Liberty

Q2 is out: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2020-Q4/press-release-webcast FCF +16% YoY gross margin 68% op. margin 35% capex $5.8bn. Office 365 commercial revs +22% (ex-FX). "Our commercial cloud surpassed $50 billion in annual revenue for the first time this year.” Gaming revenue grew 64% (66% ex-FX)

https://twitter.com/someknew/status/1286016389879218176?s=20 (warning, NSFW language)

https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2020/07/21/advancing-our-approach-1595302085970.html Visa on its digital currency approach (stablecoins, linking with wallets, etc -- "Consumers and businesses are also adopting digital currencies and circulation is growing rapidly, reaching over $10B in May").

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934289 “ HCQ Study Has 'Major Shortcomings' and Is 'Fully Irresponsible'”

I thought Peter Thiel was Hulk Hogan

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632v1.full.pdf

;D

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/cdc-says-us-could-get-coronavirus-under-control-in-one-to-two-months-if-everyone-wears-a-mask.html

Never found it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.06.20147702v1 “ COVID-19 screening strategies that permit the safe re-opening of college campuses”

I think Europe has low single digit positive rates... what a tragedy, how many unnecessary deaths and how much unnecessary economic damage...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-failure-leadership.html

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa923/5868545

“Trump says 'I don't agree' with CDC director's mask message“ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/trump-says-i-dont-agree-with-cdc-directors-mask-message.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/politics/white-house-cdc-house-testimony-schools/index.html “ White House blocks CDC from testifying on reopening schools next week” I’m sure they only had good things to say, but the public doesn’t need to know what the CDC thinks about this... Jared has got it under control.

I think you're misreading the situation. I think Trump's problems are self-inflicted. If he was a little smart and a little competent and had a little empathy, and was surrounded by people like that too, he'd have done what almost every single country has done and this crisis would've boosted his popularity and been a clear re-election calling card, as most successfully met challenges are for presidents (9/11 for Bush, for example). I protected you, this really bad thing happened and I dealt with it well, you can trust me to have your back for 4 more years, etc. Instead, it revealed him without a shadow of a doubt to be an incompetent bullshit artist who has no idea how to do the actual job, and polls reflect that. As for the market, it's always going to do what it's going to do. People think it should work in lockstep with the underlying economy, but if you look at the facts, it rarely does, too many factors and reflexive feedback mechanisms. If it did, it would be a lot easier to predict, because the economy moves a lot slower than the market.. While this is true, contrary to the beloved narrative some here like to peddle, I really could care less about whether Trump handled things in a way that best suited his political ambitions. In fact, theres probably a greater source of truth to the argument that without some degree of mismanagement, we wouldn't have the stimulus and rate policies that are making certain long and short term investments available and extremely compelling, not to mention predictable, right now. Short term, you have capital markets completely open at outrageous rates to companies just recently believed to be on the brink of "extinction"...longer term, you have guaranteed low rates and a put option of a party change which has already committed to an outrageous level of money printing, and yet inflation protected assets in irreplaceable locations trading at historic spreads against treasuries.... Yeah, I was more worried about the unnecessary human suffering and deaths and out-of-control epidemic than the market here...

I think you're misreading the situation. I think Trump's problems are self-inflicted. If he was a little smart and a little competent and had a little empathy, and was surrounded by people like that too, he'd have done what almost every single country has done and this crisis would've boosted his popularity and been a clear re-election calling card, as most successfully met challenges are for presidents (9/11 for Bush, for example). I protected you, this really bad thing happened and I dealt with it well, you can trust me to have your back for 4 more years, etc. Instead, it revealed him without a shadow of a doubt to be an incompetent bullshit artist who has no idea how to do the actual job, and polls reflect that. As for the market, it's always going to do what it's going to do. People think it should work in lockstep with the underlying economy, but if you look at the facts, it rarely does, too many factors and reflexive feedback mechanisms. If it did, it would be a lot easier to predict, because the economy moves a lot slower than the market..

What's the difference between an introverted and an extroverted engineer? An introverted engineer looks at his shoes when he's talking to you, an extroverted engineer looks at your shoes when he's talking to you.

https://english.elpais.com/science_tech/2020-07-17/over-half-of-coronavirus-hospital-patients-in-spain-have-developed-neurological-problems-studies-show.html

New documentary on Claude Shannon just came out on Prime Video: Looking forward to this!

New documentary on Claude Shannon just came out on Prime Video: Looking forward to this!

Do these countries have an out-of-control outbreak with almost 80k new positive tests a day (at very high positive percentage of tests, meaning there's a lot that are going untested)? You don't get to have other countries' outcomes without doing what they did to get these outcomes. Lots of adults work in schools, and even for kids, "low risk" doesn't mean "no risk" for them, or "no risk" to pass it on to their families... The preliminary data seen in some places could still be reversed as more time passes and more evidence is gathered, and just yesterday Fauci was warning young people that they're spreading the virus. Not only that, but the goal here is to get kids in schools to get more parents out in the world, and I'm not sure that's the best thing to do when you're breaking infection records daily and there's no plan to deal with the crisis and the feds are MIA. What's a risk worth taking when the virus is very rare in a population, such as in Germany with 300-500 cases/day and a fairly stable curve and measures in place to contain it, isn't worth taking in a country with 70,000-80,000 cases/day and a fast-growing curve, with governors suing cities to keep them from using masks and such. If Trump cared about kids and their educations, he'd have done a good job controlling the virus like everybody else. Now what happened is they told him that the only thing he polled remotely ok on is the economy, and that the economy can't reopen if kids aren't in school. He's not doing it because it's better for kids or the pandemic. And he certainly didn't help the economy by bungling the pandemic response... Seems super-duper-obvious, but I guess it needs to be said..

Meanwhile, the guy the should actually have had running things without constant second guessing and contradicting from the beginning seems like a really good guy:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/zuckerberg-says-hes-been-disappointed-by-trumps-handling-of-covid-19.html