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.
This graphic (from Visual Capitalist) offers a fact I would have never guessed: stock ownership has been declining, on the whole, for many years! I would have assumed that between zero commissions, RobinHood, /wsb, the rise of online brokerages, and all the rest of it, it would be getting higher year after year without interruption. But, nope:
Since the Coleco Adam was one of the many computers I had as a kid, it was a kick to stumble across this commercial. There’s a bonus, though, in this total rip-off from WarGames premise: the (very cute) girl in the commercial is none other than a young Lori Loughlin. The extra-special bonus, of course, is her line, which she utters twice – “Is that legal?” – – turns out to be more germane to her world than anyone dared imagine.
Whoa! How did I not know about this? As big a Beatles fan as I am (it’s pretty much all I play on the bass guitar), I had no idea Peter Jackson was coming out with a Beatles documentary this year (it releases August 27th). This looks absolutely amazing, and in sharp contrast to the grainy Let It Be (which seems to show a band that is constantly on the verge of breakup), this looks filled with joy (although personally I’d lose my mind having Yoko Ono no more than six inches away from John Lennon morning, noon, and night):
(more…)Hangin’ on, hangin’ out
There’s a place for me & you
Hangin’ round, hangin’ free
We got nothin’ else to do
Turn it up, fade it down
Yeah, that song it saved my life
Perfect teeth a perfect smile
Oh, she was a friend of mine
Let’s go out to the place
Where the hands of time are slowed
No one walks, no one dies
No more hassles anymore
I grew up in the upper-middle class my entire life. I never knew any rich people for most of my years. Indeed, in the many times I’ve addressed the subject of wealth distribution, I have recalled that during my upbringing, the “rich” man I met was a general manager at a Ford dealership, and probably made $45,000 a year to my Dad’s $35,000. So that, to me, was rich.
I wish it was still so. I never thought I’d type this, but I truly do yearn for the days of my childhood when, yes, there were fables about millionaires, but on the whole, people were more or less in the same boat. This is a thing of the past now, although I strongly suspect in about twenty to thirty years, it’ll be very much with us again. Life moves in cycles, of course.
This came to me because I finally got around to watch the Netflix documentary about Operation Varsity Blues. I love documentaries, and as such, it is excellent. For those of you who subscribe to Netflix, I certainly recommend it. They’ve done a beautiful job weaving the tale, splicing in real-life images of high school kids (the honest ones, not the rich ones) in the throes of getting either accepted or rejected from their hoped-for schools. Although the “script” was simply copied from the real-life FBI wiretap recordings, the dramatization is led by the actor Matthew Modine (of Full Metal Jacket fame) who plays the detestable Rick Singer.
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