“Stahl then referenced Sorkin’s latest book, “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation,” before further pressing him over whether he thinks America will face another economic disaster like in 1929. “The answer is, we will have a crash,” he said. “I just can’t tell you when, […]

My dad was an officer in the US Naval reserve. He served in the Panama Canal Zone for two years in the late 50’s, when I was a toddler. He always spoke highly of the US Navy, although he admitted he was almost kicked out of OCS for infractions due to his inattention to petty […]

Like Lenin in Russia and Mao in China, Castro replaced a corrupt government when he came to power. Like Lenin and Mao, Castro replaced one form of totalitarianism with another. Unlike communism in the USSR and China, communism in Cuba has proven durable. Decades of US trade sanctions, subversion and assassination plots failed to dislodge […]

I just finished reading “Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase” by Roger G. Kennedy. Most of the histories I’ve read have either taught me about events I hadn’t formed any prior impressions about or else confirmed and colored out my superficial understanding of those events. This book was different for […]

Just saw this on FB, although the report apparently came out last year: “Physicists confirmed that clocks in two rooms at identical heights separated by only 10 meters horizontally run at measurably different speeds — not because of gravity differences but because local mass distribution differences create subtly different spacetime curvatures detectable by modern optical […]

GLP-1 receptor agonists [semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound)] are proving transformational for type II diabetes patients in particular and for obese individuals in general. Now, it appears they have benefits in cancer patients. “Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists in patients with four solid tumor types was significantly associated with lower rates of progression […]

I’m not an investment advisor. I do have personal experience in investing going back over 40 years. I’ve been retired for nearly two years and have no regrets so far. “Rental properties carry concentrated risk, illiquidity, and management overhead…The return needs to be significantly better [than an investment elsewhere] to justify the extra complexity. Often, […]

Sometime around 2033 or 2034, SS benefits will drop by ca. 23% if nothing is done. One frequent proposal is to remove the cap on payroll taxes. There are at least two problems with this: (1) the wealthiest Americans derive most of their income from non-salary sources, and (2) this just turns SS into welfare, […]

Mike Brock has a long piece up at his substack on Milton Friedman. For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the money quote: “The honest historical record is that Friedman made substantive contributions that the contemporary American left has absorbed without recognizing and that the contemporary American right has invoked without honoring. Both receptions are defective. The […]

It’s the grimmest moment in my political lifetime. Not only do we have a president devoting to enriching his friends and starting a brutal, mad war––we’ve had those before––but he’s one who doesn’t even pay lip service to democracy. Why did we get here? Because people voted for him. Why did they vote for him? […]