Wilder: The AI Bubble

The latest from John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy & Wise is "What Does A Bubble Look Like?" John discusses why he thinks we are looking at another investment bubble, but one that goes far beyond prior bubbles such as the housing bubble or the dotcom bubble. An excerpt:

    I could go on for another three thousand words about how frothy we are at this moment in time, but this time really is different.  Most of this bubble is built on debt to build things that are impossible to build in promised timelines using resources that aren’t available.  At least when the dotcom bubble burst, we had lots of unused fiber optic cable in the ground and when the housing bubble burst, we had houses left over.

    What happens when a debt bubble bursts that hasn’t built the data centers it promised and evaporates a huge percentage of the venture capital that was sunk into it and all we have left are mountains of Nvidia© chips sitting in warehouses surrounded by confused pimps?

    Well, that’s just another way that A.I. will change the world, I guess.  

 Read the whole thing. 

Israel: Jews Spitting On Christians An "Ancient Jewish Custom"

From France24: "‘Some hide their crosses’: Jerusalem nun attack highlights Israel’s growing anti-Christian problem." The article relates:

    Harani, who heads the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC) – an Israeli NGO that documents anti-Christian incidents and help victims report them to authorities – said there are so many cases now that she and her roughly 100 volunteers are kept busy “24/7”.

    “The most common is spitting,” she said. “But it can also be graffiti on [Christian] signs with crosses on them, vandalism or different forms of harassment.”

    The perpetrators, she said, belong to a very tiny part of Israel’s population of 10 million – “most Jews would never do this” – and mainly identify as ultra-Orthodox, Shas-style Sephardis or nationalist religious Jews.

    “They all wear kippah [traditional Jewish skullcaps]. I’ve not seen one secular Jew misbehave toward Christians.”

    In 2024, her organisation recorded 107 incidents. Last year, the number jumped to 181.

    “There isn’t a month that goes by without at least ten incidents reported,” she said, but noted that in reality, the numbers are likely much higher. This is in part because victims either do not know how to report, or do not want to “make a fuss” over less serious offences like spitting. 

The article tries to minimize the seriousness of the situation by essentially explaining that the Jews doing this are just too stupid and ignorant to know better, but also that it is a Jewish tradition.

Related:  

• "Israel: Spitting on Christians in Jerusalem ‘not criminal’, says Ben Gvir"--Middle East Eye. This October 2023 article notes that Ben Gvir--who was Israel's National Security Minister (and oversees the police) indicated that the Israeli government was not going to prosecute such assaults because it was not illegal. It adds:

    Ben Gvir had previously defended the act of spitting on Christians as “an ancient Jewish custom”. 

    The claim was echoed on Tuesday by Israeli settler Elisha Yered, who is suspected of involvement in the killing of a Palestinian teenager in August. 

    Yered said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom”.      

Also:

    Harassment by Israelis against Christians, including spitting, is not new. However, it has spiked under the new government, which took office late last year and has been described as the most right-wing in the country's history.

    The attacks - committed mostly by ultranationalists or settlers, including soldiers - range from trespassing on churches and spitting on churchgoers to destruction of Christian symbols and vandalising graves, among other acts. 

    Police have reportedly not been taking the attacks seriously, refusing to treat the incidents as part of a trend and downplaying the culprits' motives by saying they are carried out due to "mental illness". 

VIDEO: French SS Units In Vietnam

The aftermath of the Japanese surrender in World War II saw insurgencies pop up in South East Asia to throw off European colonial rule, including in French Indochina. As Mark Felton describes in this video, faced with a shortage of experienced troops, the French turned to using captured and imprisoned French men that had served for the Vichy French government and other collaborators, including a unit apparently made up from French that had been in the Schutzstaffel (SS).  

 VIDEO: "Battalion of the Damned - Waffen-SS Unit Vietnam War"
Mark Felton Productions (12 min.)

