Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
Amazon recently agreed to purchase MGM for over $8 billion, and the reaction has been skeptical. Critics of the deal argue that Amazon overpaid for the MGM catalog, especially in comparison to Disney’s (admittedly brilliant) trio of acquisitions: Star Wars ($4 billion), Marvel ($4 billion), and Pixar ($7 billion). But this is allow hindsight to … Continue reading Why People Don’t Understand Amazon’s MGM Acquisition
Just as Covid-19’s rapid arrival produced confusion, its rapid exit (at least in certain geographies) is producing similar confusion. To reduce this confusion, we should learn how to make decisions based on two different lenses: personal health, and public health. Since I’m most familiar with my own situation, I’ll explain how I’m thinking about these … Continue reading Exiting Covid-19: Personal + Public Health
For anyone who is or wants to be a writer, this advice from Simpsons sage John Swartzwelder is the best advice you’ll ever get: “I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the … Continue reading The Secret To Writing
If you just read news headlines, you would think that despite the development of remarkably effective vaccines, Americans won’t see relief from the pandemic until the end of 2021. That’s just plain wrong. Once again, we’re falling prey to the classic fallacy of treating the future as a simple extrapolation from the recent past. When … Continue reading Covid-19 Will “End” In America By June 1
Watching the WallStreetBets/GameStop saga unfold is like watching a movie like “Lone Survivor” where you already know that the characters are doomed to a tragic death, you just don’t know how it’s going to happen. In many ways, it is all-too apt exclamation point for an era where so many have decided that truth is … Continue reading WallStreetBets, GameStop & devil take the hindmost
One of my pet peeves is that way in which many people can’t seem to grasp the basics of statistics. Every day, I see news reports about the Covid-19 crisis in California, and some try to use these reports to argue that California’s problems prove that Covid-19 lockdowns are a waste of time, and that … Continue reading Lies, Damned Lies, and Covid-19 Statistics
I recently ran across a tweet from my friend Ben Casnocha that quoted conservative thinker Ross Douthat: The “outsider intellectual” archetype who believes conspiracy theories, e.g. stolen elections: “Extremely smart people whose self-identification is bound up in constantly questioning and doubting official forms of knowledge.” https://twitter.com/bencasnocha/status/1337271852717129730 I have a number of very smart friends who … Continue reading Conventional, Contrarian, Conspiracy Theorist
In Part 1, I laid out my analysis of President Donald Trump and the petty nature of his evil. But in recent months, his evil has taken a dangerous and disturbing turn. On September 23, during a White House press briefing, he was asked: “Win, lose, or draw in this election, will you commit here, … Continue reading Voting For Donald Trump’s Re-election is an Evil Act
With the 2020 U.S. Presidential election just days away, I wanted to make my feelings clear. In this post, I’ll discuss the nature of President Donald Trump’s evil, and in my next post, I’ll argue for why every American, whether liberal or conservative, should not vote for him. As many other writers have noted, it … Continue reading Donald Trump and the Pettiness of Evil
Last night, my hometown baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, won the World Series for the first time since 1988. I can still remember the 1988 World Series, which featured Kirk Gibson’s famous walk-off home run in Game 1 (my dad and I started off watching the game at our local Shakey’s pizzeria, and finished … Continue reading What The World Series Can Teach Us About Covid-19