The ratio of AI slop posts across Twitter now is pretty wild.
Gay people exist in real life, and having some gay characters in fiction is normal.
The issue is bad writing, forced themes, etc. Even many gay people would watch that particular Stranger Things scene and be like “uh… this is bad”.
The mega-flop episode in this last season of Stranger Things gave me a new marketing pitch for my upcoming sci fi novel:
You know what would be crazy? Just deciding to skip punctuation.
Cormac McCarthy, the bestselling and Pulitzer-winning author of books like No Country For Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian, famously didn't like quotation marks, felt they cluttered the page, and so he didn't use them.
When dialogue happens in his novels, there are no quotes around it, and you as the reader just have to figure out when a line is narration or dialogue. He also didn't use semicolons or exclamation points or certain other forms of punctuation. While he didn't exclude commas entirely, he did minimize them, and instead used extra "ands" in place of where many other authors would use commas. He used periods normally.
His prose isn't my cup of tea, but there's no denying his success, and it goes to show that you can kind of just do things.
In the first Expanse book, Leviathan Wakes, there is a scene where a detective is looking through space port logs.
There’s one ship called The Badass Motherfucker. It’s owned by the MYOFB Corporation (presumably, “Mind Your Own Fucking Business”).
They don’t elaborate. The detective passes over it and eventually finds the ship he is after. This particular ship and corp never comes up again.
I feel like we need a spinoff covering whatever the hell these guys are up to, lol.
I for one am grateful for the work of those who seek ways to make Bitcoin quantum-secure.
I remember back in my freshman year of college, which would've been nearly twenty years ago now, hearing about quantum computers and thinking we might have them in a decade.
When I first bought bitcoin, it was with the notion in mind that maybe one day quantum computers at scale would exist, that one day the Bitcoin network might have to upgrade for it, as it has updated in the past for other things. Bitcoin is resilient against many risks, but I've generally thought that to be one worth watching.
I think some of the recent concerns about quantum are overdone. Bitcoin goes through seasons, and this is clearly quantum season. But it is true that some institutions and potential large buyers are worrying about bitcoin's quantum resistance, and thus its price can be impacted even if the software is not. This can pass, in time. And those who develop potential mitigation paths, that help figure out what the most efficient and resilient upgrades would be if they are needed, are doing good work on that front.
Much like how some people are understandably spooked by just the risk of quantum (i.e. even if you believe there's a ~5% chance of it happening in some investable time horizon, that factors into your expected value analysis), others are understandably relieved by knowing that people are working on it and that mitigation paths do exist. And I'm glad they're doing that.
I wrote multiple times a year ago that privacy would continue to be suppressed regardless of administration.
It is.
One of my most popular posts here was when I simply reminded people that our politicians are retarded.
This was when Trump was surging in the polls last year. I talked about why both him and Biden were retarded, not just Biden. This was at a time when many people needed hope that one side might be smart, that maybe Trump wasn’t retarded as his literally senile competitor was. As if they forgot the 2027-2021 run.
Now, here in December 2025, with a repeated failure to release the full Epstein files, and he himself implicated in many of them, and MAGA turning against him, are you surprised?
Everyone knew he was a bad person. People just argued for why a bad person was needed, or why his bad values wouldn’t interfere with his policies.
But yeah, bad people rule things badly.
Nothing stops this train.
nostr:nevent1qqsxv3wstrce3mprgzsq8u35mx25qeqvxu6umytk4sl67zutlwsr5eqedkn89
Well, having read this, for the fun of it I just retweeted it to my 800k followers too.
I've been slumping on my fitness this past month.
It got cold, so I stopped my daily biking. Then I got sick, so I wasn't hitting my basement gym either. Then even when I recovered I just wasn't doing it. Best I was doing was walking outside to get some sun and fresh air.
Yesterday I got back in. Stretches, push-ups, squats, bag-punching, deadlifts, dumbbell routines, and a few treadmill sprints. I'm super sore today, and my cardio is shit at the moment, but it feels great.
If you've been slumping a bit this winter, I'm right there with you! Use today as a catalyst to get back in. You'll be glad you did.
Imagine if you won the lottery, but were in another state, and now had to get back to that state with the lottery ticket. If you were to somehow lose the ticket, you’d lose it all. Like carrying a single private key to a few thousand bitcoin in your pocket or something.
Anyway, here’s a review of Night Moves by Jared Dillian. It’s a collection of 16 short stories about situations like that, and although they are drastically different from each other, I’d say the overall theme is “dark comedy slice-of-life”. Most are about some variation of death, addiction, sex, temptation, or compulsion.
I’m primarily familiar with Dillian’s financial work- he’s a former Wall Street trader and a current financial newsletter writer. He’s also a DJ and fiction writer, which is the side of his work I’m less familiar with, until now.
