1/ I immigrated to the US 20 years ago, and I don't regret the decision. The people, the opportunities. It really *is* a wonderful country.
But downsides exist and they can basically all be summarized by the leafblower.
A thread... 👇
2/ What is a leafblower? It's a motorized wind generator that moves light outdoor particles (leaves, twigs, dirt/dust).
Facts about the common leafblower and its typical use:
3/ It's gas-powered with a 2-stroke engine.
That means it's incredibly loud and incredibly smelly. You can't mistake the odor. It's an crappy-machine solution to a pseudo-problem.
4/ It doesn't *fix* the "ugly leaves in my yard" problem, it merely makes it someone else's problem. Usually the neighbor, sometimes the street.
Of course, the most efficient way for the neighbor to remove their leaves is to blow them back into your yard.
5/ This is individualism at its worst: act as though collective action is impossible or undesirable, and then ignore or complain about the resulting arms-race-to-the-bottom the individualism creates.
6/ It creates long-lasting swirling clouds of smelly dust. In addition to its use being zero-sum from the leaf-location perspective, it's actually negative sum taking into account the kicked up dust, noise and pollution.
7/ Then there's the class aspect. I've yet to see a leafblower wielded by a wealthy homeowner. It's invariably a contracted gardener (typically an immigrant) who has to endure the machine up-close.
8/ I'll let y'all draw your own analogies, but IMO the leafblower can teach us a lot.
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"In all honesty, most finfluencers have pretty shit takes on the market. It kind of arises based on the mismatch between the skills required to actually trade and the skills required to market oneself."
"I'm a smart engineering/CS/math student/graduate. How do I get into quant trading?"
A thread. 👉
1/n
2/ I'm going to preface this by asking an important question:
Why trading?
Almost every outsider has an idea of what trading is that's pretty far from the reality. It's not "deploy cool ML models on gigabytes of data". It's:
3/ - Do I have enough cash margin in account JP44315A?
- Why does the data format disseminated by broker X suck so much with this new update?
- How do I optimize my tax footprint?
When Elizabeth I died, noblemen had to make a huge show of her funeral in order to prep people for the accession of James I (James VI of Scotland).
With modern eyes, it’s cool to see how critical the “show” was to a government’s legitimacy. Government meaning the king, obv.
2/
This wasn’t some unnecessary extravagance. Shutting the city down for a day or two for the funeral procession was a critical part of establishing the legitimacy of the next king.
Oh and by the way, yes James II really was a horrendously bad king.
3/
1/ Musings about variance in trading, in sports, and in life.
A thread.
2/ Why does poker get played for big $ but chess (mostly) doesn’t?
Because of variance.
In chess, if you’re rated 1800 ELO and you’re playing someone rated 2000, you pretty much know exactly your P(win) and P(tie). (It’s 15% and 19%, go check).
3/ There’s no sense in betting for two reasons:
- A wide spread of ability directly creates wide spread in outcome. A 2400 will NEVER lose to an 1800.
- All these probs are pretty much known. $ gets traded when people disagree about probs. No such thing exists in chess.