There is nothing wrong with your television. We will control all that you see and hear. We can deluge you with a thousand channels or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. Enjoy ....
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.
We believe what we want to believe, so it can be very hard to change a belief, even in the face of contrary evidence.
Recently, we've seen a massive uptick in distrust toward news agencies, big companies, the government, and basically anyone with a particularly large reach.
To a certain degree, this is understandable and justified. Here is an example of the power of the media focused on a message. Click to watch.
Propaganda has always been an issue, and almost everyone does it; governments, companies, etc. Luckily, it's easier to see today than in the past, but unluckily it's also more pervasive and insidious than before.
It's to the point where if you watch the news you're misinformed, and if you don't watch the news you're uninformed.
The above segment portrays a rosy picture of Amazon's efforts to protect its workers while delivering essentials to the struggling homebound masses. This comes while Amazon has come under massive fire for removing some of its protections.
Honestly, I use Amazon and, in my opinion, this isn't a massive breach of trust. News stations have a lot of time to fill, they often have sponsored content.
That being said, it's something to be cognizant of - not necessarily offended by.
Personally, I believe I am reasonably aware and somewhat immune from propaganda. That probably isn't as true as I'd like to believe.
It used to be true that winners wrote history (think empires, wars, etc.). Now, the one that delivers the most broadcast narratives shapes the emotional and seemingly logical responses to what we perceive to be happening around us.
The result impacts elections, financial markets, buying choices, and countless other areas of our life.
As A.I., Bots, and social media grow, our ability to discern truth from 'truthiness' weakens.
It's a great reminder that what you're seeing and hearing is carefully manufactured, and hopefully, it encourages you to get outside your bubble.
A friend has two tickets for the 2020 SUPER BOWL — both box seats. He paid $2,500 for each ticket, but didn't realize last year when he bought them that it was going to be on the same day as his wedding. If you are interested, he is looking for someone to take his place — it’s at St. Dominic's Church in San Francisco at 3pm. Her name is Melissa . She's 5'7 about 140 lbs. She's a good cook, too. She'll be the one in the white dress.
As for the Super Bowl, it seems like this will be a good matchup. The KC Chiefs are in it for the first time in 50 years (and have an amazing offense), while the 49ers are coming off a series of tough seasons (but have an amazing defense). It will also be a Super Bowl without Bill Belichick's scowl gracing our screens.
It's not just the fans that are excited about the matchup, it's also the bookies. Two years ago, gamblers set a record by placing $158.6 million in Super Bowl bets. Expect more of the same with gambling now legalized in an additional 13 states beyond Nevada.
If you're still looking for a bet – there's another wishful thinking approach you could take to find one ... it is called the "Super Bowl Indicator."
The theory is that a Super Bowl win for a team from the AFC foretells a decline in the stock market and a win for the NFC means the stock market will rise in the coming year. So, if you're hoping for a strong S&P you'd be rooting for 49ers.
There's one big caveat ... it counts the Pittsburgh Steelers as NFC because that's where they got their start (or as a data scientist would caution ... they did that to fit the data better).
With that "adjustment," at one point the SBI was "right" 33 years out of 41 - an 80% success rate. Sounds good, right?
Come on ... you know better. It's been wrong four of the last four years ... another sign of spurious correlation if you weren't sure.
Rationally, we understand that football and the stock market have little in common, and we probably intuitively understand that correlation ≠ causation. Yet, we crave order and look for signs that make markets seem a little bit more predictable.
The problem with randomness is that it can appear meaningful.
Wall Street is, unfortunately, inundated with theories that attempt to predict the performance of the stock market and the economy. The only difference between this and other theories is that we openly recognize the ridiculousness of this indicator. More people than you would hope, or guess, attempt to forecast the market based on gut, ancient wisdom, and prayers.
While hope and prayer are good things ... they aren’t good trading strategies.
As goofy as it sounds, some of these "far-fetched" theories perform better than professional money managers with immense capital, research teams, and decades of experience...
I have a thought experiment I sometimes ask people.
What percentage of active managers beat the S&P 500 any given year?
... Now, what percentage beat the S&P 500 over 15 years?
Recently, the answer is about 5% (and that's in a predominantly bull market). For the record, that's significantly worse than chance. Perhaps that means something they're doing is hurting, not helping.
Recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger was dropkicked by a stranger at an event he was attending in South Africa.
I'm just now seeing it. In case you haven't, I thought I'd share.
For some of the most successful people I know ... It is less about what happens, and more about what they choose to focus on, what they make it mean, and what they do.
For context, he's 72 - and this is his response to the attack:
To those of you with young children, here's a peek into your future.
After years of hard work and your best efforts (OK, mostly your best efforts) ... I predict that your adorable bundles of joy will someday wish they could send you this card.
So, take a moment to think about your Mom ... and remember that she was very young when she did those things to you ...
... and what you make them mean is up to you.
Here's a funny clip from SNL in honor of Mother's Day.
In 1977, the Voyager 1 launched into space. Just over a dozen years later, the Voyager 1 spacecraft had traveled farther than any spacecraft/probe/human-made anything had gone before. It was approximately 6 billion kilometers away from earth. At that point, the Voyager 1 was "told" by Carl Sagan to turn around and take one last photo of the Earth ... a pale blue dot.
The resulting photo is impressive precisely because it shows so little in so much.
"Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." – Carl Sagan
Earth is in the far right sunbeam – a little below halfway down the image. This image (and the ability to send it back to earth) was the culmination of years of effort, the advancement of technology, and the dreams of mankind.
The resulting speech from Carl Sagan is still profound, moving, and worth a listen.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Today, we have people living in space, posting videos from the ISS, and high-resolution images of space and galaxies near and far.
We take for granted the immense phase shift in technology. You have more computing power in your pocket than we first used to go to the moon.
As humans, we're wired to think locally and linearly. We evolved to live our lives in small groups, to fear outsiders, and to stay in a general region until we die. We're not wired to think about the billions and billions of individuals on our planet, or the rate of technological growth - or the minuteness of that all in regard to the expanse of space.
However, today's reality necessitates we think about the world, our impact, and what's now possible for us.
We created better and faster ways to travel, we've created instantaneous communication networks across vast distances, and we've created megacities. Our tribes have gotten much bigger - and with that, our ability to enact massive change has grown as well.
Space was the first bastion of today's innovation, but today we can look toward A.I., medicine, epigenetics, and more.
It's hard to comprehend the scale of the universe and the scale of our potential ... but that's what makes it worth exploring!
Let's Play: News Segment or Propaganda Piece?
The original,, from The Outer Limits TV show was:
As a society, we're fairly vulnerable to groupthink, advertisements, and confirmation bias.
We believe what we want to believe, so it can be very hard to change a belief, even in the face of contrary evidence.
Recently, we've seen a massive uptick in distrust toward news agencies, big companies, the government, and basically anyone with a particularly large reach.
To a certain degree, this is understandable and justified. Here is an example of the power of the media focused on a message. Click to watch.
via Courier News
Propaganda has always been an issue, and almost everyone does it; governments, companies, etc. Luckily, it's easier to see today than in the past, but unluckily it's also more pervasive and insidious than before.
It's to the point where if you watch the news you're misinformed, and if you don't watch the news you're uninformed.
The above segment portrays a rosy picture of Amazon's efforts to protect its workers while delivering essentials to the struggling homebound masses. This comes while Amazon has come under massive fire for removing some of its protections.
Honestly, I use Amazon and, in my opinion, this isn't a massive breach of trust. News stations have a lot of time to fill, they often have sponsored content.
That being said, it's something to be cognizant of - not necessarily offended by.
Personally, I believe I am reasonably aware and somewhat immune from propaganda. That probably isn't as true as I'd like to believe.
It used to be true that winners wrote history (think empires, wars, etc.). Now, the one that delivers the most broadcast narratives shapes the emotional and seemingly logical responses to what we perceive to be happening around us.
The result impacts elections, financial markets, buying choices, and countless other areas of our life.
As A.I., Bots, and social media grow, our ability to discern truth from 'truthiness' weakens.
It's a great reminder that what you're seeing and hearing is carefully manufactured, and hopefully, it encourages you to get outside your bubble.
Posted at 04:59 PM in Books, Business, Current Affairs, Film, Gadgets, Healthy Lifestyle, Ideas, Market Commentary, Science, Television, Trading, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
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