Lyn Alden

Mt Everest had its first documented climb in 1953. The first person went to space in 1961. It's kind of crazy to think about how "new" mankind's spread over the world is. My father was already a teenager the first time someone climbed Everest, and in his twenties by the time someone went to space. If we start the "modern era" as roughly coinciding with the telecommunications age (ie the dawn of the cross-continental telegraph in the1860s), it's less than two consecutive human lifetimes old. Everything is new.

Whenever we go to the local Italian restaurant, the waitress asks if we want dessert or coffee afterward. I know it's a common thing, but for the life of me I don't know why anyone would want coffee after a big meal at night.

My December public macro newsletter has been published. You can check it out here: https://www.lynalden.com/december-2025-newsletter/

What if the world as you knew it consisted of infinite rooms and staircases, each partially flooded and filled with strange statues, and it only had two living people in it? That would be nuts right? Anyway, I read Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, and that’s the world in which the titular character finds himself. Notably, Clarke has only written two novels in her career, they were 16 years apart (“Jonathan Srange and Mr Norrell” in 2004 and “Piranesi” in 2020), and both were award-winning massive bestsellers, beloved by critics and readers alike. Piranesi lives in a realm of infinite rooms and staircases, inhabited by birds and fish and shined on by the sun and moon and stars, and in which seawaters routinely rise and fall. He has a rather meager existence as he lives off fish and seaweed and catalogues the various rooms, and he is grateful that the world is generous enough to provide for him. For the most part he’s the only person around, except occasionally he runs into one more guy he calls “The Other.” He also knows of 15 human skeletons that he has names for. Clarke did plenty of historical research and makes a lot of allusions in the work. It’s rather literary, and the whole thing is quite a surrealist artsy story and it’s much loved by people who enjoy sophisticated things. I am, perhaps, not very sophisticated. To me this felt like the kind of book I’d be assigned to read in high school. It was rather dry and boring to my unsophisticated palate, though short enough to breeze through in several sittings. I predicted most of the mystery in advance, and as things happened I’d be like, “alright.” When something occasionally did surprise me, it was always mildly to the downside. Like someone tells you lunch will be a mystery, and then come lunchtime it’s revealed to be a sandwich. I know a lot of people who rave about this book, so it’s been on my to-read list for a while, and now I have that good feeling of finished homework. When people talk about Piranesi I can be like, “Ah, yes, Piranesi. Fine literature, that is.”

Too many shows and book series go on for too long. Rather than end at an ideal spot to maximize the art/story of it all, they keep going until the creators get bored or the money isn't flowing anymore.

Finally getting a moment to start watching The Boys season 4. Watched up to season 3 a while back, which is where it was up to at the time. Anyone else watch it?

