by Ray Dalio
Everything is a MachineSometimes things happen that are hard to understand. Life often feels so difficult and complicated. It’s too much to take in all at once. My deep pain led me to reflect deeply on my circumstances. It also led me to reflect on nature, because it provides a guide for what’s true. So I thought a lot about how things work, which helped to put me and my own circumstances in perspective. I saw that at the Big Bang, all the laws and forces of the universe were created and propelled forward, interacting with each other as a perpetual motion machine in which all the bits and pieces coalesce into machines that work for awhile, fall apart, and then coalesce into new machines. This goes on into eternity.
Presidential Election 🗽
In the U.S., no one is required by law to vote in any local, state, or presidential election. According to the U.S. Constitution, voting is a right and a privilege. Many constitutional amendments have been ratified since the first election. However, none of them made voting mandatory for U.S. citizens.
Breaking Bad 💣
Breaking Bad is an American television drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. The series was broadcast in the United States and Canada on the cable network AMC. It premiered on January 20, 2008. The series aired a total of 62 episodes, ending on September 29, 2013.
Credit & Debt 💳
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date. In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
Boeing B747-400 Series 🛬
The Boeing 747-400 is a wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The “Advanced Series 300” was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting a 10% cost reduction with more efficient engines and 1,000 nmi (1,850 km) more range. Northwest Airlines (NWA) became the first customer with an order for 10 aircraft on October 22, 1985. The first 747-400 was rolled out on January 26, 1988 and made its maiden flight on April 29, 1988. Type certification was received on January 9, 1989, and it entered service with NWA on February 9, 1989.
What is Money 💰
The Economics Glossary defines money as follows:
Money is a good that acts as a medium of exchange in transactions. Classically it is said that money acts as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange.
Most authors find that the first two are nonessential properties that follow from the third. In fact, other goods are often better than money at being intertemporal stores of value, since most monies degrade in value over time through inflation or the overthrow of governments.
Disinformation 💁♀️
by Claire Wardle
Too often, we share posts on social media without thinking. We’re standing in line at a coffee shop or scrolling mindlessly during our morning commute. The minute we see something that resonates – it might make us laugh, angry or even smug – we click on the ‘share’ or retweet button, and carry on scrolling. It’s often a split second decision. It feels like it carries little weight. But those split second decisions can have repercussions.
When smartphones first appeared, we seized the opportunity to have these amazing gadgets in our pockets. We could interact with friends in real-time, play games, read the news and scroll through fun, engaging content. What we didn’t realize, as a society, was that these little gadgets required a new level of responsibility. Overnight, everyone had become a publisher.