kimmy

Is there a good way for somebody to get started in investing without putting a lot of money at risk? And regarding the ETFs... would I just walk into my bank and say "I want to buy an ETF"? -k

... These two posts pretty much sum up the argument I have with myself over this. On the one hand, I recognize that making extra payments on my low-interest rate mortgage is not optimum in terms of return. On the other hand, the security of having the mortgage paid off really appeals to me. One factor is, I think that the comparison to make is not value of investments I could make right now vs mortgage interest I pay right now. The relevant comparison is the mortgage interest rates I would be paying in the time-frame when my extra payments are shortening the mortgage. I will have to renew my mortgage probably at least twice before it's paid off, and chances are pretty good that the interest rate will be higher by then. Another factor is that I just don't know anything about investment. I would end up either putting my money into something low-risk and low-return, or spending money on management fees, which would eat into the pretty thin margin that investment would have over paying off the mortgage. So those things both kind of tip it towards just doing the safe thing. All that stuff is good, but I won't be able to eat non-tangible rewards when I'm old. Looking after your emotional and spiritual needs is important, but making sure your physical needs are looked after is important as well. -k

It's when people complain about things like pro-rich policies instead of complaining about poor-people voting for Democrats. -k

I hear that the new crop in Congress includes Blood Moon kooks, anti-gay paranoids, Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists, people who are convinced that ISIS is invading the US through Mexico, and a dude who is convinced that Hilary Clinton is the Anti-Christ. -k

Argus is obviously discussing stupid financial management habits, not attempting to attack individuals or identifiable groups. Getting upset over this strikes me as extremely thin-skinned. What's next, are we going to get offended when somebody says that the anti-vaxxers are stupid? Moon-landing hoaxers are stupid? Chem-trail kooks and Sandy Hook Truthers and Obama Birthers and 9/11 Truthers? No way! We need to be free to point out that stupid ideas are stupid. Argus contends that holding large sums of cash rather than investing it is a stupid way to manage your finances, and he's made an argument to that effect. People who disagree ought to produce a counter-argument, not wring their hands over the perceived insult of people with poor money management skills. As to the subject at hand... I'm not into a TFSA yet. Is it worthwhile for somebody who doesn't have a lot of money available for investment or savings? I maintain a bank balance sufficient to last me a few months if I can't work, or to pay emergency expenses. My main financial planning tool has been RRSPs, so that I can increase my tax return. Beyond that, most of my money goes into making extra payments on my mortgage. My thinking has been that once I have my mortgage paid off, my monthly expenses drop dramatically and I will have a lot more freedom to invest, save, and/or work less. Am I being short-sighted in wanting to get rid of the mortgage first? -k

I was not implying that the people who won election on Tuesday were bankers or coal company owners. Rather, I am saying that the big winners on Tuesday are the super-rich, Wall Street and the banks, and energy companies. I think it's stupid to be excited that there are more women in office now. It's a bunch of sock-puppets for the wealthy and for powerful industries. There's more female sock-puppets this year? yaaaay team. -k

Yes, Clinton started the deregulation train. And obviously it was a big mistake. So why are the Republican cheerleaders here so excited about putting both houses in the hands of a group that are promising to undo what little regulation was put back in place following the fiasco of 2008? Current Republican rhetoric calls Dodd-Frank "Obamacare for the banking industry" and they're committed to killing the Volcker rule. Who, other than banks, is asking for that? -k

Not to fear! The Republicans have promised they are not going to return to the pre-ObamaCare era. They are going to introduce a new solution that is Market-Based™ and Patient-Focused™, and will prevent discrimination against patients with pre-existing conditions, and have no individual mandates, and will have everything that people like about the ACA with none of the things that people don't like about the ACA, and will use the power of the free market to make all of this happen. And when they figure out what this magical plan is, they'll make sure to tell you. -k

Women who own banks and coal companies might be winners, but other women not so much. -k

Yay! Less jobs for West Bank workers! That'll teach Israel a lesson! -k

If its impact is as trivial as you seem to think, then why do Republicans continue to have such enthusiasm for finding ways to keep people from voting? "Let's close polling stations at colleges!" "Let's purge thousands of names from the voter lists and notify them too late for them to get reinstated!" "Let's force students to vote at their parents' address, even if they live hundreds of miles away!" "Let's provide inadequate facilities in 'urban' precincts so that 'urban' voters have to line up for hours!" "Let's hold voter registration drives in 'urban' areas and throw boxloads of registration papers in the dumpster afterward!" For people who love democracy so much, they sure seem to hate it when people vote. -k