Moorish Spain was the period from the 8th to 15th centuries when Muslims ruled the Iberian peninsula. Anyway, here's a book review of The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, which I've had time to finish on this fine Thanksgiving day. It's historical fiction written back in 1995 about the final years of Moorish Spain. Guy Gavriel Kay is known for writing stories that are mostly historical fiction, but with a small touch of fantasy. In this story, Al-Rassan refers to the southern part of Spain/Portugal controlled by Muslim city-states, while three Christian kings rule their mini-kingdoms in northern Spain/Portugal. In this book, Muslims are called Asharites and identify with the stars, Christians are called Jaddites and identify with the sun, and Jews are called Kindath and identify with the twin moons over this world (which is a touch of the aforementioned fantasy element). Ultimately, it's a story about love and friendship across cultural boundaries, but duty that sometimes has to separate them. The three main characters are Ammar (an Asharite poet-swordsman), Rodrigo (a Jaddite noble knight-leader), and Jehane (a Kindath physician), and it spans a few years as the Jaddites and Asharites grow increasingly hostile toward each other. The story is probably best summed up when Ammar laments that the concerning way things are headed, it's likely not going to be his poetry that he's remembered for. It's not as simple as two sides of a war, though. The Asharite city-states of Al-Rassan are rather secular, as are the Jaddite mini-kingdoms in the north. But the Jaddite clergy seeks to push those secular Jaddite kings to have a holy war and retake the peninsula, and the Asharite warlords back across the strait seek to push those secular Asharite kings to reclaim their peak of power of the peninsula as well. So there are basically four powerful factions in conflict, along with the Kindath as the fifth minor element. The word "Lions" in the The Lions of Al-Rassan refers to men without equal. Ammar and Rodrigo both represent basically the pinnacle of their sides, and it's a story about what happens as those two "Lions" meet in the waning days of Al-Rassan. I mostly enjoyed the plot, as well as the main three characters. Guy Gavriel Kay is kind of an "author's author", meaning that several authors consider him one of the top authors out there, but his books only have moderate popularity compared to the top bestsellers. Kay also helped Tolkien's son edit The Silmarillion back in the 1970s after Tolkien's death. Although Kay is praised for his prose, it's not my favorite. I prefer more concise, straightforward prose, whereas this is somewhat poetic in nature. To me there's a slight distracting element when prose is written like that. The author Brandon Sanderson has used the analogy of clear glass vs stained glass when it comes to prose style. Sanderson's prose is "clear glass" meaning you read for the story, not the prose. Kay's prose is "stained glass" meaning that you read partially for the prose itself, with the trade-off that it's harder to see the story/characters as perfectly clearly through it. And then of course there are many subtypes. Kay's prose just doesn't vibe with me well. I think it's a great book, with strong themes and intricate politics and a broad cast of fascinating characters. Some will quite enjoy the prose, but it made me slightly detached from the characters as I read it.

Receiving zaps from users is a way better incentive model than paying out a share of advertising revenue to posters based on engagement. Zaps tend to reward quality and sincerity. Giving an advertising share in proportion to engagement rewards slop and rage.

I find Bladerunner 2049 frustrating, because I *almost* love it. The characters, themes, acting, and the overall plot structure are great, imo. However, villains give melodramatic exposition monologues, villains leave heroes alive for no reason other than the plot needs them to, important things are left thinly guarded for no reason other than the plot needs the heroes or villains to easily get at them, etc. In other words, there are distracting writing/execution issues in what could otherwise be a masterpiece. The first time I watched it, I didn't love it. It did stick with me though; I think about it sometimes, for years afterward. And watching it a second time I appreciated it more, but still was frustrated by the same things. What does everyone else feel about it?

It was around autumn 2012 that Japan ramped up its central bank balance sheet dramatically. Notably, that's also when their GDP peaked in dollar terms, and their stock market had its generational bottom. Japan serves as an example that what's going on economically can be very different than the stock market.

What's going on in Sudan gets an order of magnitude less coverage than what's going on in other military hot spots of the world, despite being of similar magnitude. Perhaps I tend to think of it a lot because Sudan borders Egypt to the south. So it's geographically in my mind more tangibly. People can only get emotionally engaged about a handful of things. The world is too big and noisy for us to care about everything. That way lies madness. But it's still interesting which things do reach us, and rile us up. When violence gets covered heavily in the media, it's often said that it's about the numbers, the humanity of it. But in reality, conflicts at the intersection between major religions, major military powers, or where there is a lot of oil, are what get most of the coverage. If violence happens to people outside of that scope, it's often drowned out and ignored. Social media and algorithms are powerful. In a situation where it might be reasonable to care about something 2x or 3x as much as another thing due to geopolitical implications and such, social media can put it in front of you 200x or 300x as frequently, and thus make you care or think about it 200x or 300x more. The issue is fractal, and so it happens the same at smaller scales. In any given industry or community, there are certain topics that get an order of magnitude more coverage and discussion than a dozen other things of similar scale or importance. And then people get sucked into an echo chamber where they think the 3-5x things that are frequently in front of them, and that their mind is mostly focused on, are indeed the 3-5x most important things when in reality it's mostly the algorithm reinforcing itself, and reinforcing that aspect of human nature that moves in groups. Being able to sculpt your own algorithm is important, but equally it helps to be aware of the algorithm's influence in the first place. When you hear about something a ton, ask why. When you don't hear about something big very often, also ask why. ___ "Sudan plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a vicious struggle for power broke out between its army and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It has led to a famine and claims of a genocide in the western Darfur region - with fears for the residents of city of el-Fasher after it was recently captured by the RSF. More than 150,000 people have died in the conflict across the country, and about 12 million have fled their homes in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjel2nn22z9o

