Screwball
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Posts posted by Screwball
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On another note, earlier today, after giving back a little bit, the S&P 500 was within 25 points of all time highs.
We probably need to lower interest rates. 🙂
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4 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:
Every system can be gamed - it's just a matter of deciding if the effort is worth it. 😉
I'm not sure anymore. I told my buddy a year ago I am now owned by Google and Amazon. I have no privacy, none, zero. They know more about us than we do. There are companies traded on the NY stock exchange who make money by data mining our ****.
1984 wasn't suppose to be an instruction manual. I worked in and with IT since we had IT and you could see where it was all going to go as it progressed via the technology. So did crazy Teddy. 🙂
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I'm sure everyone has noticed this who has played with it. It seems to me, you get the best results when you give it as much information as you can up front. That said, it also seems, some things they/it will do very well with, other things, not so much.
On the downside, I was reading an article today about how this changes our educational system. It's really easy to ask HAL what percentage change is X to Y. No need to understand the math.
That's part of the reason I quit teaching last June.
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30 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:
I guess we can write of a continuation of ACA. Just hanging around to see how much more $$$ my Medicare Part D and the new drug plan is gonna cost me.
May have to start my own YouTube Channel
More than the increase the SS COLA adjustment will give you like every other year since forever. Think that's a rip-off? Wait until the pukes start to really "fixing" social security.
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MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce
Maybe the 11.7% can start a youtube channel or a financial services company and get rich. 😉
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11 hours ago, Deleterious said:
It's becoming a pretty standard play for the big social media moguls. Build up a huge audience and then start putting your face/name on products and push them to your fans. Mr Beast has toys, food/snacks, and now financial services, I guess. He has 450 million subscribers on his YT channel. If he converts 5-10% of them, he will make a lot of money.
Selena Gomez has over 200 million followers on IG. Most are young girls/women so she starts a beauty company and is now a billionaire. Hailey Bieber just sold her makeup company for a billion dollars. All the Kardashians push products and Kim is a billionaire.
Thanks. I had no idea this kind of stuff was going on. Selena Gomez - 2 million followers? I don't even know who she is. That might be a good thing. What a world.
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OK, I'm going to admit stupid here, but I've never heard of this guy. I read the one article and tried to make sense out of it, this paragraph caught my eye;
QuoteThe trademark application aligns with a 2025 fundraising pitch deck that outlined plans to expand into fintech, which was viewed by Business Insider. That deck described customized offerings that would target MrBeast's audience, supported by financial literacy content. The deck listed nine potential offerings, including student loans, insurance, and credit insights. It said the company would launch by partnering with a fintech company to leverage its existing infrastructure "while avoiding regulatory, credit risk, and capital requirement."
There is more but not much makes any sense to me. Does he sell cars too?
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18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:
To this this day it never fails to make me laugh when I pop the hood on my 2.4 L *4* cylinder powered car and can't see the ground anywhere, when I had 300 horses sitting under the hood of my '66 SS and almost had room to stand inside the engine compartment with the engine.
Absolutely.
Change the oil, and filter, plugs (and wires if needed), points, condenser, clean the battery terminals (and battery), look at the belts, air filter, all the fluid containers (brakes, wipers, anti-freeze,etc) then put it up on a rack and check the suspension parts while they get greased, u-joints, rear end fluid level, tire wear level, and pull a front and back wheel to look at the brakes. This was a routine tune-up as they called it. It used to work that way.
They were simple, and they lasted as long as you did that.
Now they are too complicated. The first thing they do is hook up a computer.
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9 minutes ago, oblong said:
I have 2 VHS copies. 2 DVD copies. ‘Special” editions. And it’s been on my DVR for a few years. But every time it’s on TV I sit and watch. The sequence starting with Boom boom thru Rays music is so awesome. I could do without all the Carrie Fisher stuff though.
there is a video on YouTube where a guy shows all the filming locations today.Totally agree on the Fisher stuff. And how couldn't you love Cab Calloway?
