Search Results for: palo alto

Triple Anecdote

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Our world is changing fast, and I think the pace of those changes is going to accelerate (and for the worse). Here are three quick anecdotes from my own personal life in the past few days; they aren’t really related except inasmuch as it shows the the tradition of human beings doing jobs seems to be on its way “out”.

The Bank Squirrel

As I suspect is the case with most of you, I do virtually all my banking online. There’s no real point physically going to a branch anymore. However, last year I saw that Citibank was literally giving away free money, and I wanted to take advantage of it. They were paying a $700 bonus for opening a $50,000 savings account, with the only requirement being that you had to leave the money in there for 60 days. I therefore opened a bunch of accounts for myself and various family members (since obviously one person is limited to just a single account for the promotion).

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The Essence of Arrogance

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Below is the founder of Palantir, which was created here in Palo Alto and actually took over Prophet’s old offices downtown. The chap shown is founder Alex Karp. Take a good look at his clothes, his visage, and his general demeanor. Every molecule seems to reek of arrogance. As a side note, the hapless rubes who bought into his PLTR stock are looking at 75% losses so far, with plenty more on the way, I suspect. Something about pride before the fall.

PLTR

The Passport

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For weeks, I’ve been mentioning a certain something in my life that’s been going on and which has, on occasion, interfered with my normal routine. I’ve hinted at it during my tastytrade show, and I’ve mentioned it off-handedly in the comments system. Now that it has an ending, I’m ready to tell the tale. (TRIGGER WARNING: If you do not have utter and complete disrespect for anyone who works for any government, you might want to give this entire post a miss. I have a lifelong disrespect for all civic employees. Every single one. So, like I said, I would suggest perhaps you pop over to the Kardashian website or something instead. Kiss, kiss………………..Tim)

The Trip Forthcoming

As long-time readers know, the vast majority – – virtually the entirety – – of our family’s travel is due to fencing. Our children are elite, internationally-seasoned fencers, and we’ve been to a dizzying number of cities and countries to the sport.

Now, having never been an athlete myself, I’m not sure what kinds of places other athletes go, but when it comes to fencing, I am convinced the organizers of any of these events pick from a list of the world’s least desirable locations and choose those for the venue. I’m not going to enumerate them, but let’s just say that, were it not for fencing, I’d have never visited any of the cities are countries to which we had traveled.

In that spirit, the next trip up was in…………..Romania. You remember them, right? The impoverished former member of the Eastern Bloc whose dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was so hated by his countrymen that, when the USSR fell to pieces, he and his wife were shot to death by his own army on Christmas Day, 1989. So, true to form, the fencing destination was a former Warsaw Pact shithole, and a place no one would ever want to visit. Ever.

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