Weird how Petr never thought it was "insane" for putin to bombard a city where 3 million regular Ukrainians are currently living, working, and raising their children - for four years.
But God forbid the "business representatives" backing russia's invasion get uncomfortable.
Caolan Robertson is probably the best investigative journalist on X right now - follow him!
Also huge thanks to NAFO and Irish investigative journalists digging deeper into this case.
Rusal needs to go!
A nice Finnish joke I found 🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮
Finnish general Adolf Ehrnrooth was visiting in England after the World War II.
British general asked him how many Russian troops were stationed in Finland.
"A few hundred thousand" answered Ehrnrooth.
"Where in Finland are they stationed?" The British general asked.
Ehrnrooth answered: "Two meters underground around the border."
This week I came across the obituary of a photographer named David Plowden. I was unfamiliar with his work, but decided to browse his website after reading that he specialized in photos of trains and industry.
I’m not much of an art guy, but these photos are astonishing. (1/4)
I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.
That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.
You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.
Things most Americans agree on:
Groceries cost too much.
Tariffs suck and make no sense.
Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks.
The debt is a mess.
The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good.
Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants and have never been explained.
Americans are exhausted.
AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process. Yo like I love you, but WTF, but I still love you.
Diversity is actually awesome! The opposite is boring AF.
Canadians are super fucking cool.
Mexicans are chill.
Putin isn’t a good guy looking out for America’s best interest. Rocky IV and Miracle are great movies.
Good neighbors are a blessing.
Freedom of religion and coexistence without having to blow each other up is probably a good idea.
We all question, are we alone in the universe?
We all fuck up along the way.
Epstein didn’t hang himself.
The Trumps and Epstein were best friends for decades. It’s like Bert trying to tell us Ernie was just an acquaintance in the same social scene on Sesame Street back in the day.
The Cowboys suck. Go Birds!
Things we’re told to fight about:
Me.
Laptop.
Vaccines.
Transgenders in sports.
Pronouns.
That’s the joke.
This is an insane story. The DOGE whistleblower who said that login attempts were made to the NLRB from Russian IP addresses minutes after DOGE got access had his brake lines cut and photos of him walking his dog from a drone taped to his door after Musk attacked him on Twitter
On @rte, I highlighted a striking contradiction
Australia banned the export of alumina to Russia, citing its critical role in the Kremlin's war machine
Yet, Ireland hosts Europe’s largest alumina refinery and exports to Russia have skyrocketed since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
Every sign at this refinery in Ireland is in russian. The official website is a .RU domain.
There’s no reason to hide it because local politicians are openly doing it for them.
For weeks, Irish politicians have dodged questions about the refinery in Ireland supplying Russia’s war machine.
So I tracked down government minister Niall Collins at a farming show.
He refuses to back sanctions & his stance was worse than I expected.
Avoidance.
Congress can no longer wait on the Administration to act. That’s why we will vote this week on military aid to Ukraine & tough sanctions on Russia. America must have moral clarity in regard to Putin’s invasion and murdering civilians. 70% of Americans want a stronger response.
Documenting the headwinds I now see for AI.
It won't seem like it, but I love AI and am long-term positive. But when "math doesn't math" I take note.
1. The core thesis for foundation model lab investment has been high upfront investment made worthwhile by significant long-term profits.
2. These are capital intensive businesses and the compute commitments are very high relative to revenue and require strong growth over long time periods. The "leverage" (commitments versus revenue) is extremely high.
3. The fundamentals are not as positive as they previously were:
• Input costs are higher (commodities, chips, power)
• Interest rates are higher
• Competition is more intense
• Scaling Laws are now problematic: exponential costs/power cannot continue
4. Forecasting compute spend is challenging and high risk due to (a) revenue uncertainty and (b) algorithm uncertainty
5. Revenue growth appears to be slowing. The technology is valuable, but ROI is proving to be more expensive and take longer than anticipated.
6. The future is likely "different models for different use cases" with the lower end of the market being highly competitive.
7. Core use cases such as agentic software engineering are likely to need approaches beyond next-token prediction. They are Σ₂ᴾ complexity problems requiring multi-objective optimization and likely a combination of Transformers and other methods.
8. Current forecasts in memory makers are built largely on quadratic attention. That will not persist: we are already seeing work from DeepSeek, Minimax and Nvidia that can cut RAM needs by 80% or more.
9. This means semiconductor valuations are substantially overinflated and will go through the traditional glut versus shortage cycle.
10. For foundation model providers: lower costs with competitive differentiation is good. However, lower costs with a lack of differentiation would mean lower revenues. This makes it harder to (a) service commitments and (b) pay back investors.
11. Leverage is substantially higher than in previous cycles, evidenced by leveraged ETFs, call option activity and margin loans. Korea is particularly susceptible.
12. 0DTE options create a profile that has stronger parallels to portfolio insurance and 1987 than any other point I can remember.
13. The combination of exponential increases in call activity coupled with the ties of semiconductors to structured products means there is a non-trivial systemic risk to the financial system.
14. Implied earnings growth rates are inconsistent with other periods in history.
15. Macroeconomically we cannot and should not fund exponential cost increases. History has shown us repeatedly that there are better ways (see Quick Sort and Simplex).
16. Significant supply is hitting the market via IPOs.
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Taken together: costs and competition are increasing while revenue growth is likely slowing. Valuations are fragile and prone to technology disruptions that are already here. Systemic financial market risk is extremely high.