The apparent post-’70s rise of obesity in America can in significant part be explained the decline of smoking. The decline of smoking inversely matches the rise of obesity almost perfectly: I can attest in the ’90s and early 2000s it was common to see pedestrians smoking. Cigarette butts littered the sidewalks and accumulated in small… Continue reading Bring Back Smoking to End Obesity

‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford, by Rob Henderson. The concept of luxury beliefs seems like a rebranding or rehashing of the Champaign socialist or Limousine liberal trope/archetype. The origin of the latter dates to the early ’70s: In the 1970s, the term was applied to wealthy liberal supporters of open-housing and forced… Continue reading Luxury Beliefs – a flawed and unoriginal concept

Trace has gotten into a spat with Freddie deBoer over educational enrichment and IQ. Freddie soundly rejects the blank slate, whereas Trace, finding some agreement with Freddie, still sees value of enrichment. I am going to give this one to Freddie, and I think Trace is off the mark here. It started with an article… Continue reading Trace – Freddie Enrichment and IQ Debate: Why Trace is Wrong

From FT: ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything, by Cory Doctorow. But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers… Continue reading Cory Doctorow and ‘Enshittification’: Stuck in Stage Three

It’s less of an interview and more like a speech or monologue Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview pic.twitter.com/67YuZRkfLL — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 8, 2024 Tucker’s job is to stare with rapt attention as the guest filibusters or rambles, whilst not showing the slightest hint of disinterest or boredom, such as by averting his… Continue reading Tucker-Putin Interview

The dominance of big tech is, IMHO, one of the biggest investment opportunities and new economic paradigms in history, or at least going back to the industrial revolution. An increasingly large share of global economic activity, such as cloud, AI, apps, mobile, ads, etc. is being funneled through maybe a couple dozen huge companies. Although… Continue reading The Investment Case for Leveraged Tech, This Decade’s Bitcoin

I saw this tweet going viral. Elon Musk has a low opinion of higher ed, particularly elite colleges: The value of an “elite” college education is not what it used to be — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2024 Unless he means it’s more valuable, the fact that parents are spending so much money on… Continue reading College as a path of least resistance: why degrees continue to thrive

College grads of decades ago were almost a full standard deviation smarter compared to today’s grads: A few decades ago, the mean IQ of a college grad was about 115. Now it's somewhere between 100 and 102. — i/o (@eyeslasho) February 4, 2024 Based on what? He gives no evidence to substantiate his claim. For… Continue reading College grads and IQ, now and then: claimed 15-point difference is too high

The big story is Meta stock gained 20% on blowout earnings: FBL, a leveraged single-stock ETF that tracks the 2x daily returns of Meta, gained 40%: AFIK, this is the greatest single-day gain for an ETF ever. This is not a penny stock or some speculative biotech going up 40%, but a fund which tracks… Continue reading Meta Surges 20% on Earnings, FBL up 40%

Taylor Swift Democrats: Conservatives are losing the “don’t be weirdos” contest, by Richard Hanania. We can understand Taylor Swift Democrats as men and women comfortable with their birth sex, eager to play the roles traditionally assigned to it, not racist but not feeling particularly guilty about the sins of their country, and who will naturally… Continue reading Normies and the GOP