The more west, the more quiet. At least past month...
Improving picture for the most part. And as always - market is leading the way.
https://void.cat/d/WYtmQbk5CfJcLCy8aZx6ca.webp
#Macro
Kaspi listed in Nasdaq $KSPI.
LSE's GDRs struggled w/ low trading vols. Co' could now be eligible for inclusion in the Nasdaq100 or Nasdaq Next Gen 100, which would provide a further boost to volumes from passive funds that track indices
23'9M: rev: 2.8B; profit 1.3B, cap: 17B
Grim article on China. Highlights aging population before it got rich. And a switch to consumption?
"Household consumption's share of economic output in China is already one of the lowest in the world"
Comment I liked on development in in large orgs:
"There's a lot wrong with development these days. It's not just the incredibly stupid methodologies, but also a major shift away from competency as a whole. When I started working in 2004, you had to do everything yourself: planning, implementation, and deployments/maintenance. Nowadays, we have developers who can't deploy an application, DevOps professionals who can't write a single line of code, and Java developers that don't know how the JVM works — yet, they all hold strong opinions"
It was a titbit i found interesting from DW coverage on middle east transformation as oil demand supposedly declines eventually. Even taking into account slave-like contruction sector which had to be huge to build out everything in desert over decades I still found it surprisingly huge share of natives being in vegetative welfare status. Normally there are bunch of sectors in countrys economy that dont depend on manual labor. Entrepreneurship drives demand for quality education system and apparently they don't have that.
ML helped find a material that could "potentially reduce lithium use by up to 70%.
Microsoft researchers used AI and supercomputers to narrow down 32 million potential inorganic materials to 18 promising candidates in less than a week"
Already powers lightbulb.
Surprising move by Hertz: selling EVs to purchase ICEs. CEO says they got ahead of themselves, damage costs.
I suspect most current EV manufacturers are building cars as phones, without regard for ease of repair.
#EVs
Fun fact: 90% Kuwait, Qatar citizens work in public sector. Often unproductively.
30 USD/TRY
Turkey Dec inflation: 64.8% YoY. Market watchers & gov saying this cycle should hit its peak by mid-2024, to 70%, before decel to ~40% at 24' end
Country's CB made sharp pivot in June when it began hiking interest rates under a new team. Rates since lifted 8.5->42.5%
Great conversation. I think majority of ecoststem is ignorant or even unaware of current mining issues. And the exact reason I was so pleased w/ Ocean pool launch. There's a door now at least.
Thanks for showing this. I'm a melody guy, did not listen to lyrics at first. "Cute" was not an appropriate word... :}
Cool! Thanks for sharing, cute song too.
In 2022 I only watched movies I haven't seen before. In part2, finishing with rest of feature films (25+), documentaries (10) and a single TV show: True Detective (a little more on that one).
#movies
https://www.generalistlab.com/value/cinema/reviewing-lesser-known-movies-part-2/
This week I learned not only Kevin Costner was responsible for birth of greatest female vocalist hit, but it has origins in country music and a writer is this sweetie: Dolly Parton.
https://void.cat/d/DeJiJGN7f1briECEMiR456.webp
#GLMusicDiscovery
Annual portfolio review is here w/ some extras:
-valuation on Akola Group
-previously undisclosed last transaction for 23'.
-expanded on US market outlook and why I'm mostly bullish.
Commentary on $EVO, $SQ, $APPS, $KSPI, $IAC, Reliance Industries, EWA1L.
Karim Jedda built demo browser extension w/ local LLM to sit between self & browser, to filter out spam, ads, bad intent on social media, websites.
Extensions can be detected, but author hints that application would not bring much overhead and be undetectable against DOM changes.
Germany gas consumption:
2021: 1027 TWh
2022: 850 TWh
2023: 813 TWh (est.)
HN comment I resonated with.
"I fear everything will be expanded by llms soon. "write an email, three paragraphs, about X", instead of just sending X directly. Then the receiver gets a wall of text, and uses an llm to distill it back to X' before reading"
Supposed help.
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” William Morris
#minimalism
In last #GLMusicDiscovery of 2023, sharing a difficult soundscape by Su Tissue, that disappeared in 80s from public eye.
https://void.cat/d/CaDU354dGmVTytCdsBBvL1.webp
Salon de Musique is complex, demanding but ever-interesting in it's layers. Cacophony ultimately has it's own order.