so much geopolitics and I missed that ESMA had issued cringe guidance for “finfluencers” a few days ago.

“Welcome new users don’t forget that posting is a joyless exercise, life is pain, and use alt text or we’ll bash your head in with a claw hammer”

In the morning update out from a European bank, crypto YouTube views sink to lowest level since 2011. Won’t someone think of the creators/ grifters?

Still early, but the market reaction seems fairly subdued for what should be a serious situation. Almost as if the market has efficiently priced in the 🌮

The Fed and markets have a very serious problem ft.com/content/21b5...

Incoming. Thousand word whiny post from Bill Ackman, that no one will read, on why capping credit card fees is wrong, and, respectfully, Trump should reconsider

it’s been a couple of weeks since the ios update, and I still find the new camera icon unsettlingly creepy

Obviously bad news for German dentists, but surprised to learn that there actually is such a thing as a “German Dentists’ Pension Fund”, and it’s not a euphemism among institutional sales to describe a gullible investor

Margin Call 2 synopsis - The year is 2035. Most investors gain exposure to U.S. Treasuries by betting on Jesus not returning, with an intermediary converting those wagers into Treasury purchases via Polymarket arbitrage. The new pope announces Jesus doing a come back.

lol expect to see a lot more cases like this giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I wish someone would perform a public service and leak the payout amounts made to politicians, celebrities, influencers and random thought leaders

Michael Platt of Bluecrest fame is not only the self-styled "best trader in the world", but a master troll. Following a large drawdown on a short CHF trade gone wrong in 2015, he redeemed all external investors in Bluecrest and turned the firm into a family office managing his own money

Big upgrade overnight from Goldman on TSM. Price target increased by 35%

hopefully the relationship unravels well before the november midterms

As mkts open tomorrow, one interesting question is how TSM trades. On Fri, semiconductors staged an explosive rally on reports that TSM was cancelling orders due to capacity constraints. With limited foundry capacity available elsewhere (Samsung, Intel), semi capital equipment names rose sharply

This is 2026, and no one takes the moral high ground and leaks. Instead, just place a bet on Polymarket

think Trump would be quite happy with continuation of a dictatorial regime provided it’s *his* dictator and happy to fall in line with US interests

I’m looking forward to wimpy Pete Hegseth sitting across the negotiation table from the new UKR defense minister Fedorov

tbh I’m more concerned now about Trump forcibly extracting Zelensky than Russian special forces

👇 Today is “it is never comms” turned up to eleven. The UK (and most of Europe other than the frontier states) pressed the snooze button on the alarm in 2006, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Today’s “well, who is to say which way water flows?” media round is the least important of the bitter fruit.

Right. Today’s bad media round is the inevitable consequence of, frankly, bad decisions and optimism bias since Crimea was invaded.

from the excellent r/Giscardpunk subreddit, someone installed ChatGPT on an old minitel www.reddit.com/r/Giscardpun...

Enjoy the quiet moments of beauty, like these winter bell jellies, this season.❄️🔔🪼 There’s wonder in ocean life, and caring for it helps us all.

Headlines that weirdly make sense in 2025

while cleaning out the basement this weekend, came across a pile of glossy design and fashion magazines from over 20 years ago. had forgotten how great physical media could be. scrolling mindlessly through tiktok afterwards was so sad and uninspiring

The same tech billionaires that reportedly limit their own kids‘ screen time and access to social media… Watch what they do, not what they say

This is what is going to happen. There will be a thin top layer of non-digital universities — and all the tech billionaires will send their kids to those places.

I have to wonder if “data centers in space” (an objectively and obviously stupid idea) only exists as a narrative so that all of the kleptocrats who backed Trump and their private equity cronies can dump their Space X bags on retail before it goes under.

my default is to mock this, but on reflection it’s far better that they keep busy with stupid projects as a distraction from « making Europe great again »

In some ways this is a useful reminder that a lot of the talk of European security guarantees to Ukraine have the whole thing backwards. For more than three years Ukraine has been guaranteeing European security by fighting and degrading the Russian armed forces. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

don’t you just love how the proposed cut, <cough> export tax on the Nvidia H200 chips has now increased from the 15% rate proposed a few months ago to 25%?! almost as if that figure was just pulled out of thin air

nice take on the enshitiffication of cinema that indirectly, and with humour, makes a lot of the same points that have come out following the announcement of the netflix wbd merger

somehow getting only one ⭐️ is even worse than no stars

The actual risk of civilisational erasure is Russian imperialism, which, if we don't manage to support Ukraine adequately, advances another country Westwards, and the many stranded effort to undermine European infrastructure and politics will intensify.

if there was any doubt remaining as to where the US administration’s sympathies lie…

that’s why it’s called The Misinformation ™️ in my discord server

Rereading the wsj article on the corrupt dealings between the Trump admin and Russia, and this line provoked a grim laugh: « Witkoff has tried to inspire Ukrainian officials with the idea of soldiers disarming to earn Silicon Valley-scale salaries operating American built AI data centers »

A rare piece of positive news, if indeed the case. (My entirely unoriginal takeaway from the WSJ report is that the Trump admin is orders of magnitude more corrupt than I thought possible)

"Dave Nicholson has been collecting rave flyers since before he could legally step foot in a club. In 1998, he set up Phatmedia as part of a project at art college. It has gone on to become the largest database of old school rave flyers on the internet."

One of the more balanced discussions I’ve read about whether there is a bubble in AI investment or not. There’s a plausible scenario where future productivity enhancements in AI hardware render obsolete datacenter and hardware investments, all while AI use cases roll out

There’s an alternate universe where DJT set his sights on being NYC mayor, somehow won, and the world is all the better for it

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news... "“The fundamentals have not changed,” says the CEO of a vaping company turned crypto treasury company about a market crash in tokens like Shiba Inu. Is that good?"

at least ten years ago they pretended to care about UBI when evangelizing about automation and the techno future

Weekend mode in Geneva and a couple of people on the train platform enjoying a joint, before the train arrives. Don’t let anyone tell you this place isn’t chill

Wonder how differently the BBC would be reporting on the release of the Epstein email cache were it not for the crisis created by the allegations of bias and the Trump legal threats

here’s the very low tech horse drawn cart, making its way around my🇨🇭village this morning to collect discarded oversized objects

Bloomberg sends push notifications for everything (including Taylor Swift’s engagement) This morning when I woke (European time) literally nothing. No flash announcing Mamdani’s win. Had to open Bluesky to get an idea of the magnitude of his win