Xi Jinping continues to secure power, for an unprecedented third term as China’s leader (instead of the usual two-term limit). Chinese stocks are crashing on this news, down 10%. My thoughts: 1. People got the outcome right but the cause wrong. Sure enough, China is struggling as many predicted, but it’s not due to Covid… Continue reading Xi Jinping secures power: some thoughts

From Unz Review, Tucker Carlson’s Virtue-Signal with Kanye West Backfired—But Exposed Regime’s Rampant Social Credit Canceling. I think Derb is off the mark here. Conservatives who are respectable enough to have their own TV shows—a category that obviously includes Tucker—live in terror of being thought hostile to blacks. They want thirteen percent of their guests… Continue reading Tucker and Kanye

There is nothing wrong with selling out or being a hack, per say. Most creative-type people are never going to be in a position to sell out. And those who do can take their profits and reinvest them in causes they care about but are unpopular. People seem to think that making money is as… Continue reading Philosophical ramblings: Creativity, Authenticity, Stoicism, and Wealth and Happiness

[Closed my #BTC short. No reason. Will think abt it later] — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) October 17, 2022 Talk about bad timing, BTC is down 2% since he covered his position yesterday (because when you cover a short position, you expect the price to go up). He has said multiple times that it’s worthless,… Continue reading Taleb covers BTC short, too soon?

It’s an understatement to say the past year has been demoralizing. The 3x tech ETFs have gotten killed. Inflation and interest rate expectations have surged. The S&P 500 is down 25% this year. Nasdaq down 30%. But the Nasdaq is up 3% today. If and when the stock market recovers, which I predict will be… Continue reading 2022 has sucked, but looking ahead

I saw this Richard Hanania article Please Don’t Call Me “Heterodox”: The language of dissidence as the mirror image of reading the room: Many of them also believe that the 2020 election was stolen. I suspect that in some cases they started out by realizing how crazy academia and the media were on matters of… Continue reading There is no reason to trust the mainstream media

From an autobiography of Buckminster Fuller: His last book was a group biography of three science-fiction authors (Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Isaac Asimov) and the writer-editor John W. Campbell. These men, like Fuller, interpreted advances in specialized fields for the public, making forceful arguments about the future, which they said would be science-driven,… Continue reading The end of cult figures

It would seem like every measure of societal well-being has gotten worse since 2020: Increased healthcare costs Increased chronic illness Increased mental illness Increased crime Increased national unrest Worker shortages Stunted learning/development Supply shortages Inflation Global global unrest (Ukraine vs. Russia) None of these these things are going to get better. The healthcare burden and… Continue reading The National Sickness

I saw this No, the USA Is Not Headed Towards Civil War See that red rectangle? That belongs to the anti-systemic left who are firmly entrenched in many of the USA’s leading universities, who are not particularly loyal to the constitutional republic, and are more than happy to see it end to serve their own… Continue reading Expect more political and cultural division in the US, but not civil war

Over the past few years that has been considerable hype over tail-hedging funds, most notably Universa, which made headlines everywhere after it booked a 3,000-4,000% return in 2020: A ‘Black Swan’ fund posted a massive 4,000% return after the coronavirus blew up markets Nassim Taleb-Advised Universa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March Investor who returned… Continue reading Tail Hedging Strategies Are Struggling During the 2022 Bear Market