Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Distant Voices, Altered Lives

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“What was I like when I was little?”

I knew the answer to the question already. After all, I had asked it plenty of times before, and the response was comfortingly consistent.

“Oh, you were a gentle baby.”

As a child, I found great reassurance knowing that even during the phase of life that infantile amnesia prevented me from remembering, I was a gentle person. I’m not sure why it was so important, but all my life I have embraced gentleness as a crucial part of my identity, and I wanted to know from my mother that I had always been sweet-natured. I wished it for myself, and for her. (more…)

The Phases of Apple’s Entire Public History

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I know that the Cupertino-based tech giant has been talked to death, but my relationship with Apple is, I think, a fairly special one, so I wanted to share my own view as to the principal phases the company has been through over the years of its public ownership. I’ve laid out the entire price chart of Apple from its IPO to the present day and have tinted what I consider the main eras: (more…)

The Boomerang of Hate

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The Slope of Hope has a well-deserved reputation for being a kind and helpful community. That’s largely because of the cultural fabric each of us has woven into this place over the past eight+ years. I have been online since 1981, and I have a profoundly acute sense as to what constitutes a good online culture, so I daresay Slope is the last bastion of financial discussion that isn’t laced with vitriol within the components of the group. (more…)