Time for another Daily View round-up. Haven’t done one of these in a while.
Item #1: Bitcoin due for crash as old holders, miners sell:
This is so obvious that I have increased my position against it, whilst still long leveraged tech, so I will make money either way from the tech stocks rising and or Bitcoin falling.
It does not matter how much Michael Saylor buys, there is too much supply from old holders and Mt. Gox to offset his buying. The price being as high as it is, is in part based on the implicit assumption that many of the coins mined from 2009-2011 are lost for good, but I believe far fewer coins are lost than assumed.
How hard is it to store a text file or a hard drive containing the key? We’re supposed to believe someone was technologically savvy enough to mine hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin early on, which was still not an easy feat even when mining them was less difficult, but cannot keep track of a key? This additional supply will weigh on the price.
Item #2: Interesting article by Scott Greer, DEI-Brained Generals:
According to this ideology, America is great and good because of its sacred diversity. The mission of the empire is to spread this diversity to every part of the globe in order to make it more democratic. Un-diverse places (which just mean areas that are too white, not too black, Asian, etc.) are seen as very bad and anti-democratic. Viktor Orban’s Hungary is regularly castigated as anti-democratic simply because it rejects mass immigration. Even though Russia is multicultural, it’s still a white majority country. Thus, people like General Anderson demonize it as a white nationalist state that’s afraid of a mixed-race American president.
It’s debatable if Russia is taxonomically White. I don’t think it is. It’s more like it’s multi-ethnic than multicultural. The left hates Russia for two reasons: alleged election interference and Ukraine. Ethnonationalism has little to nothing to do with it. Pre-2016 the left was either indifferent or even saw Russia as being a bulwark against American expansionism and influence. Bill Clinton for example was a huge fan of Putin during the late 90s and and early 2000s and there are many photographs of the two together. Russia is not even that culturally conservative either.
Item #3: McDonald’s stock recovers its losses. A month ago when McDonald’s stock was at $260 I called it a ‘premium product’, arguing that customers were unfazed by the high prices despite the negative media coverage, and sure enough, it’s at $300 now, having recovered all its losses. Right again.
McDonald’s, along with Wing Stop and Chipotle, is now a premium/luxury experience for the upper-middle-class. Spending $40 for lunch is the ‘new normal’, as Americans have so much disposable income now. It’s not just for poor people or kids anymore like during the 90s or early 2000s, when growing up you’d scrounge the couch or bed for change to go to McDonald’s. That role is filled by Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, or Burger king. If you want cheap fast food, McDonald’s is not the place anymore. Similar to Tesla and Apple, the premium market has the highest profit margins and is the ideal one. I was also right about McDonald’s not being hurt by the new obesity drugs, as many incorrectly predicted last year. Same for Walmart stock, which also keeps going up.
Item #4: Meta stock makes new highs:
The best prediction of the year keeps getting better. Meta has gained almost 450% since I recommended it in early 2023. Meta basically dominates social networking and advertising between Facebook and Instagram, along with its other services. Google is dominant too, such as YouTube, but cannot make inroads into Meta’s territory. The verdict is still out on the smart glasses and the Metaverse. This will either be a new paradigm or the digital equivalent of the Spruce Goose.
Item #5: Candidates make Hail Mary pass in last ditch effort for votes
Right now we’re in the silly season of the 2024 election. In a last minute bid for voters, both candidates make increasingly grandiose promises or policy proposals that they cannot possibly deliver on or have no intention of. Because time is so limited, it’s not like they will have to substantiate their promises with actual evidence.
Kamala did this with her wealth tax proposal. Same for Trump’s threats of protectionism and price caps. The odds of any of these becoming policy are about zero, as neither intend to follow-through on their promises, nor have the political capital to do so. And this also assumes it survives legal challenges. Trump’s Executive Order 13769, which limited immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, was nullified by judges. Same for Biden and student loan forgiveness, which was struck down by SCOTUS.
Trump also in did this in 2016 with his border wall proposal. After he was inaugurated, the wall went out the window in favor of the much more politically viable tax cuts. I predict the same for 2024 too should he win. He’s not going to rock the boat with policy that could be bad for the stock market or economy.
This is why the stock market is not concerned. Just empty populist promises by both sides.
