BlackRock

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The wsj writes that BlackRock’s profits jumped 21%. They manage $7.3T for their clients. In comparison the GDP of Japan was $5.7T last year.

Covid-19 has negative impact on 99 out of 100 companies. Just Zoom, care takers and the makes of ventilators might see an uptake in business. Did the geniuses at BlackRock invested in exactly that tiny slither of the overall economy? Nope. The WSJ writes:

But after the Federal Reserve rushed in to stabilize markets, many investment firms reaped the benefits of the Fed’s intervention in the second quarter.

In other words: They backup up their money tankers just in the right moment when the Federal Reserve turned on the money pump. How convenient. For the people who own the 7.300.000.000.000 dollars that BlackRock manages.

If BlackRock would be seized, and its managed assets would could be distributed evenly among all Americans everybody would get $22.500.

number of dead people make you look bad?

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Simple: just take control of the accounting part. Deaths go down, economy booms. Everybody happy, except for the ones who died a horrible death (Covid is not gentle in that respect), and those who miss them.

It is extremely disconcerting when infection numbers become a subject of spin. If dead people are become an operation field for alternative facts. It started with the number of attendees to his inauguration. Now it is about dead people. Not good.

Specially since if you don’t have good data actually more people die. Data is one of the few weapons you have against that virus right now. It was not necessary to shut the entire country down. If the US would have had tests and data to figure out where the outbreaks are.

Contract tracing and masks is what helps. All over the world. Where it happens numbers are tiny: Taiwan, Japan and Korea have together more than 200 million people. Around 1300 people died there. In total. 9 of them in Taiwan.

exif image description in WordPress Gutenberg

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TIL that if you have a jpeg with an EXIF image description Photoshop will hand this through and WordPress will auto caption the image when it gets used as a “Featured image” on a post.

Using a png file instead of a jpeg avoids this.

75 years ago

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It probably is apocryphal that scientists were not sure if the atmosphere would catch fire in a chain reaction when they would ignite the first nuclear explosion. It did not.

2 bombs were used in a war. 2 because there were two competing technologies, and the idea was to test both of them. Out of todays perspective it is strange that the US did not just demonstrate a bomb somewhere for the world to see without killing all those people. Around 100,000 people died in each incident. About the same died in Tokyo from firebombs. But many more airplanes were involved.

It is noteworthy that mankind managed to control this part of their capabilities so successful. When the Soviet Union dissolved I felt that there would be a 50/50 chance that the weapons would fall in the wrong hands. Even Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa had them at some point.

In 2020 I would think that enough submarines with ICBMs would be beneficial for the European Union: They are the perfect deterrent, and would alter the need for US ‘protection’ from a Russia that starts talking about reparations for WW2 on its political fringes.

July 14th, Rose garden

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“The European union was formed in order to take advantage of the United States. They formed and they take advantage of the United States. And I know that, they know I know that, but other presidents had no idea.”

Why did other presidents have no idea? Well, probably since their level of sanity was greater. It is easy to find supporters who also will defend utter nonsense like this.

Once you wade neck deep in bs you probably no longer notice.

Question is just how / if one should engage with people that operate in a made up world like this.

bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh

Not sure how but Elon Musk’s and Bill Gates twitter just sported identical non sensical messages:

Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000. BTC Address – bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh Only going on for 30 minutes! Enjoy!

and

I am giving back Bitcoin to all of my followers. I am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below.
You send 0.1 BTC, I send 0.2 BTC back!

BTC Address : bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh

Musk’s message was still live. Strange that twitter does not have a kill switch for a specific string. Not sure if there is a delay, but so far there have been 208 231 transactions and 6 6.17 BTC received on that address.

Some people believe everything. Not many, but will millions of followers that part does not really matter.

I am sure one will find out how this did happen.

I miss SoCal

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And then again I don’t miss it at all. And I have the feeling that that aspect will grow stronger in the next months.

CS6 starts with the same file

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Photoshop CS6 started to launch with a specific file open. Turns out there was a .psb file in 

Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS6/AutoRecover

Removing it while PS wasn’t running fixed it.

The Old Man and the TV

media politics technology

As time takes its toll what might have been a stream ones turns into a trickle. Such of which we could just witness. 43 presidential minutes condensed into the above. What nonsense. This is all that POTUS did during that time. Watching TV, clicking on nonsense links and tweeting out random crap that adds nothing to the world. Even his ardent followers can only react with ‘yeah, he is right’ to such nonsense. There is nothing there. Really isn’t. As he would say it: “Sad!”.

As if there would be no epidemic. As if there would be not seismic shifts in the global power landscape. As if there would not be a climate crisis.

book arbitrage

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So, I saw John Green talk about art that was never finished a few days after it came out. The book he referenced titled “unfinished” seemed interesting. It was available on AMZN for around $50 in the US and about the same in EUR. So I ended up buying it over here. Turns out the seller didn’t have it. So I thought I buy it in the US and pick it up the next time I am there. Books are valid for a while. No need to have it now, just nice to have it eventually. When I looked today I can still buy it. But for a price that is more like: “So, you really want to have this, huh?”

Long story short: Impulse buy books! This was not the first time. Specially if something gets featured somewhere it is good to be fast.