my journal 3

and after the faked murder on google maps street view, a more serious video, martin luther king's speech for his nobel prize:


The US government still went ahead and killed him nonetheless (according to the "conspiracy theory" I believe). He wasn't as lucky as Lech Walesa, who maybe was saved by receiving a nobel prize:



Funny how they have an interview with Brzezinski in the middle of this video (polish-american statesman). And to say that I had been convinced that he was a reptilian. There's plenty of videos on this on the web. However, now I think he saved Walesa's ass. Needless to say, I have just been to the movies and watched that Wajda's movie on Walesa. Don't know how good it is, because with such a powerful subject, it seemed excellent to me, but even an average movie would have seemed excellent.
 
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Yeah... not all germans are geniuses, as I was starting to think. In fact, a whole bunch of them are idiots.

Check this out, they have a tv show where you bet on people doing various stunts. I am against people risking their life and even more making a show on this, so I am against boxing, and car racing and even soccer. Anyway, here is the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetten,_dass..?#The_Samuel_Koch_Incident
Samuel Koch, a 23-year old aspiring stuntman, became a quadriplegic during a stunt performed on the show on December 4, 2010. The incident was broadcast live. The contestant took on a bet in which he was to try to jump over five moving cars using spring-loaded boots. The cars were of gradually increasing length. While the first three attempts were successful, the stunt went horribly wrong during the fourth try, when the man failed to clear the car, driven by his own father. Koch's head hit the windshield while he was inverted, and he then landed awkwardly on the studio floor, taking the impact on his head.[7][8][9] The contestant fractured two cervical vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord.

Koch was transported to a nearby hospital, where emergency surgery was performed upon him. Koch survived but is now paralyzed from his neck down.

The reason I am saying they're idiots, is the fact that they still haven't cancelled the show, but the same would apply to car racing and all that, so the whole world is populated with idiots anyway.


Look at the shocked faces. **** suckers, what did you think, that he was made out of rubber?


How about campaigning to cancel a show that made you quadriplegic instead of saying how beautiful it is to be alive?

I guess because if he said "I am pissed off at the show and at people who didn't stop me from risking my life", he wouldn't be welcome on tv any longer. So, there's certainly people who say wise things, but they're not shown on tv. Instead we say plenty of stories on car racers, who have bad accidents, recover, and go right back to racing.

Also, he is shown watching an athlete jump on a spring board, which is an activity very close to the one that made him a paraplegic, because that'd happen if the athlete fell on his neck. Just great. As we say in Italy, the idiot is the one who keeps repeating the same error over and over again.

It's just a question of percentages. There's plenty of idiots everywhere. Just that in Germany there's a much higher percentage of honest and intelligent people than in Italy.
 
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reminder to myself: things2remember

STOP RUMINATING MISTAKES AND INSTEAD WORK ON THE PRESENT TO AVOID THEM.
 
Here's the latest "index.html", with all the markets I follow:
View attachment index.html

I have to update it every 3 months, because I've automated all the markets except the BUND. That one doesn't work. There's no continuous contract available to insert in my html code.

....

There's no need to say anything further about my discretionary mistakes, because I just keep repeating the same errors over and over again. It's not like I haven't learned what they are: I get bored, I trade to get some happiness out of the markets, even when everything is perfect the way it is, and, as this time, to avoid a small loss on one of the 10 markets I was invested it on, I closed all the other 9 markets, and bet everything on one, and without a stoploss. As a consequence, this time, like other times, I unnecessarily lost 50% of my capital.

So, there it is, the same usual mistake, summarized in 5 lines. And I will probably learn nothing from this lesson either. I don't know why. The urge to get revenge on the market, for that small loss one trade is showing me, is too strong. I guess I have to fight first of all my perfectionism. I have to improve myself in accepting things not being perfect.

things2remember

I am just as obsessive and perfectionist in my everyday life. I've thought about a small incident at the office all weekend. And yes, maybe next time I will avoid the incident, but all this anger and the rumination is useless. And it is the very anger and impatience that makes me screw up with my trading.

