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ryandward

52 karma · joined October 15, 2020

Econometrician and genomicist
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ryandward··on WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore
Yeah, before today I'd have likely dismissed such comments as "conspiracy theory" but, RobinHood literally disabled the ability to buy, or even search for these stocks on their platform.
ryandward··on WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore
The biggest flaw of conventional economic theory is that "people are rational".
ryandward··on WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore
Even as an econometrician, I would never call it dumb. It's a virtual incarnation of Occupy Wall Street. These guys are probably spending less than those who protested several years ago did. Heck, you can buy a stock and still go to work. No need to forego weeks of labor.
ryandward··on WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore
Nobody is gambling money away. The sentiment is that they are knowingly _throwing_ it away to send a message.
ryandward··on GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine
John Maynard Keynes quips that "in the long run we are all dead."
ryandward··on How r/WallStreetBets gamed the stock of GameStop
If I'm not mistaken, that's kind of the point. People are willing to throw money away to punish Wall Street.
ryandward··on How r/WallStreetBets gamed the stock of GameStop
Exactly -- reducing the barriers to market entry while increasing widespread market understanding reduces the _unique_ opportunity for arbitrage that Wall Street has enjoyed.
ryandward··on How r/WallStreetBets gamed the stock of GameStop
This emergent behavior seems a lot like DDOS, but in the stock market.
ryandward··on GameStop Stock: How Reddit Took on Wall Street
This kind of emergent behavior is reminiscent of DDOS attacks.
ryandward··on U.S. Hits Record Daily Death Toll, with Worse Likely to Come
I agree, there might even be a correlation between "incorrect confidence" and creativity. It's important to note though that other countries have been dealing with the fallout of their bad mistakes for centuries, while the US is still relatively young.
ryandward··on Blender Conference 2020
A few weeks back I went to the LibreOffice conference and the vibes were really encouraging. It is really a strange time we live in, where there are these fundamental structural changes in gatherings, bringing communities together in a totally virtual space.

These FOSS conferences are a huge deal and really thrive on community support. I encourage you to go, if for no other reason to get a feel for where the projects are going.

ryandward··on The Need for Touch
There's something fundamentally different that seems to cut cleanly along cultures.

Growing up in a Mexican culture, I have always been taught to be chaste and pious, but it just isn't something I internalized. Instead, my peers were a much bigger influence.

It seems more common in some other cultural contexts to internalize this kind of self-denial with overtones of purity.

Even as a gay man, I never found the need for dating apps, since there isn't as much of a binary distinction between friends/acquaintances and romantic partners.

ryandward··on The Cobalt-60 Accident of Ciudad Juarez (2019)
That's the grim truth.
ryandward··on The Cobalt-60 Accident of Ciudad Juarez (2019)
Something isn't adding up. I grew up about twenty miles from here in the 1980s and 1990s and never heard of this. How is this possible?
ryandward··on An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you
Maybe we can try to be nice to each other.
ryandward··on I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
I guess it isn't news to me, but I'm running out of places for legit conversations and product recommendations.