By the way, it wasn’t the internet or lack of demand that killed Toys R Us. It was venture capital.

A private equity consortium led by KKR Group and including Bain Capital made a leveraged purchase of Toys R Us in 2005, and the company struggled under the debt used for the buyout. According to The Record the company’s debt payments were as high as $400 million a year, and were particularly crushing when the recession hit in 2008.

Also what many seem not to understand is that absurd debt loads preclude companies from doing other, useful actions that might improve their position and competitiveness. This is the venture capital business model: purchase, load up a company with debt while they extract current and “future” profits, then exit, shielded from the repercussions.

We are in the pillaging and looting stage of capitalism now, and it won’t be pretty.

Trump was absolutely 100% correct to block the Broadcom-Qualcomm deal. It’s amusing to watch all the people braying about it who would’ve been celebrating the same thing if Obama had done it.

Trump is terrible, but killing TPP (for America) and scuttling this Broadcom/Qualcomm merger are pretty great things.

Yep:

The baseline historical outcome for large numbers of people (especially men) moving from one populated area to another populated area is conflict, bloodshed, disease, and death.

— John Durant (@johndurant) March 14, 2018

Not to mention massive social change, which right or wrong is hugely disruptive and undesirable to the people already living there.

Liberals can cry as long as they want — the above is just a historical fact, like that Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president, etc.

Something I didn’t know about TARP was that it wound down in October 2010 with only $388 billion of the $700 billion available dispensed.

So when you hear about how “the stimulus didn’t work,” realize that we barely even tried it.

I learned that from reading this book. That work is what prompted a previous post about terrible academic writing. The book is indeed as dry and flavorless as the Atacama, but does contain good information throughout.

That said, I do not recommend that anyone else subject themselves to reading it. It very much only examines the crash through a confused mixture of laissez-faire capitalism and free market boosterism, even when its data and sometimes previous sentences directly contradict this line of thought. It is as interesting (if you can withstand the terrible writing, which I can) to read from this level of witnessing the cogntive dissonance as it is for the information therein. Nearly all of the writers get so close to understanding what occurred and why, but are never able to pull the pieces together, as doing so would threaten both their worldviews and their salaries. If you read this, do so for the information as the analysis is mostly useless and the writing is a tragedy.

I’d never thought about fluidity and the diminution of the nation-state in quite these terms before, but this comment is spot-on.

Also, all of these arcane speech codes, microaggressions, bizarre and unrealistic sexual norms, they are a way if gatekeeping. Spaces in the fluid elite are limited and it’s important to keep as many people out as possible. There are no real borders, so borders are created in behavior, in speech, in shared norms that look very inaccessible and bizarre to the majority.

Let’s find a common cultural referent here. Remember how the people in the Capital appeared to those from the Districts in The Hunger Games? That’s how the globehopping, fluid elite seem to almost everyone else. They look and seem utterly ridiculous, in a comical way. This is true even if some of their ideas are valid and good (which they are).

As the scope of human possibility has theoretically increased — with the internet and access to so much more information — freedom of action and being has actually substantially decreased.

There’s little room for exploration anymore, for trying on identities, for getting the feel of something and deciding that you don’t like it — or do. There’s no space for making mistakes any longer. Everything goes on your permanent record and no one will allow you to forget a minor flub, a moment of anger or even just a poorly-chosen word.

Everyone’s a critic but with none of the wisdom, insight, or sagacity of a true critic. Instead, nearly all are poo-flinging monkeys who have the acuity and wit of a doorknob.

The internet and social networks have amplified the worst of our mob tendencies and driven the reasonable and the well-considered from discourse altogether. It’s not sustainable from a societal perspective, and the most likely result is that the worst will achieve total victory.

I think I would’ve made a good scientist, even today where the focus is on math pseudo-IQ tests rather than deep thinking.

However, I am glad that the obsession with mathiness caused me to stay away as I would’ve not liked academia much — and that would’ve been the most likely default destination.

As E.O. Wilson knows, ideas rarely come from math. How most scientists actually generate ideas has little to nothing to do with the oddball math worship.

I am angry at my teachers to this day for telling me that math was all that matters, even if they were narrowly correct. Math hardly matters at all for real thinking, unless you are a mathematician.

I could’ve never passed any of the math classes in the STEM curriculum, so that was an effective hurdle keeping me out. But I still would’ve been a good — and perhaps great — scientist.

People who think “fake news” is some new phenomenon should really read up on “yellow journalism.” It moves faster now, yep, but it’s not new at all.

Obamas in negotiations to develop Netflix series: report.

Oh please no. Can’t we be just done with them and Trump too?