Disqus - Latest Comments for LloydFassett

Re: Israel/Gaza

Lloyd Fassett — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 16:00:17 -0000

I agree with everything you wrote, especially the idea of significant support to grow a stable and economically thriving Palestine.

However, the way it looks to me is that Hamas is hoping Israel invades and acts atrociously to foment anger by Islamic countries. That's why committed an act of terrorism. Iraq is assured, but really the invasion by Hamas was the grenade to get Saudi Arabia to side with Palestine. Hamas directly fighting Israel is ridiculous and Hamas has always known that. This is about the Middle East, not the neighborhoods it's starting in. It's about the world and which way, and how forceful, the U.S. goes and how the Middle East reacts to what we do. I think Hamas had all that in mind from way back.

When Netanyahu was elected, they saw their chance to elicit a war because of his personality. From yesterday's news:

When asked if he has considered stepping down, Netanyahu said the only thing he would resign is Hamas.

“We're going to resign them to the dustbin of history. That's my goal. That's my responsibility,” he said.

Saudi Arabia was silent for days and two days ago warned about Israel escalating.

War is never certain in its outcome. Currently it's trending in the direction the oppressed wanted it to though. What do they have to lose by throwing rocks at the bees nest? They haven't felt like they have a future, maybe ever.

USV signing that statement was probably a bad idea. The vagueness of the statement "we also acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas" can justify the quote from Netanyahu to exterminate a group. 'defend itself' certainly sounds like a justification to kill everyone to me. It's a euphemism. It's the same as the U.S. creating the phrase "preventative war", which is also something that's a false justification to act in a murderous way.

Back to the top though. I certainly wish there was a Marshall Plan that included middle east countries and Israel to invade Palestine with infrastructure and support. The living conditions Palestinians have been in are a breeding ground for terrorists. If Netanyahu wants to exterminate Hamas, get the world to change the conditions of Palestine in the coming decades. That will exterminate
Hamas. Invading and killing Palestinians while you're looking for the terrorists won't exterminate Hamas because genocide doesn't work. It never has, never will.

I wish the miracle of the Marshall Plan were indeed followed, reinforced, accelerated, implemented, expanded. Please.

Re: To Infinity and Beyond

Lloyd Fassett — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 01:03:25 -0000

Very cool post. It made me think of a couple things.

1. Malthus knew we were going to run out of food because human growth was exponential and food supply was linear. It was humans that changed the economics by that. re: In the Socratic dialogue 'Republic', Plato wrote: “our need will be the real creator” (Who knew? All I googled was 'necessity is the mother of invention')

2. Some people think that, left unconstrained, others are inclined to socially destructive behaviors, while another type of person thinks others are good and if left alone will positive contributions to society. I bet those two types also fear the future / have a growth set about problem solving.

Your post reminded me that the framework we use contributes to what we see. What we see has a role in what we make. Watch the ball, all the way into the net.

Re: The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri (Book Review)

Lloyd Fassett — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 14:39:38 -0000

This book is certainly rising in the world. Thanks for the review, especially about the lack of prescription. I suspect that would look at Political Science as the hierarchy is a solution to a previous problem. I'll have to pick it up.

From your review, I also suspect there's a lack of discussion about a connection between values and process. So a prescription is fine and great to bat back and forth, but what are the underlying values? Get that, then the prescription follow.

Technology and structure will continue to shape the world...er the world will adapt to technology and structure.

I'm glad you were out front on the B-Corp issue...that's an example of values, structure and prescription I'm talking about.

Re: Recruiting and Hiring Stats HR Pros Must Know in 2017

Lloyd Fassett — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 16:16:42 -0000

Great list of statistics.

Is the use of the phrase "Job Offer" incorrect in this statement:

After finding a job offer, 64% of candidates said they research a company online and 37% said they will move on to another job offer if they can’t find information on the company.
(Careerbuilder 2016)

Do you mean Online Job Description?

Re: ICOs and the Promise and Perils of a Global Capital Market for Everyone

Lloyd Fassett — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 13:36:44 -0000

"People sometimes rightly scoff at the notion of selfregulation"... is it really 'self regulation' if it's distributed though?

Re: The Annual Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hiker Survey (2016)

Lloyd Fassett — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 21:30:56 -0000

It's just life as a family man that keeps me away from multi week adventures. Some day though I'll get back to longer ones.

My kids though will be ready for long trips without me soon as they are 15, 13, 13 and 11.

Mostly though I wanted to point out how your work goes a long way in ways you might not imagine; through inspiration and through people I pass the information down to like my kids and for weekend warriors.

Re: The Annual Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hiker Survey (2016)

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 12:09:54 -0000

Thanks for publishing this. I'm just a weekend warrior, but find the information really useful as it's more people over longer distances so information about equipment, water treatment, shelter are still helpful for my enjoyment of backpacking.

