I see some people saying, “it’s not gold going up, it’s the dollar going down” and things like that. That’s not really the case, and there’s a simple test to see why. When a currency crashes, it loses value relative to everything. Other currencies, real estate, stocks, precious metals, etc. Prices of normal goods and services skyrocket. In this bull run, precious metals gained value vs other things. Gold vs oil. Gold vs stocks. Gold vs real estate. Silver vs oil, etc. The dollar is rangebound vs other major currencies. The supply growth of the dollar this past year was 5%. It’s gold and other precious metals that went up vs everything. Partly based on fundamentals, and now seemingly due to momentum. Now, where there is some truth to the statement: central banks in aggregate haven’t added to their holding of treasuries in ten years. The only foreign treasury purchases have been in the private sector, and at a rate lower than total US debt growth. But central banks have been buying gold. There is indeed a gradual shift toward neutral reserve assets afoot, ever since around 2009. But that a very long process. That source of demand didn’t single-handedly drive the huge boom in precious metals over this past year. This was like a volleyball held under water and let go, soaring back up.

The number of people who spent the past decade complaining about the Fed's artificially low interest rates, only to turn around and constantly complain about their slowness of cutting rates lately (as if 3.75% is super high), is comical.

The premise of the movie Bugonia is that two conspiracy theorists (led by Jesse Plemons) kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Emma Stone) because they think she's an alien. We watched it last night, and had mixed thoughts. -It was notably darker than I thought, which is neither good nor bad but in kind of a "dark comedy" genre it was lower on comedy and higher on darkness than I would've guessed. Scenes were more violent and tense than I had expected them to be. -I was entertained throughout, in the sense that I enjoyed watching it and was curious how it would end, if everyone would be alright or not, comedic or tragic ending, etc. -The acting was great all around, and particularly from Plemons. No complaints about cinematography or the score. -I felt the writing/dialogue could be a stronger. Much of it comes down to Stone's character debating with Plemon's character, the back-and-forth that they go through, and it wasn't super riveting imo. -I have another criticism but it's a spoiler to talk about it. In general, I feel that the narrative kind of "cheats" in a sense, where details and plot points don't necessarily line up as well as they could. Definitely glad I watched it. Was curious about this one.

As part of our currently nightly movie streak, we watched One Battle After Another. Dicaprio, Penn, Del Toro, etc. A (very long) dark comedy-thriller about far-left terrorists and white supremacists. Neither me nor my husband were a fan of this one at all. -Didn't like or sympathize with almost any character (other than the teenager). -But I also didn't find it that funny or interesting, and no character really captured a scene. In a movie like No Country for Old Men, I didn't particularly get emotionally attached to any character either, but they're all super interesting on-screen, especially the villain. Penn plays a villain here (Colonel Lockjaw) that is both menacing and goofy, but while the writing and acting of Hans Landa in Inglorious Bastards really nails that combo, I didn't feel that way for Lockjaw. It was more jarring. Overall acting was fine, given the quality of the actors. But no role was particularly memorable. Nothing really stood out for the cinematography or the musical score, and I didn't particularly like the writing. And several aspects seemed unrealistic in what feels like it's trying to be a fairly realistic movie. I suspect the main issue is that on one hand, they want to capture that kind of dark-funny nihilistic vibe that several Coen brothers movies have (e.g. Fargo). But they don't quite want to fully commit to that nihilism either, and instead really do want us to emotionally attach to several of the characters here, and straddling that line didn't work for me.

You know what there aren't a lot of? Horror musicals. Anyway, I watched "Sinners" last night, and enjoyed it more than I expected. My husband and I are currently in a movie-a-night mode after a long stretch of zero movies. Here's a quick review. Sinners is getting a lot of hype because it was nominated for a record-breaking16 oscars. Of course, with Hollywood quality deteriorating over time, an oscar nomination isn't really what it used to be. There's some oscar-inflation, basically. And there's often a huge disconnect between what critics and insiders like vs what the public likes, especially in this highly polarized environment. Set in1930s Mississippi, Sinners is a stylized action story about the supernatural. It's one of those elevated type of stories, where there's 1) what's happening at the surface level for entertainment, and 2) what themes those actions are meant to represent. But it didn't get as heavy-handed as I expected. Well-executed themes can deepen the entertainment, whereas heavy-handed or misaligned themes can dampen entertainment, and for me the combo was neutral-to-positive. The music and the directing/cinematography are truly incredible. Like, outlier masterpiece level, 10 out of 10. There's a huge blues component, and the visuals are just constantly surprisingly good. My biggest complaint is the action in the third act. That's the only aspect that detracted from its entertainment value for me. Physical fights and gun battles don't work with a consistent set of rules or power scaling. As a result, the fights feel very unrealistic, and the outcomes feel determined by where the plot needs things to go, rather than maintaining the illusion of cause-and-effect (e.g. it distracted me enough to pull me out of the immersion, and I felt the writer's hand strongly at play). Overall fight choreography is like a 4/10 here. Thus I consider it a flawed masterpiece. Really glad I watched it for its music and visuals and overall plot concept, but was sufficiently distracted by third act details and execution.

