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.
Sovereign Man
Moody’s: “Ratings desk, can I help you?”
Caller: “Yeah, he’s out.”
Moody’s: “Who’s out?”
Caller: “Knight. He’s dumped his IWM puts and has lightened way up.”
Moody’s: “Got it. Thanks. We’ll take it from here.”
(more…)Taking the Room’s Temperature
So, what’s up with Tim and the Celsius scale?!?! I’m glad you asked. Even though the U.S. is the one freakish country that uses Fahrenheit, I vastly prefer it, for the simple reason of granularity. Using Celsius, in my opinion, is the equivalent of people declaring their age as “In the Thirties” as opposed to “37“. I prefer precision.
State of the World
This illustration of GDP size simultaneously incorporates countries and individual U.S. states. It’s eye-opening to see that California, just one of fifty states, has an economy about TWICE as big as the entirety of Russia. Folks like me who grew up in the Cold War think of Russia as some kind of head-to-head equal with the U.S., when in fact economically they’re pretty much just a pissant also-ran. I mean, good Lord, even Italy’s economy is bigger than Russia’s.
Peace In Our Time Bar
