Top NN (neural net) engineers are getting paid $5-20M annual compensation packages. I've now heard this from 4 different extremely reputable sources but I don't see people talking about it publicly yet so here goes…
What are the implications of this insanity ?!?!?!? … 🧵
The Biden administration is launching a $5 billion-plus program to accelerate development of new coronavirus vaccines and treatments, seeking to better protect against a still-mutating virus, as well as other coronaviruses that might threaten us in the future.
“Project Next Gen” — the long-anticipated follow-up to “Operation Warp Speed,” the Trump-era program that sped coronavirus vaccines to patients in 2020 — would take a similar approach to partnering with private-sector companies to expedite development of vaccines and therapies. Scientists, public heath experts and politicians have called for the initiative, warning that existing therapies have steadily lost their effectiveness and that new ones are needed…
Jha and others said the new effort will focus on three goals: creating long-lasting monoclonal antibodies, after an evolving virus rendered many current treatments ineffective; accelerating development ofvaccines that produce mucosal immunity, which is thought to reduce transmission and infection risks; and speeding efforts to developpan-coronavirus vaccines to guardagainst new SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as other coronaviruses.
Many states have recently changed their scope of practice laws and granted full practice authority to nurse practitioners, allowing them to practice without oversight from physicians. Physician groups have argued against this change, citing patient safety concerns. In this paper, we use a ratio-in-ratio approach to evaluate whether the transition to full practice authority results in harm to patients as proxied by rates of malpractice payouts and adverse action reports against nurse practitioners. We find no evidence of such harm, and instead find that physicians may benefit from the law change in terms of reduced malpractice payouts against them.
In a few days, a £1.4bn probe will be blasted into space on an eight-year mission to find signs of life on other worlds in our solar system. The spacecraft will not head to local destinations such as the planet Mars, however. Instead, it will fly into deep space and survey the icy moons of distant Jupiter. In doing so, it will open up a new chapter in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – or Juice – will exploit an unexpected feature of our solar system. The greatest reserves of water turn out to exist on worlds very far from Earth, in deep space, and in orbit around the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. Juice is the first mission to be launched specifically to explore these remote worlds.
Public services such as police, fire, and traffic control in South Africa are breaking down. Private firms are stepping in to take some of the burden. Twenty two percent of Johannesburg’s fire engines are owned and operated by private firms.
Fire Ops employs more than 60 firefighters across seven fire stations in Johannesburg and owns two fire engines—including one now sporting the same shade of blue Discovery uses for its logo and much of its branding—as well as six smaller high-pressure-pump response vehicles.
Discovery says the blue firetruck responded to 172 building fires between Fire Force’s launch through the end of January.
Mr. Ossip said the Discovery-branded truck promotes the insurer’s brand and lowers damages, including to multimillion-dollar homes in some of Johannesburg’s toniest areas. “You need to just save one or two of those a year and it is substantial savings,” he said.
The service helps alleviate a shortage of operational fire engines in Johannesburg, a spread-out city of more than 5.5 million residents, in situations where minutes can make the difference between a blaze limited to a couple of rooms and one that destroys an entire house or spreads to neighboring homes.
Robert Mulaudzi, a spokesman for the City of Johannesburg Emergency Management Services, said the city currently has about seven operational fire engines across 30 fire stations.
…Fire Ops, which invoices buildings’ owners for fire services, says that while it responds to all calls, it will give priority to clients, including Discovery policyholders, when simultaneous fires break out. Other insurers usually pick up the bill when the company puts out a fire in a home not insured by Discovery, said De Wet Engelbrecht, Fire Ops’s chief executive.
In 19th century Great Britain prosecution assocations and insurance firms were responsible for much of the policing (see Stephen Davies in The Voluntary City.) In Lessons from Gurgaon, India’s Private City (working paper) Shruti Rajagopolan and I discuss private police and fire services in modern day Gurgaon. In general, the private firms provide excellent service relative to their public counterparts but, as in Gurgaon, there are limits to how much the private firms can do without large economies of scale:
…Fire Ops also has to navigate public infrastructure that doesn’t always work, including traffic lights, fire hydrants and municipal water supplies….In September, both Fire Ops and the city’s fire department responded to a blaze at Little Forest Centre, a private special-needs school in Johannesburg, but a water shortage in the area meant all fire hydrants were empty, said Kate More, the school’s owner and principal, who isn’t a Discovery policyholder.
Despite Fire Ops sourcing water from a neighbor’s pool, the school burned down.
The proliferation of fees has been one of the most annoying changes over the past decade in the world of travel.
We are getting nickel and dimed with new fees … from service fees, resort fees and baggage fees to seat assignment fees, housekeeping fees and environmental fees. You name it; they’ve created a charge for it.
One of the most egregious new fees we see nowadays is for airline seat assignments. It’s common knowledge that most airlines charge for choosing not only extra legroom but also ‘preferred’ seats in coach. These standard seat assignments used to be free, but now they are the purview of elites and those willing to fork over the cash.
Seat assignment fees are spreading to business class
Air France and KLM, joint partners (partially owned by Delta Air Lines), now charge customers for advanced seat assignments in business class. These are seats that can already cost up to $10,000. But now, once you’ve purchased a business-class seat (or used miles to secure it), you’ll need to pay between 70-90 euros ($76-$98) per flight to pick a seat ahead of time.
“With the current model of seat selection, Air France and KLM business class customers are not always assured of getting their preferred seat,” said Julia Gordon, communications director for Air France USA, through an email. “By introducing the Advanced Seat Reservation as a paid option, Air France and KLM will increase the chance that our customers do actually get their preferred seat.”
There are some exceptions. Elite members of the joint Air France-KLM Flying Blue loyalty program are exempt from the fees, so if you are a Flying Blue Silver, Gold or Platinum member, you won’t have to pay to pick your business-class seat. You’ll also be exempt if you fly as part of a corporate contract with the airlines. Additionally, you can still pick a business-class seat for free among what’s still available at the 24-hour check-in window.
Air France business-class seats. CLINT HENDERSON/THE POINTS GUY
One of the more annoying parts of this is that it was almost without any advance notice. It’s already in place for flights departing after April 13. It originally included flights to North America, but that has since been pulled back because of their transatlantic joint venture with Delta and Virgin Atlantic. However, if they rolled it out once, it could easily come back.
“The execution of the Air France-KLM change is very poor — to charge someone who may be paying thousands of dollars a fee to reserve a seat in advance if they don’t have frequent flyer status is insulting,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research. “As a passenger, I’m not at all happy to see AF and KLM introduce seat assignment fees for business class; as an analyst, I’m not surprised.”
In fact, Harteveldt has predicted fees for business-class seats since at least 2016.
The move copies competitor British Airways, which has had a similar policy in place for years. Lufthansa, Swiss and a few other European carriers also charge for some business-class seat assignments.
The worry, of course, is that it could come to the U.S. market next.
Harteveldt said that would depend on the Air France and KLM fees’ effect on business.
“They will look to see if there’s any shift in market share or negative reaction from corporate accounts,” Harteveldt said. “Seat assignment fees will soon arrive on U.S. airlines if there is no meaningful negative reaction … then you’ll see U.S. airlines adopt the model.”
It should be considered a failure by KLM and Air France since they never capitalized on the lack of fees during those years when British Airways was charging for seat assignments and they weren’t, according to Harteveldt. He also said the airlines should have considered offering a stripped-down version of business class that was cheaper and came with fewer frills like extra baggage, lounge access and seat selection.
“If they introduced a de-contented fare like Emirates has that strips out stuff … [usually included with] a basic business-class fare, that would be more understandable,” Harteveldt said. “With the reduction in business travel, maybe it makes sense for airlines to consider (a basic business-class fare) if they would be able to sell more of their premium cabin seats.”
Business-class seating. CLINT HENDERSON/THE POINTS GUY
“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” shared Brian Sumers, an industry expert who authors the Airline Observer newsletter. “Air France-KLM essentially has two competitors on that side of the Atlantic — International Airlines Group and Lufthansa Group. So, we know that British Airways has had seat fees for a very long time, and we know that Lufthansa Group has charged for its special throne seats as well.”
“We also have a new development,” Sumers continued. “Lufthansa is coming out with its new business class, and they are going to charge for everything. It’s going to be the most complicated configuration for seat fees ever.”
At the same time, Sumers said he understands the reasons behind it, including that business-class travel hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It used to be that an airline like Air France would sell out the front cabin to bankers and lawyers who didn’t care how much money they paid,” explained Sumers. “A lot of that business is gone. TPG readers probably have bought a lot of business class tickets for the summer. In their minds, they paid a lot of money for their tickets, but that premium leisure demand doesn’t exactly replace the business demand on a one-to-one basis.”
When I asked him if he thought U.S. carriers would copy the move, Sumers said, “I think U.S. airlines are more attuned to the political climate than passengers may think. There has been enough heat on airlines for their fees that I think people that work at airlines are taking an extra hard look before they add a new one.”
A different style of business-class seating. CLINT HENDERSON/THE POINTS GUY
Unfortunately, both Harteveldt and Sumers agree that fees are here to stay.
“The consumer says they are fed up, but every day they get on budget airlines where it’s fee central,” Harteveldt said. “They have a Ticketmaster-like fee, fuel recovery, advance seat reservations. They charge for carry-on and checked luggage. We haven’t seen any of the network airlines say maybe we can gain market share by not charging fees and going back to an all-inclusive model and advertising it aggressively. Instead, they have all copied the budget airline model of a la carte experience.”
“If there was a backlash, there would have been a major shift in market share,” Harteveldt continued. “We haven’t seen a backlash … where passengers are revolting against the airlines that charge fees and a shift in market share to airlines that did not charge fees. Given the profits that airlines earned from these products, they are not going to give up any of that unless it’s forced on them by either the government or a change in the competitive environment.”
So what explains this pattern? I presume there are lots of factors. The orange parts of South Dakota and Arizona are Indian reservations The blue along the Tex/Mex border reflects the long life expectancy of Hispanics. Hawaii has a heavily Asian population. Both groups contribute to California. Seattle and Denver have well educated people who like hiking. Etc., etc.
But what about the South? Some of it is race. Blacks have a shorter life expectancy than other groups. But not all; Tennessee and New York are both roughly 16% black. The South really does have a shorter life expectancy, at least in rural areas and smaller towns.
I grew up in Wisconsin, and thought I knew the state pretty well. But I couldn’t tell you why it looks bluer than Indiana. And before looking at this graph, I would not have expected such a vast different between Nebraska and Oklahoma (both boring flat states out on the Great Plains.)
Last time I checked, Wisconsinites drank more alcohol than any other Americans. That doesn’t seem healthy! When I visit, the people look obese. (It’s actually average, but my reference is relatively skinny Massachusetts/California.) So why is Wisconsin blue? Indeed other than those Indian reservations, the entire Nebraska/North Dakota/Wisconsin triangle looks pretty blue. Why? Why is Wisconsin bluer than Michigan counties with similar demographics?
Oddly, that triangle of longevity maps almost perfectly with another map showing places where white southerners did not move:
Longevity is obviously lower in the south, and (more subtly) seems a bit lower in parts of the north with lots of immigration from the south.
PS. The map shows white southern migration, but lots of blacks also migrated from the south, albeit mostly to northern industrial cities. They also tend to have a lower life expectancy.
Update: The graph below shows that Wisconsin drinking is in another league. When I was growing up, I assumed our drinking culture was normal, like everywhere else.
In yesterday's municipal elections, Denver voters roundly rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed the conversion of a private, shuttered golf course into thousands of new homes and a park.
While votes are still being counted, early returns show that just under 40 percent of voters cast 'yes' votes for Referred Question 20. If approved, the measure would have dissolved a conservation easement requiring the 155-acre Park Hill Golf Course to remain a golf course and allowed developer Westside to proceed with its plans to build 3,200 housing units alongside a park and other public amenities.
"The Park Hill Golf Course will forever be a case study in missed opportunities. With historically low turnout, Denver has rejected its single best opportunity to build new affordable housing and create new public parks," said Westside in a statement. "Thousands of Denverites who urgently need more affordable housing are now at even greater risk of displacement."
Westside first acquired the Park Hill site back in 2019 and has been trying to put a mixed-use housing project on it ever since. At the time, developing the site required only that the city and the site's owner agree to lift the conservation easement requiring the property to be maintained as a golf course.
The company's plans didn't sit with neighborhood activists, who argued the city shouldn't forfeit the open space and should instead look for ways to acquire the site and convert the entire property into a park.
In 2021, these activists—organized under the group Save Open Spaces (SOS) Denver—successfully passed a ballot initiative requiring that any proposed dissolution of conservation easements be put to the voters. A Westside-sponsored initiative that would have exempted their property from this ballot initiative requirement failed.
Nevertheless, Westside and the city continued to hash out a development agreement for the Park Hill site. The final plan would have had the company offer hundreds of its planned units at below-market rates for lower-income residents. Westside had also agreed to reserve the majority of the 155-acre property for parks and open space, among other amenities it promised to provide for the neighborhood.
This did little to mollify opponents, who objected to any loss of open space.
"In a climate crisis, in a heat island with a deficit of trees, you don't cut them down and build on top of it. Not when you have alternatives that are equal and better," Harry Doby, an activist with SOS Denver, told Reasonearlier this year. He suggested industrial properties adjacent to the site should be redeveloped instead.
The Westside project also attracted fervent opposition from Denver's socialists.
Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed City Councilmember Candi CdeBaca, who is on track to lose her reelection bid, criticized the Westside proposal as insufficiently affordable and said the Park Hill site lacked the infrastructure necessary to support an influx of residents.
The city's DSA chapter, and the national DSA's Housing Justice Commission, both came out against the Park Hill redevelopment as well. They argued letting a developer turn the golf course into more housing would only benefit "capital" at the expense of "democratic control and redistribution of land."
We support Denver DSA. Affordable housing can't be provided by the market. Reforms offered up by the state and developers that don't include democratic control and redistribution of land are ultimately false promises that serve only to benefit capital. https://t.co/EWMbFZXIAs
— DSA Housing Justice Commission ???????? (@dsa_housing) March 17, 2023
Countering this eclectic opposition were the city's local Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) activists, affordable housing developer Habitat for Humanity, and business groups.
The Denver City Council approved a development agreement and rezoning of the Park Hill site in January 2023, setting the stage for last night's ballot initiative.
Throughout the process, Westside has argued that the site has to be a golf course as long as the conservation easement is in place. Opponents won't get the park they've been clamoring for.
After last night's vote, the company has said the land will be returned to a regulation 18-hole golf course and that the site is immediately closed to public use.
Doby, in a February email, predicted that Westside will not go through with the cost of restoring the golf course to active use, and instead cut its losses and sell the property. Because of the 'no' vote, he argues that "a developer wouldn't touch this parcel with a 100 foot pole." That should decrease the sale price, making it feasible for a non-profit to buy the land and work with the city to modify the easement to allow the park.
Time will tell what exactly ends up happening with the site. What is certain is that thousands of units that would have otherwise housed people won't be built.
Cash App creator Bob Lee was seen staggering down the street of San Francisco after being stabbed, ABC and The San Francisco Standard report.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Cash App founder Bob Lee was seen stumbling while trying to seek help after his stabbing, per ABC's KGO-TV.
Lee called 911 to report his stabbing, SFPD Chief Bill Scott told ABC.
The Mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, called Lee's fatal attack a "horrible tragedy."
New surveillance footage appears to shed light on the moments after Cash App creator Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco earlier this week.
The video shows Lee apparently seeking help after his stabbing attack in the Rincon Hill neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, according to a report from ABC's San Francisco affiliate, KGO-TV. The tech mogul was walking around with what appeared to be "stab wounds in his upper left chest" near a residential building there, ABC reported, citing sources who had seen the video. SFPD chief Bill Scott also said that Lee called 911, ABC reported.
The San Francisco Standard reported that video footage from the scene appeared to show Lee approach a car at one point and pull up his shirt. But The San Francisco Standard said the car pulled away and Lee then appeared to drop down to the ground. He later headed back to the bridge where he collapsed outside of the apartment building, the publication reported.
Insider was unable to independently confirm the events in the surveillance footage viewed by ABC and The San Francisco Standard. The origin of the surveillance footage is not clear. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to Insider's request for comment on Thursday morning ahead of publication.
The San Francisco Police Department said it responded around 2:35 a.m. on Tuesday, according to a press release.
"The victim was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries," the police department said. "Despite efforts by first responders and medical personnel, the victim succumbed to his injuries."
At the time, the department did not name the victim, and the San Francisco Chief Medical Examiner's office declined Insider's request for comment. But police have since confirmed Lee's identity to ABC, and Lee's father and brother have posted messages on Facebook on his passing.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that "San Francisco is prioritizing public safety," amid calls by tech industry leaders including Elon Musk to address safety concerns in the city. Lee was the chief product officer at the fintech company, MobileCoin, and the former CTO of Square.
"The homicide of Bob Lee is a horrible tragedy and my sympathies go out to his family and friends," Mayor Breed said in a statement. "I'm confident that when the police make an arrest in cases like this, our District Attorney will do what's necessary to hold any individuals accountable for their actions," Breed said.
The District Attorney's office would ultimately make any decisions on bringing charges after the police conclude their investigation and if any suspects are arrested.
One model of a future course is a super-textbook: lectures, exercises, quizzes, and grading all available on a tablet with artificial intelligence routines guiding students to lectures and
exercises designed to address that student’s deficits and with human intelligence—tutors—on call on an as-needed basis, possibly for extra marginal fees.
…last week, the private Khan Lab School campuses in Palo Alto and Mountain View welcomed a special version of the [GPT] technology into its classrooms.
Rather than solve a math problem for a student, as ChatGPT might do if asked, Khanmigo is programmed to act like “a thoughtful tutor that’s actually going to move you forward in your work,” says Salman Khan, the technologist-turned-educator who founded Khan Academy and Khan Lab School.
Khanmigo was developed in concert with OpenAI, the nonprofit tech start-up that created GPT-4, the underlying technology for the latest version of ChatGPT. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the partnership.
Ufuk Akcigit and Nathan Goldschlag (my co-author and former student) have an important new paper on the employment and invention dynamics of US inventors. Amazingly they link data on inventors from patents to census data using anonymized, person-level identifiers, known as Protected Identification Keys (PIKs) so they also have individual data on earnings and employment and they link that data to data on firms.
Ultimately, we observe the employment histories of approximately 760 thousand inventors associated with 3.6 million patents granted between 2000 and 2016.
What they find is twofold. First, an increasing number of inventors are being hired by large incumbent firms (left below). Second, when inventors move to large incumbent firms they earn more but they invent less, compared to similar inventors who go to young firms (right below). Why would an incumbent firm pay more for less productive workers? One possible answer is the Arrow replacement effect, namely a monopolist has less incentive to innovate than a competitive firm becasue the monopolist has a bigger opportunity cost, namely it’s own profits. As Arrow put it: “The preinvention monopoly power acts as a strong disincentive to further innovation.” A logical extension is that a monopolist will be willing to pay not to innovate and one way of doing that is to hire inventors who, if they worked at an entrant, would threaten their monopoly profits.
This is an important paper on declining dynamism in the US economy.
by trains@insider.com (Taylor Rains,Bianca Giacobone)
American Eagle regional aircraft.
Markus Mainka/Shutterstock
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have exited 74 airports since 2020.
Increasing operating costs and staffing shortages have impacted regional markets in recent years.
Some of the airports are in the Essential Air Service program and are now served by a new airline.
Regional airports have become one of the biggest casualties of the coronavirus pandemic.
Aviation consulting firm Ailevon Pacific reviewed Cirium data to determine which airports the US' biggest airlines have left since 2020. In September 2022, the company's research revealed American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines had exited 59 airports. The three major airlines have since dropped 15 more regional airports.
While most of the airports are still served by competing carriers, a few were left without any airline service. For example, American has departed Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which has seen another operator yet.
