Who knew that the old Saran-wrap-on-the-toilet gag would someday become an essential public health practice.
Is "I forgot the third" a common affliction in Texas?
Did I already make that joke in a thread earlier this week or did I just think about it?
You made it twice so far. I forget the third.
I propose that the missing third topic is the stock market, even though we discussed it already. I'm a big believer in efficient markets -- at least as a baseline assumption -- but I absolutely do not get the relative placidity in the markets now.
I mean, I can come up with good reasons why the indexes shouldn't be cratering in a Depression-era fashion, but without doing the math, I think we're looking at less than a 15% drop from peaks. That seems insane.
I'm no market-timer, so my retirement money will stay basically in stocks, but surely the opportunity for a v-shaped recovery gets more and more remote all the time. The idea that there is a hard dichotomy between virus control and economic growth is just wrong.
The nitwits storming the state capitols aren't going to be able to "open the country back up again." A lingering pandemic is going to scare lots and lots of people into isolation regardless of what the government does. Most folks who can remain cloistered will do so.
Where did this Stonks! joke come from? I missed its origin story.
5: It's just this funny picture, as far as I know. Recently it's been used a lot for Animal Crossing turnip sales.
This on the money paragraph from this great piece by Brandy Jensen really speaks to me
I remember reading a year or so ago, something about the stock market pointing out that the 2008 crash being correlated with a recession in the real economy affecting real people was actually sort of historically unusual and that if everyone was expecting the next major recession to be accompanied by a stock market crash, or vice versa, they were thinking wrong.
Turns out the people in charge of the country see a stock market decline as the only economic problem worth doing anything about, so maybe the new definition of "recession" or "bad economy" is "stock market decline", but it doesn't have to be.
On OP.1, a version of this has gone around before, about "where are your toothbrushes stored?" and noting that aeresolized droplets spread throughout the bathroom after a typical flush, with "grossface emoji". I don't think it's even been a significant vector for any other disease, so I suspect that it's mostly bathroom paranoia again, rather than a real risk.
Probably, but I just got the same poop-vector email from a colleague who has a different sense of when you use the feature letting you email the entire company at once.
I too think the "virus in the stool" means "RNA of dead viruses in the stool", just like "virus still found in people who recovered" means "RNA of dead viruses found in people who recovered".
My favorite STONKS derivative is this one-sided text conversation which was maybe staged but still cracks me up.
Sending memes to his other girlfriend at the same time he was apologizing to her and crossed the streams.
Maybe we can use this to finally get closing seats on toilets in offices and similar public places.
This is why rich people get gold-plated toilet seats because gold is antiseptic and because if you use solid gold it makes the seat to heavy.
Ultra rich people use 24k gold because the seat melds to their ass and it gives a much more personalized fit.
10 - "The market is not the economy" is a cliche, and it's not incorrect, but there are times when the economy is really dangerously fucked in a structural way -- the Depression and 2008 being obvious examples. This looks to me more like those than like, say, the double-dip recession of the early '80s (where stocks still slid).
Here's a chart of the S&P 500 with recessions in grey. I think there's a pretty significant correlation between recessions and market movements. That is, recessions correlate with soft markets, even if soft markets don't correlate with recessions.
The world is still awash in hoarded capital. Where else is it going to go? Its much safer to bid up the price of stonks than to invest that money in people and infrastructure.
In fact, the only thing safer than stonks is sovereign bonks. Which can be invested in people and infrastructure.
|| Somehow, I got into a thing where I was watching various versions of Finiculi Finicula on the internet. |>
Just finished Fearless. Bridges, Rosellini, Perez. I think I'm gonna live.
Anyone have advice on what Korean baseball team I should be routing for? I was thinking the NC Dinos, because the mascot is a dinosaur, or the SK Wyverns, because that would have been my home team if I had landed that job in Incheon.
If you want to land something at Incheon, see me.
Its probably better that I didn't land that job in Inchoen. I mean, its a totally cool city from the future with robot garbage collectors and whatnot, but I don't think Koreans would appreciate my work ethic.
Just to put it on the record, I think the NYT finally did a decent job of answering my question. The markets represent the richest companies, and therefore are only subject to the downturn on a trickle-up basis. The people and businesses getting crushed are those that are least important to publicly traded companies.
(I mean, I still suspect we're going to find out that this isn't so, but the NYT presents the argument in a way that I can comprehend it.)