@BrianTh37895972 @Quodverum_ @AdamBaldwin @ScottAdamsSays
SO....
About that "inevitable" Democrat over-reach that always
BLOWS UP INTO THEIR GREEDY FACES....

Yeah, they're not going to (politically) survive this.

I know I'm in the minority in relation to my views on Pence. I'm still 50/50 as to whether Pence is deep state or working under deep cover with @potus and the military.

Why?

Logic. I do not think @Potus would have asked a deep state operative to be his VP. There's too much

I've been studying @naval for years now.

I've read "The Almanack," listened to the full 3.5 hours of "How to Get Rich," absorbed his best podcasts, pondered countless tweets, and more.

Here are 20 highlights you should know (thread 👇):

Sources:

Paradoxes:

"Answers to all the great questions are paradoxes … Pursuing them is actually really useful because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace." — @naval

Meaning:

"I think the closest I can articulate ... is to keep growing and learning in the short period of time that you have. To seek truth and to accept things the way they are. To see the world the way it really is. Then, just to live your life." — @naval

Desire:

If @naval could put on thing on a billboard, it would be:

"Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want."

I see a lot of fantastic discussions, papers, threads, and op-eds about the insurrection from experts from various fields.

As a social scientist, I want to add that it's important to understand that collective action like we saw yesterday is due to *many* factors.

Yes, the leadership of Donald Trump played the central role in instigating the anti-Democratic effects--from his initial attempts to dismiss and discredit state votes to fomenting the insurrection yesterday.

Leadership matters a great deal for motivating collective action.

Of course, leadership doesn't occur in a vacuum. Trump was supported, enabled, validated and empowered by Republican elites for his entire term.

This came to head with the concerted efforts by GOP members of the Senate and House who tried to overturn the election certification.

The main attempt to overthrow a democratic process was by spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.

This was primarily spearheaded on social media, which is why freezing Trump's social media accounts is such a big deal.

These social media account accounts were used to spread misinformation and organize, but this misinformation was laundered and legitimized by right wing media figures to millions of people.

From Fox to OAN to Newsmax, these false messages were spread to millions of homes.

Earlier when asked about why the govt didn't act earlier the PM said “I think we were told about the new variant and the way it was taking off on 18th December and we went into T4 across the vast bulk of the country pretty much in the next 24 hours.”

This isn't entirely correct.

The new variant was identified in early December after genome data was paired with a curiosity that the rates of infection in Kent were not falling despite national restrictions and then T3.

So there was indicative sense that the variant may be playing its part as early as that and perhaps sport greater transmissibility.

On December 14th Matt Hancock informed the Commons, saying the new variant was in at least 60 local authorities already.

He told MPs in that over that week, there had been sharp, exponential rises in coronavirus infections across London, Kent, parts of Essex and Hertfordshire.

He said they couldn't be sure whether that was due to the new variant but that caution was required.

As a result, London and several other places in the South East were moved to T3.

On 18th December NERVTAG reported that they believed the new variant was indeed more transmissible.

On the 19th, the govt acted. This is the action I assume the PM referred to today.

I’m not going to litigate the SEC’s unproven allegations on Twitter, and as you can imagine, there are new considerations to what can / should be said publicly after the litigation process starts. However, I would like to address 5 key questions I’ve seen. 1/10

Q: Why didn’t Ripple settle with the SEC?

Can’t get into specifics, but know we tried - and will continue to try w/ the new administration - to resolve this in a way so the XRP community can continue innovating, consumers are protected and orderly markets are preserved. 2/10

Q: Did you pay exchanges to list XRP? When will it be relisted?

