Assorted links


#7. From the comments: "Yeah, Ackman might be a giant dick (hint: everyone in IB is a giant dick), but he’s on the right side of this trade. Herbalife is a parasite."

To me, the real arrogance comes from those who hate Ackman and think they can make him choke on Herbalife, if in fact it's a lousy company. Do these people think themselves masters of reality?

BTW "status competition" in the link label is missing an adjective ... I thought you read the comments?

Shorts are tricky and this one seems especially tricky. Warren Buffett is an investor in Pampered Chef. Does their revenue go down as they attract more distributors? Probably not. If Ackman was secure in his short, he wouldn't really need to make a big deal about it, maybe. Thought timing is critical, for shorts. But he's donating the profits to charity so he doesn't need the money. But he has a potentially infinite loss if the Herbalife just stays a lousy company indefinitely.


#8 Sometimes prizes cascade and have a snowball effect, I think. Duflo's prizes seem incommensurately many as compared to her actual work.





I had the same reaction.

"Sour grapes are the best!"


I don't think he is exactly a fan. He's versed in him because one of the theses in his book is that Nietzsche is a founding father of conservatism.

I briefly looked up his (horrible) book (read the NY Times review if you don't believe me). A major conservative antagonist seems to be Edmund Burke, who wrote about 100 years before Nietzsche. And, even granting he is unsympathetic to Nietzsche, my point still stands that his commentary on Ackman is soaked through with ressentiment

Robin is an unabashed leftist. As such, no way is he a "fan" of the reactionary Nietzsche. Rather, I think Robin considers Nietzsche useful both as an important exponent of reactionary ideas as well as someone who thought very carefully about the genealogy of some modern cultural practices and moral intuitions.


> I had the same reaction.

> “Sour grapes are the best!”

I'm having the same reaction.


The interesting thing about that experiment is that it only tested one effect of immigration on white liberals: the physical presence of non-whites. The Latino subway riders in the experiment were just peaceably riding the subway. They weren't committing crime or disturbing the peace, so they weren't testing any of the other effects of immigration. They were simply testing the effect of the physical presence of non-whites.

The fact that the mere physical presence of non-whites influenced white liberals' attitudes to shift in an anti-immigration direction reveals how shallow white liberal support for diversity, immigration, multiculturalism, etc. is. At root there is a visceral aversion to non-whites that isn't even suppressed so much as just avoided by avoiding non-whites.

I suspect it's just (just!) something atavistic: no group wants to feel that it might be swamped/outnumbered. I'm not sure this is realism or depressing.

In the journey towards civilization we've had to suppress several pesky atavistic traits.


Civilization existed on a very high plane long before the modern enshrinement of diversity. (Where do people think 'diversity' came from?)

In fact, I'd say modern efforts on this front are downright dystopic, and will culminate in the totalitarian view of human biological diversity as an evil to be eradicated.


Or am I missing something?

It can but I doubt that would be an issue in this case. That said, I can't imagine the process can be economical. It's probably at least 10x the cost of blowing a building in place. And I suspect it's much more dangerous.






I doubt the setting cement would mind if the water carried typhoid or cholera. As to mud n muck, I don't know. But a filter ought to sort that out.




6. Yeah, I've long suspected that New England isn't really any more enlightened or egalitarian than the rest of our country. There was a beautiful positive correlation between the portion of a state that's African American and the portion that went for Romney. Vermont, which might as well be all-white, was the farthest left, and Mississippi, which is very black, was the farthest right.


More thoughts here...

I'm not sure what you mean by "solving" "domestic racial segregation". You seem to be advocating the use of covert and overt manipulation and force to inhibit free association and force interaction among people against their preferences. I don't see why you should be able to impose your preferences and beliefs on people who have demonstrated that they don't share your views.

Actually it has nothing to do with my preferences. This isn't like cigarette bans or anything like that.


It has everything to do with your preferences. Your preference is for greater diversity and integration, and you want corporations to enact measures that work towards increasing diversity and integration, regardless of people's preferences. You want to violate free association and impose your preferences and beliefs on people who don't share your views.

And how exactly do you expect corporations to do that?








A simple and stunning way to put it. I wonder if Obama worrying about his 'base' is also in part about himself at base being uncomfortable with the white Republican Senators etc. 'bus riding' in his neighborhood. In that case, hopefully he might get more comfortable and talk to them.




I'm cool with losing on principles, especially if those are the ones that are attracting these people. Maybe Republicans could (1) sweeten their lip-service, taking hints from Democrats and (2) go straight at the Democrats lies and (3) embrace the correct positions on things like gay marriage ("I don't give a f&*%) and (4) rationalize immigration policy.


#7 To me this is only good as Schadenfreude and it's going to need another pound of Schaden; cf. Venice, Merchant of.



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