If you were a smart guy like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and you thought a stagflationary tsunami of enormous proportion was going to wash over the US economy regardless of who wins in November, what would you be doing right now?
I think you might be doing whatever you can to get liquid in the global reserve currency without spooking the marks.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
Inflation
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed Narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything.
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Crypto
Recent Notes
The Washington Pravda and the Wall Street Izvestia
Today both Wall Street and the White House are determined to tell you a story that inflation is over and mission accomplished. Wall Street because they want a cheaper price of money and the White House because they want to win an election.
It’s not a lie, per se, but it’s not a truth, either. It’s all just story, all the way down.
And like all sclerotic institutions, Wall Street and the White House rely on their media organs to tell the story.
Cursed Knowledge #27: Panera Lemonade
Panera’s in hot water over their charged lemonade. After building their brand on clean and healthy food, they’re now facing several lawsuits claiming their lemonade caused permanent heart damage and even death. So what’s really going on with the lemonade? And why is the story surrounding it so misleading?
Useful Idiots
Yes, Virginia, western news media are often useful idiots.
But let’s be real: so is Tucker Carlson.
The Bitcoin ETF Tipping Problem
ET contributor Dave Nadig was there at the beginning of ETFs, and he’s forgotten more about their structure and operations than I will ever know.
In this excellent note, Dave digs into the Bitcoin ETF “tipping problem”. It’s a fascinating read on where narrative runs headlong into the real world of market mechanics.
Death and Rebirth: In Precious Metals, Crypto, and the 6th Grade
“Nice yellow pants, freak.”
Nobody is immune to getting slapped with a label, especially when you’re a new kid in middle school. The trick is not selling out. The trick is owning your identity.
That’s true for Wall Street, too.
It’s All True
Eight thoughts that I can’t reconcile about about Justin Mohn, the 32-year-old in Levittown, Pennsylvania who murdered his father, cut off his head, and made a YouTube video showing off his trophy and saying he did it because his father, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers, was part of the “Biden regime” and was a “traitor to his country”.
It’s All True (Eight Thoughts on Justin Mohn)
Eight thoughts that I can’t reconcile about about Justin Mohn, the 32-year-old in Levittown, Pennsylvania who murdered his father, cut off his head, and made a YouTube video showing off his trophy and saying he did it because his father, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers, was part of the “Biden regime” and was a “traitor to his country”.
Breaking News #14: Harvard Material
Harvard has some of the most stringent admission standards of any university. Most people will never have the opportunity to receive a degree from this elite institution. But that doesn’t mean you can’t obtain your “graduate certificate” in fields like Museum Studies, Social Justice and Digital Storytelling all for the bargain price of $12,880 from the Harvard Extension School. Of course, Harvard won’t accept these credits in its main programs and you can’t get any federal loans for it, but you can tell your friends that you attended one of the world’s elite institutions. In this episode, we discuss how things got to the point in our higher education system where programs like this exist and what can be done to fix it. We also cover the declining narrative of electric vehicles, the challenge of measuring inflation, Vivek Ramaswamy’s master plan, 90s alternative music and a lot more.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 9: Pathogenesis
A single virus can cause disease of the body in several ways at once.
A single narrative can cause disease in society in several ways, too.
This is the story of a new disease from an old acquaintance.
The Intellectual Rot of the Industrially Necessary University
The intellectual rot of the modern University perverts and diminishes the works of its faculty and administrators, no matter how smart they are, no matter how well-intentioned they are. It is a rot that requires plagiarism and promotes antisemitism.
We require a new Reformation, and here are its theses.
Breaking News #13: The Curious Case of Claudine Gay
Claudine Gay recently resigned as President of Harvard due to allegations of plagiarism. But the story behind that is far more important than the headline itself and gets at much bigger issues within the academic world, In the episode, we dig into those details. We also discuss what the recently launched ETFs mean for the future of Bitcoin, why attacks of hedge fund managers based on the carried interest deduction are misplaced, whether a soft landing is possible and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Non-Linguistic Inflation Framing in the Wall Street Journal
We do a lot of work here to understand how the media frames issues linguistically, but we haven’t done much to see how that carries over in graphical narrative representations. Would the same patterns we see in the WSJ’s words be represented in the WSJ’s pictures?
Oh yes.
“Yay, College!”
Every once in a very great while, the direct beneficiaries of a yay-something narrative construction overplay their hand so egregiously, embarrass themselves so publicly, reveal their mediocrity so clearly, that the common knowledge propping up the yay-something narrative collapses.
This is the breaking of “Yay, College!”.
Breaking News #12: The Aggrieved Trump 2024 Narrative
The news about the election has been heating up recently. But it unfortunately has not revolved around the process of people voting to determine the outcome. The combination of Donald Trump’s legal issues and efforts to remove him from the ballot in blue states have dominated the recent election coverage. In this episode, we tackle both of these issues and how they are playing out in narrative world. We also discuss the reporting around the recent ceremony in Iran to mark the anniversary of the death of Qasem Soleimani, why S&P 500 yearly forecasts still exist and what we can learn from Rick Rubin. We also all offer our New Year’s resolutions for 2024.
Breaking News #11: Women and Risk: A Wall Street Narrative
It is no secret that women are underrepresented in the finance industry. That is especially true with respect to the “risk-taking” roles that people tend to associate with a career on Wall Street. While there are many reasons fort that, one of the primary ones lies in the stories we have been told in the media about women in finance. In this episode, we dig into those stories, how they influence us and how they also may offer us a potential solution to the problem. We also discuss the recent college president testimony in front of congress, Joe Biden’s tweets about inflation, the amazing story of the creator of Barbie and a lot more.
I Got You Fam
Last week, Jay Powell told you that the Fed intends to cut interest rates next year, not because they must, but because they can.
But inflation is a bird that always comes home to roost. And when it does, we will look back at Powell’s Christmas 2023 “I got you fam” pivot as a BFD in the Great Unmooring.
The End is My Beginning
Sir Steven Wilkinson returns home to Lancashire to say goodbye (?) to his father. There’s no true conversation to be had, only fragments to be gleaned, which will have to be enough. Tick-tock, everyone. Tick-tock.
Cursed Knowledge #26: Singin’ in the Rain
Movie musicals are a Hollywood staple. A spectacle of dance, emotion, and music. Proving which Hollywood stars are actors only and which are true triple threats. But it turns out a lot of our favorite classics have been keeping some pretty big secrets. Including who’s really singing.
The Changing Narrative of Women on Wall Street
Sure, you can do it. But you shouldn’t.
This used to be our common knowledge about risk-taking men on Wall Street. Today it’s our common knowledge about women.
And we are all paying a heavy price for that.
Breaking News #10: The Story of Generative AI | Bringing the Power of Discovery Back to the People
Generative AI has the power to become one of the most significant innovations any of us will see in our lifetimes. In fact, it may already be there. In this episode, we discuss the impact of this new technology on all of us and the world we live in,. We talk about what the technology is, how it works, the risks associated with it and its potential to shift the power of search and discovery from the hands of big tech companies to everyday people. We also discuss Ben’s first reader context on Twitter, whether the Rock could win a presidential election, the role of major universities in our society and a lost, but now found Beatles song.