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vvitchering · 3 years

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I saw ur call for gereskel on Twitter. Ever given a thought as to what it would be like for Geralt to prep and prime corvo bianco to the point were he's finally comfortable enough to invite Eskel to spend the winters with him there. Like all the staff are whispering amongst eachother about who the lady of the house is gonna look like. Geralt getting a double wide bed, and planting herbs for "someone else". And how the staff just stares in awe when there Witcher just sinks into the arms of Eskel when he finally arrives?

Those on staff at Corvo Bianco had learned many things from their previous employer. Their opinions meant nothing, their work was hardly ever good enough, and gossip was an offense grievous enough to warrant immediate termination. When the witcher took over the estate, they had feared the worst. He certainly looked the part of the fearsome warrior with his scars and swords and suspiciously stained armor. But despite the eerie eyes and prematurely white hair, Geralt of Rivia had quickly proven himself to be a surprisingly mellow and even tempered employer.

He gave the impression of a man severely out of his depth when it came to matters of the homestead; glad to pour his considerable wealth into restoration and upkeep, but hesitant to make any actual decisions or changes on his own. Barnabas-Basil was all too happy to assist, thrilled at the chance to finally restore the vineyard to its former glory.

The witcher seemed pleased by the efforts.

Gradually, he filled the main house with his own personal touches. Sets of armor and weapons, paintings (some of...questionable taste), maps of the Continent, and a surprisingly sizable library made the house feel lived in. The vines were planted, gardens tended, and their wine production began anew. The witcher began to spend more time on the property. He devoted himself to learning the trade, surprising himself and the Majordomo with his ability to detect even the most minute flaws in their product with his enhanced senses. With his suggestions, their wine became well known and sought after. Soon, the witcher barely needed to take contracts to keep coin flowing.

And so, he began to live on the property full time, only accepting the most dire of monster hunting contracts and even then only locally. He preferred not to leave Toussaint, if he could help it. There was nothing left for him in the north, he’d say, just ghosts. He was happy to do odd jobs and exterminate the occasional pest for his neighbors, who grew fond of the witcher himself as well as his wine.

His staff grew to like their new employer as well. He was attentive, curious, and never hesitant to get his own hands dirty. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see him up at dawn and learning to tend the vines with the field workers or spending time in the stables attending to his beloved mare. While he wasn’t overly chatty, he was pleasant and friendly with the staff and never mocked or belittled their efforts. With a witcher on the grounds, they no longer feared the creatures that lurked on the outskirts of the vineyard. They were well protected from all manner of beasts, monsters and thieves. The staff of Corvo Bianco grew to adore Geralt of Rivia and with that adoration came a new breed of newly allowed gossip.

They worried for their employer’s heart. Never once did they see the man pursue romance, though many eligible locals had offered themselves as options. It made little sense. Geralt was successful, handsome, and in the prime of his youth (presumably. The staff really had no idea how old the man was, what with his witchering, but he certainly did not appear to be nearing old age any time soon) And yet, he was plainly lonely, often seen staring off into the distance, wistful and wanting. (Again, presumably)

When the first letter arrived, no one batted an eye. The witcher kept correspondence with lots of people, business partners and old friends alike. It was when the letters kept arriving, and Geralt had taken to pacing the courtyard waiting for the courier to arrive, that rumors began to spread. This was clearly more than a business transaction! More than a friendly word or two between long distance friends. They were love letters, surely! Master Geralt had a lover somewhere!

Barnabas-Basil attempted to squash the rumors, chastising the staff for sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Master Geralt was good to them, kind and generous, and did not deserve to have his private affairs become entertainment. Suitably shamed, the rumors died down to almost nothing, until one final letter arrived and a change came over the witcher than even the Majordomo couldn’t deny.

The morning following the arrival of the letter, Geralt had made a list of improvements and additions for the main house as well as the grounds. Of his own volition. Without any prompting at all. Quite suspicious.

Among the projects on the list, there was a request for a larger garden. More exotic flowers and shrubs, a few new fruit trees for the orchard, and dozens more varieties of herbs. The new garden would be enormous and beautiful and certainly impressive to anyone.

Next were the requests for ingredients and spices to stock the kitchens. Marlene, who cooked all of the witcher’s meals, puzzled over the list and wondered why in the world Geralt had ordered in such large amounts. He certainly did eat a lot, with his witcher’s metabolism and active lifestyle, but some of the items she knew for a fact were not to Geralt’s personal taste and yet he had still ordered a witcher’s worth of them.

