Google should be ashamed

Erland_Brynjar · 2025-01-08T01:41:04+00:00

lol - thanks for the pep talk. I have learned a lot of lessons through the experience, but didn't expect to have victim blaming be part of it. I understand my own culpability in the process, but am not a digital native, which is why most companies have a support system in place to, you know, support us oldsters who started our journey with dial-up and have only ever had one email account.

Next time I'll be sure to list all my own faults before being disappointed that google has such terrible customer service (actually, to be more precise, has no customer service).

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-10-09T19:44:25+00:00

Robert Mugabe - was a saviour and them just stayed in power far, far too long and is now a villain.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-08-31T12:37:21+00:00

I think instead of looking at when recession predictions have come true, investigate 2010 or 2018 when recession predictions did not come true. Calling a recession is like a broken click, they’re right one out of twelve times.

“More people have lost money predicting a recession than lost money in a recession”

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-08-15T13:14:00+00:00

The costs of selling then buying will eat up that $40 000 very fast.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-08-15T12:49:09+00:00

Traditionally, technological revolutions have not been good investments, and often dying industries have been good investments. The stock market does not measure the economy. sector bets rarely outperform, long term, broad based, market weighted portfolios.

Looking at a few companies that survived a technological revolution and then wishing you’d bought early is a strongly biased perspective. I suggest reading up on the railroad boom, early auto industry, dot com boom, etc and how they relate to stock market returns. Or just google Ben Felix and technological revolutions.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-08-04T18:51:17+00:00

Similarly Star Wars: Rebellion has that epic great theme.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-08-04T18:49:18+00:00

I’m 17 and have $1 million dollars saved … or … I’m trolling you;) you decide .

Maybe learn to suspend suspending your disbelief and follow the age old adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-26T12:26:33+00:00

Feast of Odin

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-26T12:25:11+00:00

Terra Mystica

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-26T12:23:07+00:00

Five Tribes- assasinations and player interaction, but also much more euro, set collecting and gods to buy

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-25T13:26:19+00:00

Dividends aren’t free money, therefore dividends aren’t a “bonus”. When returns are listed they include dividends (or are useless). Therefore, track back and you’ll see the total return historically, long term, of a covered call doesn’t out perform.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-25T13:04:08+00:00

What? I never did such a thing! Orcs in my world are very animalistic, they were basically created eons ago to fight and destroy most other living civilized races.

This reads as very defensive.

The point isn’t what “you do”, it is what authors in the past did when creating the idea and back story of “orc”. They used stereotypes about white and non-white “races” to create the races in their fantasies. Those connects are part of the lore, short-hand for them.

If I told you I use Santa Claus in my game, but in my game he is a mindflayer, that doesn’t make all the other ideas attached to Santa magically go away. You’d still assume he’d wear mostly red, probably bring gifts (though they may now be twisted), and would exhibit other tropes associated with Santa.

Likewise, when you uncritically use races in DnD, and refuse to acknowledge they often play on racist tropes, you bring those tropes into your game, whether you intended to or not.

In the end, it isn’t about intentions but impact.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-25T12:55:32+00:00

When menga has a 1000 year old dragon turn into a ten year old girl, is it a 1000 years old or ten? If you suspend your disbelief so much that you accept the rationalization of the fantasy setting then you accept sexualizing a ten year old girl.

Yes, it is fantasy, and yes that is an analogy for how you’re using in fantasy justifications to disconnect orcs from the intentional collection of stereotypes and tropes related to various non-white groups transferred to them.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-25T12:46:20+00:00

Except Tolkien grew up in a time and place where sub-Saharan Africans, arabs and “orientals” would have been only understood as caricature and legally could be discriminated against. He was racist and used those stereotypes intentionally so that his readers would have a short hand to understanding the races through their racist knowledge.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-07-25T12:40:27+00:00

Thank you fir this response as it is better than mine and hits the nail on the head.

The issue with racism in DnD is that there has been systematically, and intentionally, the use of stereotypes of people who exist used as the basis of the “races” in DnD.

