zepp's daily thought compendium 2015 ed. #NoHashTags early access KICKSTARTER INSIDE

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#23

They’re lawyers and I bet they haven’t even watched Harvey Birdman. For shame.

Also Sin, a HALF GALLON of vodka PER DAY?? Holy crap, the ability of the human body to withstand incredible self-inflicted torture never ceases to amaze me, although I’m sure you probably have seen a number of far more ridiculous experiences than even that.

Edit: I’m going to Colorado next week, and I can’t wait to make fun of Coors all the time to my friends there.

Second Edit: The translation of Coors Light in chinese (yes they sell coors light in China) literally means “silver bullet”, so at the bar you’d have to ask for a silver bullet.

#24

Or played Ace Attorney.

#25

In law school, professors would jokingly ask students if they wanted to be lawyers because of Law and Order. Whenever I was asked that question, I literally literally always responded with “I want to be an attorney because of Harvey Birdman.”

#26

Working in Baltimore has definitely redefined what I believed was compatible with life. The big issue with these guys is that over time 1/5 vodka per day doesn’t do to them what it would do to us and the problems start if they’re admitted and aren’t put on withdrawal protocols. Agitation, seizures and intubation can ensue. This is particularly risky if you don’t have a reliable historian, friends or relatives. Gotta love those outside hospital transfers. The fun ones are the 60-70 year olds who some in complaining of chest pain after doing cocaine. The really horrifying cases are on our specialized infectious disease service. We have parts of Baltimore that have HIV rates comparable to sub-saharan Africa, who present with complications of HIV people haven’t seen in 20-30 years. It also treats some of the victims of gang violence. Apparently there is a Baltimore style shooting where they shoot their rivals in the spine so a) they can’t be charged with murder and b) it sentences their opponents to a slow and horrible death as paraplegics. These are 20-30 year olds who develop worsening lower back ulcers that dig into their bones and abdomens with infections resistant to almost every antibiotic we have. Re-watching The Corner or The Wire is REALLY weird now.

You definitely see the impact of poverty here and I’m looking forward ending my stint here in July and starting fellowship. This has been interesting, but I’m done with this.

#27

Sounds like those gangsters have moved up from storing their knives in shit to storing their bullets in shit. I’ve heard stories of the ways gangsters would end a person, one of which involved stabbing them in the back with a knife that’s been sitting in shit for a while. The inflicted wounds would be deep but not life threatening and for other gangsters who can’t or won’t come forward to a hospital to get immediate treatment, they’d end up treating those wounds as superficial and ignore them until it’s far too late to do anything about as the resulting infection would slowly poison the blood stream and kill the victim in a very slow, agonizing way.

As fascinating as your horror stories are, I hope you’ll find a better work environment soon.

Edit: Also Happy Birthday. :caik:

Oh yeah? Well I wanted to become an attorney because of Lionel Huntz.

And now you know why I never got into law school.

#28

Thanks man :D. I already have my fellowship waiting for me, so less than 6 months to go!

And that story is more gross factor and in reality, treating that wouldn’t be hard.

#29

Moving things more to Zepp’s territory, what’s happening globally in the markets? What drove this sudden crash in oil prices (not that I am complaining)?

#30

The short version is twofold: Weak demand in many countries due to insipid economic growth, and it’s also coupled with surging US production. Contrary to popular belief, the United States has never been held hostage by other countries when it comes to oil because they rely on oil exports more than the United States relies on any one particular country for oil. Especially when so much oil is produced domestically or imported from Canada or Mexico.

#31

Aren’t people paid gargantuan sums of money to see this shit coming?

#32

Economics is a pretty imprecise and chaotic system. It’s probably really hard to predict things with any sort of reliability even within the span of a few years.

#33

Regardless, the important thing to take away from this is that its now totally okay to completely forget about any and all lessons learned about the harshness of pricey petroleum (as its no longer your problem). The Humvee’s back in vogue baby! :mwahaha:

#34

I think a big factor is that Obamas bought oil continuously. We’ve got a huge reserve. Also something something Saudi arabians.

#35

It also helps that we’re fracking Mother Earth fast and hard, and mining the shit out of her now that her ice caps are coming undone.

#36

The sentence “we’re fracking Mother Earth fast and hard, and mining the shit out of her now that her ice caps are coming undone” could be changed to something so deliciously pornographic with only changing a couple words…also it kinda made me horny.

Also, daily thought since it’s been a while, from my main man Bertrand Russell:

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

#37

And what does I AM RAMUH RAMUH think about the Silk Road founder’s conviction?