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Just a simple car (years ago), for the most part the make didn't matter, if you took it in for a tune up and inspection once a year they were dependable, and didn't cost a lot of money. I've dealt with some car issues recently, and it is a total mess, and not cheap. So much has changed over the years.
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19 minutes ago, oblong said:
RIP Steve Cropper
Classics, both.
I wanted to watch the Blues Brothers movie a while back, and the only way I could was to pay for it. Spit. A buddy of mine featured the soundtrack at his wedding reception. It was a hit.
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Why do they continue to try to do stupid things. This is baseball. It isn't difficult.
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I had a Rambler of some kind, don't remember what year. 70s probably. It had air conditioning when that was a thing, but this was old when I got it. It didn't work. There were buttons on the dash for air, maybe 5 of them. One setting said "desert only." Too funny.
Cars are a perfect example where a simple task like getting from point A to point B departs from the KISS rule (Keep It Simple Stupid) to product life cycle and making a **** load of money. You could design a car to last a lifetime and save a ton of money over the years, but they don't do that and never will. We also like all the bells and whistles.
A good buddy is a retired Mercedes mechanic. They have car seats that make my recliner feel like a park bench. The electronics in cars today is off the charts as well. All stuff that can **** up - and cost money to fix. Lots of it, and usually not a fun experience.
ON EDIT: appliances are no different.
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The Gremlin was a POS too. A buddy had one. He loved it, even though it was broke all the time.
That said, it was a different era. Back then you could work on cars, and preventative maintenance really helped. The cars were similar, but different. Chrysler and AMC were kind of the odd balls. In those days there were big thick manuals on how to fix them. So many times they would explain how to fix something in a detailed way, and then the disclaimer; except Chrysler. Their starters were a POS. So were the front suspension. There was nothing worse to align the front end than a Chrysler, and you always had to replace the ball joints first. They were always bad.
At least someone with some tools could work on them. Not today.
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The Pacer...I was an auto mechanic in 1975 and I can attest they were a POS.
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Another interesting chart. Incoming chart porn. I'm not sure what's driving this. Silver is on a real tear, especially since the low back on September 4th of $41.065. Hit a high of $59.47 earlier tonight, but has given back a touch of that.
A three month rip of about %45. Cha-ching!
Compared with gold (purple line).
They usually trade similar. I wonder if some of this money is coming from crypto?
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13 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:
The rest of the Enron story. Excerpt From "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" Asshole <---link
Great read by the way. On a conference call (see link for conversation) when pressed to show the books, Jeff Skilling of Enron called analysis Jack Grubman an asshole. The was the beginning of the end of Enron. Ticker ENE. Eventually the accounting firm Arthur Anderson fell along with them. Some were sent to jail (Skilling) (hey!, what a concept) and some died while waiting (Ken Lay) and another main player committed suicide (John Baxter). The whistleblower Sherron Watkins does speaking tours on business ethics. I went to one of her talks, it was excellent.
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Speaking of Paul Volcker, I watched some old clips of him in front of congress years ago. It wasn't pretty, or fair. He made them look like fools. Dude was a smart guy. There isn't too many people who could carry his jock strap.
Another was in 2010/2011 after the banksters blew up the world (in 2008/2009) and congress decided to bring them all in to explain. From Jamie Dimon of JPM, Lloyd Blankeinn of GS, on down the list of about 8 CEO's of Wall Street's largest banks. Hilarity ensued. The banksters exposed these idiots for the worthless frauds they were, and it wasn't even close.
A Robinhood day trader could have asked better questions. And of course, if by chance, one of them did (and some (not many) ARE capable) they get shut down pronto - because we can't have that.
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26 minutes ago, Deleterious said:
He is nominating Screwball for Fed Chair.
I would make Paul Volcker look like a piker. 🙂 There would also be an immediate market crash.
