byEngineer

Which is based on subjective feelings alone.

I was treated by the byc cops really bad. I can easily imagine how much more worse I would feel if I were Black with all that PC propaganda fed into my head since birth

Charged isn't convicted. Somehow Blacks are 70% of prison population. So it looks like the cops are right. Unless we will buy now into a conspiracy theory that Blacks are convicted based solely on the skin color.

You mean this is why males don't complain about being targeted more often by the Police than females?

You would think logical people are here. If 80% of crimes is done by Blacks in a neighborhood isn't it more efficient to look for criminals in this group even if it is just 15% minority?

Why males don't complain about being targeted by the Police compared to women?

Exactly! Russians are incapable of growing enough food to feed themselves. My point exactly. Blaming their own stupidity on others is stupid too

Are you Buddhist? Yes! Are you religious? No!

This is as idiotic as:

Are you vegetarian? Yes! Do you eat meat? Yes!

So you can't draw conclusions? This is basic reading comprehension skill we are talking about here dude.

Whatever. Each and every country in EU produces much, much more food it can consume. Poland produces 100% more food Poles can eat. The same is true for basically whole of EU and the USA. Of course Russia has its excuses, like "it is hard", but dude! Population lower than Pakistan or Japan with soooooo much land. Still can't do it. Apparently all they can do is dig up some oil and gas. Everything else needs to be imported. I understand Saudi Arabia is the same way, but they are on a desert! Pathetic... With all this land, all these resources, all this human capital 60% income dependant on oil and gas exports.

Medvedev. Just admitted very recently that a country occupying half the globe with 130m population can't even grow enough apples. They need to be imported from Poland. The same is true with everything else. Are you kidding me? And then Over 50% of the Russian budget comes from gas and oil exports. The country gdp size is the same as Spain's... So all it really took was to drive oil prices below 60usd a barrel. And the Russian economy is ruined. Wow...

Oh, details, details, we never look for them when deciding to give three young children to a psychopath ran family

So you are a religious person after all?

This works both ways. Atheistic forms are there along deity ones. And still this or another way this makes you a Buddhist which IS a religion. Atheistic Buddhist is an oxymoron, I hope you understand at least this much

>> But you consider yourself agnostic probably? Or atheist... >And of course you don't see any contradiction here. >Buddhism is nontheistic, so no contradiction...

Buddhist friend from Japan claims otherwise. Many Gods in Buddhism. Taking the religion and cutting out whatever not convenient so Westerners will still pay for the privilege. That's what they did to promote buddhism in US and make money on it. Still it is like puzzle with missing pieces then.

You know Jesuits (yep, these evil dudes) have their own ways to meditate, their own way look on things like economics (gold standard has been widely discussed among Jesuits since middle ages), etc. One could take whatever is convenient there too, say there is no God, and just end up with some kind of philosophy. My point is that it's not like in your own civilization you don't have some deep thoughts or ways to meditate, it is just that they aren't fashionable at the moment. Or maybe christians are too focused on Jesus Christ to notice all this stuff that was developed within this religion across centuries.

>> You probably would be better off omitting this spiritual junk food of new age instead altogether. >In favour of what?

Something closer to our own civilization. I think I believe in God. I go to church very rarely though. I'm not deep believer. I hate all the bad things Catholic Church has been doing. Especially to children. But Im not obsessed with them too. I'm not a good Catholic at all. But for me changing this altogether to be more Eastern would be a mistake. You are still under influence of a religious thought. The difference is that it is foreign to the culture where you function daily. It's like changing big comfortable armchair for a wooden chair. Maybe you don't want to sit at home at all, but still better to have an armchair.

When I was a child (maybe 8 year old) I was slapped in face by a priest during mess. Others, friends saw it. It was because I wanted to leave the mess. Because I was feeling really bad/dizzy. The point to understand is that this priest is a really, really bad christian. He isn't God.

If you want to pick and choose. At least do it within your culture. Pick and choose values in your own culture that make sense to you.

Omit these bad Christians who hurt you. I'm sure there are bad buddhist monks who hurt their own too. See through that. Might be intellectually interesting.

Gold Standard and Jesuits: they figured out that fiat money always ends up with inflation (stealing the value of money by the King/Government). So they figured gold standard is good as it makes stealing money from people more difficult. Now, just imagine the parallel between this and for example what many modern economists say. They might not even know that a lot of libertarian economic thought had its roots in Jesuits "philosophy". Religion touches every aspect of our lives. Should FED be abolished? There were guys in habits thinking about it 500 years ago. Just saying it is cool to see these parallels within your culture. If I studied buddhism instead I wouldn't be able to see them. Not sure if bddhism has anything on money standards or economics.

