Spekulatius

Black holes are singularities too.

Meloni, the Italy Premier has come around. Dhe was deemed Putin friendly before she won the election but now made a 180Deg U-turn: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-pm-says-eu-will-not-allow-russia-others-endanger-security-through-2024-12-22/ I don’t think the German AFD will come to grips with this threat- making a deal with Putin is basically on their party statutes. These idiots put in moment of silence for Assad ousting, believe it or not.

Yes, the problem with wind is, if there is no wind in Germany, there is likely no wind in France, Benelux, Denmark and Poland as well because the weather is correlated . So you quickly run into the issue where the connected power network that balances supply and demand pushes up price elsewhere. One thing is sure, more wind and solar can’t be the solution. Germany needs steady baseload and peaker plants (which would be expensive NG)

Not a book but worth reading, because it gives a framework for decision making in these situations.

WTH is this? $600M drop on Aspens economy due to Bezos and Sanchez wedding. Maybe it’s just me, but this looks more and more like we are living in an oligarchy:

I think it’s great, but I would hate my utility company take that bet. I think we get Natrium cooled nuclear reactors way before fusion is going to work. It’s a much easier technical problem to solve.

@John Hjorth No, I would not listen to Putin’s 5 hours presser either. However, you can find some summaries that re useful. It is interesting and scary what a twisted personality this guy has. and compassion or moral compass whatsoever. He has imprisoned himself with his own twisted logic , just like many of the worst dictators in history have. On a different but very related note there is an interested background story on Georgia, which has seen a lot of protests lately after the election . It’s run by a shady Oligarch and probably about to become a Russian puppet state again if it isn’t already: Another covert war going on here.

Is the Commonwealth Fusion System upstart financing this? I hope so, because they are far away from even have a prototype. Their reactor at this time are not even energy positive yet, that years out. From there, it probably takes decades to provide a commercially viable prototype.

@John Hjorth I don’t think the Russian economy is going to implode alls of a sudden. Thats doesn’t tend to be what happens in these situations . What does happen is that a war economy is eating itself and hollowing out to the point. the evidence is that they have to outsource to North Korean mercenaries, which likely isn’t very effective and comes at a huge financial cost to Russia, furthering their decline. Also related to this it’s instructive to look at Putin’s annual press conference. he plays the cool poker player here , except he plays with other people lives and gambles his country. The whole thing takes an ridiculous 5 hours, he proposes a missile duel , claims Russians are bored without war and other absurd claims:

What’s up with the exploding police cars and banks to day in Russia: Remember, it can all end quickly as it did today exactly 35 years ago:

Well quantum computing is probabilistic , so it should be good for probabilistic problems. I also think you can probably solve numerical quantum mechanical problems using quantum computing as sort of with an analog computing approach (I am guessing). Also one thing to consider is that with structures getting smaller, all computers will become quantum computer weather you like it or not, because the devices become dominated by quantum effects. If you talk about structure one atom in size (3nm is 10 atoms ballpark) then an electron can tunnel and you don’t really know what is going to happen, except you will know the probability. This will probably happen in 10 years or so. Interesting times.

Everything will happen eventually, the question is the timeline. I think the Mars colony is the biggest nonsense and won’t happen in my lifetime. We would be better off building a city on the South Pole, since it had better weather (warmer), access to water , plenty of resources in the ground and you actually can bail if things go wrong. The first thing that will explore Mars are autonomous robots. Much cheaper, can be adapted to the environment, don’t need expensive life support systems ) and if things go wrong, nobody dies. We will get a human there to plant a flag, but that’s about it.

The stock market aside, can you do this anywhere else on the planet:

I always love seasonal content:

I know Europe is uninvestible but I have found this VIC thesis on Elis SA quite compelling: https://valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/Elis_SA/5242429684 It’s basically a uniform laundry/ consumables business similar to VSTS or Cintas, but mainly in Europe. they do have a good track record as far as I can tell, but the stock has recently taken a hit as they have taken an interest in VSTS, which makes no sense (imo) an acquisition for them. no this is apparently off the table but investors are obviously now discounting the possibility of an dilutive merger. I think Eli’s is attractive because the outsourcing of these things is a trend, the revenues are somewhat re-occurring and they can gobble up many small operators at supposedly relatively low multiples. Haven’t done a whole lot work on this, it seems good enough to buy a few shares and probably will add more. This and Italmobilare ( a publicity trades private equity like fund trading at a 45% discount to NAV) have been recent buys in Europe.

Not that bullish for the SP500, imo.

Kuiper is the next satellite constellation and I think China will build another one.

I added to LNR, STNE and bought a starter in BAX and ITM (Italmobilare an currently Italian private equity Holdco)

I think this is one to watch. it’s probably impacted by the malaise in South America with Brazil, and Mexican equity markets going down the tubes.

Islam is the youngest of the great religions. I think as religion it is inherently flawed much more so than other religions. For once, the expansion is build it- a Muslim is encouraged to spread Islam with the word and the sword. If you read the Quran, you quickly find out that it’s basically a very detailed instruction on how your live your live. It tells you when to pray, when and what to eat, when as when not to have sex with your wife, how to punish crime or transgression with little room for interpretations. All those rules may have made sense 1500 year ago, but they are now hopelessly outdated. It’s very different from the new Testament, which has very basic rules with lots of flexibility on how to interpret them in specific situations. Also, the basic Christian emphasis is compassion, white the focus in the Quaran is about being just. Since all religion are based on dogmas but are also philosophical framework , I think the Muslim is the most flawed of the great worlds religions by far. There are many modern scholar who try to interpret the Quran in newer up to date ways but the problem is they the Quran is very clearly written with the intend to have clear rules and the fundamentalist correctly point out that they are just applying the Quaran as intended. There clearly are many Muslim who don’t follow the Quran strictly and more or less live secular life’s but strictly speaking they don’t follow the intend of their religion and my guess is that’s why there are so many Muslim fundamentalist that’s just follow the book . I think the societies that do this are screed because they badcolly follow a 1500 year old rule book that was not designed to be updated. Its like running a bunch of COBOL code because you believe it’s the best programming language ever created and all other programming languages after that are just transgressions.

Law enforcement jobs and firefighter jobs are much less risky than being a logging worker, roofer etc, which get no pension at all. When you look at the mortality tables for policemen, they show increased risk of arteriosclerosis, cancer, high blood pressure etc, probably due to unhealthy lifestyle, shift work, stress. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/37845 https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states

Your phone probably uses it. Higher precision than GPS.

Isn’t tobacco a Trump trade? Beyond the more obvious things like lower tax rate benefit we have currently a situation, where there are hundreds of illicit vaper devices and what not available everywhere while at the same time the process to approve legit devices or products is totally broken. If this is cleaned up, it would be a big benefit to those that play by the rules and that’s big tobacco.

Yes, that’s it. One of my favorite Blogs ValueAndOpportunity posted about it and bought it a while ago. I did not buy at that time but checked the results and like what I saw. Welcome to CoBF !

Trading with Putin and getting back the cheap NG gas. That’s basically what the AFD is asking for. What’s could go wrong? You would think that the Ossies had enough when they were occupied for 45 years by the Sowjets (and were none too happy when visited the DDR in the 80’s) , but I guess not.