Basically, when currency is scarce, its value goes UP.
When currency is plentiful, its value goes DOWN.
The first scenario lowers inflation, the second raises it.
After Japans bubble economy popped in the early 90s, they had asset values FALL.
So the BoJ began stimulating the economy - trying to push UP inflation - by adding currency to the markets.
The Carry Trade illustrates one of the dangers:
Japan was trying to stimulate their own economy, to counteract the deflation caused by their bubble popping.
But money doesn’t know borders, and though the money was intended to stimulate JAPANS economy, there was nothing stopping ANYONE from purchasing that currency. It’s not like you have to live in Japan to buy Yen.
So the money (yen) was created in Japan, but ended up all over the world.
This has consequences:
* Japan ended up with mountains of US dollars. This is one of the reasons that Japan has more US Treasuries than China. This mountain of dollars lowers YOUR cost of living. Because USD is being acquired for The Carry Trade. This creates artificial demand for USD.
* Because the yen is created in Japan but is then used for international commerce, it dramatically reduces the inflation that “printing money” would normally create. This is why Japan has more debt per capita than any country by far, by a factor of over 2X
I am just an I.T. dude who invests in real estate. So what I just posted may be completely wrong.
The carry trade has existed for about four decades; that’s my summary of how it affects us, from the perspective of a small time real estate guy.
We're a bit far down in the thread, but I'd be interested in knowing why this alleged outflow of cheap yen didn't keep pushing the currency down. It's been flattish in the 100-150 band for decades.
One cost is to the savings of Japanese people who don't get a competitive rate of return on their savings. They save a lot and generally don't invest abroad.
You are conflating two things with that story. The prototypes cost $20,000. The designed can cost $3,000. Higher than your "$1,000" can, but it also had a bunch of "features". If you've ever worked at a hardware company, you probably know that the price of DVT units, or any prototype, ends up being significantly higher than the production unit.
Speaking of knots, and not to hijack this post: I am interested in learning, say, 10 most useful knots that could be useful in most situations: joining two ropes, attaching a rope to a tree branch, etc. etc. Is there a youtube channel people would recommend I watch to pick them up?
Figure eight, bowline, slipknot, clove hitch, trucker's hitch (not really a knot but useful) and a sheet bend will cover you for like 99% of use-cases, including climbing haha.
If you learn some of these, you'll also see how interconnected many of them are.
A sheet bend and bowline knot are both wildly useful. But a bowline is just a single rope sheet-bent (sheet bended?) back onto itself! And a trucker's hitch is just a slip knot where you creatively use the slipped loop as a pulley.
Honestly like 99% of the time when I join two ropes I just use an overhand knot, sometimes with a stopper so it doesn't roll. It's pretty normal in climbing and supposedly bomber (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGqGlFc3oFs). Agree most important thing is using them right.
I used to be a rope access worker, mostly for consstruction, maintenance and inspections in hard to access places. Most knots are only useful in very niche situations or to impress your friends. You probably don't need more than 5 to solve almost every situation you could realistically get yourself into (eg. Figure height, alpine butterfly). In a lot of cases, the fancy knots you see online are only usefull because they are easier to untie after getting loaded (eg. Using figure-nine instead of figure-height) and you can ignore them.
I would recommend looking at the ones that are thought in the Irata and Sprat certifications. IIRC there is fewer than 10 but there is a wide range of ways you can use them or combine them together.
I'd say that the basic sailing knots should fit your bill pretty well. I can't recommend an online source, but you should find plenty resources on Youtube. It shouldn't take longer than an evening or two to learn them.
There are a billion options so I recommend just picking a few and practicing until you can tie them quickly without references. You'll start to understand hope knots in general work and be able to pick up other knots much easier.
I work as a merchant seaman and for our regular day's work everyone basically exclusively uses bowlines, round turn and two half hitches, and clove hitches. We'd use reef knots or single sheet bends for joining ropes.
Animated Knots by Grog is a good reference, with excellent explanations, visuals, and in many cases fascinating supplementary commentary and history. Have fun!
I settled on two, I don't really need a lot of knots but wanted to do better than the overhand. Anyway the two I settled on were "putting a loop in the end of a rope" The bowline. and "tying something down on my truck" The Truckers hitch. There are many great knots out there but I figure between these two that is about 90 percent of my knot tying needs.