When news that Geralt had ordered a much larger bed reached the staff’s ears, even the strictest dressing down from Barnabas-Basil could not stop the excited whispers. Flowers, food, a bed for two...So Master Geralt did have a lover! And from the looks of the changes around the vineyard, that lover was paying them a visit. A possibly permanent visit! And soon, if the witcher’s increasingly nervous checking of all his orders was any indication.

The staff let their imaginations run wild in the meantime. What sort of someone did a witcher take for a lover? A royal he once saved from certain death in a faraway land? A simple merchant who was kind to him when he passed through? A powerful mage who was a legend in their own right?

When the sound of galloping hooves announced the arrival of a guest a week later, many of the staff tripped over themselves in an attempt to get the first glimpse of Master Geralt’s mysterious love. The figure arrived alone, no procession or guards (there went the foreign royalty theory) and riding a huge dark stallion. A long black hooded cloak obscured their face. Despite the concealment, they struck quite the intimidating silhouette: tall, broad shoulders, with the muffled but unmistakable sound of clamoring of armor and weapons following in their wake (not a simple merchant or mage then, either).

As the visitor dismounted, the door of the main house flew open, revealing the witcher himself. His eyes focused immediately on the visitor and he nearly vaulted the stairs in his haste to meet them.

“Was the hood really necessary?” Geralt said, a smile splitting his face, as he grabbed the cloaked figure and hugged them tightly.

“Can’t be too careful these days. Especially with a face like mine.” came the deep but warm response as the visitor stepped back from Geralt and pushed the hood off.

It was only their years of experience and deep respect for their employer that stopped a few of the watching staff from gasping audibly. Their visitor was another witcher, horribly scarred as if he had been attacked by a wild beast. Though his lips were disfigured, they nonetheless managed to produce a smile to match Geralt’s as the two embraced again.

“It’s good to have you home at last, Eskel.”

“It’s good to finally be home, Wolf.”

(“Of course a witcher would fall in love with another witcher,” Barnabas-Basil said later, counting his sizable betting wins as the news spread through the estate.

“It’s only logical.”)

#the witcher #geskel #eskel/geralt #gereskel #hi wow this is Super late #this has been sitting in my inbox for literal months #I knew pretty much what I wanted to do here but I just have not had the drive to write #I still don't but I felt like I wanted to at least try today #so here's this #I hope it doesn't disappoint too badly :')#mine

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Savior or strongman? El Salvador’s millennial president defies Congress and courts on Covid-19 policy

Some Salvadorans praise him for taking decisive action that may have saved his small Central American nation from the worst impacts of the coronavirus. Others say he is becoming a strongman who is violating his own country’s constitution, most recently as he spars with the Supreme Court and National Assembly about how soon El Salvador will reopen.

That Bukele, 38, is in office at all is still something of a surprise for many Salvadorans.

He is the first president since the end of the Salvadoran civil war in 1992 not to belong to either of the country’s two major political parties.

Bukele’s paternal grandparents were Palestinian immigrants to El Salvador and he ran for president as a social media savvy, motorcycle jacket wearing, millennial outsider who would shake things up in a nation worn down by endless corruption and horrific gang violence.

“Bukele is very focused on getting done what he believes needs to get done, and has little patience for his critics, or for the institutions that oppose, slow, or limit his ability to act,” said Geoff Thale, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, in an email interview with CNN.

“He’s used social media to attack his critics, including journalists. He’s repeatedly attacked the National Assembly- which is dominated by the two traditional political parties, which are hostile to him.”

Prowess on social media

With nearly two million Twitter followers and polls that often show more than a 90 percent approval rating, Bukele has broken the traditional mold for politicians in his country and generated international attention.

In 2019, he acknowledged his country bore responsibility for the conditions that caused migrants to flee after the drowning deaths of a Salvadoran father and two-year-old daughter on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Ahead of making his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Bukele asked the audience to wait and first snapped a selfie, which he later said would have more impact than his prepared remarks.

But before the coronavirus outbreak, some critics in El Salvador warned that Bukele’s disruptive style was increasingly eroding the separation of powers and threatening the country’s fragile democracy.

