Media – Page 15

Some articles 2

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/movies/janeane-garofalo.html

Interesting take on Janeane Garofalo’s career, and how she may have sacrificed some mainstream success because of a distaste for “selling out”. I’ve always liked her style of dry witty kinda dark humor. Sarah Silverman is like the R-rated Janeane. Now I want to go to Brooklyn and watch one of her standups. Here’s a Janeane Garofalo joke I found on the internet:

Listen, young people, I understand narcissism – clearly. But at least I have the decency to hate myself. And that’s what’s missing from the young people. They don’t have the debilitating self-loathing and the second guessing.

https://twitter.com/address_eth/status/1549818088396406784

Crypto/web3/blockchain is a new internet. And a new internet needs a native naming and address system. There are two such systems I like: ENS (.eth names) and HNS (Handshake tlds/). They are compatible systems, though that’s not initially obvious. ENS has the growth and momentum right now. But Handshake has the potential to completely re-wire the internet naming system for the better, helping us move away from trusted third parties and bureaucratic capture, towards self-custody and greater programmability and user choice. Not investment advice blah blah

https://www.exponentialview.co/email/3ec31bca-1d2c-438c-831e-ad1d0341f8d7

Global warming is real, but is it entirely (or even mostly) man-made? Recently I’ve been reading Bjorn Lomborg’s work and it’s opening my sleepy eyes. I assume global warming is at least partially man-made, but to what extent, and whether it warrants such wholesale investments in new policies, regulations, and business practices — that I don’t know. ESG feels increasingly like a boondoggle. Maybe I’m just getting old.

https://twitter.com/AtifRMian/status/1549782314829357056

Turkey. Sri Lanka. Argentina. Now Pakistan. We are seeing the cresting tides of a global sovereign debt crisis, and unlike 1997, the American-led world order is far more hamstrung in its ability to help. America is dealing with record high levels of consumer inflation, government debt, and political polarization. And since Obama, it’s steadily retreated from its role as the world’s policeman. Who watches the watchmen?

Some articles

https://www.tubefilter.com/2022/07/14/youtube-tiktok-time-spent-kids-2021

Kids (4-18) are spending more time on TikTok than YouTube. This gap has grown in recent years. I watch TikTok sometimes and can attest to its addiction. TikTok is FAST and once you adjust to it, you don’t wanna return to slow. On a tangential note, I quite like Netflix’s playback speed feature. I play most movies and TV shows at 1.25x now, and will watch more Netflix on my laptop than my “smart TV” because the smart TV lacks that feature.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-wins-the-fields-medal-20220705

39yo June Huh won the Fields Medal. In high school he dropped out to become a poet. I see in his story further evidence of the deep unity within all knowing. Many years ago a friend and I were discussing the idea that we could live in a simulation. To which he replied, “If we’re living in a simulation, then math is the operating system”.

https://thebitcoinlayer.substack.com/p/is-bitcoin-an-inflation-hedge-yes

Nothing groundbreaking here, but I enjoy Nik’s newsletter. And I re-iterate my base case that bitcoin will hit $1M before 2030. After which, it will crash to something like $200K, and the naysayers and critics will be in oestrus, and the cycle will repeat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/well/family/check-in-text-friendship.html

After reading this (and I had to find a roundabout way to read it because I don’t pay for the NYT and had reached my limit of free articles), I emailed two friends from college and (surprisingly) they replied rather quickly. I will try to do this more often – maybe even create an explicit habit out of it.

Podcast notes – Carmen Reinhart on international financial crises – Nobel Symposium

Interconnected nature of crises
Rich literature on banking crises – but there’s systematic relationship between banking and currency crises

Banking crises typically came after financial liberalization
125 countries, 300 banking crises = tight connection between capital market integration (open capital account) and incidences of banking crises

In era of heavy regulation, relative dearth of financial crises

Before, currency and banking crises were looked at in isolation
But, banking crises often lead to future currency problems – feedback loops

A legacy of banking crises is that governments end up with a lot of debt – takes over private debts / bank debts

Banking crisis increases probability of sovereign debt crisis – but not other way around

Pattern of steps
1. Financial liberalization
2. Boom in economic activity, asset prices
3. Slowdown / onset of banking problems
4. Bank crisis
5. Sovereign debt crisis

How to measure severity of crisis – look at per/capita GDP, and number of years required to return to pre-crisis peak

Most severe 100 crises, ranked – lots of triple crises (bank, currency, sovereign debt)

Antecedents of financial crises
-currency overvaluation – bad loans, firm over-profitability
-asset price bubbles
-credit boom
-build up of short-term debt
-decline of bank deposits / existence of bank runs
-hidden debts – all kinds of nasty surprises are revealed during crises
–

Post crises recessions are longer and more protracted than norm

Even by 2018, countries like Italy and Greece still had not returned to pre-crisis peaks (re: 2008 financial crisis)

Legacy of these crises is build-up of public sector debt

Advanced economies are no strangers to sovereign default…not even world powers

A must read if you want to understand the fundamental innovation of bitcoin: “Bitcoin is time”

I read this essay every few months and every few months my mind is blown again:

In other words, the difficulty-adjustment is about keeping a constant time, not a constant level of security, difficulty, or energy expenditure. This is ingenious because good money has to be costly in time, not energy. Linking money to energy alone is not sufficient to produce absolute scarcity since every improvement in energy generation would allow us to create more money. Time is the only thing we will never be able to make more of. It is The Ultimate Resource, as Julian Simon points out. This makes Bitcoin the ultimate form of money because its issuance is directly linked to the ultimate resource of our universe: time

from Bitcoin is time by Gigi

Some of Kevin Kelly’s life advice

Source

When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.

Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated.

Your growth as a conscious being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.

Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally

What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone, because when you trust the best in others, they generally treat you best.

Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.

Our descendants will achieve things that will amaze us, yet a portion of what they will create could have been made with today’s materials and tools if we had had the imagination. Think bigger.

Rather than steering your life to avoid surprises, aim directly for them.