Niklas's thoughts

Andreas Cervenka is my favourite economy journalist. He's written books. I've written about his Greedy Sweden. Another one of his books is named 'What does a bank do?' (my translation of the original title in Swedish).

That's actually a great example of Cervenka's greatness. Just like Noam Chomsky, Cervenka is brilliant at simply explaining complex and complicated subjects.

For example, he taught me that if I get a hold of 25 million USD, I can get a license to start my own bank. Once I do that in Sweden, I can start creating my own money.

Yes, you read that correctly.

You can create your own money. And that's not only how banks work in Sweden. The basic scheme is the same all over the world.

But that's not the only way to make money.

Cervenka recently had an article published in Aftonbladet magazine: Är SpaceX peak crazy?. In short, I think most of the article spells two things:

1. How money easily is valued in very illusory ways
2. The coming burst of the AI bubble will make the global financial crisis of 2008 to seem like a case of the sniffles (in some ways)

OK, here come quotes, translated by yours truly:

Friday afternoon, Swedish time, the space company SpaceX makes its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.

It is one of the most hyped listings ever and by far the largest.

In total, SpaceX is selling new shares for 75 billion dollars, 712 billion Swedish kronor. The second largest listing was when Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco went public in 2019. That time, the company raised 29 billion dollars.

Investing in stocks should normally be something that is primarily done with a calculator in hand. But anyone buying shares in SpaceX must, above all, use their imagination.

The price of 135 dollars per share means that SpaceX's market value lands at 1,770 billion dollars (just under 17,000 billion kronor) or almost 95 times last year's revenue.

***

As recently as March 2020, SpaceX was valued at 34 billion dollars. The growth in value since then makes the company's own rockets look like moisture-damaged firecrackers.

It is also a valuation that defies gravity. Recently, AI competitor Alphabet raised a total of 85 billion dollars from investors through a new share issue, a record for a company already on the stock exchange.

Alphabet is valued at around ten times its sales.

***

But then again, selling dreams is also something of Elon Musk's superpower. It has been a long time since the valuation of Tesla, with a market cap of 11,000 billion, was about cars. It is based almost entirely on Elon Musk's promises of robots and self-driving taxis.

***

Even those who do not believe in the visions will be involuntarily drawn into the dream, as SpaceX becomes large enough to end up in the portfolios of all funds and pension managers around the world that track indexes. Millions of people will thereby become shareholders in the company.

***

The question, of course, is what happens next. Just in the last few days, there has been more nervousness around AI stocks. Companies are worrying about the high costs of letting their employees use AI without restrictions. There have also been several studies suggesting that AI investments have not yet generated as much new revenue as expected.

And the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that OpenAI plans to lower its price to compete with Anthropic. Price wars are usually not very good for profitability.

***

Perhaps all the visions will come true and SpaceX will be the starting point for a new era of humanity.

But it could very well turn out that we look back on 2025 and 2026 as a crazy time when many lost their footing. Something to laugh harshly at in hindsight.

“Do you remember the SpaceX prospectus? Elon Musk was going to get a 1,200 billion bonus if he put a million people on Mars”.

#SpaceX #ElonMusk #capitalism #ArtificialIntelligence #AI

Today Olivia Rodrigo's new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so much in love is released. I really like the Olivia Rodrigo/Robert Smith combo.

Robert Smith sings background vocals on the song 'what's wrong with me'.

'drop dead' is the lead single from the new album that's released today. Part of the lyrics:

you know all all the words to 'Just Like Heaven' And I know why he wrote them now that you're standin' right here

It's cute.

The songs on the album are mostly much better than what's heard on Taylor Swift's new album.

#music #MusicTips #OliviaRodrigo #RobertSmith #pop

I just discovered Iskandr's latest single, which consists of the three last singles to be released from their coming album, Sacraal. The band are on Eisenwald, a weird and wondrous record label.

Qobuz calls the single 'alternative & indie'. Record Club call them a black-metal band. The second song on the latest single off the album combines old-school acoustic instruments with reverbed-the-hell-out vocals, goth elements, gloom shit, and...techno?

