Signing Off - Peace, Out

A place to talk about speculative investing ideas for the optional Variable Portfolio

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Maddy
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by Maddy » Fri Oct 30, 2020 8:27 pm

What's NOT political (or at least politicized) these days? Is discussion of coronavirus political? (Hint: If you lean left, no; if you lean right, yes.) Is it so abnormal that people want to engage in political discussion three days from the most important election in the nation's history? Isn't the obvious antidote to a paucity of discussion on non-political topics the starting non-political topics? Is the demonstrated interest in political themes something that needs to be controlled? Does the answer to the immediately preceding question depend upon your politics?
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by Kbg » Sat Oct 31, 2020 6:38 am

Couple of brief responses...

My choice, y’all and the board are good. Political stuff clearly contained in a section of the board which is good.

But freaking just about every thread ends up on politics no matter where it is posted and gets turned to that subject by a couple of posters. In my view this is ruining the entire board and made it far less interesting to participate in...cuz there isn’t any other content as of late.

This isn’t my first rodeo on boards ruined by political stuff. Politics are fine where they belong on this board (Heaven knows I’ve spent enough time there over the past month) but I highly recommend the moderators put some folks in the penalty box if they can’t refrain from it in the financial sections.

Boards die when the content sucks or drys up simple as that.

Just my .02

And...a good portion of my stepping away is just the discipline of trying to focus on making the most of each day.
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mathjak107
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by mathjak107 » Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:09 am

you are correct about forums drying up ...

when stocks usually fall and the pp does its thing to plan , the threads are filled with what i call the high fivers ... they love congratulating each other so the posting rate is good .

but when things dont go to plan and there is no high fiving to be done the threads dry up . the pp acts like a very high equity portfolio would when multiple classes move together and days like we had are just as bad as conventional models can be .

so there is not much to discuss for the hard core followers and the rest of us who question things going forward already gave our reasons , so not much left to throw around without discussing alternates or work a rounds .

i actually have the pp more as my variable portfolio
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by Xan » Sun Nov 01, 2020 1:27 pm

sophie wrote:
Fri Oct 30, 2020 4:18 pm
For example, I happen to enjoy libertarian-focused discussions far more than VP discussions - I'm 100% uninterested in those and I basically never touch anything in the VP section. Similarly, someone who loves gambling with stocks will want to post frequently in the VP section but may be uninterested in the political threads. What's wrong with that?
Sophie, this is a great point. I've just created a "Non-Variable-Portfolio" usergroup, similar to the "Non-Political" usergroup, which will prevent members from being notified about posts in the VP section. Sounds like you'd like to join.

I've also created a "Non-Other" group in case anybody wants to opt out of the general-purpose "other" discussion.

I'll be making sticky posts in all three of those areas containing opt-out instructions.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by pmward » Mon Nov 09, 2020 7:55 am

I just want to say thanks for trying to corral the political stuff to an isolated forum. The political stuff was a big reason why I disappeared from the forum (aside from popping in to share some news once or twice) over the last 6 months or so. I know I'm not the only one that stopped coming here because of the politics. I hope things will be more contained now, with the separate forum and the election being over. Hopefully that will also lead to kbg coming back as well, as I've always found your opinions valuable.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by Kevin K. » Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:44 am

Just wanted to chime in briefly to say I'm among those who regret the intrusion of political stuff into the financial discussions. And the fact that there is a separate forum for politics, not to mention the prevalent content there, just reinforces the stereotypes that many Bogleheads and other mainstream investors have about there being a close if not inevitable correlation between this crowd and the one that spends a lot of time hanging out in their bunkers counting their ammo stash, gold bars and MRE's. It's a shame because there's a lot of brilliant content on these forums.

I realize mine is probably a minority view and respect the strong libertarian ethos here. I have a much bigger problem with the hyper-vigilant moderation - censorship, really - on Bogleheads and other forums than I do with anything here but I do think it would be beneficial to try to keep the political commentary out of the other discussions as much as possible.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by ahhrunforthehills » Mon Nov 09, 2020 12:04 pm

