Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 20th, 2017

Change is the only constant.

 

  

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• AI Beats the World's Best Gamers after Just Two Weeks of Learning. (NewAtlas)
• Russia-linked Hackers Targeted Hotel Guests across Europe: Security Firm. (Reuters)
• One Year after Rio: What's Left behind after the Flame Goes Out. (ESPN)
• Humans and Robots are on the Cusp of a Sexual Intimacy We May Never Reverse. (Quartz)
• Elon Musk Just Shared His 4-Step Plan for Mars - Colonists Should Be "Prepared to Die". (ScienceAlert)

 

Trading Links:

• Ray Dalio Urges Investors to Hedge Against Possible North Korea War. (FN)
• There Has Never, Ever, Been this Many Trades Betting on VIX. (ZH)
• Amazon Could Start Selling Event Tickets in the U.S. (TechCrunch)
• South Korea Introduces World's First Robot Tax. (ZeroHedge)
• The Number of Cash Payments Dipped 11 Per Cent Last Year - But It's Still the Most Used Payment Method. (CityAM)

Rubik's Cubes ... More than just a game.

One of my unique abilities is pattern matching.

Even if I'm not an expert in a field, based on context and patterns, I quickly see the big picture – and recognize the bottlenecks and leverage points that impact transformative results.

Perhaps that's why Rubik's Cubes fascinate me. 

A scrambled cube presents an insurmountable challenge to newbies.  It almost seems that there are infinite possibilities ... and most lead towards chaos and failure. In reality, a Rubik's cube is pretty easy to solve if you understand a few simple algorithms (and match the positions of a couple key blocks in relation to the decisions you need to make next). 

As more people learn to solve standard cubes, the game evolves.  There is new generation of "Cubers" that attempt to find new creative situations to add difficulty, solve it faster than the next person, or try crazy variations of the cube that barely resembles the original. 

 

If you're trying to learn how to solve a basic cube, here's a great resource. 

After you've learned the basic patterns, and solved a few puzzles,  you can up the ante.

Here are some examples of bigger cubes with more variables and different shapes.

 

via hananujiya

Ultimately, it is that base pattern recognition and simple solving skills (applied in the right order) that sets the stage.

It doesn't matter where you start.  As long as you continue to make progress, the result is inevitable.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 4th, 2017

A poorly thought-out plan, executed perfectly, is better than a perfectly designed plan that never gets executed. 

 

via Calvin and Hobbes 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• NFL in Talks with Jerry Jones, Yankees to Combine Event, Hospitality Business. (BR)
• How to Boost Your Mental Health with Nootropics. (PickTheBrain)
• Study Says It's the Cuddling, More Than the Sex, that Makes You Happy. (Flipboard)
• Fukushima Disaster Evacuees Told to Return to Abandoned Homes. (TheGuardian)
• Someone Asked Their Amazon Echo If It Was Connected to the CIA. the Response Was Not Reassuring. (SomeEcards)

Trading Links:

• The Secret Economic Lives of Animals. (Bloomberg)
• Bill Gates Invests in Veggie Burger that Bleeds' like Beef to Feed the Masses and Save the Planet. (GeekWire)
• Alan Greenspan: the Bubble is in Bonds, Not Stocks. (Apple)
• Why the Post Office Gives Amazon Special Delivery. (Wall Street Journal)
• U.S. Farmers, Who Once Fed the World, are Overtaken by New Powers. (Wall Street Journal)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 16th, 2017

Science, Art, or "PooPoo De Toro"...

  

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Ray Kurzweil: There's a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm in Our Brains (Futurism)
• Brain-training Games Don't Really Train Brains, a New Study Suggests. (WashPost)
• Why Men Don't Live as Long as Women. (Nautilus)
• What a Hunter-Gatherer Diet Does to the Body in Just Three Days. (CNN)
• Is Philosophy Simply Harder Than Science? (TLS)

Trading Links:

• Return of the Day Traders. (Forbes)
• The Unexpected Economic Consequences of Video Games. (Vox)
• Why Elon Musk's Early Adopters Take Risks. (Forbes)
• Nvidia Heads 50 Companies that Will Change the World. (Alphr)
• This is the Future of Investing, and You Probably Can't Afford It. (BizInsider)

You Can Call Me Old Glory - Weekly Reading Links - July 7th, 2017

Hope you had a happy 4th of July - grilled out, saw some fireworks. Here's a video of Robin Williams reminding us that it's never a bad time to feel patriotism.

Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.

