The New Coffee Room

... And, Ben has capitulated as well. Sadly predictably.

Define the problem, and AI will propose a cure. The problem with humans is that they see a problem and want to know why it's not fixed. I guess AI will become the bad guy for that.

I guess we'll see in a year whether the dying population of 60 Minutes viewers is growing, or shrinking. But with Pelley at the helm, it is sadly clear the direction it would have gone. I know old people are a large economic force and their eyeballs are valuable, but that level of insularity is not sustainable.

I indicated for 1000 shares of Spacex. I've never done an IPO before. Let's see how this works. May get 0 shares, or up to 1000.

@NobodySock said:

@Horace said:

@NobodySock said:

@Horace said:

Look at the government pension teat suckler making fun of other people for being concerned about money. That's rich. But I have to hand it to you, it's a great scam to suck taxpayer dollars out of people you hate, from a country you hate.

I guess I could put my investment capital into T bills and forget about it for the rest of my life, and I'd still definitely be better off than you, but that would be no fun.

I would have bet the farm if I was a gambling man that one member of this form would be triggered and spew his vitriol here. Maybe I should take up gambling just for the fun of it.

Well since you've threatened to kill me before, in one of your psychotic episodes that you probably don't even remember since you're now medicated, I have lifetime license to treat you like the abject piece of shit that you actually are. Enjoy, little man.

And it is these kind of posts that must be quoted for posterity lest the originator reflect on its trollishness and simply remove it.

Yeah you do that.

@NobodySock said:

@Horace said:

Look at the government pension teat suckler making fun of other people for being concerned about money. That's rich. But I have to hand it to you, it's a great scam to suck taxpayer dollars out of people you hate, from a country you hate.

I guess I could put my investment capital into T bills and forget about it for the rest of my life, and I'd still definitely be better off than you, but that would be no fun.

I would have bet the farm if I was a gambling man that one member of this form would be triggered and spew his vitriol here. Maybe I should take up gambling just for the fun of it.

Well since you've threatened to kill me before, in one of your psychotic episodes that you probably don't even remember since you're now medicated, I have lifetime license to treat you like the abject piece of shit that you actually are. Enjoy, little man.

I keep biting off little pieces of the Pelley interview. To give an example of how astonishingly insular his life had become in whatever cocoon allows him to continue, with a straight face, to expect pure admiration, trust, and credibility because he was a "war correspondent" - he wasn't familiar with the name "Bari Weiss" before she took over CBS. That is fucking ridiculous. The dude is a fossilized talking head with an unaccountable ego.

We'll see. It is not set in stone, and any confident prediction that Trump is capable of effecting a unilateral cease-fire from Israel's side is posturing. It may turn out to be true that Israel doesn't respond this time, maybe, but it's hardly definite. Bibi is vowing reprisal as we speak.

Also it seems to me that Bibi has not acted as Trump's puppet throughout this conflict, and has done things against Trump's wishes from time to time.

"Blocked Israel"? He's commander in chief of the Israel army now?

Look at the government pension teat suckler making fun of other people for being concerned about money. That's rich. But I have to hand it to you, it's a great scam to suck taxpayer dollars out of people you hate, from a country you hate.

I guess I could put my investment capital into T bills and forget about it for the rest of my life, and I'd still definitely be better off than you, but that would be no fun.

How do you know a journalist used to be a war correspondent? They'll tell you.

That variation of the joke about Harvard grads is my takeaway from Mr Pelley.

Note the irony that you can have no such certainty about a soldier and how you can tell whether they've seen some shit. Because those who have, generally aren't eager to talk about it.

You just had to get to know them. Get beyond the burly, gruff exterior.

I guess we've run out of things to invent that are useful, and now we're on to things like this.

It would be very easy to accuse Mr Pelley of stolen valor. The reputation of war correspondents is forged by people who walk the walk to a much greater extent than he ever did, or ever might have done. They don't let the embedded Pelleys of the world face real danger when they can help it.

