One year ago today: November 27, 2018, a generic day.
Five years ago today: November 27, 2014, Arduino inventory.
Nine years ago today: November 27, 2010, boost but no cables.
Random years ago today: November 27, 2008, remember Peggy?
A taxpayer-funded US chip developer, RISC-V, is relocating to Europe, citing tariff problems. Goodbye, you won’t be missed. But I wish the US would make them pay back the money used to establish the outfit. The chip company doesn’t build anything, but charges to have their logo stamped on parts as quality control. The US also has laws that stops chips from entering or exiting the country that could potentially harm American citizens or interests. To remove any doubt, that means China. And that could escalate.
According to a study in Toronto, people can tell who is rich or poor by looking at their faces. Strangers were able to tell from looking at photos who was rich close to 70% of the time. The suggestion is that the facial expressions of rich people retain “relics” of well-being, even after allowing for the lack of “tattoos and piercings”. I often thought there is something to this, because I think I attract the type of women I am not attracted to back.
Mind you, the same source (CNBC no link) also had a list of what things to give up if you want to be rich. Eight of the eleven items were intangibles. It’s fine to counsel people to give up fear, uncertainty, small thinking, and nostalgia because you don’t have to specify how they could possibly do that. But the list further says to give up a steady paycheck. I would need rather complete details on that item—and in advance. The one thing I agree with unreservedly is that rich people would rather be educated than entertained. It’s a vicious circle. One you are educated enough to be rich, finding even more of it becomes almost like a job.
Secret M16 headquarters.
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We drove half-way to Nashville to the Sunflower, a gluten-free sandwich place. It’s okay but you should already have a taste for a lot of the ingredients. I’ve learned to like raw kale over spinach and like they say, every person who moves toward a vegetarian diet had to pretty much force themselves off of meat. I don’t know if that’s for me, but I’ve cut out most products, especially beef, that are laced with all the bad stuff. I had a chickpea sandwich. We worked the cryptogram, but with two of us we cracked the cipher so quickly we didn’t need a scratch pad. Is this meaningful? Yes, to me very much. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to find a woman with any brains in the US of A nowadays?
I had taken the doggies with me up to the bank and a quick morning walk in the sunshine. One of the tellers was from Everett and we talked for half an hour. The small town aspects of northern Washington state have dried up pretty quickly with the big 1990s exodus from California. We talked about the job situation back home, where the local economy is so heavily dominated by Boeing, MicroSoft, and similar industries that employ a lot of “middle management”.
The material is not published yet, but I have long been critical of the entire American system of middle management. These people have always been, in my opinion, under-educated and over-paid. It’s a useless layer of go-between people that does not exist in most of the world. Some say it is what made the American system so American, but I say the opposite. We’d have been living on the moon by now but for that bunch milling around blocking the way.
There are quite an array of studies showing that A.I. would best be implemented getting rid of these people. I still subscribe to the old definition that says education is the increase in probability of a certain response. Ten middle-managers could never agree on anything, so I’ll be watching if A.I. leaps that barrier. I’ve also maintained that middle–management are also vastly overpaid for what they actually do. Nor would it pain me to see people like city employees stop getting paid twice what they are worth. To me, robots and A.I. are just symptoms that this is not the first time humans have priced themselves out of the market—and that the market is in itself an artificial contrivance. America should have been the world’s demonstration that a successful nation does not need a ruling class.
ADDENDUM
Real estate. Have you heard of the Silver Tsunami? This is yet another prediction over how the Boomers will distort the housing market. All these predictions, including my own, have been wrong for a simple reason. It’s government interference via bank lending policy. Look how the invention of “pre-foreclosure” prevented millions of underwater homes from hitting the market in the collapse of 2008. No, it was not a recession, it was a disaster. I honestly believe if the situation had not been manipulated, I would today own a five-bedroom estate on the beach in north Fort Lauderdale. But the government changed the law so the banks did not really have to foreclose (as was required by laws that I had counted on). Instead, the banks employed a variety of dodges, including buying the houses back at rigged auctions.
Now, the last and third wave of Boomers is turning 60. The talk is that they will put their houses on the market and move elsewhere The recent revelations of the sub-standard conditions at retirement homes and their fantastic prices will dampen that concept. These Boomers are the last generation of Americans who mostly own their own houses. There are powerful forces looking to separate them from all that equity. We are back to the situation where millions of houses hitting the market at once could undermine the economy. Experience says the banksters and their minions are not about to let that happen.