So I have to be more serene and less compulsive, control freak, and so on. This, too, I must have said somewhere on my journal before.

Unless I change, my account will just go to zero, over and over again, or at best I will go up and down, between 40k and 4k, as I've been doing for years.
 
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crazy son of a bitch


a while later, he died doing the same thing

more idiots in a video entitled "people are awesome":

 
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The gold conspiracy

nice video here:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-gold-conspiracy/

THE GOLD CONSPIRACY

As increasingly more conspiracy ‘theories’ become conspiracy ‘facts’, The History Channel discusses “The Gold Conspiracy” in this brief documentary. Gold is one of the most precious metals in the world. A glittering commodity so rare that people will go to great lengths to obtain it. But who sets the price? And what are the secret methods to control its value? History uncovers theclandestine world surrounding the highly prized precious metal. How much gold does the United States really have – and where is it locked away? Is the American government overstating the amount of gold in its reserves to create the mystique of financial superiority?
 
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These german geniuses at ZDF (German public television) have succeeded again at making an excellent documentary:
Sophie Scholl - Die Seele des Widerstands

There's subtitles, so you learn German as you learn history (she was an opposer of National Socialism):

Snap1.jpg

Pretty cool frame, huh? A clip from a color film (yeah, from the 1930s) of the Hitlerjugend for women (Bund Deutscher Mädel / BDM)

On top of the subtitles, I am on this google translate page...
https://translate.google.com/#de/en/

...so I can speak into the microphone and let google translate what it is that I haven't understood (at this point still the majority of what I read/hear, but not for much longer).

Excellent, huh? You don't get much closer to knowledge than with the Germans, a people that is the closest to knowledge that I know of. The Italians are about being sneaky. The Americans are about being violent and overbearing - I am talking in general. The Germans are about knowledge.

In a sense, I feel much closer to the Germans and the Japanese than the Italians. We're a bunch of idiots, and instead those guys do what they say and take things more seriously. (Majority-wise of course, I am not saying all Italians or Germans are the same way). I wish I were working at a Japanese bank (I did for a while, too) or a German bank, instead of an Italian bank, where most people are slackers, who get paid for screwing around all day long. I hope my bank will go bust soon. I hope Romans get hit by an earthquake, and, as Travis Bickle would put it, I hope that "some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets":


"...wash all this scum off my country" is the way I'd rephrase it. We need a flood that will drown about 90% of Italians. Americans need one as well, for them the percentage of people to drown is just as high, although for different reasons.

I am very disappointed and dissatisfied with humans in general, but with German humans less so.
 
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I was wondering why the Germans have not produced a lot of comedians, or... you know what I mean - they're known for not having a good sense of humor, or rather they're not known for their jokes...

simpsons.jpg

Another thing. This is one of the most read blogs, and it is considered funny, but it's not (only mildly funny, but almost to the point of being boring):
http://www.notesofberlin.com/

It is the 24th most read, according to this list:
http://www.deutscheblogcharts.de/

These are the notes posted in Berlin (walls, etc.) that they posted recently and that they find funny, the last three they posted (use google translate to translate them):

AA-Treppenhaus_Beatrix.jpg

ich-karl-marx-str-nk-b-768x1024.jpg

suedstrern.jpg

The last one, for example, says "I am not coming back", "not returning": it's the owner of the store. So? How funny is it? Not much, really. The blog posts a bunch of these, not any funnier, and it's widely read.

I have a theory. Several theories actually.

People who are busy working and learning do not waste time joking. The Germans don't waste time screwing around, in general.

In this sense, I am German. I don't waste time developing a good sense of humor or rather a good set of jokes, although I could, and I don't, because it is a waste of time. Furthermore, for example, it is dishonest to my employer. I have plenty of colleagues who spend their day going from one room to another, joking around with all the other colleagues, thereby not working and keeping others from working.