XRP is one of the most liquid (top 3-5) digital assets globally, and 95% is traded outside the US. Ripple has no control over where XRP is listed, who owns it, etc. It’s open-source and decentralized. 3/10

Delisting and halting are 2 separate things - most are halting trading. With 8 different govt agencies, each with their own (and sometimes opposing) views of crypto, U.S. market participants are facing conflicting policies and no surprise, some act conservatively. 4/10

We’ve moved from lack of regulatory clarity to regulatory chaos in the U.S. This is why regulation by enforcement is such bad public policy. With the new administration, we expect #DCEA to be reintroduced - common-sense legislation providing clarity to the entire industry. 5/10

1/ Wow, what an essay, trying to distill thoughts from this masterpiece: https://t.co/bxR3cnNJrM

Hat tip: @NSKinsella

The essay is about inflation's effect on culture, through the analysis of a short story set in Weimar Germany. I've selected some quotes and will comment.

2/ "With all points of reference gone, the only law...appears to be perpetual change."

When money changes, everything else anchored on money starts to change as well. Prices being the most obvious one, but crucially, not the only one.

3/ "...if we seek an explanation for the dissolution of authority in the world he is portraying, we should look to the monetary madness of the Weimar Republic."

The insanity and disorder of society, in other words, can be traced back to monetary policy.

4/ "Everything threatens to become unreal once money ceases to be real."

Unreal, in this sense is counterfeit or fake. Societal attitudes become as fake as the money we use because it no longer just represents value provided, but also value fraudulently obtained.

5/ "By making money worthless, inflation threatens to undermine and dissolve all sense of value in a society."

Money helps us to know where we can expend our labor to best provide value. If our sense of value is skewed, we will no longer properly value our labor, time or energy.

Lots of stuff happened on Capitol Hill yesterday.

All sorts of reflexivity and fertile fallacies.

And, if you haven't figured it out yet, you are only allowed to believe one version of the story and are allowed to only have one response.

Just like in late May.

(2) Any "takes" that were outside of what the established majority had prescribed would instantly brand you a racist, a bigot, a white supremacist.

And you were hedged, deleted, and banned if you thought for yourself.

Just like in March.

My number 1 stock pick for 2021 is: Pine Island Acquisition Corp.

$PIPP

Let me break down why I think this will be THE SPAC of 2021. 👇

TL:DR – the management team is loaded with President Biden’s closest friends and advisors. No other SPAC has this level of access.

$PIPP company overview:

-focused on defense, government service & aerospace
-perfect focus when you consider who is on their Management Team

$PIPP Management

-here's where it gets EXCITING
-founded by John Thain (ex Merrill Lynch CEO and Uber director)
-then STACKED with veteran Government and Administration key figures

$PIPP Insane Management Connections

-the list of PIPP "DC Partners" includes:

-- President Biden's pick for Secretary of State (Tony Blinken)
-- President Biden's pick for Secretary of Defense (Gen. Lloyd Austin).

$PIPP - The Joe Biden Connection

- Tony Blinken and President Biden are close allies.
- Blinken has been an advisor to Biden for decades
- Blinken set to be appointed Sec. of State

.@NYGovCuomo : "If the UK spread catches on in NY, hospitalization rate goes up, hospital staff gets sick - then we have a real problem. Then we're at shutdown again."

The problem with capacity now is staff shortage, he says. "We have beds, we have equipment." Primarily nurses.

Cuomo: Very worried about UK strain. Still just 1 case confirmed in NY, but believe we have more. Notes spread in UK only took about 3 weeks.

Says this concern + staff shortages at hospitals is why such a push for faster vaccination of health-care workers.

Cuomo: "We have seen a dramatic increase" in performance of vaccinations.

Were doing 10k per day for first several wks

On Monday, went to 30k

Tuesday, a little over 30k

Wednesday, went to 50k

And today going to be in excess of 50k

"That's 5 times the rate they were doing."

Cuomo: Refusal rate varies. Drs taking vaccine at much higher rate. Anecdotal, but would expect to see numbers around 80% for drs. "And drs know best."

Nurses, there's a variation. Would expect to see that 70-80%. 70 is the minimum threshold for viability of vaccination program.

Cuomo: 2M health-care workers in state. Only have 900k doses for the 2M.

"Any hospital that hits their refusal rate, fine, tell me, we'll reallocate it - bc overall we don't have enough dosages for half the population of health-care workers."