Re: No, Donald Trump Is Not Hitler

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:28:21 -0000

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world... You...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Re: No, Donald Trump Is Not Hitler

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:15:18 -0000

He's more like Hitler for inciting violence at rallies and Hate Speech directed at deportation based on ethnic and religious basis. Mostly, it's his position to Make America Great again by deportation and making the rest of the world pay because then we'll be great again.

For hate speech examples, review these highlights of Trump encouraging violence that was more common in his good 'ol days as well as promises to pay for legal bills if someone gets hurt because they need to be hurt. Documentation of promoting violence is more important to being like Hitler than your examples of conspiracies.

http://www.nytimes.com/vide...

You can also review the 19 points here about basics of Demogogery, which lists Hitler as an example along with Joseph McCarthy. In Trump's world, placing the press in a penn at his rallies where they were subject to taunts of the entire crowd with 'CNN Sucks' is an example of being against the free press or freedom of thought, as well as engineering rallies to have those penns encouraging the demeaning of the free press, is similar to the engineering of rallies at Nuremberg to promote a mass hysteria around the ruler and against 'the other'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

He's not a fascist yet, but let's all hope he's doesn't start detaining and deporting based on mass over generalizations like Mexican's are rapists and all Muslims must be stopped until we figure out what the hell is going on.

I'll throw you a bone though, the title of this post is true. He's not Hitler. I have started calling him a Demagogue because it's more truthful. Trump has not started a war and systematically killed people based on religious or sexual orientation. He's got that going for him.

Re: No, Donald Trump Is Not Hitler

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 00:30:36 -0000

You don't explain how Hillary should be a Hitler, at all or how Hitler was different than Trump when he was first elected.

Re: Bend looks to increase no-cause eviction notice; The city is discussing increases the notice from 30 to 90 days

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 17:06:55 -0000

John Boy - Landlords already get as much as they can. They won't be able to collect 2 -3 last month of rent from everyone and their choice will be to wait for the few to come along that can do that, or not charge that. They are already at 'market rate'.

'Quality of Accomodation' means that there is a cost increase with this policy change (though not a significant % of overall cost). As cost goes up, there is a limit to the quality people will rent. At some point, they pay the same, but get less quality.

Re: Bend looks to increase no-cause eviction notice; The city is discussing increases the notice from 30 to 90 days

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 15:27:09 -0000

Dude / Dudette - post with a name and picture so you're not some weird lurker. I'm hoping that other people are reading this and suspect that you're really one of the bad landlords trying to protect your way of evicting people. Main point here is that I hope the City Council sees the comments and ignores comments made anonymously because it's too easy to hide behind whatever your motivations are. Perhaps you're a landlord? Who knows.

I don't agree that there's inelasticity of demand. It will just shift down in quality of accommodations. You get what you get for the same price. There's a lot more elasticity on the landlord side as rents can go up and down monthly with a tenant in place. One missed month of rent can wipe out small increases too, so if you're a landlord you can pass on this extra cost and more, each landlord can do whatever they want. Yes, it's an increased cost. It's tiny compared to the run up of house values since the rebound. Extending eviction notices are going to have some kind of dent compared to the run up in rents? Did you fail Econ 101?

And what world do you live in that landlords are so nice to their tenants? Good tenants get asked to move on all the time without cause. If that were not the case, there wouldn't be laws in every state and city to protect tenants.

You should just come out and say that you're a libertarian, along with your name and picture, so we could see that you believe in unfetter free markets. Those do lead to nasty outcomes for the masses, but of course you should advocate for that openly.

Re: Bend looks to increase no-cause eviction notice; The city is discussing increases the notice from 30 to 90 days

Lloyd Fassett — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:21:46 -0000

I think all the comments here are nuts so far. This is a perfectly reasonable law for a true and reasonable reason...you can't find a place in 30 days in this town. I'm just chipping in here just in case the City Council reads the comments and thinks that there aren't people who care about a fair balance between tenant / landlord relations.

Go ahead and let landlords raise deposits. It's not like they don't already have them as high as possible because that's the free market. The only thing that will keep rent and deposits low is competition. It's obnoxious that there would be a wiff of landlords keeping prices low for the betterment of our community at a financial expense to them.

It's also stated in the article and by one of the commentators that landlords have For Cause evictions too which are faster than 90 days if someone is abusive to their property or the contract they have with them.

C'mon people. Be fair and reasonable to tenants in a town with very low rental availability.

Re: The Meltdown

Lloyd Fassett — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 12:50:43 -0000

Ok. Easy enough. Do you have any suggestions on when to quit though?

Re: Bend man accused of selling stolen items at 'garage sales'

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 18:12:04 -0000

Thanks for the link. I had no idea the KKK had such a presence in Bend.

Re: Bend man accused of selling stolen items at 'garage sales'

Lloyd Fassett — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 12:14:46 -0000

The kkk burned cruises on Pilot Butte? What years? Got a link for that?

