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.

The Ursine Mafia

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I fully expected this kind of thing, but not nearly this soon:

mafia

This sort of thing seriously nauseates me. Those who do crimes on the LONG side (say, for instance, the founders of WeWork) are still heralded as heroes. I mean, hell, the founder of Nikola was practically carted off in chains, and it’s still a public company! Elizabeth Holmes was the rare exception to a bullish criminal getting in trouble (umm, although she’s still free as a bird, enjoying life on a huge estate; who knows if they’ll ever send her to the pokey).

But let the market slip a few percent, and suddenly it’s the big bad BEARS that are the cause of all life’s troubles. One of a million people is a true bear. And the rest of the people despise them. Just wait until this stupid market is down 50%. I’ll probably be blogging from prison. Just watch.

Back In the USSR

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Putin revealed his thinking in a speech last week where he stated (incorrectly) that Ukraine had always been part of Russia historically, and has now followed through on that with what looks increasingly like a full occupation of Ukraine. If he meant what he said in that speech then Ukraine’s time as an independent country may well have ended for the time being, in what is also a harsh warning to any other ex USSR states bordering Russia that are thinking of seeking closer ties with the West, and looser ties with their scary imperial neighbor. Russia may have started to reconstruct the Soviet Union’s old empire, and a new Cold War may be starting here that would align the democratic west against the undemocratic East. That may of course have serious consequences on trade with China in due course.

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