TIL: Today I Learned

[gangleri2001]

I disagree with both Arakhor and Commodore.

@Arakhor: it's not just one study. It's plenty of them proving consistenly that stock picking is pointless for nearly everyone out there. Only a selected few can consistently beat the market and usually for margins that make it worthless all the extra effort put in it.

@Commodore: It's not a scam. A good and certified financial advisor is a life saver for many financially illiterate investors. They help them get their financial life on track and keep it that way, assist you in selecting an investing vehicle that suits you given the abundance of vehicles out there and keep you away from actual scamers. A CFA is for many people the best option out there given the financial illetiracy you might find virtually everywhere.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

TIL young men (18 - 25) in in the USA are required to register for a potential draft with the 'Selective Service System' when they turn 18 or risk missing out on random benefits for the rest of their lives.

I thought the only benefit you would be denied is college federal loans.

Selective Service cards expire? wat

Not sure if the cards themselves do but you age out of the system around 28 or so. There are terms with the registration that you are supposed to follow up until then such as registering a new address whenever you move up until that age.

The system is actually in shambles. It is severely understaffed and underfunded and if a draft were ever actually needed they'd have to spend at least a couple of months spooling up an actual functional draft system as the current one is such a mess.

I disagree with both Arakhor and Commodore.

@Arakhor: it's not just one study. It's plenty of them proving consistenly that stock picking is pointless for nearly everyone out there. Only a selected few can consistently beat the market and usually for margins that make it worthless all the extra effort put in it.

@Commodore: It's not a scam. A good and certified financial advisor is a life saver for many financially illiterate investors. They help them get their financial life on track and keep it that way, assist you in selecting an investing vehicle that suits you given the abundance of vehicles out there and keep you away from actual scamers. A CFA is for many people the best option out there given the financial illetiracy you might find virtually everywhere.

Also, a financial adviser should just park your money in a mutual/index fund. They should not be trying to pick 'hot' stocks as that's a fools errand. Just park your money in a wide variety of stocks and you'll be fine over the long run. Also, make sure the financial adviser actually has fiduciary responsibility to clients - this means they are not allowed to play games with your money (i.e. picking individual stocks and day trading with your money).

 

[Birdjaguar]

I disagree with both Arakhor and Commodore.

@Arakhor: it's not just one study. It's plenty of them proving consistenly that stock picking is pointless for nearly everyone out there. Only a selected few can consistently beat the market and usually for margins that make it worthless all the extra effort put in it.

@Commodore: It's not a scam. A good and certified financial advisor is a life saver for many financially illiterate investors. They help them get their financial life on track and keep it that way, assist you in selecting an investing vehicle that suits you given the abundance of vehicles out there and keep you away from actual scamers. A CFA is for many people the best option out there given the financial illetiracy you might find virtually everywhere.

Also, a financial adviser should just park your money in a mutual/index fund. They should not be trying to pick 'hot' stocks as that's a fools errand. Just park your money in a wide variety of stocks and you'll be fine over the long run. Also, make sure the financial adviser actually has fiduciary responsibility to clients - this means they are not allowed to play games with your money (i.e. picking individual stocks and day trading with your money).

good advice. First and foremost though, you need to know what you want to get out of your investments over what time period. Educate yourself. Read books, subscribe to newsletters. As has been said, the simplest way is to invest in broad indexes over a long period of time.

 

[Takhisis]

I thought the only benefit you would be denied is college federal loans.

Isn't this enough to cripple a lot of families already?

 

[cardgame]

I think you can be denied at some forms of welfare as well. Basically any federal assistance, because it's a federal program

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Isn't this enough to cripple a lot of families already?

Yes but the workaround is to lie and depend on the fact that no one will check because the whole system is broken.

I think you can be denied at some forms of welfare as well. Basically any federal assistance, because it's a federal program

I would be super surprised if that were true. Though the current admin is busy writing new regulations that would mean all legal immigrants face deportation for claiming any benefits so I guess I wouldn't be that surprised.

 

[Ajidica]

So, I just learned about this guy because of a Facebook meme:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls
How come whenever I learned about Black History Month in school it only seemed to consist of MLK and George Washington Carver and his boring peanuts? Stealing traitor ship and joining the Union navy is much more interesting!

 

[Takhisis]

Yes but the workaround is to lie and depend on the fact that no one will check because the whole system is broken.

So, Trump and his tax returns.

 

[Commodore]

You developed this strong opinion from a single study?

Someone didn't read the article or even the little snippet I quoted. This isn't just one study that's been done, it's something they've been doing every year since 1964 and the monkeys have routinely outperformed so-called financial experts.

