From CNN: Biden just signed a potential TikTok ban into law. Here’s what happens next. Pundits are erroneously calling this a TikTok ban, when it’s anything but. It’s more like a roadmap of options that could, in theory, potentially lead to a ban down the road if TikTok management is somehow unable to avail itself… Continue reading TikTok Ban: Take 2 (Why it won’t happen)

Time for another update on the Bitcoin method, in which I describe a ‘night effect’ for Bitcoin, similar to one that has existed for stocks for decades. A highly-cited paper from 2008 describes a night effect for stocks: We use transaction-level data and decompose the US equity premium into day (open to close) and night… Continue reading A Strong ‘Night Effect’ for Bitcoin: All of bitcoin’s gains come from overnight

I saw this going viral, from The Economist: Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich: Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers. Gen-z benefited from five key economic tailwinds or trends over the past 15 or so years, although this also applies to many millennials too: 1. Inflated white-collar salaries and substantial… Continue reading Why Generation Z is Unprecedentedly Rich

This week feels like Déjà vu of last week. Item #1: From the NYTs: Muted Reactions to Israeli Strikes on Iran Hint at De-Escalation, “Israel had vowed retaliation for Iran’s attack last weekend, but the strikes reported overnight were limited, and Iran downplayed them.” This agrees with what I wrote last week here and here,… Continue reading The Daily View 4/21/2024: Iran vs. Israel, DJT Stock Comeback

Peter Thiel said that AI will be “worse for the math people than the word people.” My intuition would be it’s going to be quite the opposite, where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people. What people have told me is that they think within three to five years, the… Continue reading AI will not make writers obsolete

I saw this going viral: Harvard will require test scores for admission again (archive link) “Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources,” Chetty said in a statement Thursday. “But the data reveal that… Continue reading Test-Optional is a Failure: The Return of the SATs

It’s time to expound on the recent situation involving Israel and Iran. With Israel and Iran in full-swing, all the prediction sites like Metaculus have added markets for wagering or estimating the possibility of war involving Israel and Iran. Thank you–where were you guys a week ago? A lot of good that does. Yet again–like… Continue reading Iran vs. Israel: The problem with forecasting, and my heuristic for profiting

O.J. Simpson died at 76 of prostate cancer–which despite the ‘health experts’ and media’s insistence is harmless and slow-growing, even going so far as to reclassify certain prostate cancers as non-cancers–evidently still kills people at a relatively young age. This goes to show how useless and harmful many of these health experts are, as we… Continue reading O.J. and the compartmentalization of serious crime

Item #1: Bitcoin crashes, as I predicted last week, on Iran escalation (and the overall shittiness of cryptocurrency that requires no additional explanation). It’s going all the way back to $20k, maybe lower: When one of the smartest people and best forecaster says Bitcoin is going back to $20k, you better believe it. Contrary to… Continue reading The Daily View 4/13/2024: Bitcoin Crashes, Iran Attack, and ‘Degen communism’

A day does not go by without breathless headlines about advances in AI, chatbots, machine learning, or related technologies. Thanks to the so-called internet-of-things, your iPhone can sync with your dishwasher, and thanks to Neuralink, in the not-too-distant future will sync with your mind. You can summon a chatbot to solve business problems, or use… Continue reading Why the AI can read your mind but nothing works