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Vegas64

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Everything posted by Vegas64

  1. From Wiles (I think via Vanity Fair) Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” Ie, in one breath she confirms two things we’ve long flagged: first, that the counter-narcotics framing is just a fig-leaf to oust Maduro. And second, like it or not, it might work (Maduro has been haggling over exile terms since at least early November). And in the Americas at least, this all hints at Trump’s preference for 1) coercion over containment, 2) unilateral action over multilateral pressure, and 3) personal dominance over institutional strategy. Legal, humanitarian, or regional fallout?
  2. It's harder than you'd think on first pass. I drove into the office yesterday for a holiday party. It was an exercise in gratitude for not having to do that except for rare occassions. I can't go back to having to commute into a city center and work in an office and lose that time in commuting, etc. On the other hand if I only made $120k, I'd have to do it. I can't even get by on $240k so I'd hate to try on $120.
  3. Depends on how you define leader. I think the consensus is surely that Google almost fumbled the bag and OpenAI should have never been allowed to grow to be what it is today and they have caught up all the ground they lost. Gemini's models and image generation, etc. is technically better I think the consensus is, but the mass majority of people use OpenAI more. I think their MAU's dwarf Gemini's right now. ChatGPT is the Kleenex brand name of AI and Google has only themselves to blame for that I think. I think the analysts (and traders) who are watching this bubble in earnest are all super bullish on Google because they are vertically integrated (e.g. make their own TPU's, have a massive infrastructure via GCP, etc.) and are well positioned to win the AI wars, but OpenAI is certainly not yesterdays news.
  4. Depends. I've been in county during the holidays and everyone sort of comes together to laugh and hang out and I've been in during the summer whenever people just want to fight.
  5. I haven't done a push up in 30 years. Let's see!
  6. Was going to post something like this. Birth rates plummet for responsible people groups and they explode for marginal, disadvantaged and developing people groups. I think that's a tale as old as time. Going from hundreds of years ago with the Irish and Italians to the Mexicans of the last two or three generations in America to globally the highest growth regions being the poor areas of Sub-Sahara Africa and Bangladesh and the like. Just based on pure brute force numbers, the world power and hegemony will be a brown persons world sooner than later IMO.
  7. The question you should be asking yourself is, if you believe all that to be true, how do you best position yourself to profit and come out ahead? Think like the Big Short guys who saw the global housing collapse coming. If you really believe it, that is. That is what I've been challenging myself with at least, having the balls to make some bets on what I think I believe to be true to best position myself for the future.
  8. And Oracle is back to almost even from before the huge spike. AI forecasted demand stock growth giveth and it taketh away.
  9. This is all apocraphyia these days in the lore and legend of AI and such, but I was listening to a podcast and apparently Elon was all-in on SpaceX and told the founder of Deepmind that his whole focus was on SpaceX because he wanted to get to Mars as a back up plan for when things got bad here on earth...to which the guy told Elon "dude, the thing that is goign to go bad on earth is likely A.I., and if it's A.I., you don't think it will be able to get to Mars too based on systems, comms, technology, etc. that we used?" Elon then invested in Deepmind and started really focusing on AI after that "aha!" moment. WIld.
  10. I got busy yesterday so haven't been able to read the spicy Vanity Fair tea. Apparently there is a lot of making fun of Trump from the inside. That said, this speech and the feedback I'm seeing from it reminds me that we are not only in a K-shaped economy, but our politics are K-shaped as well. We might as well live on different planets from MAGA's and visa versa.
  11. Maybe the funniest thing I’ve ever seen because I think of all the old fogies on here like myself and dbeasy and cman and other old Dallas proper guys who had kids come up through St Marks and Hockaday (or heaven forbid, Jesuit and Ursaline) and who still go to the original pancake house on northwest for coffee before going to HPV for more coffee because we work 2 hour days now.
  12. For sure. reminds me of this bit (comedy):
  13. YouTube is streaming the Oscars. Are we all just holding on this illusory idea of Hollywood as an instituion? We ARE big! It's WB and Paramount that got small.
  14. Alex Karp is a maniac and maybe even a sociopath. But I think he’s right about one thing: Interviewer: I want to get into all of that, but I’ll tell you where I want to start. You wrote a book last year called “The Technological Republic,” and you quote Samuel Huntington in it and you argue the following: that the West was not made possible “by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.” What did you mean by that? And is that what Palantir ultimately does? Alex Karp CEO of Palantir: Well, I think one of the most interesting things about that quote is it’s indisputably and obviously true. Interviewer: You genuinely believe that the U.S., this idea of ideas, values, religion, has nothing to do with it? You think it really is about organizing violence? Alex Karp: But one of the biggest problems we have in our elite institutions, especially our Ivy Leagues, is this indisputable truth that no one would listen to the superiority of our ideas if our ability to organize violence was inferior. That every single person in the world believes, outside of the faculty of Harvard, and certainly all of our adversaries know to be true, is viewed as something that’s kind of worthy of great discussion and dispute. And the primary reason they dispute it, honestly, is because at their core, they want to undermine the superiority of Western values, which are meritocracy, rule of law, accepting that inputs and outputs are not the same, that are the basis of building the superiority on the military plane.
  15. I agree with your line of thinking more than I don’t, but I think from everything I’ve read, there are durable goods and gains that will outlive the bubble. The energy grid, the data centers and nuclear investments being the main ones, that will benefit whatever comes next and rises from the rubble of this current bubble.
  16. Hot sports opinion, but Buccees are actually extremely overrated and gross and nasty. Madisonville is disgusting. Ennis is awful. I can't think of the other ones off the top of my head I've been to, but they are all bad. Maybe Denton.
  17. FWIW, I'm not an AI apologist.
  18. Let's play a hypothetical. If one were interested in getting into this space, how would one? And what are some of the good companies in your experience?
  19. I read this and have more or less thought it true. Curious your thoughts:
  20. We found the guy who doesn't understand exiting protocol!
  21. didn't you make a million bucks last year? such a short memory these managers and companies have. now THIS is fascinating and talk about headwinds. But what do you mean selling sustainability? How does one sell sustainability? ESG consulting or management or something? Doesn't seem like a product you can sell it's an idea or concept for businesses to embody.
  22. I thought the big difference in this bubble versus the previous was that it was largely being funded by equities and NOT debt though. Hmmmm, are we being lied to?
  23. Fair enough, I don’t want window or middle seats arms in my persona space and pits in my face and the risk of you spilling on my laptop.
  24. FYI Ray Romano has been the pop-in at comedy cellar if you want to try and get lucky and see him. He's doing a Broadway thing this month and so he's been in town.
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