weekend notes

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,” wrote Mary Shelley in 1818, exploring our humanity through her hideous creation, Frankenstein. And ever since, we’ve leapt from one change to the next, those periods in between marked by an eerie calm that we desperately embrace, mistaking stability for reality. “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information ab

Hope all goes well… I’ve always dusted off an old anecdote for Memorial Day. But departing from tradition, I wrote something new, a glimpse of the next generation, a brighter future (see below). Enjoy your long weekend. And see you next Sunday with full wknd notes. E Week-in-Review (expressed in YoY terms): Mon: Japan Q1 GDP -3.4%, Security guards drag HK opposition lawmakers out of parliament, In

AOf the many unintended consequences of relinquishing global leadership to central bankers, the most ironic is that monetary-policy dominance ultimately denies both the future and the present of prosperity. In its fullest expression, not only does it entirely pull economic growth from tomorrow to today, but it does the same to investment returns. 30-year US Treasury bonds now yield +1.32%. Japanes

Hope all goes well…  “Asset prices remain vulnerable to significant price declines should the pandemic take an unexpected course, the economic fallout prove more adverse, or financial system strains re-emerge,” wrote the Fed on Friday, already orienting its efforts on fighting the last battle. Which is not to say these risks have passed. They haven’t. But with 80k Americans dead, when nearly

AI’ve always turned up the volume when writing, never listening to anything new. Fresh lyrics are distracting. But after the hundredth time, a song’s words disappear and all that remains is mood. Immersion. From that place things open, creep out, connect. And truth be told, the most fun part of writing is never quite knowing where it will lead. Stephen King writes to music, in a trance. Metallica

Hope all goes well… “First off Olivia, I’m proud of you for passing the exam,” I said. She smiled. “Now let me say that to become the person you want to be, you can’t handle yourself like that again.” She apologized, having spent the previous day locked in her room, crying, indulging in drama, worried she’d failed. “No need to say you’re sorry, it’s not about me. It’s about you, what you want to a

:“One of the questions I get asked the most these days is when the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic,” said Bill Gates. “My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus. The former is unlikely to happen anytime soon. W

Hope all goes well… “I just can’t stop crying,” said Mara, apologizing, taking a seat on the couch as I closed my laptop. “Olivia and I went to her best friend’s house for a birthday drive by and were first in a long line of cars. We were blasting ‘Today is Your Birthday,’ rolling slowly. When her friend heard us, she sprinted into the front yard, screaming with joy, we all started crying, now I c

ASpring is here. Tulips are rising. They do so every year of course. A miraculous reminder of the ebb and flow that surrounds us. That includes us. That is us. And for some, rising tulips return us to stories of Holland’s mass hysteria. It left them in 1637 for no apparent reason. A single bulb that traded one day for 10x a skilled craftsman’s annual earnings was virtually worthless the next. Natu