Glad to see Three Days Grace is still putting out new tunes after 30 years. Hard to believe some of my favorite active bands have been around that long, and that I've been following them the majority of the time.

An advisor got arrested for giving Federal Reserve trade secrets to China. -First thought is, “why does a central bank even have trade secrets?” In that case, the central bank probably isn’t as transparent as it should be. -Second thought is, “maybe it’s info they have on specific banks rather than their own trade secrets.” In that case the Fed collected trade secrets and then got breached, becoming a third party security hole. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-federal-reserve-adviser-arrested-passing-trade-secrets-china-justice-2025-01-31/

In a world where super powers exist, that’s probably the objective right answer. To copy and accumulate other powers. Always think exponential. In the DC Animated Universe, Amazo had this ability. He gradually absorbed all of the Justice League’s abilities, beat all of them, could rekt everything, but then just decided to leave the world since he was so above them. And then in a later season, after exploring the universe and absorbing more powers, he came back stronger then ever. The justice league and literally all of their allies and even some of their villains readied to defend earth against this one threat. And then he busted through all of it. But at the end he was mainly interested in questions and meaning, so they were able to convince him to be peaceful. View quoted note →

I do feel like telekinesis is an under-explored superpower in fiction. It’s relatively common, but rarely fleshed out with rules and details. View quoted note →

If you could have any super power, what would it be and why? What super powers seem under-explored in fiction?

Just finished The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Pros: Interesting read. It's a fascinating world, with unique characters, and the plot is hard to predict since the plot deviates from the typical tropes. I rarely found myself rolling my eyes at something immature or silly, which I do for a lot of books. The prose is very unique and powerful, including usage of second person perspective in some chapters which is exceptionally rare in literature. Cons: Action/magic wasn't very clear, so the outcome of conflicts sometimes seemed arbitrary. Some character decisions were frustrating to me or felt unrealistic. I need to read the trilogy now since the first book is not really self-contained on its own to a meaningful degree. But I'm curious enough on how all this turns out that I do want to finish the trilogy now.

Nostr is like: View quoted note →

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A lot of people want local state government to be in power when they are not in charge of the federal government. Once they gain control of the federal government, they mock state power and want as much concentration over them as possible. This is why I don’t view politics as likely to fix things. My main hopes are 1) technology and 2) bottom-up culture. The printing press changed things forever. And then the telegraph did the same centuries later. And the discovery and usage of oil. The internal combustion engine. Electricity. Radio. The internet. Bitcoin. Tech can spread everywhere and permanently, while policies focuses on a specific location and temporarily.

What are your favorite guns for someone who is not a big gun enthusiast but is passionate about self defense? Like, you aren't optimizing for a zombie apocalypse but you want your wife to be able to pick up the gun and defend the house from intruders if need be, and the gun's maintenance levels have been maybe questionable but it's reliable enough to still probably work reliably and she can wield it.

I just published my January 2025 public newsletter.

Lyn Alden

January 2025 Newsletter: Three Things Never to Fade

January 28, 2025 There are a lot of moving variables in the investment landscape lately. We’re in a new political environment, and technology...

Today I saw an Autozam AZ-1. It’s this tiny little car from the early1990s, bigger than a go kart but smaller than a Mini Cooper or Miata, and its doors open vertically. Fewer than 5k of them were produced, which was over 30 years ago so who knows how many are left. Didn’t get a pic but it was a red version of this pic. I had to look it up since it was so neat.

Got my sci fi manuscript back from the editor, meaning it's ready for me to look through all the proposed edits and do another draft. But I have so much email to catch up on and so much macro content to get to. So all day I'll be distracted. -_-'

One of the remarkable things about this era is that the long-term debt cycle has correlated with the longest-ever period of growth stocks outperforming value.

We're now hitting the computational milestones expected from various charts from over a decade ago. These trends have been on track. Most of us still don't have robot vacuums since they still kind of struggle, but alas.

Apparently "dark country" music is a thing. Came across it the other day and it's my new favorite thing.

A problem with most pets is you outlive them. Dogs, cats, etc. The problem with parrots is if you don’t plan right, they outlive you. When I was little, like 9 years old, my main dream was to have parrots. I pushed my father to get them, and he did. And I took great care of them for a decade. I kept their cages open so they could go inside or outside as they pleased. I pet them, played with them, etc. And then I went to college. My father got a new girlfriend, and they got a cat, which they named fucking Paris Hilton (girlfriend’s idea). And it was a Bengal cat. An aggressive, energetic type. Paris was actually really cool on her own, but not with the parrots. You have to be careful with cats and parrots standing atop open cages. The parrots are happy to say hi and the cat is happy to play a predator. Can’t have that. So my father started to lock the parrots in their cages. The macaw became noticeable unhappy first. The amazon was stoic for longer. But I was like “I’m in college, and then I’m going to live in a small apartment, and they can’t stay here or anywhere.” So I did a ton of research and found them new homes that had the expertise to take care of them. Parrots are often snappy toward people they don’t know, and both of these parrots would bite people other than me. So they needed a lot of resocialization. I loved them so much, but I would be so careful to advise parrots as pets unless one was *really* equipped to have them. View quoted note →

My mental model of the world: