Liberty

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-hatred-derangement-syndrome-1475192121

What's so special about Trump's children? Legacy: How about giving tens and tens of billions to a real charity that tackles important problems for the betterment of humanity and the reduction of human suffering, and convincing dozens of other billionaires to do the same, rather than building kitsch golden palaces with your name in giant letters on the front door and using charity money to have paintings of yourself made? When I think Buffett, I think "smart", "integrity", and "teacher". When I think Trump, I think "bully", "salesman", and "megalomaniac". We'll see how history remembers both...

If that's your definition of success... If given the choice, I'd rather have Buffett's life (and legacy).

Do you think Trump would feel bound by his campaign once in office? You can't even say that you know where Trump stands on things and that once elected that's what he'd do, because in the past he's been all over the place and seems more guided by self-interest in the moment than by values that are stable over time. IMO one of the variables you forgot is that one candidate is pretty predictable, while the other isn't. I wouldn't mind it so much if I also thought he was honest, put the interests of others above his own, wasn't entangled in conflicts of interest, wasn't belligerent, etc. But unpredictable + these things gets pretty scary..

I voted yes....just to mess with the poll. I think people spend too much time on politics. But Im a jerk like that. I agree that people spend too much time on politics, which is why I've stayed out of the discussion here until recently. I don't really follow politics in Canada at all, and only passively follow US politics because it's unavoidable online (I don't follow anyone explicitly political on Twitter, yet my feed is full of politics). When there's an election here, I set aside an hour or two to do my homework on the choices that I have and then make a decision. I guess my meta-point would be that people wouldn't have to spend so much time on it if they applied some of the same common sense tests that they apply to other areas of their lives to it and did their best not to get caught up in the whole tribal/identity/emotional hooks of the political machine. Would you trust what Trump said on a quarterly conference call about the state of a business? Would you trust him to manage shareholder's capital like a good steward and not run it like his own piggy bank/ego booster? To make decisions for the good of shareholders even if it makes him look bad/weak? Etc..

I asked this one on Twitter, but I'm curious to see what the results would be here. The question is simple: imagine that you put 30% of your net worth in Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett is retiring. Would you trust Donald Trump to become chairman and CEO of the company with his own handpicked board.

Don't forget that Trump isn't Austrian either. So there can't be any similarities in their salesmanship tactics and their sociopathic-narcissistic personalities. Trump is such a good salesman that people who are deeply resentful of the rich coastal elites and big businesses who treat low-level employees badly support him. He's such a good salesman that people who identify as conservative and would say that values like honesty and traditional family structures are most important to them support him. His salesmanship talent is so great that he can be one of the most inauthentic person imaginable (he's always playing a role and has incredibly slippery beliefs, he pretends to be his own agent and calls others to praise himself, etc) yet be praised for his authenticity. One of the most insecure guy who erects monuments to his own glory and will keep up grudges with journalists for years over the smallest slights (small hands) is praised as a big alpha dog. He's so amazing at it that he can say with total confidence that he never said many things that he said in front of cameras or wrote online and there will be hordes to defend his claims. He's aggressively attacked others for doing things that he's now doing without apparently giving it any second thought (it was terrible when Mitt Romney was slow to release his tax records...). A man who uses hyperbole every other word is praised as someone who "tells it like it is"... What's scary is that even his supporters have no idea what he would do in power because over time he's held so many positions that it becomes clear that he'll just say whatever he thinks will work best to get what he wants at any particular time. If you're familiar with the concept of social engineering, this is it on a very large scale. He used to want to run for president as a democrat, but now he's courting the far right.. But it's a tribal thing; people root for "their side", including all the republicans who fought him and thought he was a clown (*cough* Cruz *cough*). I find it sad that otherwise fairly rational people get carried away in the sports of politics and forget that with a clear head, they would never support a person like that to run a company they invested in (want Trump to run Berkshire Hathaway?), yet they think he could run a country and make decisions about things like war (life & death for many including soldiers).

http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/debt/canadians-are-just-200-away-from-being-overwhelmed-by-debt-new-survey-finds

Nice book review: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-full-story.html

It's part of the presentation (PDF linked at the top, video below): http://www.spacex.com/mars It's a carbon fiber fuel tank for the new rocket. Here's the inside: http://i.imgur.com/HR4INZU.jpg And to give an idea of the scale of the rocket + spaceship, here's where that giant tank fits in the whole: http://i.imgur.com/JPZZwZl.jpg

"beyond our time" Time doesn't magically make things better. People have to actually create the technologies and make it happen. If people like Musk and Bezos (Blue Origin) and others at NASA, etc, said "Oh, it's beyond our time" and gave up, then yes, it would take longer. But by working on the stuff they are bringing it closer. In fact, NASA actually lost capabilities over time and we lost decades that could've been used to make progress because there was no political will and the structure of NASA and its contractors probably became too bloated and inefficient to make real rapid progress on a lot of this stuff. In the Musk presentation, he keeps talking about how he always thought the chances of SpaceX succeeding were low, but he wanted to make as much progress on these problems as possible. And on the Mars stuff he also says that it's going to be a long shot, but he's going to do his best. Said the only reason he's accumulating assets is to help make this happen, and he'll do his best, and maybe others will have to take the ball and run at some point. That's how progress happens, and that's how one person can accelerate the timeline of what would otherwise happen with less smart and motivated people in charge...

http://i.imgur.com/plGZXaB.jpg

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/09/27/video-spacex-interplanetary-transport-system/ Live stream starting soon if you want to watch the full announcement: http://www.spacex.com/mars

These are all online website polls, correct? See: http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-polls-4chan-the-donald/

Did I hallucinate the part where Trump bragged at length about opening a club in Florida that didn't ban blacks and muslims, and people said it was wonderful, and so on? That must've been a dream, because it was so cringe-inducing...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-making-housing-fix-a-top-priority-minister-says/article31924658/

I'm talking about psychology. People haven't felt that lower oil prices were bullish in the past 2 years. If anything, the whole event has been sold as a terrible crash that decimated the profits from an entire industry and that was partly caused by a slowing china and by OPEC going for market share.

A: Some unpredictable thing that will affect mass psychology and turn people more bearish than they were. B: Conversely, some other unpredictable thing could make people more bullish, which would accelerate investment and capex, which would self-reinforce into better economic data... Seeing as how lately half the time bad news are good news and vice versa, the very same unpredictable thing could lead to A or B depending on how the wind is blowing...

A quick look at the company's Q1 2017 (hate these weird fiscal years) release shows: http://ca.blackberry.com/content/dam/bbCompany/Desktop/Global/PDF/Investors/Documents/2017/Q1FY2017_Financial_Information.pdf

All I can add is a Parsadism: Cheers! :)

Traveled with friends during the weekend, so we had a few beers (irish stouts from a local brewrie) and I had a scotch (Balvenie 12).

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/18/iex-exchange-finally-set-to-launch.html