Sir Terry Pratchett is best understood as one of the most interesting, deeply ethical practical (I would say Pragmatist but I cede to actual experts) philosophers of the late 20th Century who just happened to work in deconstructed fantasy literature as his medium.

Christmas cheer from the WSJ: The small ways you can make your economy-class seat a little less miserable www.wsj.com/lifestyle/tr...

Will it still be legal to kill a lobster by any of Sir Robin's methods, just so long as you don't boil it? Mashed into a pulp, Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken; To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away; And his limbs all hacked and mangled.

I mean merits and all but I can see comment editor having a giggle before approving for publication

Half Ma’am Half Brisket

From the files: Iran buys kamikaze dolphins from Ukraine share.google/p32QWk0OG1nN...

this is it. this is the most bluesky post ever

Excellent beginner's guide to RPOs in the AI boom www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

"Cash on the sidelines" has been a repeated claim recently for why market will go higher. <Ed: There isn't any>

Vanguard on AI: "the approximately 100 occupations most exposed to AI automation are actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in terms of job growth and real wage increases"

Breaking: In a massive hit, Ford is writing down $19.5 billion in EV investments. It will also stop making the electric version of its F-150 pickup.

@jburnmurdoch.ft.com does your nice top 1% vs bottom 1% SEND support look similar for other groups? (Eg quintiles stack neatly?) Also does private look similar for just the public schools, so it excludes the special private schools aimed at providing SEND? I assume so, but charts left questions!

Whereas the problem with going 'we will have the old Labour right's approach to social issues BUT we are going to do Old Labour economic policies to make it up to our left flank' is that Labour voters are repelled by the social issues and the economic policies don't work!

It's constantly baffling to me that the left's response to voters saying that everything the government does is badly run is to say that more stuff should be nationalized and run by the government.

political science

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

B of A and, now, Morgan Stanley finally give in.

AI and productivity: How much is productivity damaged by everyone having to click at least twice on every newly-opened PDF to close unwanted "can AI summarize this for you?" prompts? Or time spent in email settings getting rid of unneeded AI summaries?

The U.S. military may just be the world’s most lethal investing club, and it’s killing it in this bull market. www.wsj.com/finance/stoc... via @WSJ

Tesla Model Y Posts Worst Defect Rate of Any New Car in a Decade www.autoblog.com/news/tesla-m...

OMG Tiffany #earworm #strangerthings stuck for a week at least. Can I sue?

I don't put much weight on post-holiday trading today, but notable that Alphabet down a bit while Nvidia down, which isn't part of the narrative of Alphabet's TPUs pulling ahead in the chip race.

Anyone know where Polanski's claim of a 1.88 multiplier on govt spending on CO2 reduction comes from? Seems very high

Reeves is right about the madness of foreign residents being allowed to contribute to NICs at bargain rates to get pensions worth massive multiples of cost

Markets taking time to make their minds up about the budget. Weirdly given it was all out beforehand the speech seems to have moved markets from thinking it was worse to thinking its better: Now gilt yields down and stocks and sterling up, perfect reverse.

ISAs: I'm not particularly in favour of tax breaks on saving in general, but Reeves justifying limiting ISA allowance for cash on basis that over a period stocks beat cash ignores volatility, and ignores that sometimes (rarely) stocks are wildly overpriced and cash is a better long time investment.

UK budget: I'm not convinced that in a country suffering seriously low investment it makes sense to raise taxes on investment (writing-down allowance change and first-year allowance net out to a £1.4bn tax rise)

Budget RPI link for fuel duty underlines the cynical use of RPI by govt: where taxpayers have to pay stuff linked to inflation, it's linked to RPI. Where taxpayers receive something linked to inflation, it's linked to CPI. Meanwhile RPI is so bad the ONS says it isn't a national statistic

Cleaners: Precariat Teachers: Upper middle/educated middle class Nurses: Moving up from historically working class to educated middle class 3 very different groups. Zack Polanski: "What I’m more interested in is what’s happening to cleaners, teachers, nurses and those everyday things"

Why do people think England flags have been raised on lampposts? White adults National pride: 26% Anti-migrant/minority sentiment: 49% Both: 19% Ethnic minority adults National pride: 15% Anti-migrant/minority sentiment: 55% Both: 20% yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

Newspaper that said it wasn’t worth half a billion pounds is magically now worth half a billion pounds www.ft.com/content/cd8e...

"Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under a Mamdani administration?" Trump: "I would" Ackman just started throwing up and crying.

When the market goes down hard, it’s never because investors got too bullish, too levered, and too far out over their skis. It is always because the Fed did it to them.

(Barron’s) - MSCI is reviewing whether to exclude digital asset treasury companies, including Strategy, from its indexes, with a decision expected by mid-January. @barrons.com $MSTR www.barrons.com/articles/str...

It’s the exclusive everyone wanted, the story that will win next year’s Pulitzer… I can reveal London’s giant AI generated Christmas artwork, the subject of much online mockery, is being torn down - and I honestly *genuinely* think you’ll never guess why. www.londoncentric.media/p/ai-artwork...

Investors excited that latest version of Google Gemini is so good. Yet, it can still say things like "Since 1 < 9, it might incorrectly conclude that 5.11 < 5.9" - although it does eventually reach the right answer. Doesn't give great confidence in its supposedly improved reasoning.

Late to this but will just note that in 2007 alt-funds dedicated to investing in violins and rare guitars were a clear sign of the top. wwd.com/fashion-news...

Being expected to beat expectations never gets old. "...Nvidia is expected to deliver another earnings beat."

👻

Phew. New near-passive PC build with biggest heatsink ever, Noctua NHP1, and after build...nothing. Dead. But in checking, somehow one of the memory sticks (now deep under the heatsink) is loose. Lots of delicate wiggling later, it boots. CPU idle temp (AMD 9700x):36C with no fans. Cool, as they say

Another way of framing the core question: Is Michael Burry the Tony Dye indicator we've been waiting for?

Nice charts from @mims.bsky.social on AI build-out. He quotes JPM that every iphone owner globally needs to pay $35 a month to generate enough $ to justify capex. Seems to me that equates to ~$9 a month for every smartphone owner. Still punchy, but I can imagine that. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/when...

Gamestop went through its April tariffs low yesterday to close at its lowest for the year

Be much easier for the Gen Z customers willing to pay $6.99 to have cash delivered just to have it delivered directly to the dealer. Who else pays that much for cash? Robinhood is teaming with mobile app Gopuff to provide customers home delivery of their cash www.wsj.com/finance/inve... via @WSJ

I am obliged to report that when the No 10 spokesman gave this part of the statement there was a brief but heartfelt outbreak of laughter from journalists, one of whom later asked if the PM might thus be interested in a bridge he had to sell.

Its the 8th of November. Seems like imaginary people are cancelling Christmas earlier and earlier. When I were a lad, "they" didn't cancel Christmas until well into December. I blame woke.

Tesla has suddenly become more like a blank-check company than an EV maker. (via Bloomberg Opinion)

Every day I look at my screen and think "that's it, that's the quote that sums up this mad era." And then the next day there's another one. www.axios.com/2025/11/06/o...

You know how ChatGPT 5 is meant to fix stupid mistakes in maths? Not so much. Even when asked about stupid mistakes in maths.