Mere Musings

Yet another discussion post that I wanted to keep writing about but not annoy my fellow students by getting wildly off topic. “One thing that I’ve thought about recently (this program exposes us to the global reach/scale of the companies that we’re already familiar with) is wondering just how big these mega corporations will get. We live in such an unprecedented time in global scale/business, each company is constantly looking for more improvements and gains, seamingly the only thing keeping them from gobbling up everything is government regulations. Your company choices reminded me of CVS’s attempt to buy Aetna for $69 billion. The only thing standing in their way is potential antitrust regulations. The chapters we read for this week have talked about how we have an interest in continuing OUR big companies, but don’t want other countries to get a foothold, but what if that stands to change? The sense of unity (think of the EU and their economic block) in our globally connected world...

"There's nothing new under the sun," often understood as there's no new things, every story's already been told. Though that's another topic, the thing I wanted to talk about today is about iterative creators, sometimes referred to as "copycats." A Youtuber that I have long enjoyed watching, " Primitive Technology " documents one guy's hobby of living life with "primitive tech." He went out into some land he owned and just started making things, no outside tools and has gradually gotten more advanced, making clay tiles and all sorts of fantastic things. It's both entertaining and calming which is why I've always enjoyed his videos. He has a very distinct style, instead of bombarding you with words or talking, he stays silent, almost emotionless through the entire video, it's a distinct choice and really lends itself to what he's doing. He's the "original" to this genre of youtube channel. Ther...

(Background info. I'm in an MBA program and part of it is bi-weekly forum posts. This week was interesting enough/long enough to merit more attention than unread forum for 11 people. I'm not an expert but these were my thoughts while researching the topic of payday loans for a class.) I’m an avid listener to NPR and interestingly enough, yesterday there was a small bit on payday loans (as well as a couple weeks ago a more in-depth segment). They talked about how the problem with payday loans isn’t when they’re used once, but when they’re used repeatedly. Having to pay the fees for the first loan makes the second paycheck not go as far as it should, needing a second loan. It’s just a terrible cycle that adds up to a HUGE interest rate. The second more in-depth segment discussed a study of payday loans and found that when people were given more information about the exact details and ramifications of these loans they were less likely to take them out. It showed that a lot of peop...

I've been toying around with the idea of a blog for awhile, it just seems like a great place to save and share my musings and activities in a way that social media just can't. I've had ideas to write about for years but never got around to putting pen to paper (or key to keyboard) but figure now is as good a time as any. This blog will have a wide scope, whatever interests me (which believe me, is a lot) and whatever I have strong feelings/ideas about. I love to toy around with ideas and concepts and while I'd never consider myself a writer, I've always enjoyed writing down ideas and fleshing them out. This hopefully will be quite rewarding for me, to get in the practice of picking my own brain as well as producing "quality" content, but also hopefully be interesting or insightful to read (if only for examples of what NOT to do/think). But regardless of my skill level or degree of interest, the only way to get better is to do. So that's what I'm go...