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.

The bond market has been getting a bit nervous about companies with a lot of AI capex ahead. Chart via BofA.

People have discussed how there's been a lot of bitcoin selling among 5+ year hodlers. What often gets left out of the discussion is that over time, more and more hodlers naturally age into being 5+ year hodlers. So, some long-term hodlers are selling, but that's part of more and more people becoming long-term hodlers. At 30%, the percentage of bitcoin that has been unmoved onchain for 5+ years is near its peak level.

Much of life comes down to trying to find the most workable point between two extremes. We do that for a lot of things at the individual level, the institutional level, and the sovereign level. Even Aristotle wrote about this thousands of years ago with the Golden Mean (e.g. that the virtue of courage is somewhere between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness, and not necessarily right in the middle). I think one of the hardest ones in today's age is the "tribal ignorance vs analysis paralysis" problem. On on hand, people are very emotional decision-makers, and then they also are hardwired to form into groups. Agreeing with each other on one thing often then comes with an overlay of other things to form basically a tribal culture around it, as people start to adapt the mannerisms and ideas of those they already partially agree with. This is an effective shortcut in some cases, basically like ancestral/cultural knowledge rather than having to figure out everything from scratch ("this person seems like he's doing well, and he does/thinks these 25 things, so maybe I should do/think those 25 things too"), but has its obvious shortcomings. Social media algorithms further amplify it as well, connecting people of similar tribes together across space and helping them build echo chambers around themselves, often unknowingly. On the other hand, human reason lets us apply logic and cold hard analysis to things. You can make an argument, and then spend equal time building up the strongest possible counterargument, fully understand your opponent's position in order to test your own position, see why a given thing often can have two rational people that disagree over it, etc. You can replace anecdotes with statistical analysis, you can compile tons of case studies, you can separate arguments themselves from the characteristics of those arguing them, etc. But then it often leads to a form of anti-tribalism which doesn't necessarily work well either: you become so aware of multiple perspectives that it's hard to commit to one. Your mind is so open that your brain falls out. You have so much data you barely know what to do with it. It plays a role in why academics are often not effective leaders, capable of getting a bunch of people to organize and achieve something specific. Ideally, the right balance on important things is to do a lot of research, steelman the major opposition positions to understand them properly, but then find the right point to put it to rest and make a firm decision. Knowing where that point is can be the hard part, akin to finding Aristotle's Golden Mean. That's the ideal to strive for, and likely impossible to reach most of the time. But there are still exercises one can do to get a bit closer to it. If someone finds themselves more commonly in that tribal mindset, then forming a habit to remind oneself to research and steelman an opponent's argument, and separate the argument from the person making the argument, can go a long way toward making better decisions. It puts a brake on making too many emotional, overconfident decisions. If someone finds themselves more commonly in the analysis paralysis mindset, then forming a habit to remind oneself to stop overanalyzing, go out and touch grass, pay attention to what your "gut" or "vibes" are telling you, and a make a decision you're willing to live with either way, can also go a long way. It puts an accelerator on your stalled condition. The key part, then, is having self awareness to see which direction you tend to err in more often. That allows you to nudge your baseline toward that more optimal point, even if you never do quite reach it.

I realized the other day that Wikipedia has an article for me now. It doesn't mention most of my work or Broken Money, but it does mention that nothing stops this train. 🤷 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Alden