We're building a Narrative Early Warning System (NEWS) as our first major research project in a larger effort to inoculate ourselves against the weaponized narratives of Big Tech, Big Media and Big Politics. Read more | Continue reading
Over the past 25 years, our leaders have intentionally constructed an Apocalypse Now world of proclamation and fiat, where our wealth has grown much faster than our economy. The bill is due for their hubris, and inflation is here to collect it. Read more | Continue reading
Tired: Pump and Dump Wired: ChaChaCha! Read more | Continue reading
The international "negotiations" over Ukraine are 100% designed for domestic Russian consumption. They are as necessary a part of successfully invading Ukraine as mobilizing troops and tanks. Read more | Continue reading
The social rewards that come from imitating others feel good, but they come at a high price. Here are 25 Anti-Mimetic ideas that can help us craft a life that is a little more free from the herd, and a bit more open to the spontaneity and wonder of new things. Read more | Continue reading
To date, WHO leadership has simply been part of the Chinese narrative machine. It’s more than a disgrace. It's more than a humiliation of the people who do good and important work through WHO. It’s a betrayal of the entire world. Read more | Continue reading
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with the American dream that once was, And I must pause till it come back to me. Read more | Continue reading
Over the past four quarters, the United States has generated more wage inflation than at any point over the past 40 years. This is not an anomaly. This is not a single quarter aberration. A wage-price inflation cycle is here. I'm not predicting. I'm observing. Read more | Continue reading
A Honda Accord cost $12,000 in 1990 and it costs $25,000 now. A Mustang was $9,000 and now it’s $27,000. The BLS has new car prices close to unchanged over the past 30 years. ET contributor Brent Donnelly tries to wrap his brain around hedonic adjustments to CPI. Read more | Continue reading
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance. The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything. Read more | Continue reading
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance. The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything. Read more | Continue reading
In 2008, the US housing market - together with a Fed that thought the subprime crisis was "contained" - delivered the mother of all deflationary shocks to the global economy. In 2021, the US housing market - together with a Fed that thinks inflationary pressures are "transitory" … | Continue reading
The Fed, China and Italy are the Three Horsemen of the Investment Semi-Apocalypse. They're major market risks, but you'll survive. There's a Fourth Horseman. And it will change EVERYTHING about investing. Read more | Continue reading
The Very Serious Investor is quite disturbed by recent goings-on in illiquid, small cap stocks with high short interests. These happenings represent an assault not only on the Very Serious Investor’s livelihood, but his entire cosmology. People placing profitable discretionary tr … | Continue reading
I believe there is a non-trivial chance that the United States will experience a rolling series of “Ireland events” over the next 30-45 days, where the Covid effective reproductive number (Re not R0) reaches a value between 2.4 and 3.0 in states and regions where a) the more infe … | Continue reading
The American Medical Association is not a charitable organization. The American Medical Association is not an educational organization. The American Medical Association is a tax-exempt hedge fund and licensing corporation, designed from the ground up to enrich its executives and … | Continue reading
Any news outlet that won't let you see a lie does not work for you. Read more | Continue reading
We don't need more minimally viable products. We need more maximally viable organizations attacking big problems with a tinkerer's mindset and a capitalist's goals. Guest post by Luis Perez-Breva, faculty director at MIT Innovation Teams. Read more | Continue reading
Doug Parker, American Airlines CEO and Chairman of the Board, wrote a letter to his employees today that pretty much defines high-functioning sociopathy. I'm going to reprint excerpts from that letter - which is couched in the saccharine vocabulary of modern team-speak, but is in … | Continue reading
In a world awash with cheesing, being lawful good doesn't mean being lawful stupid. But for God's sake, don't lose your soul in the process. Read more | Continue reading
We've been assaulted by three brutal grifts in just the past week ... three smacks from Bobo and his bag of oranges ... each deserving of an Epsilon Theory note. Here's chapter 1 - the ludicrous crony capitalism of the US government giving Kodak $765 million for "pharmaceutical s … | Continue reading
The war over reopening schools is a proxy war. The real war is between political parties, but they've set up the fight as teachers on one side vs. parents on the other. This is not our war. This is THEIR war. How to stop it? We refuse to fight. Read more | Continue reading
We've been assaulted by three brutal grifts in just the past week ... three smacks from Bobo and his bag of oranges ... each deserving of an Epsilon Theory note. Here's chapter 1 - the ludicrous crony capitalism of the US government giving Kodak $765 million for "pharmaceutical s … | Continue reading
A truth that’s told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. - William Blake Our narratives of COVID-19 are all lies. They are lies of a particular sort, political narratives that have a nugget of truth within them, but are told with bad intent. They are told this way b … | Continue reading