I usually read full novels rather than collections of short stories. And the majority of the novels I read tend to be fantasy or sci fi; basically stories about the past or the future. This one consists of short stories that are mostly set near the present day.
The characters in the stories range from grungy teenagers to aging dentists, from up-and-coming weather forecasters to divorced ladies, from working professionals to homeless alcoholics, and everything in between.
More than half could be classified as tragedies in the sense that you’re basically reading a slow-motion trainwreck happening. But tragedy is not the theme of the collection per se; some of them are quite constructive and happy. Others are kind of neutral and comical. And that keeps you guessing as you read- any given story might end happily or sadly, or somewhere in between.
I found the writing to be clear and smooth, and was always happy to get to another story. I’d spend 10 minutes reading one between periods of work or exercise or something, as a mental reset. My mind would get to enter this other character’s weird life for a moment to see what problem or situation they’re dealing with.
If I have to critique what was otherwise a great read, I’d say some of the stories ended rather abruptly or anti-climactically. In those cases I’d find myself wanting a few more pages of resolution. But that seems quite intentional, and basically the best critique an author could receive is that the reader wanted a bit more of what they were reading. If I were reading a 300+ page book that ended anti-climatically I’d be annoyed, but weird slice-of-life short stories ending anti-climactically is indeed like real life, and feels like the correct writing choice in these cases.
Since this one was quite enjoyable, I’ll look to pick up one of his essay collections such as “Those Bastards” or “Rule 62” at some point.
Good morning.
I’m bullish on Lightning, meanwhile quantum computing won’t matter here in the 2020s.
Just saw someone wearing a mask while driving alone in their car.
In the year of our lord 2025.
Here's the "No BS" macro news for today.
-The Fed projected, back in early 2024, that they would likely end balance sheet reduction around this time and transition toward gradually increasing their balance sheet in line with nominal GDP (so that banks' fractional reserve lending remains unaffected with current regulations).
-It got pulled forward slightly, perhaps two or three months, by the government shutdown overfilling the Treasury cash account (i.e. sucking cash out of the broader financial system).
-The Fed previously announced they would stop reducing their balance sheet. Today they said they would start gradually increasing it. Powell said the baseline is $20-$25 billion per month, but due to current liquidity shortages and April tax day (which drains liquidity), they plan to increase it by $40 billion per month through April (which afterward in May, conveniently, is when Powell will be replaced as chairman with a presumably more dovish chairman).
-They're focusing on printing money to buy short-term duration Treasuries, not long-term. This is for the financial system, not economic stimulus per se, and so they won't be calling it QE.
-The Fed will now be structurally expanding their balance sheet while inflation is above their own target.
-This is a gradual print scenario. It's bullish for liquidity and liquidity-correlated assets, in general. It's not explosively bullish, but it does lean dovish.
-Nothing stops this train.
The treasury buybacks are a liquidity management tool, because the amount of debt outstanding has outpaced trading volumes of that debt. It improves the liquidity of off-the-run securities.
They are a net issuer, not a net buy-backer. The buybacks are a sign of fiscal dominance but not something I put much macro weight on.
There's an annual contest for indie-published fantasy books called SPFBO, and it's been running for ten years now. When looking for indie novels to read, that's not a bad list to start from.
Anyway, here's a review of "The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids", which was the first winner of that contest.
It's the first in a five-book series that focuses on a thief named Amra Thetys. Amra is kind of your typical anti-hero thief; she grew up in a rough spot and does some bad stuff but basically has a heart of gold. At about 200 pages, the book is a short read, but I guess the series as a whole is like one 1,000+ page book.
I liked the first half quite a bit. It's fast-paced and gets right into the story. The prose is solid enough. Amra quickly gets pulled by her friend into some criminal mess, with some dark omens sent her way, and we go from there.
In particular, a bloodwitch came up to her on the street once she got pulled into the mess, and said:
"I See blood, and gold," she said, her voice gone all hollow. "I Hear a mournful howl. Fire and Death are on your trail, girl, and behind them the Eightfold Bitch makes her way to your door. One of Her Blades has noticed you. But will it find your hand, or your heart? Unclear, uncertain..."
Amra was freaked out, because bloodwitches can turn your blood to rust and see the future. So I was like, "alright, you've got my attention."
But the second half was somewhat disappointing. Things were just kind of happening, there was a rapidly expanding character list, magic kind of just did whatever it needed to, and I wasn't very emotionally attached to anyone. The ending was okay, but it primarily set up the rest of the series.
I probably won't pick up the second book in the series anytime soon, though from the ratings and how this one went, I could imagine the five of them all being a fun enough read.