I have not followed close, but odds of another cut next week? Looks so. The news tomorrow might be the Hassett guy for the next Fed chair starting in Feb?, a dove who wants to lower rates. He's only one vote, but they work for the bankers so it don't matter anyway. He's just the head of the bull**** machine.
I don't know that the Fed deserves as much blame as they get, given congress has to spend the money to be monetized. At the same time, they are a bunch of bull**** artists presented as experts. I worked with a guy who's son worked for the Richmond Fed. He told me about some of the research projects he worked on. They really do good stuff when if comes to collecting data, but they have proven to be quite inept at their two mandates.
If the economic numbers, which they have, were properly evaluated, they tell a much different story than the numbers the Fed uses to make their decisions. They should know that - and they do - and don't care.
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Always interesting to watch the futures after a long holiday weekend. We are also now into what they will call the Christmas rally time of the season. I'm sure Jim Cramer may bring it up next week, or Bubblevision in general. If someone can stomach to watch long enough to see if that is true, please report in. 🙂
Chart porn, and once again back to the 10/10 candle. The market is a traders dream - volatility - cha-ching. 3 month chart by day of the S&P.
Nice little profit in only five trading days, but if you stayed long over the weekend and can't do squat until the market opens on Monday morning... For those who play the market this way, they are taking quite a risk over a long weekend. Which is why many of them go broke before they get rich and live on their own island. And there is nothing worse than watching things take a **** and can't do anything about it.
So what's the market look like on this fine Sunday night?
Not too far above these levels are the all time highs. Which way do we go?
ON EDIT: The futures market (chart above) is the cash market. The S&P is the index. They trade the futures market (you need a margin account with a brokerage) so what they call the e-mini (S&P futures) is a more accurate visual of what is going on with the money than the index.
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3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:
IDK SB, If the public is so stupid that they keep voting for people who promise to give them something for nothing, then what other choice is there other than national bankruptcy? At some point there has to be an adult in the room!
An adult wouldn't steal from us or teach us how do do so, but that horse left the barn years ago.
We are at FUBAR. 🙂
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5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:
I think the outcome will have to be a 'new' tax added to the mix - something like some variation on a VAT that people will not see directly. Maybe a grand deal where we trade adding a VAT for flat no-deduction income tax and/or annual 'assets' tax. If you made the public an offer that eliminated the 1040 and all its attendant schedules it might have enough appeal to slip in a net overall increase. If you wanted to be clever you could tie the VAT rate to the size of the debt - have the tax fall as the debt falls.
A tax we don't see which will be paid by us serfs like we always do. Brilliant!
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11 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:
Not addressed to anyone in particular... But:
I believe we are sitting at a $1.8 TRILLION dollar annual deficit, year-to-date this year.
Trump and his sycophantic House & Senate Republicans are the most fiscally irresponsible jagoffs in the
HISTORY of ALL MANKIND!!!
Errr, sorry everyone, about my expressiveness...
Well, at least they are the most fiscally irresponsible U.S. leaders in the history of the U.S.
The worst.
EZ Fix: Balance the ****ing budget. If taxes are required to be raised, tough ****, do it. If Trump and his sycophantic H&S R's have to lose some of their self-serving tax breaks, tough ****, do it. If they can find ways to lower budget spending... that will actually fly in this country... fine, do it.
But in order to balance the budget, they're going to have to negotiate with the Dems... so the Trumpublicans are NOT going to get all their little "gimmes" in a balanced budget.
Tough ****, do it.
PS: Not going to happen until the Dems take over the House and Senate.
But that is coming soon IMO, to a theater near you. Release date: January, 2027.
I'm sure they will fix it anytime now. 🙂
I want some of what you're smoking.
Skynet or: How I learned to stop worrying and love AI
in Politics
Posted
Since there is a thread about this now, I would be curious when talking about our own experience with AI, which AI app did you use?
There seems to be quite a few. I did a Google search and got this;
I've used Co-pilot (comes with Windows 11), Grok (Twitter's version) and Google's Gemini. Make one wonder how the results from the same query would vary across platforms.