And who wouldn’t like to think about Nasim Taleb on such a day, as one devours a relative of the black swan, a blackened or we hope brownened turkey.
He told his parable of the Turkey and Confirmation Bias about Christmas, but being fattened for the slaughter, either intentionally or by accident, is equally appropriate for Thanksgiving:
The turkey
It quite literally has no fucking idea what is about to happen. [They wrote that, not me, but I sort of wish I had!]
One of Taleb’s fables regarding Black Swan type events is that of the turkeys that are raised for Christmas dinner — although think of any other suitable farm animal, or even users of popular websites.[4] [They mention Facebook, but one can’t help but think of other websites that fleece their members, to add another suitable farm animal, and isn’t the irony so thick you could slice it like bacon!] Judging from past events, the turkey can consider itself lucky. It is fed and watered every day and generally kept happy. No indication from these past events suggests that one day it might be slaughtered for food. However, after this event (assuming the turkey lives at least to the point where it finally figures it out) it becomes “obvious” that it was being raised for slaughter; the protection and vaccinations are to keep it healthy, the excess food is to fatten it up. In short, after the event, the narrative becomes clear.
Until that point, however, the turkey would have no idea and it would be unfair to say that the turkey would have been able to predict its own demise from its 100 day eating binge during that time itself. But even more important to how psychology prevents us from recognising “the black swan problem” is that the turkey’s belief that every day would be fantastic would be reinforced by the fact that every day was fantastic. The accumulation of supporting information doesn’t just reassure the turkey, but also actively destroys its ability to think about what it doesn’t know. As a result the turkey undergoes a terminal revision of belief on the very day it has received the maximum validation of the belief that its life will continue getting better. Taleb generally is referring to this phenomenon when he says apparently silly things like “newspapers make you less knowledgeable about the world”.
The moral of the story; do not be a turkey. Alternatively don’t trust burgeoning stock markets or constantly rising house prices. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Black_swan
But to pick up on the last point and disagree, you do not want to miss out on fantastic fattening days, just want to make sure you keep an ear out [not like Van Gogh!] to hear when the farmer is sharpening his blade. So tuck in today, but don’t over do it, in case you have to make a dash for it tomorrow, metaphorically or phorically speaking.
Spike Milligan also comes to mind this day, and I will let him say grace:
A thousand hairy savages
Sitting down to lunch
Gobble gobble gulp gulp
Munch munch munch.
Bon appétit, and thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving.
Oh the power!
Oil tanked today after OPEC failed to cut production. I’m thankful for that, but sadly I just filled up yesterday. Dangit!
We should be looking at gas another 5-10 cents cheaper in the next few days. Remember the old gas wars? Pretty soon maybe we’ll get a free toaster with every fill up. Just in time too. My old toaster is getting cranky.
Anybody want to catch the falling knife and buy oil companies? Not me. My knife catching days are over. I’d need to see an uptrend first, and that looks like it could be a while.
Is that what happened? Gas was already way cheaper here, 1.08 loonies per litre, which is very informative I am sure.
We got great cloth christmas wrapping bags one year and a very nice set of Winnie the Pooh stories, available both in english et en francais. My mum’s scotch glasses were almost exclusively gas station promotions! Never a toaster though …
Wow – it must have been some vicarious fumes because although I did get up just before 4, after a brief, not unpleasant interlude with my main squeeze Mouse, I slept until after 7:30 – I feel like I am under a sea of molasses, but other than that …
Happy Green Friday – it really needs a better name, even the ads are scary.
Gasoline futures are trading 11 cents a gallon lower. Sorry, but my app for conversion to loonies per litre is broken. XLE, the big energy etf, is down 4% in premarket. The more aggressive XOP, down 7%.
xty, looks like you must have some kind of automatic image resizer thing running? I know that popcorn gif is not that large.
WordPress updated itself recently, and it seems to be handling images way better – I can drag them into the things I put in the side widgets without making them tiny first – but that is the first large gif to appear. I wonder if it would accommodate a too big picture in the comments now. I will give it a go.
This is for sure massive
Resized by the cyber ghosts! Gone are the days of oops I destroyed the page, and that is an ear lobe …
Got down the slow cooker, and it is cooking up chopped steak, onions, celery, tomatoes and lots of wine, peppercorns, and fresh oregano and thyme.
I might even light a fire. [But it makes the rest of the house cold! Darn living with an engineer and being unable to pretend there isn’t a howling wind through the hall ways when the fire is going.]
And I did, and drank
It only looked like that after I drank it!
Good Morning! Sleep patterns a little odd, and it will have to be a novel tomorrow …
Reading the interminable Jules Verne … they finally met Captain Nemo. It reminds me, in a bad way, of Swiss Family Robinson, perhaps the worst book ever written . Although we did actually go for a sail on the boat they used to film the ship wreck with Jane Seymour in the movie, the Erin Go Bragh
Don’t forget to take your flower dust. Loved the link about linguistic relevance, was just corresponding with a photographer friend and discussing that very concept.
“Heads up! You are attempting to upload an image that is too large. If saved, this image will not be uploaded.
The maximum file size is: 4882kb”
So much for not resizing. Yes, it was extensively enhanced, but the untouched original was still almost 2x too big.
So here’s the enhanced “echinacea” minus 3 flowerheads.
Don’t know about the worst book ever written, but I would say the worst I was ever prevailed upon to read was The Red Badge of Courage.
And of course when you say Erin Go Bragh, I think she sometimes go Braghless.
where’s Pistol Pete?
I wonder if echinacea is spiky like echini?
But this is quite the version, at least the venue looks priceless:
By which I mean, maybe Pete is up on the hill …
And now for the other half of the bottle …
I’ve been spending a lot of time w/
, he seems to be helping my condition and I like his outlook on things. I think an executive order is in order to make 
legal, I mean shit, how has he been here?
insert “long” between how and has, too lazy and incompetent to edit. Hi all.
Hey Xty, I think you might have just requested this tune without even realizing it. (I’m guessing you might be baked as well) anyway this is an old
fave, and the hill is a fine place.
and the warmed up stew. Very exciting times.
and
😳
I thought you might be hillish
just a 1/2 bottle?, what an affordable date 🙂
sunny & 63 here tomorrow in this crappy old navy town, but we do have the Atlantic Ocean, Blue Ridge Mountains and rivers galore. As in life “Everything depends on how you look at it”
I’ll stick to booze, thanks, but here’s one for you rasta’s.
yo EO, whataya think about Pack vs Patriots tomorrow? Hopefully it’s on the tube here, we usually end up with a lousy local(Redskins) game.
for Woodpecker:
Super Bowl preview? Rodgers and Brady both seem unstoppable. Let’s get ready to rumble.
OK, I have a question for anyone that might have some thoughts. I have a heat pump that is only efficient/effective to around 34, and the emergency heat strips aren’t connected (electrically), I also still have the old furnace (gas fired, hot water radiator) which works fine but is expensive to run. I’m struggling over what is cheaper to do; run the heat pump when the temp. is favorable or circulate the water that is constantly being kept heated hot in the furnace. (No EO, I haven’t boiled the numbers down) Pete. ..I’m thinking that the water is being heating anyway.
some Feat’s. night all. Pete.