Thought of the Day

A good friend from Banco Santander (the sponser ) invited me to watch live one stage of the Tour of Portugal!

Here is a pic with Rui Vinhas the yellow jersey. I guess i am 20 kg too heavy and 25 years too old!

Learning will be totally free, soon

And what if millions of students around the world who had never before had access to a college education were suddenly able to take courses taught by the most distinguished scholars on the planet and receive credit for their work, all for free? This is happening.

Zero Marginal Cost Society, Jeremy rifkin

yes this is happening now

Get 1200 free online courses from the world’s leading universities — Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more. You can download these audio & video courses (often from iTunes, YouTube, or university web sites) straight to your computer or mp3 player. Over 30,000 hours of free audio & video lectures, await you now.

25 years ago no one would predict that you could communicate almost for free with anyone in the world through what's up, Skype or email. No one would guess that you could send videos or pictures to a friend in the other side of the world for free.! No one.

Jeremy Rifkin predicts that Culture & learning will be totally free. Why pay huge amounts of money to attend a second tier school if you can learn from the best teachers worldwide on-line and listen again and again until you get it? Don't pay a lot to take a course the old fashion way.

Learn to learn online, it's the future (not to distant)

In music no one will listen to a lousy orchestra if you can listen to Yuja Wang or Kissin online for free.

Average teachers and musicians/performers will be without job

it was always bad to be average but in the digital world it's even worse.

My oldest & youngest boys waiting for the sun to show .

Reading from the FT today, Gary Silverman

The Clintons, by contrast, have profited financially by using their connections to the global elite — including in such highly regulated sectors as for-profit education, finance and healthcare. Big banks such as Goldman Sachs and UBS, which have together paid almost $2m for speeches from the Clintons since 2013, are the obvious example.

It's amazing the amount of money companies in USA pay to get a well known person! I guess in Europe no one pays this kind of money.

I don't care if the Clinton's have some important message to transmit, my point is that if you are good or well known you want to be in the biggest countries and in the biggest cities. In Europe the amount of money companies pay it's a fraction and in my country a lot of famous athletes agree to speak for a small fee to cover the expenses!

my advice is if you want to make money move to the center, the biggest country and the biggest city! The same person in London makes 4 or 5 times more than in Lisbon doing the same job and with the same productivity.

More about the same:

http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2016/03/how-to-get-better-move-to-big-city.html

Low skilled people voted to leave EU. They did well. Globalization and free trade is very good for the best. If you are not the best it's better to be in a closed country very protected.

i know that if you are in a closed economy the prices of everything will go up but you would probably have a job.

But the pains of the low skilled people are not only caused by Globalization, automation is the real culprit and that is not going away. Low skilled people and i mean the 90% less educated are doomed anyway.

What to do? Be nice or be very very smart

https://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2014/06/be-nice-or-be-fired.html

I spent last week in NY visiting HF

1. Mid town is changing slowly. Only shops that cater to tourists survive. Barnes &Noble closed in Rockefeller center and in Citigroup building. Toys r us & Fao Schwartz also closed. Prada, Michael Kors etc... are opening more & more shops. Difficult to buy a toy for my boy.

2. Restaurants are very expensive, i went to LAVO a very nice restaurant ( i believe it's in 58th street) and without wine (cheapest was USD 70) and desert we paid USD 300 for 3! For us Europeans the price we see in the menu is not what we are going to pay because we have to add tax & service!

3. Many of the funds i visit are a bit negative about the economy and the stock market. I took this as a bullish sign (S&P is doing all time highs). We are in a Bull market and in a bull market we have to wait and sit still.

4. Quant is doing great all the rest is struggling a bit. To me Quant is discipline and like all in life if you have discipline you will do well in the long run.

5. the move to Organic is unstoppable. There was a big queue in the Fresh & Co chain. impossible to eat there.

6. Don't have breakfast in a NY Hotel it's very expensive USD 40 and they add tax & service which is a steal. you can go to Whole Foods and have a top breakfast.

the view from my room

7. I have walked some 17k every day in NY. it's a wonderfull city just to walk from meeting to meeting.

8.Next time i will be in NY i will try Soul Cycle Gym. They look cool.

9.I bought a ticket to Mega Millions (lump sum 508 Million less taxes I guess) ! If I win I will buy a new mountain bike and a Horse.

I finished my 4th EOX on saturday.

It's a Ultramarathon on Mountain Bike. The best riders finish in 10 hours!

I did 4th in my first EOX , 3rd, 9th and Saturday 9th overall again.

This year they created a Masters class with more than 45 years and i got a 2nd place prize!

11 hours on the bike.

The start was at 6 am in Spain. I woke up at 4.15 am shower, eat some sereals with juice and one coffee in my room (the Hotel Breakfast was closed) and my brother drove me to the start line

There were some 100 riders at the start line. Some of them were clearly out of my league! Bruno Rosa one of the best in Portugal was there and he ended up winning the race.

The start was too fast for me so i settled my pace and after several hours started to gain some places. After the 5th hour i was in a group of 7 feeling great. there were 5 riders at the front of us and then our group. unfortunately i got a flat tire and had to stop and repair. I lost 4 minutes and i lost the group. After that i rode alone for some 3 ou 4 hours and then got company. in the end i finish 9th arriving with Nuno Marques from Barcelos in the north of Portugal who is much better than me but was feeling bad.

it was a good day. temperatures of more than 35 celsius the only thing that i kept thinking was cold water. If it's true

i am very happy!

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