At odds with the National Assembly

In February, as Bukele demanded the country’s lawmakers approve a request for $109 million loan to better equip police and soldiers, heavily armed troops marched into the National Assembly on his orders, which many in El Salvador saw as a blatant attempt to intimidate and a return to the era when political violence dominated the country.

The National Assembly rejected the pressure campaign and the incident hurt Bukele’s image abroad, although the Trump administration, which considers Bukele an ally on immigration and on its Venezuela strategy, did not condemn his actions.

In March, the spread of the coronavirus presented Bukele with another opportunity to act boldly or, as his critics claim, grab more power for himself.

After closing borders, Bukele put in place stringent quarantine measures but also earmarked food and money for impoverished Salvadorans.

He ordered the military to arrest people violating the new measures, sending thousands to government “quarantine centers.”

When the Supreme Court ruled the arrests were unconstitutional and ordered him to stop, Bukele refused and the soldiers remained on the streets.

“Five people won’t decide the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans,” Bukele wrote on Twitter of the ruling. “One thing is to interpret the constitution, it’s something very different to order the death of the people.”

According to Johns Hopkins Covid-19 tracker, there have been 1,571 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in El Salvador to date, with 31 deaths attributed to the virus.

Battling the gangs

After a spike in gang violence in April, Bukele wrote on Twitter that the police and military had the authority to respond however they saw fit and his government released photos of tens of gang members shirtless and forced to sit on top of one another in prison, despite the dangers of spreading the virus further.

“I thought that was very disgusting I guess it was their way of showing off to the people showing them who has the power,” said Will, a former member of the Barrio 18 gang in El Salvador, who has started a gang outreach program through a local church and is still covered by the tattoos that gangs in Central America often used to identify their affiliation.

Will asked his last name not be used out of fear that security forces might hunt him down as a former gang member. El Salvador has been wracked by decades of out-of-control gang violence, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

The government’s heavy-handed response to the pandemic has halted the church group’s efforts to convince gang members to seek a new life, Will said.

“The government doesn’t know how to identify the root of the problem and keeps firing at everything that moves so we are very affected by it,” Will wrote to CNN on Facebook Messenger. “I can’t even go out without worrying what kind of police officer is going to pull me over knowing they have license to kill now if they feel threatened.”

Despite feeling a target had been put on his back, Will said he understood Bukele’s popularity with many Salvadorans.

“Some say we are losing our democracy,” the former gang member wrote, “But to be honest it seems that he is thinking about the people and has done things that never been done in the past for the people especially those of low income.”

Showdown over reopening the country

The battle over who has the power to decide the terms of El Salvador’s quarantine will likely rage on as long as the disease does.

Bukele has said he wants the country to begin reopening on June 6th, but lawmakers in the National Assembly have said that it needs to happen sooner.

On Monday, the country’s Supreme Court overruled Bukele, saying he did not have the authority to extend anti-coronavirus measures and urged the National Assembly and president to work together to reopen the country.

But even as lawmakers proposed the bill to immediately lift the quarantine, Bukele vowed it would not become law.

Another showdown already appears to be in the works with lawmakers looking to override a president who is determined to use all his powers and beyond to stop them.

“This is a law that will massively infect Salvadorans,” Bukele wrote on Twitter. “Thank God, I can veto it.”

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andrewdburton · 4 years

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Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

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What Do I Mean by ��Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

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What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences affect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

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Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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michaeljtraylor · 5 years

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It’s getting scary out there

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

Things are looking scary — Apple issued a rare profit warning late Wednesday citing a sharp decline in Chinese demand for its expected lower first quarter numbers. The company blamed, in part, “rising trade tensions with the United States.” This, to a degree, is a win for President Donald Trump, as he wants China to feel pain from tariffs. But it’s also a reminder that many big U.S. companies generate close to half their profits overseas.

Story Continued Below

The spooky salvo from Cupertino tanked Apple shares by 7 percent in after-hours trading, sent U.S. futures lower and could weigh heavily on U.S. stocks on Thursday even as the partial U.S. government shutdown is slated to roll on with no end in sight.

So the trade war has to end — In the latest POLITICO Money podcast, Leuthold’s Jim Paulsen explains why Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have to made a deal by March 31: “I think personally that the trade war is coming to an end and there is really nothing Trump can do about it.”

Wall Street eyes the 2020 field — MM talked to a couple of Wall Street Democrats about where they think the industry will wind up in the crowded field to take on Trump. More on this below but Mike Bloomberg tops the list, followed by Joe Biden and then a wild card. Read on to find out who.

