The widening gyre is eating America alive. It is the instrument of the Beast, a three-headed hydra of Big Politics, Big Media and Big Tech.
A third political party can be our weapon to slay the Beast, but not in the way you think.
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.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Over the past 25 years, our leaders have intentionally constructed an Apocalypse Now world of proclamation and fiat, where our wealth has grown much faster than our economy.
The bill is due for their hubris, and inflation is here to collect it.
Inflation
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.
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.
Recent Notes
The Medium is the Message
Social media is not just a delivery mechanism for content.
The delivery of content through social media IS the content.
Defund the World Health Organization
Skipping the Greek letter Xi in naming the latest Covid variant is ridiculous, not dangerous.
What’s dangerous is WHO leadership placing Chinese political interests ahead of global health interests.
Critical State Theory
This note is about the narrative process that makes it so politically difficult to say that yes, parents are responsible for their children’s education AND yes, our children should be taught the fact of embedded racism in our nation’s history.
And why it’s so important that we do so, anyway.
Cursed Knowledge #6: F*ck Almonds
Move over Hollywood! Almonds are one of the most lucrative and fastest growing industries in California. Unfortunately they’re not as good for us as you’d think.
Prime Time in Crypto
No one gives a clearer explanation of how financial institutions work than ET contributor Marc Rubinstein, and his primer on prime brokerage services (and its extension into crypto) is no exception.
The NFL Has a Gambling Problem
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
The Mandarin Class
I don’t think there’s anything illegal in how Fed governors trade their personal accounts.
No, I think it’s much worse than that.
When Narrative Takes Flight
We find ourselves together now at the stage of the Widening Gyre in which your political identity now determines the reality you wish to accept about three days of moderate operational difficulties at the ninth largest global airline, as measured by passenger-miles.
No Time to Die: China Banks Edition
With $300+ billion of assets, Evergrande is big, but if you want REALLY big, take a look at the balance sheets of Chinese banks.
ET contributor Marc Rubinstein was there at the beginning when Chinese banks went public, and he’s here now to review the sector.
How Lucky You Are To Be Alive Right Now
ET friend and contributor David Salem is back!
Here with his Constitution Day address at Middlebury College, David makes the rich tradition of academic speeches richer still, with nods to the Founders and Vitalik Buterin alike.
The Uncontained Spark
There is an uncontained spark in the financial world today, a spark that emerged from the unlikeliest of places, a federal courthouse in Florida.
It’s a spark with the potential to light a searing bonfire under Robinhood and Citadel.
#BITFD
Zeroism and the Allocator Status Quo
ET contributor Matthew Edwards pushes back on seven rules that allocators often apply to new managers.
1) We don’t do crypto.
2) We only invest in what we know.
3) We never pay full fees.
4) We prefer fundamental investment strategies.
5) We seek strong alignment of interests.
6) We cannot be greater than x% of a fund’s total assets under management.
7) We require a minimum track record of X years.
Unanchored
ET contributor Brent Donnelly starts up where he left off, with a new launch of AM/FX and a new riff on the classic ET note, “Snip!”.
In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!
Whitestone Bridge
Our true enemies on 9/11 – the Deep State of Saudi Arabia and the Deep State of Pakistan – are our true enemies still.
And we won’t defeat them until we bridge our petty divides.
The Green Protocol: A New Vision for Crypto, Pt 2
The Green Protocol is a set of rules for the tokenization of symbolic betting markets in positive social good.
I think this is how crypto saves the world.
Our first step on this new path? Let’s plant one billion new trees in North America over the next ten years.
Cursed Knowledge #5: Hot Coffee
The McDonalds Hot Coffee lawsuit is the archetypal example of nonsense litigation. But there’s a lot more to the story than most people know.
Notes from Camp Kotok 2021
ET contributor Brent Donnelly with an end-of-summer compilation of the top–of-mind topics at Camp Kotok!
Prophet of the Pandemic
Sophocles knew it. Dostoevsky knew it.
Disruption to the biological order and disruption to the social order are one and the same.
Afghanistan and the Common Knowledge Game
When the State Department announced on August 12th that it was removing all remaining non-essential personnel from Kabul within 3 days and was considering a relocation of the US embassy to the more defensible airport, the fall of the Afghani government became common knowledge.
And that’s when everything fell apart.
The Afghanistan Narratives
We are in the very early innings of the narrative formation around responsibility for the outcome in Afghanistan. Steel yourselves for weeks of gaslighting from every angle. Hooray.