That's it. The single is great. I'm buying Sacraal.

#music #MusicTips #BlackMetal #techno #experimental #goth #alternative

I just saw Kurt Vile shout-out to Czarface's absolutely brilliant hip-hop album Super What?:

Earlier this year, Vile spoke with The Quietus about the album:

I didn’t know what to expect from this record. I bought it when I was on the road. I listened to it on a ferry on a Discman, leaving the UK, headed to Europe. The music behind it is really good, but then the rest of it is insane and makes me laugh, and it’s just the perfect intro. It just explodes into my headphones and into my brain, and I’ve never been the same. That’s one of my favourite modern tracks as well.

The video is better than the Quietus thing; Vile is obviously deeply into hip-hop and he loves music. By the way, Vile's latest album is really fucking playful and good. He's always creating good music. Go, Kurt Vile!

Czarface is a great collaboration. Imagine hip-hop at its most playful, groovy, and funky, and you're down. Everything Czarface release is truly great, no exaggeration. Everything from the comic-book examples... It's not weird that MF DOOM collaborated with Czarface. I mean, check out this album. It's actually the first posthumous release from MF DOOM after his death.

This album is SO much fun. Darryl from RUN-DMC is in here. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien is here. There's so much to love here. Simple and flash lyrics, references to everything from throwaway riddims like 'dem girls like sugaaaaah' to the laughter at the start of the first track.

I fucking love musicians that don't take themselves too seriously. Make no mistake, this is not sloppy in any sense; this is music by people who know what the hell they're doing and have the chops to take in influences, fun, chaos, chance, and severely addictive rhymes and beats from everywhere.

I fucking love hip-hop and this album is a great example of why everyone should get deeply into this.

This album reminds me of Deltron 3030's eponymous great album...

#music #MusicTips #Czarface #MFDOOM #HipHop

I'm nearly a fifth into The Magic Mountain, which I've written more about in this post. The edition I'm reading is translated by Simon Pare; he keeps a blog that he wrote about his translation work, which he did during 2024. The blog is named A Year on the Magic Mountain.

Here's the start of the book:

Arrival

An ordinary young man was travelling in midsummer from his home town of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Grisons region of Switzerland. He planned to visit for three weeks.

Yet it is a long journey from Hamburg to these mountains-too long a journey, in truth, for such a short stay. It leads through many different regions, uphill and down, descending from the south German plateau to the shores of the Swabian Sea and by ship across its leaping waves, over abysses once thought to be unfathomable.

Here, a journey that has so far proceeded smoothly and directly becomes fragmented. There are stops and disruptions. In a place called Rorschach, on the Swiss side, you once more entrust your progress to the railway, but only as far as Landquart, a small Alpine station where you are obliged to change trains. After standing around for some time in windy and rather unattractive surroundings, you board a narrow-gauge railway, and as the small yet uncommonly powerful locomotive pulls away, so the truly adventurous part of the journey begins, an abrupt and arduous climb that seems to go on for ever. For Landquart station lies at a middling altitude; now, though, the wild and rocky route forges up tenaciously towards the high peaks.

Hans Castorp for that is the young man's name-sat alone in a small, grey-upholstered compartment with his crocodile-skin bag (a gift from his uncle and guardian Consul Tienappel, whom we may as well introduce at this point), his winter coat, which was swaying from a peg, and his tartan blanket-roll. He was sitting with the window wound down, and since the afternoon was cooling fast, this cosseted, delicate boy had turned up the collar of his fashionably loose, silk-lined summer topcoat. On the seat beside him lay a paperbound book entitled Ocean Steamships, which he had dipped into earlier in his journey, but now it lay there ignored, while puffs of steam streaming in from the heavily panting locomotive speckled its cover with particles of soot.

***

Here's a great paragraph that I read this morning. Mind you, a lot of what I've read so far in the book are recollections, fragments, and inner workings that deal with conversations between people at one specific place.