Big fan of the Bill of Rights. All ten of ‘em.

Canada lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs to similar levels of a few years ago (up to a limited number, and still 6% tariffs rather than zero). US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products. In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about. It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes. A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."

You ever read a book in one sitting? I did that with the 1979 sci fi novella Electric Forest by Tanith Lee last night when going to bed. Ended up getting to sleep a bit later than intended because of it. Anyway, here’s a review. In a far future world where humanity exists on hundreds of planets, most people are genetically engineered to be beautiful, and not just the wealthy, but everyone. However, some rare accidents happen. Magdala was born crippled and ugly in a beautiful world. Given up by her prostitute mother to a state-run orphanage, she was mercilessly bullied by other kids. Now in her 20s, she works a menial job, lives in a tiny apartment, and has no friends or partner. She has considered plastic surgery, but it’s too expensive, and for her full-body condition it wouldn’t be enough to fix the issues anyway. Thus, she lives in a perpetual state of loneliness and melancholy. Then one day, a scientist shows up and says he can make her beautiful. And as a reader will expect, it certainly does come with a catch. What follows is a generally social-intrigue type of plot, where beautiful-Magdala has to do various things for her benefactor. Overall, I’m glad I read it, but cannot really say I liked it. I’ve been meaning to read more of this era of sci fi. The prose was quite good. The opening premise was interesting. I genuinely couldn’t really predict where the plot would go. A few individual scenes were great. But I did not particularly like the characters, nor did I view them as making understandable choices. Of course, plenty of characters in fiction make bad choices, but when well-characterized, those bad choices are understandable, like we see the cause and effect, we know the character enough to be like, “yep, they’d do that.” I mostly didn’t feel that here. I did not like the details/choreography of the one action scene (I mean, if you have exactly one, then do it really well), nor did I like the epilogue.

Back in 2018-2020, I wrote a lot about how the upcoming issue of fiscal dominance would contribute heavily to populist politics. For example, 2020: "Populist politics then become more commonplace, and while some strands of it can be quite rational based on countering prevailing policies that are rightly viewed as needing reform, there are also more dangerous or extreme strands that begin to emerge as well, particularly if those initial and more rational strands go unaddressed. Policymakers historically face the choice of doing something to alleviate the financial burdens of the broad population, or risking outright revolution."

Lyn Alden

A Century of Fiscal and Monetary Policy: Inflation vs Deflation

Published: September 2020 There has been a lot of discussion lately about how effective monetary policy can be. In my view, the big debate between ...

During eras of fiscal dominance, the state tends to take more control of the economy, tends to restrict capital movement, and tends to limit personal freedom, whether it's a right or left government. And they drum up as much public support as possible with a narrative. But witnessing it playing out first hand has still been a sight to behold. I could jot it all down on paper but then admittedly have still been surprised at times as it keeps playing out. And we see both left and right varieties occurring. For folks who want to keep government pretty limited where possible, these past six years have been absolutely wild to watch in practice. So many people forget the basic principle that any power you give your current government, a future government that you don't agree with can use that power against you. The poles of right and left keep drifting outward, and the horseshoe theory of politics is on full display as the two populist extremes are closer together than the moderates of each side are (but then ironically, some of those moderates also unite to oppose those extremes as well). So many people lose their minds and go full communist or full fascist. And then some normal things get labeled as extreme, so people who just believe in a handful of principles that were normal a few decades ago are like out in the wilderness now. And the centralized algos certainly contribute to it. As someone who has been active on social media for a long time, 2025 really stuck out to me, at least as much as 2020 did. I see people reorienting their positions so rapidly around new things in a sort of mass groupthink, I see people retweeting so many things that support their view despite being obvious AI slop or clearly false or out of context with just a 2-minute factcheck. Some real populist momentum waves build, and then centralized algos give them rocket fuel. Both the main wave, and the reactionary wave on the other side, are fueled by the algos for maximum engagement. When I interviewed @jack at the Oslo Freedom Forum back in 2024, he focused on algos affecting not just what people can say, but what people think. And in the year and a half since then, I think that has very much played out. There is an enormous premium these days for being able to recognize the algo's influence on you, and to continually factcheck and emotion-check yourself, take a breath and step back, touch grass, get sun, and assess what your foundational principles are.