I just think she ought to use examples that actually make the case she wants to make, rather than misrepresenting the content of a game to fit her narrative. It seems kind of crappy to me that on the one hand she be clamoring for content that has better female characters and so-on, and on the other hand she be misrepresenting games that actually provide the kind of characters she's asking for in an effort to make her argument. It seems as if she had to go out of her way to find something from recent major releases to appear relevant. She'd have had no trouble finding weird Japanese crap to fit her narrative, and no trouble finding older games, but it probably wouldn't have been very satisfying for her if she couldn't point at something current and popular and North American-made. -k {take your PacMan and blow it out your ass, Michael.}

Perhaps Anglo/American marketers are appealing to an Anglo/American market by using words that Anglo/American customers actually use. Perhaps if Les Francophones had developed the touchscreen interface, we would all be talking about Le Caressement instead of tapping our screens, but I somehow doubt it. -k

Regarding the whole "GamerGate" thing, it seems to me that the people shouting "it's not about anti-feminism! It's about journalism ethics!" are desperately trying to put a fig-leaf on the situation. Zoe Quinn first got public attention a few years ago when she claimed to have receive sexist harassment from gamers in response to her "Depression Quest" game. It brought negative attention to the "gaming community" and made them mad. Fast forward to this year, her ex-boyfriend makes allegations that she had sex with people in the game industry, and the people who were mad at her from before figure "ah-ha! This is our big chance at revenge!" And go hog-wild with an internet campaign of harassment and slut-shaming. Except things don't go the way they expect. The overwhelming reaction isn't "Zoe Quinn is a big whore who had sex in exchange for positive reviews", it's "wow, the gaming community is full of socially-retarded woman-hating losers." Finally the gaming community gets the mainstream attention they crave, and the attention is so overwhelmingly negative that they're in full damage control. And so the more savvy voices in the community have been pleading with people in the "movement" to stop talking about Zoe Quinn or feminists at all. They've pleaded with the "movement" to not even say "Zoe Quinn" and refer to her as "Literally Who" (as in "literally who in the hell is she, anyway?") rather than by name. And they've pleaded with the "movement" to adopt this talking point that "it's not about Zoe Quinn or feminism, it's about Journalistic Integrity". Ok. So if it's about Journalistic Integrity... did they doxx and harass the journalists who allegedly did Zoe Quinn favors, or did they doxx and harass Zoe Quinn? If it's about journalistic integrity, why did they doxx and harrass Brianna Wu and Felicia Day who aren't even journalists? If it's about journalistic integrity, why was this launched because a free-to-play indie game might have got undeserved positive attention from journalists? Shouldn't they be more concerned that a $60 major studio release gets undeserved positive attention from journalists? Especially when these major studio releases bring reviewers to parties with free food and drinks and gift-bags with iPads? Shouldn't that sort cause more concern amongst these journalistic integrity enthusiasts? If it's about journalistic integrity... did they boycott the website that fired a reviewer after a publisher complained about an unenthusiastic review, or did they boycott the website that published the "gamers are over" editorial? They boycotted the website that published the "gamers are over" editorial. And that's another thing that gamers are mad about. The truth is that gamers ARE over. Games aren't just for gamers anymore. Games are mainstream entertainment now. It's a huge industry with a huge customer base that extends far beyond "the gaming community". Studios don't need to focus on the traditional "hardcore gamer" anymore, and that doesn't sit well. And that's one of the things that keeps popping up from these gamergate people. We often see complaints that some elite "who aren't even gamers" are trying to socially engineer inclusiveness into games. That studios are being forced into being inclusive and the push for inclusive games is coming from some kind of outside force that's trying to push a Hayes Code mentality onto the video game industry. But that's stupid. Game studios aren't trying to social engineer anything. They're primarily about making money. They want to broaden their audience. And they know that while the traditional gamers might not care about inclusiveness, or how women are portrayed, or anything else, there is a broader audience to be reached. -k

Because guards would never treat prisoners of either sex roughly! It's so unrealistic! I haven't seen the clip you mention, but it sounds like an inane criticism. I have seem some of her stuff and I think that some of the things she talks about have merit, but if it's getting to the point where she's complaining that the guards in a game are not behaving like gentlemen to a female prisoner, then she's lost me. And complaining about Dragon Age does seem pretty stupid. I think Bioware's role-playing video games have been among the leaders in creating great female characters. I think there's a place for criticism... this kind of criticism has helped games move on from being the realm of teenage boys to being mainstream entertainment. This kind of criticism helped developers aim higher and make games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. -k