Pierre and Watertown in South Dakota, two cities cut by United in November 2021, are EAS airports. Denver Air Connection took over the service for United.
The trend of airlines leaving small markets is not new and became common during the COVID-19 pandemic, though the trend is continuing. American, Delta, and United have all cut routes in recent years, citing poor performance and the pilot shortage as contributing factors.
Henry Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst of Atmosphere Research Group, told Insider in an earlier interview that routes to many regional airports are simply unsustainable.
"As hard as it is for the people that live in these small towns to lose airline service, it is an unfortunate reality that airlines are not just going to serve a city out of civic responsibility," he said.
Harteveldt further explained that "airlines are going to seek out markets that they believe will give them an advantage, but if a city isn't profitable, they will cut it."
The lack of crews has also pushed airlines, including American and United, to ground regional aircraft because they simply don't have enough pilots to fly them.
A person holds United States dollar banknotes in this illustration photo taken in Poland on December 26, 2022.
(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The US dollar could weaken 10%-15% by the middle of 2024, Stephen Jen at Eurizon SLJ Capital wrote in a note.
As inflation continues to cool, the central bank could cut rates in 2023, which would lead to the dollar's depreciation, Jen said.
"As the USD loses cyclical support, the US' familiar structural flaws might again become exposed, as the supportive 'tide' recedes."
The US dollar could weaken by as much as 15% in the coming four-to-six quarters as inflation continues to subside and the Federal Reserve loosens monetary policy, according to a Tuesday research note by Stephen Jen at Eurizon SLJ Capital.
For February, inflation as measured by the consumer price index cooled in line with expectations, rising 6.0% year-over-year. That data arrived ahead of the Fed's 25 basis-point rate hike in March amid the turmoil of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis.
Inflation notched a high for the cycle in June 2022, with CPI clocking in at 9.1% year-over-year — the highest rate since November 1981. By the fourth quarter of this year, Jen anticipates that reading to drop to below 4%.
"We expect US inflation to continue to decline at roughly the same pace as it rose in 2021 and the first half of 2022: historically, there has been scant evidence of downside stickiness in inflation, even if there is evidence of downside price and wage level stickiness," Jen wrote in the note.
To Jen, who invented the dollar smile theory, the Fed, as well as the European Central Bank, is likely close to or already beyond peak hawkishness, and rate cuts are looming.
The central bank's nine previous rate hikes, in addition to the tighter credit conditions sparked by the bank crisis, already signal inflation is trending to the downside, he added.
The next 250 basis points of adjustments to the federal funds rate, the strategists maintained, will be cuts.
The US Dollar Index—which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of rival currencies—has declined 2.46% over the last four weeks after it notched a 7.9% gain in 2022. In the next 18 months, in Eurizon's view, the currency "is vulnerable to substantial (10-15 percent) depreciation."
Jen's dollar smile theory, meanwhile, says the greenback strengthens when the US economy is either strong or weak, but slips when growth stagnates.
"The key point to make here is that, consistent with our Dollar Smile framework, fading inflation with a soft landing should push the dollar into the deep trough of the Dollar Smile," the strategists said. "This could mean 10 percent generalised dollar depreciation this year, and more next year."
A North Carolina lawmaker switched parties in what is a stunning turn of events in the state's politics.
State Rep. Tricia Cotham, formerly a Charlotte-area Democrat, on Wednesday announced her move to the GOP.
The flip gives Republicans a legislative supermajority, meaning they can override the Democratic governor's vetoes.
A North Carolina state representative who was elected as a Democrat announced her switch to the Republican Party, which gives the GOP a supermajority in the state legislature and allows them to override vetoes from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
State Rep. Tricia Cotham, a Mecklenburg County lawmaker who served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017 and again beginning in 2023 after an unsuccessful congressional bid in 2016, blasted her former party while a group of legislative Republicans stood behind her at a Wednesday press conference.
"The party wants to villainize anyone who has free thought, free judgment, has solutions and wants to get to work to better our state," Cotham said. "Not just sit in a meeting and have a workshop after a workshop, but really work with individuals to get things done, because that's what real public servants do."
Such a dramatic move by Cotham will empower the GOP to pass a swath of conservative-oriented legislation over the objection of Gov. Cooper if the party remains united on all of its votes. Cooper, a former state legislator who also served as the state's attorney general for 16 years, is a moderate but has clashed with North Carolina Republicans on issues including abortion policy,voting rights,gun rights, and appointment powers.
Republicans already have a supermajority in the state Senate, where they control 30 of the 50 seats. But after the 2022 elections, the GOP came one vote shy of a supermajority in the lower chamber, controlling 71 out of 120 seats, while Democrats currently maintain 49 seats.
The North Carolina Democratic Party upon hearing the news on Tuesday called on their onetime caucus member to resign.
"This is deceit of the highest order. Rep. Cotham's decision is a betrayal to the people of HD-112 with repercussions not only for her district, but for our entire state," the party said in a statement. "If she can no longer represent the values her constituents entrusted her to champion, she should resign, now."
Cooper in a Tuesday statement expressed dismay at Cotham's decision.
"This is a disappointing decision. Rep. Cotham's votes on women's reproductive freedom, election laws, LGBTQ rights and strong public schools will determine the direction of the state we love," the governor said. "It's hard to believe she would abandon these long held principles and she should still vote the way she has always said she would vote when these issues arise, regardless of party affiliation."
In 2016, Cooper narrowly defeated then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and in 2020 beat then-Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, giving Democrats a continued foothold in a state that had once been favorable to them.
But despite North Carolina's increasingly diverse population and its penchant for close statewide contests, Republicans have dominated state legislative races since seizing control of the General Assembly in the 2010 elections.
Upon assuming power in 2011, legislative Republicans set out to redraw districts that would protect their newly-robust majorities, affording them an outsized number of seats relative to their party registration and statewide electoral performances. As a result, redistricting in the state has been a highly contentious affair, with multiple lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of districts across the state.
And while Republicans in Raleigh have pursued a raft of conservative legislation over the past decade, their push hit a roadblock when Cooper bested McCrory.
As of March 2023, Cooper had issued 75 vetoes — more than all previous North Carolina governors combined — since taking office six years ago, according to The Assembly NC.
From 2005 to 2009, Jerry Meek, whom Cotham married in late 2008, was the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. According to the North Carolina political blog Watauga Watch, Cotham and Meek are no longer married.
Cotham's mother, Pat Cotham, is an at-large member of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners.
State Rep. Cotham's office has not yet responded to Insider's request for comment.
Residents of Paris overwhelmingly voted to ban rented electric scooters, with 89% choosing to restrict the devices in a low-turnout municipal election on April 2. Only 100,000 Parisians voted, a fraction of those eligible.
George Selgin has an excellent post on the history of FDIC. I already knew that FDR had opposed the idea of deposit insurance and was pressured into agreeing to the proposal in order to achieve his other banking reform goals. But this was new to me:
Carter Golembe (1960, 195) zeros in on the truth. “[I]t is not reading too much into history,” Golembe says, to regard deposit insurance schemes as “attempts to maintain a banking system composed of thousands of independent banks by alleviating one serious shortcoming of such a system: its proneness to bank suspensions, in good times and bad.” Henry Steagall, who was second to none in his determination to save the United States’ small unit banks, made no bones about this. “This bill,” he said, referring to his May 1933 effort, “will preserve independent dual banking in the United States. … This is what the bill is intended to do” (ibid., 198).
Insurance and branching were, in short, rival reform options; one sought to preserve the unit banking status quo, and particularly state-chartered unit banks, despite their inherent weaknesses; the other would instead have allowed banks to branch statewide, if not nationwide, which would have meant more relatively large and well-diversified banks with branches, and many fewer smaller unit banks. Steagall favored the insurance option, while opposing branch banking tooth-and-nail. Carter Glass, his Senate Banking Committee counterpart, took the opposite position.
I increasingly believe that it makes sense to view federal deposit insurance and the small banking bias of our regulatory system as part of a unified regime that aims to create moral hazard—to encourage banks to take socially excessive risks. From the point of view of Congress, this risk-taking is a feature, not a bug. That’s why neither political party is proposing any sort of reforms to fix the problem. Indeed the problem is likely to get worse over time.
In a free market regime, the US system would consolidate into a smaller number of large, well diversified banks. Some worry that adoption of the Canadian approach would offer too little choice to consumers. But the US is much larger than Canada, and would end up with more than 5 large banks. In any case, this tweet casts doubt on the view that concentration hurts depositors:
I might have to check out The Exorcist, not sure that I’ve really ever seen it.
As Warner Bros. turns 100 years old this month, the movie studio’s profits are the highest they’ve ever been. Its top 10 films released since 2001 have grossed more than $14.4 billion, adjusted for inflation.
On March 31, Italy became the first Western country to take action against an AI chatbot, ordering a temporary ban on ChatGPT. Italy’s data protection authority said that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, collects personal data unlawfully.
As you may know, I’ve long advocated the abolition of federal deposit insurance. I believe that a free market would provide people with safe places to store wealth, such as narrow banks and MMMFs that invest in T-bills. But my proposal is not politically feasible, at least for the foreseeable future.
How Can We Align the Interests of Bank Shareholders with Depositors?
It addresses moral hazard in a way that seems more politically feasible than abolishing FDIC:
This raises a natural question. If shareholders prefer more volatile assets and depositors prefer less volatile assets, how can the preferences of depositors and shareholders be aligned to avoid the insolvency risk just described?
Historically, shareholders of banks were subject to multiple liability. The most common version of this seems to have been double liability. The way that this worked is that a shareholder would buy X dollars worth of stock in the bank. If the bank become insolvent, not only did the shareholder lose his X dollars, but the shareholder was also responsible for compensating depositors using up to X additional dollars of the shareholder’s own personal wealth. This is referred to as double liability since a shareholder investing X dollars in the bank would have a maximum loss of 2X dollars.
