Official BBO Hijacked Thread Thread

[Cyberyeti]

I mistakenly posted this in the Trump thread, moving it where I meant to put it

 

Random advice sought:

 

As I've mentioned in various threads I have a friend in Russia that I've been supporting on and off both with her mental health and in a small way financially. Her bank is not one of the specifically sanctioned ones

 

Pre Ukraine war, I transferred money in roubles with no issues via one of the commercial money transfer organisations, but they now don't deal with Russia.

 

Last time I transferred money in pounds, got ripped off 10-15% on the rate, but the money got there.

 

Now it appears there's a minimum fee been brought in that's considerably more than I normally transfer for transfers in pounds, dollars or Euros.

 

Is there any way of organising a transfer in roubles ? because I can't find anybody that will do it.

[Winstonm]

https://www.theonion...tion-1849106921

 

The Caviar Coup: Roe v Whey

[pilowsky]

There seem to be quite a few ships at sea.

[y66]

Fun read: Paul Goldschmidt: Man, machine, MVP? ‘This guy’s a robot’ by Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic. A few excerpts:

 

Ever see a hitter hold a bat up to his ear and tap it to measure its sound? The hitter is making a subjective judgment on the quality of the wood, not one based on objective data. Paul Goldschmidt, during one of his first spring trainings with the Cardinals, stunned his teammates by bringing a new level of analysis to his selection of bats.

 

Former Cardinal Matt Carpenter recalls Goldschmidt taking every bat he planned to use for the season, 50 or 60 perhaps, and measuring the exit velocity off each one. A team employee developed a chart to show him which bats produced the best results. Goldschmidt then divided the bats according to the quality of wood, separating ones he would use in batting practice from ones he would use in games.

 

“Paul is not superstitious,” Carpenter says. “He was just going to figure out, ‘Let me give myself the best chance every time I step in there with this bat. If this bat is truly harder than the other ones, then why not use it?’”

 

Goldschmidt is just as thoughtful, just as analytical, about every aspect of his profession.

A little more than two months before his 35th birthday, Goldschmidt is a leading contender for National League Most Valuable Player, an award for which he finished second in 2013 and ’15 and third in ’17. Going into Wednesday’s games, he led the league in batting average (.347), on-base percentage (.429) and slugging percentage (.639), all by significant margins. He is a four-time Gold Glove winner for his defense at first base. Yet to his teammates, opponents, coaches and manager, the care Goldschmidt puts into seemingly his least consequential skill, baserunning, is the most vivid example of his relentlessly painstaking approach to the sport.

 

The average fan probably does not notice one of Goldschmidt’s trademark baserunning techniques, much less think it matters. Yet to Cardinals manager Oli Marmol, it is one of Goldschmidt’s defining acts on a baseball field. When running the bases, Goldschmidt always strikes the bag with his right foot first.

 

Coaches preach such form as the best way to make the quickest turn possible, stay on a direct line, cut down the distance to the next base. Younger Cardinals hitters, trying to follow Goldschmidt’s lead, will look into the dugout if they erroneously lead with their left foot, acknowledging their mistake.

 

Such details matter to Goldschmidt, and when seeking an edge with his base-running, he doesn’t stop there. On close plays at first, he tries to land with his foot as flat as possible at the front tip of the bag. The less time his foot is in the air, the quicker he can touch the base, the better his chances of getting a close out call overturned by replay.

 

Every so often, Goldschmidt will register an infield single or beat out a double play by employing such a maneuver. He preaches it to teammates during spring training and practices it before games. A safe call at first might be the difference between winning and losing. The final score might be the difference between reaching the postseason and falling short.

 

“Slugging first basemen, they don’t work on that kind of stuff,” Carpenter says. “But Paul Goldschmidt does.”

The most unique aspect of Goldschmidt’s approach to hitting, however, is the method he employs when he feels something is amiss.

