Item #1: I edited and rewrote parts of my article on smoking and obesity, Bring Back Smoking to End Obesity. Smoking, stimulants, and purgatives were widespread in the seventies and earlier as a way to mitigate weight gain. Food has replaced the role of smoking and amphetamines for simulation. Item #2: Bitcoin keeps lagging Nvidia… Continue reading The Daily View, 5/26/2024: Japan and Ozempic, Hikikomori , Smoking and Obesity

I often see people using adjectives such as ‘odd’, ‘bizarre’ or ‘strange’ to refer to each other’s arguments when what they meant to say is they disagree. Or that they “don’t understand” or “don’t follow”. Perhaps this is seen as less offensive or a circuitous or roundabout way to express disagreement. Arguments can be fallacious… Continue reading Arguments are not strange

In my post from last year, The trinity: enshitification, tip inflation, and shrinkflation, a characteristic of enshitification is the removal of useful features, and the imposition of features no one wants and are annoying. There is no permission; users have no say in this process in what features are added or removed. It just happens.… Continue reading The Assistant No One Asked For

Walt Mismark argues that the alt-right has won, calling it “wildly successful”. Sebastian Jensen takes the opposite view, which I agree. The alt-right lost in the sense it has been subsumed or overtaken by the trad/norm-core right and aesthetic on twitter, especially since 2022. Although some alt-right values were assimilated, it’s no longer the alt-right.… Continue reading The Fall of the Alt-Right and the Rise of the Norm-Core Right

I saw this: How The Atlantic Went from Broke to Profitable in Three Years, which agrees with my earlier article from just a month ago: Why legacy media is thriving. Every year we hear the same tired predictions about how legacy print media (which includes its online/digital equivalents) is doomed, dying, or ‘unable to keep… Continue reading Legacy Media is Thriving in the Trump Era

Item #1: I saw this going viral on Twitter: Some people see “50% of marriages end in divorce” and incorrectly believe this means their own chance of getting divorced, were they to get married, is 50%. This would be like reading that 35% of Americans have fatty liver disease and believing that you have a… Continue reading The Stats You Need: Divorce Rates and Harvard’s Acceptance Rate

Item 1: Your Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can’t You? Allen Wong’s story is an outlier among FIRE outliers. It’s like, “TIL: High-IQ people earn more money.” His success is so luck dependent even by FIRE standards. He may as well had joined Uber or Facebook in 2009 or been an early investor… Continue reading The Daily View 5/15/2024: FIRE lifestyle, Music, VCs, Status Games, and more

Anyone who did SEO in the early 2000s, including yours truly, probably recalls the adage ‘content is king’. It meant that rather than focusing on building links, writing the best possible content should take priority. In theory, links would be rewarded without having to buy or ask for them, because people would apparently feel compelled… Continue reading The internet is overflowing with ‘content’, and it sucks. Users are fighting back.

According to a 2018 Guardian article, we are living in an ‘age of rage’. Such anger is often framed as having an ideological or political bend or etiology (e.g. Trump, Biden, Covid). Another article The West needs to grow up argues that infantilism is to blame for society’s problems. Jonathan Haidt makes similar arguments that… Continue reading The Age of Rage: Why are People are So Angry?

Item #0: RIP to the GOAT: Jim Simons, a Pioneer of Quantitative Trading, Dies. It is believed that Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion Fund earns title of the greatest performance of any hedge fund. Although we don’t agree on much politically, I like to think he served as inspiration for my own life. He set the standard… Continue reading Daily View, Finance Edition: RIP James Simons, Huge Gains Shorting Bitcoin