35 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2024
    1. Map of the exact location of the Berlin wall, plotted on a current map of streets and buildings. Useful in pinpointing exact locations of images have from my trip in 1987.

  2. Sep 2024
  3. Aug 2024
  4. Mar 2023
    1. Finding huge quantities of small loose stones during the excavation process for the foundation led to an improvisation in the SHOBRI wall (Shuttered Debris Wall). These stones were utilised in the walls by inserting them into the Debris mix in the shutters as alternating bands.

      shuttered debri wall - beautiful wall using rocks found on site

  5. Jun 2022
    1. FAANG is an acronym of five major technology stocks that include Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (now Alphabet). Jim Cramer coined the term in 2013 while giving accolades to the companies for being the dominant companies in their niches.
    1. That means many investors already have at least some exposure to them. Because the heavy weighting of FAANG stocks in indexes such as the S&P 500 gives them an outsize impact on the broader stock market, it’s worthwhile for investors to learn a bit more about them.
    1. In finance, “FAANG” is an acronym that refers to the stocks of five prominent American technology companies: Meta (META) (formerly known as Facebook), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX); and Alphabet (GOOG) (formerly known as Google). 
    1. In finance, “FAANG” is an acronym that refers to the stocks of five prominent American technology companies: Meta (META) (formerly known as Facebook), ...
    1. According to Piketty (2020, p. 20), the “most worrisome structural changes facing us today [include] the revival of inequality nearly everywhere since the 1980s.”

      An effective Occupy Wallstreet is needed to finish the job it first started. Without a plan, there is no success. What is the plan? Part of that, according to community economist Michael Shuman is a return from Wall Street back to Main Street: https://michaelhshuman.com/store/

  6. Dec 2021
    1. With secondary sources, I like to check and see what the author is doing with the information. It's standard to refer to interpretations that agree with yours, but often even more interesting when the new interpretation is arguing with, modifying, or "complicating" the previous one.

      I have noticed in some anthropological literature that it appears that the authors completely missed the boat as the result of the lack of ability to communicate with their subjects or better understand their broader basic contexts.

      Particular examples of this: -1930s: A. Irving Hallowell conversations with William Berens, Chief of the Berens River Anishinaabe about rocks

      • Robin Wall Kimmerer mentions in Braiding Sweetgrass that the new American immigrants looked down on the indigenous people for not "giving thanks" for their food, when in fact it was so embedded into their general culture that it should never have been in question. The immigrants just didn't possess the ability to see the how the thanks had been given.
  7. Nov 2021
    1. For low-carbon practices to grow and displace high-carbon ones, integrated action across disparate spaces and coordination between many different actors are necessary (161). For example, mobility scholars (166) highlight the extent of reconfiguration required to disassociate academia from high-carbon travel, including altered institutional cultures, funding practices, and student recruitment to support virtual ways of working. Although novel low-carbon practices may emerge, policy must ensure these stabilize and become prevalent, as well as impeding the circulation of high-carbon practices.

      A new social imaginary of cosmolocality, where we spend most of our time locally, but use information technology as the prime method for nonlocal communication. In other words, replacing transportation with lower footprint communications.

      https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cosmo-Localism https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cosmo-Localization https://medium.com/@joseramos_30450/the-cosmo-local-reader-invitation-to-participate-dbcb6248f54b

      In the field of production and provisioning systems, cosmolocal production implies designing and sharing designs globally, and downloading the appropriate ones for local clean production, thereby minimizing global supply chains.

      Graduated relocalization that begins to replace auto transportation with pedestrian and bike traffic can result in huge decarbonization impacts. This relocalization movement is also an economic reconfiguration, echoing what community economist Michael Shuman refers to as the movement from Wall Street to Main Street - decentralizing centralizing organizations when feasible, and creating more community wealth while decarbonizing unnecessarily long supply chains.

      https://michaelhshuman.com/store/

  8. Jun 2021
    1. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

      But are Google's tools really making us more productive thinkers? One might argue that it's attempting to do all the work for us and take out the process of thought all together. We're just rats in a maze hitting a bar to get the food pellet.