Lighter Links:

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Intelligence, Not Just Our Processes? (Burrus) 6 Findings after Researching 1,000 Self-Help Articles.(IntelligentChange) Clean Meat: a Bold Prediction May Finally Come True. (Forbes) Language Alters Our Experience of Time. (The Conversation) Pump Action: the Heart-stopping History of Cardiac Surgery.(NewStatesman) This Emotional Intelligence Test Was So Accurate It Was Creepy.(FastCompany) Neuroscientists Figure out How to Wipe Individual Memories from the Brain of a Snail. (DT) The ABCs and Ds of Whether to Get Prostate Cancer Screening. (NYT) The Top 21 Natural Testosterone Booster Ingredients. (Visual) What Duck Sex Reveals about Human Nature. (Spiegel) The Impossible Mathematics of the Real World. (Nautilus) What is Space? (Nautilus) The Shah of Iran: An Interview with Mohammad Reza Pahlevi.(NewRepublic) From Russia with Blood. (BuzzFeed) Here's the Easiest Way to Eat More Vegetables. (Time) Crash Override: Malware that Took Down a Power Grid May Have Been a Test Run. (Networkworld) Hume's Theory of Ideas. (AutodidactPhilosophy) A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf is 8 Miles from Creating an Iceberg the Size of Delaware. (NYTimes) Athens, Sparta and Rome: The Ancient Election. (TLS) Why are Artists Now Able to Create "Photo Realistic" Paintings and Pencil Drawing that Totally Blow Classic Painters, like Rembrandt and Da Vinci, out of the Water in Terms of Detail and Realism? (Quora)

Market-Related Links

Hedge Fund Launches Back on the Rise. (Institutional Investor) The Median Price of New Homes Hits a Record High. (WSJ) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos May Be Single-handedly Killing Inflation.(CNBC) Technological Change and the Future of Financial Intermediation.(JohnKay) China to Promote Wealth Management Investment in Commodities - Regulator. (Reuters) Debunking the Fintech is Failing' Nonsense. (TheFinancialBrand) Should Your Company Be Profitable? (AVC) On Currency. (JPKoning) This is How Big Oil Will Die. (Shift) How Vertical Farming Reinvents Agriculture. (BBC) Quantopian's Army of Analysts is Defining the Future of Investment.(Inc) The Stars are Starting to Align for Gold Bulls. (BusinessInsider) Is a $2.7 Million Lunch with Warren Buffett a Bargain? (Bloomberg) 4 Indications that Make It Painfully Obvious Trumpcare is in Deep Trouble. (Fool) North Korea behind WannaCry Ransomware Attack, British Intelligence Claims. (BGR) Mobile Data Consumption Will Soon Surpass Fixed Broadband.(Axios) How Behavioral Finance Can Help Investors in Today's Market.(ValueWalk) JPMorgan's Massive Guide to Machine Learning Jobs in Finance.(EFinancialCareers) Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Future of the (Old) New Economy.(HBR) IBM's Watson Supercomputer is Getting into Wall Street Stock-picking. (CNBC)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. Click Here To Join My Mailing List

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 17th, 2017

The new normal.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Putin Implies the U.S. is ‘Stupid’, Talks about NATO ‘Falling Apart’. (ValueWalk)
• Anti-Semitic Incidents Rose a Whopping 86% in the First 3 Months of 2017. (Apple)
• Beyond Alt: Understanding the New Far Right. (NYMag)
• Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Shouldn’t Value Speed Over Power. (Heleo)
• Learning to Distinguish “Fear” from “Fear of Fear” is Key to Leading a Happy Life. (Quartz)

Trading Links:

• Puerto Rico Votes in Favor of Statehood. (TheHill)
• Trump Tweets and the Efficient Market Hypothesis. (SSRN)
• Tony Robbins: What I Learned from the World's Greatest Investors. (Time)
• The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2016 - Pg.1. (Forbes)
• For Aramco Insiders, Prince’s $2 Trillion IPO Valuation Doesn’t Add Up. (WSJ)

Postmodern Jukebox's Cool Cover of "Creep" [Music Video]

Creativity isn't limited to creation.  

Sometimes how you approach something changes it. 

For example, in music, there are some pretty famous covers that "beat" (or revitalize) the original. 

• Aretha Franklin's Respect (An Otis Redding song) is so familiar that it seems like it's the original.
• Disturbed's The Sound of Silence (A Simon&Garfunkel song) has a whopping 236 million views on YouTube.
• Johnny Cash's version of Hurt (A Nine Inch Nails song) has over 50 million views on YouTube.

