IPhone X

Posted from my iPhone

Amazing ecosystem built up already.
Voice dialing, GPS, learning languages, e-books.

iPhone

It's official, I finally sold out.

I bought my first Apple product, an iPhone. If I can secure some tether software I'll probably cancel my Verizon broadband card, although I like Verizon far more than AT&T.

San Juan Islands

Failure

I deleted all my personal ads and social networking accounts except for LinkedIn.com.
I dropped my ItsJustLunch subscription, too.
I haven't used my Events&Adventures membership for over 18 months now.

"These are not the droids I want..."

Many, perhaps most, Americans don't believe that a systemic financial failure is possible here. Today the FDIC shut down two more local banks and at current debt & leverage levels, a systemic failure is not only possible but probable. Fannie Mae lost 90% of its value for a reason. The odds are good of a full-blown panic by the end of the year.

Success

In today's email for one of my projects, I'm one of the Senior Technical Architects...

"Today I had the best experience in a Steering team meeting I've
ever, and I mean ever, have had.

I really felt like I saw the light at the end of the tunnel very
clearly today. Wanted to share my experience with all of you."

Batter Up!

And it's Washington Mutual up to bat for the Team Insolvency!

A takedown of WaMu essentially wipes out the FDIC, IndyMac already knocked out about 1/3rd of their reserves. The reality is that the FNM and FRE bailout is probably in the $250-500 billion range and the total possible losses in real estate are in the $5 trillion range, give or take a trillion or two.

We're probably not too far off from a declaration of "national emergency".

It's Started

When Weimar Germany caved in to The Great Depression, its culture shifted towards a denial and conformity which brought Hitler to power. In "The Great Reckoning", James Davidson warns that the United States will likely enter a similar period.

I believe it has begun.

In the past few months, I've been banned from three online boards for sarcastic commentary which was un-exceptional in earlier days. When people lose control of their lives, they often seek control of something else; anything else. The American workplace has been damaged for many years but I'm seeing an acceleration in groupthink and conformity and fewer people mention the emperor's new clothes. Steeped in silent desperation, the under-employed run around with their hair on fire. To not join in their frantic panic is to invite suspicion.

These post-Crash years might be a primer for the future and we may enter a period of pure madness as US culture seeks to maintain popular delusions. History has already judged us.... I never thought I would see such blatant corruption as when the SEC announced its new stock-shorting rules. How do they maintain a pretense of credibility?

That torture was a topic of debate was a signal to The Coherent.

I don't believe that I will live long enough to see the United States recover.

Rollover

In the 1981 movie, Rollover, the movie draws to a close as the Arab nations begin withdrawing all their savings from the United States, precipitating a financial crisis.

Well, friends.
This week we've experienced the rollover moment.

As of today, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are essentially bankrupt, their stocks down 42% and 46% this morning alone, total losses now in the 90% range. I expect that they, along with several other large banks, will effectively be nationalized. This in itself should cause a considerable run on the US dollar.

Stick a fork in the US, baby, because it's done.
Golden, crispy brown.

Burnt Toast

I haven't kept up with the markets for several weeks.
It appears that MBIA, ABK, CFC, WM are essentially bankrupt.
Many regional banks, too.
GM.
Citicorp.

Wow.

There's just too much paper.
95% of Americans don't realize we've been in a gold bull for seven years.
An equal number don't understand what's happening to their "savings" or income.

Wow, this sure looks like the real meltdown. At last. The Federal Reserve has pumped close $500 billion in to prop up the System but it's only slowed the rate of collapse. There's just too much meaningless paper.

I wouldn't be surprised if the current Federal governmment becomes one of the crash casualities. As I said before, I just don't see how the Feds can fix something like this. It's too big. The final credit expansion was just too big.

A Bit Much

My first orgy was... a bit much.

Sex

I should have been having sex like this when I was twenty-five.
My alt.com purity score now down to 64.

And Wells Fargo is a good short candidate.

The Ongoing Meltdown

My prediction from Sept 2007 -

"Food and energy prices will rise faster than inflation while real estate, bonds and durable good prices will trail inflation"

That's been fairly good so far.
Bonds haven't crashed yet like I've expected.

Option ARM resets are now impacting the housing market, with rising defaults for the next several years. There will be no "recovery" in housing for quite some time. Oil at $70/barrel is plentiful but nobody wanted to invest the necessary billions into infrastructure and transportation. New supplies and energy-efficient infrastructure won't impact prices for several years. In many ways, this is a repeat of the 1970s.

Women, American workers and culture remain self-absorbed, mired in political games & feel-good chatter, confident of their intrinsic value in the world. The Empire declines slowly.