Many ridiculous ideas have been disseminated about the nature of boredom. It is generally believed that interesting and novel ingredients help to 'pass' the time, meaning that they abbreviate it, whereas monotony and emptiness clog and block its course. That is not necessarily accurate. Emptiness and monotony may well stretch for a moment or an hour, leading to 'boredom', but they abbreviate larger magnitudes of time, the largest too, and can even dissolve them into nothing. Conversely, abundant and interesting content is very much capable of abbreviating and enriching an hour and even a day, but when scaled up it lends depth and weight and solidity to the passage of time, and as a result eventful years pass far more slowly than the meagre, empty, and flimsy ones the wind carries before it so that they fly past. What we call boredom is therefore actually more like a pathological, monotony-induced absorption in time; uninterrupted homogeneity shrinks great vistas of time in heart-chilling fashion; if one day is like every other, they are all the same, and the effect of perfect uniformity is that even the longest life would appear very short and be gone in the twinkling of an eye. Growing familiarity causes a dulling or blunting of our sense of time, and if we have the sensation that the years of our youth pass slowly and yet later life proceeds more and more swiftly, rushing past us, then familiarity must be the cause. We know that the addition of adjustments and new habits is the only way to control our lives, freshen up our sense of time, and bring about a rejuvenation, intensification, and deceleration of our experience of it-and with it a regeneration of our whole sense of being alive. That explains why we seek a change of scene and a change of air, why we go to the seaside and crave the relaxing effect of variety and the episodic. The first days in a new place have a youthful feel, a sense of force and breadth-we are talking about a period of between three and eight days. Then, as we 'settle in', there is a gradual and perceptible shortening: anyone who clings on to life-or, rather, would like to cling on to life-may become grimly aware of how the days begin to lose their density and race past again; the last week of four, say, is eerily fast-moving and brief. Admittedly, the refreshment of our sense of time continues beyond the interlude and, when we have returned to normal, asserts itself once more: the first days at home after the change once more have a newly spacious and youthful feel, but this ceases after a few days because we adapt faster to the rule than to the exception, and if our sense of time has been dulled by age or-a mark of an innate lack of life force-was not very highly developed in the first place, it very quickly fades and after only twenty-four hours it is as if we had never been away, as if our trip were the dream of a single night.

#book #reading #ThomasMann

It's interesting to read about Stefan Zweig. He deeply influenced Wes Anderson as the later wrote The Grand Budapest Hotel-

I thought about the film as I started reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I found the book when I read Sarah Bakewell's additions to the recent 100 best novels of all time list that The Guardian collated. The list was gathered by results from asking critics and authors of their best novels. This past weekend, the Guardian released the 100 best novels all-time list as gathered by readers. The Magic Mountain is #42 on the author list, #50 on the reader list.

The book sucked me in even when I felt guarded against just that. Fuck me. So far I've read 14%. Mann's greatness is obvious even just ten pages into the book. The book seems to often be described as 'philosophical'. There are plenty of philosophical concepts in the book, but those are in the eyes of the beholder; Mann simply holds up a mirror to the human.

About Sweden, I've read about how Swedish 'christian democrat' Alice Theodorescu Måwe has accepted around 100,000 USD as a 'side income' which she failed to report. Lobbyists are going to lobby. In other Tidö-party-related news, the extremist right-wing xenophobic, homophobic, and anti-pedophile party Sverigedemokraterna had a government representative leave the party due to child-pornography charges. Don't get me wrong: sexual disorder doesn't care about political-party affiliations. It's just astonishing to see how Sverigedemokraterna treat their own once they've done something 'wrong'; see how William Petzäll was driven to his death.

Swedish TV have a humour show on. A guest star in an episode is Nick Alinia, a conspiracy-theorist nazi sympathiser. Nice. Contestants have chosen to leave the show.

This weekend, I learned that the CIA used 'vampires' to fight communism in the Philippines. They've done worse, apart from some things.

I really like Spatial, No Problem. by Mouse on Mars and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Of course, Perry is dead, but he recorded so much with so many people that I think and hope it will take decades until the well runs dry. The album is wondrous. I love the playful lyrics, not least the ones made with Bob Marley and the ones against Chris “Vampire” Blackwell.

Gary Marcus has written an article named Slop, productivity and why the AI-fueled world is going nowhere mighty fast. Even the graphs say a lot.

