Professional Data Person. Marketing Consultant. Startup Investor. Trader. Also, Writes Things.
Nov 16, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Fun fact: you don’t actually have to treat other people poorly to achieve good and useful things.
One can be ambitious, tough, motivated, driven, with a single-minded focus on achieving great things and NOT treat other people like chattel.
Nov 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As an example, as spicy as these DMs are, they should be read with about a pound of arsenic, and should be assumed to be The Turn rather than The Prestige.
A good con artist doesn’t stop conning because they are caught. In fact, once you’re caught the opportunities for the true grift only multiplies. The performance is the point, and the reactions you can draw from the performance help you setup the next act.
Nov 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you have enough money you can “successfully” run a business however you want. This is why it’s often incorrect to assume that just because business leaders make arguably inane decisions they will pay for it in any material way. Meta is a prime example.
People underestimate the importance of runway. Sometimes the difference between a very good and very stupid idea in business is how long you can keep trying it until they turn the lights off.
Jul 22, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
We have arrived at the point in the plague where the sheer number of confounders makes it nearly impossible for even the highly numerate to intuitively predict what their individual risk for COVID is, this is important.
Individual COVID risk is now highly dependent on:
1. Vaccine status. 2. Pre-existing condition status. 3. Local public safety regulations. 4. Average, local vaccination rates. 5. Delta variant prevalence. 6. Activity type and duration. 7. Prevalence of masking.
etc...
Jun 9, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Fun facts:
1. $15 an hour is approximately $28k a year.
2. The poverty line for a family of four in the U.S. is $26k.
3. The average yearly rent payment in the U.S. is about $1,000 a month.
4. Federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 and states average about $10 ($19.2k)
5. Federal minimum wage earners ($7.25) represent about 2.3% of the total workforce, and state minimum wage workers (~$10) represent about 1% of the market.
I think it's weird that "freedom" has gone from meaning something like, "the capacity to make choices" to "the ability to take on risk without responsibility."
"Freedom" has become as a kind of branding or aesthetic, rather than a means of achieving goals. One is "free" not when one makes hard, sometimes painful choices to achieve something of value, but when one ignores consequence in favor of a kind of naïve hedonism.
Jun 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hot Take: No human being, no matter how talented, is capable of consistently creating art that will appeal to Internet-scale audiences. The fact that creatives are forced to keep trying in order to make ends meet is a tragedy.
We expect people to create art that will somehow integrate the perspectives of billions of people at once, and keep doing this for years at a time while juggling both commercial and personal constraints. This is an impossible standard.
Jan 29, 2021 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
After reading a bajillion articles on GameSpot, and spending more time than I usually do puttering around WSB and FinTwit, I think a lot of journos are seriously mischaracterizing this event.
My complaint is premised on three assertions:
1. MANY of the people playing this game understand this pump will not last forever.
2. MANY of the people playing this game understand hedgies are playing too.
3. This isn't about money for many of them.
Jan 28, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I think my biggest frustration with this whole GME is that I’m a *giant* defender of broad market participation. I think everyone owning a small piece of the economy leads to a better, fairer world. (1/2)
Moments like this not only convince normal that it’s not worth investing, but also provides proof that some investing professionals have no interest at all in free and fair markets that offer the same opportunities to all.
If you ever wonder why I believe that a large chunk of the hedge fund industry is an elaborate grift designed to enrich mediocrity, extract wealth, and inflate the egos of those who, when put to any rigorous scrutiny, turn out to be bad at their jobs -- this is why.
Jan 28, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I turned on FF14 hoping to unwind after a day of work and weirdness, and then I noticed that everyone in chat is talking about...Gamestop. This is quite a thing that's happening right now.
People are talking about this trade like it was a stimulus check. They're talking about how it is helping people pay off student loans and credit card debt. FF14 is generally pretty wholesome, but there is no one here looking to spin up millions.
Honestly, @chamath has the clearest take on this that I've seen so far.
Jun 4, 2020 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
@CharlesNegy Hi! I'm going to assume good faith, because this conversation is too tedious any other way.
1. Often when people as questions like these, they tend to reverse the causal arrow. They look at a group and say, "bad outcomes are obviously the result of bad habits."
2/?
@CharlesNegy 2. Alternately, they do the opposite, suggesting that good outcomes are always solely the result of good habits.
3. This is a highly seductive way of viewing the world, because it allows us to believe that everyone "gets what they deserve."
