Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

Homo Silicus

  • Interesting use case of GPT3 – to model economic agents – as was done in this paper.
  • “These models can be used the same way economists use homo economicus: they can be given endowments, put in scenarios and then their behavior can be explored—though in the case of homo silicus, through computational simulation, not a mathematical deduction“
Misc

52 Things – Tom Whitwell

  • The classic annual list, 2022 edition. Eye opening as usual:
  • “37 per cent of the world’s population, 2.9 billion people, have never used the Internet.“
  • “40% of global shipping involves moving fossil and other fuels (oil, gas, wood pellets) around. More renewables (solar, wind, nuclear, geo), means fewer ships.“
  • “If you want a question answered on the Internet, post a wrong answer first.“
Misc

How to Negotiate

  • Fascinating article based on a Wharton professor’s guide to negotiating for reasonable people.
  • Some of the key points:
  • Leverage – “In general, the person who feels better about “no deal” has the most leverage, and the person that’s less okay with “no deal” has the least leverage.“
  • Have specific justifiable goals – preparation is key here.
  • Establish and maintain trust – “If it’s not there, trust is the single biggest obstacle to a good deal.”
  • Get information – “More listening = more leverage.” 
  • Concessions – “Link them with “if…then.” Make sure they recognize you’re giving up something of value so they feel the need to reciprocate.“
Misc

Common Misconceptions

  • An awesome list of common misconceptions from Wikipedia.
  • “Netflix was not founded after its co-founder Reed Hastings was charged a $40 late fee by Blockbuster. Hastings made the story up to summarize Netflix’s value proposition, and Netflix’s founders were actually inspired by Amazon“
  • “Adidas is not an acronym for either “All day I dream about sports”, “All day I dream about soccer”, or “All day I dream about sex”. The company was named after its founder Adolf “Adi” Dassler in 1949. The backronyms were jokes published in 1978 and 1981.“
  • ““420” did not originate from the Los Angeles police or penal code for marijuana use. California Penal Code section 420 prohibits the obstruction of access to public land. The use of “420” started in 1971 at San Rafael High School, where a group of students would go to smoke at 4:20 pm.“
  • And so on …
  • via The Browser (a must subscribe general newsletter).
Misc

Mini Baby Boom

  • New data suggests a small “baby bump” among US born mothers as a result of the pandemic.
  • “The 2021 baby bump is the first major reversal in declining U.S. fertility rates since 2007 and was most pronounced for first births and women under age 25, which suggests the pandemic led some women to start their families earlier. Above age 25, the baby bump was also pronounced for women ages 30-34 and women with a college education, who were more likely to benefit from working from home.“
  • Source: NBER via Eric.
Misc

Calm Credit Markets

  • One of the clear harbingers of the sharp rally last week was not just very negative sentiment, or the CPI print itself, it was the overly calm VIX index.
  • The VIX spent most of October falling, despite the bearish drum beat.
  • This is also the case in credit land – where things are “surprisingly chilled“.
  • “Here’s the US junk bond CDS credit spread index, which remains well below its 2008, 2011 and 2020 peaks, and the shape of the CDS curve, which tends to invert [Pictured] as markets freak out about a rash of near-term defaults.“
Misc

Paying for Outcomes

  • Sometimes ideas come in seconds and the job is done.
  • Yet, those paying for these ideas always equate time spent to value. They want to pay for process.
  • “How can it be that you talk to someone and it’s done in a second? But it IS done in a second — it’s done in a second and 34 years. It’s done in a second and every experience, and every movie, and everything in my life that’s in my head.“
  • Taken from FS this quote is from Paula Scher who conceived the Citi logo in seconds.
  • There is a great story in the link as well along the same lines.
  • Professional investing can actually sometimes feel the same way. Especially if you believe in Blink.
Misc

Venture Down Rounds

  • Lots of interesting VC data based on actual closed deals from Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick.
  • One of them, pictured, is the percentage of down rounds which have gone up but not much yet.
  • Although up rounds might be in name only.
  • Here is a summary of the most interesting data points.
  • In a few words, things are worse than 2021 but not by that much, things are still way up from a few years ago.
Misc

Jones Act

  • The Jones Act Is a piece of legislation, that mandates that maritime commerce in the US must be conducted with American-built and staffed ships.
  • The Act, which finds its origins in the 1920s, causes all kinds of problems – for one such ships are almost 3x more expensive to operate.
  • The impact can be felt, as this article explains, in the cost of petrol.
  • Fascinating how high prices bring out all sort of aspects of systems.
Misc

Effective Altruism

  • If you haven’t come across it before, effective altruism is an interesting movement that coined the term “longtermism”.
  • It says of the human race – “We’ve been around for approximately 300,000 years. There are now about 8 billion of us, roughly 15 percent of all humans who have ever lived.“
  • “You may think that’s a lot, but it’s just peanuts to the future. If we survive for another million years—the longevity of a typical mammalian species—at even a tenth of our current population, there will be 8 trillion more of us. We’ll be outnumbered by future people on the scale of a thousand to one.“
  • One of the movements champions – William MacAskill – has recently written a book that has received much attention (to be expected for such a well funded movement).
  • “What We Owe The Future” is worth knowing about – and this is a very good review of it.
Misc

Bewilderment

  • They say in investing it is all about having strong opinions weakly held.
  • Another way to say this is – bewilderment to combat excessive certainty, inflexibility, over confidence.
  • “You no longer need to exhaust yourself pretending to understand what you don’t or making pronouncements about questions that are above your pay grade. You can trade false simplicity for complicated truth. And the resulting worldview is more useful and more beautiful because it genuinely reflects reality. That’s why a synonym for bewilderment is wonder, which, at least for me, is not terrifying but exhilarating.”
Misc

Fire Departments

  • In the US in 2021 the NY Fire Department attended 10,639 incidents that were deemed “structural fires” out of a total of 1,213,715 incidents.
  • The vast majority of the rest are actually medical incidents.
  • Fires are just must less common (more alarms, less smoking, better safety).
  • Fire departments in the US perform the role of ambulances – in 1980 they attended 5 million medical calls but in 2020 this was 24 million (Covid notwithstanding, a huge rise).
  • Contrarian article arguing why fire departments have perhaps put themselves out of business.
Misc

Fusion Power

  • Fusion power holds great promise but has never really materialised.
  • Why? To find out read this excellent review of the book The Future of Fusion Energy, an introduction to fusion.
  • One answer is funding – “The reason we don’t have fusion already is because we, as a civilization, never decided that it was a priority. Fusion funding is literally peanuts: In 2016, the US spent twice as much on peanut subsidies as on fusion research.“
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