      What if the end is a picture of us as the people on the space ship at the end of WALL-E? What if it's keeping us from thinking?

      What if it's making us more shallow thinkers rather than deep thinkers?

      Cross reference P.M. Forni.

  9. Oct 2020
    1. As Matt Taibbi observed way back in 2009 in the midst of the previous bailout, “By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of CDS [credit-default swap] and CDO [collateralized-debt obligation], most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the [2008] crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system – transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.” [10]

      Great quote.

  10. Sep 2020
    1. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;(W) 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,(X) for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

      God instructed Adam and Eve to eat whatever they desired, though prohibited them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Skywoman Falling", she explained how in Indigenous culture, they follow Original Instructions. These "instructions" are not rules but rather guidelines for each person. Kimmerer explains how during Skywoman's time, the first people's understanding of the Original Instructions were to care for the and have respect for hunted animals, value family, and hold respectful ceremonies for their beliefs.

  11. Aug 2020
    1. Altig, D., Baker, S. R., Barrero, J. M., Bloom, N., Bunn, P., Chen, S., Davis, S. J., Leather, J., Meyer, B. H., Mihaylov, E., Mizen, P., Parker, N. B., Renault, T., Smietanka, P., & Thwaites, G. (2020). Economic Uncertainty Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Working Paper No. 27418; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27418

  12. Jun 2020
  13. Mar 2020
    1. Websites should not make conditional “general access” to the site on acceptance of all cookies but can only limit certain content if the user does not consent to cookies.
    1. ‘specific website content’ means that you should not make ‘general access’ subject to conditions requiring users to accept non-essential cookies – you can only limit certain content if the user does not consent;
  14. Sep 2019
    1. "This wall, you won't be able to touch it. You can fry an egg on that wall — it's very very hot," the president told reporters in Otay Mesa, in the San Diego sector of the U.S.-Mexico border. "So if they're going to climb it, they need to bring hoses and water and I don't know where they're going to hook it up. There's not a lot of water out here."
      1. Active or passive automated defense from the wall? Why not have it create heat to burn people. Electrify? Auto-turrets? (Makes me think of an Aeon Flux episode.)
      2. Water? Or gloves.
  15. Jun 2019
    1. This year, the Promise’s marketing has emphasized vocational college. Administrators hope marginal students will be less likely to drop out of such programs because they are shorter.

      Vocational programs are great for "Builders", who learn by doing stuff than merely reciting study material.

    1. Income share agreements could lower costs and improve outcomes by tying loan amounts to objective judgments of how much the student is likely to earn from her degree. Educational quality could also benefit: Investors would presumably advance students money only for schools that were doing a decent job of teaching them. The risks are that some borrowers could end up paying far more under such a scheme than the current plan and that investors might not lend to students they consider too risky.

      The author's counter arguments to Income Share Agreements are not convincing enough for me. They seem abstract and vague.

    2. His administration cut out the middlemen by killing off the Guaranteed Student Loan Program, the one created under Presidents Johnson and Nixon that relied on banks, in favor of a direct loan program, in which money came from the Treasury. But the government’s loose lending policy, with few questions asked, remained in place. The Obama administration also heavily promoted income-based repayment programs, which set borrowers’ monthly payments at 10% of their discretionary income and then forgave a portion of their debt after 20 to 25 years of payments. This severed the link between the value of students’ education and how much they could borrow, providing a huge incentive for schools to raise tuition, since taxpayers would pick up more of the tab. Enrollment in these programs is one big reason that the government’s costs for student loans are exploding.

      Obama revisions to the original student loan program of 1970s started under Johnson and Nixon.

    3. The voucher system, combined with a lack of government oversight, created perverse incentives: Colleges could raise money quickly by admitting academically suspect students while suffering little or no consequences if their students dropped out and defaulted on loans.
    4. In particular, the system gave colleges an incentive to maximize the tuition they extracted from students and the federal taxpayer by boosting fees and enrollment, which meant relaxing admissions standards.

