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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • That was my initial reaction, thinking China MUST hold more treasury bonds than anyone else, right? Turns out that’s typically Japan ($1 trillion), and the UK has generally held roughly the same number as China (both in the $700B range). Maybe the US anticipated and had contingencies ready if it was just China doing the selling, but when the other big holders started a slow bleed, it might’ve given them pause? Dunno.

    We also don’t know who held what more recently than January and I don’t know if the data gap is the usual lag or if the the people who do this work at the Treasury department got “DOGE’d”.

    Bottom line, it’s been fun to think about but I don’t think we should put too much stock in conspiracy theories originating on Substack.


  • There’s a theory being batted around without too much evidence (hold tight, Snopes is on it) that Mark Carney talked European and Japanese leaders into accumulating US Treasury bonds, and then slow-selling them to make Trump squirm once he imposed the broad-brush tariffs to spook the T-bill market.

    The theory sounds mostly plausible in that Carney was in Europe for closed door meetings with European leaders shortly after being designated PM, and that Trump backed off so quickly and used the language of “the bond market is tricky” to justify the change in direction. Dropping demand for T-bills leads the Fed to increase yields to keep the borrowing taps on, means expensive borrowing for them, means no money for tax cuts for billionaires.

    On the other hand, the story originates from a twice-fired shock-jock’s Substack.

    But it sounds like something a wicked smart Harvard/Oxford educated economist would dream up and pull off…

    ¯\(ツ)






  • First, good job on not having a smart TV. They’re truly awful.

    I would de-emphasize the actual resolution benefits of 4K. Most of us don’t sit close enough to notice the difference.

    For me, it’s about high dynamic range (HDR).

    For example, when I was a kid, I was always annoyed by how the photos I took of what I thought was a gorgeous landscape, and then developed the film (yes, I’m an old) it always looked horribly bland and drab.

    Watching 4K content on a TV for the first time was like looking at the beautiful landscape again. (It actually was - Netflix’s Marco Polo had the most stunning vistas!)


  • Most answers here are missing the benefits of a home Mac running 24/7 if you’re already part of the Apple ecosystem. For example, you can have it sync all your iCloud data (documents, photos, iTunes content) and back them up locally, then elsewhere outside of Apple’s ecosystem. You can also have it act as a local CDN for OS updates, whereby it will cache OS downloads locally so any subsequent updates will be super quick.

    On the downside, I found native Docker on macOS kinda sucked, and just installed Ubuntu on my 2012 Mac Mini (now running Proxmox for funsies), but I have an old iMac to do the caching. You could probably virtualize and get both benefits, and I am considering moving to a new M4 mini for the power savings and sheer speed. That M4 Pro chip has absolutely incredible Geekbench numbers while sipping power.









  • There are multiple versions. I suggest you get these from the official site (free, but donations support the cost of equipment, purchasing film reels, and HDD space) and make sure you have the most recent 4K version. I don’t think you will know with certainty which version you have if you try to get this through other means.

    I get the sense it was a tricky restoration due to the film stock (and film scanning equipment) they had available, which was spread across 16mm, Kodak 35mm, and Fuji 35mm (which had better colour preservation but was incomplete). They explain it much better on their website, but it is an iterative process, and earlier versions might have a different quality.


  • I guess it depends on the piece. Is the movie trying to be entertainment or art?

    Certain kinds of art are definitely “not for me”, yet are entertaining to some. And I still consider the films I find entertaining to be “art”. I wonder if this is a false dichotomy?

    Addendum: I will admit that well written characters and dialog isn’t as easy to come by in Hollywood media. But movies that mainly focus on the writing and are great do exist.

    I find it helpful to not conflate good writing, good characters, and good dialogue. A story does not require dialogue to have its plot be propelled forward, to make us feel what is at stake is important, to make us care deeply about what happens to the characters (e.g. A Quiet Place, Wall-E, for example). Similarly, excellent dialogue simply isn’t possible if the audience doesn’t care about the characters nor the stakes - the words will simply fall flat. It’s all connected, and there is considerably more to writing than dialogue.