1/ There is an odd defect in the human mind that allows people living under an enormous dam to suffer little anxiety as the reservoir behind it gradually fills to the brim and the concrete walls crack from the mounting force.
2/ In such circumstances, most people will go about their daily business. The specter of sudden catastrophe will remain unthinkable to them, if only because it has not yet happened―as if the ravages of time were positive evidence, instead of something to worry about.
3/ In the aftermath, the same defect will cause survivors of disaster to blame it all on the trigger event, the unforeseen engineering flaw or earthquake or storm that finally burst the dam and brought the water crushing down.
4/ People naturally ignore that unhappy reality: all dams break sooner or later if they are not strengthened. — @Ian_M_Easton
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
In this @HiddenForcesPod, @Gavekal's CEO @gave_vincent joins me to discuss de-dollarization, U.S. re-industrialization, and his case for a Chinese “deflationary boom” and revaluation of the renminbi.
I ask Louis about the most important trends set to define the investment landscape in the years ahead and why he believes that the U.S. and Europe are set to undergo long periods of structurally high inflation while China’s economy is set to experience a “deflationary boom.”
2/4
In the second hour, we discuss the American imperial model of dollar recycling, why it is unsustainable, and why Louis thinks de-dollarization is a prerequisite for the re-industrialization of the United States.
We also discuss whether or not America needs an industrial ...
3/4
I’m starting a regimen of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) and will be documenting parts of this journey in my weekly newsletter and on the Hidden Forces podcast.
Here's some background on why I've decided to grow my brain.
🧵👇🏼
Most of you already know that I’m a brain tumor survivor. I underwent brain surgery, followed by six weeks of daily stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) to cure a debilitating tumor whose symptoms included dementia, anterograde amnesia, and general cognitive decline.
2/x
I wrote about my experience for The Atlantic’s Quartz Magazine in 2015, and the CBC did a short documentary about it for those interested in learning more.
It's intersting how COVID-19, the Ukraine war, and now, Israel-Palestine are causing rifts and realignments on the hard left & right as everyone tries to figure out where the majority of the country is and what interlocking set of positions can create a winning coalition in 2024.
It's also interesting to see how certain unaligned people become totem poles around which this homeless mass of voters can congregate and find common cause and understanding.
We've seen this with Trump, Tulsi, RFK, Tucker, Peterson, Elon, Vivek, and even Norman Finkelstein.
Normally, the parties select the candidates and we have to decide which one we hate the least.
Instead, what we have here is some combination of the social media-driven crowd and a new coalition of private interests sourcing and proposing potential leaders for the movement.
It’s been a year since we launched the Hidden Forces Genius community and in this thread, I share some thoughts about what this experience has been like for me and what comes next.
🧵👇🏻
Victory Lap
It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come. I don’t just mean the Hidden Forces podcast. I mean the entire podcast industry.
When I started listening to podcasts more than a decade ago, hardly anyone even knew what they were; even fewer were actually listening.
2/x
In 2013, just over 1 in 10 Americans twelve years of age and older said they had listened to a podcast in the past month. Today, just under 1 in 3 said they have listened to a podcast in the last week.
That’s a huge change in a country of more than 334 million people.
3/x
While delivering a speech to the United Nations only weeks before the fifty-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was “on the cusp of a historic peace agreement” with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
👇🏼🧵
“Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said, “But there’s a fly in this ointment, because rest assured, the fanatics ruling Iran will do everything they can to thwart this historic peace.”
2/
Weeks later that peace was shattered when more than 1,400 people were killed and some 200 more were taken hostage by the terrorist group Hamas on the single deadliest day in Israel’s history.
Since that attack Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in ...
3/
At the turn of the century, the West was in a state of celebration. Not only had we won the Cold War, but there was a feeling that history had reached its final conclusion.
Capitalism won, the free market reigned supreme, and the US sat atop a New World Order that was ...
👇🏻🧵
... liberal, market-oriented, and democratic.
Where did everything go wrong and why does it feel like the world is coming apart?
REASON #1: THE Culture War
America has always been a land of contradictions. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the country’s ...
2/
... conflicted relationship between tradition & progress.
While today’s culture wars and the more extreme demands of many so-called “social justice warriors” may seem unprecedented, they are only the latest manifestations of what historian Richard Hofstadter described as ...
3/