Category: Uncategorized

High vs. low cost of living calculations fail to take into account the overlooked benefits of ‘high cost of living’ areas: 1. For a person living alone modestly, $200k even in the Bay Area is more than enough to put away a decent chunk of money for retirement. Just run the numbers, as I have… Continue reading High vs. low cost of living calculations (why things are not as bad as they seem)

1. Bitcoin update: getting ready to drop. Last week I predicted Bitcoin would drop based on a pattern, which is still valid: The likely (as I predict) SEC rejection of the recent batch of Bitcoin spot price ETF applications will be the catalyst for a big decline, although it could fall for no particular reason… Continue reading The daily view 7/7/2023: Bitcoin Crash Soon, Battle of Billionaires, Affirmative Action

I saw this tweet going viral: All of you people saying white collar work is a safe choice. Please ask some 55 year old men or women what happens to you once you hit 45 or so, and how safe your career path is…. Then come back and share your oh so informed opinions on… Continue reading All jobs have risk, but you may as well maximize your earnings anyway

From Noah Smith Hey tech folks: The West is not failing. He’s right about all of these: The notion that there is a “global American empire”, and that this empire is “ending” The idea that the U.S. dollar is falling and will be replaced by either crypto or a BRICS currency The belief that the… Continue reading No de-dollarization

1. OpenAI sued A lawsuit claims OpenAI stole ‘massive amounts of personal data,’ including medical records and information about children, to train ChatGPT: The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI crawled the web to amass huge amounts of data, including vast quantities taken from social-media sites. OpenAI’s propertiatary AI corpus of personal data, WebText2, for example, scraped… Continue reading The daily view 6/30/2023: Bitcoin ETF rejection?, Apple $3 trillion, OpenAI sued

From Arnold Kling, Price Discrimination Explains College Tuition: He points out that list prices for tuition mislead the public in many ways. For example, he reports that although average full tuition at private colleges rose 33 percent from $27,000 in 2004 to almost $34,000 in 2020, average tuition paid actually edged down, from $15,000 to… Continue reading College tuition and scholarships: who pays what

Bitcoin getting ready to dump again to $25k soon, and then back to old support of $15k probably by end of the year or early next year. The sloppiness and lack of compression and lack of smoothness in the chart portends to major downside like last time when it was at $29k: You can see… Continue reading bitcoin getting ready to crash again , charts very bearish

I saw this going viral: Ok WHAT. I had no idea “The Population Bomb” led to the sterilization of 8 million Indians and Paul Ehrlich just lives out his life as a beloved professor. From a recent ACX post— pic.twitter.com/gtIDYC3pcu — Alt Man Sam (@mezaoptimizer) June 26, 2023 Just as the left has its own… Continue reading Defending Ehrlich (sorta)

Time for another round of tweets. Except Mr. Arab man, he never publicly opposed Polio vaccines (I think Balaji is wrong about almost everything, especially crypto, but let’s not put words in his mouth): So, apparently steroids are OK, but not polio vaccines. Same incompatibility as w/libertarian Putinism. Granted Balaji has discernment issues; the question… Continue reading Tooleb tweets, part 4

1. From Arnold Kling How did my genes survive? I am 5’3”. I wonder why I exist. If the preferences that women express on online dating sites are to be believed, then if I were young and single then my chances of reproducing would be close to zero. Working backwards, the genes that caused me… Continue reading The Daily View 6/24/2023: OceanGate , Bitcoin, Putin,