 

“When I don’t feel right with my swing, when anybody in the history of the game doesn’t feel right with their swing, they go to the batting cage, or they go to their hitting coach, or they go on the field for BP and they just grind over it,” Carpenter says.

 

Goldschmidt?

 

“He goes to the training room.”

 

When Goldschmidt visits the training room, it is not because he is hurt. He’s simply looking to get his body aligned properly, adjust a hip, ankle or any other body part necessary for him to unleash his powerful swing. In his mind, if his swing is off, it’s because his body is off. That’s how confident he is in what he does at the plate.

I love that he understands the importance of alignment which Alexander technique practitioners can relate to (try watching a hundred or so people walking along a sidewalk and observing how many move seemingly effortlessly and with poise). I remember seeing my favorite bridge software developer sitting somewhat slump shouldered at the Buffett Cup in Dublin and thinking he could save a lot of energy by improving his posture. :)

[y66]

He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won a Fields Medal.

[y66]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-07/nickel-big-shot-called-the-shots

 

If you sell nickel futures at a price of $25,000 per ton, and then the price of nickel futures goes up to $100,000 per ton, then in some simple arithmetic sense you have lost $75,000 per ton. If you sold 100 tons of nickel futures, then you have lost more than $7 million. But if you sold 150,000 tons of futures, the math changes a bit; it becomes non-linear and relativistic. If you sold 150,000 tons of nickel futures at $25,000 per ton, and then the price goes up to $100,000, your banks will call you up and say “uh you have lost $11 billion, can you pay that please,” and you will say “I would prefer not to,” and an insane series of events will happen:

 

1. The nickel exchange will cancel a bunch of trades and declare that actually the market price of nickel is $48,000 per ton, magically reversing most of your losses.
   
2. Then the exchange will call you and say “okay let’s close you out of that trade at $48,000 per ton.”
   
3. Then you will say “no, this is still too much money for me to lose, I prefer not to.”
   
4. Then your banks will say “well okay how much are you willing to lose?”
   
5. You will say “I would close out this trade at $30,000, that’s how much money I am willing to lose.”
   
6. Your banks will say “okay fine, we’ll wait for nickel prices to go back below $30,000, meanwhile we’ll just lend you the money to stay in the position.”
   
7. They will.
   
8. Eventually nickel prices will go below $30,000 and you will get out of the trade at a modest loss.
   
9. If prices never go below $30,000 then I guess your banks are very sad, but honestly they’re pretty sad about all of this anyway.
   

I cannot stress enough that this is not how it works if you are a small customer. This is the white-glove treatment that only the biggest customers get. If you are big enough, you get to tell the exchange how much money you’re willing to lose, and the exchange and your banks will make sure you don’t lose more than that.

 

Here is a wild Bloomberg News story about Xiang Guangda, the Chinese metals tycoon who runs Tsingshan Holding Group Co., who is nicknamed “Big Shot,” and who blew up the London Metals Exchange in March.

[Winstonm]

An additional benefit of being a Big Shot is that Billy Joel will write a song about you.

[y66]

Clownfall

Boris Johnson’s government has collapsed at last. For months Britain’s prime minister wriggled out of one scandal after another. Now, irretrievably rejected by his own mps, he has accepted that his premiership is over. He has asked to stay until the autumn, but he should go immediately.

 

Mr Johnson was brought down by his own dishonesty, so some may conclude that a simple change of leadership will be enough to get Britain back on course. If only. Although Mr Johnson’s fingerprints are all over today’s mess, the problems run deeper than one man. Unless the ruling Conservative Party musters the fortitude to face that fact, Britain’s many social and economic difficulties will only worsen.

 

Right up until the end Mr Johnson clung desperately to power, arguing that he had a direct mandate from the people. That was always nonsense: his legitimacy derived from Parliament. Like America’s former president, Donald Trump, the more he hung on the more he disqualified himself from office. In his departure, as in government, Mr Johnson demonstrated a wanton disregard for the interests of his party and the nation.

