Honestly, if someone was financially prudent over the past decade, beyond not being able to get a boost on their credit card limit what are they going to suffer? Obviously, if they work in the financial industry they might lose their job. But guess what? That happens to people every day. It's a part of life.

Yes, and wide-ranging economic collapses are a part of life as well. To think that the credit crisis is going to be confined to the financial... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:11 AM on October 10, 2008

I think the fundamental assumption concerning the credit cards is that we will be entering a period of deflationary pressures, ie the money that you borrowed now won't be worth as much "stuff" as it is in the future. Basically you might be borrowing a $1 today and be paying back the equivalent of $.80 or something like that.

The value of a dollar goes up with price deflation. In a deflationary scenario, borrowing dollars today would mean... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:18 PM on October 10, 2008

Why are multi-hundred-million dollar annual salaries necessary?

Well, only yours and mine are. And mine is due to a rounding error, by several decimals.

But shhhh! I won't tell if you won't!
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 6:51 PM on October 10, 2008

God, those "yes on prop 8" commercials are some of the most vile, misleading, homophobic and disgusting political ads that I've ever seen. I'm ashamed to live in the same state as these people.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:17 AM on October 10, 2008

Wow, I hadn't thought of Amok in years! Great post.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 7:58 AM on October 10, 2008

Be honest. How many people here secretly want the market to fall to some ridiculously low level just to see it happen?

I would have preferred to have just bundled the last several trading sessions into one huge selloff and taken a week off. But watching our clients' 401(k)s, IRAs and pension plans get destroyed while the market deleverages is not my idea of entertainment. It's sickening, quite literally.

Interestingly, we... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 3:11 PM on October 9, 2008

Today's volatility in the DJIA after the vote was like nothing I've seen before. On a volatile day, you might see the average move several points with one tick. But today, there were 10- to 50-point jumps from one tick to the next, moving in either direction. You can't even see the volatility on the 1-minute charts; they look orderly in comparison to what was happening on my screen. Crazy.

517 - From Bloomberg: The London interbank offered rate, or Libor,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 2:52 PM on October 3, 2008

The sole remaining hope of fiscal sanity lies with the House of Representatives.

Lord help us all.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 8:45 PM on October 1, 2008

I really really hate it when people take something innocent from my childhood and pervert it, or destroy it. Please stop doing that.

Yeah, there go all my fond childhood memories of Peaches.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 12:46 PM on October 1, 2008

There is only one hit for "John Titor," and the link is dead.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:32 AM on October 1, 2008

Actually, let me put it even more strongly: I would rather let the economy burn than pay for one single golden parachute.

Well, that's something, I guess. The financial equivalent of "kill them all and let God sort them out." It's really hard to fight with such a reasoned, nuanced viewpoint, so I won't bother.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:46 PM on September 29, 2008

I'm hesitant to post this, because I know how foolish one can look when warning of a disaster that may or may not come to pass (in fact, it would be irresponsible to create undue concern). But I'm fortunate enough to work with people who understand the intricacies the credit markets far better than I could ever hope to, and I've been lucky enough to hear their take on this over the past 18 months. Everything they've talked about for the past 18 months is either coming true or already has.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 5:00 PM on September 29, 2008

Looks like it's back over $405 in the aftermarket. The NASDAQ is looking at those late trades.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:37 PM on September 30, 2008

The silver lining on the cloud of financial crisis is the future presidency of Barack Obama. These videos of Palin are the frosting on that silver lining. And the Cafferty video is like skywriting in frosting on the silver lining cake cloud.

Hey! I could write for Sarah Palin!
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 3:33 PM on September 26, 2008

I feel like I'm being tested by assembling increasingly complicated circuitry on an alien spacecraft.

Again.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 7:46 PM on September 19, 2008

I'll bet half of them can't sing any of the words to "This Corrosion."

It's kind of funny to think that the Sisters haven't even released an album in some of these kids' lifetimes. And all the best stuff is what, 25 years old now?

But Andrew keeps on plugging away with the live show, and I'll be going to see them here in L.A. in a couple of months. Some of the newer, unreleased songs are pretty decent, but man,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 10:02 AM on September 19, 2008

38, but I have IES.

Implausible Excuse Syndrome.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 8:21 PM on September 16, 2008

This should be a fun week in the markets.

Wanna trade jobs for a week? I'm sure I'd rather be doing....well, anything else.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 6:33 PM on September 14, 2008

Speaking of which, another net positive from this whole thing should be that asshats like Cramer on CNBC should lose their influence.

Nuke the channel from orbit, that's the only way to be sure.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 6:53 PM on September 14, 2008

Yeah, what the fuck was that? On any other day, that probably would have been the top business story, but everyone was busy watching FNM and FRE collapse while the market soared. I feel sorry for all the investors that had their stop-loss orders executed, but man, when something hits those Bloomberg terminals, you really get to see the efficient market at work.

So it looks like the Sun-Sentinel committed the initial blunder by placing the old story... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 4:54 PM on September 10, 2008

When they discussed this on NPR yesterday the legal expert said there there is almost no way to recover money from decisions based on bad reports in news articles. News orgs make mistakes, we all know that. You are responsible for judging information for yourself.

Yeah, after digging around a bit, I'll happily recant that part of my rambling. Here is a ruling that addresses most of the issues, and the shareholders don't appear to have much recourse.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 3:35 PM on September 11, 2008

I just want that magic bar of soap.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 2:19 PM on August 8, 2008

China is still going through its awkward emo stage. A mix CD with some Motorhead and the Stooges may help.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:40 AM on August 7, 2008

Still, the "going through a stage" bit is rather obnoxious.

