I prefer not to wish ill on anyone but Roger did many bad things, hurt people and played dirty, he was eventually going to go down one way or another.

I’m just happy we’re shifting the Overton window and asking the right questions, like “if Epstein didn’t bank himself, who did?” nostr:note1we7xmqgf2e37wq84hj8fkjlg0vhnsk2cfmvmg3ksuve05kw3we8sycfps0

I have watched a surprisingly small number of movies over the past few years, mainly because I have been so busy and also because not that many new movies have appealed to me.

On a set of recent flights I watched a bunch of movies in a row:

1) Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It’s the prequel to the series and stars the character who later becomes a main villain in the series, so that is neat. Not bad actually. I found it pretty engaging even though the original Hunger Games series lost my interest somewhere around the second movie.

2) The Creator. Sci Fi military/drama/action movie about AI. It had a decent plot structure and theme, but overall was pretty “meh” and had some distracting plot holes.

3) Ferrari. A biopic about Enzo Ferrari during some of the harder years of his life. Great acting from Driver and Cruz. Somewhat underwhelming overall story, but solid film imo.

4) Wish. The first critically-panned Disney animated film in a long time. I was curious to see what was so bad about it. Imo the problem was not that it was truly bad per se but that it was aggressively mediocre. Songs felt kind of forced or out of place. The plot structure itself was pretty creative. There was hype from some conservatives around this movie being “woke” but I didn’t see that as being the case. It’s ironically about a bunch of people fighting for personal liberty and a smaller role for government, lol.

Almost all of finance/investing can be summed up as shorting abundant things and going long scarce things.

And yet, many people spend the vast majority of their effort trying to go long abundant things and short scarce things precisely during the 10% of the time when that works, instead of going to therapy or something.

The Antidote to Nihilistic Narcissism

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“He’ll have a long life as long as he doesn’t know himself.”

In Greek mythology, this was the prophecy concerning Narcissus. Narcissus is better known for how the myth ends. He falls in love with his own reflection, which is where we get the word narcissistic. The ending refers back to the initial prophecy. When he saw his own reflection, he didn’t recognize it because he didn’t know himself.

In the middle of the myth is Narcissus rejecting the love of everyone else. The order matters. Narcissus only fell in love with himself after rejecting everyone. He didn’t reject everyone because he was in love with himself, but rather he fell in love with himself because he rejected everyone. His only target for love was himself.

I bring up this myth because this is the intellectual path that so many people take. They cynically reject belief systems one by one until they are left with nothing else. Lacking anything else to believe in, they turn to themselves and become completely self-centered. They become nihilistic narcissists.

Bad Parenting

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Look at the prophecy again. Narcissus will have a long life as long as he doesn’t know himself. Presumably, his parents made sure he didn’t know himself because Narcissus didn’t even recognize his own reflection. They did this with the best of intentions, to ensure he had a long life, yet clearly, a life staring into your own reflection is not exactly meaningful.

Think about what we tell our kids: “You can be anything you want to be.” “Go find what you’re passionate about.”

These platitudes specifically avoid giving children an identity. More subtly, not giving them an identity makes it harder for them to get attacked. We do this with the best of intentions, yet is this really what parents should be doing? To define yourself is an enormous burden, especially for children.

Nihilism as Default

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Think about the myth again. Narcissus rejected all would-be lovers.

Why?

He didn’t know himself. He didn’t have any basis by which he could even evaluate their fit. How could he since he had no self-awareness or self-understanding? He couldn’t solve for love because he didn’t know half the equation.

Identity is the basis of evaluating everything. Without grounding, nothing can be built. Without identity, belief is impossible and nihilism becomes the default.

The Appeal of Narcissism

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Nihilistic narcissism is a safe position. Because you never have to stand for anything and never take a risk, you can preserve your own ego, preserve your intellectual life as in the prophecy. The appeal is in preserving what you have, your own self, however empty and senseless you become.

But nihilistic narcissism completely strips meaning from life. You may live a long life staring into your own reflection, but it’s not a very fulfilling one. Lacking any sort of external north star, you are left with an internal north star, which if you follow, becomes navel-gazing. Ironically, narcissism is the end state of not knowing yourself.