 

Although the denouement took almost two excruciating days, his fate was sealed on July 5th when two cabinet ministers resigned. The catalyst was the behaviour of his party’s deputy chief whip, accused by two men of a drunken sexual assault. Downing Street lied about what the prime minister had known of the whip’s record of abuse, and sent out ministers to repeat its falsehoods—just as it had months earlier over illegal parties in the pandemic. Despairing of yet another scandal, over 50 ministers, aides and envoys joined an executive exodus so overwhelming that the bbc featured a ticker with a running total to keep up. In the end the government had so many vacancies that it could no longer function—one reason Mr Johnson should not stay on as caretaker.

 

The party will hope that its agony is now drawing to a close. But that depends on it taking the right lessons from Mr Johnson’s failure. One is about character in politics. Mr Johnson rejected the notion that to govern is to choose. He lacked the moral fibre to take hard decisions for the national good if that threatened his own popularity. He also lacked the constancy and the grasp of detail to see policies through. And he revelled in trampling rules and conventions. At the root of his style was an unshakable faith in his ability to get out of scrapes by spinning words. In a corner, Mr Johnson would charm, temporise, prevaricate and lie outright. Occasionally, he even apologised.

 

As a result, the bright spots in his record, such as the procurement of vaccines against covid-19 and support for Ukraine, were overwhelmed by scandal elsewhere. Behind the unfolding drama was a void where there should have been a vision. Crises were not a distraction from the business of government: they became the business of government. As the scandals mounted, so did the lies. Eventually, nothing much else was left.

 

Conservatives have been quick to blame everything on Mr Johnson’s character. But his going will be cathartic only if they also acknowledge a second, less comfortable truth. He was an answer to the contradictions in his party. Many of today’s Tory mps belong to the low-tax, more libertarian and free-market tradition, but others, many from northern constituencies, cleave to a new big-spending, interventionist and protectionist wing. They won Mr Johnson an 87-seat majority in the last election and are vital to Conservative fortunes in the next.

 

The charismatic Mr Johnson was able to lash these factions together because he never felt the need to resolve their contradictions. Instead he was for both protectionism and free-trade agreements; he wanted a bonfire of red tape even as he punished energy firms for high prices; he planned huge government spending but promised sweeping tax cuts.

 

This is the politics of fantasy, and you can trace it back to Brexit. In the campaign to leave the European Union Mr Johnson promised voters that they could have everything they wanted—greater wealth, less Europe; more freedom, less regulation; more dynamism, less immigration—and that the eu would be knocking on Britain’s door desperate for a deal. It worked so well that fantasy became the Tories’ organising principle.

 

Nowhere more than in the economy, the third lesson the next government must learn. Mr Johnson often boasted that Britain’s economic record was the envy of the world, but he was spinning words again. The truth is that the Britain he will leave behind faces grave social and economic problems.

 

It has the highest inflation in the g7, which lavish government spending using borrowed money could well entrench. As we wrote recently, average annual gdp growth in the decade leading up to the global financial crisis of 2007-09 was 2.7%; today the average is closer to 1.7%. Britain is stuck in a 15-year low-productivity rut. The country is forecast to have the slowest growth in the g7 in 2023.

 

What is more, this spluttering engine faces extraordinary demands. Industrial action is spreading from the rail unions to lawyers and doctors. As the cost of living rises, a coherent and determined government is needed to hold the line on spending. Britain is ageing. From 1987 to 2010, when the Tories took office, the share of the British population aged over 65 was steady, at 16%. It is now 19% and by 2035 will be close to 25%, adding to the benefits bill and the burden on the National Health Service, already buckling under the weight of untreated patients.

 

Britain also needs to speed its transition to a net-zero-emissions economy, requiring a vast programme of investment. It has ambitions to count in a world where Russia and China throw their weight around, but its armed forces are small and under-equipped. Scotland and Northern Ireland are restless in the Union and Westminster has no plan to make them content.

