Today I learned that the new Surat Diamond Bourse in India is the biggest office building in the world in terms of square meters of floor space. Until this was built in 2023, the Pentagon was the world’s biggest office building. More floor space than any skyscraper. Now this one is bigger. But my first thought is, “why the hell does a diamond exchange have to be so big!?” Like, I can’t imagine what they need so much space for.

There are so many indie-published novels with mediocre ratings on Goodreads and Amazon and such, and I always find myself thinking, “who reads these?” Since I don’t have as much time as I’d like to read fiction, I generally end up reading just the big hits and then continue reading sequels on them.

The Harry Potter series was an example where, whenever fans voted for their favorite character, it usually wasn't Harry Potter. He'd be in the runningb but not at the top. Fans were like, "I mean, we all like Harry. But we don't necessarily *love* him. And he's not *fucking memorable*. He's kind of boring. Many people instead preferred Snape, Hermione, Black, Dumbledore, Dobby, etc. -The very deep anti-hero or pseudo-villain. Highly conflicted, dark, and emotional, but sides with good. (Snape) -The smartest one that fixes everything. (The books were read by bookish types, and Hermione was their bookish character identifier.) -The wise mentor. Usually among the strongest, but from the prior generation. The plot has to factor him/her out. (Dumbledore) -The chad scary seeming-villain who is actually a hero. (Sirius) -The ultra-weak character, with charisma and talents, that manipulates things around the margins and morally *has* to fucking win. (Dobby).

When it comes to all fiction you consume (books, shows, movies), do you tend to remember the villain or the hero more, many years later? Here are some variables to consider: -Characters and concepts that stuck with you personally, for years. -Memorable quotes or images. -Iconic characters. Archetypes. Things you want to replicate. -Roles that were so fucking well-acted that it can't be topped, and thus brought out the full complexity of the character. Clarifications prior to answering: -Villains include very bad folks that turn good at the end (e.g. Darth Vader). Partial goodness is often part of good villain design. -Heroes include clear anti-heroes from the first act of the story (e.g. Han Solo). Partial badness is often part of good hero design.

Still working my way through Arcane when I get a chance. The animation, music and overall world-building conception of their underworld is so good.

In China, many social media users began using the meme "garbage time" (a sports terminology) to criticize the state of the economy. As that meme grew here in 2024, China's central authorities began cracking down on it. But many Chinese citizens are adept at moving around censorship. When desiring to criticize the current state of the Chinese economy, many of them will instead bring up historical examples of prior Chinese dynasties that made similar errors, and draw clear parallels to the present, while maintaining plausible deniability and difficulty of censorship. Pretty interesting. My hat is off to the Chinese social media users working around top-down censorship with memes and historical analogies. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/asia/china-economy-garbage-time.html

Back when ETH did the change to its money supply algorithm to be deflationary, a lot of people correctly pointed out that they can just change it again. And they did, so now it's back to having a similar supply distribution rate as bitcoin, but with fewer reasons for anyone to want to hold it long term relative to bitcoin, and with more competition nipping at its heels than bitcoin.

Latin American equities have had a big stretch of underperformance vs US equities, but since December 2021 they haven’t made a lower low on a total return basis. One of the things I’m watching in macro land is whether there is some meaningful reversal here. The combo of 1) lots of global capital stuffed into US capital markets and 2) a US rate cutting cycle, is a potential catalyst for serious multi-year capital rotation toward more global assets.

Anybody watch the Netflix show Arcane? I ignored it for years since video game adoptions into other media are rarely good. But so far this is surprisingly solid.

Just said “nothing stops this train” on Fox Business live. ;)

👍 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061142662

When you read fiction of any genre, do you tend to gravitate toward authors and/or main characters of your own gender, or not really and it’s fine either way? In my reading, it seems about 50/50. Plenty of male and female authors I like, and usually there are a lot of major characters of both genders. Statistically, women read novels more than men, but it varies by genre, eg romance vs military fiction. I guess part of why my reading is somewhere in the middle is I don’t read pure romance books or pure military books and the like, but rather read adventure/fantasy/sci-fi books that often have one or more romantic arcs, one or more action scenes including sometimes military scenes, heists, crimes, etc. I listened to this podcast on how to write novels that men would like out of curiosity, and it was interesting. Basically, their thesis is that too much current writing advice is geared to writing for women, so male readers kind of get left out, but then authors pick up on that and write for men, and they do a lot of volume. I think that’s largely correct. However, I also found the advice a bit black and white, like that most women want character development and details of feelings while most men want achievement and details of things. My assumption is that the majority of men and women readers want both of those things. So what are your thoughts? Do you tend to gravitate toward authors and characters of your gender or not really?

Who knows how real either number is, but notably I crossed 70k followers here on Nostr a couple days before I touched 700k on Twitter.

Surprisingly, Chester Bennington's (RIP) replacement by Emily Armstrong fulfills the same vibe in the lineup. Her screaming vocals capture a lot of the same sound and essence of Bennington. That was a surprisingly good pick. With Mike Shinoda still doing major vocals and most other members still onboard, Linkin Park 2.0 is surprisingly continuous with Linkin Park 1.0, in my view. Solid revival of a major band after a six-year semi-hiatus.

Wake up babe, new Linkin Park dropped.

The Social Security Administration expects their reserves to run out in 2035. That’s a different pile of money than most other government functions, and so without either tax increases or legislation that transfers other money to it, payments going out to retirees could actually be cut after that due to not enough income flowing in. I’m not sure what they’ll do at that point since we don’t even know what things will look like then, but basically 2035 is the next station to see if the train keeps going or not. This drawdown will represent “intergovernmental” public debt turning into public debt held by either the private sector, foreign sector, or central bank.

What aspects do you enjoy most about your favorite sci fi or fantasy novels? Obviously it’s a mix of everything but what consistent themes do you find yourself returning to frequently? To give an example, I tend to like complex and internally consistent magic systems or “hard magic” systems, eg Brandon Sanderson. He basically invents an alternative physics in a given series and there’s a whole set of stories around that. I also put a lot of weight on complex characters, eg Game of Thrones. You know it’s good writing when someone can push a kid out of a window in the first episode and then somehow kind of make you almost like the guy later on. If you don’t like sci fi and/or fantasy, what is it about the genre(s) that you dislike? And do you like one but not the other, or both or neither?

Good evening. My September newsletter is out. It's an update on the fiscal dominance view: https://www.lynalden.com/september-2024-newsletter/