more comment (re: gender pronouns on name tags)

Thank you for your perspective on the name-tag thing. I shared it with my nesting partner by reading parts of it aloud to him. We've been working on helping him to understand what my nonbinary identity means to me.

I wonder how many genderfluid, transgender, agender, or nonbinary folks would agree with you that the name-tag thing is oppressive. Personally I'm not a fan either. On social media profiles I refuse to provide my pronouns -- some people act like if you don't provide your pronouns you are failing to show solidarity with the transgender community, but what if I'm a member of that community and I don't want to provide pronouns and I don't appreciate you doing it either? It can turn into a sort of LGBT fascism, forcing everybody to declare their pronouns.

It reminds me of how many folks on the Left refer to hispanics as "Latinx" when a majority of hispanics do not like that term applied to themselves, if they've even heard of it.

It's OK for each individual to choose their identities, but when as a group or culture we force people to declare identities, or we choose identities for them without consulting them, that's taking the concept of diversity too far.

go big or go back to bed, LOL

I was reading about the international student/alumni/faculty movement to get university endowments to divest from fossil fuel corporations.

It's one of those social movements on the Left that I find problematic.  Not because I think investing in fossil fuels is a thing we should do.  I would ban fossil fuels if I were Dictator Bug.  But because it is one of those reform movements that seems ignorant of its own privileges and focused on such a tiny fragment of a possible solution.

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Harvard University, with an endowment of $42 billion, is effectively a hedge fund that runs an elite university on the side.  With an endowment of that size, it could easily provide free tuition for each undergraduate student while still making a net profit on the leftover dividends.  Instead, it charges $50,000/year tuition.

Attending college is still a privilege in the US, not afforded to everybody.  Even if you can get in, can your family afford it?  There's no guarantee of affordability, despite the complex web of need-based and merit-based financial aid combined with massive amounts of student loans -- instead of free tuition, we have you run through this financial chomper and leave you a debt slave for the rest of your life.  (At least, a debt slave who typically makes a higher take-home salary than the poor folks who didn't make it through the chomper.)

Once you're on the inside of this elite credentialing system, which sorts of activism will not produce eyerolls when viewed alongside the privilege you've been granted?

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Should universities hoard capital and invest it like hedge funds to maximize their returns?  Should universities resist the unionization of campus staff and graduate students?  Should universities accept research grants from the Department of Defense or the National Security Agency?  Should universities accept research grants from corporations that result in intellectual property that is not shared freely with the world?  Should universities publish research in for-profit journals that exclude readers from accessing their knowledge?

The word "university" would seem to mean a place that cherishes the universal.  Free and open education for everybody who wants one, and research results shared with everybody, not an elite castle that wields hoarded capital and private knowledge to continue enriching itself and the few it chooses to admit.

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But, rather than fixing any of these things, let's focus on the small portion of this hoarded capital that is invested in fossil fuel companies.  That's what's wrong, that our university is profiting from global warming.  Yes, that should stop.  Absolutely.

BTW, Harvard announced earlier this year it will not divest from fossil fuel companies.

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With $42 billion, Harvard could set up a free and open online university for everybody on the planet, through which anybody could take online classes from Harvard lecturers, leading to anybody who's willing to do the work securing a Harvard degree.

Harvard could revolutionize the spread of information around the world, with new approaches and new technologies.  But, no, that would devalue the elite Harvard undergraduate degree, which is awarded to only 1,700 individuals per year.

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I'm always caught between "the art of the possible", and wanting to actually fix things.  In the case of the Harvard divestment movement, it isn't even possible LOL, the administration said, "fuck you."  So rather than calling for divestment from fossil fuels, why not go big?  Divest from everything, and use that $42 billion to leverage Harvard into a new, global, Age of Universal Free and Open Higher Education.

I reject that ridiculous bastion of hoarded capital, knowledge, and prestige for what it is.  Fuck Harvard.

returning to the play money trades

I've been sitting away from the playing field for a while.  Overall my play money account made a profit, but I had one big horrible losing trade when I sold QQQ short, expecting the bear market to resume along with subsequent waves of COVID-19.

QQQ continues to hit new highs, along with other more recognizable stock market indices, regardless of COVID-19.

But every other trade I did made money.  I've given more than my net profits away, it's just a game I'm playing, to see whether I can win.