Kevin K. wrote:
Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:44 am
... just reinforces the stereotypes that many Bogleheads and other mainstream investors have about there being a close if not inevitable correlation between this crowd and the one that spends a lot of time hanging out in their bunkers counting their ammo stash, gold bars and MRE's. It's a shame because there's a lot of brilliant content on these forums.
Haha.. yeah. Someone else posted about a book called "A libertarian walks into a bear". It sent me down the path of watching the Libertarian debates on Youtube. My whole life I was proud to say I was a libertarian. Not anymore. The number of boos that Gary Johnson got when he said he supported people proving minimum competency for driving a car (i.e. a driver's license) was insane. No wonder why everyone thinks libertarians are crazy.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by l82start » Mon Nov 09, 2020 1:35 pm

the politics (in general not just here) is driving me out a bit too... hopefully after the election the new politics section can mature into a political philosophy section, with the high quality discussions that i don't see much anywhere else.

orange man bad - Alzheimer's patient crooked, are not fun conversations they go nowhere and nobody can hear the other side...
-Government 2020+ - a BANANA REPUBLIC - if you can keep it

-Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by pp4me » Mon Nov 09, 2020 4:29 pm

Looking back, it appears that this forum has a rich history of political discussions, with both of the founders, Medium Tex and Craig Rowland participating in a lot of them.

Heck, MT actually started the Religion Thread which I think is the longest one here. Imagine having a thread like that over on Bogleheads.

Maybe what's been driving some folks away are the posts that were more like political ads than discussions. And now that the election is over maybe we won't see any more of those.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by l82start » Mon Nov 09, 2020 4:46 pm

yep.... its not politics alone that is a grind, its partisan election politics.. some of the best political philosophy discussions i have seen on the internet have been here, and many have had some overlap with economics and investing...

over the years the pattern has repeated, election seasons drive up political talk and complaints about it... it ebbs back in time..
-Government 2020+ - a BANANA REPUBLIC - if you can keep it

-Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by Kbg » Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:41 pm

After some nudging to reconsider and then hanging around for another month I think my initial decision was the right one for me.

I got to thinking about why I was getting sucked into the pure sewer that is this board's politics section. It has all the quality (and uselessness) of Twitter, WAPA and NYT political article "discussions." In my heart of hearts I just don't believe most Americans are like this, just a small minority who frequent the internet probably way too much. The board has always had this stuff and for the most part I've just not waded into it, so after a bit of further reflection I concluded it wasn't really the politics that was causing me to reconsider why I spend my time on this board.

I looked at my stats tonight and I think it was 41 or 47% of all my posts have been in this sub-forum and probably 90% of those posts were on two threads. At the end of the day I've always been here (or any financial board for that matter) for the learning and engagement with others on topics of finance. I like data and I like to talk about the data and what it means. And, there just isn't much of that going on anymore. So between the pure lack of much engaging finance content (primary reason) and too much of the political section creeping into the finance sections (secondary reason ) I'm signing off.

I love rye humor...so let's conclude with that classic of break up lines: No really, it's not you. It's me.
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by dualstow » Thu Dec 03, 2020 8:38 am

i’m just looking at this thread for the first time. I hope you’ll come back soon, kbg.
RIP Marcello Gandini
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I Shrugged
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by I Shrugged » Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:00 am

I don't understand why you don't just hide the politics folder and stick around?
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GT
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Re: Signing Off - Peace, Out

Post by GT » Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:33 am

Kbg wrote:
Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:41 pm
After some nudging to reconsider and then hanging around for another month I think my initial decision was the right one for me.

I got to thinking about why I was getting sucked into the pure sewer that is this board's politics section. It has all the quality (and uselessness) of Twitter, WAPA and NYT political article "discussions." In my heart of hearts I just don't believe most Americans are like this, just a small minority who frequent the internet probably way too much. The board has always had this stuff and for the most part I've just not waded into it, so after a bit of further reflection I concluded it wasn't really the politics that was causing me to reconsider why I spend my time on this board.

I looked at my stats tonight and I think it was 41 or 47% of all my posts have been in this sub-forum and probably 90% of those posts were on two threads. At the end of the day I've always been here (or any financial board for that matter) for the learning and engagement with others on topics of finance. I like data and I like to talk about the data and what it means. And, there just isn't much of that going on anymore. So between the pure lack of much engaging finance content (primary reason) and too much of the political section creeping into the finance sections (secondary reason ) I'm signing off.

I love rye humor...so let's conclude with that classic of break up lines: No really, it's not you. It's me.
Good luck in the future Kbg!

If you know anything about semi retirement before Medicare kicks in, stick around I could use the data crunch - I struggle with analyses paralyzes so I have been over analyzing my options
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