whall6

Highly highly recommend. I use it at least once a week and have done so for several years. My daughter loves scrolling through all the local birds and playing the sounds they make.

Hot take (with recency bias): Ron Chernow

Homer and Virgil were historians at the end of the day. Whether what they reported as happening was true or not is as irrelevant as whether Alexander Hamilton threw away his shot at Aaron Burr or not. Their writings, just like Chernow’s, are steeped in legend.

Chernow’s work has excellently captured:

Alexander Hamilton John D Rockefeller JP Morgan Ulysses (!) S. Grant Etc.

As I type this out, perhaps the best comparison for Chernow is actually Plutarch? Either way, I haven’t seen anyone mention him and that would be an unfortunate oversight.

roads

I think even the Chicago school would agree that roads should be public

autos

I absolutely detest US policy with respect to autos so I will not refute this

oil

Matter of strategic importance that isn’t related to spying or subterfuge. The Nazis probably would have won WWII if they hadn’t run out of diesel. I’m not sure digital cameras come close to this.

seems cruel and unusual…

I don’t look down upon people based on what they think is cool and I don’t think you should either.

Yep, agree.

You’re speaking with authority but have no sources. What can you point me to that says working for longer than a month at 72 hrs/wk is unsustainable? Sure everything you say can happen. But also you can feel invigorated and it can be extremely healthy to feel like you have a purpose. It’s up to the person who is signing up to work to decide. And guess what? Nobody is forcing you to work 72 hrs/wk. There are plenty of other jobs out there.

Hard work is invigorating? Especially when working on something cool?

There’s something so beautiful and heavy about the how frank and pithy the opening line of Anna Karenina is:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Yep, agree. I was mostly focused on the cause, but supply chain disruption certainly seems to have exacerbated the collapse.

I think the supply chain was probably disrupted mostly because as the empires contracted inwards, there may have been a lack of policing throughout the hinterlands. So, getting from state to state would have been more dangerous.

In today’s terms, this might have implications for the policing of the world’s physical trade corridors: the oceans. What might happen if the world’s global oceanic police force (the United States) decides to no longer spend the trillions of dollars required to police these vast stretches of ocean?

I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I am saying the prime mover was probably climate change and you’re saying the disruption of supply chains exacerbated the collapse. Both can be true. I was focused on the cause.

To follow the red herring about crude oil, you’re making my point for me: you’re looking down at a busy road full of petroleum-fueled automobiles when 20% of the world’s oil supply has been completely eliminated.

To be more specific, the difference between now and 20 years ago is the United States is a net exporter of oil. Horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other nearly unbelievable technological leaps have turned the United States into an oil superpower within less than 2 decades. Aside from all of that, I truly believe that in 10 years everyone with a home (rented or owned) and a daily commute will be driving an EV. Consumer demand is far less than transportation/travel/industrial demand for oil, but it is the tail that wags the dog.

I'm very curious what part of the article you're drawing on to suggest that their reliance on copper and tin was the cause of the collapse. The article that I read seemed to suggest it was climate related.

I have no idea where you're from, but oil is not what it once was, especially in the United States. In fact, we have a very recent case study substantiating this claim: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait sees 20% of the entire world's supply transit through when under normal conditions. Yet after being completely closed (then slightly reopened, and now almost completely closed again), the world is functioning relatively normally and is much less impacted than it would have likely been even 20 years ago.

My conclusion from the article is entirely different: collapse doesn't necessarily occur all at once. And given that, maybe to someone living through this collapse, they wouldn't have even recognized it.

Agree with you on most angles but with a twist: the suburbanite should be seen not as the adult shopping, but as the children that the suburbanite is most likely shopping for. I’m certainly not going to be picky about the Greek yogurt when half of it will end up uneaten (or on the floor).

I’m not sure you have to be that rich to pay the $300 per year membership to buy food at loss leading prices. The bulk sizing of everything at Costco is overblown anyways. I wish it was bigger

Can someone more up to speed explain to me why with Virginia’s proximity to one of the largest natural gas reservoirs in the world in West Virginia, they don’t just build new power plants to keep up with electricity demand?

the film in the article says:

"a 100 W light bulb turned on every night for a year takes equivalent energy output from burning half a ton of coal"

I get that this film is probably dated, but there are so many things wrong with this:

1. 100 W for 8 hours at night * 365 days in a year is 292 kWh; a ton of coal burned in a power plant produces ~1,000 kWh. so, much less than half a ton. still alot though...