It is easy to see how this sort of arrangement would help to navigate the conflicting visions of depositors and shareholders with regards to what banks should do. Multiple liability aligns the financial incentives of the shareholders with those of the depositors by making shareholders responsible for depositor losses.
I like that idea. I’m no expert on banking, but what about simply requiring people (and institutions) that purchase bank stock to make and hold deposits in the bank that are equal to the size of their equity purchase. If you buy $1 million in Republic Bank stock, you must also deposit $1 million into Republic Bank and hold it there until you sell your stock. In that case, the FDIC could continue insuring ordinary deposits, but these special deposits of bank shareholders would be uninsured. (Shareholders could hold other insured deposits, apart for these uninsured accounts.)
From the shareholder perspective, this would double the cost of a bank failure, and reduce the incentive to take excessive risks. It’s also an approach that utilizes market forces. When it comes to regulation, bureaucrats will never be able to anticipate all of the different ways that a bank might screw up. In this proposal, the market is automatically moving banks closer to alignment with uninsured depositors.
PS. This picture shows the FDIC headquarters. Ironically, my old employer (Mercatus Center) is right next door.)
GPT4 passed the medical licensure exam but the critics want to know how does it perform in the real world? Zak Kohane, pediatric endocrinologist, data scientist, and chair of the Harvard Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School has apparently been working with GPT4 for about 6 months. He has a forthcoming book (with Peter Lee and Carey Goldberg). He writes:
“How well does the AI perform clinically? And my answer is, I’m stunned to say: Better than many doctors I’ve observed.”—Isaac Kohane MD
That’s from a review of the book by Eric Topol. Not much more information to be had in the review but if you think about it, this bit is hilarious:
I’ve thought it would be pretty darn difficult to see machines express empathy, but there are many interactions that suggest this is not only achievable but can even be used to coach clinicians to be more sensitive and empathic with their communication to patients.
Looking at #8 the US comes in a very solid third but somehow Czechia and Hungary are way out in front ;P
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This year, India surpasses China in population. Here’s another milestone:
2. This twitter thread presents a depressing take on Brexit. I’m glad I opposed Brexit, as I’d hate to have to rebut all of these arguments. Regarding this one, I wonder how British nationalists feel about immigration switching from (presumably white) Europeans to (presumably non-white) non-Europeans?
3. I used to think that I couldn’t be a feminist, because I believed that gender was not just a social construct. I was relieved to hear that feminists have come around to my view:
Political opportunism, with both parties loving science where it suits them and spitting it out where it does not, is nothing new to James Cantor, a sex researcher who has seen “fair-weather friends” come and go. He has acted as an expert witness for Florida’s government in several gender-care cases. He remembers how 20 years ago he was pitted against lesbians and feminists because he focused on the role of biology in explaining differences between the sexes, whereas they saw most differences as social constructs. “Well, here we are 20 years later and suddenly I’m their darling now the science, which hasn’t changed, suits their argument [that sex differences are real],” he chuckles.
According to the Rockland/Westchester Journal News, David McKay Wilson—a tax columnist at the Westchester, New York, newspaper—was visiting Rye Playland for a story on the park’s changing tax status. He bought a ticket to the rides and was standing in line for the locally famous dragon coaster when he struck up a conversation with the kids waiting alongside him.
One of the kids told her father about how she had just been talking with a grownup. Outraged that a man spoke to his daughter without his permission, the dad reported Wilson to a guard. That guard called the police.
6. When the number one Republican is so insecure he feels a need to insinuate that the number two Republican is a pedophile.
Medieval Times workers launched an unfair labor practice strike Saturday, Feb. 11, claiming management has given substantial pay hikes to employees at other castles while their wages remain low amid unsafe work conditions.
The group of about 50 performers and stable hands walked off the job and began picketing after their first performance Saturday, forcing the Buena Park dinner theater to cobble together the two remaining shows by pulling in employees from other departments.
Artists of all stripes are still trading urban life for Marin’s wide vistas and locals-only beaches. The county’s progressive liberalism has always played a role in its allure, as has the legacy of the 20th-century counterculture that proliferated across the Bay Area. . . .
Bolinas, population 1,400, has always been a self-regulating community. Though it gets its fair share of tourists, not all the locals are welcoming, and far less so to the cashed-up city denizens who’ve inflated the housing market enormously in the past decade. The road sign indicating the turn-off from Highway 1 regularly gets stolen, and if you venture into the bar at Smiley’s (established 1851), the old-time saloon on Wharf Road, the intensity of the collective appraisal can be, to borrow from the local parlance, a little gnarly.
Locals-only beaches? Stolen road signs? Super tight zoning laws? Is this actually liberalism? Sounds more like a left wing version of Trumpian tribal anti-immigration ideology.
Bacon discussed the printing press in his seminal work, The Advancement of Learning (1605), where he identified three inventions that had changed the world: gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press. He acknowledged that these inventions had enabled the expansion of human power, discovery, and communication, but he also warned that they had also introduced new dangers, errors, and corruptions.
Of course the Chinese developed those three inventions, and the Europeans stole them without compensation. Later, America stole intellectual capital from the UK to jump start its industrial revolution. (A point not emphasized in US history books.). And now there’s great moral outrage that China is stealing Western intellectual capital.
12. As I’ve been predicting, Brexit did not deliver the promised independence to the UK. Here’s Bloomberg:
Hardline Brexiteers are nonetheless depressed at the seeming inevitability of the [Northern Ireland] agreement passing relatively easily. One said the promise of divergence from Brussels rules was dying and it was inevitable the UK would end up aligning more closely with the EU over the next decade, first under Sunak and then if Labour wins the next election.
We compare the online reviews of 221 “Questionable” Illinois and Indiana physicians with multiple paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions with matched control physicians with clean records. Across five prominent online rating services, we find small, mostly insignificant differences in star ratings and written reviews for Questionable versus control physicians. Only one rating service (Healthgrades) reports on paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary actions and it misses more than 90% of these actions. We also evaluate the online ratings of 171 Illinois hospitals and find that their ratings are largely uncorrelated with the share of hospital-affiliated physicians with paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions. Online ratings have limited utility in helping patients avoid physicians with troubled medical malpractice and disciplinary records, and steering patients away from hospitals at which more physicians have paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions.
That is from a new paper by David A. Hyman, Jing Liu, and Bernard S. Black. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes, “Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time”:
It sounds like an absurd idea that in 2040 we might see complaints in the Polish press about a flood of British plumbers undercutting wages, or Brytyjski Skleps lining the rougher areas of Warsaw, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
This talking point has also appeared in the Telegraph, the Express and the Financial Times. It often comes with a sense of vague alarm and bewilderment. Poland? The post-communist place? Don’t they live entirely off vodka and potatoes? Don’t they have horses clippety-cloppeting down the streets selling women’s underwear pinched off a truck in Germany? Poland?
A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland
Having lived in Poland for nine years, I can say that I am not at all surprised by these projections. To be clear, that is all they are — projections. A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland.
Still, I think a lot of British people would be surprised by how much better things can be in the land of Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II.
That is by Ben Sixsmith. Poland remains a underrated nation.
Yes the expenditures had prior approval, but that does not always lead to productive results:
Nine months ago, in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Olaf Scholz declared a Zeitenwende — a turning point — for Germany’s military and its place in the world. But since then, barely any of the €100bn in extra funding the German chancellor pledged has made its way to the armed forces.
The parliamentary body set up in the spring to allocate money to modernisation and reform programmes has met once. The defence ministry had no procurement proposals to submit to it. Its next sitting will not be until February.
Now opposition lawmakers, and some of the country’s leading security experts, are beginning to ask whether Germany’s commitment to a leading role in European defence is anything more than rhetoric.
“Mr Chancellor — I can’t call it anything else, you are breaking your promise to the parliament and especially to the Bundeswehr [federal army],” opposition leader Friedrich Merz said in an attack on Scholz in the Bundestag on Wednesday morning.
Far from rising, the 2023 defence budget, Merz noted, was set to shrink by €300mn based on current government plans. The lack of German action was “[giving] rise to considerable distrust” at Nato and in allied capitals, he claimed. Germany has long fallen short of its Nato-set obligation of spending the equivalent of 2 per cent of GDP on defence.
Pretty astonishing balance hehe. Three years at a luxury hotel in Paris isn’t a bad perk, or any of these options really ;).
Last week, David Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, posted a now-viral Twitter video of himself paying with an American Express Business Centurion Card at a Rite Aid.
The drugstore chain has a partnership with American Express, where members can redeem American Express Membership Rewards points at subpar 0.7 cents per point. When Portnoy pays, his Membership Rewards balance — a staggering 44,403,931 points — appears on the screen, presumably earned from heavy business spending.
The information for the Centurion Card and Centurion Business Card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
To put that into perspective, that’s worth a whopping $888,079 when leveraging transfer partners, based on TPG’s valuation of 2 cents per Membership Rewards point. That said, it’s possible that Portnoy could get even more value by redeeming his points for high-value things like international business-class tickets.
However, with so many points in his account, it seems clear that Portnoy is hoarding his points, leaving them open to devaluation if Amex were to change its program. With that in mind, I took the liberty to write this article to give him some completely unsolicited points and miles advice.
David, here are a few ways you can use your nearly 45 million Amex points. These examples range from absolutely ridiculous to practical, but anything is better than letting your Amex points sit there and collect dust. For everyone else, use this article as inspiration for redeeming your (probably much smaller) Amex points balance.
Spend 3 or more years at the Waldorf Astoria in Paris
Why pay rent when you can live in a five-star hotel for three years?
Amex points transfer to Hilton Honors at a 1:2 transfer ratio, making 44,403,931 worth 88,807,862 Hilton points. This is more than enough points for an extended stay just about anywhere in the world.
Hilton Honors redemptions are variably priced, but you can often find a good deal at the Waldorf Astoria Versailles Trianon Palace in Paris. Rooms usually go for around 80,000 Hilton Honors points per night, so in theory, Portnoy could use all of his Amex points to book a whopping 1,110 nights at the hotel. This December, most nights at the property cost around $260.
Of course, there are other options too. The Waldorf Astoria Bangkok also goes for 80,000 points per night on most dates. Or, if he really wanted to stretch his points, he could spend 21,000 points per night at the Hilton Garden Inn Krakow in Poland, giving him just over 11 1/2 years at the property if the current rate holds.
For simplicity’s sake, these numbers do not include Hilton’s fifth-night free benefit. So if Portnoy is willing to check in and check out of his hotel, he could theoretically stretch his points even further.
Fly from New York to Europe in business class … 700 times
CHRISTIAN KRAMER/THE POINTS GUY
Amex points give you no shortage of ways to get to Europe in style.
One of my favorite ways to use my Amex points to fly to the region is by transferring to Avianca LifeMiles, which charges 63,000 LifeMiles for a one-way business-class flight from the U.S. to most European cities.
Better yet, the airline doesn’t add fuel surcharges, so there’s little out-of-pocket cost for these redemptions no matter the airline operating the flight.
Since Avianca is a Star Alliance member, Portnoy could fly some of my favorite European business-class products like Austrian, Swiss and Turkish Airlines.
United is also a member, opening up some interesting summertime routes to Europe and connecting options. Also, with over 44 million points, Portnoy can check out all of these excellent flight options and still have millions of points to spare.
Book 5,900 short-haul domestic flights on American Airlines
ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY
Domestic flights are an option, too. One of my favorite ways to book them with Amex points is by transferring points to British Airways, which charges 7,500 Avios for a one-way economy flight up to 651 miles within North America. This includes popular business routes like New York to Washington, D.C., and Seattle to Portland, Oregon.
With 44,403,931 Amex points, he could book just over 5,900 short-haul domestic flights (up to 651 miles) by transferring to British Airways. That should have Barstool Sports’ domestic employee travel covered for at least a few years, in theory saving the company possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the cash value of those tickets.
Book almost $900,000 worth of paid airfare with Amex Travel
ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY
One of the best benefits of the Amex Centurion card is its 50% points rebate on airfare booked through Amex Travel. Portnoy could redeem points for flights at 1 cent per point initially, and receive a 50% rebate on points a few weeks after booking.
This effectively lets him redeem points at 2 cents per point with very little effort, so a $1,000 ticket would cost just 50,000 Amex points. He’ll also earn frequent flyer miles and elite status on these flights since they process as paid tickets. This is by far the easiest way to redeem Amex points for flights, and it could help Portnoy offset a lot of business travel expenses for him and his employees.
Note that the 50% rebate is only valid on the Amex Business Centurion card. However, if you have The Business Platinum Card® from American Express, you’re eligible for a 35% rebate on all premium-cabin tickets and tickets booked with your preferred airline through Amex Travel, up to 1 million points back per calendar year.
While it pains me to write this, if Portnoy doesn’t have any immediate travel plans, he could open an American Express Platinum Card® for Schwab and cash out his points at 1.1 cents apiece to a Schwab account.
If he cashed out all of his points, he’d walk away with a cool $488,443. While the points would be worth a lot more when used for flights, when you have over 44 million points at your disposal that you’re not using, it could make sense to cash out at least a portion of them.
The information for the American Express Platinum Schwab has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
After all, how many times does one really need to fly from the U.S. to Europe in one year? Even if Portnoy spent six months at a hotel, he’d have millions of points left over.
Also, he’s likely earning points at a rate faster than he can spend them. Cashing out some of his points ensures he gets some value now and protection from a future Membership Rewards devaluation. With tens of millions of points at his disposal, letting them all sit dormant is a risk.
Itching to build up your own Amex point balance? You might not be able to match Portnoy’s 44 million points, but the cards below offer welcome bonuses that can help you get enough points to book a business-class ticket to Europe, some domestic flights or other travel.
Here are a few of our favorite cards and their respective welcome offers:
The Platinum Card® from American Express: Earn 80,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $6,000 on purchases in your first six months of cardmembership. However, some readers have been targeted for up to a 125,000-point bonus using the CardMatch tool (offer subject to change at any time). Terms apply.
The Business Platinum Card® from American Express: Earn 150,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $15,000 on eligible purchases with the Business Platinum Card within the first three months of cardmembership. Terms apply.
American Express® Gold Card: Earn 60,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $4,000 on eligible purchases with your new card within the first six months of cardmembership. However, some readers have been targeted for up to a 75,000-point bonus using the CardMatch tool (offer subject to change at any time). Terms apply.
David Portnoy’s flexing his Amex points balance was a genius move for social media engagement. Boy, do I wish I had that many Amex points.
Now that Portnoy has shown off his balance, it’s time to start spending those points. Otherwise, they’ll be left open to devaluation if Amex decides to change its loyalty program.
Whether he picks three years at a hotel, thousands of flights, nearly $500,000 cash or a combination of all the above, the Barstool Sports founder will get a lot more value by using his miles than letting them sit dormant.
For rates and fees of the Amex Platinum Card, click here. For rates and fees of the Amex Business Platinum Card, click here. For rates and fees of the Amex Gold Card, click here.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed a special prosecutor to oversee criminal investigations related to former President Donald Trump.
Jack Smith, a former chief of the Justice Department’s unit that investigates public corruption — the Public Integrity Section — will take on the new role which operates largely independent of Justice Department control under decades-old federal regulations. The announcement represents a new phase in the extraordinary investigations into an ex-president and his allies and comes as Trump mounts a new bid to reclaim the presidency.
“Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said in a statement. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
The special counsel’s purview will include the Justice Department’s ongoingprobe of Trump’s alleged retention of highly sensitive national security secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as aspects of the effort by Trump and his allies’ effort to subvert the 2020 election and disrupt the transition of power to President Joe Biden.
Garland expressed an urgency behind both investigations, emphasizing that Smith’s appointment should not slow them down.
“I will ensure that the Special Counsel receives the resources to conduct this work quickly and completely,” Garland said at a short-notice appearance before journalists and TV camerasat DOJ headquarters. “Given the work done to date and Mr. Smith’s prosecutorial experience, I am confident that this appointment will not slow the completion of these investigations.”
Smith, in a statement, also vowed to pursue both probes with urgency.
“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” he said. “The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”
Neither man promised to bring the probes to resolution before the 2024 campaign ratchets into high gear, but the pair of statements stressing the need to move rapidly appeared to signal an intent to reach some decisions before the cases become further enmeshed in the political debate.
Garland did not say with specificity Friday why he was appointing a special prosecutor or why he had decided this week to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue investigations that have been underway for at least half a year or longer. However, the attorney general indicated that his thinking had been impacted by recent political events, including Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that he will be a candidate for president in 2024.
“It is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution based on recent developments, including the former president's announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well,” Garland told reporters.
Garland declined to take questions from reporters, but during his nine-minute prepared statement, he seemed to emphasize the possibility of obstruction of justice charges out of the Mar-a-Lago documents probe — mentioning that prospect three times.
Garland also stressed that the move to appoint a special counsel should not be seen as a suggestion that the career officials who’ve been pursuing the various probes had acted improperly or allowed political considerations to affect their work.
“All the career prosecutors assigned to these matters are conducting their work in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” the attorney general added. “ I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity. And I also believe that appointing a special counsel at this time is the right thing to do.”
Many of the career prosecutors and investigators are expected to continue staffing the probes now under Smith’s supervision.
Garland’s announcement came just hours after he signed a formal order tapping Smith for the post.Smith, a 1994 Harvard Law School graduate, led the department’s public integrity section for five years as a career official during the Obama administration before taking on a position at the U.S. attorney’s office in the Middle District of Tennessee.
During his stint at the Public Integrity Section, Smith oversaw the prosecutions of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted in 2015 of disclosing national defense information and obstructing justice — two potential crimes at the center of the Trump documents probe. Smith also oversaw the convictions of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and former Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, both for bribery and extortion charges. McDonnell’s conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Since 2018, Smith has been prosecuting war crimes in the Hague stemming from the conflict in Kosovo. He’s registered to vote in the U.S. as a political independent, officials said.
The announcement also came amid a flurry of notable activity at the federal courthouse in Washington, where three new grand juries were impaneled Friday, likely linked to the start of Smith’s investigation.
Under Justice Department procedures, special counsels are required to inform senior department officials of major investigative steps such as indictments. Garland retains the ability under the regulations to reject such charges, but any move to countermand the independent prosecutor must be reported to Congress and would be almost certain to ignite a political firestorm.
According to Garland’s order, Smith will take over the entirety of the probe into the presence of numerous White House records and documents with classified markings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021. Smith will also take over the ongoing investigation into “efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021” as well as related matters.
However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., will retain control over investigations and prosecutions of people “physically present on the Capitol grounds” on Jan. 6, 2021, Garland’s order said. About 900 people at or near the Capitol that day have been charged criminally with offenses ranging from trespassing to seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government.
No one has yet been charged in the broader Jan. 6 or election interference probes.
Centralizing the Trump-focused investigations under a special counsel is a move meant to help instill confidence in the independence of any prosecutorial decision in the explosive investigations. In 2017, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign links to Russia. In 2020, Attorney General William Barr appointed then-U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe.
Tyler Cowen linked Milky Eggs’ excellent overview of the FTX crash. I’m unqualified to comment on any of the financial or regulatory aspects. But it turns out there’s a psychopharmacology angle, which I am qualified to talk about, so let’s go.
I wrote this pretty rushed because it’s an evolving news story. Sorry if it’s less polished than usual.1
1: Was SBF Using A Medication That Can Cause Overspending And Compulsive Gambling As A Side Effect?
Probably yes, and maybe it could have had some small effect, but probably not as much as the people discussing it on Twitter think.
Milky Eggs reports a claim by an employee that Sam was on “a patch for designer stimulants that mainlined them into his blood to give him a constant buzz at all times”. This could be a hyperbolic description of Emsam, a patch form of the antidepressant/antiparkinsonian agent selegiline. The detectives at the @AutismCapital Twitter account found a photo of SBF, zoomed in on a scrap of paper on his desk, and recognized it as an Emsam wrapper.