As long as borrowing stress remains elevated, many asset prices are likely to remain choppy.
This is why the Fed is ending balance sheet reduction, but simply ending it is not necessarily sufficient. By 2026 they will likely go back to balance sheet expansion to put out this fire. Notably, it likely won't be very fast/large balance sheet expansion, but rather will be just enough to help settle this down, which makes a big difference.
What if humanity could find some alien tech and thus greatly accelerate its own technological progress? But what if that tech was hoarded by a small group of people?
Anyway, here's a review of Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It's a 22nd century hard science space opera set in our solar system, written by a retired engineer. One of the more successful indie sci fi books in recent years. It's also one of the most successful books to have bitcoin in it; it's a small background role, but bitcoin is one of the leading types of money in the solar system.
Marcus, an indebted down-on-his-luck asteroid miner (and secretly, a bit of a space pirate as of late, given how bad things have gotten) finds his ship taken over by a wealthy genetically modified corporate heiress named Miranda. She has bought his defaulting debt contract that his ship collateralizes, and has gained admin access over his ship's computer. And she knows he is secretly a space pirate, which altogether gives her multiple types of leverage over him. She wants him to take her on a mission to the edge of the solar system to do something she won't say, involving unimaginable treasure, and he has little choice but to go along with it. Secretly, however, he plots how to regain control of his ship as they go, because he recognizes how much of a suicide mission it is because of who guards the space out there.
Pros:
-The hard scientific realism in the book is great. The type that basically takes an engineer to write. No wonder he has endorsements from like, the co-founder of Autocad and such. It's also a smooth read, all from Marcus's perspective.
-Although the story mostly takes place on one ship with a few characters, the worldbuilding is a solid start. I assume it'll be expanded later in the series. The technological situation and structure of society are very fleshed out relative to how little we actually see, given the tight setting. The world feels realistic and lived-in.
-High nostalgia factor. Fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, and more recently the Expanse, and all sorts of classic sci fi literature over decades, will find a lot of references or similarities in a good way. The author is very well-read on the genre.
-The audiobook is pretty unique and great. Unlike most audiobooks, it has a full-cast production, meaning that each line of dialogue sounds like the person speaking it, rather than just one person reading a given chapter's narration and dialogue. I listened to this one rather than read it. You can only buy the audiobook on the author's website though, not Amazon/Audible. (Amazon/Audible have been kind of shitty to authors lately.) The other version of the book are available on Amazon.
-AI gets a really good treatment here, and the third main character, an AI, is my favorite character in the book.
-There's a lot of suspense throughout. Most of it is not really predictable how it's going to end since it doesn't follow a basic tropey structure. Even if you don't particularly like some of the characters (and indeed they're designed to be rather unlikable), you're likely to find yourself reading further to see what happens.
Cons:
-The book is about 500 pages, and I think 50+ could have been cut out of the middle to make it stronger. The dialogue between Marcus and Miranda gets rather repetitive after a while. And because of the limited setting (mostly on one ship), most of the worldbuilding is done via exposition by Marcus. So if readers hate "info dumps", they'll probably get annoyed at this. I personally don't really mind exposition as long as it's good, so this wasn't a dealbreaker for me (the "don't do exposition!" advice to authors is overdone in my view). I just think the middle could have used a trim. And although most of the book is not predictable, one aspect imo very much is, and that's where a lot of the repetition is.
-There are some unnerving aspects/scenes in it. I can't really say what they are without spoilers. Let's just say being in Marcus's head for 500 pages isn't, uh, my cup of tea. The book is self-aware about it, though. It's an intentional choice to have put these unnerving aspects in, so it's not a con per se but it's more something that will put off some readers. And it's a little more understandable by the end.
Overall, a unique story. And for the audiobook, I do think that over time more audiobooks will be made with this more complete type of cast. Audiobooks used to be very expensive and a small piece of the market, and only in recent years have they become very popular. As they become a bigger and bigger share of the fiction market up to some substantial percentage, I think more work will go into their quality and details.
When people ask where the alpha is on Nostr, here it is.
The way I look at it, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, it’s not about writing what the audience wants- it’s about successfully landing what’s in your head into the audience’s head.
That means understanding the audience. If there are inadvertent frictions between you and the audience, the work is less likely to spread the entertainment, ideas, themes, and so forth as the creator sees it.
I expect demand for the preferreds, especially STRC, to drive down yields.
They would pause the preferred dividends before selling the bitcoin.
It's a healthy bull market, imo. And now that bitcoin is a $2T+ network, it's normal for it to move like a more liquid asset should.
And it's still up like 8x from the 2022 low. The S&P 500 is up less than 2x.
Well, a decent chunk of my posts over the past year have been about narrative structure in fiction, book reviews, and stuff like that.
