Stock picking

 

The Yellow Menace

 
The Chinese startup DeepSeek has launched an Artificial Intelligence machine that is much cheaper faster and better than the American competitors. NVidia fell 17% to this hour and the American 500 billion budget to advance the technology just received a hard beating. If other industries are a precedent, and they are, Chinese manufacturers will erase American industry. 

The Japanese auto industry outcompeted American manufacturers like Ford, Chevrolet, and other former giants. Like German and British producers before, the American industrial heartland has been emptied. Japanese industry liquidated the photography and watch industries.  People said they were unstoppable. Yet Japan, while still very powerful, has found its place and is not menacing the world. Now China is following the same process and is trying to erase the American hi-tech, AI industry. At a certain point, it will slow down and integrate into the world.  

Fortune asks: 

• How did China manage to catch up so quickly?
• Is there any hope for the United States to regain a clear lead?

Eric Rauscher writes:

For Nvidia shareholders, today is an opportunity to pick up shares at a discount. The focus shouldn’t be on the next six months but on the next ten years. The demand for computational power will only grow as AI evolves. Models like DeepSeek R1 are merely early milestones in a journey that will require exponential growth in hardware capacity. Those who can see the long game will realize that Nvidia and similar companies aren’t under threat. They are essential pillars of a future dominated by artificial intelligence. Be cool, and don’t panic.

Next day: Nvidia re-gained 7%, up the level two months ago. Somehow NASDAQ stabilized.

We were nothing

 James Barr writes in the Epilogue that "It was the struggle between France and Britain for mastery over the Middle East that led the two countries to carve up the Ottoman Empire with the Sykes-Picot agreement, and it was British dissatisfaction over the outcome of this deal that led them, fatefully, to proclaim their support for Zionist ambitions in the Balfour Declaration."

In other words, Zionism was then an unimportant plaything between two imperialist powers. A hundred years later, we have grown. Our population and economy are larger than middle-sized European countries like Switzerland and Austria, and our military power is far greater. And we are growing fast. 

On a personal level, I discovered an autobiography of an old love. I am absent from it, and that hurts but is entirely justified. We met after a year in Bauchi, when I was in bad shape. There I got malaria and other bad infections, I drank Methylated alcohol that almost killed me, and the company never paid me so I just took a bus to Lagos and returned to Buenos Aires. There I was without money and a job. Friends were disappearing - that was the time of the Argentine military terror. I tried to move to Venezuela, which was booming, but so many Argentines were trying to escape that the Consulate's door was closed. I took a plane to New York and then to Tel Aviv. She married a German guy and is happy. 

Coming Famine in South Africa

 Pic. The Anglo-Boer War Women’s  Monument opened in 1913, commemorates the 26370 Boer women and children who died in the concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

The monument commemorates the Burgers killed during the war and draws out the emotions experienced by departing Commando, the pain of a child dying in his mother's arms, and the losses inflicted on civilians and combatants. 

This morning, I drank a strong coffee and felt so sleepy that I had to return to bed. I had a vivid dream that I was in a group with Boers, and we were discussing today's Expropriation Law with nil compensation. South Africa is following Rhodesia's disastrous example, and soon, there would be no food in the republic because the Zulu were no farmers. I dream very little, but this was strong. 

Untold Crimes

 
Joe Biden, on his last day in office, forgave Anthony Fauci retroactively, starting ten years ago. What was his crime?

The USA disaffiliates from the WHO. Why? It has something to do with the last COVID epidemic. 

I know nothing.

Fauci, who has never been charged with a crime, served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years, including during the emergency phase of the Covid pandemic. Evidence suggests the Wuhan lab was working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans — what is known as "gain-of-function". Fauci financed the research. 

Bad Feeling

Tomorrow at 0800 will take place the exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hamas. The details of the agreement were not published, but many of the hostages are not alive and we are paying for them living terrorists. I expect that the population will receive a deep shock tomorrow. I am already depressed. I have reached the chapter on "Palestine" in the A line in the sand book and had to stop reading. The previous chapter is also depressing: In 1944, De Gaulle sent 800 Senegalese colonial soldiers to Beirut and they practically demolished it. The Lehi (the Stern Gang in the book) killed Lord Moyne. 

Itzhak Shamir (pic) explained: 

Lord Moyne was the highest British official in the Middle East …. and because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target. This was the main reason for his assassination.

El Varon de Rabinal

Pic.: A Maya carved jade plaque from Nebaj in Guatemala depicts a Maya king with a headdress sitting on a throne and paying attention to a little person to the left of the scene, who is shown with crossed arms, the sign of greeting and respect. The plaque dates from the Late Classic period, c. CE 600-800.

I am reading Rabinal Achi, a song and dance drama about a historical feud between the Rabinal and the Qiche peoples.  El Varon de Quiche destroys Rabinal villages and tries to kidnap their children. After being caught by the Varon of Rabinal, he is judged, asks for a drink and a woman, and then submits to be sacrificed. Justice is done and the conflict is solved. Amazingly for a pre-modern story, it is totally secular, and no god or spirit is mentioned. 

P.S.: It is not amazing. The Spanish conquest destroyed all pre-Christian religious objects. Cardinal Landa, the first Inquisitor of Maya Lands, persecuted and killed many shamans and unbelievers. The Rabinal Achi song and dance presentation was kept secret by the Mayas for two hundred years till the French religious Brasseur arrived and paid for the necessary feathers dresses and masks.