If you need more fresh reasons to hate big AI companies, read Ed Zitron's article The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble 3.0.

#EdZitron #ArtificialIntelligence #books #reading #Sweden #politics #sverigedemokraterna #kristdemokraterna #lobbying #music #MusicTips

Today Swedish krautrock-meets-psych-rock band Les Big Byrd release their new album, Ruin Everything.

This track may be my favourite on the album.

On the other hand, the title track is also pretty dope.

#music #MusicTips #LesBigByrd #psych

Mastodon recently published a blog post, Europe's New Tech Strategy Puts Open Source Front and Centre, a decree that says Europe should care about open-source code:

The European Commission has just released a major strategy on technological sovereignty, and it’s placing open source software squarely in the spotlight. The message is clear: open source is key to true digital independence.

A recent article posted by Swedish state-owned SVT Nyheter says this (translated from Swedish by yours truly):

American tech giants claim their cloud services are securely encrypted.

But according to an internal report circulating among Swedish security agencies, this is a “false sense of security.”

In the background are US laws that can compel Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to hand over data.

American tech giants dominate the cloud services market. They themselves claim that US authorities cannot access their clouds—despite their headquarters being located in the USA.

[...]

However, this is a claim that the Swedish Armed Forces debunk in their new cloud strategy. They point out that American companies have a “far-reaching obligation to hand over information to US authorities” due to two US legislative packages: FISA and the Cloud Act. The strategy also establishes that the location of the provider's headquarters is “decisive” for which legislation applies.

An internal report circulating among security agencies, which SVT has reviewed, goes even further. It concludes that cloud providers, through their control over the infrastructure, in practice have the technical capability to access data in plaintext.

The Military Intelligence and Security Service (Must) confirms the concerns regarding US cloud services:

— It is clear that we must consider what the legislation implies. If it means a provider could be forced to shut down, access, or share information that belongs to us, then it is obviously concerning, says Must chief Thomas Nilsson.

I can't remember when I heard it, but I remember when Condoleezza Rice said if there's a way for U. S. companies to gain leverage over non-U. S. companies, the government will help out. Regardless if that's true or not, FISA and the Cloud Act should be enough.

France have developed their own meet software.

The German state Schleswig-Holstein has cut their ties with Microsoft:

• LibreOffice is replacing Microsoft Word and Excel
• Open-Xchange is taking over Outlook for email and calendars
• Plans are underway to replace Windows with the Linux operating system

Also, from the same article about Schleswig-Holstein:

Are other governments also ditching Microsoft tools?

Absolutely—and not just in Germany. This move from Schleswig-Holstein is part of a growing global trend:

• France’s gendarmerie (about 100,000 personnel) has been using Linux for years.
  
• India’s Defence Ministry introduced its own operating system, Maya OS, in 2023.
  
• Local governments in Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark are reportedly exploring similar options.
  
• The EU’s Interoperable Europe Act, passed last year, actively encourages open-source software use across public bodies.

Aah. Feels good to not be shackled. I've written about my own why-Linux-is-better-than-Windows thing.

#OpenSource #code #freedom #FOSS

I read an article named Qobuz Is Suddenly One of the Fastest-Growing Streaming Music Platforms. But Why, You Ask?. From the article:

Amidst seemingly endless price hikes and controversies over at the market leader, listeners (and artists) are quietly seeking alternatives. Curiously, Qobuz Managing Director of North America and Northern Europe, Dan Mackta, notes that a surprising number of Spotify users ditched their accounts right after their year-end ‘Wrapped’ campaigns were revealed.

It's not unexpected. People hate Spotify for many, many good reasons, like how they're not only using AI to ditch record labels, how they're actively lobbying against songwriter payouts, how their CEO (Daniel Ek) uses his personal extreme-amount wealth to buy AI warfare bullshit, et cetera.

After extreme backlash, Spotify say they're going to label AI music; I'm not sure what they think 'AI music' is, but rest assured they'll try to fuck over the consumer. Don't forget what Liz Pelly wrote about Spotify; her book is excellent, buy it.