Re: Joel Monegro — Deep Web Marketplaces

Lloyd Fassett — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:46:02 -0000

The dynamics sound like Game Theory / Prisoners Dilema to me.

"Superrationality" on @Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

One way monetize is to charge to make one actor's role, or data, in the network better. Sitter City does this by having baby sitters pay for their background checks as an option. It makes the marketplace better and differentiates one sitter over another while keeping the marketplace open.

Re: What society are we building here?

Lloyd Fassett — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 14:22:52 -0000

Seems like growing pains to me for publishing content online. In print people had to pass editors to get the word out and that controlled quality mostly. It seems that the Twitter issue to me though is the same as tabloid journalism of yor. Back then they did it for money. Now they do it because they are the disenfranchised with a gun. The dumb comments online don't bother me (except for the impersonation is over the line) anymore than seeing tabloid covers that I never bought anyway 20 years ago. They are both dumb comments that don't contribute to me.

We're not there yet though to use technology to take the gun back from disenfranchised kids. Hypothetically you could have a federated reputation system whose function it was to limit the reach of messages to match their reputation level, but that's not today.

It is a matter of reach though that is like how journalism works (worked). Good stuff gets into the NYT's because there is a curation process. That's still centralized. There is yet a decentralized curation process.

The solution is not on limiting free speech though. It's on increasing / decreasing the reach of comments to fit the audience. Once the kid with the gun has no audience, he/she will just go away anyway.

What kind of society are we building though? An inclusive one.

Re: Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (Book Review)

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:01:57 -0000

I'd recommend economic history as a subset of non-fiction that I would think would appeal to you. The late Peter Bernstein was from the Finance world like Taleb and wrote many interesting ones. Start with "Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk". It's about how statistics freed humans from religious dogma by creating an alternate explanation for why things happened.

Re: We Didn't Know What We Had

Lloyd Fassett — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:28:24 -0000

This story is also more important than it looks on the surface. I have a pdf of Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt if you like to read more. Its considered a HBR Classic about interpreting markets. I wonder how much doesn't happen, more than what does. For example, why did it rage so long to get wheels on luggage?

Re: Critics Steamed Over Flavored Milk in Schools - News Story - KTVZ Bend

Lloyd Fassett — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:40:21 -0000

Public schools need to follow the American Medical Association and Pediatric Association recommendations, which is to remove sugary drinks from people's diets. Nobody is taking away the rights of any parent to have their kids not follow medical scientific research at home....so those kids can bring flavored milk and a case of candy bars for their own consumption if their parents want. Food distributed to everyone in a public school needs to follow what research shows is healthy.

Re: http://bryce.vc/post/18518707943

Lloyd Fassett — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:51:17 -0000

When I hear about people working that hard on a regular way of business, I think it's frequently because their businesses don't have enough advantage over their competition and/or are not differentiated enough. A part of it might be that you have to work that hard because all the VC's work that hard to push through the deal flow and most have the same processes to do so.

I think hard work is a part of success, but perhaps it's over rated in its contribution to the outcome like the tortoise and the hair. Perhaps it's because that in your industry, that hard to follow pace creates a small advantage and because of the design of the process, small advantages can create leverage. Maybe there is more truth to your hard work than you think.

I really like the title of your post too because it implies to me thinking about doing, instead of doing.

I do hope you feel better too.

Re: Two Lesbians Raised A Baby And This Is What They Got

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:43:22 -0000

People should be able to choose their religion. People should be able to choose who they want their own families to be. Both need to be the right of every American. Move on.

Re: http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/12467331482

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:06:26 -0000

Good points, but it it seems more industrial era advertising as opposed to collaborative interactive environments. I think your example works in commodity markets, but there are other places where there could be more important drivers. If a relationship persists, it seems like it would be another issue altogether. Relationships extend over time where search isn't so close to the purchase decision.
I just found your blog through G Reader's Recommendation engine too, then I subscribed to your feed directly. I'm not even sure what point to make about that though wrt your post.

Re: Real Names (cont)

Lloyd Fassett — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:22:51 -0000

There's a whole lot going on here.

I bet the commentor is a harbinger that participation will double around the net from what 10% to 20%? He thinks it's his choice, but really other things are pushing everyone that way.

The other is that comment systems / approaches won't scale. It seems like it's been years since Fred published his Unique's, but I'd guess it's only growing linearly and because his fame is rising, not because of the interaction and 'work' that's going on in the comments.

What scales are a purpose where the data is separated from the commentor. A blog is about the author. I scan the posts and sometimes dip into the comments. I used to read a lot of comments, but at 400+ for this one post, that doesn't work now. Sometimes what is being discussed is more quantifiable and you end up with Wikipedia.

Long story short, the purpose will drive the tools. Anonymous, real name, whatever....they are about reducing spam and bringing forward something worth bringing forward. Map that to the post and if there's a process that can help 'guest' learn more, he'll start using that.