It seems the US isn’t competitive in the Icebreaker business… should we keep Helsinki’s shipyard busy for our own profit?

Article in question from CBC

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/adam-gopnik-anti-elitism-antisemitism-anti-urbanism-1.7458841

Trying to make sense of the current political storm, this article helped me.

I keep coming back to the question: what’s the end goals/motivations of Trump supporters? They know he wants to break the government and, yet, thinks it’s worthwhile. Why? Motivation will be multifaceted and we read all kind of proposition from dementia to dark gothic MAGA (as a plot from billionaires to each be king of their own techno-feudal city state). I don’t want to be naive but don’t want to be fear mongering either. Any agenda is enabled by the population and sufficient support.

This article’s take on anti-elitism as a rejection from the uneducated mass of educated immigrants because they perceive them as competition and as being responsible for their failure to achieve success… it leaves me a bit depressed because it takes effort to open up to any difference (immigrants, sexual orientation… ) and the mass of average (poorly) educated population doesn’t have the ressources to make this effort. And then the division in our population can be exploited by dangerous individuals for further pain.

How do we fight this now (and frankly forever because this weakness is intrinsic to this world, for every generation)?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39240669

Anybody Alive And Growing Anything?

Photo of my biggest terrarium for attention. Things are less colourful currently; this is from about a year ago. I always enjoy my terrarium the most in February with the green contrasting with the Canadian winter. It’s especially white and snowy this week.

Photo of my biggest terrarium for attention. Things are less colourful currently; this is from about a year ago. I always enjoy my terrarium the most in February with the green contrasting with the Canadian winter. It’s especially white and snowy this week.

I wont ever advise for timing the market, yet the current imminent US-Canada trade war and political storm inspired me to reassess my investing strategy.

Context : Mid 30, kids, mortgage, stable job but no retirement plan with the job.

I favour a diversified mix of low cost index fund but being a nerd i enjoy the Rational Reminder podcast and understanding the smallest details. An evidence based approach to risk and expected returns will guide my choices.

I started with 20 % bond and 80 % stock. The problem with bond : can exhibit volatility if interest rate change especially over longer time horizon, will limit growth if too high %, uncorrelated to stock but sometimes move in the same direction than stocks in recent downturn… I can put some extra payments on my mortgage and consider this a bond for a few years.

I want home country bias : no withholding taxes on dividend and at the opposite i get a tax credit for taxes already paid in Canada. In a conflict i can’t ever be expropriated from my own country stocks and use the Canadian currency for my spending. Let’s make Canada 25%.

Next is the US allocation. It’s two thirds of the investable world by market weight (see the VT etf if you want references) it’s had incredible returns in the last decade with p/e multitude going higher. Currency and country are uncompensated risk (random) and i won’t put myself in a place where 2/3 of my retirement is subject to random results. I choose 35 %.

That leaves 20 % for International developped market. I would like this to be higher than US but i will wait for the actual market weight to tell me that International merits a higher than US %. I leave developing market alone : i want an efficient market with free flow of information snd rules of law properly enforced.

Total 100% (20-25-35-20) close to VGRO.to No single stock, no gold, no crypto. What are your asset allocation plans and most importantly why?

If there is enough engagement here, i will make a future post about asset location, favourite etf to achieve my goal, small cap value and insured US allocation with deep itm options on SPY.

Feu Follet :

45 ml lightly aged agricole rum

15 ml green chartreuse

15 ml Falernum

15 ml St Germain

15 ml orgeat 

30 ml lime

20 ml Pineapple

150 ml Crushed ice (more dilution is wanted)

Angostura bitters 1-2 dash on top

A tick bush of slapped (for aroma) thai basil 

French name because of many French ingredients, but keeping with tiki traditions of mysterious and dangerous vibe.

I created this recipe after reading through the excellent tiki cocktail book Smuggler’s Cove. It’s unnecessarily complicated just because…