 

Britain is in a dangerous state. The country is poorer than it imagines. Its current-account deficit has ballooned, sterling has tumbled and debt-interest costs are rising. If the next government insists on raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, it could stumble into a crisis. The time when everything was possible is over. With Mr Johnson’s departure, politics must once more become anchored to reality.

[y66]

From A turning point in cancer by Eric Topol:

 

We dread the diagnosis of cancer, not only because of its threat to life, but also the conventional chemotherapies that are given, with considerable toxicity. But the theme of the clusters of individualized medicine I’ve reviewed here offers a way forward that links biology and therapy. That reduces the need for chemotherapy. Moreover, as plasma cell-free tumor DNA tests get more informative, the dream of the earliest possible diagnosis of cancer may ultimately be fulfilled, and coupled with an individualized, biologic-based treatment when necessary. So at the very least, I hope you’ve now heard of some “unheard-of” important, new results that foster considerable hope for better cancer outcomes in the future.

[y66]

Very cool and heartwarming to see Tiger Woods getting such a tremendous ovation as he walked up 18 at St. Andrews today. Who can forget how he played here in 2000 as he was setting the golf world on fire?

[Winstonm]

Very cool and heartwarming to see Tiger Woods getting such a tremendous ovation as he walked up 18 at St. Andrews today. Who can forget how he played here in 2000 as he was setting the golf world on fire?

 

I'm wondering what Nicklaus thinks now of his endorsement of Trump in 2020. I would consider that his 19th major (screw up).

[y66]

Fun read: How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team

[y66]

Also: This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End

[kenberg]

I see that the predicted high temperature in San Franciso today is 65 degrees F.

At one time we went to SF to visit Fisherman's Wharf or the City Lights Bookstore and maybe (well, not me) to wear a flower in our hair. Now SF is one of the few places in the country where we can step outside without getting baked. My grandson is coming up for a visit from Austin Texas, where the predicted high is 105. Here, near Baltimore, they are predicting 95 and sunny. Much better than 105, but I still decided I can wait a bit before mowing the grass. Maybe at twilight. And maybe not.

[y66]

I see that the predicted high temperature in San Franciso today is 65 degrees F.

At one time we went to SF to visit Fisherman's Wharf or the City Lights Bookstore and maybe (well, not me) to wear a flower in our hair. Now SF is one of the few places in the country where we can step outside without getting baked. My grandson is coming up for a visit from Austin Texas, where the predicted high is 105. Here, near Baltimore, they are predicting 95 and sunny. Much better than 105, but I still decided I can wait a bit before mowing the grass. Maybe at twilight. And maybe not.

I was going through some old books this morning and considered donating my copy of Ferlinghetti's "Pictures of the gone world" to my library's book sale. Decided to hold onto it a while longer.

 

You mentioned the possibility of moving on the other thread, perhaps not seriously. It's a fun problem to think about. SF is ideal in many ways but the world is catching up with it. I met a guy who spends April-Nov at a place he and his wife restored on the coast of Maine and the other 4 months in a detached apartment at his son-in-law's place in New Mexico. Some variation of that plan appeals to me. Not easy to escape inertia or the comforts of a familiar place.

 

It's only 90 F here. I'm heading out shortly to cut some grass. Will stop after 20 minutes or so and do the rest -- another 20 minutes -- another day or perhaps at twilight.

[y66]

"The Changing Light" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)

 

The changing light at San Francisco

is none of your East Coast light

none of your

pearly light of Paris

The light of San Francisco

is a sea light

an island light

And the light of fog

blanketing the hills

drifting in at night

through the Golden Gate

to lie on the city at dawn

And then the halcyon late mornings

after the fog burns off

and the sun paints white houses

with the sea light of Greece

with sharp clean shadows

making the town look like

it had just been painted

But the wind comes up at four o’clock

sweeping the hills

And then the veil of light of early evening

And then another scrim

when the new night fog

floats in

And in that vale of light

the city drifts

anchorless upon the ocean

 

From "How to Paint Sunlight"

[pilowsky]

