jgbond

Whiplash, even though it’s about music and arguably a cautionary tale

There’s a whole chapter in the popular mathematics book “How to Not Be Wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg that covers successful lottery strategies and the math behind them. As I recall from the book, the basic strategy was very simple and had a few groups of practitioners. Optimizing for increased incremental returns was far more sophisticated, though. There were also the operational challenges of buying and tracking so many tickets.

I’m guessing DMs were the real loot. The public display with the BTC diversion validates any DMs that were stolen. Otherwise blackmail targets could deny them.

The apartment complex they’re talking about in the article is (educated guess, used to live there) one of the nicest and most expensive in the country. It’s overlooking the Saigon River and has luxuries and amenities that you wouldn’t have except at super luxury buildings the US.

You can live a pampered lifestyle that would not be even remotely within reach in the US on the same budget.

I read an article years ago about how urban design in China post-Tiananmen has deliberately incorporated features that prevent mass protests. Narrow, labyrinthine alleys are hard to clear out and control. With sprawling, eight-lane highways, it's relatively easy.

Xinjiang is an autonomous region, too. Tibet has been thoroughly “Hanified,” though you’re right that it hasn’t been as dramatic as in Xinjiang. The same is true for other ethnic minorities, too. Traditional costumes are kept to pay lip service to plurality, and there are some parks that feel more like Epcot Center exhibits. It’s not all due to government intervention, but China’s ethnic minorities are disappearing.

The article doesn’t touch on it much, but the palm oil industry basically runs on slave labor, too.

Or perhaps it could be a cooperative relationship where neither side has to fear?

Having worked in a meat processing plant, I can assure you that no humans would want to eat anything that goes into "rendering" for use in pet food.

I'm not talking about offal, tripe, small goods, etc., all of which have markets for human consumption. Some of those items are high margin, too.

There are markets somewhere in the world for just about every last bit of an animal. The only stuff that goes into pet food is stuff that has been contaminated or that has no higher margin use in other applications. Basically, pets get the waste.

Fun fact -- The highest margin product in a beef house is fetal calf blood. It typically goes for about $400/liter and can sometimes spike up to $1000/liter.

Finally -- I'd been driving myself nuts for about two years trying to figure out the title to the Sturgill Simpson song "Turtles All the Way Down."

WeChat is the only viable option in China because no one else is allowed to compete. It's a bloated piece of crap that has borderline become an OS within an OS. "In WeChat, everything’s in one place." Know where else everything is in one place? On your home screen where you can have lots of buttons called apps that do specialized things in a better and more simplified manner than WeChat can.

The post fails to mention that WeChat is protected from competition against other major global apps. If Google, Facebook, et al, were allowed to operate freely in China, WeChat would get picked apart.

Yes, there are a lot of cool things about WeChat and certain features that it arguably does better than its foreign counterparts, but it is still a mess. It is slow, cluttered, bloated, and full of crimes against design. The lack of competitive pressure really shows.

I imagine that if and when some real competition shows up, WeChat will evolve into a full-blown mobile OS.

This would suck for people who like to use their own cards to build rewards points and then get reimbursed.