I've written about Qobuz before. I use Qobuz, both for streaming and buying music. From my own garden article:

They are, as far as I know, the only music-streaming and music-purchase platform that openly publish how much they pay per stream.

In terms of average revenue per user (ARPU), Qobuz generated average revenue of  US$121.13 per year, where the market average is US$22.38 per year. This means that Qobuz generates on average five times more revenue per user than the market average, which results in a significant impact on artists' remuneration.

From the article I mentioned at the top:

Without naming names, Qobuz told us their per-stream payouts are ‘four times higher than the nearest competitor.’ According to DMN’s stats, that’s also approximately six times Spotify’s per-stream payouts, a company that, incidentally, entirely downplays the use of per-stream royalty measurements.

Yeah. Buy your music, stream it from a provider that's got good-quality stuff and, most importantly, pay the makers a good amount of money.

Most surveys, over time, show that humans value music the most out of any art form. Consider ancient Greece: philosophers, musicians, writers, etc. were treated very well, because they made what people loved; sure, ancient Greece also thought that keeping slaves was a good idea—Daniel Ek surely loved that part about ancient Greece!—but treasuring what made people happy and didn't hurt animals and the planet was and is good.

#music #MusicStreaming #MusicBusiness #BrokenRecord

Here's a book: Wild at Heart.

Yes, it's the book on which David Lynch based his film.

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern in Wild at Heart, the film, as Sailor and Lula, respectively.

The book is much more than the film; they complement each other. I've read half of the book; it's a very quick read. The language is swift, simple, without darlings. Although, I must confess, there's so much heat from the book in the form of attraction, humour, The Inevitable (à la God)...it's great, so far.

Here are some quotes from the book, and may people buy shitloads of books off Barry Gifford, the wonderful author, because he deserves all the best.

The world is really wild at heart and weird on top, Lula thought. Anyway, Sailor was out now and he was still the best kisser she’d ever known, and what Mrs. Marietta Pace Fortune didn’t find out about wasn’t about to hurt her, was it?

***

“My daddy was livin’ with his mama when he died,” said Sailor.

“Did you know that?” Lula shook her head.

“I surely did not,” she said.

“What were the circumstances?”

“He was broke, as usual,” Sailor said. “My mama was already dead by then from the lung cancer.”

“What brand did she smoke?” asked Lula.

“Camels. Same as me.”

***

“I’d stand by you, Sailor,” Lula said. “If you were an embezzler.”

“Hell, peanut,” Sailor said, “you stuck with me after I’d planted Bob Ray Lemon. A man can’t ask for more than that.”

Lula pulled Sailor over to her and kissed him soft on the mouth.

“You move me, Sailor, you really do,” she said. “You mark me the deepest.”

Sailor pulled down the sheet, exposing Lula’s breasts.

“You’re perfect for me, too,” he said.

***

“Sailor?”

“Honey?”

“Ever imagine what it'd be like to get eaten alive by a wild beast?”

“Mean a tiger?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I think it'd be the biggest thrill?”

Sailor laughed. “It better be, darlin', 'cause it'd be the last.”

“Ripped apart by a gorilla, maybe,” said Lula.

“How about bein' squeezed to death by a python?”

Lula shook her head. “I don't think so. That might be way too slow? And you'd feel your ribs crackin' and insides oozin' out. I'd rather get grabbed sudden and pulled apart quick by a real powerful animal.”

“Lula, sometimes I gotta admit you come up with some weird thoughts.”

“Anythin' interestin' in the world come out of somebody's weird thoughts, Sailor. Couldn't have been no simple soul dreamed up voodoo, for an instance.”

“Voodoo?”

“Sure. How else you explain stickin' pins in dolls to make a person squirm or have a heart attack? Or cookin' someone's fingernail clippin's to make 'em vomit till they ain't got nothin' left inside and drop dead. You tell me, Sailor, who could come up with shit like that ain't super weird?”

“You got me, peanut.”

“You certain?”

“I ain't never met anyone come close to you, sugar.”

Lula rolled over on top of Sailor.

“Take a bite of Lula,” she said.

#book #reading #BarryGifford