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Top Personal Finance Twitterers That Will Follow You Back.

Someone has compiled a list of people who will, tit-for-tat, follow you back. Tit-for-tat has a strong basis in game theory and possibly evolutionary bias. It’s a widely used strategy in the boggling world. This despite the fact that it is almost Sock-Puppeting. The players don’t create false references for themselves, but they trade references that are not always completely genuine.

That’s not what really makes this funny. What’s funny is that I created a private (secret?) twitter account, just to log “what I did on my summer vacation.” I didn’t expect to ever share the name, and may not ever get “social” with it.

I think I’ve fallen into this “personal finance” network. One day I mentioned that I’d been working on my portfolio, and suddenly I had followers. It seems obvious now that this was an API opportunity. Someone could be “pinging” Twitter accounts for “follow-backs” and building a list.

The Case-Shiller indexes ticked upward, with an actual increase in home prices. That is pretty interesting to a prospective buyer (Bend, OR?) like me. The conventional bearish wisdom was that the turn would be in 2010 or 2011. The thing Calculated Risk asks me to remember is that those are not seasonably adjusted numbers. I’m now sure how much I trust such adjustments, but the claim is that adjusted prices are still down.

Another amazing statistic is that California’s default rate soars to 9.5%. Delinquencies in June are up sharply from a year ago, when 6% of borrowers were behind on their loans.

It’s hard to think that 1 in 10 loans can be delinquent and this can at the same time be clearing.

I don’t know why I forgot about this blog. It Monster Munching to be my favorite food blog, and for a while I was really into food blogs. Perhaps, as I veer back into the retirement part of my semi-retirement I have more time and interest to seek out food. That, and a recent break from the ordinary (splurging on prime-grade rib-eyes) made me ready to try more.

It makes my IBM x335 server (1U full depth) look small. It makes a bit of noise but only draws 170 watts. I’ll only have it on for server exercises.

One of those statistics that boggles them mind:

According to the latest data, the number of vacant U.S. homes touched 18.7-million in the second quarter. That is a daunting figure, of course, but it is more fun to put it in context. Assuming four people per household, the U.S. currently has enough surplus housing to put the entire population of the U.K., with room left over for Israel.

Lifehacker is an interesting site. It seems part of the Getting Things Done phenomenon, and perhaps is geared towards web artists and content creators.

Lifehacker did a cooking week a little while back, and this cookbook roundup looks good, literally. Maybe I’m just hungry as I type this … but I’ll bookmark it here so I can follow some of those links later.

Language shapes our abilities:

Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like “right,” “left,” “forward,” and “back,” which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space.

This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like “There’s an ant on your southeast leg” or “Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit.” One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly…

The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like Kuuk Thaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English).

Mind Hacks reported that “A new edition of the beautifully produced RadioLab has just hit the airwires with an excellent programme on the science of randomness.” I think I listened to it back in June and found it to be a good introduction.

The idea is being discussed, as here at Marginal Revolution. It seems to be a echo of past ideas, like “we’re going to need a bigger stimulus” or “we’re going to need a second stimulus” circa March 2009. It doesn’t make much sense to me, frankly. The first stimulus is only coming on-line now. It is, perhaps though accident and incompetence, ending up better timed to the recession than pessimists feared.

As we are only spending the first stimulus now, as things continue badly, lets see how that works.

From Nick Rowe via Mark Thoma, a new take on Califorinia’s IOUs as scrip (money). They’d actually be “better” money because, if they were considered money at all, they’d be currency that paid interest. Wouldn’t we all want that?

And we can understand why Canadian Tire money does not circulate as a medium of exchange. This is a case where, contrary to Gresham’s Law, good money drives out bad. (Gresham’s Law does not apply because there is no legal tender law saying that merchants have to accept Canadian Tire money at par, and only Canadian Tire does so).

and

So California scrip would end up like Canadian Tire money – being kept in the glove box until your next visit to the issuing store – except for one thing: California scrip pays 3.5% interest; Canadian Tire money pays none. In that one respect at least, California scrip is better than US dollars.

Suppose California scrip does end up circulating as a medium of exchange, being generally acceptable at par to US dollars. Is that possible? I don’t think it is, because then Gresham’s Law would kick in. If I hold both in my pocket, and merchants will accept both, at par, I would pay with US dollars, and hoard the California scrip, to collect the interest.