Down goes the Dow

agip wrote:

Whoo weee

We’ve talked about this one.

I was in it twice, made money both times.

Racketwicz was long term bearish on it - correctly it seems.

https://twitter.com/awealthofcs/status/1456356037242597380?s=21

Came here to brag about being correct, but you remembered!

I said a long time ago that "indoor tech" was going to be doomed this year. People have tons of money and they sure as hell don't want to spend it on being inside.

agip wrote:

Stocks should go up, sure, and they did.

Minor correction:

stocks only go up

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

My bet is the Canadian security services in Ukraine. Trudeau hasn’t yet convinced the idiot that blackface should be part of his cover.

$20 (USD aka real money) says he's French-Canadian

VS-SJW-IR-TS idiot wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:In my past profession I encouraged retirees who desired to travel not to wait. Health and infirmaries of age can halt plans.

I'm all over that... we may retire sooner than later for exactly that reason. Mind you, even while working we have traveled a ton, but for pleasure and for work (both mine and my spouse's). Before covid, anyway...

Wife and I are downhill skiers. We planned to go more ofter during the week days in retirement. Well with each of us having health events that has delayed things. I have recovered, currently it is her turn. An elective surgery that went south, with an extended hospital stay, and another surgery in the new year. She will likely be fine post surgery, but recovery will eliminate another season. Then there is just the age issue.

If you have noticed when a stock blows up the downside is substantial. The trend down starts in advance. Illustrated by Z and MRNA.

Prof. Racket wrote:... he's French-Canadian

Um, no. I've got a good story about that too though. Where mas and I did undergrad, we had to take our second language an hour every day. If you reached a certain level, they excused you, which produced five spares per week. In my program, which had really no free time, that was huge, particularly given that I like sleep WAY more than language training and would happily crash in my room with the least provocation (and often did, whether I was allowed or not; I was a poor student back then). The possibility of five spares was a huge carrot, and I became single-minded about improving my French, not for the sake of learning it, but for the reward of the spares. I was declared "functionally bilingual" by the end of second year, which yielded the prize. There ended my formal French education, and my ability was left to languish and die through total neglect over the next 35 years, until I needed to buff it up for work, which took WAY more effort in middle age than it had the first time around...

Daughter’s undergraduate major was anthropology/Canadian studies. One summer she attended University of Montreal where all the teaching was in French. Son also took French in high school. Both kids were much better than their father who earned a D in high school French III.

Speaking of French and tattoos. Mrs Opitz was my French I teacher, she had a concentration camp tattoo on her wrist.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:Speaking of French and tattoos. Mrs Opitz was my French I teacher, she had a concentration camp tattoo on her wrist.

Yikes!

I read Anne Frank's diary this year after visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Spoiler alert, the book DOES NOT HAVE A HAPPY ENDING!!!

Maybe this will make me look like an idiot, but even though I knew her story (both from being, well, a living human vaguely aware of the world around me, but also having recently visited the museum), as I read the diary I got lulled into her life, and what starts out really dreary and depressing starts to get really optimistic toward the end. End then it just ends. Not happily! I was so angry! I know, stupid, right? I wonder what the alien psychoanalysts are making of this... :-)

Was there a huge lone around the block like usual?

I kept the French. Was declared bilingue with you, but then had Montreal gf, a Quebecois neighbor, Quebecois brother-in-law, and now French in-laws, friends, and second social life.

Sorry, “line”, not “lone”. Fat fingers.

I have been told many times “travel early”, and I have been lucky enough to have done so. I strongly encourage it, if one can.

We will be skiing Nov 24, one of the places we go opens this weekend. Can’t wait. For no good reason, been feeling like my days are numbered. Which they are.😮

M@serati wrote:Was there a huge line around the block like usual?

I assume you're talking about the Anne Frank house? First time we were in Amsterdam we tried to go there on a whim, pre-pandemic. No way to get in same day. No way. We were in Amsterdam again this year, mid-pandemic but during a low point in new cases. I booked tickets easily a couple of days in advance. Even with reduced capacity, no problem getting in. I had a painting made by a pair of street artists, a couple living just outside Amsterdam in some kind of hippie artist cooperative, something that evokes an image of my spouse. I wish we'd found time to pop by and see them but didn't manage it. I think the day after we left was when the Netherlands got ushered out of the World Cup, or at least they lost, at home, anyway. The city didn't have many tourists (pandemics are the best time to travel if you don't like seeing other tourists... :-) We found the same thing in Iceland in 2020), and most of the ones we saw seemed there for the match the next day, decked out in national colors.

On my return trip from swimming and grocery shopping passed by a Maserati. Personalized license plate: WIFEMAD.

No, not really, not the vibe you give off.

Upon further consideration: "People we know in the field of Engineering for fifty, please."

seattle prattle wrote:Upon further consideration: "People we know in the field of Engineering for fifty, please."

I think I've already said too much... :-D

You bet.

Kind of luck the stock market clocked out at noon eastern time today just treaded water into the close.

But up for the day even if off of the highs,

Can't complain.

We love Amsterdam, almost bought a place there but opted for a somewhere else instead. My architect wife loves walking around and photographing the doors and door handles!

Did you make it all the way through War and Peace? I made it 75% of the way through. At about 33% I realized that the style of this literary effort reflected the psycho-social qualities of the then-readers’ lives. That is to say, that it read like a soap opera, and I got around to wondering if it had been written in installments, like Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”.

(Lol remember CT? He is still in, I think)

How the heck did you find the time to endure the seemingly limitless minutae of personal interactions and psychology? At 33% I realized that it wasn’t going anywhere, and wondered just what percentage I needed to apprehend its entirety. I began skipping ahead and fragmenting. I figure I got 75%, and maybe even that was too much. This book was from when people had time to fill, no real media, no big admin, their lives were small...

If I could post photos I would post of my monitor stands, which variously sit on The Pelican Shakespeare, The VLSI Handbook, and The Brothers Karamazov😂. I liked Notes from Underground, and my little two-fer including The Overcoat and The Nose.

Ivan Denisovich still rules. Beats those boat anchors under my monitor stands. I also have lots of really heavy Springer-Verlag texts I use as doorstops.

Off to the bar, I am buying tonight thanks to TSLA. Have a good weekend all. Do some running!

M@serati wrote:Lol remember CT? He is still in, I think

I've attended exactly one reunion, at 25 years. It was way more fun than I expected. Conversations picked up with old friends as if I'd just seen them a couple of days ago, not 25 years earlier at grad. CT was there, and he was out and seemingly doing very well (some sort of finance position iirc), married to the lady who treated him as a physio way back then. Not many still serving even then, and far fewer now, can't be more than a handful, I would think.