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING — Sounds like many of you dig the new faster MM. Keep the comments coming to [email protected] and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver.

THIS MORNING ON POLITICO PRO FINANCIAL SERVICES — Zachary Warmbrodt on what to watch on Capitol Hill in 2019, in the financial services world. To get Morning Money every day before 6 a.m., please contact Pro Services at (703) 341-4600 or [email protected].

New Senators and House members will be sworn in this afternoon for the 116th Congress and will immediately begin yelling at each other about the shutdown. House Democrats still plan to pass a funding bill with no wall but it’s DOA in the Senate (even though the Senate previously approved such a measure unanimously).

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

WHAT WALL STREET DEMOCRATS WANT IN 2020 — Per an email from a plugged in Wall Street Democrat: “Most of them would love a Bloomberg presidency but have some doubts about his ability to withstand a Democratic primary. Biden not particularly well known on the Street but a safe pair of hands and has a credible path to the nomination and a general election victory.

“Don’t think Beto will run the kind of campaign that attracts centrist Democrats. The other possibility — if he runs — is [former Virginia governor Terry] McAuliffe who is pro-business, well known from the Clinton years and has demonstrated that he can win the kind of swing state Dems need to carry.”

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Top tweet — From Josh Brown @ReformedBroker: “Chinese demand wrecked Apple’s quarter. Your friendly reminder that 40% + of the S&P 500’s 2019 profits are expected to come from overseas. Call Kudlow and remind him too. You break it, you bought it.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

How growth could crash — Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zenter in a client note: “In 2019, fading stimulus and tighter financial conditions bite. We expect full year growth to come in at 1.7 percent … sharply slower (the slowest since 2012) and much lower compared with consensus (2.3 percent) and with a low point of just 1.0 percent in 3Q2109.”

WARREN LAST NIGHT— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last night on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSBC took direct aim at prospective self-funders like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer: “People should not be self-funding and they should not be funded from PACs from other billionaires.”

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PROBLEM — Per the NYT, his 2016 campaign was rife with sexual harassment and pay disparity complaints and he did nothing about it. Read more. And he told CNN he didn’t do anything because he didn’t know about it and was too busy.

ROMNEY SAYS HE’S NOT RUNNING — Incoming Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday he wasn’t running against Trump in 2020 but might not support his reelection: “I think it’s early to make that decision and I want to see what the alternatives are,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

WHAT TO THINK — Romney could still run. He’s changed his tune plenty of times on Trump so far, what’s once more? And the world could look totally different in a few months. Romney probably can’t win a primary challenge to Trump but he’s still in the game, as our Alex Isenstadt explain here. And our John Harris on why people like Romney don’t bother Trump very much, because he always crushes them.

STOCK MARKET KICKS OFF 2019 WITH MORE TURBULENCE — AP’s Marley Jay: “The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street resumed on Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year, as stocks plunged early on, then slowly recovered and finished with a slight gain. The Dow … dropped as much as 398 points in the first few minutes of trading after more shaky economic news from China. But it gradually recouped those losses, and a small rally over the last 15 minutes of trading left major indexes a bit higher than where they started.” Read more.

But the first day of stocks doesn’t really mean much — Bloomberg’s Lu Wang: “It’s tempting to assume that as today goes, so goes the year. But history shows that using the year’s first day of stock trading as a premise for an annual view of the market is baseless.”

INVESTORS EXPECT THE FED TO PUMP THE BRAKES — WSJ’s Daniel Kruger and Nick Timiraos: “Investors increasingly believe the Fed … won’t raise interest rates in 2019, a sign of fading confidence that the U.S. economic expansion will continue at the stable pace the central bank foresaw just two weeks ago.” Read more.

TAKING STOCK OF THE WORLD’S DEBT — WSJ’s Aaron Kuriloff: “The world has never had as much debt as it has right now—nearly $250 trillion. That figure is three times what it was two decades ago, according to a Citigroup analysis of data from the Institute of International Finance. The biggest borrowers: the U.S., China, the eurozone and Japan, which have more than two-thirds of the world’s household debt, three-quarters of corporate debt and nearly 80 percent of government debt.” Read more.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

QUARLES WANTS TO OPEN THE BLACK BOX — Our Victoria Guida on Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randy Quarles and the stress tests: “In outlining his thinking for how the Fed should improve the stress tests, Quarles said he does not want to ‘rewrite Genesis,’ but he does want to make the exercise more transparent. That’s welcome news to bankers, who often refer to the tests as a ‘black box.’” More for Pros here.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

DEMS FIGHTING THEMSELVES — Our Rachel Bade and Heather Caygle on progressive fighting with leadership over a rules package the left fears could make it harder to vote for Medicare for all and other big ticket items.