Beware the truckers hitch, it is not a real knot so should be secured by one. But super handy for making a line nice and tight. The one I picked up is this over complicated version that has the nice property that it is in-line, that is, you don't need the far end of the rope for it to work.
I went through that exact rabbit hole a couple of years ago, and after much watching the HowNot2 channel, and much reading other sources, I came to the conclusion that you only need to learn very few knots to do nearly everything. The specific knots you learn matter little as long as you select knots with a long eatablished safety record.
My personal short list are the following:
1. Joining two ropes (i.e. bend): Zeppelin bend, or Figure-8 bend. If the ropes have a very different diameter you will need a different knot, such as a Double Sheet Bend.
2. Holding on to an object (i.e. hitch): Two Round Turns & Two Half Hitches. More turns and half hitches make it more secure.
3. Making a fixed-diameter loop at the end of a rope: Figure-8 loop.
4. Making a fixed diameter loop in the middle of a rope: Alpine Butterfly, or simply take another piece of rope and do a Prusik Loop.
5. Grabbing onto a rope, such as when you want a loop that can be cinched down (i.e. friction hitch): Icicle Hitch. I personally do Round Turns & Half Hitches instead, and will die on that hill.
Another useful trick that can be done with a combination of the above is called a Trucker's Hitch. It is not so much a unique knot, but a common combination of the principles above.
For those who know about knots: please resist the temptation to nitpick and offer alternatives. Yes, there are many others. No, it doesn't matter. The knots above, or a combination thereof, covers 95% of everything you can do with rope, they are safe, and easy to verify.
> you only need to learn very few knots to do nearly everything
I see a lot of posts here along these lines. It turns out there is a trade-off between knots: how easy they are to undo vs how likely they are to spontaneously untie, particularly when not under load.
Most of the "every knot you need" recommendations here seem to come from people tying things down for a short haul, and consequently come from the the "easy to untie" end of the spectrum. The sheepshank is great for a temporary tie down but obviously falls apart when not under load. Less obviously so does the bowline, figure 8, and most knots composed of half-hitches.
A rock climber takes a dim view of knots that spontaneously untie when they aren't looking, so they use a different set of knots. At the extreme are fishermen. A single strand of nylon is slippery, is weakened by kinks, and yet a fisherman's knot must remain secure while drifting in the surf being bashed waves. Consequently, they will use complex, slow to tie knots with 7 or 10 loops.
Your knots look to be at the "easy to untie" kind, except the alpine butterfly. If it has been under high load for a while it can be a real bitch to get apart. It's popular with climbers, but I would not recommend it for tying down a load.
> I see a lot of posts here along these lines. It turns out there is a trade-off between knots: how easy they are to undo vs how likely they are to spontaneously untie, particularly when not under load.
Agreed. There are many tradeoffs, indeed. But just because there are ten common knots that can do a bend, it doesn't mean that a person benefits from using all of them -- they all perform the same function, so knowing a single secure bend is enough, especially for a beginner asking these sorts of questions.
Personally, I have chosen my knots based on how safe and effective they are, as well as how easy they are to remember, tie, dress, verify and untie after load. The Zeppelin bend is hard to verify against e.g. the hunter's bend or Ashley's -- but it's just as secure as a flemish bend at a fraction of the effort to tie. The double sheet bend is bleh, but I didn't want to get into the weeds of what to do when joining ropes of very dissimilar diameters.
> Most of the "every knot you need" recommendations here seem to come from people tying things down for a short haul, and consequently come from the the "easy to untie" end of the spectrum
Agreed. I would say camping-style knots tend to be easy to tie, easy to untie, and not adequate for safety critical applications.
> Your knots look to be at the "easy to untie" kind
If you mean "easy to untie after being heavily loaded", then we agree. If you mean "can become untied accidentally after e.g. intermittent loads", we disagree. They are climbing knots, after all.
I specifically did not include knots that are commonly recommended even though they untie easily e.g. under intermittent loads, such as the sheet bend or the bowline, precisely because of how easily they become untied.
> It's popular with climbers, but I would not recommend it for tying down a load.