#38

From my understanding…he got greedy and lazy about protecting his own privacy, and that led to his downfall. Not exactly a new story. He clearly knew the risks going in, and for years he was very smart about protecting his identity. He could have gotten out with millions while he was ahead, but he chose to kept going, getting greedier, and lazier about protecting his own identity.

that being said, legal drugs for all, I mean seriously.

So, in other news, I literally physically invaded #hmongchat over the weekend. And by that I mean The Hmongtown Marketplace in St. Paul, MN. For those not in the know, the Twin Cities have the largest Hmong population in North America, for various historical reasons you can google if you’re really interested. It really wasn’t all that different from many of the markets I’ve seen in China and Southeast Asia. But I couldn’t stop myself from giggling a bit while walking around there, and wondering if they still chat it up on IRC. My wife said it was the best pho she’d ever had in her life though…so if you like pho and you happen to be in the area, then you know where to go.

#39

So Zepp. What are your thoughts on today’s date reading 210 (or in other parts of the world, 102201(5))?

#40

Get back to me in exactly 2 months and I’ll tell you exactly how I feel :scooby: (BTW cause this is a NERD FORUM, scooby doo is a reference to smoking fat blunts)

So I promised bonus content in the other thread. Like ten years ago, I was trying to buy a living room table for my college apartment. Nothing fancy, just something stable enough to store copious amounts of alcohol on. So I found a good enough table on craigslist for like 20 bucks, emailed the dude, he said yeah I could buy it, come around to his place tomorrow at 9AM, he’d meet me downstairs, and I could take the table away. It was a sunday, and so waking up to get anywhere by 9AM was hard enough for me at the time, but worse it was like 15 miles away, so I had to get up extra super early to get over there. But whatever, I needed a table.

So I got to the guy’s place right at 9, hung around for like 10 or 15 minutes but the dude wasn’t showing up. And dumbass me, I forgot to get the guy’s phone number (in retrospect that was a good thing he didn’t have my number). This was in kind of a shitty part of Chicago, and there weren’t any buzzers on the door either. Also, this was ten years ago, so we didn’t have fancy email shit on our phones. I hang around til like 9:30, dude doesn’t show up, so I say fuck it, I’m outta here, I’ll just drink off my chair like I’ve been doing the last two weeks.

Well, I get a nasty email from the guy about 11AM, saying where the fuck am I, he waited around forever and I didn’t show up, he’d brought the table down by himself and everything. Now, I know I had the right address. I mean, I’d lived in chicago my whole life, I know my way around. He starts firing off nasty, swear filled emails like every 15 minutes. Eventually I just stop responding and just enjoy the free amusement the guy is providing.

Well…the dude doesn’t stop. For weeks. For months. I get random nasty emails from this guy like 3 months afterward. I eventually block his email and move to China. Oh and I bought a cheap ass table from like wal-mart or something. I wonder if the dude is still angry ten years later.

#41

Here’s an interesting piece on the inevitable failure of libertarian delusions of grandeur

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-the-hidden-internet/

#42

Depending on your point of view, the root cause of the oil crash is:

  1. OPEC suddenly and unexpected deciding “To hell with it, fracking/shale oil must become unprofitable to exploit!” and massively bumping up production. There are also a slew of internal politicking in the cartel that I wouldn’t like to try and decipher - but it looks like one result will be weakening Iran’s position and strengthening the Saudi’s (although, this was from things I read a while ago and may have gotten the names of the guilty confused). America’s role in this is largely benefiting from gas prices going down. Hurray oil!

  2. Vague conspiracies involving mutually beneficial arrangements for the US and OPEC to wage an economic war on Russia, sparked partly because of the invasion-that-totally-isn’t-happening guys. It is having the effect of massively weakening Russia’s economy. (Although RT would have you believe lower oil/energy prices are definitely GOOD for Russia! Ignore that starving children in the background. They just don’t want to eat. They could.)

I think 1) is probably more accurate, and 2) is a benefit. Basically this is a way to squeeze out the competition. As for why people didn’t see this coming…most economists aren’t good at predicting outcomes. What they’re predictions are good for is predicting what other economists think will happen. The world of economics is governed by heavy tailed probability distributions but modeled with the normal distribution (increasingly, with a mutated/mutilated form of it, but still, ultimately, flawed). This was largely why the 2008/9 crash was so “unexpected” and “unpredictable”. People actually worth their salt (Nassim Taleb, annoying as he is) were predicting it, and with good cause.