VIDEO: When Rifles Don't Penetrate

A good video on why rifles will sometimes have far less penetration than you might think, and some rifles that shouldn't have all that much penetration do. The video is to address why the .30-06 used to shoot Charlie Kirk didn't blow through his spine like someone might expect whose only experience is using full power loads with heavy bullets against deer and elk, but also compares other bullets and other calibers, so it has broader application than just Kirk's assassination.  

VIDEO: "When Rifles Don't Penetrate (And Why)"
TII Armory (13 min.)

Selling Off Access To Public Lands: The Oligarchs Versus The Rest Of Us

From High Country News: "The billionaires’ club at the center of America’s public lands fight."  The basic issue:

    At the end of a dirt road along the northeastern edge of Montana’s Crazy Mountains, a simple sign warns visitors they are now entering private property.   

[snip]

    The road beyond the gate next to Wilson leads into what was, for more than a century, one of two historic public trails into the east side of the Crazies. The U.S. Forest Service relinquished the public’s access to the trail early last year as part of a land swap with the Yellowstone Club — an exclusive mountaintop retreat for the megarich located 100 miles away in Big Sky.  

[snip]

    PERCHED MORE THAN 7,000 FEET above sea level, the Yellowstone Club was built atop former public lands acquired through land exchanges with the U.S. Forest Service in the 1990s. It has since converted more than 15,000 acres outside Big Sky into one of the most exclusive communities on the planet. 

    The club’s membership has included familiar names: celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Tom Brady and Paris Hilton; tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt; and financial elites like Bill Ackman, Warren Buffett and Robert Herjavec. 

    Inside its gates, the Yellowstone Club has an 18-hole golf course, a concert venue, a movie theater, a dedicated fire department, hundreds of luxury homes and nearly 3,000 acres of private ski slopes. Initiation runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and an undeveloped lot inside the gate has sold for as much as $10 million, according to Forbes. 

    CrossHarbor Capital Partners, a Boston-based investment firm, bought the Yellowstone Club out of bankruptcy in 2009. 

    In the 17 years since, the firm has expanded its Montana portfolio — developed through a subsidiary called Lone Mountain Land Company — to become one of the largest luxury-resort footprints in the Rocky Mountains. 

The article mentions that some of the top government officials responsible for overseeing public lands themselves belong to the Club or have other conflicts of interest.  The article continues:

    “The landowners now have access to the public lands in a really exclusive way,” said Cleveland of Wild Montana. She said the exchange gives these landowners “easy access into that country where the public has to hike 20 miles of backcountry trail to get in there” and “opens the door to a much more realistic development scenario.” 

    The most contested piece of the deal was the trail network. Two historic public trails had appeared on Forest Service maps for more than a century. The exchange abandoned the public’s claim to both. 

    In their place, the Yellowstone Club agreed to pay for a new 22-mile trail on mostly public land, at a substantially higher elevation, as part of a 40-mile backcountry loop. 

    “Can you imagine elderly folks and younger folks trying to hike that,” asked Wilson on a visit to the future trailhead. “It’s not hiker friendly at all. Definitely not hunter friendly.”

    He looked up at the nearly vertical wall of shale rock where the trail is slated to start. 

    “It’s ridiculous,” he said.  

    Public lands used to be for the public. Even the National Parks and National Monuments, whatever other limitations were imposed on commercial development, largely remained open for public recreation. But then came the Wilderness Lands. These are the modern day equivalent of the "King's Forest" from feudal times. In theory they are open to the public for recreation, but the prohibitions on roads make them largely inaccessible except to the rich who can afford both the time and money to ride in on horses or fly into a handful of airstrips. 

    But it seems that it has become harder to designate additional wilderness. So what seems to be happening is for a federal agency--for instance, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the Forest Service--to restrict access. 

    In my neck of the woods, I've seen the BLM sell off the land that has the roads to access certain area, leaving an "island" of BLM land surrounded by private land. Great for ranchers and for environmentalists, but not for the public seeking to access the land for recreation. The Forest Service, on the other hand, is simply not maintaining roads and trails and then closing them as being too dangerous. For instance, there is a wonderful hiking and camping area near my area, up past a reservoir, that used to have three main road leading into the area. The most accessible road suffered a landslide some time back and they simply never reopened it. The difficulty of reaching it from the other directions has severely restricted its accessibility. 