I am not in love with the alpine butterfly variations in general, but in the specific context of making a midline fixed loop without access to either end, there's not much to choose from as far as I know. The Figure-8 capsizes in that application, for example. That said, I would rather use an accessory line with a friction hitch (e.g. Prusik loop), but an alpine butterfly is commonly used in safety critical applications as you mention, so I'm curious to learn what you would rather use in that situation.
As for fishermen and safety, how do you explain that they still commonly use the bowline or the sheet bend?
> As for fishermen and safety, how do you explain that they still commonly use the bowline or the sheet bend?
I've not seen a lot of fisherman use them myself. But if they are indeed common as you say, then it must mean most fisherman are beginners.
Fisherman are nice people. They help each other out, and they learn fast. For example when a fish falls off the line a beginner will often loudly proclaim it bit through the line. Someone with experience often takes that opportunity to look for the telltale curls in the nylon line indicating the knot had slipped, rather than being cut. If they see them, they will often congratulate the beginner on nearly catching the biggest fish of the day - it's a shame they don't know how to tie a fishing knot.
> I specifically did not include knots that are commonly recommended even though they untie easily e.g. under intermittent loads, such as the sheet bend or the bowline,
Ahh, sorry. Reading comprehension fail on my part. I confused your post with others that mentioned the bowline. It's a wonderful knot, but it must be kept under tension.
> alpine butterfly is commonly used in safety critical applications as you mention, so I'm curious to learn what you would rather use in that situation.
As I said as the start, I was thinking you were recommending knots for casual use. I'd use the Alpine Butterfly when I want something that won't slip in that situation, however I quietly curse under my breath while tying it because if it gets tight I've created a lot of work, particularly if I don't have a marlin spike handy. I haven't owned one for years now, so I go out of my way to not use the butterfly.
To be frank, this has been a rather disappointing conversation.
I gave some quick guidance for newbies with some broader context to help them, only to have somebody dismiss everything I said because they didn't pay any attention to what was written.
Next time, please do read what you reply to, especially if you are going to be dismissive. What a waste of everybody's time. I was hoping to learn something new. Bleh.
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to remember the correct way to tie a specific knot in a given situation unless you do it frequently. It's always best to have a cheat sheet as part of your (e.g., camping) gear. So once, you get the YT recommendations that you ask for (and you will), take physical notes!
I keep a short length of rope around the house where I occasionally pick it up and practice some knots. If you rely on them to protect yourself like in climbing they needs to be memorized to the point where you can tie them in the dark.
There are kits you can buy which come with a deck of cards along with two or more ropes (of different sizes) which are fun to do as well. Some knots are specific to connect different size or same sized ropes. It's a good mental exercise.
There are plenty of good examples in the other replies and I just want to add that the square knot, with a tiny variation, is the best way to tie your shoelaces.
Writer Jack London's mansion,The Wolf House, that he was building up in Sonoma county was destroyed by a fire that investigators later attributed to the spontaneous combustion of oil-soaked rags in the dining room...
> If you want a large printer that's decent for tinkering, Sovol SV08.
I disagree about Sovol the company though. I have a Sovol SV07 in the garage gathering dust. Its printer head got all clogged up and when I complained to them, they just sent me a random part with no information on what to do with it. I guess I could get into the tinkering mode, but who has the time?
I'd just love to have a sub-$1000 printer which prints whenever I have something to print (which is not too often, I concede), and does a fantastic job of it.
I got a 2026 model Y recently and tried out FSD. It made enough errors in the first few trips that I am surprised it's being touted as a "robotaxi".
For example: travelling West on 15th street in SF, at Guerrero the leftmost lane turns into left turn only and the Tesla happily continued straight through.
That jolted me out of complacence and the next time it was in the wrong lane, I quickly took over and corrected it. It's happened a few times and I don't use FSD that much.
I've come to the conclusion that a big part of the difference between Waymo and other AVs is that Google has so much more geospatial data than anyone else that they know where that left turn lane begins and what it means in the context of that part of that road.
My Mercedes has the opposite problem. It will notify me there's an OTA update and ask if I want to do it now, or not. If I just turned the car on, I probably don't want to do it now, so the question is silly. It's unclear if the "Later" option actually applies the update after I've turned the car off, or if it just means it'll nag me again later and the cycle repeats. At least it does map updates automatically.
I'm curious, what does having control over the update process give you? Isn't it replacing one unauditable black box system for another?
Are you concerned about a regression and don't want to be in the vanguard cohort?