Such a place is one of profound despair. There is no meaning and all you have to live for is yourself. Is it any wonder so many people are depressed?

Parents, give your kids the gift of identity. Your job is to help them know who they are. This should be natural, since the kids come from you. By knowing you, they learn to know themselves. By showing them who you are, you are really showing them who they are. By participating with them in community you are showing them who they are. By telling them your family history you are showing them who they are. Tether them to your identity so they can find meaning. Give them the solid foundation of knowing themselves.

Because identity is necessary to a meaningful life.

I was asked a while back whether I would be richer if I wasn't Christian. The main implication being that there are so many immoral ways to make money that Christian values prevent. And while I agree that there are ways to make money that are closed off to me, there are also ways to lose money that were closed off, too.

There are a lot of monetary pit traps in the world today. There's all kinds of addictions that can destroy your balance sheet, drugs, sugar, power, games, etc. Christians exercise self-denial muscles through God's grace. So in that sense, I think I've been saved from the many ways in which I could have lost my stack.

To hold is hard. And it requires a lot of self-denial. If you want to hold, Christianity is a sort of super-power.

💜💜💜💜💜 nostr:note1ytr4ncwfm9vcwfu2m85aeunrxc62uy3ufnmmc005ddhphpdz33qsu2v9w7

Volatility is our Protection

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"Bitcoin is too volatile." How many times have you heard that from normie nocoiners? I know for myself, it's the biggest reason that I've heard for why there's not greater adoption.

Indeed, it's an understandable objection. The upside is great, but volatility and risk are not, at least from a normie point of view. After all, if the point of saving is to mitigate risk for the future, then volatility does the opposite because there's less predictability in purchasing power.

Yet if we examine things a bit further, what they ask for is something that cannot exist in a fiat economy. Let me explain.

The behavior that is sought by the people that complain about Bitcoin being too volatile is an asset is something like the various fiat currencies that are stable to the dollar. For example, the Euro, the yen and the Canadian/Australian dollars have fluctuated, but have stayed in a reasonable range of the dollar, not really deviating more than 25-30% from the average over the last 20-30 years.

Yet their lack of volatility is decidedly artificial. It's the result of central bank operations. They keep their currencies within a peg range against the dollar by buying/selling dollars as needed. Obviously, Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank, so there's no stabilization mechanism and thus is a lot more volatile.

Other than a few currency traders, nocoiners generally don't invest in foreign currencies despite there being relative stability and little volatility. They want the upside of Bitcoin as well. The returns of Bitcoin have been staggering, especially compared to traditional assets since its inception 15 years ago. The nocoiners want the large upside without the volatility. They want an asset that goes up over the long term with little to no volatility in the short term.

But this is impossible. Suppose such an asset existed. Say an asset went up 50% a year without volatility. What would happen?

The main feature of central bank backed fiat money is that there's no opportunity cost for money and loans are basically infinitely available. So say the loans are available at 10% yearly interest. The wall street finance bros in that case can easily buy the asset with the loan to make a cool 40% profit. They would do that all day long because making 40%/year is very difficult.

But because they need to *buy* the asset to make this trade work, this trade would cause the asset price to rise. But even if the asset price goes high enough that it's no longer 50%/year, but 20%/year, they would still continue because there's a 10% margin that they can make. Indeed, they will continue borrowing and buying for this trade until the asset's yearly price increase is at or below the loan rate.

Indeed most of the profit available in the market have gone to bankers for this reason. Profitable things (companies, assets, etc.) all get arbitraged to death through these infinite loans.

So why doesn't this dynamic happen to Bitcoin? It's the volatility, particularly to the downside. The problem with using loans to buy the asset is that when you're underwater on the loan, you get liquidated. And liquidation makes the downward volatility worse! In other words, the giant volatility swings add significant risk to the loan-based strategies, and the more people doing them make the risk worse, even in the face of the massive profit margins.

Bitcoin volatility is our protection against fiat games taking over. The volatility adds risk, which prevent the loans from being too easily given, making the borrow and buy trade harder. The volatility also clears out the leverage, which ultimately comes from money printing.

Volatility makes the levered players, the privileged players in the fiat system, lose. And that means the normal people, the ones that can't get loans or leverage win.

Volatility is the plebs' protection.