 

[Hrothbern]

Someone didn't read the article or even the little snippet I quoted. This isn't just one study that's been done, it's something they've been doing every year since 1964 and the monkeys have routinely outperformed so-called financial experts.

That monkey result does not realy surprises me (with hindsight) considering that smaller companies did the last half century relatively better than the big companies.
Any random method would give the same result.

Big companies good in acquiring the better smaller companies over time getting fresh blood.
New small companies emerging all the time and the survivors getting listed and sold for good money.
If that mechanism of emerging small companies stays, then monkeys will stay better.
But if the barriers to entry for smaller companies, and/or the barriers to have an above average succes, would increase over time in a changing nature of our economy, this monkey succes could change.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

it's a monkey business, folks!

 

[Cutlass]

I thought the only benefit you would be denied is college federal loans.

And federal employment.

 

[Bamspeedy]

In my high school, we had 4 classes per day, assuming that two of them were the 2-hour 5-credit courses and two were the 1-hour 3-credit courses. Add in noon hour, and that was a 9 am - 4 pm day.

I'm not sure what schedule the vocational students were on, as they didn't mingle much with the rest of us.

We had three trimesters/year. The school year was from the day after Labor Day until June 30.

I thought 5 and 3 credit courses were weird, then I found on the internet some school in california has 'credits' in multiples of 10, needing 220 credits to graduate. I don't understand the point of having such big numbers. My daughter's school has 1 and 0.5 credit classes needing 26 to graduate. 8 AM-3 PM, quarters and semesters, but quarters are just for progress reports, almost all classes are at least 1 semester long. After Labor day until typically first week of June. They have 4 two hour periods (must actually be 1 hour 45 minutes, since the school day isn't 8 hours long), with one of those periods split for lunch and one short class period (all band/choir is during this shorter class).

Back to 'do 10th graders take history class?', I Checked her graduation requirements again, all 10th grade students are required to take 'Western Civilization', also required to take a US history class to graduate (not necessarily at grade 10).

Graduation requirements:

Spoiler :

English 4 credits

Mathematics 3 credits

Science 3 credits

Social Studies 3 credits (U.S. History and Western Civilization required)

Physical Education 1 ½ credits (in 3 different years)

Health 1/2 credit

Personal Finance 1/2 credit

Electives 11 credits

TOTAL 26 CREDITS

But that's just the minimum, for going to college they recommend Spanish I-IV, more math, science, 'fine arts' (band, choir, art classes), etc.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Back to 'do 10th graders take history class?', I Checked her graduation requirements again, all 10th grade students are required to take 'Western Civilization', also required to take a US history class to graduate (not necessarily at grade 10).

Graduation requirements:

Spoiler :

English 4 credits

Mathematics 3 credits

Science 3 credits

Social Studies 3 credits (U.S. History and Western Civilization required)

Physical Education 1 ½ credits (in 3 different years)

Health 1/2 credit

Personal Finance 1/2 credit

Electives 11 credits

TOTAL 26 CREDITS

But that's just the minimum, for going to college they recommend Spanish I-IV, more math, science, 'fine arts' (band, choir, art classes), etc.

Regarding the spoilered material...

It's been 38 years since I graduated, so I'm a little rusty on remembering the requirements for graduation. I do know that 100 credits were required for the diploma, and going over that was allowed (good thing; I ended up with 120).

Of the core subjects, phys. ed. was the only one I didn't take all three years (only 2 credits were required, the basic course was 3 credits, so I took that and called it done). The rest of the core subjects - math, English, social studies, and science were taken all 3 years. I also took typing and French all 3 years and two science courses - chemistry and biology. The rest were optional courses, and included basic accounting, creative writing, sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, geography, film study, and I'm probably forgetting one or two.

I joined three school clubs - yearbook, newspaper, and poetry, and all of them involved a great deal of typing. The meetings were during noon hours and I'd spend half an hour to a full hour after school getting the typing done for the yearbook and poetry club (we put out a book of student-written poetry and short stories every spring).

I never did any of the fine arts in high school. I'd had private music lessons in junior high and took a hiatus from them during high school - there just wasn't enough time in the day to deal with homework, babysitting jobs, and daily practice for music (though I did keep on playing and learning new songs as the mood struck; I started working in musical theatre during those years and learned some of the songs I know while listening during rehearsals).