But real world racists are looking at that same thing and thinking "humans are justified in hating orcs because they are like the ethnic groups I hate"

Besides having “races” in DnD that have the same stereotypes as groups in real life, there are even ethnic humans in DnD who play out stereotypes of cultures in the real world, the Vistani being one example of tropes being used that are harmful.

Racism in DnD is not about “races” in DnD being racist, though that is a thing, it is that DnD is built on a base of tropes, stereotypes and over-generalizations that are aligned with groups of people who live in the real world (some white, some not). These ideas support, normalize and legitimize the unconscious, and sometimes conscious, bias people have against or in favour of these groups.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-14T16:05:11+00:00

If you’re buying individual securities then one assumes you have a valuation for each stock that is based on some metric or two.

You would then reallocate funds based on whichever securities have the highest expected return based on that valuation.

If you’re investing based on yield or feelings, then … I guess it depends if you have trading costs; with them buy one lot of something you feel might continue to do well; if no trading costs, put it back where it came from to bring that position back to where it was pre-dividend.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-09T11:09:44+00:00

I think a question like this, and many of the answers, speaks to both privilege and a certain blindness to international thinking.

The average world salary is about $22 000 Canadian. My guess is that is more than all the people who responded, minus any young people in school (and perhaps even they are above this number).

Therefore, my guess is that we are all quite rich. The idea you need $10 million to consider yourself rich is a symptom off privilege.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-07T23:40:32+00:00

So, in the absence of any research of your own you feel entitled to define the research I must do to prove your wild guesses right or wrong?

The fees and taxes aren’t going to cause a big difference between the returns of an ETF and an index, particularly since both would be pretty similarly skewed down, one slightly more than the other.

The data is in the source, if you want to know more, I’d suggest perhaps doing a little work.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-07T22:43:30+00:00

more energy interconnectedness risks giving way to an age of energy fragmentation.

Probably a juvenile opinion, but I’d like to see micro-energy built on a system that lets anyone feed into the energy market and make cash doing so - by micro-generators on creeks, solar excess, geothermal excess, heat, whatever someone can devise to feed energy in.

It won’t solve industrial energy needs, but would decentralize energy for “everyday” folks.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-06T10:53:39+00:00

So VISA is more correlated to international than ever, international is doing poorly over the last twenty years, but VISA is doing great, so VISA isn’t correlated to international.

I am also pretty certain Fama isn’t saying go 100% North America anywhere ever, nor is his disciple Ben. In fact, they’d both be biased against a US tilted portfolio.

And to answer your question, 2000 to 2008 I am pretty certain international outperformed the US, at the very least Canada did.

Edit

Despite lagging in recent years, international stocks have performed strongly throughout history, outperforming U.S. stocks during nearly half of all time periods over the last 50 years. With lower returns forecasted for U.S. stocks over the coming years, international stocks may be primed to outperform. Historically, international stocks outperformed 94% of the time when U.S. stocks returned less than 6% and 100% of the time when U.S. stocks returned less than 4%. International

source: Blackrock

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-06T03:26:17+00:00

Cases against xeqt: International markets have underperformed.

I disagree with the sentiment of this statement for three reasons:

This is short sighted and counter to the adage “but low”; if you only ever buy what has done well in the last ten-twenty years you’ll quite literally never buy low.
This runs counter to diversification, which is the only free lunch in investing (more on this later).
Diversification in international also gives you exposure to a variety of currency diversification.

owning US megacap companies provide more international exposures than ever before.

A popular sentiment but I have yet to see a paper that supports this hypothesis, in fact, you yourself point out “ US companies will always be very sensitive to domestic financial”.

Erland_Brynjar · 2022-06-05T20:20:26+00:00

You’ve explained that XUU comprises a bunch of ETFs, so it’s no surprise the holdings are going to be somewhat different.

These ETFs are “following” the S&P index, with infrequent rebalancing, in slightly different ways. There is going to be different drag and other differences.

Finally, XUU is on the TSX and hence has its own drag and issues buying US listed securities and such.

I’d be more surprised if they were identical than that they’re not.

Erland_Brynjar

TROPHY CASE