In a world of AI slop writing, I’m prioritizing brevity more than ever. As Blaise Pascal (not Mark Twain to whom it is often attributed) once wrote, “I only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I am increasingly putting in the time to make things shorter.

One of the most successful pirates in history was Zheng Yi Sao, a Chinese woman. Historians aren't clear about her early life; she may have been a prostitute. But in her twenties she married a pirate lord who commanded a large confederation of pirates, and thus lived a live of piracy with him for years. When he died in the early1800s, rather than the confederation turning to chaos, she managed to take command of it. She married her late husband's adopted son Zhang Bao as well (she was in her 30s, he in his 20s), and he became basically the #2 in the fleet under her, and that helped cement things. Over the next few years, the confederation grew to hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of pirates. They were one of the biggest powers in the South China Sea, rivaling the navies of China, Portugal, and Britain who were active in the region. In 1810, however, she saw that the future probably wouldn't be so bright for her and the pirates. A pirate confederation is a chaotic thing, and cannot last against multiple navies indefinitely. But pirates rarely ever quit while they're ahead; they almost all end up dying violently. The Chinese and other navies were working together and were pretty desperate to get rid of piracy, and were willing to negotiate. However after months, negotiations broke down between the authorities and the various pirate lords, including Zhang Bao, until Zheng Yi Sao went personally to the Chinese governor's mansion that they were primarily negotiating with, at great personal risk. Just walked right in there with a small delegation, without any fighting force, to negotiate, and got it done. After that, the pirates surrendered from a position of strength. Zheng Yi Sao, Zhang Bao, and others received pardons and got to keep most of their wealth. Zhang Bao became an officer in the Chinese navy, commanding a fleet like he used to. Zheng Yi Sao received land and founded a gambling house. Their marriage was recognized by the Chinese government, having been an unofficial "pirate marriage" beforehand. Zhang Bao eventually died age 39, still in service in the navy. Zheng Yi Sao died at 68, having lived decades overseeing her gambling house, and with children from both her marriages. A pirate lord that retired wealthy and peacefully, and managed to navigate the transition away from piracy in a way that let the most reasonable pirates all quit while they were ahead.

Zheng Yi Sao - Wikipedia

My accountant going through my zaps for tax season like

The Supreme Court just struck down Trump's use of emergency powers to impose global, indefinite tariffs (i.e. the tariffs actually have to go through Congress like other taxes, if they're going to be imposed). -Some specific tariffs, such as those on aluminum and steel, cite other laws for justification and can still be applied. -The Trump administration previously said they'll attempt other laws as justification if the Supreme Court strikes down their use of emergency powers.

My February newsletter is out now. Because scheduling things on the day of the Super Bowl is apparently how I do things. The issue focuses on the Fed's shift toward balance sheet expansion, the implications of Japan's rapidly rising bond yields, and the volatile moves in precious metals.

Lyn Alden

The Gradual Print is Here

February 8, 2026 This newsletter issue discusses the implications of the Fed’s shift from long-term balance sheet reduction to its new trend ...

RIP Brad Arnold of 3 Doors Down.

Anyway, GM.

Algos treating bitcoin like SaaS. Relatively few new retail investors came in this cycle. Meanwhile, altcoins exhausted basically every possible narrative for why they should exist and are set to more persistently fade into irrelevance, with most of them not even really reaching new highs this time. Bitcoin separated from the pack for the most part, but had trouble catching a sustained bid nonetheless. -Some institutional investors are indeed spooked by the quantum risk. That had a nonzero impact, and I have really good sources on that. But if quantum was the main catalyst for the underperformance as some like to argue, then there'd most likely be a big performance gap between bitcoin (hard to upgrade) vs more centralized altcoins (easy to upgrade) that are marketing quantum resiliency roadmaps. That's not happening, though, which largely disproves that as the main culprit. -Most institutional investors I've looked into have little knowledge or even awareness of the spam issue, version wars, fork wars, etc. -Biggest factor seems to just be a combo of 1) buyer exhaustion (lack of retail, lack of sovereigns, leaving basically a corporate play this cycle) and 2) weighed down by the more permanent stagnation of altcoins (which is good in the long run but a headwind here, because there is a lot of cross-ownership between them and bitcoin).