    Sometimes the private landowners will also sabotage access. The article mentions private land owners illegally blocking public roads or trails that crossed their land. I too have seen that, with ranchers putting up fences across public roads and trails on land they are leasing from the BLM. They are supposed to leave a means to go through--a gate or area of fence that can be moved--but more and more do not. One area I've enjoyed for hiking has a section of hiking trail that parallels a fence dividing the National Forest from some private land. This past summer, I found a tree that had been cut on the private side of the fence in such a way that it fell on the public side of the fence and lengthwise along the hiking trail blocking a considerable length. Other sections also had trees that had been felled to block or obstruct the trail. 

Related:

• "Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Sues Montana FWP Over Corner Crossing"--Outdoor Life.  That is, crossing into a federal land that is corner locked--where the only way to access the land is crossing at the corner from one piece of public land to the other. 
• "Senator Seeks to Transfer 140,000 Acres of Louisiana’s Only National Forest. Residents Are Furious"--Outdoor Life.  Per the article:

A draft bill attributed to a Louisiana senator’s office seeks to convey roughly 140,000 acres of the Kisatchie National Forest to the local government of Grant Parish in central Louisiana. That represents nearly a quarter, or about 23 percent, of the state’s only National Forest land. 

The excuse for the transfer is to help speed economic development, which sounds suspiciously like making it possible to eventually transfer the land to a developer.

Pakistan Deploys Figher Jets, Troops To Saudi Arabia

From Reuters (via Yahoo): "Exclusive-Pakistan deploys jet squadron, thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia during Iran war." From the article:

    Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a squadron of fighter jets and an air defence system to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defence pact, ramping up military cooperation with Riyadh even ‌as Islamabad serves as the main mediator in the Iran war.

    The deployment, the full scale of which is reported here for ‌the first time, was confirmed by three security officials and two government sources, all of whom described it as a substantial, combat-capable force intended to support Saudi Arabia's military if ​the kingdom comes under further attack. 

Hickok 45 With Thoughts On Carry Guns

The video starts out as a critique of the Glock 43X but is applicable to other smaller carry guns. What Hickok 45 discusses is that the Glock 43X has a slim enough grip that it can be difficult for him to shoot with his large hands (he notes he tends to shoot left with it unless he really concentrates), but is large enough that it is no longer a pocket pistol but falls into the category of something that needs to be carried on the belt. But, he reasons, if a firearm is large enough that it needs to be carried on the belt, he might as well go with something larger and easier to shoot (e.g. a Glock 19 or something of similar size).  

 VIDEO: "Is The Glock 43X An Overrated Carry Option?"
Hickok45 Clips (11 min.)

Famine Coming To Africa

Basically it is because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz according to the video, below. Oil used to produce fuel, particularly diesel, comes through the strait; and South Africa relies on Russian fertilizer that would also come through Iran and thence through the strait to South Africa. As he explains, the input costs of growing this season is too high to justify planting the crops. And since South Africa exports food to much of the rest of Africa, there will be food shortages elsewhere in Africa.  

 VIDEO: "South African farmers won't plant crops this season. Here's why:"
Willem Petzer (8 min.)

Yale Med In Trouble For Racial Discrimination

Townhall reports: "The Justice Department Found Yale Discriminated Against White, Asian Med School Applicants." A couple points from the article:

• The department looked at median grade-point averages and standardized test scores broken down by race, and concluded that “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.”
• The median entrance exam score for admitted Black students at Yale’s medical school last year was 518 and for 517 for Hispanic students, according to the Justice Department. The median score was 524 for both White and Asian students. The highest possible score is 528.
  
  The median grade point average in 2025 for admitted Black students was 3.88 and 3.91 for Hispanic students. For White students, it was 3.97 and for Asians 3.98.     

As the author sums up: "The Left does not care if your doctor harms or kills you, so long as they're diverse enough." 

VIDEO: What's Holding Back The Gun Industry

This video discusses some of the reasons for the lack of innovation in the gun industry. 