Today I decided there was one trade I was absolutely certain of -- there's no way long-term US Treasury Bonds (with maturity dates of 20+ years) can avoid declining in value at some point during the next 20 years.  No way.  I view selling long-term Treasuries as a 100% chance of winning.  Maybe not next week, but definitely at some point.  So today I began selling short long-term Treasuries.

And, I couldn't help it, once again I sold short QQQ, but with a much smaller bet than previously.  I don't feel 100% about this, but I feel QQQ can't keep going up like this forever.  At some point the bubble will pop.  But it could be a couple more years before it does, who knows.

That's it for now.  And I only bet a bit more than 10% of my account today.  I'll wait a month and bet some after we know who won the Georgia runoffs.  I'm not trying to make big bucks, it's more about placing a marker where I think the markets will go next.

Green voters are the swing voters

It always takes a while for states to report their official vote counts, even when we aren't in the middle of a pandemic.  Now that we're getting the official counts, I can try to make more sense of what happened -- how was the 2020 Presidential election even closer than the 2016?  How did Trump come so fucking close to winning again: only 44,000 votes?

But when things are this close, you can point to almost any factor and say, "That's why Biden barely won!"  And all of these reasons would be equally correct.  Any factor that could shift the vote by 44,000 in the three closest swing states was the reason why Biden won.

Well ... one factor that shifted was the Green vote.  In 2016, if the Green voters in the closest swing states had voted for Hillary instead, she would've been President.  Well ... in 2020, the Green voters in the closest swing states voted for Biden instead.

I could bore you by walking through the state-by-state numbers in both elections to prove my point, but I did prove it to myself earlier today.  The Green vote was decisive in both elections, but it pulled in opposite directions -- away from Hillary in 2016, and toward Biden in 2020.

I voted Green in both elections, but I live in Maryland, where it didn't matter.  It mattered in Wisconsin, which was one of the three closest swing states both times.  Wisconsin is now the "it" state, so close, about 20,000 votes each time.  And the Green voters who switched to Biden were enough to swing the state.

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In the past I've become frustrated with all the Democrats who tell Greens that they're wasting their vote blah blah blah.  All the votes in the non-swing states are wasted, no matter who you vote for, because of our ancient Electoral College.  My vote in Maryland was wasted no matter who I voted for, because the margin between Biden and Trump was more than 2/1.

But in Wisconsin, your vote is valuable.  If you want to vote Green in Wisconsin, go right ahead, that's your right, and I'm not going to pick on you.  But voting Green in Wisconsin was irrelevant to who won the Electoral Votes in Wisconsin in both 2016 and 2020.  You may as well have not voted if you were a Green trying to affect the outcome.  I may as well have not voted.  Everybody in Maryland may as well have not voted.  But in Wisconsin, your vote is valuable -- so long as you vote for one of the top two Presidential candidates.

In 2020, Green voters decided to make a difference by voting for Biden.  In 2016, Green voters decided to say, "I don't care whether Hillary or Trump wins."  What happened in between?  Greens saw how awful Trump was, more awful than they expected.  I mean, he was more awful than I expected, and my Maryland vote doesn't matter at all either way.  People who had been willing to vote their Green conscience in 2016 felt like, "I gotta get that fucker out of the White House."

Green voters decided to make a difference in 2020, and Biden won as a result.

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I think people should have the right to vote for whomever they want, no matter which state they live in.  If Democrats want to win, they should win by convincing people to vote for them, not by limiting voter choice.  So whenever somebody argues that I should vote for Hillary or Biden as the lesser of two evils, I feel like "Go Away!"  Give me a reason to vote for Hillary or Biden.  I voted for Obama in 2008 because I thought he was the best candidate on the ballot.  Democrats, nominate the best candidate!

But if I lived in a swing state, like I did in 2000, I might decide to vote for the Democrat to make a difference in the outcome.  In 2020, enough Greens in the swing states decided to vote for Biden to make a difference in the outcome.

I don't expect Democrats to thank us Greens for helping Biden to win.  But maybe instead of treating Greens as the enemy, they should think about how to win Greens over -- by nominating the best candidates.  Democrats won't always have Trump on the ballot, scaring Greens into voting Democrat to keep that fucker out of the White House.