I read the novel Blood of the Bourgeoisie by Michael Sullivan. Given all the corruption recently revealed about powerful people, it seems like a good season for it. It's a thriller about elite corruption, and features bitcoin prominently. Anyway, here's a review. The book is a concise and well-paced read, with three point-of-view characters. All three of them are quite fleshed out, especially given how trim the overall page count is. The plot is well-constructed and creative. Motivations make sense, the scale is significant, and I found myself consistently wanting to know what happens next. The audiobook version is out now, narrated by the great @walker. I started with the ebook version, but then listened to the audiobook version for the second half, so I experienced the book both in prose form and through listening, and both were quite enjoyable. I like there to be themes in novels. In other words, if the answer to why Prince Niceguy defeats Darklord Asshole in the climax is because "he's better with a sword", then that's just not that interesting to me. In addition to his training, what did Prince Niceguy learn that allowed him to defeat him? The original Star Wars trilogy handled this well: Luke loses to Vader in the middle movie and beats him in the third movie, not just because he improved with a saber between the duels but because he mastered himself and his emotions, and accepted the truth of things rather than deny them. This novel has good themes, in my view. Clashes of ideology. Tough choices. Characters who have their worldviews tested. Good, evil, and shades of gray. Can evil be purged peacefully, or does it require violence? There's a series of flashbacks in it, which is a structure that annoys a minority of readers (because it risks breaking your immersion by jumping back and forth), but I really like that structure in novels as long as it's well done. It helps flesh out a story and makes the reader wonder how the flashbacks are going to inform or intersect with the present-day plot. In this case, I thought the flashbacks were very well done and played nicely into the plot. I predicted how the flashbacks would intersect the main story, but there are other twists that surprised me a great deal. In my view that's the ideal combo, because as a reader I'm rewarded for thinking ahead, but also blindsided at times. To the extent that I have any critiques of the novel to flesh out a full review, they're pretty limited and contextual. -The bitcoin component is significant, both plot-wise and dialogue-wise. If someone doesn't like bitcoin, the plot can still work for them but it'll likely detract from their overall appreciation. On the other hand if someone is very knowledgeable on bitcoin, the "bitcoin 101" parts of it may feel skim-able. That's a tough balance for an author to navigate and I can't envision how it would be handled better. I would imagine that the sweet spot as a reader here is to be interested in bitcoin but a bit skeptical or not super knowledgeable about it. -One of the challenges an author faces (including myself) is how to make dialogue seem realistic but not too realistic. That's an unintuitive thing. If you actually transcribe most real-life conversations, they are filled with "ums" and false starts and just tons of verbal clutter which makes them super annoying to read. So an author can't actually make dialogue perfectly realistic, all the time. On the other hand, if dialogue is too polished and expositionary, it sounds artificial: "Well how do you do today, Bob? Lovely weather isn't it? Have you heard about that deceased gardener? What a shame. They found him this morning. I heard he was sleeping with the countess." Sullivan handles the dialogue well, but there were some times I would have preferred it pushed a bit closer to the realism side of the spectrum. There is not necessarily any ideal sweet spot, though. It's all trade-offs. An author has to put necessary exposition somewhere, and it can go in the narrative or in dialogue or some blend of the two, and readers have different preferences. There was one moment where characters whispered in front of another character as though they weren't heard and I was like, "guys, he's right there in earshot, looking at you..." I'd be happy to pick up other books by Sullivan in the future. In fact, he's got an earlier sci fi novel out called The Final Flaw. I haven't gotten to that one yet, but after reading this one, I'd like to give that a read as well.

Husband saw this on our yard and was like, “did someone get fucking raptured?”

Trump has said that he would pick the next Fed chair tomorrow. Odds rapidly jumped for Warsh. No matter who it is, nothing stops this train.

So I watched The Rip. A Miami cop movie with Affleck and Damon. I liked the first half quite a bit. Really intense opening scene, good mystery setup, high emotional stakes, etc. Always happy to see Affleck and Damon together. The second half lost me a bit. Some aspects seemed unrealistic enough to distract me and pull me out of it. And I felt the heavy hand of the writers/director in terms of character choices not really making sense, convenient scene changes, etc. But, all together a solid cop movie. Glad I watched it. So far out of this recent run of movies, Sinners is comfortably my top choice even though I had some issues in the third act.

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.