As an “IQ junkie”, anything about IQ is going to pique my interest. I saw this going viral: American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the ‘Reverse Flynn effect’ . I don’t think it necessarily proves what it purports to claim. It’s possible: -The Fynn Effect never existed. The existence or lack thereof of the… Continue reading IQ decline dysgenics (are IQs really falling?)

Since around 2020, and getting worse with each passing year, has seen the so-called trinity of enshitification, tip-flation, and shrinkflation, that working in unison has gradually and insidiously eroded our purchasing power, our sanity, and the quality and quantity of goods we consume. It’s bad enough having 7% annual ‘official’ CPI inflation, but including other,… Continue reading The trinity: enshitification, tip inflation, and shrinkflation

One thing that is annoying is how people who are otherwise objectively smart (such as in STEM fields) and disinclined to believe hype from ‘political media’ or the MSM, uncritically believe social scientists. It’s like, “that pundit on Fox News is wrong, but some social scientist or journalist is right.” No, they may both be… Continue reading Social Science as the New Puritanism

Time for another update, Bitcoin has gone up a bit but still unable to get above 31k. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps going up. So I still make money being short even in a bull market, and then with my leveraged tech stock positions I still make money on the long side, too. The chart… Continue reading Bitcoin update: crash to commence–crypto has no future in society

Meta stock has finally crossed $300 again, as I said it would: META up 20% today, on top of huge gains over the past month, as I said would happen. It’s going back to $350 soon. TSLA up 30% over the past month, going back to $300. TUR is still falling, also as I said… Continue reading ‘We’ Hate Zuck Because He’s Better Than Us

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