Occupy

[Cain]

I've worked for a think tank before.  It's much more boring than you'd think.

[Triple Zero]

Homey don't play dat. Let's have Lollapalooza, or hey, how about a SECOND WOODSTOCK. That showed everyone when we just rocked out about not caring about anything, and throwing mud at Green Day.

I just actually snarled.  Jeff left the building.

I dun gud then.

I remember being a young teenager and thinking the whole thing was cool. Then at the end of my teenage years, I was like "Woodstock? Really? Way to try and steal someone else's thunder. And poorly, at that."

Are you referring to Woodstock'99? (cause there's been several, apparently)

Thanks anyway for making me look that up ... wow what a mess. And to think I was to go to my first festival that same summer, except it was awesome, and everyone was nice, and I crowdsurfed at the Chemical Brothers and the only Riot was of the Atari Teenage kind. Also they didn't ban bringing food and drink, just had a limit of 8 beercans pp or so. So I brought that, a bread, butterknife and a jar of fucking peanutbutter. Think I only bought one ridiculously overpriced pizza the whole weekend.

I couldn't find any reference on throwing mud at Green Day, unfortunately

And the reviewer from Salon.com said that half the festivalgoers left a day early!! Fucking pussies, come to Sziget, it lasts a whole week and you're on an island in the fucking Danube right in the middle of historical "like Prague but bigger" beautiful Budapest city and everything's cheap because fuck yeah Hungary.

Actually, come to think of it, been to Sziget twice and quite some people were in fact a few years older than me, making them Gen-X-ers right? Maybe it's also the US Gen-X-ers. I can imagine that era in the US breeding a generation of "whatever" entitlement?

Maybe it's actually having a war on your own territory that instills the fear of "fuck damn that was some serious bad shit" that seems to have spanned at least three generations. It's getting less now, as the people that lived through WW2 start dying of age, but things like swastikas or even typing "heil hitler" makes me cringe (a little). I suppose it's a bit similar in the US with the slavery and racism history. Very similar in fact if you consider the Dutch did slavery and racism just as well, except they did it in Indonesia and South Africa, on foreign territory, like the USA had with their wars. Or maybe it's a stupid comparison and I'm rambling a bit.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It's possible that I'm confusing festivals, Trip, or maybe even the band involved, but, the mud slinging bit would have probably been in 94 or 95, so maybe it was Lollapalooza. I'm also not sure about the Woodstock thing now if it was in 99, as I was 18 then. Unless the idea had been floated around in previous years.

As far as whether or not you and I are Gen X-ers, it depends. I've seen some ranges that include being born in the early 1980s, and others that end in 1978. I suppose it all depends on what you consider yourself. I imagine it's also different in Europe anyway for any generation, possibly for reasons like you give. And it does seem that Americans don't have the same cringe factor when exposed to fascist symbolism. But we also don't seem to have the same shame when it comes to slavery. If we did you'd never see the Rebel Flag on some average Joe's truck, or some of the sentiments expressed embarrassingly by my Teabaggers. But back to the Europe-America thing. That may end up not being the case in the generation being born now, with economies being more interdependent and the internet allowing for a global culture.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

agreed.
high frequency trading seems to be a dangerous development of the market that does not benefit the whole.  a small fee for each trade seems prudent.
PMZ, why the opposition to this?

If the tax is small enough that it really only affects HFT's but is negligible for small investors, then I could get behind that.  The manifesto didn't specify and I was imagining something like a few dollars per trade, which would make it even tougher than it already is for small time traders to come out ahead.

[Elder Iptuous]

Right...  just to get rid of HFT.
according to Wiki:

By 2010 high-frequency trading accounted for over 70% of equity trades taking place in the US and was rapidly growing in popularity in Europe and Asia. Aiming to capture just a fraction of a penny per share or currency unit on every trade, high-frequency traders move in and out of such short-term positions several times each day. Fractions of a penny accumulate fast to produce significantly positive results at the end of every day.[5] High-frequency trading firms do not employ significant leverage, do not accumulate positions, and typically liquidate their entire portfolios on a daily basis.[6]

So HFT doesn't actually lend any benefit to the market from what i can see.  the firms that do it claim it adds useful liquidity, but since it doesn't actually lend capital to businesses on a useful timescale, it seems to me that it simply exploits the system of measured and reasonable investment to extract wealth.
the firms that engage in HFT say it's a stabilizing force in the market, while the SEC says it is a major contributing factor in Flash Crash.  intuition (i would go as far as to say common sense) says the SEC is right.
according to the above, the trading fee would only have to be pennies to render the practice infeasible.
seems like a no brainer to me. 

[Cramulus]

It's possible that I'm confusing festivals, Trip, or maybe even the band involved, but, the mud slinging bit would have probably been in 94 or 95, so maybe it was Lollapalooza. I'm also not sure about the Woodstock thing now if it was in 99, as I was 18 then. Unless the idea had been floated around in previous years.

pretty sure the mud slinging was the Green Day performance at Woodstock 99 - I remember watching it on TV in high school

oh thank god for youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h275pulfwHE





On the generational note, you guys might find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

The rough general consensus is that the Millenials start around 1982. (putting me right at the cusp between X and Y.)

