On my first encounter with Wall Street analysts I also wondered what they were for. Here is Coben’s take:
It is possible some retail investors may follow the research ratings, but in my experience the audience that matters most is the company itself. Management teams appreciate reports seeing their narrative endorsed in a report carrying the logo of a major bank. Flattery takes you a long way in finance, as it does in life.
And in turn management teams may, if the analysis reflects what they believe is the true and right way to talk about the company, prioritize that particular bank to be on the left side, or the upper right corner, or the bottom third paragraph of the second-to-last-page, of the term sheet. And if you have no idea what that last part was supposed to mean, I envy you, truly.
One of my earliest memories of conspiratorial thinking was when I was in 7th grade and flunked a state-wide English language competition. [Note: Worry not, I returned the following year and won 1st place, which was ultimately worth diddly squat except for bragging rights. Oh, and some family lore, for my now-wife’s best friend placed second and apparently told her stories about me. ] Upon return to school, a certain teacher who was generally decent huddled with me and asked me for “the scoop”, meaning for the shenanigans that must have went on for me not to get an awarded. The scoop was that I spent the night before playing something — from the years when it went on the most likely culprit is Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness — though of course that’s not what I told him. Which is to say, when Alfie Haaland, the father of Norway’s star centre-forward, Erling, had sarcastically congratulated the referee on England’s victory, I knew exactly where he was coming from.
Good to see that Tyler Cowen’s verbal tick caught Doctorow’s attention:
Today, these Renfields clutch their pearls at the “demonization” of the ultra-rich, calling it “billionaire derangement syndrome.” But the only “billionaire derangement syndrome” that matters is the syndrome that affects billionaires and convinces them that they are above any discipline or rules.
Oh snap.
On how movie stakes have become too high. I agree! Where are this generation’s Harold & Kumar?
On the beginnings and endings of interstate highways. This has been on my mind recently, as I drive up I-25 past the exits to I-70, thinking that, hey, I know exactly where I-70 starts (or ends?): right on the I-695 Baltimore beltway. And to think it goes straight this far out west… Well, except for that little infamous break in Pennsylvania.
“If you literally educate children, care for patients, clean up the environment, or do something like that, you aren’t a looter — but your boss probably is, your boss’s boss definitely is, and you’re part of a dying breed.” No notes there.
Going straight to the quote:
In reality, any program to intentionally add nutrients to nutrient-deprived oceans would be considerably less dangerous than any of these natural analogs. Fires, volcanoes, icebergs and vents just dump crap into the ocean willy-nilly, with no plan, no environmental monitoring, no environmental impact assessment, nothing. Nature does this in precisely the kind of blind, reckless, unthinking way that skeptics fear in people, and even then there’s no evidence of harm.
Let spotting the cognitive error here be an exercise for the Reader.
Hey, I had that exact model back in 2008 and the little guy traveled the world with me back then, from Barcelona and Naples to Bangkok and Kho Samui. Not proud of the fact, but that 1024x600 pixel WSVGA screen is where I first saw Season 4 of The Wire. I even took it with me to the US, so it’s been on as many continents as I have. And wouldn’t you know it, I kept it through all these years, hoping for a good opportunity to resuscitate it. Which is to say: I know what I’m doing this weekend!
I thought my kettle was broken when it beeped at 95°C even though I had set it to boil but then I remembered that we are now mile-high and the water will boil at a lower temperature. I imagine this will cause even more headaches for our family’s baking recipes, but the most immediate concern is how this affects my preferred brewing method.
There is always tweaking to be done, but the gist is: get the water as hot as possible and compensate for lower temperatures by grinding slightly finer (one notch lower on my Baratza Virtuoso grinder) and steeping slightly longer (which is a natural extension of a finer grind but is important for those using an Aeropress or — shudder — a French press). Be prepared for dry air to mess with the bean freshness. Try not to expect too much of light roasts.
This is also more or less what Kagi’s LLM response gave me, [Note: Kagi, unlike free search engines, doesn’t shove half-baked LLM responses down your throat at any opportunity. Rather, it only provides an “AI” response if you end your query with a question mark, which is both simple and delightful. ] the explanation of the physics and chemistry behind it taking three paragraphs instead of three sentences. Which was fine! What was not fine were the actual search results: a depressing line-up of sloppy websites to which I shall not link but which go like this:
Et cetera, et cetera.
Each article was a shockingly long (“Coffee Brewing At High Altitude Explained: What Matters, What Doesn’t”, Read time: 11 minutes) elaboration on the above three points broken up by AI-generated images of coffee setups precariously perched over various mountainous regions. Each homepage was a depressing array of overly glossy thumbnails atop headlines which promise a plethora of affiliate links: “Best Heat Guns for Perfect DIY Coffee Roasting at Home”, “Top Coffee Makers That Keep Every Office Buzzing”, “Master the Basics of Home Roasting: Equipment and Techniques Unveiled”, and so on and so forth for 166 pages, 10 articles on each page, none of them with a publication date because you and I both know they were made in one day, nay, one caffeinated, agentic late-night session.
Would it not be nice if there was an actual indie blog written by a hyper-obsessed coffee aficionado, a fellow high-altitude brewer, or a person really into something? You know, like the old days? If there still are, they are being crowded out by one-man shows who are really good at faking it, at least until you read the first few sentences and, if they’re lucky, click the first link.
Not to poo-pooh on the indie web! I am absolutely certain there are many a cracking post on it about coffee, maybe even some about brewing it at high altitudes. It is just so gosh darn difficult to find. For example, Kagi’s Small Web project — excellent at showing random posts from the indie web — cycled through the same five posts in its “Food” section, only one of which was about coffee (and quite good at that — I am now a subscriber). I would also assume that Kagi’s algorithm would prioritize it over the AI slop if there was indeed information that I needed there but no, link after link it was one sloppy website after another, with a few unanswered forum posts in between.
So maybe this post is now it?
Baby carrots: the Keto Cheetos.
How can an article about actors playing made-up versions of themselves not mention Being John Malkovich? The omission is almost as egregious as the one FT video game writer did to Planescape: Torment. Both of the snubbed works of art came out in 1999, which I can only assume was too far behind the authors’ time horizon, but then if you write about a field for a living shouldn’t you know about its (fairly recent) history?
I am of firm believe that to know a thing is to know its roots. Yes, this can go too far — see the name of this very blog — but most people most of the time don’t go far enough back, the most common knowledge border being their birth year. Which is fine for a blogger, not so great for professional journalists.
Remember when I mentioned paying movers was some of the smartest money you could spend. Well, I should have added paying someone to assemble large IKEA furniture, and then I should have followed that advice. Good lord…
Saw my first solitary ball of tumbleweed today, rolling accros the appropriately named Prairie Center Parkway. Reminded me of this CGP Gray video about them.
After 16 years of successfully avoiding Epic*, tomorrow is the day: my provider** training begins. Let’s see how it compares to Cerner, Allscripts et al.
** Hate hate hate that term.
Today I learned of Subsoccer and it is both preposterous and something I would in fact like to have. American spirit of invention chugs along even at 250.