There is nothing new under the sun. We tell stories that are remarkably similar to other stories that other people have told before us. There are themes that repeat over and over because they're somewhat universal amongst us humans. Ms Sarkeesian can get on her soapbox and complain about all of these games where the protagonist's wife or daughter is murdered, but avenging a loved one is a literary plot device that's been around for as long as there has been literature. It's not going away. Avenging a murdered father or murdered son is pretty commonplace too. I don't dispute that some of these murders of wives and daughters in video games (and in other media, for that matter) have been lurid and sexualized, and maybe that merits some scrutiny. But I don't get the idea that we should object each time the death of a female character used to advance the plot. I haven't paid a lot of attention to Anita's videos, but I got mad when she mentioned Angel from Borderlands as an example of one of her tropes, "the euthanized damsel". I don't play a lot of games, but I love the Borderlands series. And Angel is one of my favorite video game characters ever. Anita's comments are off base for two reasons. Angel isn't a damsel, and she isn't euthanized. Even though she's in a sense a captive, she's the instigator and mastermind behind the player's actions... she's devised a plan to save the planet and through a variety of manipulation, she has enlisted the player as her hands. And her death isn't euthanasia, it's a heroic act of sacrifice. And for Anita to use it as an example of what she's saying made me wonder if she'd actually played the game or if she was relying on second-hand knowledge. Either she didn't understand the context, or she was being intentionally dishonest. -k

Oh? The answer to predatory practices in the financial industry is ... dissolve Delaware? -k

This is true, and yet not "pro" enough for some. There wouldn't be a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if Republicans had control of the senate, for example. -k

Expecting a couple of years of pro-rich, anti-environment, pro-Wall Street, anti-gay legislation to be heading for Obama's desk. -k

The women who've come forward made clear they didn't expect that their experience with Ghomeshi would jump from first base straight to hitting and choking. -k

First off, I can't believe that Moxie Fruvous ever had 'groupies'. That ... can not be possible. But that aside, if it had just been a matter of using his fame to get with young women then this would not be a news story. Women of legal age can go chase after celebrities if they want, and it's not anybody else's responsibility to look after them. If CBC had knowledge that Ghomeshi dated a lot of young women, their response should be "that's none of our business." But if CBC had knowledge that Ghomeshi made life hell for his female co-workers, then they had a responsibility to act. And if CBC had information that Ghomeshi's personal life may have veered into criminal territory, they also had a duty to at the very least notify the police, and also discuss the situation with Ghomeshi. What responsibility CBC bears depends entirely on what they knew and when they knew it. -k

He's apparently very witty and charismatic, he had a national radio show, and he got to interview famous people on a regular basis. Younger women have been attracted to older men for less. -k

Obama has also never come close to Bush's 22% approval rating or 73% disapproval that he'd amassed by the end of his term. -k

Of the new season TV shows, the only one I have checked out so far is "Scorpion". It stars a girl best known as a loser on American Idol, a guy best known as one of the Khaleesi's bloodriders on Game of Thrones, and a guy best known as T1000 in Terminator 2. The Premise: Agent Gallo (T1000) is an NSA agent who recruits genius Walter O'Brien (bloodrider) and his genius cohorts as "consultants" to assist in extraordinary circumstances where only the brightest minds can solve the problems in time. A struggling single mother named Paige (American Idol loser) becomes embroiled in their first adventure and proves helpful; she's hired on to act as a liaison between the socially awkward geniuses and the normal people they often struggle to interact with. Her gifted son begins to relate to O'Brien and friends in a way that he's never related to other people before. The Good: T1000 is his usual crusty self, but the best thing about the show is American Idol loser Katharine McPhee, who provides a warm and likeable presence. The Bad: pretty much everything else. The genius characters are a collection of cliches, aside from Walter O'Brien who is pretty much an ubermensch. Parts of the show relating to science and technology, which occur often, are so painfully bad that I have to conclude that they hired Pliny as their science consultant. The genius characters spout technobabble so lame that Geordi LaForge himself would lift up his visor and say "whaaaaa???" The plots are full of holes that you could fly a 747 through. For example, in episode 1, the planes can't land at LAX because of a software malfunction, and they'll start to crash within 2 hours if the team can't fix the software. But... none of the assembled geniuses comes up with the idea of maybe diverting the planes to the numerous other airports within 2 hours of LAX. How smart could these guys really be? I have a hunch that no actual geniuses will be watching this show; they'd knock themselves unconscious from all the facepalms. -k