Yeah, I was being needlessly flippant. My apologies.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 12:11 PM on August 7, 2008

The Dems are the Washington Generals to the Republicans Harlem Globetrotters.

I wonder if we can get the national anthem changed to "Sweet Georgia Brown" - though "Yakkity Sax" often seems more appropriate.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 10:56 AM on July 29, 2008

2,990 results for cuil sucks

So why does it only show me three of the results? None of them helpful, I might add.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 10:02 AM on July 28, 2008

It dies without a message box, without an error message, without making a sound, it just suddenly destroys all its windows, discards any open files, and thus unadorned folds up and flees the mortal coil. It looks very much like the window has minimized, but it won't be found on the taskbar or in Task Manager.

That's almost....beautiful.

I've finally found the way I want to die.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 5:49 PM on July 23, 2008

Am I the only person who finds this inappropriately disrespectful?

Absolutely. Sewage treatment and waste disposal are vital endeavors that protect the public health and welfare. These facilities deserve much more respect than this.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 7:21 AM on July 18, 2008

Just wait until they get their MySpace page up and running.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 7:44 AM on July 11, 2008

I always love that opening sequence, where the City Hall is the tallest building of the downtown skyline. Oh, and how the Rampart district seems like a nice, middle-class neighborhood.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 7:32 AM on July 10, 2008

O Pan! Io Pan!

Strange Angel is another great book about the life of Parsons.

I've long been fascinated by his rather tragic tale, especially with the parallels between his own story and that of John Dee, with L. Ron playing the role of Edward Kelley. When I first began my research, there were no biographies yet released, and I was considering writing one myself, but ran into rather stiff resistance from Helen Smith among others. Still, this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:56 PM on July 4, 2008

If this guy never existed, then R.A.W. must have created him.

R.A. Wilson created his own version of events in Cosmic Trigger, even attributing the founding of CalTech in part to Parsons, which is wildly incorrect.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:59 PM on July 4, 2008

I just read that last link...Marilyn Manson thinks Parsons was responsible for the atomic bomb? And that the objective of the Babalon Working was to bring about the end of the world? I've always given him credit for being reasonably intelligent, but nearly everything that he asserts about Parsons is wrong.

(For those who have read that link and are trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, it is true that Parsons was a disciple of Crowley's, but Crowley was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 5:07 PM on July 4, 2008

Well, I've always thought of Crowley as something of a Rorschach blot...we tend to see what we want to see. If Crowley was a confidence artist, then by nearly any metric he was a rather poor one.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 5:44 PM on July 4, 2008

Oh, my apologies for not knowing you had a deep personal relationship to Parson's brain function. It must be my guiltless patriarchal attitude.

Hmm...I'm not sure what provokes your hostility. But if you can point me to anything in Parsons' writing that displays the nihilistic ambition of literal world destruction attributed to him by MM, please do so. Otherwise, I'll continue to maintain that Manson is full of shit.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:56 AM on July 5, 2008

This is an absolutely top-notch post. Well done and thanks, forrest.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:57 AM on July 2, 2008

It's ironic to watch people cling so desperately to the ability to take for free that which they turn around and proclaim "valueless."

If I see a penny lying in the street, I won't waste the effort to pick it up. And I won't bother defending my so-called "right" to do so when someone asks me to just leave it there.

If something has value, isn't it's worth paying for?
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 2:37 PM on June 24, 2008

I always thought David Bowie held that record.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:21 AM on May 25, 2008

Yeah, Japan, quit being so goddamned cute.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:18 AM on May 25, 2008

My god, it's like the literary equivalent of that horrible Lisa Loeb song. And an extremely extended remix at that.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 10:21 AM on May 22, 2008

I'm holding out for the "Invader" Zim model myself.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 12:36 PM on May 15, 2008

*considers dusting off Universal Ministries ordination certificate and declaring self open for business*
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 11:40 AM on May 15, 2008

This is fantastic timing as I've recently decided to start hitting the links again. It's just like they say: when God farts, the devil opens a window.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 10:04 AM on May 14, 2008

ooh, i just got chills.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:53 AM on May 14, 2008

"FREE TIBET!" available only with purchase of $100 or more.

Offer not valid in Taiwan or Tennessee.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 12:39 PM on May 8, 2008

The first rule of Tentacle Club of Mesonychoteuthis, with Swiveling Hooks is - you do not talk about Tentacle Club of Mesonychoteuthis, with Swiveling Hooks.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:00 AM on April 28, 2008

One of my favorite concert memories is from seeing the Cocteau Twins in Hollywood back in '85. After they had played their full set, the crowd naturally wanted an encore, for which they were not the slightest bit prepared. Flustered, Robin rewound the reel-to-reel which had their drum tracks, and they played a couple of songs from the yet-to-be-released Tiny Dynamine again.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 9:16 AM on April 21, 2008

This furthers my newfound appreciation for all things Finnish. I really would like to visit there someday.

My understanding is that a great deal of the population moves from the cities to their country homes in the summer. Is that still the custom? It looks like a bustling little city.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 1:57 PM on April 15, 2008

Dear God,

I am a close associate of Ex-head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Late General Sanni Abacha. I want to know if you can assist me by providing your foreign account for a quick transfer of a total sum of $95.5m U.S. Dollars from Africa to your account. You were recommended to me by one of your devout followers, Retired Col. Usman Mohammed. But I did not disclose my intentions to him. I promise to offer you 25% of the total sum if you can assist me as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 6:42 AM on April 14, 2008

I can't imagine anyone enrolling in law school without being high.
posted to MetaFilter by malocchio at 8:03 PM on April 13, 2008