Emsam is a brand of selegiline, a medication used since the 1960s to treat Parkinson’s disease. Selegiline is a MAOB inhibitor2. MAOB is an enzyme that breaks down dopamine3. If you inhibit it, you get more dopamine. So in a very broad sense, selegiline gives you more dopamine.4
Dopamine does many things in many brain systems. Here’s an oversimplified chart:
Everyone wants “magic bullets” - drugs that can increase dopamine inone of these ways, but not any of the others. Treat attention problems without causing hallucinations. Cure tremors without causing hypersexuality. But it’s tough. There are dozens of dopamine-based drugs, and all of them succeed in some ways and fail in others. Adderall mostly helps attention but sometimes causes a little paranoia on the side. Antipsychotics mostly prevent hallucinations and delusions, but also cause anhedonia. If a good doctor carefully chooses the right drug and dose, you’ll mostly get what you want. Otherwise, choose 2d4 random side effects from the appropriate side of the table.
Selegiline is an even less magical bullet than usual. People call it an antidepressant, anti-Parkinsonian, and stimulant, and all of those descriptions are accurate. It also does one unrelated thing: it disables a key digestive enzyme that prevents certain foods from killing you. For boring technical reasons, some pharma companies thought this might not happen if you delivered selegiline through a patch on the skin. For other boring technical reasons, the FDA disagreed and said people on the selegiline patch still shouldn’t eat those foods. The pharma companies decided to release the patch anyway, in case some people liked patches better than pills - and so Emsam was born.
The “meat products” sentence is inexpertly phrased - as the link on the left explains, this is only true for certain dried meats like cured salami. And it’s equally true for some non-meat products like soy sauce. I’m only harping on this because some tweeters seized on this as a conspiratorial explanation for Sam’s vegetarianism, and that doesn’t make sense.
The pathological gambling is obviously more interesting. The link on the right quotes medicine.com, which says:
Dopaminergic agents used for Parkinson disease have been associated with compulsive behaviors and/or loss of impulse control, which has manifested as pathological gambling, libido increases (hypersexuality), uncontrolled spending of money, binge eating, and/or other intense urges. Causality has not been established, and controversy exists as to whether this phenomenon is related to the underlying disease, prior behaviors/addictions and/or drug therapy. Dose reduction or discontinuation of therapy has been reported to reverse these behaviors in some, but not all cases.
I can see why this caught so much attention. But let me rain on the parade: this seems pretty rare. Grossett et al found a prevalence of about 8% on any antiparkinsonian, but none of the 17 patients they found were taking selegiline. Lanteri et al quote a prevalence of 2.2 - 7%, but only one of the 15 patients they found was on selegiline, and that person was also on other medications more likely to cause the condition. This doesn’t prove that selegiline never causes problem gambling - but it suggests it’s one of the less likely medications to do so, probably at somewhere well below 2 - 8% of patients.
I was only able to find one case report of pathological gambling clearly caused by selegiline rather than some other medication - the fifth patient in Drapier et al (2006), which describes it as “the first case report in the literature”. And this definitely isn’t because doctors don’t like recording all the weird things selegiline can do - see eg the three case reports of selegiline causing transvestism (1, 2, 3)! 5
Does this mean that Emsam definitely wasn’t involved? Not exactly. “Gave someone a gambling disorder” is an overly binary way of saying “shifted someone’s brain’s risk curves6 a lot”. One of the case reports of antiparkinsonian-induced gambling was a “54-year-old, married pastor” who began gambling large sums daily after starting the pramipexole. It probably takes a lot of risk-curve-shifting to get a 54-year-old married pastor to go to Vegas and blow all of his savings. But if you’re already a cryptocurrency trader, maybe it only takes a tiny amount of risk-curve-shifting to turn you into a cryptocurrency trader who makes riskier trades. Maybe selegiline only shifts your risk curve a lot 0.001% of the time, but it shifts it a tiny bit more often than that.
Here’s a report by a Wall Street trader who got addicted to cocaine - another dopaminergic drug:
It's not like you rip one line and then all of a sudden your life falls apart. For me, I started to have what I thought was more fun at night, which resulted in less success during the day. I was still making money, but not making great decisions all of the time. My formula for success started slipping away from me. It took about two whole years before the wheels started to fall off. Then I started losing money and making very poor choices in and out of the office.
During my years of struggling with addiction, my trading suffered. One of my first seven-figure losses came because I'd lost focus and attention to detail. I just didn't do the clerical part of my job over options expiration. And when I came into work on Monday, I learned that it cost our firm over a million dollars. And in 2009, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars personally. I was stubborn. I was adamant that the market shouldn't be rallying as much as it was. I was short, stayed short and doubled down. And the entire time I knew I was breaking a cardinal rule of trading: Don't fight the Fed.
I don’t think Emsam is vastly worse than other dopaminergic drugs - maybe even including common drugs like Adderall. I think all of these drugs are fine for ordinary people who need antidepressants or stimulants. They might even potentially be fine for people who work with risk as a job, like traders - especially if they’re following an algorithm or having their work checked by other people. But if someone’s making big decisions based on their intuitive risk assessments, they should keep in mind that dopaminergic drugs can shift the way they think about those things - not necessarily to a worse place, just a different place.
A significant fraction of the finance industry is on Adderall - I know because they keep trying to make me prescribe it to them. This hasn’t degraded performance so much that managers have noticed or made rules against it. And for all I know, maybe the medicated mental risk curves are better for trading than the unmedicated ones. Still, I would warn everyone involved to be careful.
2. Is There Some Conspiracy That His Name Was Sam And He Was On A Medication Called Emsam?
This is a surprisingly popular question on Twitter by people who I assume are trolling but you never really know:
Emsam is in fact named after the two kids of the CEO of the pharma company that developed it: Emily and Sam. This is the cutest psychopharmacology fact I know.
3: What Was In The Blue-Green Bottle?
Going back to @AutismCapital’s picture:
What’s the blue-green bottle to the left of the red circle?
Here the detectives on r/NootropicsDepot recognized it as their company’s old brand of adrafinil7. Adrafinil is a prodrug of modafinil, an unusual stimulant-like drug. That is, your body metabolizes adrafinil and turns it into modafinil after you take it.
So was SBF effectively on modafinil? Seems likely - many traders are. I won’t lie - modafinil is a good stimulant, during medical residency some doctors (including me) would use it to stay alert through the night shift. It’s not any better than Adderall or anything, just a bit different and easier to get.
Does it affect attitudes to risk? Hopefully you can already predict my answer to that question: all dopaminergics affect attitude to risk in complicated ways we don’t really understand, but for most people these effects will be too small to notice. There’s one case report of modafinil causing pathological gambling, and various contrived studies where neuroscientists investigate how modafinil shifts some technical parameter in a risk curve; these kinds of studies often don’t replicate. I think you can really just stick to your prior of “all dopaminergics affect risk curves in ways we don’t understand, but it’s usually fine when your job doesn’t require perfectly-tuned risk awareness”.
Except - was he taking the selegiline and adrafinil at the same time?
Selegiline prevents the body from breaking down dopamine. Modafinil works by preventing cells from reabsorbing dopamine. If you can’t break it down, and you can’t reabsorb it, what happens? Does it just build up forever until it explodes and you die?
This is what happens with serotonin. If you take a drug that prevents serotonin breakdown (like a traditional MAOI) and a drug that prevents serotonin reuptake (like an SSRI) at the same time, you definitely die. Lots of doctors have noticed that the MAOI + stimulant situation is pretty similar and decided you shouldn’t take these at the same time either. So some people following the FTX situation have wondered whether this combo might have been very dangerous - either to Sam’s health or to his risk-management ability.
One or two recent papers about the mechanisms of action of MAOIs and amphetamine at the molecular level suggest why the combination of amphetamine (with MAOIs) is not unduly risky as has been (mis)stated for so long. Care and experience are required but it can be done safely although small increases in dose do sometimes seem to have disproportionate effects.
There is now quite a lot of accumulated experience of the concurrent administration of MAOIs and amphetamine for therapeutic purposes in depression. It is safe when done carefully. Early concerns about frequent hypertension have not materialized and recent clinical reviews indicate judicious use is safe (21, 22). Since amphetamine is substantially more potent than ephedrine it would seem, by extension, that concerns over this drug may also have been be over-rated. If taken in supra-therapeutic doses or overdose the situation may be different.
The present case adds to the literature describing effective combinations of MAOIs and stimulants and suggests that the combination of transdermal selegiline and a stimulant may not need to be considered absolutely contraindicated. This combination therapy may be an option for some patients with comorbid ADHD and treatment-resistant MDD when used with caution and monitoring of heart rate and blood pressure.
Based on reports like these, I once placed one patient, one time, on a combination of MAOIs and amphetamines, during a situation where I thought potential benefits outweighed risks. I quadruple-checked every detail of the regimen, prayed, and added my malpractice attorney’s phone number to speed dial. In the end it went fine. But it’s not a combination I would recommend trying at home.
Even it’s not deadly, could a MAOI + stimulant shift risk-sensitivity even more than selegiline or modafinil alone?
Again, my answer is going to be “all dopaminergics shift risk-sensitivity, usually to relatively small degrees, but maybe enough that it would become relevant in an unusual situation like crypto trading”. Would this unusual interaction do it more than usual? Maybe, hard to say, but my wild guess is probably not - for example, in this study, the addition of selegiline didn’t make people feel any higher on cocaine.
Also, I don’t even know if SBF was really taking these at the same time. There was just a photo with (what looked like) both of them on his desk.
4: Was Everyone On Meth?
Get ready for a galaxy-brained answer here: Nobody took meth. Nobody thought they were on meth. But in fact they were on meth. But actually it’s fine and you don’t need to worry.
Backing up: for some reason, a bunch of crypto accounts are assuming meth was involved:
…which seems pretty obviously about normal amphetamine (ie Adderall) rather than methamphetamine. For example, she’s describing it as “regular” and “medicated”. And admitting it publicly while being the CEO of a major company. Also, 99% of amphetamine users are on Adderall and not meth. Come on!
But, as I said before, unrelated to this, at least some of them were in fact on meth.