Another reason, though, is that they killed all the jews, who are the best at comedy, and also their past doesn't allow comedians to laugh too much. It's as if they didn't have the right to laugh and to joke, after what they've done.

One could argue that if they had a sense of humor and spent more time screwing around, they wouldn't have done what they have done.

This is totally right, because whatever you do, if you're serious as the Germans and I are, you do it all the way. If instead you're an idiot, like my colleagues and a lot of Italians, and spend your day screwing around, everything you do, will be half-assed.
 
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I was all wrong about Lili Marleen, and it has to be written like this, so you can appreciate the rhymes:

Vor der Kaserne,
vor dem großen Tor
Stand eine Laterne
und steht sie noch davor,
So wollen wir uns da wiedersehen,
Bei der Laterne wollen wir stehen,
Wie einst Lili Marleen,
wie einst Lili Marleen.

It's all written like this, so you should not join the verses together in one line and forget about the rhymes. Which is what I had done.

I found a new version by Willy Fritsch, which is good:


There's a whole list of different versions here, that can be downloaded as well:
http://ingeb.org/garb/lmarleen.html

... holy cow, among them, there is a very precious one 1943 version by Lucie Mannheim, jewish, who sang it with anti-nazi lyrics (perfect rhymes as well) - use google translate to translate it:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucie_Mannheim#Text_der_Lili-Marleen-Persiflage

Ich muss heut' an Dich schreiben, mir ist das Herz so schwer.
Ich muss zuhause bleiben, und lieb' Dich doch so sehr.
Dass Du tust nur Deine Pflicht, doch trösten kann mich das ja nicht.
Ich wart' an der Laterne. Deine Lili Marleen

Was ich still hier leide, weiß nur der Mond und ich.
Einst schien er auf uns beide, nun scheint er nur auf mich.
Mein Herz tut mir so bitter weh, wenn ich an der Laterne steh'
Mit meinem eig'nen Schatten. Deine Lili Marleen


Vielleicht fällst Du in Russland, vielleicht in Afrika.
Doch irgendwo, da fällst Du, so will’s Dein Führer ja!
Und wenn wir doch uns wiederseh'n, oh möge die Laterne steh'n
In einem andern Deutschland. Deine Lili Marleen

Der Führer ist ein Schinder, das seh'n wir hier genau,
Zu Waisen macht er Kinder, zur Witwe jede Frau.
Und wer an allem schuld ist, den – will ich an der Laterne seh'n.
Hängt ihn an die Laterne! Deine Lili Marleen

Actually, she seems to have translate it by herself:


And I also found the full film made in 1944, The True Story of Lilli Marleen, from which came the previous clip:


Full of mistakes but very interesting.

Among the mistakes, at minute 15 (and before) they say that lale andersen was swedish (found nothing on that) and that she was in a concentration camp, but on wikipedia they say:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lale_Andersen#Leben
Der Einweisung in ein Konzentrationslager (wegen „undeutschen Betragens“) kam glücklicherweise eine Falschmeldung der BBC über ihre angeblich bereits erfolgte Verhaftung zuvor. Dadurch zu heftigem Dementi genötigt, konnten die Nationalsozialisten diesen tatsächlich geplanten Schritt nicht mehr realisieren.
The detention in a concentration camp (due to "un-conduct") was fortunately a hoax the BBC about their alleged arrest has already taken place before. Thus compelled to vigorous denial that the Nazis could not realize this actually planned step.

So much for her being Swedish, too:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lale_Andersen#Leben

Snap1.jpg
 
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being a perfectionist without being a control freak

I believe that it is possible and very beneficial to be a perfectionist without being a control freak. In other words, attention to detail is important, but it is better if it is coupled with accepting whatever details you cannot change.

Examples of benefits:

1) I insulate my room so to avoid unwanted noises, but if a noise gets through, like a crying neighbor, then I don't get so mad about it that I can't sleep for the rest of the night.