    In some ways, I disagree with her premise that there is a lack of innovation because we've seen a lot of development over the past 20 years including: refining the AR system; development of piston systems for the AR; a large number of new cartridges for long range shooting and hunting; the wide adoption of accessory and optic mounting systems on handguns; use of newer materials and incorporation of materials that were formally very expensive like carbon fiber; the revival of lever actions with changes to make them more useful for self-defense; the development of the stack and a half magazine designs making it possible to stuff more rounds into small carry guns; and on and on. 

     On the other hand, I can see where she is coming from: the dominant rifle and handgun designs are the Glock (or other polymer striker fired pistols) and AR and they haven't really changed all that much in the past decade. Most of the innovation is on the margins, so to speak: refinements to existing designs rather than radical departures. 

    But that is not unprecedented. In 1890 most American hunters would have been armed with a lever action rifle; and most people that had a handgun would use a revolver. In 1930--40 years later--the lever actions and revolvers would be more refined, but the majority of hunters would still be using a lever action rifle; and most pistol owners would still be using revolvers. Even as late as 1980, most people who owned a handgun for defense would have had a revolver, although the bolt-action rifle would have long eclipsed lever action rifles in sales. 

    The only period that saw rapid advancements in both ammunition and the basic designs of weapons was in the latter half of the 19th Century. The primary factors were:

• Changes in ammunition. The world shifted from black powder muzzle loaders to metallic cartridges, with the period ending with the adoption of smokeless powder. 
• New designs made possible by the development of the metallic cartridges. Repeating arms had existed before, but they were expensive and dangerous. The only successful designs were black powder revolvers. But the metallic cartridge allowed for the development of repeating rifles such as the lever action rifle, bolt action rifle, and semi- and fully-automatic rifles and machine guns. Revolvers became more reliable and more refined. The first semi-auto pistols were developed. 
• Manufacturing innovations including mass production and better steels. This made firearms less expensive and inexpensive metallic cartridges possible--the better steels allowed for the higher pressures from smokeless powder. 
• Freedom to innovate. There wasn't the laws and regulations prohibiting individual inventors from making new firearms. So if you were a medical doctor that came up with a design for a system of rapid fire using multiple barrels rotating around an central axis, more power to you. And if your system didn't quite work well, you could tinker with it and come out with new variations, until it finally worked right.  
• The new firearms represented a significant improvement over what gun owners already owned. Meaning that it was worthwhile to replace older firearms with newer models.  

 Today the world looks different:

•  In most ways, the ammunition used today really isn't all that different than that used in 1900. There are improvements in design so we have much more efficient rifle ammunition than 100 years ago but not so much that many (most) people are still using 100 year old cartridge designs and calibers. And this is possible because most of the innovation has come in bullet designs. But none of these require or even allow major changes to the basic design of firearms. 
• Radical design changes are generally few, occur fairly rapidly, and then it becomes a game of refinement. Right now we are mostly in a period of refinement. The basic designs are pretty much optimized. And unless the underlying method of propelling a bullet changes, it is unlikely that we will see revolutionary design changes in personal firearms. 
• There is little freedom to innovate. Too many laws and regulations. Too much capital investment required. Fewer large firearms manufacturers. And too many influencers ready to crap on anything that is innovative. 
• Because the innovation is at the margin, newer products offer only marginal improvements over earlier designs or models. A lever action rifle in the 1880s offered a significant improvement--really in the order of a magnitude of improvement--over a muzzle loading black powder rifle because of magazine capacity, ease of use, and ease of loading and unloading. I would even argue that the AR's rise to popularity is because it offered significant improvements over older rifles--particularly at the same time as improvements in bullet design and manufacturing made it more accurate and capable of taking larger game than would have been believed even a decade earlier. And a flattop over the original AR design with the integrated rear sight and carry handle would represent an improvement just because of it being easier to mount and use an optic. But what improvement does the AR coming out this year give me over one from last year?  

 VIDEO: "Whats Holding Back The Gun Industry"
Boondock Ballistician (13 min.)