See Romberg 1995, Methamphetamine and amphetamine derived from the metabolism of selegiline. When you take selegiline, your body metabolizes it into other chemicals. One of them is methamphetamine. How much? Probably lower than the levels methheads get, but maybe around the threshold for being clinically relevant.
Luckily for them, this is l-methamphetamine, the mostly-inactive stereoisomer of meth (if you don’t know what stereoisomers are - do you know how all superheroes have an evil version of themselves with a goatee from a parallel universe? This is that, but for organic chemicals). There’s boring technical debate about exactly how dangerous and addictive l-methamphetamine is, but the answer I find most convincing is “so safe and nonaddictive that the government lets you sell it over the counter as a nasal decongestant”
The government also lets you spell it “levmetamfetamine” on the ingredient list so people don’t see it and freak out.
Anyone taking selegiline might get a positive urine test for methamphetamine, but there’s no reason to expect any real negative effects.
The NYT interviews the psychiatrist, who denies that stimulants were overused:
I originally wrote here that “In line with most tech companies” was a great euphemism for “yes, we were overusing stimulants”. But many commenters responded that they’re in tech, and neither they nor most of their friends take stimulants. So I think this was overly hasty of me.
Probably it’s selection bias - as a Bay Area psychiatrist, I see the people who are in stimulants, but not the ones who aren’t. A few years ago I wrote a piece on my experience as working in SF’s business district:
The human brain wasn’t built for accounting or software engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he can’t sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his colleagues can work so diligently?
(it’s because his colleagues are all on Adderall already – but telling him that will just make things worse)
He goes on to give me his story about how he’s at risk of getting fired from his Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers position, and at this rate he’s never going to get the promotion to Vice President Of Staring At Giant Spreadsheets, so do I think I can give him some Adderall to help him through?
Psychiatric guidelines are very clear on this point: only give Adderall to people who “genuinely” “have” “ADHD”.
But “ability to concentrate” is a normally distributed trait, like IQ. We draw a line at some point on the far left of the bell curve and tell the people on the far side that they’ve “got” “the disease” of “ADHD”. This isn’t just me saying this. It’s the neurostructural literature, the the genetics literature, a bunch of other studies, and the the Consensus Conference On ADHD. This doesn’t mean ADHD is “just laziness” or “isn’t biological” – of course it’s biological! Height is biological! But that doesn’t mean the world is divided into two natural categories of “healthy people” and “people who have Height Deficiency Syndrome“. Attention is the same way. Some people really do have poor concentration, they suffer a lot from it, and it’s not their fault. They just don’t form a discrete population […]
We could still have a principled definition of ADHD. It would be something like “People below the Nth percentile in ability to concentrate.” Instead, we use the DSM, which advises us to diagnose people with ADHD if they say they have at least five symptoms from a list. The list has things like “often has difficulty sustaining attention” and “often has difficulty organizing tasks”. How often? You know, often! And if you work as a Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers, you’re going to have attention problems a lot more “often” than the rest of us.
ADHD is so poorly defined that the official standards basically boil down to “it’s hard to do your job without Adderall”. Coding takes a lot of focus, and it’s hard to do without Adderall for a lot of people. I want to back off from saying it’s omnipresent, because commenters are telling me it’s not, but I’d be interested in finding firm numbers. See my original piece on Adderall for more thoughts on this.
At normal doses, most people can think clearly on stimulants; unless there was some evidence of abnormal doses or missed sleep (see below) I usually wouldn’t expect this to have a clinically significant effect on judgment. But again, if it showed up anywhere it would show up in complicated trading.
6: Is It Okay, As A Psychiatrist Bound By Doctor-Patient Confidentiality, To Give An Interview About Your Patient To The New York Times?
What? No!!! Obviously not!!! Why would you even ask this question? What the heck?
This isn’t really a psychopharmacology question. And yet in answering the last psychopharmacology questions, I did end up having to read FTX’s In-House Performance Coach Is Just as Surprised as You Are. Apparently the FTX company psychiatrist gave an interview to the New York Times on his opinion of SBF’s personality.
He claims this is okay, because he was just a “performance coach” for the company, who happened to, additionally, be a psychiatrist who was treating many of the company’s employees. This is not better. Psychiatric ethics tries to have careful conflict-of-interest rules so that you aren’t playing multiple roles for the same person. For example, suppose you are employed as a “performance coach” in the Bahamas by a famously generous and free-spending company. And suppose that company has made it extremely clear that they want their employees to be on stimulants. And suppose you are treating those employees, and need to decide whether to put them on stimulants or not. It seems kind of plausible that maybe if you didn’t give the employees stimulants, you would lose your cushy Bahamas job. Isn’t this going to unduly influence your prescribing decisions?
I’m usually the last person to be a stickler for role-conflict-rules - I prescribe to family members in emergencies, and sometimes the emergency is “they are bad at getting a real doctor”. But this is just way beyond anything that even I would consider appropriate.
And even aside from that, it’s just crazy for any kind of a mental health professional to give an interview to the New York Times about anyone in an even slightly patient-like capacity. Even supposing that he wasn’t SBF’s psychiatrist (but then who was prescribing the Emsam?) this violates a norm against psychiatrists publicly assessing famous figures8. I suppose Dr. Lerner will argue that he was assessing Sam with his performance coach hat rather than his psychiatrist hat - no guessing how many FTT tokens I think that distinction is worth.
But aside from that, really? REALLY? When the New York Times, for its own stupid reasons, tried to write an article that would compromise my ability to avoid a weird multiple-role-conflict with my patients, I quit my job and tried to contribute what little I could to the ongoing campaign of all reasonable people to destroy the New York Times. This was the correct, ethical thing to do! And he just . . . voluntarily offered them an interview? About his patient performance coachee? REALLY?
I’d like to think that maybe SBF asked him to do this interview and gave 100% express consent. But even then, there’s a marit ayin consideration - the psychiatrist should start by very explicitly saying he has express consent, and would never do anything like this without it.
The best I can say for him is that he’ll probably get away with it, because the only injured party is Sam Bankman-Fried, and I assume Sam’s lawyers are busy right now.
7: So Was This All Because Of Weird Drugs?
I don’t really want to have an opinion on this, because I assume at some point one of their lawyers will hit on the defense “it was all because of weird drugs”, and I don’t want to seem like I’m shilling for one side or the other in a legal case.
I think you could make an argument that dopaminergic drugs shift various complicated risk curves in the brain. But a lot of Wall Street is on stimulants of one sort or another, and most of them don’t act like FTX did. Emsam is a little stranger than the usual Wall Street stimulants, and combining it with other stimulants might amplify the effects. But I still would think in terms of “how much are we moving the risk curves, and is it really that much further than a lot of other things do all the time?” rather than “does this switch you into uncontrollable pathological gambling mode?”
If I were one of the psychiatrists who will one day buy second houses from the money they make as expert witnesses on this case (DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT ASKING ME TO DO THIS9), I would focus on what doses were involved. Adderall 10 mg will help treat ADHD and give you a nice motivational boost. Adderall 200 mg will cause paranoia and sometimes hallucinations. There are similar considerations for modafinil and Emsam. All of these drugs are compatible with “probably didn’t matter” or “probably the main cause of everything” depending on what doses we’re talking about.
(and of course there could be other drugs I don’t know about)
The other free advice I would give these witnesses is to think about sleep. The most common way stimulants cause psychosis (this is my personal opinion, I haven’t checked if the literature agrees with me) isn’t by some kind of direct dopaminergic agonism. It’s by making it feel possible to operate on two hours of sleep a night. This is not actually possible and will land you into some kind of very exotic and maladaptive mental state. Someone who takes lots of stimulants during the day and then manages to sleep fine at night might do better than someone who takes the same amount of stimulants in order to work 130 hour weeks.
Free advice to the rest of you: I described certain drugs here as relatively safe, or potentially useful, but I want to emphasize that these are all serious medications and you shouldn’t mess with them lightly. Modafinil is great - except that it might cause fatal skin rashes in young people, it can break birth control, etc. Emsam is fine, except that it will kill you if you eat certain types of cheese, etc. I’m providing you with infotainment, not the much longer and more warning-filled lecture I would give to people who I was actually prescribing these to. Please don’t rush out to abuse drugs just because you read about them in an article on how they contributed to a $10 billion bankruptcy.
Conflict of interest notices: I was friends with an FTX/Alameda employee a few years ago. I support the effective altruist movement, which FTX donated money to. I briefly worked at the same San Francisco clinic as Dr. Lerner, a psychiatrist mentioned in this piece - but I’m so introverted at work that I never actually met him.
In the process of double-checking this, I came across this article from last year which says we’ve been understanding MAOB all wrong for decades and everything works differently than we think. I haven’t fully absorbed it yet, but you could combine this with a story where selegiline exerts its stimulating dopaminergic effects through its amphetamine metabolites. I’m going to stick to the textbook explanation in the main article so I don’t have to have an opinion on this.
I’m trying to write a rushed article about breaking news, please forgive me for writing sentences like these instead of linking to two thousand pharmacology papers about the thing these sentences are oversimplifications of.
I’m sorry to use the old offensive terminology, but I do so deliberately here. These studies were done decades ago, when nobody had heard of transgenderism, and when “transvestism” was considered incredibly shameful. I don’t think these drugs were changing people’s gender identity. I think these patients were probably repressing pre-existing desires about gender nonconformity, the drugs made them more risk-seeking, and so the patients made the risky decision to express their gender issues in the (socially dangerous) way available to them at the time. All of this probably has Vast Societal Implications.
The head of Nootropics Depot, MisterYouAreSoDumb, made a comment on the situation, which I reprint here in its entirety:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Holy fucking shit! I just looked him up. Totally a customer of ours... Crypto Bernie Madoff was our customer. LOL
What a fucking asshole! Illegally stealing customer's deposits to gamble on shitcoins through his Alameda Research fund! He's the reason BTC was depressed this bull cycle. Sam is the reason I am still here watching fucking depressing crypto news instead of being completely out and having lower blood pressure... and he is a fucking customer of ours! What a weird fucking world this is.
