Spekulatius

Karl Marx was wrong about many things but he was right on one thing “ Religion is opium for the masses”. I don’t know who said it, but patriotism is one way to get people to vote against their own interest. Thats why politicians love patriotism. Almost any time a politician plays the religion or patriotism card, you can almost bet on getting fooled.

The problem was not that Trump had classified documents that he wasn’t supposed to have. The problem was that he denied having them and handing them back, hence they were taken. Biden had the same issue (classified documents in his garage), admitted it and gave them back without issue. If Trump had acted similarly , there would not have been an issue either.

Bought a bit of $ZTS and $TTD last week. I also bought a tiny starter of $BNTX in one account. Added a bit to Elan 6099 for my Japanese basket.

I think OpenAI spends $3 for every $ they take in currently, so how long can they do this? Google with Gemini can do this all day long and offer Gemini Pro in a package with others things for $20 and make a profit. How is OpenAI going to win with an inferior and expensive to build out tech stack? https://one.google.com/about/#compare-plans

Will be interesting to get a feel for the lay of the land when I travel back to Germany (first time since 2022) this weekend. It’s easy to read the news but hard to get a feel for the sentiment when you live far away. I have a feeling that Merz is failing at reform. The Rentenreform (pension reform) vote was one example. he was held hostage by the SPD because he did not negotiate with the other parties (Linke, AFD). Due to self imposed ideological restrictions. If you have an only one party to go to, then you get held hostage by them I think the prudent thing would have been to talk to all of them SLD, lind and AFD and see where you get your votes to get the thing done with the least compromised (from Merz perspective) regardless of ideological constrains (Brandmauer). Of course the SPD would have cried uncle but they would also realize that their leverage is limited next time. Ironically, the Linke withheld votes which allowed the votes to pass which already tells you who won. It’s a win for pensioners but a loss for the young people who need to pay for all this. But what do I know….

Ouch! https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/no-accountability-residents-demand-action-repeat-offenders-drive-up-crime-charlotte/NTJDQ7ARVZBYRKHYHTOCU4VY4U/

LOl, Zelenskyy has balls. Unlike Putin who is 30 ft away You realize that 55k students in a country of 84M people are not a whole lot. As an investor you should not about the concept of base rates. i bet I one could mobilize 550k students in America to demonstrate for the same thing. Or 5.5M for the White House to get painted in Rainbow colors.

@Milu you ignore physics. There is an easy way to do it and a hard way. Everything in space is hard and expensive and I don’t see a compelling reason to do this in the first place. Tell me one and I am ears. Yes, I know heard that there is more sun radiation per unit area but did you know that you need to protect solar cells in space because or the hard radiation’s?How easy is it to install a solar cell ins pace versus on earth. What are launch cost to get a kg of any material in space versus some place on earth? I think it makes more sense to put datacenters on the bottom of the ocean than in space , especially on the continental shelf. Way cheaper and indeed cooling would not be an issue at all. Same with Antarctica.

The patriotic spirit has gotten Germany & Europe into WW1 and 2 to begin with. There is a fine line between putting your home county first and kicking everyone else with the boots. I think we are digressing towards the latter.

Comps. I compare with Buzzi and GCC. I think business mix is a bit different but 11.5x EBITDA does not look that cheap for a building material company, even if I give them credit for under earning. I trim in my tax deferred accounts only.

Trimmed some AMRZ. Seems fully valued.

What about the ICE behaving like a regular police force not like a crossover of Gestapo and Ku Klux Khan.

Yes, cooling is more complex in space, since there is no convection cooling and radiation cooling takes a lot of surface area. There is also the issue with launch cost (each kg of mass cost more than a thousand $ to launch even if Musk’s plans pan out) , destructive cosmic and solar radiation and the difficulty of repair and upgrades.

I have not used Perplexity for many month. I use a Gemini as a default (it’s good and it’s quick) and ChatGPT (good but sluggish). I have very little need for anything beyond the two. I used Perplexity in 2023 and 2024 when it seemed to be ahead of the pack but I don’t think I have used it this year at all. I think it has become the Altavista of Chatbots.

The story is Billy Bob Thornton playing Billy Bob Thornton in Texas.

Had to look up what a “Bike nonce” is and had to laugh.

BS. Imposters are getting blue checkmarks amongst other issues. Why can’t X fix this?.

I think the are referring to BASF. BASF has been building up a large chemical complex in China but that has been in progress for years even before the Ukraine war started. They are also building a large complex in the USA, FWIW.

The fine for X wasn’t about free speech: What I can say is that the blue checkmark think isn’t about user authentication that much is clear., based on who gets these now.

That’s correct and for once I agree. I think the USA is doing Europeans a favor at this point in the long run by letting them figure it out on their own. Trump should stop “negotiating”with Putin. He does not have a significant stake in the outcome.

I agree here. Sarah Rogers is right fighting this fine on X. It makes no sense and is counterproductive for Europe to do this. FWIW, Helmut is Austrian.

Scott Galway brings issues to a point better than anyone else:

This is true if Europe acts as unified body. This is not true Europe acts as 27 different countries. Putin and to some extend Trump try to break up Europe into individual countries as they are easier to deal with in a fragmented state. If Europe acts as unity (politically, economically and militarily) it can counter Putin and Trump. That why Putin and Trump have so much contempt for the EU.

Interesting times when you can get chased by masked ICE officers without warrant because you look like an immigrant.

I agree much better short than NVDA. PLTR (ridicolous valuation and politically vulnerable ), MU (commodity chip producer) , ORCL (tied to OpenAI, negative FCF), Corweave (also tied to OpenAI, Capex heavy) seem much better candidates.