This book I read quite a while ago explains why this approach WILL NOT work. The author is both an artist and economist, and he wondered why are artists poor.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are...

In a nutshell he said the problem with artists is that it is winner take all business. Meaning unlike business where you can compete and work on building a better widget, with art that does and cannot exist. As a result you have a few who manage the expectations of their clients take all the money. Art is not about expressing yourself, but about expressing what the client thinks that you are expressing.

Think of it as follows. We have all heard about the art with the banana taped to the wall, or the painting with a single stripe. We mock it, but our opinion is completely irrelevant (for the most part) because we don't sponsor the individual who taped that banana. For the individual who taped the banana was most likely sponsered by the individuals who thought the act was awesome and explained society. This is how art works.

Thus by giving money for free and painting what they want they don't actually solve any problems. For they will not reach out to the clients who will say that taped banana is awesome. Instead they will only attract more people who really don't get the arts.

I read this book to understand open source way back when. For Open Source is very much a winner take all business as well. Linus has a job and he is well taken care of. So what about the minions who do the work of Linux? I am not condemning Linus. I am more saying that Open Source and the Arts have from a business perspective quite a bit in common.

and here is why I am a snarky cynic as I just read in the CBC news.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/scienc...

So let's get a news agency to report on how much CO2 is being produced and how bad it is. Let's just get the people riled up to protest and stop my pet favourite thing. I am not saying the fossil fuel industry is better. I am saying it is getting hard to trust the "science" and this is causing more and more polarization because we all have our biases.

Let me be the snarky cynic. I think there is a bias by the tree huggers. Take nuclear as an example, no way we shall never use that. Well it does solve the climate change problem. But then the radiation if shit hits the ceiling argument comes around. Ok, but how come the world has not heard about this guy?

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.or...

He is making it feasible to clean up radioactivity. That is awesome, yet do we hear about it? This is where my snarky cynic barbs are raised. What if there was a down deep bias and not about climate change?

Next example, city people in Europe are starting to complain that there are too many big electric vehicle SUV's driving in the city. Huh, heh, what? I thought they did not want fossil fuel power vehicles? The goal posts have moved and the real fight was not climate change, but cars.

Do you see where I am going here? I am not a climate change denier, oh climate change is real! However I am seeing that as we begin to shift the tree huggers are only happy if we do things their way! Heaven forbid we do something else, like Carbon Capture. No we must not do that at all!

BTW here is the irony. As Germany protests nuclear, they are shutting down their last station only to extend and power up other fossil fuel stations because they don't have enough electricity. It really and truly is a WTF moment.

Thus this vice article and its premise, not going to believe it as vice has drank too much koolaid.

Sooo from the chart the most private appears to be Telegram, and the worst offender iMessage. LOL Apple... We care about privacy and data protection... [until they don't have to.] What a bunch of BS Apple seems to be selling

The cognitive dissonance is stunning... Here we are in a climate crisis (not arguing for or against), and what do we do? Oh yeah land a super big plane in the Antarctic from a company called, "Wolf's Gang luxury adventure camp." GREAT! Wonderful!

Oh I read the article. So please explain to me how this is totally acceptable? To argue that this is just the cost of doing business is nuts.

Ok yes I am cynical with my title, but hear me out. The UK has plenty of wind energy, and when it runs it does amazingly well. But oddly in the past few months there have been moments when there was not enough wind. In fact basically none. As a result the UK had to power up fossil fuels.

  https://fortune.com/2021/09/16...

I used to be a big proponent of renewable energy, now not so much anymore. For if we can't produce enough renewable, what then? We can't seem to find enough ways to store enough energy over many days. Meaning we need a backup energy supply and if that is the case, why on earth are we even doing solar and wind?

While that sounds like a good idea, it is not feasible. From what I know, one is civil law, the other criminal law. And we know what happens to white collar crime... Much easier to do civil lawsuits. Yes this also applies to the USA.

IMO It is not as simple as Fly Swatter says.