Item #6: Trump hates Taylor Swift:
Trump posted that he hates Taylor Swift. But crucially, he made this comment on Truth Social, not Twitter. Richard Hanania
called this a blunder, but it was a calculated move by Trump to stir up his base, which is why he posted it on Truth Social and not Twitter. Truth Social is a self-selected audience of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Had he posted it on Twitter then it would have been a mistake, but Trump is smarter than that.
This continues in the tradition of Trump deliberately making incendiary or polarizing remarks to the gasps and horrors of the media, but it works for him when it would otherwise doom other politicians. Same for his comments in 2015 about Mexico, or in 2024 about Haitians and pets. The sort of person who is appalled by these remarks was never going to vote for him. Yet Trump benefits from high turnout and enthusiasm of ‘super supporters’, ideologues, and single-issue voters, even at the cost of losing some of the middle. It’s somewhat counterintuitive how this works, because it’s not just about ‘more supporters’, but rather the type of supporter with a high turnout in battleground states.
Item #7: U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Ellison in New York City to 24 months and ordered her to forfeit $11 billion for her involvement in the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange company.
I am not sure where she is going to get $11 billion, but a lot of people are mad that she got off easy. She cooperated and was the star witness. It’s implicitly understood that cooperating entails a shorter sentence; otherwise, there would be no reason to help. Everyone would just take the Fifth. Also, she was short-changed by her coconspirators, earning little money and not spending lavishly at all. Third, she wasn’t involved with FTX and the misappropriation of customer funds, but rather was part of the Alameda trading division.
Item #8: Soda does not cause weight gain in mice
“Calories in / calories out” is bullshit.
You can make mice eat 4x the calories and end up the same body weight, as long as the calories are from soda.¹
Scientists restricted one amino acid (isoleucine) in mice. This made them eat twice as much, have ~75% less fat mass, and…
— anabology (@anabology) September 23, 2024
There are something like a billion obese humans that this experiment could be run on. Why still mice? One idea is to have prisoners volunteer for medical experiments in exchange for reduced time and other benefits. Then you’d have a large supply of people to test these theories on in a strictly controlled environment, with fewer ethical concerns. Given the popularity of soda and high rates of obesity, this would not work on humans.
Item #9: The myth of superior Asian health
You do not realize how grossly corpulent Americans are until you’re in Asia
Everyone is normal BMI
There might be one overweight person with a BMI of 30
No 300+ beached whales
— AJAC (@AJA_Cortes) September 23, 2024
Yeah, except they have tons of visceral fat, smoke like chimneys, have abnormally high rates of diabetes, have high rates or stomach and esophageal cancer due to picked foods, have low muscle mass, and not uncommonly drop dead in their 60s and 70s. Meanwhile, obese Americans on the ‘SAD’ live forever it seems, like James Earl Jones who was obese and died at 93. This came as surprise to me that Asian populations are not nearly as healthy as their low body weight would suggest. As for Japan having a lot of centenarians on a per capita basis, this is likely due to pension fraud, not superior diets. (Which further disabuses the popular notion that ‘Asians don’t do crime’, which is a common narrative that you see on Twitter.)
Item #10: Speaking of crime, duo arrested for livestreamed $230 million Bitcoin heist.
Whether it’s this or FTX, yet again, we see a recurring pattern where non-blacks tend to commit large financial crimes. The tendency of X/Twitter to focus on only black crime overlooks crime committed by other groups. There is no group that is somehow ‘ethically pure’. India commits tons of call center or tech support fraud, for example. Eastern Europe does tons of computer fraud. Whites do tons of infomercial fraud or those shitty get-rich-quick real estate seminars.
Item #11: The world is becoming more Kafkaesque:
Evernote, who deleted no less than thirty thousand words as their user interface failed to sync the data across my devices.
Buggy technology is not Kafkaesque. Your car not working is not Kafkaesque. Technology failing to meet our expectations is not the same as an impersonal or impenetrable bureaucracy. It’s time to retire this word. If language is supposed to facilitate clarity or communication, the word Kafkaesque doesn’t. There is probably a better word that describes the phenomenon he’s writing about. I call it more like the disconnect. Technology is complicated, so there is a disconnect between the interface and the output. Politicians are increasingly disconnected from voters.