many ways, we’ve probably reached or are near the limits of what stats in quite a few fields can get us — at least without beyond-human level intellects.