The first Daily View of 2025. Item #1: Polymarket gives 23% odds of Trump creating a national crypto reserve in his first 100 days. Betting “no” is like picking up dollars on the sidewalk. I have already placed bets on this contract, expecting to earn an easy 20% in the next 100 days as nothing… Continue reading The daily view 1/3/2025: Bitcoin and Polymarket, Stocks overvalued?, Elon on Mounjaro…

Jimmy Carter died. Many of the critiques of his presidency come off as circular, e.g. “Jimmy Carter was bad because the economy was bad,” which although true, does not necessarily implicate Carter. The ’70s were sluggish due to many factors: high commodity prices due to Middle East conflict and embargoes, high inflation due to oil,… Continue reading 2025 predictions, and recap of 2024

Twitter/X and Substack accounts are up: Substack Twitter Twitter heavily censors new accounts. I will mainly use Twitter and Substack for posting links to the blog, as I find blogging to be a more effective medium for expressing ideas, although I may tweet replies. The H-1B visa controversy is the biggest story now, overtaking Luigi… Continue reading More thoughts on the H-1B visa situation

The topic of immigration and Indians has blown up over the past few days. I dunno who got the ball rolling on this, but I suspect it started with Trump’s inside team, e.g. David Sachs, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy pushing this narrative of a ‘talent/worker shortage’. This has led to various heated exchanges between… Continue reading The Trump-Tech Immigration Rift

Interesting post by Richard Hanania, Why Are Americans So Rich? Americans have been blessed in terms of both culture and policy. We have a common language, and the cultural differences between various parts of the country are relatively small. Moreover, while Europe has done a good job of creating an integrated single market for goods,… Continue reading Why America is So Successful (and Wealthy) Compared to the Rest of the World

Social engineering is a hot topic in information security. Even articles published as recently as a couple years ago have many citations. But how much of it is hype? This is not to say social engineering does not work–clearly it does in some notable cases. But I believe the success or efficacy of social engineering… Continue reading Is the claimed efficacy of social engineering overhyped?

In early November 2024 it went viral that Elon Musk is also a top-ranked Diablo player. This came as a surprise, as how does he find the time or learn so fast? Elon Musk runs 6+ companies, raises 12 kids, and still ranks in the Top 20 of the World gamers list for Diablo, where… Continue reading A high IQ is a huge head-start to mastery

I saw this going viral: Are Social Media Platforms the Next Dying Malls? It got over 1,400 Substack ‘likes’, which I think is close to a record for that site, indicating considerable agreement or people who want to believe it’s true. It looks like Mr. Gioia is inventing his own reality again to suit his… Continue reading Social media platforms are not like dying malls

The possibility that someone as deft with words as Noah Smith or David Brooks is smarter than someone as outwardly competent or accomplished as Elon Musk or Peter Thiel seems absurd, but verbal ability has among the highest ‘g loadings’ of any IQ subtest, more than even fluid or spatial IQ, so it axiomatically follows… Continue reading The cognitive elite we already have

I saw this going viral: This is a good visualization of why those who say “calories in = calories out” actually are arguing that calories out are inflexible, because the only intervention they advocate for is reducing calories in. “You could eat less…” You can change calories out!! https://t.co/UQzQ7FbNQW — anabology (@anabology) December 13, 2024… Continue reading The sad truth about metabolism: why nothing works