Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Brief History of Doom

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Banner ads on websites don’t normally work on me, but about a week ago, as I was over on ZH, there was an ad for a book called Brief History of Doom which instantly grabbed my attention. Even though I had written a similar book, Panic Prosperity and Progress, you can imagine that any book about financial ruination is going to seize my interest, so I bought it.

I enjoyed the book, and I’d certainly recommend it. I will say that the most enjoyable part of the book for me was the introduction, which ran about the length of a regular chapter. That’s where the author lays out his core arguments. In a nutshell, his main point is that the growth of private debt in a country, particularly when that debt exceeds 150% of GDP, is a reliable (>80%) predictor of financial catastrophe.

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Make Me a Chai, Robot

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I was recently griping to The Director about the fact that I buy a chai from Philz Coffee every weekday morning, but the quality varies from so-so to great. I had taken it upon myself to try to figure out which of the baristas there managed to make the best chai, but I realized that was pointless, since my mobile order was going to get randomly assigned.

He wrote me back with a link to a startup that is making a chai robot. Now this isn’t a C3PO-style humanoid scurrying around delivering chai. Instead, it is a big ol’ box whose innards are wholly devoted to creating a user-defined chai with the precise ingredients and quantities you desire.

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This is War (by Binkius Hippo)

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Well, this is what happens when you think that any kind of war is easy to win and you attack without any kind of plan. Raging dumpster fire.

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Trump was hoping to scam China like one of his subcontractors but didn’t realize that China has the second largest economy (largest by some esoteric economic measures) and enough nuclear weapons to ensure MAD. Instead of backing down like a subcontractor facing bankruptcy and ruin, China said “bring it” and here we are.

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