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.
I would like to start out with a snippet from the 1993 film Schindler’s List.
We were on the roof on Monday, young Lisiek and I and we saw the Herr Commandant come out of the front door and down the steps by the patio right there below us and there on the steps he drew his gun and he shot a woman who was passing by. A woman with a bundle, through the throat, just shot her. Just a woman on her way somewhere, you know, she was no fatter or thinner or slower or faster than anyone else and I couldn't guess what she had done. The more you see of the Herr Commandant, the more you see there are no set rules that you can live by. You can't say to yourself, "If I follow these rules, I will be safe."
For me, nothing captures my feelings toward the stock market better than the above quote. The stock market, in the form of Herr Commandant, has power. It can do things at will. It has its own behavior. But that behavior is no longer something that can be understood. It simply does what it does, without any clear basis in rational thought, and we can either participate as willing collaborators, rationality be damned, or we can stand back in abject puzzlement and horror. I’m kind of in the horror camp.
(more…)I like physical newspapers. I don’t subscribe to any, but I do enjoy my morning read of our little hometown paper, the Palo Alto Daily Post, which is pretty much 80% real estate ads and 20% news stories. On Thursday morning, I was greeted with this:
Although I don’t hang out in the comments section much, I always read the most popular comments each evening from the Daily Digest. I noticed that tonight, far and away the most like comment was from Arizona Slim, the elder statesman of Slope.
I get a lot of emails. 99% of them are spam, typically wanting me to put up “promotional” posts on Slope (I never do, so, you’re welcome) or pushing some service on me. As for the others, they typically are informative or friendly, but once or twice a year, I get something snarky or mean.
Earlier this week, I got one of those. It wasn’t anything too nasty; indeed, it was an empty email! The only content it had was the subject line itself, which read, in its entirety:
Subject: How can you support a guy like Elon Musk by buying a Tesla? Thanks
Now, this chap wasn’t a Sloper. I’m guessing he saw me mention owning a Tesla on tastylive, or maybe he read it on Slope and wasn’t a registered user. In any case, he knew I owned a Tesla (I actually own two) and, evidently being no fan of Elon Musk, he demanded that I explain myself.
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