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mjfl

3,898 karma · joined June 17, 2013

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mjfl··on Ancient DNA Shows Stone Age Europeans Voyaged by Sea to Africa
Wasn’t the water level lower back then? How much smaller was the Mediterranean?
mjfl··on DNA evidence says first Americans came from Asia
It is my understanding that they've always been understood to be descendants of the Siberians.
mjfl··on 40% of Britons haven't read a single book in the last 12 months
put the porno book down.
mjfl··on 40% of Britons haven't read a single book in the last 12 months
They should also quantify how many of the books that people are reading are trash fiction and self-help books. Not many people that read are actually reading substantive, educational works.
mjfl··on Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
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mjfl··on Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
The crackdown on Trump supporters after his 2016 election.

https://archive.ph/uJR8h

mjfl··on Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
It's pretty disgusting to demand a domestic crackdown on your political opponents because of the 'threat' posed by an extremist group that you are covertly funding, training, and controlling, which is what happened with Azov.
mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
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mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
This is insanity. You have lost your mind. Europe is covered by a nuclear umbrella and is thus in no danger from Russian invasion.

And you still haven't answered the question, which indicates that you don't see any Ukrainian path to victory - rather your intention is to throw all of Ukraine into the meat grinder in order to make yourself slightly safer from a completely hypothetical Russian invasion, which is profoundly unethical.

mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
Ukraine needs to rebuild its army too, and would benefit more relative to Russia from a ceasefire, even if Russia reinvaded. You people are so wildly irrational.
mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
That is a false premise. No one is negotiating complete surrender.
mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
What is Ukraine’s path to victory??
mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
what is Ukraine's path to victory and why do you think war is better than peace or even a ceasefire?
mjfl··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
This place has become a real echo chamber lately. I'm seeing radically unexamined opinions stream past like a firehose and can't respond to all of them. But to the anti-peace "pro-Ukranian" people here:

1. Do you see a path to victory? If so, how many Ukranians have will have to die before Crimea is retaken? Conditioned on your answer - do you really care about Ukrainians?

2. Do you really believe that the West stands for the 'rules based international order' while it unconditionally supports the ethnostate of Israel holocausting it's indigenous population inside of a concentration camp?

3. Do you really consider Ukraine to be a democracy given that Zelensky has suspended elections and has repressed his political opposition?

mjfl··on [dead]
"John Bolton, former national security adviser"

Are we so naive that we're listening to this guy now? The forever war guy that wants to bathe the world in blood?

mjfl··on Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion
not my best comment, but I can't delete it now.
mjfl··on Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion
for decades they have been a mouthpiece for the CIA and the deep state. Bezos is clearing house.
mjfl··on Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion
People who oppose these moves like "I don't like when visible billionaires own our news services, I much prefer the invisible ones" bewilder me.
mjfl··on Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts
Wait- do you think the grants have gone away? Do you even know what overhead is?
mjfl··on Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts
I didn’t say it’s a good thing. I think it’s dishonest and manipulative.
mjfl··on U. of Pittsburgh pauses Ph.D. admissions amid research funding uncertainty
As I’ve said in the Penn thread: this is likely a temporary move, intended to be used for rhetoric. Eventually the faculty will complain, because they rely on large pyramids of postdocs and grad students for almost all labor. There’s simply no way to continue the work of university research without a strong supply of grad students. Once this is realized, and the NIH doesn’t bend, then grad admissions will increase again, and admin cuts will start, as they should.
mjfl··on Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts
This is likely a temporary move, intended to be used for rhetoric. Eventually the faculty will complain, because they rely on large pyramids of postdocs and grad students for almost all labor. There’s simply no way to continue the work of university research without a strong supply of grad students. Once this is realized, and the NIH doesn’t bend, then grad admissions will increase again, and admin cuts will start, as they should.
mjfl··on Burning in woman's legs turned out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain
Makes me want to take ivermectin every once in a while.
mjfl··on Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family
how do archaeologists know they burned down their own cities? One would expect the more neutral statement 'Their cities were burned every 50-100 years".
mjfl··on YouTube's New Hue
Now it looks like Tinder.
mjfl··on Resist Authoritarianism by Refusing to Obey in Advance (2017)
Complete nonsense. American media and Israeli media both credited Trump with the ceasefire deal, with the WSJ complaining that "Trump forced Netanyahu to make a deal with the devil" and AIPAC complaining that Trump isn't being blamed more for the action.

- https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-forced-netanyahu-to-make-a...

- https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64825

- https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...

- https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-official-trump-envoy-sway...

mjfl··on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
they ruled that it was plausible enough to pursue the case
mjfl··on Hedge Funds Are Pocketing Much of Their Clients' Gains with 'No Limit' Fees
funds with high 'skin in the game' as in high amounts of manager net worth in the fund, tend to be an exception to what I'm saying.
mjfl··on Hedge Funds Are Pocketing Much of Their Clients' Gains with 'No Limit' Fees
You misunderstood the meaning of what I said. Private equity has existed for a long time, but as an asset class has it had a huge boom for the past 20 years, gaining market share that it never had. This trend has been recognized by several media outlets. This article in Moonfare shows the private equity AUM has roughly tripled in the past 15 years and the number of private equity funds quadrupled between 2012 and 2021 [1]. This article by Citizens Bank documents the exponential rise in the number of companies owned by private equity while public has remained flat [2]. Another article discussing the exponential growth can be found here [3].

I guess I wasn't super clear, but anyone who's worked in the actual industry would have understood what I meant. And the fact that you didn't suggests to me that you don't have a lot of practical experience, or if you do you are stunningly aloof to the workplace discussions of your colleagues.

People who actually work in the industry would also be familiar with the fact that, yes in fact people who run funds with a half trillion under management can be stunningly unsophisticated and simply go with flashy new trends - like private equity! This has been commented on in several industry podcasts.

And again, your reference to academic studies in the financial field which, despite some people like AQR using them in their marketing, most practitioners seriously discount due to the severe problem of selection and survivorship bias, makes me believe you actually don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Actually you've said a lot of absurd things:

> Hedge funds don’t magically take your money any more than Santa Claus takes your money.

Again, people don't generally control what their pension fund invests in.

[1] https://www.moonfare.com/pe-masterclass/private-equity-marke...

[2] https://www.citizensbank.com/corporate-finance/insights/priv...

[3] https://www.dakota.com/resources/blog/private-markets-on-the...

mjfl··on Hedge Funds Are Pocketing Much of Their Clients' Gains with 'No Limit' Fees
I would argue the CalPERs does not know the return of its private equity investments because private equity is a recent phenomenon and one that locks up funds for 4-7 years, and I would predict that its realized returns will be disappointing. The financial literature is a crapshoot filled with selection bias that I wouldn't consult for anything. Rather, I will rely on my personal experience which is: private equity is a racket.
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