My car/motorcycle/skateboard doesn't need over the air updates. It used to be, and still is in some cases, that a vehicle (electronic control modules and all) was sold as a finished product. Your engine control module or speed controller didn't need random firmware updates because it was a finished product that worked as intended upon delivery.
Now people are clamoring to drive software licenses and I want no part of it. This isn't about auditing the code, this is about complexity creep and having ownership.
Well, there is the "my car has been disabled in an inconvenient time/location" problem for one. It would be nice to have more audibility but I use iOS/macOS/etc so it would be disingenuous to claim that as a show-stopper.
If by "vanguard cohort" you mean "in the first wave to test the new software," then yes; I don't want to be in that group.
I feel like being concerned about your car being disabled at an inconvenient time, but not being as concerned about your phone/laptop isn't disingenuous.
They're entirely different products, costs, use cases, risk profiles.
For the most part, yes. I do fly with ForeFlight though. Losing it mid-flight would not be a disaster in its own right but the tech has saved my life a few times.
The ForeFlight team will send out a message giving an "all clear" or a "wait for us to update the app before updating to the next iOS/iPadOS release."
As you observed, lane selection is basically the one thing that FSD is completely incapable of. But other things it does well. It's important to note this is completely incompatible with the narrative spun by Tesla haters, that it all comes down to LiDAR. LiDAR cannot help with lane selection.
Why does Waymo not have a problem with it? It did really well in dense streets with people barely pulling over to stop and run into a storefront or picking people up from a restaurant. It would pause for a second, put on turning signals, and then pull around the stopped car. It did this several times, in fact in spots where I would have waited because its estimation of distance and obstacles in a 360deg around the vehicle is flat out better than me as a human. I was really impressed.
Waymos stop in the middle of the street several times a day, behavior I've never seen or even heard of from FSD. And I'm not sure what it has to do with lane selection.
FSD goes around stopped vehicles without any problem too.
And that means they know what lane they need to be in 100, 200, 500 ft down the road. Tesla has map data but it's so poor that they can't get the lanes right.
I haven't really seen the narrative that it all comes down to lidar. I mean it's one sensor type amongst vision, lidar, gps, ultrasonics, sound and radar. For whatever reason Tesla has chosen to go a bit minimalist there.
TBF the Ford CEO, in an interview, said lidar is the difference. But I can't blame him for going with the sound bite in that context. No doubt he knows there are lots of differences. My favorite underappreciated difference is that Google has crazy amounts of geospatial data.
Imagine if you could buy your own "Waymo-equipped car". No need for driving lessons. No aggravation. No road rage.
How many people would pay for such a luxury car? With the US population aging and public transit non-existent in most places, Waymo probably has a market for cars.
There’s clearly a demand for self-driving privately owned vehicles as well, but think of it this way - why own a self-driving Chevy when you could hire a self-driving Cadillac when you need to go somewhere?
The cost of the computers, LIDAR, special maintenance, vandalism, staffing humans for remote issue handling etc will probably costs the same as a year's income for an Uber driver. But after that it's mostly profit and they can run cars longer.
The most important thing for Waymo is scaling up production of LIDAR and maintaining them efficiently. They will have a massive fleet running very sophisticated radar+computers. That's a huge logistical investment when it's a million cars. Those sensors will break or be damaged.
They've been partnering with Uber to maintain the fleet in some cities haven't they since they already have regional infrastructure? I don't think they want to be in the fleet management business.
AFAIK Uber is doing app integrations + some local operational fleet management. Waymo is supplying the cars, radars, computers, remote service, the brand, etc. Waymo has to scale that production and maintenance up country wide and then globally.
Uber's CEO compared it to Marriot, people come in to run the hotels in the local region, but they actually don't own the hotels. It's like hired managers who take a cut.
It also makes sense to have people with local experience run them in each local region. But those businesses still involve margins and expenses that have to make sense.
They are typically bigger at Nazare, but it all depends on the swell. Its not impossible for Mavericks to receive a swell that could create waves bigger than whatever Nazare has received in the last 20 years, but it's less likely.
However Mavericks is definitely the "nicer" and gnarlier wave of the two imho, Nazare is massive but has no shape, so they just surf the shoulder for 5 seconds and kick out. Mavericks has much nicer lines.
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