LET ME REPEAT THIS FOR EVERYONE AGAIN: Shitcoins are bad, and you should feel bad if you trade them. Get the fuck out of the shitcoin casino you dumb ass gamblers! Solana is garbage. TRON is garbage. Exchanged-based coins like FTT are garbage. Coins with fucking dogs faces are garbage. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency you should hold. Maybe ETH. Hedge your bets there. You need to CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS. Don't lend your coins out to charlatans promising you 5%, 8%, 15%, or 20% "risk free" returns. They are all scam Ponzis. There is no such thing as risk free 20% returns. It doesn't exist. Stop chasing it. If you don't control your private keys, it's not your crypto. If you trust an exchange based in the Bahamas ran by a jabroni who thinks he needs SIX MONITORS, you are in for a bad time. I've been in cryptocurrency since 2010 when BTC was 81 cents. I lived through the MT GOX implosion. I have had more crypto stolen from me in hacks and exit scams than you probably have ever even seen. Learn from my experience. Listen to what I am saying. TWELVE YEARS now I have been in crypto. This too shall pass. Fuck all these frauds stealing everyone's shit. We will all be better off with them out of the industry. However, you all have to learn from this shit. CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS! Stop gambling on shitcoins. You are being used as exit liquidity for idiots.
The reason cryptocurrency has changed the world, and will continue changing the world, is not because a fucking Shiba inu coin went 10,000%X because a narcissistic man-baby tweeted about it. It's because decentralized sound money has value. I've seen crypto build up from literally nothing. Even buying bitcoin was next to impossible back then. I mined BTC with my laptop at first. I stopped because I "only" mined 5 BTC per night, and it was using too much power. My first BTC I ever bought was when I met a fat dude wearing a Super Mario Brothers T-shirt at Home Depot. We met in the garden section and sat on a bench to talk about how bitcoin worked, how it was going to change the world, and how to transfer between wallets. I still have the wallet I setup and used to buy that BTC from him. Through all the craziness that has happened in the crypto space over the past 12 years, I have always been able to access my private wallets. Store your crypto in your own cold storage wallet unless you are actively trading. The moment you "lend" your coins out to someone for yields, it's already as good as gone. You've missed the entire point that Satoshi tried to get across so many years ago. Not your keys, not your coins. If you lost money in this shitshow, don't worry. This will all pass, and we will all be stronger for it. Just learn from it all and move on. Buy BTC and ETH, hold it in your cold storage wallets, and wait for the next bull cycle. Watch out for thieves and frauds trying to convince you into "the next big coin." They are all liars and thieves. Real cryptocurrency will endure. For it to really flourish, the shitcoin casinos must die. If you buy some new fucking Frodo Baggins faced shitcoin in the future and lose it all, you only have yourself to blame.
I never wanted to still be sitting here watching all this crypto drama, but people like SBF fucked this cycle up. I feel everyone's pain. I've lived through many crashes now. I am more dead inside than I was, but it is never easy to watch shit crash. If you want real sound crypto, you have some good buying opportunities here. Mid 2024 we will go through the ups again. Ignore all the morons saying this time is the end. I've heard that every crash since 2010. The next time we hit the bull market, stick to sound crypto projects and control your own private keys. Don't let frauds like SBF have your coins. You control your crypto, or you don't own it.
Some commenters ask if this article you’re reading now also breaks that rule. I’d like to think no - I think it permits talking about larger concepts (like what the side effects of different medications are) as long as you avoid individuals’ personalities. I admit that other people may be less invested in that distinction than I am.
Fine, since you’ve read this far, here’s the story of the last time I had to testify in court as an expert witness, slightly amended from some old notes I wrote at the time, way back when I was a resident. The only fact I will give you about the patient is that they drunk bleach as a suicide attempt, which describes some significant fraction of all psychiatric inpatients, so I don’t think it’s a confidentiality violation. I had been conscripted into representing my hospital, which was trying to get a longer involuntary commitment order.
The patient’s lawyer got to cross-examine me. He decided to die on the hill of “the patient never really drank the bleach”. He pointed out that the patient had been admitted directly to the psychiatric hospital without spending any time in a medical hospital, and asked me if it was realistic that someone could drink bleach and not have to spend time in the hospital.
I’m not a toxicologist and I didn't know the details of bleach poisoning. But I also felt like I was up there as this supposedly expert doctor and it would be humiliating not to know this basic fact. But also I was under oath and not supposed to lie. So I mumbled something about how, I don't know, drinking bleach seems bad but maybe you don't always end up critically ill and in the hospital, I don't know, can we please move on.
The defense attorney got really angry and asked “Well, have YOU ever drunk bleach, Dr. Alexander?” My hospital’s lawyer objected, and the defense lawyer said some legal stuff, and the two of them argued about it for a second, and finally the judge indicated that she would allow the question and I had to tell the court whether I had ever drunk bleach.
I had to admit I had not.
The defense attorney asked, still pretty condescendingly, whether this was because, without any medical expertise, using my total layman common sense, I thought that drinking bleach was probably really bad and would land you in the hospital or something.
I was kind of panicking, and I didn’t know what to do, and I worried I had just destroyed all my credibility as a doctor by not being able to emphatically say that drinking bleach required immediate hospitalization, and now I didn’t know whether I was going to look like I was walking back on my previous statement or what, so I just answered that yes, drawing on all of my expertise and years of training, all I could do was tentatively conclude that it seemed like, on net, drinking bleach was probably worse than not doing that.
The defense attorney got very excited, like I had just conceded the whole case. Then he asked me a lot more questions, and I must have handled them okay because the judge eventually gave our side the commitment order they wanted.
Then I went home and immediately Googled "how bad is drinking bleach", and according to this site:
Should you worry about drinking a mouthful of bleach? You’ll probably be fine. Most household bleaches contain fairly low concentrations of sodium hypochlorite – about 3 to 6 percent. That’s not an endorsement for trying it, but for the average adult, you shouldn’t expect anything worse than an upset stomach.
HE WAS JUST BULL$#!TTING THE WHOLE TIME!
This is why I will never again be an expert witness no matter how much they offer to pay me.
Colorado had three alcohol-related deregulatory measures on November's ballot. Two measures did not pass. Proposition 124 would have expanded the freedom for retail liquor store owners to own an unlimited number of licenses. State law currently caps that number at three. The measure, which would have been phased incrementally over the next 15 years, fell by a nearly 2-1 margin.
Strong opposition and Chicken Little-type pleas from owners of independent liquor stores helped kill the measure. "Colorado voters spoke loud and clear that they prefer locally owned stores who provide better service than out-of-state corporate interests who want to have absolute control over the Colorado market," Carolyn Joy, owner of Joy Wine and Spirits, said in a statement, the Denver Postreported.
Another failed Colorado measure, Prop. 126, would have expanded consumer choice by allowing licensed alcohol retailers to offer expanded alcohol delivery services or work with existing delivery services and would have made permanent to-go alcohol measures put in place during the Covid pandemic. As I've detailed, many states have moved to make permanent their own to-go cocktails laws. That's one reason Prop. 126's tight loss was a surprise—with one supporter of to-go booze saying they were "shocked" by the results. Polls released just a week before the election showed Prop. 126 was likely to pass. The Lamar Ledgercalled the vote "a surprising turnaround" for a ballot measure "that appeared destined to cruise to victory on Election Day."
Though votes are still being counted in Colorado's third ballot measure—Prop. 125—supporters said this week they had eked out a victory. The measure would allow any retailer licensed to sell beer to also sell wine. Supporters, led by grocers, painted the measure as what it is—a way for grocers to provide more choices to consumers.
"They want Starbucks, a deli, a COVID booster shot, organic produce and a specialty cheese section at the grocery store, along with beer and wine," Sheila MacDonald, of the group Wine in Grocery Stores, told Colorado Public Radio this week.
In Massachusetts, voters rejected a hodgepodge alcohol ballot measure that would have done a host of largely unrelated things—some good, others not so much. The measure, Question 3, would have gradually increased the number of licenses an alcohol retailer could hold. That's good. But it also would have prohibited consumers from using automated or self-checkout to purchase alcohol. Not so good.
Another key element of the measure would have changed state law to stop making it needlessly difficult for out-of-state drinkers to buy alcohol legally in the state. Under state law, a Massachusetts-issued driver's license is the only driver's license the state will accept as a form of identification to purchase alcohol. Question 3's defeat means, as WBUR reports, "out-of-state IDs still are no good for booze purchases." Most out-of-town sports fans will still have to carry and hand over a passport to buy a beer at Fenway Park.
Not all of the nation's alcohol-related ballot measures were statewide. In Atlanta, residents voted by a 4 to 1 margin to expand the hours for Sunday retail and restaurant sales of beer, wine, and liquor. Victory in an unrelated referendum in Snellville, an Atlanta suburb, will let package stores buy liquor licenses.
In addition to these various ballot measures, local governments have also been busy as ever regulating alcohol—with markedly different aims and results. The city council in Durham, North Carolina, just made it easier for residents to enjoy al fresco drinking. The unanimous vote comes a year after state lawmakers allowed cities and towns to create "social districts" exempt from general open-container laws. The Duke Chroniclereports that several North Carolina cities—including Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh—have also voted to create these social districts, expanding the ability of state residents to enjoy drinking and walking at the same time. Marcella Middleton, a Durham resident, told the Chronicle that she understands concerns about potential challenges, such as public intoxication. Still, she supported the measure because, she says, "you gotta let people be grown."
The city council in Ft. Worth, Texas, would likely disagree with Middleton. This week, they adopted a ban on open containers in what North Carolina would call a "social district." So much for letting people be grown.
Recent alcohol-related ballot measures and local legislation are a classic mixed bag. The failure to loosen alcohol regulations in Colorado and Massachusetts—and backsliding in Texas—were countered by victories elsewhere in Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina. Overall, the modesty of these reform proposals and their relative lack of success suggest states still have a long way to go in making alcohol sales easier and fairer for sellers and consumers alike.
