Month: October 2022

A week does not go by without headlines decrying the sorry state of America’s education system, such as stories about how U.S. students are either falling behind foreign peers or are failing to meet basic proficiency standards. Or how high school students cannot do algebra. Or college students being unprepared. Seeing such headlines, one may… Continue reading The Hidden Underachievers and the Limits of the Meritocracy

After 6 months of stalling, it’s finally happening. For those who seek light, this is a loss. For those who seek victory, this is a win. There is no way that the left can spin this into a positive. The priority is now damage control. Between this, high inflation, and the overturn of Roe v.… Continue reading Twitter buyout complete (finally)

Richard Hanania describes social conservatism as hopeless and says that “secularization and cultural liberalism are inevitable.” The crux of his argument is that social conservatism is rejected by a lot of people, and thus it needs to be imposed by force. “Still, the regime is extremely unpopular, at least with the urban elite that forms… Continue reading The Decline of Social Conservatism: What Happened

Xi Jinping continues to secure power, for an unprecedented third term as China’s leader (instead of the usual two-term limit). Chinese stocks are crashing on this news, down 10%. My thoughts: 1. People got the outcome right but the cause wrong. Sure enough, China is struggling as many predicted, but it’s not due to Covid… Continue reading Xi Jinping secures power: some thoughts

From Unz Review, Tucker Carlson’s Virtue-Signal with Kanye West Backfired—But Exposed Regime’s Rampant Social Credit Canceling. I think Derb is off the mark here. Conservatives who are respectable enough to have their own TV shows—a category that obviously includes Tucker—live in terror of being thought hostile to blacks. They want thirteen percent of their guests… Continue reading Tucker and Kanye

There is nothing wrong with selling out or being a hack, per say. Most creative-type people are never going to be in a position to sell out. And those who do can take their profits and reinvest them in causes they care about but are unpopular. People seem to think that making money is as… Continue reading Philosophical ramblings: Creativity, Authenticity, Stoicism, and Wealth and Happiness

[Closed my #BTC short. No reason. Will think abt it later] — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) October 17, 2022 Talk about bad timing, BTC is down 2% since he covered his position yesterday (because when you cover a short position, you expect the price to go up). He has said multiple times that it’s worthless,… Continue reading Taleb covers BTC short, too soon?

It’s an understatement to say the past year has been demoralizing. The 3x tech ETFs have gotten killed. Inflation and interest rate expectations have surged. The S&P 500 is down 25% this year. Nasdaq down 30%. But the Nasdaq is up 3% today. If and when the stock market recovers, which I predict will be… Continue reading 2022 has sucked, but looking ahead

I saw this Richard Hanania article Please Don’t Call Me “Heterodox”: The language of dissidence as the mirror image of reading the room: Many of them also believe that the 2020 election was stolen. I suspect that in some cases they started out by realizing how crazy academia and the media were on matters of… Continue reading There is no reason to trust the mainstream media

From an autobiography of Buckminster Fuller: His last book was a group biography of three science-fiction authors (Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Isaac Asimov) and the writer-editor John W. Campbell. These men, like Fuller, interpreted advances in specialized fields for the public, making forceful arguments about the future, which they said would be science-driven,… Continue reading The end of cult figures