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Every once in a while you run into someone doing Uber in a $100k car and you wonder about the economics of that. (Currently riding inside a Mercedes EQS.)

This was a hit. The pistol is suppressed, and the gunman is running sub-sonic rounds (which is why he's cycling the gun manually). Only way to get anywhere close to the 'poof!' you see in movies. He dumped the gun, will change into the clothes he likely has in that backpack, and he's gone. Either a corporate hit, or someone really didn't like seeing their grandma die in pain after a claim was denied. Astounding.

Cubans watching New York fall for a charismatic narcissist with good aesthetics promising utopias while concealing communist, authoritarian politics.

Spanish food is better than French food, and the only reason Americans think otherwise is their (unjustified) elite perception of French culture, and their equally unjustified disdain (if not ignorance) of Spanish culture.

My Singapore driver informs me that robbery carries a minimum sentence of three years in jail and six strokes with a cane. “One stroke almost kill you.” “Other country you pass out drunk on the street…phone and wallet gone. In Singapore, nobody touch them.” No shit.

I have always maintained that the "Europoor" discourse is mostly passport-less Americans engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation levels of cope around how European quality of life is better (across all dimensions other than unicorn startup formation) despite lower GDP per capita.

One of the wildest Florida stories is how the Everglades become home to thousands of enormous, gator-eating pythons. In 1992, a hurricane blew apart a python-breeding operation, and the things adapted to the marshy ecosystem that resembled SE Asia. They're now everywhere in the Everglades, threatening local wild life, and posing a major animal control problem. Florida problems require Florida solutions, so every year the state holds an official hunt where any local with a firearm proceeds to show up and blast away in every direction in the hope of bagging the biggest that year. The governor even shows up for a pep rally, holds a snakeskin football, and convenes this very serious event. Florida is the finest state in the union.

Accidentally ordered a bottle of wine in Portugal as I assumed the prices were by the glass because I live in an exorbitant dystopia.

The point of declaring words violence was always to be able to use violence against words.

Looking forward to buying a NYC bagel at my local government-run corner deli. The ration card says we get one a week.

It finally happened: My Waymo got a ticket and there was existential confusion from the officer about who or what was being ticketed. They just stare at the empty driver’s seat and then leave it on the windshield. The car drives away, indifferent.

OpenAI hiring more and more engineers at ever higher salaries tells you what you need to know about the impact of AI on software engineering.

The fact humans are returning to space exploration, paid for by putting up a network of internet satellites and technically feasible due to reusable rockets that magically land on their rear ends, has to be one of the greatest business and engineering feats ever. This is history.

People in the US are super dumb. You have a meal with some sort of Southerner who works in DC—it’s very depressing. They’re ignorant, they have terrible taste, they understanding nothing outside of the US, they know something about college football at best. And if you lived in a world ruled by them the growth rate would be +10%.

Remember: There's 'fuck you' money, and then there's 'fuck the world' money.

It's called 'venture capital'.

Every once in a while you run into someone doing Uber in a $100k car and you wonder about the economics of that. (Currently riding inside a Mercedes EQS.)

I have always maintained that the "Europoor" discourse is mostly passport-less Americans engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation levels of cope around how European quality of life is better (across all dimensions other than unicorn startup formation) despite lower GDP per capita.

Spanish food is better than French food, and the only reason Americans think otherwise is their (unjustified) elite perception of French culture, and their equally unjustified disdain (if not ignorance) of Spanish culture.

Cubans watching New York fall for a charismatic narcissist with good aesthetics promising utopias while concealing communist, authoritarian politics.

One of the fascinating things about Israel is that it’s the most militarized society on Earth—Spartan levels of war woven throughout society—and yet it’s not very militaristic. No gun fetish culture (like the US), no military parades, no exaltation of war as higher purpose.

This was a hit. The pistol is suppressed, and the gunman is running sub-sonic rounds (which is why he's cycling the gun manually). Only way to get anywhere close to the 'poof!' you see in movies. He dumped the gun, will change into the clothes he likely has in that backpack, and he's gone. Either a corporate hit, or someone really didn't like seeing their grandma die in pain after a claim was denied. Astounding.

Looking forward to buying a NYC bagel at my local government-run corner deli. The ration card says we get one a week.

One of the wildest Florida stories is how the Everglades become home to thousands of enormous, gator-eating pythons. In 1992, a hurricane blew apart a python-breeding operation, and the things adapted to the marshy ecosystem that resembled SE Asia. They're now everywhere in the Everglades, threatening local wild life, and posing a major animal control problem. Florida problems require Florida solutions, so every year the state holds an official hunt where any local with a firearm proceeds to show up and blast away in every direction in the hope of bagging the biggest that year. The governor even shows up for a pep rally, holds a snakeskin football, and convenes this very serious event. Florida is the finest state in the union.

My Singapore driver informs me that robbery carries a minimum sentence of three years in jail and six strokes with a cane. “One stroke almost kill you.” “Other country you pass out drunk on the street…phone and wallet gone. In Singapore, nobody touch them.” No shit.

Accidentally ordered a bottle of wine in Portugal as I assumed the prices were by the glass because I live in an exorbitant dystopia.

After this election, nobody will ever trust either polling or prediction markets ever again.

Full self-driving in the Tesla is incredible. You enter a destination, and the car just drives you there, including lane changes, veering, offramps, traffic lights, turns, the works. Nobody will routinely drive again. We’ll refer to the manual driving era as the Dark Ages.

What objects come to mind when you think of 'timeless design,' i.e., stuff that will still look amazing and be considered superlative years after creation. Off the top of my head: Rolex Submariner, Walther PPK, Porsche 911 (various years), the Concorde, Classical facades.

One of my conspiracy theories is that much of the American economy is fake. Millions employed in entire workfare industries like TSA/DMV/USPS/HR, plunging labor participation rate and sky-high welfare/SSDI/SNAP rate, 20% of GDP in insanely marked up healthcare, asset bubbles in cities driven by NIMBY and FOMO, all this propped up by an overvalued dollar which the government can’t stop printing—conveniently the global reserve currency because our economic rival is a hermetic dictatorship. The only real-ish parts are a small (people-wise) tech sector that launders that bloated paper wealth into a fantastically dynamic entrepreneurial talent sorting machine (with much of the talent having to be imported), and a ruthlessly efficient services industry that keeps cost of living down for the well-off (with much of the labor having to be imported).

The American mind can’t comprehend this…that half the country has the climate of North Africa, ergo their AC obsession, and AC isn’t some luxury good Europeans can’t afford (Third World countries are carpet-bombed by it), it’s the climate not justifying it.