I saw this: In a partnership with the “CSPI and Salem Center UT”, Manifold Markets is having a $25,000 forecasting tournament. Here is the website for the prediction market itself, with various markets/contracts, such as “Will Donald Trump Be Indicted for a Crime in 2022),” which shows 40% odds he will be indicted. One thing… Continue reading Forecasting: The Importance of Having an Edge

Freddie argues that America lusts for another war War as Cope: Ukraine as Desert Storm, Iraq-Afghanistan as Vietnam It was not until I was an adult that I realized that the absurd fervor for Desert Storm was in fact about Vietnam. Fifteen years earlier, American helicopters had fled in humiliation from Saigon, and nothing had… Continue reading The Russia-Ukraine situation could have been far worse

Interesting article Thoughts on the origins of wokeness Another perspective is that woke-ism isn’t new. It’s just that we have a new name for it. In the past it would have been called ‘anti racism’, ‘civil rights’ or something like that. In an earlier article I give a bunch of examples of past incidents which… Continue reading Origins of the woke

An oft-repeated factoid or ‘info nugget’ is that ancient and medieval people lived long lives, comparable even to today, after excluding child/infant mortality. Infant mortality skews the data so much that average life expectancy was otherwise similar to today. Not quite so. Rather than the assurance of a long life conditional on surviving infancy or… Continue reading Modern medicine is keeping a lot of young and middle-aged people alive

Bitcoin continues to implode as predicted and right on time, falling below 19,000. And also as predicted earlier, on a 3-month timeframe Bitcoin (black) is still massively lagging 3x tech ETFs (blue and yellow) and Tesla (green): The only difference between now and 2 weeks go is that ARKK is outperforming the 3x funds, but… Continue reading Bitcoin and Gold Both Fail Miserably as Hedges, Investments

I saw this article about the alleged futility of censorship They’re Just Going to Start a New Hate Site, Obviously I think Freddie is coming across as blasé or out of touch. It’s the trendy intellectual thing to believe that ‘individuals cannot make a difference’ or that ‘powerful people don’t know what they are doing’.… Continue reading Censorship probably does work

The purging of the alt/dissident-right from social media, such as on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter from 2017-2021 created a huge vacuum that was filled by civic nationalists. Strategically this has worked against the left, because civic nationalists tend to be more effective in terms of engagement and politics compared to other brands of conservatism, which… Continue reading The left’s self-own

I’m sure many are familiar with the so-called ‘lost decade’, in which Japan’s economy and stock market stagnated for over a decade, starting in the early ’90s when its bubble economy burst, and continuing until around 2010. But many European countries are also having a lost decade, which has gotten far less media coverage. France,… Continue reading Europe’s Lost Decade (the crisis is overseas, not here!)

I don’t why there is so much interest in ‘elite overproduction’. It’s topic that has captivated the intellectual-web over the past year especially, probably due to a convergence of societal factors like Covid and gen-z. My own take is broken down into four parts, which I discuss in the earlier post Who are the elite,… Continue reading Elite overproduction not that big of a deal, yet

I have been thinking about the differences between liberalism and conservatism in America. One might be thinking, “Isn’t this obvious, or already discussed to death,” but I think it merits further examination. I liken liberalism to an ever-expanding circle or frontier. So when people complain that ‘liberalism is going to far,’ I’m like ‘liberalism is… Continue reading Conservatism vs. Liberalism: The Circle