Generation Y is a marketing term, so it really only discusses this generation in terms of its consumer habits. But that in itself is really interesting.

They also get called the "Peter Pan Generation" due to the tendency to delay adulthood rituals really far.

some Millennials are delaying the transition from childhood to adulthood as a response to mistakes made by their parents. "In prior generations, you get married and you start a career and you do that immediately. What young people today are seeing is that approach has led to divorces, to people unhappy with their careers ... The majority want to get married [...] they just want to do it right the first time, the same thing with their careers."

On Religion

In the United States, Generation Y has a slightly lower level of religiosity to older generations, and they are more likely to be skeptical of religious institutions.[67] A 2005 study looked at 1,385 people aged 18 to 25 and found that over half of those in the study said that they pray regularly before a meal. A third said that they talked about religion with friends, attend places of worship, and read religious materials weekly. 23% of those studied did not identify themselves as belonging to a religious affiliation.

I found this claim interesting:

Generation Y'ers never truly rebelled against their parents, unlike prior generations, often enjoying the same music, movies and products as their parents

[BabylonHoruv]

It's possible that I'm confusing festivals, Trip, or maybe even the band involved, but, the mud slinging bit would have probably been in 94 or 95, so maybe it was Lollapalooza. I'm also not sure about the Woodstock thing now if it was in 99, as I was 18 then. Unless the idea had been floated around in previous years.

As far as whether or not you and I are Gen X-ers, it depends. I've seen some ranges that include being born in the early 1980s, and others that end in 1978. I suppose it all depends on what you consider yourself. I imagine it's also different in Europe anyway for any generation, possibly for reasons like you give. And it does seem that Americans don't have the same cringe factor when exposed to fascist symbolism. But we also don't seem to have the same shame when it comes to slavery. If we did you'd never see the Rebel Flag on some average Joe's truck, or some of the sentiments expressed embarrassingly by my Teabaggers. But back to the Europe-America thing. That may end up not being the case in the generation being born now, with economies being more interdependent and the internet allowing for a global culture.

I was born in 77 and consider myself a milllenial but that's because I'm the oldest of 3 and I tend to hang out with a younger crowd and generally not be apathetic about shit.  I was always more into industrial and dancey stuff than Grunge too.

[rong]

i, too, was born in 77.  at least i wasn't born in the 80's.

i always figured generation x was in high school when molly ringwald (sp?) played characters that were in high school.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was born when people still lived in fucking caves and democrats were still liberal.  I had a dinosaur of my own, and the world was my fucking lawn.

And you little shits need to get off of it.

[Jenne]

You are not that old, Mr. Roger.

I think I'm 4 years younger than you, so quit it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You are not that old, Mr. Roger.

I think I'm 4 years younger than you, so quit it.

Okay, the democrats bit was hyperbole.  But still.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Mayor Sam Adams lied about crime to oust Occupy Portland. Surprise!

Ted Clark doesn't believe all he hears. When he read reports that one of the reasons why Sam Adams decided to evict Occupy Portland from its encampment was that the City of Portland and its Police Bureau claimed Occupy had sparked an "increase of crime," he didn't believe it.

"I never saw any information to back up that claim," he explains, "so I decided to investigate for myself, using their own statistics on Crime Mapper. It turns out it was all a lie, plain and simple. They lied, and they knew they were lying, and they made no attempt to document their evidence because they knew the evidence would prove them wrong.

"The Mayor and the Police Chief lied to the citizens of Portland regarding the crime issue. There was a decrease in crime in other areas of the city, and overall, even accounting for a few areas of increase near the encampment that might be simply due to the increase in population density, there was an overall reduction in crime. I have files with all the maps for all the crime categories."

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Is this what you meant by "seizing economic choke points," Cain? If I remember correctly, you introduced me to the concept a few months ago....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Mayor Sam Adams lied about crime to oust Occupy Portland. Surprise!

Ted Clark doesn't believe all he hears. When he read reports that one of the reasons why Sam Adams decided to evict Occupy Portland from its encampment was that the City of Portland and its Police Bureau claimed Occupy had sparked an "increase of crime," he didn't believe it.

"I never saw any information to back up that claim," he explains, "so I decided to investigate for myself, using their own statistics on Crime Mapper. It turns out it was all a lie, plain and simple. They lied, and they knew they were lying, and they made no attempt to document their evidence because they knew the evidence would prove them wrong.

"The Mayor and the Police Chief lied to the citizens of Portland regarding the crime issue. There was a decrease in crime in other areas of the city, and overall, even accounting for a few areas of increase near the encampment that might be simply due to the increase in population density, there was an overall reduction in crime. I have files with all the maps for all the crime categories."

I'm unsurprised.

[BabylonHoruv]

Did you see Ann Coulter advocating that the Occupy folks be shot?