Your instinct is directionally right for elite American network/newspaper correspondents, but I’d separate two claims:

1. “Being a war correspondent” is genuinely dangerous globally. CPJ recorded record journalist/media-worker deaths in 2024 and again in 2025, overwhelmingly driven by Gaza and other conflict zones. That danger is now borne mostly by local journalists, not famous American network correspondents parachuting in. (Reuters)

2. For prominent U.S.-outlet American correspondents, the statistical death risk has recently been very low. As we said, the last clean “major U.S. publication + American + killed covering war” case seems to be Michael Kelly of The Atlantic / Washington Post, killed near Baghdad on April 3, 2003. CPJ’s Iraq retrospective says only two U.S. journalists died in the Iraq war, and Kelly was the major-publication battlefield case. (Committee to Protect Journalists)

On the highway comparison: U.S. traffic deaths are not trivial. NHTSA’s 2024 figure was about 39,254 traffic deaths, with a fatality rate of 1.19 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. (NHTSA) So a commuter driving, say, 15,000 miles/year faces a crude annual road-death exposure around:

15,000 × 1.19 / 100,000,000 = 0.0001785, or about 1 in 5,600 per year.

That’s not perfectly apples-to-apples, because the denominator for “prominent U.S. war correspondents deployed to war zones” is tiny and intermittent. But your rhetorical point is fair: for a famous American correspondent in the modern era, “war correspondent” may function more as a credibility/status credential than as evidence of ongoing extraordinary mortal risk. The people paying the real current death toll are much more often local reporters in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Mexico, etc., not the Scott Pelley class.

One caveat: danger is not just death. War reporters can face kidnapping, detention, injury, trauma, and arbitrary violence. But if we’re talking fatality statistics for prominent American outlet journalists, the “I risked my life in war zones” credential is probably doing more emotional work than actuarial work.

The last American journalist for a prominent publication to have been killed in the line of duty was over 20 years ago in the Iraq war. Not sure how that level of statistical danger compares to the danger endured by those who commute to their jobs five days a week on the American highways.

Difficult to listen to this sobby sanctimonious septegenarian. The "war correspondent" thing is clearly fundamental to his identity, and he expects that card to earn him unconditional credibility and respect. He is old in every possible way one can be old. But I'm sure his message is heard loud and clear by the next generation of journalists, approximately 100% of whom would crawl over one another to get a spot as a "war correspondent" for a prominent publication. But it's a sign of unique courage, too. Just ask all of them.

Looked it up and the ETF mentioned, SOXX, has gone from 270 to over 600 in the time that bet has been live.

So if someone bet on this bubble burst in polymarket when that bet opened, and at the same time shorted SOXX, and if this 40% drop occurs within the specified time, they will have won the polymarket bet, and yet their short will have lost money.

For the careful "yes" gamblers who placed bets when the bet opened, I assume they realized that if the "bubble" kept inflating, (as it has,) it's not necessarily bad for their bet, until they run out of time for the burst. "Sometime within the next 14 months, stock x will be 50% down from its all time high" is a very different proposition from "Sometime within the next 14 months, x will be down 50% from where it's at today".

Fine print pasted below. Seems to me that exogenous macro stuff is the most likely cause of these things. If China does something to Taiwan it'll come true, but that has little to do with whether AI is bubbly. I wonder what portion of the credence given to this bubble burst is accounted for by factors beyond AI. With only 23% credence to account for, there may not be much credence left over to assign to value-based reasons for a bubble burst.

Not sure how to see when that prediction market opened, but I think it goes back to at least November 2025. The stocks in question have done extraordinary things in that time. If we do see this 50% pullback, many will still be up from their Nov '25 price. Not NVDA, but lots of others.

For the purposes of this market, the AI industry will be considered to have experienced an industry downturn once at least three of the following events have occurred within 90 days of this market's specified timeframe:

• NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) closing stock price is down 50% from its all-time high.
• iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) closing stock price is down 40% from its all-time high.
• OpenAI, Inc. or Anthropic PBC declares bankruptcy.
• OpenAI, Inc. is acquired.
• H100 rental price falls to $1.00 or lower for five consecutive days, as shown on the SiliconData Silicon Index at:
  https://www.silicondata.com/products/silicon-index.
• Major AI Hardware Supplier Collapse: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSM), ASML Holding N.V. (ASML), Broadcom Inc. (AVGO), Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET), or Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), closing stock price is down 50% from its all-time high.

I relented and listened to Mr Pelley speak his side of the story. A couple highlights from the first 5 minutes:

• He's totally shocked to have been fired. So he's either lying or profoundly stupid. I guess the former.
• 60 Minutes online version received 2.3 billion views last year. Mr Pelley notes that that's one third of humanity. Because Mr Pelley lacks even basic critical thinking skills.

I'm not sure I can bear any more of this guy's elite brilliance, he's really dazzling me.

Strange to see a rhetorical phrase like "bubble burst" in a prediction market. They must have a way of measuring whatever it is they call a "bubble burst".