Science fiction has always been a mirror and a map, reflecting our ambitions while charting their risks. In Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs prowls a neon-drenched future where the wealthy, known as Methuselahs, cheat death by slipping their digitized minds into new bodies, their consciousness preserved in cortical […]
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Chpt 48: It’ll Be Over By Christmas
There’s an ideological quirk that I’ve observed. A cognitive tic baked into the psyche of the progressive left. In Chpt 41: Lasting Damage I referenced a heatmap that made the rounds online. It came from a 2018 Nature article titled “Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle”, and […]
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Chpt 46: We Haven’t Met But You’re A Great Fan Of Mine
I’m no genius, and I have never made such an outrageous claim, but even I can see through the gaslighting that has been going on for the last few decades as we make our ‘transition’ to ‘green’ energy. I wrote previously in Chpt 19: Trade Surplus about the hazards of […]
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Chpt 44: Heavy Messing
The Rothschilds. A name that’s been synonymous with wealth and influence for over 250 years. Often shrouded in mystery and speculation, their story is not just one of unimaginable fortune but of strategic brilliance that shaped global finance. From their humble origins in Frankfurt to becoming the financiers of nations, […]
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Chpt 43: Happy Idiot Talk
The degrowth movement is the darling of global elites. I’ve seen it pop up on Xitter, as a force for good, more times that I would like to. It’s pushed by think tanks and socialist intellectuals, not to mention, institutions like the World Economic Forum. It’s framed as the solution […]
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Chpt 39: Cantankerous
“Congrats fool, you played yourself.” Words I say to myself frequently, as I fall into the numerous traps of my own biases. Be it confirmation bias, coverage bias, groupthink, Dunning-Kruger, or even declinism. Being immune to manipulation is almost impossible in today’s modern media saturated era. Numbers vary between studies, […]
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Chpt 38: Nuisance Value
What is Bitcoin? According to many in governments around the world, in central banking, in law enforcement, it’s a nuisance. It allows pseudonymous actors to transfer supposed value from one side of the planet to the other, across borders, with no 3rd party involvement and without permission of the authorities. […]
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Chpt 37: Break Even
Seigniorage. A word with a long past and an even more sinister present. It originates from the Old French seigneuriage, the ‘right of the lord (seigneur) to mint money’. The seigneurial system was a semi-feudal system of land ownership that originated in France in the 1600’s. Allotted by the king, […]
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Chpt 35: Full Refund
Usury, never heard of it. Perhaps you’ve heard of Riba, or Neshekh? No? They mean roughly the same. The concept is simple, although interpretation and circumstance vary. Usury refers to the charging of excessive interest on loans. Something that used to be considered exploitative and immoral. Within each of the […]
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Chpt 33: Unacceptable Behaviour
March 27th, 1980. Known amongst commodity traders as ‘Silver Thursday‘. It was described in Harpers Magazine as “the first great panic since October 1929.” In the words of then Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chief James Stone, it had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the […]
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Chpt 29: Grey Area
Infinite divisibility or the lack thereof. A concept that appears in philosophy, physics, economics, order theory and probability theory. As early as the 5th century BCE philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, were theorizing a world of divisible matter beyond our human senses. The Indian philosopher Maharshi Kanada proposed the concept of […]
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Chpt 27: Kiss the Blade
Word spreads fast when there’s easy money to be made. Something that was apparent in the taverns and public houses of London in the 1700’s. News filtering down from Exchange Alley, through newsletters and pamphlets, gossip, rumors, tales of supposed riches and opportunity. Whispered stories of ordinary people becoming overnight […]