lnofeisone

There is a large contingent of west-trained Afghan army that fled to Iran when taliban took over. They are generally pissed at the US. I can see russia tapping into that reservoir and Iran not objecting.

Just wait until Afghans find their way to Ukraine to fight on Russia's side. It will be come full circle and only took 40 years or so.

I do it. It works exceptionally well for a particular narrow class of well-defined problems (e.g., optimization is one where it saved me a few hours). It doesn't work well for AI (statistics, really)-centered problems.

The "Russia will soon exhaust its capabilities" narrative has been going on for almost a year. Here is an article dating back to April of 2022 claiming that Russia is running out of ammo. Yet, here we are eight months later and that's with Ukraine successfully blowing up several large ammo/missile depots. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1590515/Vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-invasion-latest-missiles-running-out One that that's interesting is that Russia is exhausting its soviet stockpiles of old, low-tech missiles, tanks, and vehicles. 10 years out, Russia will likely be a prominent buyer/manufacturer of weapons to refresh its arsenal.

I, too, thought that Europe would have a more challenging time this winter. The odds were indeed in Russia's favor. As far as Russia's gas being stranded, there is a fair amount of Russian gas in Europe still. Russia is still importing LNG to France, the Netherlands, etc. (the UK is the only country that no longer takes Russian LNG).

I view it as a positive for the European energy operators. Industry can adjust. Europe won't go into total industrial collapse. They'll work off their storage. Prices will stay elevated to make a profit but not so high that they will bump into WFT and politicians' "rage."

so is it over?

Added to BAM/BN.

thanks for the idea. will look into it a bit more.

I love binary plays (when they work out). Any thoughts on them being liable for FTX and/or fines that might get imposed by the regulators? Just has a feel of dead money for 2+ years.

feels like a binary play no?

-2% USD. Late collapse by VET took off a big % of gains (would be roughly +5% for the year). 2023: 1) Holding O&G 2) Loading up on financials 3) Writing tech puts

Interesting move by Exxon. $2B is a lot of motivation to hire a lawyer. https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/exxon-sues-eu-in-move-to-block-new-windfall-tax-ft

AMZN, GOOGL, BX, BAC, and trying to fill ORG but it may take a second.

Definitely a feat but mostly in bureaucracy. It's incredible how fast they got permits but all they did was build around 30 km of pipeline. The actual gasification is done by a ship from Hoegh. Germany did bring it online quickly which is what they needed. In 10 years, the math starts to favor land-based facilities but those take a lot longer to build and by then who knows what gas utilization will be like?

I got this using ChatGPT asking the same prompt: Unfortunately, I am not able to browse the internet or access images to assist with drawing ASCII art. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI and I can answer questions and provide information on a wide range of topics, but I am not able to access external resources or generate images. Is there something else I can help you with? And I get using OpenAI's DALLE. The hips, the face, and the positioning of people leave a lot of room for improvement.

Humans are far more nuanced than this. Let me give you an example. I get in the call and say things I want to say and don't say things I don't want to say. AI only learns based on what it sees and can't infer what I don't say. Unless you go full Bridgewater and record every call, you won't get what you need. Furthermore, how senior leaders communicate to each other is different than how they communicate to front line staff. Long waybof saying, we are still in very easy stages of ai replacing expertise. Also, check out the drawing capabilities of GPT and ask to draw people. Say something like people playing golf. Tell me what you get.

Domain specific (that's what you are referring to wrt mcat and lsat) have been a thing for 4 years or so. Google, not gpt, leads this. There are several applications used by the us govt outside of intel and dod. They are still work in progress. Don't get me wrong, for general stuff gpt is absolutely awesome but to claim it revolutionary is absurd. I think non coders were finally given a clean interface and they all think they are mathemagicians now. Great marketing, yes. Cutting edge, no. Does it have the potential to leapfrog Google, maybe. Does Google know about gpt. You bet.

I'm using Germany as proxy. Right now Germany is at roughly 15% goal of saving for household and industry. Industry is doing way better than households. Last week average temperature dropped by 0.2C and household consumption shot up. This week is expected 2C lower than average. We are in early innings of winter. So far it's been warmer but the trend has reversed. Looking at first derivative of how much gas is in storage vs. 5 year average doesn't paint a good picture. Germany publishes very good numbers if anyone is looking (https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/EN/Areas/Energy/Companies/SecurityOfSupply/GasSupply/start.html)

Not selling is the new refilling. TIC

WE warrants. 4 years left, truly pennies. Simple theory, remote work is here to stay. Remote work will lead to lower office rentals. Office landlords will need to figure out ways to adjust (convert to residential, flexible rental models, etc.). WeWork has the infrastructure to manage buildings and do flexible demand. Who knows how much they can earn (too hard to figure out pile) but I visited a couple of offices and they are packed.

I somewhat thought that but then was wondering why not just modify the policy without all the kabuki theater.

These clowns were hilarious. Their network of wallet clusters (they had that many) and businesses were flagged and being monitored but the government only had a vague idea it was them. Ilya had a poorly encrypted file with crypto addresses and list of all the businesses through which he was laundering money in cloud storage. Getting access and decrypting the file by gov't confirmed it was all them. The file was meticulous, organized, and even color-coded. Hell, they had a ziploc back labeled "burner phone" somewhere in their apartment. Can't make this stuff up.

It's a bit more nuanced. Big fish criminals prefer to use crypto, but they don't want to hold it as an investment. Part of the reason is how aggressive (see the authorization of John Doe summons that IRS got around August this year wrt SFOX) and how capable US is in pursuing and freezing these assets. The other bit is volatility. Here is a company that does this work and publishes regular reports. It's incomplete but gives you a glimpse of what is tracked. https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-report-preview-ransomware/

If inflation ticks down, TIPS principal value will go down and can go sub $100 in the interim. TIPS holder would need to hold through maturity (1/15/26 in the example above) to recover and that would make this a non-ideal situation if someone is looking to reposition from bonds to stocks.