      Reason for inflation in tuition fees -

      1. Higher Enrollment
      2. Relaxing Admission Standards
  16. May 2019
  17. www.bible.com www.bible.com
    Matthew 13:35 This is as the prophet said: “I will speak using stories; I will tell things that have been secret since the world was made.” All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden sinc This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: “I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.” This fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet: “I will speak to you in parables. I will explain things hidden since the creation of the world.” That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world. that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: “I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS [unknown and unattainable] THAT HAVE BEEN HIDDEN [from mankind] SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE W He did this in order to fulfill the prophecy: I will speak to you in allegories. I will reveal secrets that have been concealed since before the foundation of the world. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world."
    1
    1. All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.
  18. Mar 2019
    1. President Trump will ask Congress on Monday for $8.6 billion in additional funding to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico, a person familiar with the details said on Sunday.

      Hi Dick!

  19. Jan 2019
    1. 援引《彭博社》消息,華爾街證券研究公司 Fundstrat Global Advisors 的聯合創辦人 Tom Lee 12 月 13 日向客戶發電郵時透露,已經厭倦人們不斷詢問目標價格,有鑑於加密貨幣的內在波動性,該公司將停止提供任何「實現公允價格」的時程表。 換句話說,這表示華爾街最著名的比特幣預言家,已經決定放棄對其價格進行預測。 原因很簡單,若回顧 Tom Lee 過去的研究報告,我們會發現他曾預測比特幣的價格將在 2018 年終達到 20,000 美元的目標價格;而年終的預測價格則為 25,000 美元。到了 11 月,他將目標價格削減至 15,000 美元,但比特幣當時的交易價格僅為 5,500 美元,隨後更跌至 4,000 美元左右。總體而言,比特幣價格全年下降超過 70%,而 Tom Lee 最近一次預測的「公允價格」範圍在 13,800 美元到 14,800 美元之間。

      <big>评:</big><br/><br/>出于加密货币与生俱来的独特性,其价格走势本不应该被人为地解读,而场外观众们也无需矫情地揣测低迷熊市与失守分析师之间的暧昧联系。比特币可谓区块链世界第一个广为人知的创业项目,考虑到它对现有金融体系的颠覆性冲击,这些华尔街拥趸们的「洋相」或许不失为一种班门弄斧式的保身明哲。

  20. Jan 2018
  21. Apr 2017
    1. Based on Department of Homeland Security estimates, Trump’s proposed wall will cost nearly $22 billion, span 1,250 miles, and take more than three years to build.
  22. Apr 2016
    1. Unfortunately, the new rule would leave out key banks with big international presences, like State Street or Bank of NY Mellon, ones that are clearly important global institutions. It would also roll back the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s “qualified mortgage” rules, which aim to cut some of the predatory lending practices from the 2008 crisis. It would overhaul the Federal Reserve governance system, possibly making the Fed less independent and more political, as well as undercut regulators’ ability to monitor “shadow banking,” the firms and institutions like hedge funds, asset managers, and money market funds that fall outside the normal banking system but are where many experts believe the next financial crisis will begin.

      This new attempt to roll back the Dodd-Frank reforms is being opposed by Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Maxine Waters.

    2. Now it seems that using the budget bill to water down Dodd-Frank is becoming business as usual. Republicans are pushing a number of potential reform rollbacks as part of the usual end-of-year, closed-door haggling over spending packages. In particular, a bill sponsored by Senator Richard Shelby, S. 1484, has been attached to the 2016 spending bill.
  23. Jul 2015
    1. a divorce from Wall Street, could help Democrats win back sizable segments of working class whites

      I don't see how this would help Democrats if a large segment of working class whites vote Republican. Republicans are already in bed with Wall Street, same as the neo-liberal Democrats. Why would the Dems moving away from Wall Street change that?