capital P, lowercase L

stock picks and more

Stocks

LQDA worked. You can sell it. Don’t say Shkreli never did nothin’ for ya. I’m sure the company will go on to great things, but you know how we do things around here.

NTLA is my next stock pick. It’s the only public ‘CRISPR company’ worth anything (so far as I know!). The point of technology is to apply it and execute. Intellia has done that as it looks like they have cured (I use that word very, very carefully) two liver-oriented diseases using CRISPR. Surprisingly, the trick was the same LNP that encapsulates the COVID vaccines we’ve all taken. I’ll put out some full due diligence later, but I think it is an “easy double”. Sticking my neck out is fun!

Software

I have so much to say on software, my new passion. I’ve been working on the state management problem with OpenAI’s API, which I assume will extend to any LLM that I train.

Next, I’m trying to envision what a post-React front-end/UI world looks like. We started a “React company” seven years ago when React had a few percentage points of the advanced front ends out there (mostly from Facebook products). Today, it dominates. Still, we have to move to where the puck will be. I’m not thinking frameworks (Svelte, etc.) but entire paradigm shifts. The hard thing about predicting the future is that it is very hard. The easier thing to do is watch very closely and jump on the bandwagons you like.

I’ve been spending most of my time on financial programming and Godel, my new financial terminal. This is still in beta, and you can request access here:

https://forms.gle/aTexJcdcuZY2eEZf8

Sam Bankman, Criminal Justice

I purchased www.USvSBF.com and will be making a mirror docket so you don’t have to get a PACER account. Maybe I’ll add some commentary since some seem to enjoy that. I think Sam is in big trouble. I wouldn’t underestimate the ability to impeach Ms. Ellison on cross examination, though. I don’t see him getting around his other colleagues. The issue is, surviving a cross-examination is quite hard, and I don’t know if these FTXers can handle the heat.

The reality is, virtually no one wins a criminal trial. This isn’t because no one is innocent. The sad truth is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has been the wink-and-nod charade government and its functionary news media parrots. When there is a 99% conviction rate, “innocent until proven guilty” is perfunctory and guaranteed to be ephemeral. Why? The reality is the public still trusts law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement. Why? The actual trial system requires the government to “go first”: lay out their case as to why the soon-to-be-convicted (why even use ‘defendant’?) will soon be in prison. The jury anchors to this baseline. They hear it for however long the ‘case in chief’ takes. By the time to defense gets a shot at demonstrating evidence of innocence, the half-asleep jurors have made up their mind.

This is just one of dozens of implicit biases that occur in court. I’m still delighted I was acquitted of five of eight of my own criminal counts. This seemed odd to some. I was overjoyed, and quite frankly, it restored a tiny bit of my generally crushed faith in the criminal justice system that one can win at all, even if partially.

There is limited interest in reforming criminal justice because it does not affect many people. Even when it does, there is limited appetite to ‘root for the bad guy’. One day, though, you may be the ‘bad guy’. I pray you enjoy it as much as I did. Most don’t.

Personal

I’ve been watching The Three-Body Problem on Tencent. This was my favorite fiction book in prison.