Vance has gotten an unusually large amount of attention compared to what is otherwise typical for a VP nomination. People are wondering what does Vance mean for Trump’s likely second term? I think people are overreading into the implications of Vance. He’s not going to do anything. There will not be anything close to a… Continue reading Do not expect much from Vance

As everyone knows, CrowdStrike has been implicated in the largest IT failure ever, leading to mass outages and millions of people being inconvenienced. Flights were grounded. Hospital systems were down. For 3-4 hours in that early Friday morning, the world had been put on pause, until Cloudstrike cobbled together a fix. Remarkably, Cloudstrike stock was… Continue reading Incompetence at Scale

I saw this article going viral, about the rise and fall of Bell Labs: What would it take to recreate Bell Labs? The Cold War era saw the rise of ‘genius collectives’–large institutions which employed a lot of smart people for research and development purposes. This included such organizations as the RAND corporation, Bell Labs,… Continue reading The decline of Cold-War era ‘genius collectives’, and the rise of human capital

Item 1: Tech stocks fall a lot on Trump comments . It’s interesting how there are now effectively two presidents: Biden, president de jure, and Trump, the de facto and presumed future president given Biden’s recent spiraling decline. So this means Trump’s comments carry the same weight as if he was president. This works to… Continue reading The Daily View 7/17/2024: Trump assassination attempt analysis, and more

This was a good, solid VP choice. Vance is qualified and smart, two attributes you want in a VP, as Trump’s advanced age (and now the threat of being assassinated) makes his choice more important than typical of the VP selection process. People are wondering what the implications of his choice are. There will not… Continue reading Trump selects J.D. Vance as VP

A few inches and Trump not momentarily turning his head to look away from the teleprompter, and history would have been forever changed. Audience members closest to the stage, perhaps distracted by their smartphones as the rally was starting, would have felt a mist and a sprinkle of fragments and looked up to the sound… Continue reading “…inches from Civil War”

Every day, investors are bombarded by forecasts and predictions by people who are held up as experts or who lay claim to expertise. This can include economists, CEOs, or analysts who work for major publicly-traded investment banks or smaller private firms, whose forecasts are disseminated by the financial media. It’s the only profession, AFIK, where… Continue reading Why Most Financial Analysis is Useless and can be Ignored

This segues to a debate about Elon Musk’s IQ , in which some took issue with my claim that although his IQ is likely nominally high, he’s not among the smartest people in the world, a position likely occupied by top pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists. People are apt to overestimate Elon Musk’s IQ owing… Continue reading Competence is not the same as IQ

I saw this article going massively viral, by Tracing Woodgrains: Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record. There are two issues here: 1. The problem is not so much that Wikipedia is biased or has corrupt editors (this has been known for a very long time, and has… Continue reading Wikipedia’s Problem is its Popularity

Given the ongoing decline of the credibility of the Biden administration and post-debate implosion of his campaign, a second Trump term must be seriously entertained. Here is what I predict will happen: Similar to 2016-2020, Trump will not do much legislatively, save for tax cuts, which are an easy legislative win if the Republicans can… Continue reading A second Trump term: expect the economy to boom, and other predictions