Let’s talk about how the attempted take-over of the US Capitol came to pass. For months leading up to the general election, Pres. Trump sowed the seeds of doubt in the election, repeatedly tweeting that it would be “rigged”. (Thread)

Hyper-partisan right wing media and social media influencers cultivated that doubt. They amplified his rigged claims, and combed the internet for stories that they could fit into their developing theories of voter fraud.

Ballots from 2018 round in a recycling bin? Fraud! Ballots accidentally discarded in a trash can? Fraud! An information card mailed to an old address in CA (mislabeled as a “ballot”)? Fraud!

This started in September and continues today.

If you look closely, you can see the same set of actors mobilizing again and again and again to spread these false claims. From accounts affiliated with right wing media and right wing political organizations to members of Trump’s inner circle. And of course, the Pres. himself.

Here’s a table we generated from months of work at the @2020Partnership of false/misleading information “incidents” on Twitter, from August through November:

Has the course of History been directed by a small group of people with common interests? The paintings and pictures of the great men of the past centuries reveal a common thread which links them together.

[THREAD]:

Affidavit by former head of IT for large Italian defense contractor admitting he uploaded instructions through military satellite to Frankfurt to flip votes from Trump to Biden on election night under direction of US persons. Willing to testify.#ItalyDidIt

Tarik Bateh, a senior director with JLL Capital Markets, is giving a presentation about his thoughts on Lot J. He said there are 4 major and fundamental red flags about the project, but they can all be fixed with "basic and standard" business and governance practices.

First red flag: Due diligence. He said the developers need to provide more information about the project.
"You could not get a mortgage on your house with the information that has been provided about Lot J," he said.

2. He said the developers need to invest their money into the project before the city does, as this is standard practice in the real estate industry.
"This ensures skin in the game," he said.

Bateh said the developers are fully capable of getting a construction loan from a bank, not the city.

Bateh's third point is that no city money should go towards the project until it's completed. City should instead provide a lump sum payment at the completion of the project that the developers do not need to pay.

🚨🚨🚨🚨Situation Update, Jan. 7th, 2021 – False flag attack STAGED to complete the steal

The false flag raid on the Capitol Building yesterday, led by Antifa and BLM operatives dressed as Trump supporters, set the stage to justify the final betrayal of America as Dems and

As Mark Twain once said, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Here's a thread that looks at Premier Kenney's claim that the international border testing pilot program of air travellers has been a "success." #ableg

At his Jan. 1 presser, Kenney noted the the pilot program had a test positivity rate of 1.48% compared to an overall positivity rate from testing done in the province of about 7%. See video link at approximately 3:15:

Indeed, Kenney's numbers for the pilot project are accurate. Of the 18,021 travellers who had participated as of December 17, 1.48% had tested positive after arriving in

But was it appropriate to compare the results among travellers who were presumably screened before boarding and found asymptomatic to those from recent testing results among Albertans who are overwhelming if not entirely symptomatic or have had a known contact with the disease?

Perhaps, it would have been better if Kenney had compared those results to those done among similarly asymptomatic Albertans. As @CBCFletch noted in an October 23 tweet, 659,000 tests among people with no symptoms found a positivity rate of just 0.11%....

So..had a great conversation last night with older investment types, old friends whom I traded with/against and managed money against or for. Age diff from me is > 10+ years so the takes were interesting but the common theme was a little disturbing (depends on your view)

Was looking at the landscape of the world & quite concerned where we are (I do not share your optimism for a shinny happy future). I am a Bond guy + Cycles & my view approach is ALWAYS what is the worst that can happen (that is how I was taught to trade & manage money) As a Bond

Money manager you never every want to apologize for a negative year, most people don't understand bonds can lose lots and lots and lots of money. So my view on life is always negative & fuck you approach.

The others are similar but have more equity exposure and FX, one other is really good via commodities so the conversation was from a top down look with some bottom up approaches. So.....after looking at the notes of the great conversation this is how it looked:

basically the world changed 2007/2008 especially North America. The GFC set in motion financial engineering games and here we are. The issues pre this (2000 to 2007) set ALL this up so lots of blame to go around but to pin point certain things the real problems started with QE &