"The Changing Light" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)

 

The changing light at San Francisco

is none of your East Coast light

none of your

pearly light of Paris

The light of San Francisco

is a sea light

an island light

And the light of fog

blanketing the hills

drifting in at night

through the Golden Gate

to lie on the city at dawn

And then the halcyon late mornings

after the fog burns off

and the sun paints white houses

with the sea light of Greece

with sharp clean shadows

making the town look like

it had just been painted

But the wind comes up at four o'clock

sweeping the hills

And then the veil of light of early evening

And then another scrim

when the new night fog

floats in

And in that vale of light

the city drifts

anchorless upon the ocean

 

From "How to Paint Sunlight"

 

He sounds like an Englishman - discussing the weather until your ears bleed.

[kenberg]

He sounds like an Englishman - discussing the weather until your ears bleed.

 

If a guy wants to write a poem that appreciatively describes a city it's hard to do better. I don't much know poetry but in my post I did mention the City Lights bookstore, this poem is by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, so it fits.

My wife Becky lived in SF during her adolescence, that being during the early to mid-1960s. A good time to be there, and more affordable than now. I lived for a few months in Berkeley in the 70s and enjoyed it. The Pacific coast has a lot to like. I still like St. Paul/Minneapolis, that's where I grew up. I am now in Maryland, my daughters live in Maryland, I expect I'll stay in Maryland. All in all, I think the Pacific Ocean is more interesting than the Atlantic Ocean, but that's not enough to make me move.

[Winstonm]

I am firmly of the conviction that no one likes poetry but most people can find a poem or a poet to like,

I like this one y66 posted. Thanks.

[kenberg]

I recently saw a doctor who in his summary of the visit described me as a well-nourished male. I like that, very tactful.

[thepossum]

If a guy wants to write a poem that appreciatively describes a city it's hard to do better. I don't much know poetry but in my post I did mention the City Lights bookstore, this poem is by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, so it fits.

My wife All in all, I think the Pacific Ocean is more interesting than the Atlantic Ocean, but that's not enough to make me move.

 

I don't want to sound like a smartass but I'm curious about why. The currents perhaps?

 

I think I am with you but it's a bit hard on the Atlantic

[kenberg]

I don't want to sound like a smartass but I'm curious about why. The currents perhaps?

 

I think I am with you but it's a bit hard on the Atlantic

 

You got me thinking and yes, I might be being unfair to the Atlantic. I very much like the Maine coast. Most of my experience with the Pacific has been in Oregon or Washington. So maybe I just prefer the more northerly parts of both oceans. Still, I do like the coastal area around San Francisco. That's still reasonably north. The Atlantic along the Delmarva Peninsula is ok, the Pacific along LA is ok, the north is better for me with both oceans.

 

As mentioned, I grew up in St. Paul. I also am genetically Norwegian. Toronto is one of my favorite cities. Seattle is another. And growing up in Minneapolis-St. Paul was great. Skate and sled in the winter, swim and bike in the summer, go to some physics and math lectures at the U as an adolescent. I can't fully explain it, but I just seem to like the north. With kids and grandkids mostly in or near Maryland (but a grandson is now in Texas) we probably won't be moving. But if we were to move, I am pretty sure Becky agrees that we would move north rather than move south. Becky went through her adolescence in San Francisco, not far from Haight Asbury, but she likes Minnesota and has now even been ice fishing.

 

So anyway, yep, maybe it's the northern areas of both coasts that I prefer.

[y66]

re: I can't fully explain it, but I just seem to like the north

 

Have you ever been to Norway?

[pilowsky]

I recall hearing Garrison Keillor remarking that he visited Norway to get back to his roots.

He visited a restaurant with a friend and during the meal some food became stuck in his throat causing him to choke and cough violently.

The couple at the next table complimented him on his accent.

 

Thinking back to the way he told the story, Ken's writing now makes much more sense.

[Winstonm]

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small small world. 🎺🎼🪕🎷