TIL: male employment in the US

In an economy booming by the traditional measures of surging stock values and rock-bottom unemployment, a key indicator continues to flash red: 18% of men aged 25 to 54 don’t have full-time work. That’s a vast improvement over the 25% who were idle or working only part-time in 2010. But by pre-Great Recession standards, the present resembles the bottom of a downturn, underperforming the worst points in either the 1990-91 or 2001 recessions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-get-american-men-working-again-11574436197

Где жить?

В выходные на дороге здоровается больше случайных встречных, чем в будние дни. На пляже все по прежнему. В следующей жизни я постараюсь жить на пляже или в выходные.

(no subject)

Dr Ruja's genius was to recognise that established MLM [multi-level marketing] sellers with huge downlines were the perfect vehicle to market her fake coin - a plan the FBI says she privately referred to as "the bitch of Wall Street, meets MLM". This was the secret of OneCoin's success. It wasn't just a fake cryptocurrency, it was an old-fashioned pyramid scheme, with the fake coin as its "product". No wonder it spread like wildfire.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50435014

It's a mechanism for exponential growth of the customer base combined with exponential profits per each customer. The product itself is designed so that somebody else will end up holding the bag when the scheme collapses.

(no subject)

I finished working through Lawvere/Schanuel, A First Introduction to Categories. It's an excellent book, both structure- and content-wise. Compared to other CT books that I've read so far, L/S emphasize the concept of "universal construction," which is probably the most succinct way to capture the essence of mathematics.

(no subject)

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-trump-voters

most detailed statistics on trump voters.

(no subject)

“The three types of narrative – belonging, obligation and causality – fit together to forge a web of reciprocal obligations. ”

“Narratives have a third function: we learn how our world works through stories that link actions to outcomes. Our actions become purposive. Experiments show that we rely more on stories than on direct observation or tuition. By joining them up into a causal chain, actions that are not in our immediate self-interest may then look rational, creating enlightened self-interest. At its best, this expands our knowledge. At its worst, it creates a rupture between reality and what we believe – narratives as ‘fake news’. True or false, stories are powerful. In their devastating analysis of the financial crisis, two Nobel Laureates, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, conclude that ‘stories no longer merely explain the facts, they are the facts’.”

Paul Collier. “The Future of Capitalism.”

He makes a good point about narrative-based rationality vs the rationality brought about by the Enlightenment.