As mentioned, social studies courses here (at least as of 30+ years ago) are part history, part current events. In Grade 12 the teacher subjected us to the torture of debating, and my partner and I had to argue in the affirmative that Canada should boycott the Moscow Olympics (this was shortly after Russia invaded Afghanistan)... in a class comprised of mostly boys, some of whom were very much into athletic things. I don't remember much about that debate, other than it was declared a tie - both sides swayed an equal number over to their side. As for history, Grade 12 was mostly about war and revolution. Part of our assigned classwork was to play Diplomacy. The teacher divided us up into groups of 7, brought in several Diplomacy games, told us the rules, and said that the winners of each group would get an extra 5% toward their final report card mark.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Psychology, sociology, statistics, economics are classes I took in tech scool, as they weren't in my school, but they are now.

Minimum Graduation requirements don't look like they changed much, mine 25 years ago look very similar to my daughter's (except no personal finance, and phy ed may have been less).

I remember one kid I envied in how he was able to pull off getting two study halls, both at the end of the day. So he could just go home at lunch and never come back.

TIL: I completely forgot what subject a certain teacher was teaching me. I remembered her name and she was a new, young teacher, but only through process of elimination, did I figure out she taught me social studies (geography or history I have no clue, just that it wasn't civics).

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

As a preferred alternative to mortgages, South Korea has Jeonse, or "key money". Essentially you pay a wad of cash for your lease instead of a monthly sum.

 

[Takhisis]

As a preferred alternative to mortgages, South Korea has Jeonse, or "key money". Essentially you pay a wad of cash for your lease instead of a monthly sum.

Wow. So interesting. *rereads article a couple times*

 

[Birdjaguar]

As a preferred alternative to mortgages, South Korea has Jeonse, or "key money". Essentially you pay a wad of cash for your lease instead of a monthly sum.

So it is kinda like paying the net present value of a long term lease. It would allow the owner to have a pile of cash now to invest rather than get a stream of payments over time.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Actus reus ("guilty act") is the actual external element of a crime, the act itself that causes harm. This is to be contrasted with the other main component of a crime, mens rea ("guilty mind").

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL that I am on average using up 4 tonnes of topsoil each year, on which my food is grown.

This topsoil is essentially mined by food production and should be considered a non-renewable resource !

Reducing meat is more than reducing our carbon footprint. It is also a way to reduce our topsoil footprint. But as the Guardian article concludes: we need enough animals as well for a natural soil including all the micro and macro organisms in and around the soil. Heavy plowed mono cultures most bad of all.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...nism-intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize


The soil mostly ending up as sediment in the oceans and to a lesser amount accumulating in valleys not connected to the oceans by rivers or wind.
The rate of topsoil erosion in our intensively used agricultural production (plowing !) is far higher than the natural background erosion and natural topsoil formation.
A recent report of the UK indicated that there are only about a 100 harvests left in the UK. Especially the hills in hilly areas are affected and the Mediterraneum area has a bleak perspective.

A 2015 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization states that, globally, 25 to 40bn tonnes of topsoil are lost annually to erosion, thanks mainly to ploughing and intensive cropping. In the UK topsoil depletion is so severe that in 2014 the trade magazine Farmers Weekly announced we may have only 100 harvests left. Letting arable land lie fallow and returning it to grazed pasture for a period – as farmers used to, before artificial fertilisers and mechanisation made continuous cropping possible – is the only way to reverse that process, halt erosion and rebuild soil, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

That 2015 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is a nice "to glance through". Lots of graphs as well.
The only comfort the report offers to me is that we have at least a global body that is knowledgable and competent, giving public overviews, doing solid research and giving insight and advices to countries and local organisations, to advance their own agricultural policies.
From that report:

6.1.3 | Soil erosion versus soil formation The accelerated loss of topsoil through erosion from agricultural land was recognized as an important threat to the world’s soil resource many decades ago. Furthermore, it was feared that soil was, in many areas, eroding much faster than that it could be replaced through soil formation processes. More recent studies have confirmed that these early observations were not just perceptions. Estimated rates of soil erosion of arable or intensively grazed lands have been found to be 100-1000 times higher than natural background erosion rates. These erosion rates are also much higher than known soil formation rates which are typically well below 1 tonnes ha-1 yr-1 with median values of ca. 0.15 tonnes ha-1 yr-1. The large difference between erosion rates under conventional agriculture and soil formation rates implies that we are essentially mining the soil and that we should consider the resource as non-renewable. The imbalance between erosion rates under conventional agriculture and the rate of soil formation implies that conventional agriculture on hilly land is not sustainable because the soil resource is mined and will ultimately become depleted. This has most likely already happened in many areas around the Mediterranean Sea and in tropical mountain regions. So-called soil loss tolerance levels may help to set objectives for shortterm action. However, long-term sustainability requires that soil erosion rates on agricultural land are reduced to near-zero levels.