Imagine you are at an blind bid auction for baseball cards. So you write down that bid that will be given to seller. Imagine for a moment the buyer offers 10, the seller offers 20. You are stuck at figuring how gives and how much. On an exchange that is a guessing game since the buyer and seller don't know each other. But now steps in a middle entity that says, "I will sell you order flow, but to do that I need to know the orders and your clients." Imagine for a moment that the sold order flow shows that the seller is always easy to trigger, and the buyer likes to chase. The order flow could then jack up the price to the buyer for 16 and the seller down to 14, meaning 2 dollars of free money. Is that fair? For that is exactly what happens now with Robinhood. They analyze your behaviour on buying and selling and see how you play the game. Then like Facebook they slice and dice you to make as much money as they can out of you. Of course your trades are "free"...

IMO this is a large part of the problem wrt to trading. Interactive Brokers has had discount rates for over a decade. The idea that 4-8 trades would cost you 80 dollars in commission is simply not true for the market in general. It is what the big banks charged...

The problem with Robinhood is that you don't know your trade quality until AFTER the trade. By having standards you ensure that minimum quality is adhered to. What I hate about Robinhood is that they gamified the entire stock market. And in a market like this where even a hamster can make money you get a false sense of security. For once the shit does hit the ceiling Robinhood clients will be blown out of the water. Orderflow and liquidity always works when market are not diving.

Interactive Brokers has been a discount broker for decades and they don't front run. So why does retail not know more about them? Because as the salesperson said to me in 2006, "do you know how to make money on the market? We don't want people who go broke." I have remained there since then and have consistently made money.

As somebody who does deal with the market the idea that this takes away power from the individual investor is ludicrous! Interactive Brokers offers discount rates where a trade can be carried out costing only 1 USD (American Exchanges) since over a decade. If you think a trade costing you 1 dollar is too much, then maybe you should not be in the market. The fact that others cost say 5 or 10 dollars per trade only shows how lazy the retail investor is because they don't actually research the various brokers.

Now getting to the point of payment for order flow. Imagine you are at an blind bid auction for baseball cards. So you write down that bid that will be given to seller. Imagine for a moment the buyer offers 10, the seller offers 20. You are stuck at figuring how gives and how much. On an exchange that is a guessing game since the buyer and seller don't know each other. But now steps in a middle entity that says, "I will sell you order flow, but to do that I need to know the orders and your clients." Imagine for a moment that the sold order flow shows that the seller is always easy to trigger, and the buyer likes to chase. The order flow could then jack up the price to the buyer for 16 and the seller down to 14, meaning 2 dollars of free money. Is that fair? For that is exactly what happens now with Robinhood. They analyze your behaviour on buying and selling and see how you play the game. Then like Facebook they slice and dice you to make as much money as they can out of you. Of course your trades are "free"...

When this behaviour was done wrt to Facebook people made the excuse, "but facebook does not charge me anything." Well Robinhood does not either, but they cost you profits! Real profits! But [snarkily said] the youngsters would rather gamble their money away...

What the heck happened to Slashdot? In previous times the comment would be considered as fair and insightful. Now some are turning into the same crap as in the other social networks. Trump is a twat plain and simple. However, the fact that he started a new social network to cheerlead his ego, well that is his choice. He can do whatever he wants because it is his network and we just have to abide by that. Just like we abide by the terms of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Snarkily put, serves the people right! Had we reined in big tech instead of cheerleading them maybe we would not be in this shithole scenario that we are in.

You mean like this accurate article? They said a conservative estimate was 1-7 degrees, and the actual increase was 0.7. Yeah REALLY accurate.

Let me be the snarky cynic. Do you know why we talk about 3 and these low numbers? Because the folks in 1980 used the numbers that even on a conservative scale did not happen. Ergo they rejigged their numbers to make it fit the data.

https://apnews.com/article/bd4...

In the old days, we bought something and then fixed it ourselves. Let people do that and trust me you will have devices that will stay out of the trash heap. That includes opening up the source code and giving it away to allow people to fix it themselves.