I discontinued my ItsJustLunch membership. Lately I've had one date per week while the women were uniformly at one date per month. This tells me there's a serious mismatch in the gender numbers, that there are perhaps 4X more women than men. So even though ItsJustLunch is marginally more affordable for men, they are leaving in large numbers. I suspect that the majority of men probably share my experience, that it's not working particularly well. Just like all other things. I've decided it's just a function of age and expectation. Why would I goof around with women who want marriage but not sex, a liability for me with no corresponding benefit.

Answer?
I wouldn't.
Been there, done that.

I'll hang out with J as long as it lasts.

Plano

I'm going to Plano.
Sigh.

Paranoia II

Wow. The paranoia in women today is rampant. It is truly amazing. I see why men my age stop dating, or dial it to down to lower levels. Recently I realized that I've done the same thing. There just aren't many good women to date, and the percentage of paranoia fruitloops shrieking "rape" is much higher than the percentage of fun dates who don't come with a big price tag.

It sucks but the more I analyze it, the more I conclude that it's an inevitable state of affairs.
There's just nothing to be done about it.

Disruptor

I am a Disruptor, which is somewhat like being an illusionist. I manipulate information and perception. I find high-leverage tipping points and I touch them with information. I'm strongly associated with the 2001 disruption and collapse of a billion-dollar company and I was investigated a time. But I'd sold my stock a year earlier and it's possible that the disruption was for moral, not monetary, reasons.

I'm not motivated by money like most Americans are.

The SLX disruption generated a reputation for an anonymous nobody and I secretly reveled in it. But reputations are like snakes; they twist and squirm and often turn on you. So for a time, I tracked the permutations of rumors and the purposeful distortions. Then I lost interest. A person can only handle so much hostility and my limit is abysmally low.

I don't seek the powerpulls. They find me. They're everywhere, waiting for the right combination of vector and event. I don't truly understand the mechanism of discovery because each situtation, strategy and outcome is different. In 2008, I found a tipping point in Miami. Sometimes the act of NOT touching can cause an Event. So I touched nothing, erasing my footprints as I walked away and one year later an incompetent IT staff was fired. Did I make it happen? More of a metaphorical question than a moral one. But I smiled when I heard the news.

I walk through downtown Seattle, past Westlake Mall, watching the crowd. Perceiving the crowd, the imprint of each personality, each stance, each expression amidst the silent interactions and collisions of an infinite social broadcast. It's rare but welcome when it happens, I become a ghost to the guardrails of cultural reality as I slip in and out of these danger areas.

Each powerpull is a new surprise and my reactions are often just that... reactive and ad hoc. Occasionally, after a point has revealed itself, there is a breathing space for strategy. Sometimes my alter ego presents an architecture, a skyscraper blueprint in fluorescent colors of red, blue and yellow, flashing arrows at critical junctions; the heart of the tipping point.

In 2006 I drove into Seattle for work but got a powerpull. I touched the Poison Temple and it collapsed. I touched the PT girls and they scattered to the wind. And then I touched the goth community, harder, and it fractured. Something is here. Tipping points are manifestations of energy, collection points of unresolved differentials which have built up over time like a ripe earthquake fault. I never create them, that requires far more energy than a single drifter can muster. For two years I've traced trails and reactions. There's too much energy. The tipping point was too strong. Something lives here, in and around the city but I can't find identify it.

Impedence is the key to information. Impedence and capacitance. Political environments encourage tipping points because almost all participants contort themselves to the structure, creating positive feedback paths which build energy with layers of deceit, hyperbole, and extreme self-interest. Energy manifests as capacitance which is held in check by impedence. I used to prefer memetic dynamite for high energy situations so I could work in a levelled playing ground. But invariably the tipping points regrow because they're more a function of personality and history than tactical structure.

I wasn't always a Disruptor. I had a life once. And it sucked. i suppose that it was the first victim and cutomer of my new vocation. I was a troubleshooter. I fixed mechanical devices for years, then I upgraded to electronic fix-its, and then I designed software. Eventually that academic mass of ten years of electronics, chemistry, business and information merged with twenty years of empirical repairs and... I started breaking stuff instead of fixing it.

I started breaking things. Sometimes on purpose but more often by accident. Sometimes xperiments go awry. After all, that is the nature of experiments. They explore the unknown. My current long-term experiments haven't derailed because they're too free-form to fail. Like abstract art, they're designed to become something, but the expectations on that something are so broad as to be invisible.

In one experiment, I appear to be the prey of a female predator. But in reality, she is my protege. Perhaps the two views aren't mutually exclusive. Perhaps they're not required to happen simultaneously. Perhaps it's dangerous to play with predators. And perhaps I am more dangerous with information than with a hunting rifle.