5 ms·

Neat. How did you know that? (The term, not the quoted Wikipedia text.)

matkoniecz 6y ago
I spend large part of my life on reading about things that are interesting, even if not directly useful. I would learn about it from brilliant https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/ - I think that it was mentioned there somewhere. I think this specific case I have seen first mentioned in work by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Kopali%C5%84ski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Kopali%C5%... "Kot w worku, czyli Z dziejów pojęć i rzeczy" - with short text on wide range of topics, ranging from art forgery (and interesting case of art forgery so old so it was precious historic treasure anyway) to topics such as disease eradication. (for example as result of Ever Given I learned plenty of things about container shipping, even if it is not something directly useful - for example this video showing unloading process of container ship is rally interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INsf6XHdfAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INsf6XHdfAA - shows crane picking up truck-sized containers, dropping them into truck, then immediately following process)
- KMag 6y ago
  > (for example as result of Ever Given I learned plenty of things about container shipping, One thing I learned from poking around financial models (I was/am a maintainer for a domain-specific financial modeling language used by a Fortune 500 financial services company) is that some ships are capesize[0], meaning they're too big for either the Panama or Suez canal and must transit Cape Horn and/or Cape Agulhas. In our language, Booleans are represented as IEEE-754 double-precision floating point numbers (0.0 is False, everything else is true, with the constant True being 1.0), so for a bit I was imagining gigantic container ships dressing up as superheroes and putting on capes, and going to parties out in the middle of the ocean. Digging a bit deeper, I discovered this particular field was being used as a Boolean, and a quick web search ruined the magic of what capesize really meant. I presume this wound up in our financial models because whether a ship is capesize affects its value, which affects the value of corporate bonds (or other corporate debt instruments) partially backed by ships as collateral. I suppose it's also possible that at some point we entered into bespoke repurchase agreements involving ships. (To avoid various risks in bankruptcy courts, sometimes financing is arranged by selling some asset below market value with an agreement to buy it back at a fixed date at a fixed higher price. There might also be a rental agreement involved. The cash flows look like a secured loan, but in case the loan can't be repaid, a court order isn't necessary to seize assets... the collateral assets have already legally changed hands.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capesize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capesize

I spend large part of my life on reading about things that are interesting, even if not directly useful. I would learn about it from brilliant https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/ - I think that it was mentioned there somewhere. I think this specific case I have seen first mentioned in work by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Kopali%C5%84ski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Kopali%C5%... "Kot w worku, czyli Z dziejów pojęć i rzeczy" - with short text on wide range of topics, ranging from art forgery (and interesting case of art forgery so old so it was precious historic treasure anyway) to topics such as disease eradication. (for example as result of Ever Given I learned plenty of things about container shipping, even if it is not something directly useful - for example this video showing unloading process of container ship is rally interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INsf6XHdfAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INsf6XHdfAA - shows crane picking up truck-sized containers, dropping them into truck, then immediately following process)

KMag 6y ago
> (for example as result of Ever Given I learned plenty of things about container shipping, One thing I learned from poking around financial models (I was/am a maintainer for a domain-specific financial modeling language used by a Fortune 500 financial services company) is that some ships are capesize[0], meaning they're too big for either the Panama or Suez canal and must transit Cape Horn and/or Cape Agulhas. In our language, Booleans are represented as IEEE-754 double-precision floating point numbers (0.0 is False, everything else is true, with the constant True being 1.0), so for a bit I was imagining gigantic container ships dressing up as superheroes and putting on capes, and going to parties out in the middle of the ocean. Digging a bit deeper, I discovered this particular field was being used as a Boolean, and a quick web search ruined the magic of what capesize really meant. I presume this wound up in our financial models because whether a ship is capesize affects its value, which affects the value of corporate bonds (or other corporate debt instruments) partially backed by ships as collateral. I suppose it's also possible that at some point we entered into bespoke repurchase agreements involving ships. (To avoid various risks in bankruptcy courts, sometimes financing is arranged by selling some asset below market value with an agreement to buy it back at a fixed date at a fixed higher price. There might also be a rental agreement involved. The cash flows look like a secured loan, but in case the loan can't be repaid, a court order isn't necessary to seize assets... the collateral assets have already legally changed hands.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capesize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capesize