2) Profitability is important, but if 1 out of 10 positions isn't profitable and shows me a loss, I don't go and close the other 9 positions to martingale the hell out of my one losing position

3) Maximizing the intelligence and politeness of people around you is important and something to seek, but if you happen to meet one rude person during the day, you shouldn't be so upset as to spend a week haunted by the thought of it and hating that person for being rude to you.

On and on... plenty of examples of how I have been, unnecessarily, a control freak rather than just a very meticulous perfectionist.

Perfectionist is good, but control freak should be avoided, because it makes you lose what you achieve by being a perfectionist, such as when you trade and leave the nine profitable positions to invest everything on the losing position.

The same applies to soundproofing your room. If you do it, you better still retain the ability to put up with the smallest noises, because otherwise you're going to get even more mad about noises than before soundproofing your room.

 
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You know, I think i've really nailed it with my last post, the previous one I mean. For anyone out there who trades and is a perfectionist, your compulsive urge to work hard already takes care of all trading skills and knowledge that are required for profitable trading except one, the one I explained: you must transition from being a control freak to just being a perfectionist. It's ok to work hard, but it's not ok to expect everything to go your way. This is really the last thing you have to learn to become profitable and keep your profit. You have to accept a few things not going your way, such as trades not going your way, and you have to accept losses - which is what everyone keeps saying, but I've come to this point from 10 different directions already and this was the missing one.

In that what bothers me about losses and makes me unwilling to accept them is that I am a control freak.
 
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some thoughts on some german movies

I just saw these two good movies by director Hans Weingartner, The White Noise and The Edukators:
http://www.firedrive.com/file/E6D00DC64265D0E8


And I found a great search engine for online streaming movies:
http://www.alluc.to/

Yeah, I was wrong. I found that the Germans are also good at making movies. Actually this director is Austrian, but we can count these 100 million German-speakers are "Germans" I guess. That would include as well the Swiss, the Belgians, the Italians... and some in Luxembourg, too. Oh, and Liechtenstein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_German_is_an_official_language

...

Actually that movie (the white noise) was quite good, and I am surprised the actor didn't win at least a golden globe, but I guess this is because it's a movie in german and it didn't reach the english-speaking audiences.

I just checked and it did win a few awards, but only in Germany:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_weisse_Rauschen#Auszeichnungen
2001: Max-Ophüls-Preis
2001: First Steps Award für Hans Weingartner (Bester abendfüllender Spielfilm über 60 Minuten)
2002: New Faces Award für Daniel Brühl (Bester Nachwuchsdarsteller; ebenso für Nichts bereuen und Vaya con Dios)
2002: Deutscher Filmpreis für Daniel Brühl (Bester Hauptdarsteller; ebenso für Nichts bereuen und Vaya con Dios), Nominierungen für Hans Weingartner (Bester Spielfilm) und Anabelle Lachatte (Beste Nebendarstellerin)
2002: Bayerischer Filmpreis für Daniel Brühl (Bester Nachwuchsdarsteller; ebenso für Nichts bereuen und Vaya con Dios)
2003: Preis der deutschen Filmkritik für Daniel Brühl (Bester Darsteller, ebenso für Vaya con Dios) und für Hans Weingartner (Bestes Spielfilmdebüt)

By the way, 12 years later, that same actor Daniel Brühl and his latest movie won many international awards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_(2013_film)
Budget $38 million
Box office $90.2 million

The only problem is that this time the movie sucks. I am talking about the movie on Niki Lauda. So I guess I'll stick to these non-Hollywood movies, and learn German in the meanwhile.

...

Now I am watching my fourth movie by Weingartner, Die Summe meiner einzelnen Teile, and this is good, too. I am noticing that all the protagonists live at the edge of society:
http://www.movshare.net/video/6e52a72b68969

I feel like doing that, too, so I really like these movies, because they spare me the trouble of doing it, and watching them to me is like taking a vacation. Besides, they seem very realistic.

In these movies there's always someone looking for peace away from people, just like me. I never fail to identify with the protagonists of these movies by Weingartner.