But again, I write this, and will go to church rarely. Christianity is just important part of our culture. It is school of thought too. But instead of insulating you from the world (i.e. issues, economy, whatever), it is strongly embedded in it. It actually defined our culture whether we like it or not. For Jesus Christ we have Marxist priests. How they connect the two, I don't know, but shows you how deep some of these philosophies can be, even though we are not aware of them.

so you are into buddhist "philosophy" and "certain techniques". But you consider yourself agnostic probably? Or atheist... And of course you don't see any contradiction here.

you know why the cults are out there? Because people who don't believe in God are ready to believe in anything. Wandering from yoga classes to self-improvement new-agey seminars and paying the top dollar for the privilege.

Picking and choosing from a technique here and a convenient piece of philosophy there doesn't sound like solid approach to spiritual life.

Treating your soul like cart in a convenience store where you just throw-in whatever looks good is plain naive, immature and wrong. Besides, Yoga, buddhism fashion and other New Agey fashions are so passe: they peaked in 80s/90s. Are there still people treating this seriously?

I'm sorry but this is the lowest form of spirituality I can imagine. You probably would be better off omitting this spiritual junk food of new age instead altogether.

And NOBODY would even dare to think to treat Russian monopolies like that. Monopolies that actually are a real threat to Europe. Like Gazprom.

read the article

I'm married with family. It is something else: You need to turn yourself into a corporate-or-other slave to pay off the mortgage, cars, save for kids' schools, etc.

Absolutely no wonder that in "poor" countries they are happier. Living in constant stress about the job, with huge financial obligation, not even seeing your kids and spouse except for weekends and a week vacation a year -- compare this to my parents generation in communistic (then) Poland -- no debt, guaranteed jobs, free housing. Economically speaking yes this doesn't make sense. Psychologically - why they are looking (in the article above) in all the wrong places for explanations when it is so obvious.

In your personal opinion, of course

of course, great! Go work for them! Some people just love to be treated badly and that's why companies like GS still exist. Why to be treated nice and have higher salary when you can be treated like shit, earn 90k in NYC and end up in jail for many years for copying files around. Just join them!

two different things: corruption and illegal activities happen all the time in the Corporate America. Finance, Tech, Auto, you name it. That's one thing and that's where (I believe) your comment is coming from.

Second thing: you will have much harder time becoming manager, doing important work, becoming CEO, etc in company that is not directly in your field. It gets worse. The Companies tend to get rid of employees who are not their "main line of business" in the economic downturns. In other words: your job as a developer or IT engineer at a large bank or hedge fund can (and will!) be outsourced easily if needed. They are not an IT company! They could care less about agile or not using Ruby or Java or Perl. They are financial insitution. You are there to make their infrastructure work. If not you then someone else. If nobody else, then India. You are not their core business. They have you as a nice to have extra because times are good, extra cash is there and someone thought it might be a good idea to do it in-house. On the other hand Google, Facebook, MS, etc -- they live and breathe technology. Your Manager won't be a dude who doesn't care about technology. You won't be treated as the proverbial "fifth wheel in a car". You are the core business here. On the other hand, here is the place, where employees running books can be outsourced at a CEO grim. Let ATP or someone take care of that crap!

I can't believe talented computer scientists would go to GS to waste their time building great stuff for a company that will put them to jail for many years if they put some of the HFT source code on the public server.

I don't think Google or Facebook would ever do that. The same way GS would never try so hard to jail their traders for inside trading.

Good. Because if you do by any chance you will spend many, many years in prison. You like that part too, right?

The profit to the society is from regular guys like you and me not partaking in the scam anymore. Not spending money on it. Distrusting the game. Long term it makes sense: people will start investing long term based on fudamentals vs wanting to get rich quick on hocus locus TA. Short term trading is losers game. You will always loose against HFT.

So instead of doing that, read the companies fundamentals. Learn about their debt levels. Earnings. Read their books. And only then invest with 1-2 year time horizon minimum.

HFT is valuable to the society as it makes the society understand that treating Markets like casino gambling isn't working.

screwed up medicare. screwed up with russia. screwed up with Iraq. Time to screw up the internet!

thank you very much for explaining that! So it is really quasi-random image generator with the initial string being a seed?

We are social animals. We shouldn't ignore statistics that show us the society is sick.

In my old country (Poland) just 20+ years ago divorces were almost unheard of. Today they are almost as close to the 50% as in the USA. Now stating it is all about individuals and totally ignoring what is wrong with the system, isn't a solution (imho).

Why my parents generation with (mostly) stay at home moms and dads working simple manual jobs, got married in early 20s and made happy couples in a rate of 90%+. Why they had 2+ children vs. one that we can afford.

I guess that would be very interesting to look at this.

This is totally amazing! Wondering if it would be possible to go the other way around: from generated JPG to a string. If yes, what a cool way to send your password as a... JPG over email.

