Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Dec 7, 2022 2:59:06 GMT -8
Peter Zeihans latest book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, (released this past summer) where he describes how the world got here and why, and projects where we may be going. But first some background on Peter Zeihan: And Here is a YouTube video where he give an overview of his book. About 22 minutes long.
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platon
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"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.? Tolstoy
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Post by platon on Dec 7, 2022 23:07:08 GMT -8
Peter Zeihans latest book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, (released this past summer) where he describes how the world got here and why, and projects where we may be going. But first some background on Peter Zeihan:And Here is a YouTube video where he give an overview of his book. About 22 minutes long. Zeihan has a grip on his vision of the future and he could absolutely be right. My vision of the future is somewhat darker than his so I definitely hope he is more right than me. Perhaps this quote is true, but I think not. “The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.” ― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide I believe the past is made a myth by the people who reshape it. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984 The magnets are our future and our attraction will become repulsion. “What if I told thou that I come from the future. A future beyond thy imagination, where the colonies rebel against the British and gain their independence, where slavery be outlawed, where immigrants stream into the land and manufacture refrigerator magnets by the millions?” ― Steve Bates, Back To You I am in a really down mood, I just ate a meal that was prepared in a $11,000 cookware set and I liked it. If that is not a sign of the end times I don't want to live through the real end times. I bought my first home for $10K, and they want $11K for a cookware set. Seriously Zeihan presents some solid ideas but the future is not made yet. The only thing we know for certain is that we have a shelf life.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Dec 8, 2022 3:02:49 GMT -8
Thank you Platon, that is all so true. The quote that stands out the most for me is the one by Orwell. This quote could easily be describing the trends we see today. But nothing stays the same, as everything is always in motion. But it reminds me of the old comedy routine where two guys are talking and one tells the other about something bad that’s happened to him. The other guy responds with “that’s bad” but the first guys response is “no that’s good “ and so the conversation goes. If you look hard enough you can find a silver lining in almost every cloud, once you cast some light on it.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Dec 10, 2022 19:28:35 GMT -8
This quote could easily be describing the trends we see today. But nothing stays the same, as everything is always in motion. What's really screwed up is when someone gives a false recount. Even worse is when that is their truth, what they really think happened. The mind is a crazy thing, and it's not always immutable. My neighbor had a tree dropped, in what turned out to be months before he passed away. I was messing around with a chainsaw mill, and having material right there worked best. He had the last ~25' kept together, instead of having the tree company buck it up and give it to me as firewood. I milled up the first 12' relatively quickly. But the next 13' stayed. The tree company, of which I knew the owner, even left a 8' section of rope that was pinched by the log. A few months after he passed away, the widow was leaving for a bit, and I checked with her about it, if she wanted it gone soon. She said there was no rush to get it out of there or mill it up. Just less than 2 years later, when I milled it up and took it away, suddenly she "forgot" all of this, and instead was blaming me for stealing her firewood! I won't go into the nitty gritty, but I believe she actually believed what she "remembered". She was so unhappy, that her memory changed and affirmed her thoughts. (and we've had a couple other instances like this with her) After a concussion, I had some screwed up times, and it made me realize that not all people were always on a level keel. Some people really believe things that you feel are obviously false. And likewise, some probably believe things that have your opinions as "obviously false". What is the solution here? I don't know. But in the field of law, it's at least having notes or a journal. It might be wise to write stuff down, and then look back at it in the future. Fun times. It's interesting to think of the opposite of your view, who follows it, and why. Are they all nuts? Or just wrong? Is there a middle ground? Or is it possible that you are wrong? And that's all without purposefully trying to change the past.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Dec 12, 2022 10:11:51 GMT -8
Fun times. It's interesting to think of the opposite of your view, who follows it, and why. Are they all nuts? Or just wrong? Is there a middle ground? Or is it possible that you are wrong? And that's all without purposefully trying to change the past. So, I'm thinking that the question is: What is Truth, a famous question that was asked of a very important person a very long time ago. And how do we recognize it, if we can, when we see it? That question is why history is so important. It is a deposit of human actions and the consequences of those actions. So if you do this and this, the results will be this.When someone or some nation ignores or rewrites history the outcome is never good. Orwell's "1984" is a fictional example, based on real life examples. While Orwell's book shows an example of the boot on the neck way of control, I think that Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" shows a softer method of gaining and holding control. Did the characters in these books ever realize that there was a time that life wasn't that way? Or did they just accept what they had been programed to think, that their lives were the best that life could offer? As that world was progressing to that point in the book, were those trying to sound the warning bell? And if so, were they ignored? With the changes taking place in our world right now such as de-globalization, all of what we have taken for granted for all of our lives are up for change. Without Americas guarantee of free and safe trading routes the world will return to the survival of the fittest. Just remember that there are those in the world with the philosophy of "Never let a crisis go to waste". Just sayin'.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Dec 13, 2022 6:13:58 GMT -8
4aapl, I've been thinking about the story of your neighbor and the tree. I think the clue that stands out to me most is that she was widowed about the time of the tree being cut down. Many times the loss of a spouse is so traumatic , what with the lose of a life partner and your best friend, finding yourself isolated, alone and without direction. A candidate for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. And during the 2 1/2 years I wouldn't doubt that she has been attacked by the usual predators that see an opportunity to profit, which can cause the suspicion of everyones intensions, along with memory loss. I also can see how whole societies can be affected by PTS in similar ways, causing confusion, fear and a desire for direction and a safe place. This is also where the predators come in to profit and control. In the "1984" story it was the endless war and need for all to sacrifice everything as only a war can demand. History must be altered, actions must be controlled, even thoughts must be monitored. So what are some of the catalyst today that could be used to seize such control? Climate change maybe. The call to endless sacrifices for a battle that can never be won along with the Covid pandemic where debate was was forbidden and the threat of being canceled for even questioning. And now add the trading network that the world has had for over 7 decades that is now starting to fall apart. The perfect environment for the predators of the world to take advantage of these endless opportunities that are offered. This is history in the making. I only hope that when it is recorded that the story is portrayed accurately.