Defund the police? No. Demilitarize and Deunionize? Yes. Here's how we use narrative to start taking back our world from the culture-porn merchants on the left and the right. Police reform is just the start. Read more | Continue reading
Our bi-modal political environment doesn't just impact our politics. It shapes our social and cultural narratives and channels our responses to every event. Yet Americans are large. They contain multitudes. And they can reject the political archetypes into which narratives seek … | Continue reading
The Hertz bankruptcy is not a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing management team. It's a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing minority ownership. Read more | Continue reading
This is not a chronicle of errors and mistakes made during COVID-19. This is the story about the inevitable, simultaneous failure of each of the institutions designed to operate in our interest. It is the story of how we respond to fragility with resilience. Read more | Continue reading
We are led by high-functioning sociopaths, in our politics and our economy, and nowhere is this more apparent than in our war against COVID-19. It's not a left/right thing. It's not a Republican/Democrat thing. It's a power thing.Enough. It's time for the Pack to howl. Empathy + … | Continue reading
China is fighting nCov2019 exactly like the US fought North Vietnam ... with policy driven more by narrative control than by what's best to win the war.That was a disastrous strategic mistake for the US then, and it's a disastrous strategic mistake for China today. Read more | Continue reading
China is fighting nCov2019 exactly like the US fought North Vietnam ... with policy driven more by narrative control than by what's best to win the war.That was a disastrous strategic mistake for the US then, and it's a disastrous strategic mistake for China today. Read more | Continue reading
In Part 6 of the Notes from the Field Series, Ben observes that we think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack. In truth we are sheep, living by the logic of the flock. Read more | Continue reading
You know, everyone is all in a tizzy about Softbank paying Adam Neumann $1.7 billion just to go away.My unpopular opinion: the Adam Neumann story is repeated in a non-infuriating and non-obvious way every day in every S&P 500 company. And it's been going on for a DECADE.One day w … | Continue reading
Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.com, says we need a New Capitalism ... a kinder and gentler capitalism to rectify our modern culture of greed and massive wealth inequality.Ray Dalio, the billionaire CIO of Bridgewater, says the same thing.I think they're both righ … | Continue reading
It's time to start a fire. To burn, yes, but also to illuminate.My advice? Abandon the political party as your vehicle for political participation. My alternative? Find your Pack. My platform? Make – Protect – Teach. Read more | Continue reading
7+ That’s Michael Crichton, the physician turned novelist turned director, talking about his physicist friend Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered (and named) the quark. Crichton pretty much invented the techno-thriller genre of books and film, starting with The Andromeda Strain, whi … | Continue reading
"I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him — if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning — then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room." - … | Continue reading
It's privacy and big tech again in today's Zeitgeist, which is all about mutually assured surveillance. And for Epsilon Theory, it hits home. I think it will hit home for you, too. Read more | Continue reading
Mark Zuckerberg is not The Spanish Prisoner. He's the guy running the con.Libra, the cryptocoin promoted by Facebook, is a classic Spanish Prisoner con. This is how the State and the Oligarchy co-opt crypto. Not with the heel of a jackboot. But with the glamour of convenience and … | Continue reading
Part 1 of a three-part series on what it means to have a polarized electorate and a monolithic market. Today's note: the Age of Ridiculousness and the decline and fall of the American Empire. Read more | Continue reading
Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff is now Facebook's chief lobbyist. Big Tech just gave the Internet Freedom Award to Ivanka Trump. The head of the antitrust division of the Justice Dept. is a former Google lobbyist.They're. Not. Even. Pretending. Anymore. Read more | Continue reading
The student loan crisis is a Big Deal. And it is only a part of a Bigger Deal: the Myth of College. This issue will be front-and-center in the upcoming elections. We will all be handed our very own 'Yay, College' signs to raise high. More often than not, we will be asked to raise … | Continue reading
When our processes of inquiry lack challenge, doubt and obsession with falsifying our best ideas, the result is inevitable. Our conclusions cease to be science and become something else entirely. That something else is a thing sensitive to narrative, vulnerable to priors and bias … | Continue reading
Fresh thoughts on the intersection of technology, freedom and decentralization.ET's Neville Crawley interviews Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer for the Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Read more | Continue reading
The Fed, China and Italy are the Three Horsemen of the Investment Semi-Apocalypse. They're major market risks, but you'll survive. There's a Fourth Horseman. And it will change EVERYTHING about investing. Read more | Continue reading
Common criticisms of the news media tend to focus on bias. But when it comes to learning to resist the unavoidable influence of narrative and meme on our brains, our focus should be on how much we allow others to explain things to us. We're working on tools to allow citizens to d … | Continue reading