If you want to stretch it ... how about a death metal version of Mary Poppins?

Some bands exist primarily to do covers.  Few do it like Postmodern Jukebox, which an avid following – and an abundance of talent.    

Here is one of their hits, a torch song inspired version of "Creep" by Radiohead.  Worth a listen.

 

As I was putting this together, I came across a different version of Creep played on a Gayageum (a traditional Korean instrument).  

Different ... but interesting.

There are many ways to approach almost everything.

 

A Better Way to Exercise - Whole Body Vibration Technology

Do you remember seeing a video of one of those old "exercise machines" that vibrated a belt around somebody's middle? While that might have been a fad, we now know that was not exercising.

Strangely, there is now something similar that is gaining in popularity and actually seems to work quite well. It's called the Power Plate.

This machine uses something called whole body vibration, a technology developed by Russia to use in its space program to combat the affects of zero gravity. Later, they used this technology to help train athletes; and you've seen variations of this in training methods like plyometrics.

Here is a picture of the Power Plate my5.

They claim that 15 minutes on this machine is the equivalent of about an hour at the gym. So how does it work?  Well, as long as you understand that you have to exert some effort, the Power Plate works much better than I would've guessed.

At its simplest level, the machine vibrates 40 times per second. The movements happen in three different planes: front-to-back, side-to-side, and up-and-down. The movements are small enough, and happen so quickly, that they are rarely visible to the naked eye. Nonetheless, your body certainly feels them.

The Power Plate is a little bit larger than your typical doctor's scale. You stand on its platform while performing various movements or stretches. For example, imagine doing a deep knee bend and holding that position when your thighs are parallel to the ground (basically a half squat). As you hold this position, normally, your thigh muscles would get a decent isometric exercise - and you can probably imagine them burning a little. Now imagine what would happen if, as you are performing that exercise, the platform vibrated 40 times per second. Think how many more muscles you would engage. Think how much better this would be as a core stability exercise.

The Power Plate is designed to support a wide range of exercises for all of your main muscle groups - and comes with various accessories, like straps and mats. I found that many of the exercises I enjoy most are movements that my wife says are similar to yoga positions. I try not to let that discourage me from doing them.

The machine gets used every day. My wife and son like it too.  It is exercise, and it does take work.  With that said, it has had a noticeable effect on my strength, flexibility and my ability to do traditional workouts at the gym.

You can find out more about this at the manufacturer's website. 

Here are some links about the machine and exercises.

• Info about Power Plate for the home.
• Here are Power Plate video training sessions showing 34 exercises.
• Here are more exercises.
• Here is a stretching video.
• Here is a YouTube search for Power Plate.  And, finally,
• Here are some articles on the science behind the technology

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading - June 3rd, 2017

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Expanded Laptop Ban Could Cover Half a Million Travelers a Day. (CNN)
• Someone Posted the Codes to Every United Cockpit Online. (TheNextWeb)
• A Neuroscientist Explains the Radical Theory that Our Free Will is Just an Illusion. (BI)
• Scientists Think They're More Rational Than Other People. (Scientific American)
• 50 Books Recommended by this Year's TED Speakers. (Inc)

Trading Links:

• Once Considered the Titans of Wall Street, Hedge Fund Managers are in Trouble. (WP)
• Apple: Supercycle Hopes Drive Supersize Bets. (Wall Street Journal)
• To Stabilize the Oil Market, OPEC Refines Its Strategy. (Stratfor)
• Switch It up this Year: Buy in May, till November Stay. (EconomicTimes)
• The Quants: Meet the New Kings of Wall Street. (Wall Street Journal)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - May 27th, 2017

There is a place to go with deep wishes  ...

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• What the Dying Teach the Living. (LongNow)
• Why Close Encounters with Animals Soothe Us. (New York Times)
• Will We Ever Elect an AI as President? (Wired)
• 'SNL' Releases McCarthy's 'Spicey' Outtakes. (CNN)
• The Dark Art of How (And When) to Buy an Airline Ticket. (NYMag)

Trading Links:

• The Quants Run Wall Street Now. (Wall Street Journal)
• The MMC Ventures AI Investment Framework: 17 Success Factors For The Age Of AI. (Medium)
• The Real Reason Saudis Rolled out the Reddest of Red Carpets. (Bergen)
• SoftBank and Saudis Launch Largest Tech Investment Fund Ever, $93 Billion in Committed Capital. (CNBC)