You know what would be neat? Going back and reading some of George RR Martin's pre-Game of Thrones books. Anyway, I finished the sci fi novel Windhaven during lunch today, so here's a review. Martin co-wrote Windhaven with Lisa Tuttle in the 1970s. It was a series of three novellas, which where combined into a completed novel in 1981. It's a story about a woman, Maris, who is a flyer. The gravity on this world is lower, and the atmosphere thicker, and the world consists of islands separated by dangerous seas. This combo allows people to fly with specialized wings, and it's the best way to send messages, although there are limited numbers of wings (without the tech to make any more) and so flyers are in a special caste. The initial story follows Maris as she tries to change some of the caste dynamics. Specifically, wings are passed down through bloodlines regardless of skill or desire, whereas some argue that those with greater skill and desire should get the wings instead (especially because, whenever flyer crashes at sea, the wings are lost forever, and so bad flyer skill affects the whole world over time). Maris, as one might imagine, is highly skilled but lacks the bloodline, hence the problem. Without spoilers, the book then jumps forward in time, and looks at various ethical dilemmas. Sometimes changing one aspect of society for the better, introduces new problems people didn't expect. And then solving those problems can create other problems, and so forth. It's a really interesting set of socioeconomic dynamics to explore. There's no combat or on-page violence in the book (very little off-page as well), and the rating for the book is middling (basically anyone expecting Martin's Grimdark Game of Thrones type of stuff will be disappointed). But I think it was a very unique and quality novel that stands out vs many others I've read. It's more like, political intrigue across this island world, and the evolution of various personal relationships. My criticisms of the book are mainly around dialogue. Martin and Tuttle were early in their careers when this was written, and it's not as well written as later stuff. Characters, despite holding different positions on a given topic, generally all speak with the same matter-of-fact voice to each other. Higher-caliber writing tends to make character voice jump out of the page more. In contrast, a book like The Lies of Locke Lamora is pretty far on the other end of the spectrum, with character voice that just punches you in the face from the start. Most books are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and I felt this was too far in the robotic/sameness end of it. The reason I found it is because Bookborn, a reviewer on YouTube, decided to read through Martin's entire backlog and said this was her favorite one, and arguably in her top five books of all time. While I wouldn't rank it like that personally, I definitely found it interesting, especially the second two thirds, and was curious to see the evolution of Martin's work over his career. There was also one particular sad thing in it that (the Ballad of Aron and Jeni) that made me tear up for a moment, and I was thinking about it for a while afterward.

The DOJ served the Fed with a subpoena and threatened Powell with a criminal indictment related to the Fed's expensive renovations. Powell, rather than releasing the minimal version of a statement that merely disagreed with the accusation, instead released a statement and video that pretty much went scorched earth, saying this isn't really about the renovations and is instead about the Fed's independent control of interest rates. Historically speaking, this is the biggest direct clash between the Fed and the Executive Branch since the 1940s/1950s.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell

Good evening. On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related...

Rather than choosing their tribe based on shared principles, most people just reprogram their principles around whatever their tribe is doing.

Just rode with an uber driver who has a perfect 5.00 rating. Don’t think I’ve seen that before. It’s almost always 4.9 something. It was an older gentleman wearing a three piece suit, driving a Corolla. Super friendly. Basically the final boss of uber drivers.

I had to fly down south to help a relative with a health issue. I’m at a Cracker Barrel for the first time, since it’s adjacent to my hotel. The 50-something waitress is calling me “baby girl” when asking if I need anything. I texted my husband like, “there are apparently two people in the world comfortable enough to call me ‘baby girl’, you and this waitress.” Southern hospitality tends to stand out for those that are not familiar with it. A couple years ago, my husband and I went down to South Carolina for a wedding, stayed at a random hotel, and in the parking lot as we walked up to it, a random couple that was leaving the hotel said “how y’all doin?” In the warmest possible tone. Up north, that kind of thing is rare. We just pass each other in parking lots. That’s our way. So we were like, “uh, good…” ::awkward smile::

The USDA’s new food pyramid is pretty lit.

The ratio of AI slop posts across Twitter now is pretty wild.

The mega-flop episode in this last season of Stranger Things gave me a new marketing pitch for my upcoming sci fi novel:

You know what would be crazy? Just deciding to skip punctuation. Cormac McCarthy, the bestselling and Pulitzer-winning author of books like No Country For Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian, famously didn't like quotation marks, felt they cluttered the page, and so he didn't use them. When dialogue happens in his novels, there are no quotes around it, and you as the reader just have to figure out when a line is narration or dialogue. He also didn't use semicolons or exclamation points or certain other forms of punctuation. While he didn't exclude commas entirely, he did minimize them, and instead used extra "ands" in place of where many other authors would use commas. He used periods normally. His prose isn't my cup of tea, but there's no denying his success, and it goes to show that you can kind of just do things.

In the first Expanse book, Leviathan Wakes, there is a scene where a detective is looking through space port logs. There’s one ship called The Badass Motherfucker. It’s owned by the MYOFB Corporation (presumably, “Mind Your Own Fucking Business”). They don’t elaborate. The detective passes over it and eventually finds the ship he is after. This particular ship and corp never comes up again. I feel like we need a spinoff covering whatever the hell these guys are up to, lol.