IÑIGO LALANZA

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

“Let me get this straight, you’re lending billions with cheese as collateral?”

“Not cheese. Parmesan. Parmigiano-Reggiano to be precise.“

“So, you finance this by packaging the Parmesan loans into Parmesan CDO A, which has part of Parmesan CDO B and both get put into Parmesan CDO C?”

“Yeah. The original loans are backed by wheels of Parmesan. Minimum age of 12 months. Some are 24 months. 36 months. 48 month. Hell, up to 120 months. Delicious. Millions of wheels. But Parmesan CDO C is a synthetic Parmesan CDO. A CDO of Parmesan CDOs. Parmesan Squared if you will.”

“What if it gets too hot in the summer and the wheels of Parmesan melt?”

“We’ll sell Parmesan credit default swaps.”

“C’mon! How much bigger is the market for Parmesan-backed sythentic loan and CDS products than actual edible real-life Parmesan that I can grate on top of my homemade spaghetti bolognese tonight?”

“At least 10,000x.”

“Ok, let’s say we have an underlying pool of $10 million in Parmesan wheels. How much money could be out there betting on your synthetic Parmesan financial products?”

“Probably $100 billion.”

“That is fucking crazy.”

“No, it’s awesome.”

[0xDipper @Dipper_pol]

Mark Spitznagel - founder of Universa, the "black swan" fund Nassim Taleb advises - on the most counterintuitive idea in investing:

add a 3% sliver of crash insurance to a stock portfolio. give that insurance a 0% expected return - it makes nothing over time.

it still raises the portfolio's long-run compound return - by roughly what you'd get from putting that same 3% into an asset returning 20%+ a year.

how? by killing the deep drawdowns that quietly destroy compounding. but the insurance has to actually fire in a crash. one that only sometimes pays out is "like a parachute that only sometimes deploys - you're better off not wearing one."

most "safe havens" - gold, the dollar, hedge funds, even a Picasso - fail that test.

~13-min talk, free. the man who made ~4,000% in the 2020 crash, on what actually protects you ↓

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Food for thought.

Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride

For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface.

The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities.

Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed.

In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines.

In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive.

A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent.

By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right.

In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@gnoble79 Don’t forget VZBs huge losses…

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

BREAKING: Live look at western university campuses after they learned that over 12,000 unarmed Iranian civilians have been massacred by the Islamic Republic.

[Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 @TRobinsonNewEra]

The guardian reported "110k" at our London rally today.

Yet, literally had their own helicopter showing the millions of patriots 🤡

Legacy media proving again they'll just lie to your face for their own agenda.

This is why nobody trusts them.

We are the media now.

[Clifford Asness @CliffordAsness]

It’s so sad to see the total disintegration of a once mediocre mind.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

The parade was great. Our military is incredible. And now @Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world.

Israel’s military and air force have sufficiently degraded Iran’s defenses such that this is now the lowest-risk, highest-probability moment to take out Iran’s nuclear capability, a grave threat to us all.

We should not let this opportunity pass, but Israel does not have the equipment and armaments to complete the job. We do, and it does not require boots on the ground.

The war Israel has been fighting has been on behalf of all of us. Let’s help them finish the job.

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

🚨BREAKING: Three Israeli women—Romi, Emily, and Doron—have been released from Hamas captivity and have arrived safely in Israel. They will reunite with their families shortly and undergo thorough medical examinations.
We stand with the families that have finally been reunited, and our hearts go out to those still waiting in agony for the safe return of their loved ones. Hamas continues to hold 94 hostages in Gaza. 🎗️

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

America is on its way back!

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

A friend was asked to write a recommendation for his daughter who is applying to Yale. Worth a read.

Dear ,

I am unwilling to write a letter of recommendation in support of your daughter's application to Yale. I no longer do that. It is not that I don't believe that she is qualified, on the contrary it is because I do.

You wouldn't ask me to write a letter of recommendation for her admission to Hamas. But Yale is no different than Hamas, a cult that abides no disagreement, and a cult certain of its purpose and mission beyond reflection. Yale is potentially even more dangerous. Hamas will be defeated shortly. Yale will continue to send its graduates into positions of power for years.

A recent study at Harvard found that roughly 50% of the students and professors wouldn't discuss "uncomfortable" topics. An essential life skill is the ability to change your mind. She won't learn that at any Ivy league school. Their reputations are still so strong that their faculty, staff and graduates all possess the arrogant certainty of religious fanatics.

I am sorry to disappoint you. I wish her the best in her search for a school,

Signed

xxxxxxxxxx

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

At my hedge fund, I pay an analyst to walk around parks in Austin, SF, and NY and ask these people who are tanning at 2pm on a Tuesday where they work.

We then short the stock.

We’re up 728% this year.

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@_kanyotu @MichalskiQuent1 @lexfridman Same here . I would give my life for that Japanese paper 😂

[ffred @_kanyotu]

@MichalskiQuent1 @lexfridman Hello Dr. Quentin
I'm a college student from Nairobi Kenya and currently developing a RDE as my final year project.
I happened to see a clip where you mentioned you could share references, designs and papers about RDEs.
I'm requesting that you would share the info.

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@MichalskiQuent1 I know it is a massive favor, but it would be incredibly helpful if you send me the document or at least the link. Would this be possible?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the inconvenience this may cause,
Iñigo

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@MichalskiQuent1 Good evening Dr. Michalski,
I am Iñigo Lalanza, a final-year student of Aerospace engineering. I am currently working on a Rotating detonation engine 3D model for my dissertation to analyze the influence of geometry variations of the nozzle on the performance.

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@MichalskiQuent1 I have seen the video from @integza on Youtube where you mentioned some Japanese papers used to design a Rotating detonation engine. 
After hours of research, it has been impossible for me to find this paper.

[IÑIGO LALANZA @Lalanza15]

@Rainmaker1973 @MichalskiQuent1 @MichalskiQuent1 would it be possible to contact you through Twitter or email? It’s about rotating detonation engines