Search Results for: palo alto

Zuck’s World

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Since I'm kind of tied up for the trading day, I figured I'd write a post about Facebook's headquarters as an interesting anecdote post. After all, FB's founder lives just a few blocks from me, and the headquarters of his firm is just a short bike ride from here. What lies between here and there is kind of interesting.

Look at the map below. The blue arrow denotes where Mark lives. It's a nice house, but I imagine many of you reading this live in something nicer (here in the Silicon Valley, we try to be understated – – even 27-year old zillionaires). Crescent Park is one of the two "rich" neighborhoods in Palo Alto (the other being Old Palo Alto, not shown here). Another nice zone is Lindenwood, marked with the purple arrow (it's kind of obviously a nice part of town – in this case, Menlo Park – because the distance between the streets is much greater). 

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The Trickle-Down Effect

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I am already looking forward to about a week after the Facebook IPO. The onslaught of press at the time of the IPO is going to be stomach-churning. If you're not sick of Zuckerberg's face already, by God, you will be by then. So once they are public, give it about a week, and we can all get back to our lives.

It will also stamp out all this horniness for tech stocks that's running rampant. This Valley has gone into bubble-mode again, and it's hard to take.

Zuck lives three blocks from my house, and the only benefit I'm personally going to get out of the thousands of newly-minted zillionaires is that the value of my house will go up. Indeed, I just took this photo of an advertisement in my local paper showing what Palo Alto home prices have been doing lately (the most recent year is in black; the year prior is in orange).

0203-housing

So asset appreciation of something I actually own is something I can "Like."

Heh.

Revisiting My MLK Post

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I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of Slope.

Five years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, began shorting the market. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of bears who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

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The Breathtaking Fall of Natural Gas

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I lost interest in UNG (the Hun's recommendations notwithstanding) quite some time ago, largely because it was so cheap that the position size would be unwieldy.  I was stunned today to see just how far this has fallen over the years.

It's a mystery to me why my utility bill from the good city of Palo Alto still hovers between $800 and $1000 every single month, but I think it has something to do with the fact that the geniuses at Palo Alto Utilities locked in their contract to purchase gas somewhere near the peak.

0112-UNG

POTW: Enviro-Sanctimony

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As I set out to construct another ton-of-charts-that-should-be-a-video post, I'll offer another Peeve Of The Week.

This time it is environmental sanctimony. None other than George Carlin put together what I think is the best argument against gung-ho environmentalists in this hilarious but all-too-true clip. Now, I'm not tossing trash out of the car or setting forest fires. I own a Leaf, I recycle, and I do other "basics" to be a reasonably responsible citizen of Earth.

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