THE YEAR AHEAD LOOKS SCARY — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg view: “The world enters 2019 with a lot more uncertainty about the prospects for global growth. The excitement a year ago about a synchronized pickup in global growth is replaced by angst that was initially focused on China and Europe but is increasingly spreading to the U.S.” Read more.

PREPAID CARD GROUP REBRANDS — New year, new name. The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association — whose membership includes companies like Visa, Mastercard and Discover — is starting 2019 off fresh and has officially rebranded itself as the Innovative Payments Association. Read more here.

Source link

from RSSUnify feed https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/181702774674

0 notes

nicholerestrada · 5 years

Text

It’s getting scary out there

Story Continued Below

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

Source link

Source: https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

0 notes

garkomedia1 · 5 years

Text

It’s getting scary out there

Story Continued Below

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

Source link

from RSSUnify feed https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

0 notes

chrisaldrich · 6 years

Text

Organizing my research related reading

There’s so much great material out there to read and not nearly enough time. The question becomes: “How to best organize it all, so you can read even more?”

I just came across a tweet from Michael Nielsen about the topic, which is far deeper than even a few tweets could do justice to, so I thought I’d sketch out a few basic ideas about how I’ve been approaching it over the last decade or so. Ideally I’d like to circle back around to this and better document more of the individual aspects or maybe even make a short video, but for now this will hopefully suffice to add to the conversation Michael has started.

Lots of good insights in the responses. One thing stands out: this is a real pain point for many, & I don’t think anyone feels like they’ve nailed it (or how they organize information in general). It’d be great to have more ideas added to the thread! https://t.co/6KfhO5aVU3

— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) March 8, 2018

How do people organize their reading? Perennially frustrated by this. I want one system that lets me trivially add books, papers, webpages, etc, re-organize very easily, search & filter. What works for you?

— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) March 8, 2018

Keep in mind that this is an evolving system which I still haven’t completely perfected (and may never), but to a great extent it works relatively well and I still easily have the ability to modify and improve it.

Overall Structure

The first piece of the overarching puzzle is to have a general structure for finding, collecting, triaging, and then processing all of the data. I’ve essentially built a simple funnel system for collecting all the basic data in the quickest manner possible. With the basics down, I can later skim through various portions to pick out the things I think are the most valuable and move them along to the next step. Ultimately I end up reading the best pieces on which I make copious notes and highlights. I’m still slowly trying to perfect the system for best keeping all this additional data as well.

Since I’ve seen so many apps and websites come and go over the years and lost lots of data to them, I far prefer to use my own personal website for doing a lot of the basic collection, particularly for online material. Toward this end, I use a variety of web services, RSS feeds, and bookmarklets to quickly accumulate the important pieces into my personal website which I use like a modern day commonplace book.

Collecting

In general, I’ve been using the Inoreader feed reader to track a large variety of RSS feeds from various clearinghouse sources (including things like ProQuest custom searches) down to individual researcher’s blogs as a means of quickly pulling in large amounts of research material. It’s one of the more flexible readers out there with a huge number of useful features including the ability to subscribe to OPML files, which many readers don’t support.

As a simple example arXiv.org has an RSS feed for the topic of “information theory” at http://arxiv.org/rss/math.IT which I subscribe to. I can quickly browse through the feed and based on titles and/or abstracts, I can quickly “star” the items I find most interesting within the reader. I have a custom recipe set up for the IFTTT.com service that pulls in all these starred articles and creates new posts for them on my WordPress blog. To these posts I can add a variety of metadata including top level categories and lower level tags in addition to other additional metadata I’m interested in.

I also have similar incoming funnel entry points via many other web services as well. So on platforms like Twitter, I also have similar workflows that allow me to use services like IFTTT.com or Zapier to push the URLs easily to my website. I can quickly “like” a tweet and a background process will suck that tweet and any URLs within it into my system for future processing. This type of workflow extends to a variety of sites where I might consume potential material I want to read and process. (Think academic social services like Mendeley, Academia.com, Diigo, or even less academic ones like Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) Many of these services often have storage ability and also have simple browser bookmarklets that allow me to add material to them. So with a quick click, it’s saved to the service and then automatically ported into my website almost without friction.