This guy, Weingartner, even without knowing much about German film industry, is definitely one of the best German directors, simply because he's one of the best world directors, too, and I do know about world movies.

I don't see anyone quite like him, because Scorsese, who has similarities tried to make his movies also action movies, and Herzog added to his movies some comedic intent.

This director is all about reality, probably the closest one to Vittorio De Sica, as far as I can remember.

Nowadays, as far as I can remember, there aren't many directors like this one. Unless we talk about documentaries.

I just remembered this movie, that I saw recently, by Uli Edel: "Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo". That was excellent and total neorealism. As I wrote in my movie journal, "a sad, frustrating, and also boring subject, but still an ageless and realistic movie on the reality of being a drug addict".

I also saw, also by Uli Edel, "The Baader Meinhof Complex", such a powerful subject, just like that movie on Lech Walesa. So powerful that you don't know if the movie was really good, or if it was so so and yet on a very important subject.

So anyway, also Uli Edel would qualify as neorealism.

...

I just finished the movie "Die Summe meiner einzelnen Teile". It is a masterpiece. No doubt about it. Yet guess what. No wikipedia entry in English. There really is no meritocracy, damn. Of course this also has to do with the fact that the movie is realistic and therefore sad. So audiences don't flock to it either.

But they had a nice reception in Germany at least:


Excellent soundtrack by Mighty Oaks:


But this song at the end of the movie is by Damien Rice:


...

What I think that sucked instead, of the movies directed by Weingartner, is Free Rainer:


Not realistic, inconsistent and not believable. But actor Bleibtreu always has a way of ruining movies, by turning them into blockbusters, that is crap. Half of his movies are crap.
 
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Charlotte, Großherzogin von Luxemburg, kehrt 1945 aus dem Exil zurück (in Farbe)

 
Palermo oder wolfsburg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italians_in_Germany

Interesting movie, almost a comedy, a sociological analysis of Italian immigrants in Germany. But also a drama film. A documentary, too. Poor acting though, awful acting, but still worth watching. More a documentary than a movie due to the actors being local Italian immigrants, some probably even working at VW. Probably not one professional actor, or maybe the Germans are. Let me check.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081299/

They're acting in many movies all right but they're not professionally trained, for the most part.

Very important and powerful subject, so even though the movie artistically has many flaws, it's still good due to the choice of subject.

I don't know why it won the Golden Bear. I don't think it was good enough.
 
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Veronika Voss (1982) Fassbinder [English Subtitles]

...

Not too good. Unrealistic crap. Still interesting though, but not a good movie. I can't remember a movie I really liked by this director.

He's good, of course, but I don't like his plots. It's like Tim Burton. Obviously he's good, but I never like what he's saying with his movies. Same applies to Quentin Tarantino. I like realistic movies, and they don't make them.

---

Speaking of fassbinder, I just had my usual curiosity and looked up the meaning, and it is "barrel-maker". So then I looked up where in Germany that last name is more widespread, and sure enough, it is mostly found precisely where they make the most wine:

Snap2.jpg

Snap3.jpg

But you know what's even more interesting? I wondered what the equivalent Italian last name is for "fassbinder" -- "bottai" ("botte" is the "barrel") and, to my amazement, there's some "bottai" in Germany as well (besides in Tuscany, the equivalent of Hessen in Germany), and precisely in that same Hessen region, where they make the most wine, and most likely it is not a coincidence:

Snap1.jpg

In other words, the implications of this are that, back then, you got a last name for the job you did, and this is not a surprise. Then the second implication is that you kept doing that job for generations. And the third implication is that you emigrated where that job was most in demand. All three are quite rational conclusions, but I am still surprised.

Indeed, it is not likely that that a barrel-maker from Italy got his last name in Italy and then moved immediately to Germany. But if he passed his last name along with his skills, then this phenomenon would make perfect sense.

What might also be true, but I haven't investigated it yet in depth, is that "Bottai" is also widespread in the areas of France that produce the most wine.
 
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