<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">My play with <a href="http://etoro.com">etoro.com</a> is extremely limited. Pentland talks about interventions to nudge investors out of bubbles, where people get all into chasing a single investment theory. He also talks about hedge funds where every investment is permanently on 90 day probation. But that's all happening at the tops of the markets, and the tops of the markets are all entranced by the rewards of being the biggest bullies in their respective siloes and becoming bigger siloes.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div>The old Los Alamos National Bank, LANB, was founded by a LANL scientist as an antidote to big-bank homogenization. There are still hints of that origin in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/los-alamos-national-bank/">https://www.linkedin.com/company/los-alamos-national-bank/</a>, but LANB sold itself out to a big bank several years ago.</div><div><br></div>But are spotify and instagram internationally homogenous? I get the impression that they're caught in the western world bubble, which only pretends to be the whole world. We sort of have a world culture that is purely technical: electricity, heat engines, cell phones, internet protocol, unicode, cellphone localization clusters in space-time, et c.. But at the linguistic boundaries, everything else is up for grabs, and the news coming back across the linguistic boundaries is treated as exotica.<div><br></div><div>-- rec --<br><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 11:32 AM glen <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">IDK, man. I feel like this is the same homogenizing force as Spotify, or influencers on Instagram, driving us all into the same gravity well. What I'd *like* ... what I've looked for and failed to find, are ways to invest "locally", to bet on strangers' enterprises, sure, but strangers that satisfy a locality predicate, local in space mostly, but perhaps local in ethos (like B corps or co-ops), or domain (not the useless "tech" or "life sciences" but something more refined).<br>
<br>
Does your play with etoro suggest that's possible there?<br>
<br>
On 11/17/22 08:16, Roger Critchlow wrote:<br>
> Tsk, so many bad investments, so little time!<br>
> <br>
> Binging Sandy Pentland led me to <a href="http://etoro.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">etoro.com</a> <<a href="http://etoro.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://etoro.com</a>>, where everybody can see how everybody's portfolios are doing. The front page gives the top crypto traders on the site, who are all around -70% for the past year. But scroll down and you find out that they range from +27% to +197% for the past two years.<br>
> <br>
> -- rec --<br>
> <br>
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 12:02 PM Marcus Daniels <<a href="mailto:marcus@snoutfarm.com" target="_blank">marcus@snoutfarm.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:marcus@snoutfarm.com" target="_blank">marcus@snoutfarm.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
> <br>
> Having investments go bad makes me feel prosperous, like going to the dentist. I probably shouldn't have investments.<br>
> <br>
> -----Original Message-----<br>
> From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>>> On Behalf Of glen<br>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 8:57 AM<br>
> To: <a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter<br>
> <br>
> I know, right. My Ada's down from $200 to $100! I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna pay the rent. /s<br>
> <br>
> I saw some post on Mastodon that I can't find now. The person was lamenting FTX and how they knew 2 people personally, one who lost $90k and another who lost something like $10k. And he closed with "neither of which could afford it." Maybe I'm cruel. But my first thought was, why in hell did you have $90k in crypto if you couldn't afford to lose it? I mean, I know there's a sucker born every minute ... but $90k? I could live for at least a couple of years on that. To even have 90k to invest *at all*, anywhere, implies something.<br>
> <br>
> On 11/16/22 08:44, Marcus Daniels wrote:<br>
> > Lol, well I guess I bought the right Proof of Stake crypto. (Not really, I got demolished too!)<br>
> ><br>
> > -----Original Message-----<br>
> > From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>>> On Behalf Of glen<br>
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 8:39 AM<br>
> > To: <a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter<br>
> ><br>
> > More Billionaire news [sigh]:<br>
> ><br>
> > What happened at Alameda Research<br>
> > <a href="https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175</a> <<a href="https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175</a>><br>
> ><br>
> > On 10/31/22 10:28, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
> >> Great quote from CDs screed:<br>
> >><br>
> >> "Every billionaire is a policy failure, but every billionaire is also a factory for producing policy failures at scale."<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ<br>
<br>
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