My WordPress-based site uses the Post Kinds Plugin which takes incoming website URLs and does a very solid job of parsing those pages to extract much of the primary metadata I’d like to have without requiring a lot of work. For well structured web pages, it’ll pull in the page title, authors, date published, date updated, synopsis of the page, categories and tags, and other bits of data automatically. All these fields are also editable and searchable. Further, the plugin allows me to configure simple browser bookmarklets so that with a simple click on a web page, I can pull its URL and associated metadata into my website almost instantaneously. I can then add a note or two about what made me interested in the piece and save it for later.

Note here, that I’m usually more interested in saving material for later as quickly as I possibly can. In this part of the process, I’m rarely ever interested in reading anything immediately. I’m most interested in finding it, collecting it for later, and moving on to the next thing. This is also highly useful for things I find during my busy day that I can’t immediately find time for at the moment.

As an example, here’s a book I’ve bookmarked to read simply by clicking “like” on a tweet I cam across late last year. You’ll notice at the bottom of the post, I’ve optionally syndicated copies of the post to other platforms to “spread the wealth” as it were. Perhaps others following me via other means may see it and find it useful as well?

Triaging

At regular intervals during the week I’ll sit down for an hour or two to triage all the papers and material I’ve been sucking into my website. This typically involves reading through lots of abstracts in a bit more detail to better figure out what I want to read now and what I’d like to read at a later date. I can delete out the irrelevant material if I choose, or I can add follow up dates to custom fields for later reminders.

Slowly but surely I’m funneling down a tremendous amount of potential material into a smaller, more manageable amount that I’m truly interested in reading on a more in-depth basis.

Document storage

Calibre with GoodReads sync

Even for things I’ve winnowed down, there is still a relatively large amount of material, much of it I’ll want to save and personally archive. For a lot of this function I rely on the free multi-platform desktop application Calibre. It’s essentially an iTunes-like interface, but it’s built specifically for e-books and other documents.

Within it I maintain a small handful of libraries. One for personal e-books, one for research related textbooks/e-books, and another for journal articles. It has a very solid interface and is extremely flexible in terms of configuration and customization. You can create a large number of custom libraries and create your own searchable and sort-able fields with a huge variety of metadata. It often does a reasonable job of importing e-books, .pdf files, and other digital media and parsing out their meta data which prevents one from needing to do some of that work manually. With some well maintained metadata, one can very quickly search and sort a huge amount of documents as well as quickly prioritize them for action. Additionally, the system does a pretty solid job of converting files from one format to another, so that things like converting an .epub file into a .mobi format for Kindle are automatic.

Calibre stores the physical documents either in local computer storage, or even better, in the cloud using any of a variety of services including Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. so that one can keep one’s documents in the cloud and view them from a variety of locations (home, work, travel, tablet, etc.)

I’ve been a very heavy user of GoodReads.com for years to bookmark and organize my physical and e-book library and anti-libraries. Calibre has an exceptional plugin for GoodReads that syncs data across the two. This (and a few other plugins) are exceptionally good at pulling in missing metadata to minimize the amount that must be done via hand, which can be tedious.

Within Calibre I can manage my physical books, e-books, journal articles, and a huge variety of other document related forms and formats. I can also use it to further triage and order the things I intend to read and order them to the nth degree. My current Calibre libraries have over 10,000 documents in them including over 2,500 textbooks as well as records of most of my 1,000+ physical books. Calibre can also be used to add document data that one would like to ultimately acquire the actual documents, but currently don’t have access to.

BibTeX and reference management

In addition to everything else Calibre also has some well customized pieces for dovetailing all its metadata as a reference management system. It’ll allow one to export data in a variety of formats for document publishing and reference management including BibTex formats amongst many others.

Reading, Annotations, Highlights

Once I’ve winnowed down the material I’m interested in it’s time to start actually reading. I’ll often use Calibre to directly send my documents to my Kindle or other e-reading device, but one can also read them on one’s desktop with a variety of readers, or even from within Calibre itself. With a click or two, I can automatically email documents to my Kindle and Calibre will also auto-format them appropriately before doing so.