2. modern 100 W light bulbs typically use LED and only require ~14 W of power (so ~14% of the power draw)

3. neither of the above actually matter though because power at night is essentially free; wind turbines, hydro, geo thermal, etc. all continue to work at night and can't be easily shut off, even though demand for power is much much lower.

given that energy waste is not an issue, the benefits of solving this problem are restricted to being able to view stars, preventing a few birds from running into buildings, and requiring residents near outdoor lighting to install curtains (though it seems like even with lights that are dimmed and pointing downwards, most people that live near them would still install curtains anyways, whether for darkness or just privacy...).

This must be weighed with the benefits of having lights on in the first place.

Economy != software companies. Maybe there needs to be a capital rotation out of tech? That’s speaking beyond my expertise though (and imo is a little too doomer). Continuing the hypothetical through: Healthcare, industrials, financial services and many other verticals have plenty of growth opportunities.

Otherwise it would probably be the software companies that are the most focused on last-mile details (where AI in my experience has the most trouble). I expect that as consumers are faced with more and more AI slop SaaS they will be increasingly willing and able to pay for quality.

Which enrich existing shareholders who can use that capital to invest in other economically expanding projects.

This is the right question.

Every company has a list of >WACC IRR projects that it can spend saved money on. If not, it’s a cash cow company that wasn’t growing in the first place and will allow shareholders to use the saved cash for other economically expanding projects.

I believe that as self-driving cars become more ubiquitous, these deaths (and other traffic-related deaths) will decrease. I was driving on a 4 lane road at 5 in the morning and all of a sudden my Tesla model 3 slams on its brakes, missing a deer that jumped across the road by ~2 feet. Its path was completely perpendicular to the road and I couldn't see it until a few seconds after my car started braking.

Imagine a future when a much larger proportion of drivers have 360 degree vision with no blind spots, infinitesimally small reaction times and a human failsafe in the driver seat.

I live in Texas, which is probably very similar to where you’re thinking of, and I could list off at least 10 different places within a 1 hour radius that should be visited.

Ah yes, time tested and battle hardened inference margins.

I love this.

Here’s something else you can try: take off your phone case. My phone screen is scratched to hell and I think it runs slower from dropping it without a case so many times.

Someone should run a randomized trial with screen time against phone case usage. I wonder what would show up. Imagine the human connection and true critical thinking that would happen with just a 1% decrease in screen time!

Agree with this sentiment. However, I think the S&P 500 fudged the rule to 6 months which I believe adequately straddles the line between 1. provides time for price discovery and 2. includes a large piece of the market that would otherwise be included if not for the seasoning cutoff.

Agree with you entirely with respect to other indexes including earlier than 6 months.

“belong” is a flexible word. You’re right in theory but depending on the situation money in your bank account is worth more to you than an equivalent amount of money in a company’s bank account (of which you are a shareholder).

Exactly: enrich shareholders at the expense of their own coffers.

The life cycle of a share starts at IPO. The S&P 500 does not add companies to its index until at least 12 months after IPO.

Also, Meta issued 180 MM new shares at $38/share at IPO. That’s ~$7 Bn. Which is less than 1/4th of what they repurchased just last year.

Between share repurchases and dividends, S&P 500 companies are putting money into the markets, not pulling it out.

Meta was a $26 Bn net purchaser (opposite of issuer)

This makes me think that doing cool reboots of old cars but with EV powertrains would be awesome. Think of an old VW Golf from the 90s with an EV powertrain. Or an old 60s mustang.

Money that people “dump” into the S&P isn’t going to the company’s bank account. It’s purchasing shares on the market that were owned by other third party shareholders.

For example, in 2025 Meta was a net purchaser of their own stock ($26 Bn).

These companies are awash in cash because they’re generating revenue in excess of their costs. Nothing to do with the amount of money people put into the S&P 500.

Secondarily, this is exactly why I agree that LLMs likely won’t have the impact OP believes it will. Companies hire not just for output, but for

1. Training (future management, future architects, future bankers, future developers) 2. Generally adding smart people to their teams, capturing a cornered resource 3. Showing governments and shareholders that they have created “jobs”

And a plethora of other reasons that I can’t think of.

John D. Rockefeller (pioneer of the modern corporation) is quoted as saying: “Nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it. As soon as you can, get someone who you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.”