Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Discussing DISQUS

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Today I was in San Francisco, and I spent part of the day with Daniel Ha, the co-founder of Disqus (which we use here on Slope as the comments system).

I've always liked Disqus, and it's been on Slope since the earliest days. I wanted to mention a couple of important things to Slopers:

  1. Many of you have noticed recently that your comments have been disappearing. Some people have wondered if they were getting "moderated", and others thought they were victims of some kind of conspiracy. Daniel and I diagnosed this together and discovered that their new, improved, anti-spam system is wayyyyyyyyyyy overdoing it and labeling many innocent comments as "spam." I just about had a heart attack when I saw the huge list of totally legitimate comments that had been thrown into the spam bucket. He got in touch with his engineers immediately to fix this. But if you continue seeing things vanish, please know it's nothing you (or I) are doing wrong.
  2. Now something more positive………they are rolling out a new system late this week, and it's got some great new features. The one I loved the most was that the comments auto-update, which means that, before your very eyes, you can see new comments scrolling in your browser as they are submitted. It is OMGPONIES cool, and I think you're going to go nuts when you see it.

I'll close by saying the snark-level in emails and on the web has reached "Australian Voicemail" levels, which I actually think is great. Yay, snark!

Bernanke Puts

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If there were puts being sold on Ben Bernanke's reputation, this would be a good time to buy them. Because just as there was a time that G.W. Bush was incredibly popular, just after 9/11, those 90%+ ratings marked a top that was ground down to almost nothing:

0822-bush

Now we have a situation where the words "Bernanke" and "saved the world" are put put side-by-side.

There are a couple of things that I simply know are true: (1) the market is ultimately going to be a lot lower (2) there will come a time that the stories below will be laughed at for their absurdity.

But in these times that we live – – times so bizarre that everything Ned predicted has materialized (yes, we have entered the looking glass, people) – – Bernanke is being held up as the real Messiah.

0822-jackhole