Divorce rates at 50% (contrary to the statement in the article) are not my way really. This is the way of the society today.

Well, she just says that people are selfish and following selfishness (your own) in the sphere of economy makes economic sense. You guys have your own delusions, like utopias were people are equal. And if not -- we will put them into reeducation camps, so they don't want to have more than their neighbor anymore. This never worked. What I like about Right is that it takes people as they are, the good, the bad, and the ugly and tries to build the system using what it has at hand. The Left usually expects people to be different than in reality they are. It's good to dream, but exchanging dreams for reality (i.e. utopias) ends up with tyranny. What, they still have private property? Shoot them! Bam, 7 million dead kulaks. What I don't like about Rand philosophy is that it is like the Left in the sense that it is a bit utopian, dream-like. People will go there and vote for nonsense, we need to remember that. We can't get pure capitalism as we can't get pure socialism too. But the important thing to remember is to know how the markets and economy work (Right). And to live and let live others (Left).

Then the rest of your rant really is, like, what do you mean? What did you expect? The government spending to be effective? To have people busy working in zombie banks or unionized companies? Sorry, turns out doesn't work that way. Socialism doesn't work, the only rational thing to do when working at zombie bank and is to put your time to more productive tasks. If a dreamer like you voted for that spending and is ready to spend his tax money on it... who am I to judge it? I'll gladly take it. Sure it is better than sweating 80 hour weeks at productive place like Apple. What did you think? Where Im coming from we have this saying: if someone wants to fight with you, run away. If someone wants to give you something, take it. Thank you! And don't forget to vote for even higher taxes and even more Government spending. 120k/year with all the slacking I do still doesn't get me the Land Rover I wanna have.

And if I can't afford the payment because the bank goes bankrupt next year. Please don't forget to support measures to "distress families with debt"... I mean I didn't want this car, bankers told me to buy it. We did that with housing, why not continue once this bubble pops? Raise taxes, pay even more, so I can still stay at the house I can't afford, driving a car I shouldn't have bought in the first place, all from your tax money already. But you don't care, as you know -- it is all bankers fault!!! - so bail me out brother! ;-)

Must be stinky rich to have this type of philosophy in life.

Who is a hypocrite here? I thought you would be happy to hear I'm exploiting these evil big banks, too big too fail.

I like Ayn Rand but don't agree on everything she said. But for the sake of argument let's say I agree with her 100%. So, then:

I use the company's money and time to work on my own Projects. I selfishly exploit stupid and weak that should die in the natural capitalistic process, but democratically elected Government didn't let it happen. I'm a parasite on the sick system because I want it to die. I don't see anything against Ayn Rand philosophy here. But then again, I'm not her cult follower or whatever.

And then being in this position I also see that the party can't go on forever and probably the day of reckoning will come. Most of these 300k employees wasting their time on BS jobs now, will eventually loose them. Maybe as soon as next year granted the FED raises interest rates substantially.

> How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning?

There are a few issues I have with this statement, hence I decided to slice your post. I hope it is ok. Here is what I can't agree on: 1. From the very sentence above my understanding is that you notice something very important here: is it that in your opinion democracy doesn't work? You see this point you make isn't about capitalism. It's all about Democracy. Your claim here is that (sorry for vulgar interpretation): democracy doesn't work because I see elections after elections that voters vote for guys with most money for the campaign. But that's issue with democracy. Not capitalism. As long as money exists, rich&poor exist -- democracy won't be perfect. I take different view than that on this. I think you need more than just money to kind of "cheat" in democracy. You need stupid populous too. You need dumb people who care just about 6-packs and entitlements. So whoever promises them the most for the vote casted, gets elected. And then that gets funded by cheap credit, forever low interest rates (FED) and public spending. No wonder both parties do the same. This is late stages of democracy though. Not issue with capitalism. Last time I checked capitalism worked fantastic for a country - namely China -- but without the fallacies of democracy. 2. You are not the only one who notices that. US Government noticed that as well. And compared to China, it seems democracy and capitalism aren't as effective as authoritarian system and capitalism. It's not only China. Look at South-East Asia in general. If you ask, why we have more militarization of police, huge prison population, NSA eavesdropping, etc, etc -- it's all about the elites in the US seeing on the example of China that democracy doesn't really work. 3. Another issue with the statement: would you voted for Hitler given he had the most money in elections in 1933 ? Right, democracy isn't idiot-proof. That's the real problem with it. You can't really let 6-pack-joe voting, that's idiotic notion. Again, nothing to do with capitalism.

>Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.

Democratic system that is. Ordinary citizen not knowing how to vote. Poor idiots. Almost like Jews voting for NSDAP. (Sorry, couldn't help myself). Your disbelieve in American voters is mind blowing! The distrust in democracy horrifying!

EDIT: voted <-> voting ; stop <-> help