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platon
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"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.? Tolstoy
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Post by platon on Dec 15, 2022 20:40:46 GMT -8
I only hope that when it is recorded that the story is portrayed accurately. No chance this will happen Dave, the MSM will make sure of it. It didn't happen with Covid, in fact they cancelled the careers of some of the best, and most qualified, Doctors and scientists in the World and adjudicated against them to insure the results we got, with no reprisal, all with the help of the MSM. There will never be a reckoning for what has transpired over the last 2 1/2 years. “To many people today, slavery means white people holding black people in bondage. The vast millions of people around the world who were neither white nor black, but who were either slaves or enslavers for centuries, fade out of this vision of slavery, as if they had never existed, even though they may well have outnumbered both blacks and whites. It has been estimated that there were more slaves in India than in the entire Western Hemisphere. China during the era of slavery has been described as “one of the largest and most comprehensive markets for the exchange of human beings in the world.” Slaves were a majority of the population in some of the cities in Southeast Asia. At some period or other in history, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, “almost every people, now civilized, have consisted, in majority, of slaves.” ― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society “But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head.” ― George Orwell, 1984 Orwell's work of fiction has legs, so it seems.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Dec 17, 2022 12:34:03 GMT -8
Dave, I wish it was that easy, in our situation. There's lots of levels with it, from the death, to how their relationship actually was. But then there's the problem that we are a generation younger than her, and yet in their particular family and to work around a few issues, he set up 2 fairly complex trusts to take care of her for the rest of her life, and then help support her daughter, only one of her kids and not his own son. And we were made trustees of one of these, to carry out his wishes from the grave. Fun stuff.
So while his and thus our goal was to be able to keep the house for her to live in for the rest of her life, she saw any holdbacks as us trying to benefit ourselves, in the very distant future.
We recently stepped down from this position. It was a lose-lose situation. While his wishes were for the trustees to be paid handsomely for their time while also having them as tertiary beneficiaries, that's just not something that matters to us, and the stress on us or on her was not good.
FWIW, and I've said it before in other posts, if setting up a Trust (a best practice if you own a home), make it simple and straightforward. And personally, if possible I suggest handling as much giving-away as possible while you are alive, if you are worried about it happening the way you want it.
So, there are ample reasons for her to have issues with us. My question if how that changes from just interpreting something incorrectly, to actually changing the "facts". We're not talking about the interpretation of the shade of red, but changing red to green. A solution is to have the facts written down. But how does that vary if instead we write down our interpretations? Let's say AAPL dropped $5 in a day, but instead of writing down the value drop, or the percent drop, we just interpreted the drop for the day. "It was a bad day" vs "it was a down day" vs "it was the worst day ever" (for the person on calls that day that expired worthless, for instance).
Often even deciding the what the facts are can be tough, as your and platon's worry of "death from covid" vs "death with covid", let alone just made up numbers, on the positive or negative of actual.
But at least with writing something down at or near the time of the incident, you have something to go from, even if it isn't perfect. That should help prevent further drift to the extremes.
I don't know. I see enough storylines, normally through movies and TV, of people purposefully changing things to fit their needs. But they at least know they are doing it.
What's interesting to me is to realize that there are people that change their memories of the facts, that might not even know it. And I guess some of this is well known, such as minimizing the bad memories, helping remember the past as so idealic. But between a couple of these things with her, and some of the strange times I had with Post-Consussion Syndrome some years back, it helps me remember that the slippery slope isn't just between one side and another purposefully distorting facts, but even of people not trying to change them and yet having "fact-drift" on their own.
(EDIT: on that front, while I don't think facts in my memory have changed (but would I know?), there are times where I find it interesting the things that I remember clearly but my wife doesn't remember at all, or vice versa. Likewise, and going further back, she is one of 5 kids, and there are things that just aren't remembered by some. I can understand forgetting something, and that different people forget different things. But it's the changing of facts, without malicious intent, that seems strange. But maybe that's why it is fun to read some of these psychology or memory books, something that I had no interest in when younger but now can really see some useful info.)
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