Typically I’ll send them to my Kindle which allows me a variety of easy methods for adding highlights and marginalia. Sometimes I’ll read .pdf files via desktop and use Adobe to add highlights and marginalia as well. When I’m done with a .pdf file, I’ll just resave it (with all the additions) back into my Calibre library.

Exporting highlights/marginalia to my website

For Kindle related documents, once I’m finished, I’ll use direct text file export or tools like clippings.io to export my highlights and marginalia for a particular text into simple HTML and import it into my website system along with all my other data. I’ve briefly written about some of this before, though I ought to better document it. All of this then becomes very easily searchable and sort-able for future potential use as well.

Here’s an example of some public notes, highlights, and other marginalia I’ve posted in the past.

Synthesis

Eventually, over time, I’ve built up a huge amount of research related data in my personal online commonplace book that is highly searchable and sortable! I also have the option to make these posts and pages public, private, or even password protected. I can create accounts on my site for collaborators to use and view private material that isn’t publicly available. I can also share posts via social media and use standards like webmention and tools like brid.gy so that comments and interactions with these pieces on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others is imported back to the relevant portions of my site as comments. (I’m doing it with this post, so feel free to try it out yourself by commenting on one of the syndicated copies.)

Now when I’m ready to begin writing something about what I’ve read, I’ve got all the relevant pieces, notes, and metadata in one centralized location on my website. Synthesis becomes much easier. I can even have open drafts of things as I’m reading and begin laying things out there directly if I choose. Because it’s all stored online, it’s imminently available from almost anywhere I can connect to the web. As an example, I used a few portions of this workflow to actually write this post.

Continued work

Naturally, not all of this is static and it continues to improve and evolve over time. In particular, I’m doing continued work on my personal website so that I’m able to own as much of the workflow and data there. Ideally I’d love to have all of the Calibre related piece on my website as well.

Earlier this week I even had conversations about creating new post types on my website related to things that I want to read to potentially better display and document them explicitly. When I can I try to document some of these pieces either here on my own website or on various places on the IndieWeb wiki. In fact, the IndieWeb for Education page might be a good place to start browsing for those interested.

One of the added benefits of having a lot of this data on my own website is that it not only serves as my research/data platform, but it also has the traditional ability to serve as a publishing and distribution platform!

Currently, I’m doing most of my research related work in private or draft form on the back end of my website, so it’s not always publicly available, though I often think I should make more of it public for the value of the aggregation nature it has as well as the benefit it might provide to improving scientific communication. Just think, if you were interested in some of the obscure topics I am and you could have a pre-curated RSS feed of all the things I’ve filtered through piped into your own system… now multiply this across hundreds of thousands of other scientists? Michael Nielsen posts some useful things to his Twitter feed and his website, but what I wouldn’t give to see far more of who and what he’s following, bookmarking, and actually reading? While many might find these minutiae tedious, I guarantee that people in his associated fields would find some serious value in it.

I’ve tried hundreds of other apps and tools over the years, but more often than not, they only cover a small fraction of the necessary moving pieces within a much larger moving apparatus that a working researcher and writer requires. This often means that one is often using dozens of specialized tools upon which there’s a huge duplication of data efforts. It also presumes these tools will be around for more than a few years and allow easy import/export of one’s hard fought for data and time invested in using them.

If you’re aware of something interesting in this space that might be useful, I’m happy to take a look at it. Even if I might not use the service itself, perhaps it’s got a piece of functionality that I can recreate into my own site and workflow somehow?

If you’d like help in building and fleshing out a system similar to the one I’ve outlined above, I’m happy to help do that too.

Notes, Highlights, and Marginalia: From E-books to Online

A New Reading Post-type for Bookmarking and Reading Workflow

PressForward as an IndieWeb WordPress-based RSS Feed Reader & Pocket/Instapaper Replacement

#Calibre #commonplace book #journal club #organization #own your data #prioritizing reading #productivity #reading workflow #research #science communication #tools #Education #IndieWeb #Publishing #Science #Technology

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rutherford-tabathalmin0w-blog · 7 years

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andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

youtube

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

Keeping the Net Positives

youtube

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

youtube

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

youtube

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

Keeping the Net Positives

youtube

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

youtube

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

youtube

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposte seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

Keeping the Net Positives

youtube

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences effect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

youtube

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

youtube

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposte seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

Keeping the Net Positives

youtube

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

youtube

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes