Attention, Airlines & Mobile Games

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies.

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films.

A professor at the University of Southern California, home to perhaps the top film program in the country, said that his students remind him of nicotine addicts going through withdrawal during screenings: The longer they go without checking their phone, the more they fidget. Eventually, they give in.

He recently screened the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. At the outset, he told students that even if they ignored parts of the film, they needed to watch the famously essential and prophetic final scene. Even that request proved too much for some of the class. When the scene played, the professor noticed several students were staring at their phones.

Professors at Universities can track whether students watched films on the campus internal streaming platform. Fewer than 50 percent would even start the movies, he said, and only about 20 percent made it to the end. (Recall that these are students who chose to take a film class.)

After watching movies distractedly, if they watch them at all, students unsurprisingly can’t answer basic questions about what they saw. When a film professor at UW Madison asks what happens at the end of a film, more than half of the class picks one of the wrong options.

The professors I spoke with didn’t blame students for their shortcomings; they focused instead on how media diets have changed. From 1997 to 2014, screen time for children under age 2 doubled. And the screen in question, once a television, is now more likely to be a tablet or a smartphone. Students arriving in college today have no memory of a world before the infinite scroll. As teenagers, they spent nearly five hours a day on social media, with much of that time used for flicking from one short-form video to the next. An analysis of people’s attention while working on a computer found that they now switch between tabs or apps every 47 seconds.

A film and media-studies professor at Johns Hopkins, usually begins his course with an icebreaker: “What’s a movie you watched recently?” In the past few years, some students have struggled to name any film. A performing- and media-arts professor at Cornell University, has noticed a similar trend. Some of her students arrive having seen only Disney movies.

Of course, young people haven’t given up on movies altogether. But the feature films that they do watch now tend to be engineered to cater to their attentional deficit. In a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Matt Damon, the star of many movies that college students may not have seen, said that Netflix has started encouraging filmmakers to put action sequences in the first five minutes of a film to get viewers hooked. And just because young people are streaming movies, it doesn’t mean they’re paying attention. When they sit down to watch, many are browsing social media on a second screen. Netflix has accordingly advised directors to have characters repeat the plot three or four times so that multitasking audiences can keep up with what’s happening.

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We rank nine major U.S. airlines on seven equally weighted operations metrics:

on-time arrivals
flight cancellations
delays of 45 minutes or more
baggage handling
tarmac delays
involuntary bumping
passenger submissions (which are mostly complaints)

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To keep people splurging in mobile games on your phone like the Custom Street Racing, FarmVille and Words With Friends franchises, their publisher, Zynga, uses a secretive V.I.P. program that treats players like royalty. It is a tactic borrowed from casinos, which may offer a free meal or show tickets when they notice a player is losing more than usual on a slot machine.

Retaining big spenders is essential in the competitive world of mobile gaming, where roughly 90 percent of revenue can come from less than 5 percent of the player base.

The typical V.I.P. gamer is a retired or semiretired professional drawn in by the chance to meet new people online. The continuous stream of updates and seasonal features in mobile games can also create a feeling of purpose and productivity. They can choose to spend their surplus income on golf memberships or they can play FarmVille with their newfound friends in Australia for the weekend.

Players who pour hundreds or thousands of dollars into a game are known as whales, a term borrowed from the gambling world that many people in the industry avoid.

Preventing burnout was a key goal when casinos introduced V.I.P. programs. Harrah’s influential program, which began in 1997, used a digital tracking tool to detect when someone was losing more often than a slot machine’s predetermined odds. To stop players from forming a negative memory that might dissuade them from coming back, an alert would instruct a casino floor attendant to approach them with a reward.

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For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other.

Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by cancer cells seems to infiltrate the brain, where it helps to break apart clumps of misfolded proteins that are often associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The study was 15 years in the making and could help researchers to design drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease.

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Colon cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. for those under 50. Medical groups have lowered the recommended age for colonoscopies that can detect the disease while there are good odds for effective treatment.

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The Zone Of Scarcity & Global Developments

Vikram Mansharamani published his global developments to watch from 2026 to 2031. These were a few that I found interesting:

Bio-fabrication technologies advance rapidly enabling human organs to be printed on demand. A new industry of “body mechanics” emerges and utilizes AI-driven prediction models to pre-emptively replace joints, bones, and organs before they fail. The expected lifespan of a child born in 2030 rises to 151 years.

Advancements in quantum computing lead to a geopolitical crisis as all formerly- secure communications become instantaneously vulnerable. Each breakthrough leads to a bump in gold prices as investors fear the possibility of quantum-enabled theft of cryptocurrency. Cybersecurity re-emerges as an area of top concern for corporate boardrooms, nation states, and individuals.

Deepfake technologies become indistinguishable from real life, leading to mass human confusion and cognitive dissonance. Reality Defender emerges as the world’s hottest company as it secures elections by providing voters assurance of authentic messaging from candidates, thereby saving democracy from being hijacked by technologically-savvy foreign actors.

A boom in next generation nuclear technologies combines with improved hydrocarbon extraction efficiency to keep energy prices contained in the face of exploding demand from technology applications and data centers. As copper emerges as the world’s most strategic resource, the Great Powers shift their focus from the Middle East to the Andean region.

The insatiable consumer appetite for protein continues indefinitely. Restaurants start disclosing the protein content of menu items, and Coke introduces a high-protein soda. Public health deteriorates as Americans’ religious focus on protein leads to elevated consumption of sugars and artificial sweeteners.

The global use of GLP-1 drugs skyrockets as an oral pill becomes readily available and is covered by most health insurance plans or government health offices.

Artificial intelligence generates deflation, leading to structurally rising unemployment and elevated debt levels.

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We are drowning in information and data. So much so that we’re obese in the mind. The same way the human body was not prepared for a world of abundant food, and we thus transformed our cities into feeding zones full of fat people, the human mind is not prepared for a world with infinite content and information. Less than two decades into social media and the world is already full of morbidly obese minds that cannot think or focus, let alone produce anything novel anymore.

Even the best of us are mentally overweight! There are few, if any, original ideas anywhere. Everyone, everywhere is in a constant, social-media induced mimetic trance, mistaking repetition for thought while parroting the same words as those in our little echo chamber.

The only solution is to shut it all out. I’ve come to the realization that selective ignorance on the other hand; I’m talking actual willful, intentional ignorance, is not only blissful, but is a holy virtue.

It’s the kind of ignorance that is deliberately oblivious to what is going on in the world because none of it matters an iota in the grand scheme of one’s life. It’s the kind of noble, savage and ruthless ignorance that doesn’t even waste energy saying: “I don’t care.” It’s just blissfully above to the noise, present only with what matters, here and now.

As the pace of things accelerates and the never ending cycle of hysteria continues, it’s dawned on me that none of it really matters. Sure, individual events may matter to some people, but because of how we’re wired and how the internet and social media have connected us all, the number of events that can (a) happen and also (b) be brought to our attention is infinite.

Which in short means that everything matters all the time. But when everything matters all of the time, then the only reaction for the mind and body is to become numb. In other words, nothing means anything or matters any more. This is not a way to live.

Attention, at the end of the day, is all we really have. It’s finite. It’s super super super finite. We have so little time. We have only so much energy. It’s hard to focus at the best of times, and here we are, on a daily basis, being either:

Distracted by things inside of a phone-size shopfront that most of us will either never have (picture-perfect women, hotels, cars, etc), or
Inflamed by things on that same stupid screen which we have no relationship to or influence over, happening in other parts of the world, thousands of miles away.

The end result of all this stupidity (for 99.9999% of people) is just a LOSS of attention. I’m sure some of you have found inspiration or motivation from these screens (this can happen), but if we’re all being TRULY honest with ourselves here, we can admit the truth: we can be just as inspired by a walk on the beach or a conversation with a loved one too.

When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t remember wtf I saw on Twitter or Instagram from all those endless hours of looking at the screen. But I will remember the time I spent with the people who I truly loved. To find a solution, one must first understand the problem, and the problem is twofold:

Nobody is entirely immune to the siren call of dopamine. These platforms hack your biology in such a way that they hook you. Thus you are not fighting the platform, but your own biology – and this consumes energy. Energy that could be much better spent elsewhere.
Our cups are already full. Those of use who are strong learners have already had our fill, especially if you’ve been online for the last 5 – 10 years. We’re well past the point of diminishing returns. We have all the information we could possibly need to live and lead meaningful lives. Stuffing our minds with more stuff won’t improve anything, and at this point is just a distraction from living in the real world and implementing the things we’ve already learned or know.

The beautiful thing about value is that it always migrates to the zone of greatest scarcity. As a zone attracts more attention (and thus value), it begins to lose scarcity, until it gets saturated, and then one day, the value migrates away to a zone where scarcity prevails. People are starting to realize that being online is quickly becoming uncouth and that they need to run away. But where?

The answer: offline.

Death, Pessimism & Frontier Markets

Contemplating death is the New Year’s resolution to end all resolutions. Why? Because it sharpens our focus, allows us to clarify what truly matters—and to craft our goals and priorities around that—anchors us in the present moment, and deepens our appreciation for all that life has to offer, right here and now.

Remembering that we are going to die goes hand-in-hand with another key realization: we have no way of knowing how much time we have left. We might die in three years, or 38 years, or a few months from now. So, what should we do with the time we have—with our one wild and precious life?

Humans have long known of the power of this practice. We’ve been contemplating death for over 100,000 years, from the earliest archeological burial artifacts to Buddhist maraṇasati, from Stoic philosophy to ancient Egyptian funerary texts.

It’s only in the modern Western world that we began to see this practice as depressing or morbid. We lost our relationship with death, and somewhere along the way, we stopped living fully too.

Here are 11 science-backed benefits of taking the time to think about death:

Cut through your own bullshit – helps you overcome excuses and stop wasting time on what’s not serving you
Clarify your values – less bullshit = more clarity
Motivation to act – gives you permission to stop living on autopilot or within societal expectations and start living in alignment with what actually feels true
Find a deeper purpose – research shows that being reminded of our mortality triggers a psychological drive to seek or restore meaning in life.
Be more present – when you fully accept that everything, and I mean everything, will ultimately be taken from you, the present moment suddenly becomes sacred
Gratitude – like anything else rare and precious, when we remember that life is fleeting, we value it more
Stronger relationships – when you remember that one day, everyone you love will die, and so will you, your relationships change
Empathy and compassion – death is the great equalizer
Unlocks creativity – gives rise to an intense drive to make your own little dent on the universe, to leave something behind to say that you were here.
Keep your ego in check – it’s a reminder that you’re not the center of the universe, the desire to impress starts to dwindle, liberating you from feeling like you need to be the smartest, best, most admired person in the room – instead, you start to show up as a real person: flawed, fleeting, and free
Take more risks – the only thing scarier than dying is never having really lived, so you’re more likely to pursue the life you’ve been dreaming of.

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Interest rates have begun to come down. Inflation has mostly subsided, and the real economy is still doing decently well. So why are American consumers more pessimistic than they were during the depths of the Great Recession or the inflation of the late 1970s?

It’s possible to spin all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses about why consumer sentiment has diverged from its traditional determinants. Perhaps Americans are upset about social issues and politics, and expressing this as dissatisfaction about the economy. Perhaps they’re mad that Trump seems to be trying to hurt the economy. Perhaps they’re scared that AI will take their jobs. And so on.

Here’s another hypothesis: Maybe Americans are down in the dumps because their perception of the “good life” is being warped by TikTok and Instagram.

I’ve been reading for many years about how social media would make Americans unhappier by prompting them to engage in more frequent social comparisons. In the 2010s, as happiness plummeted among young people, the standard story was that Facebook and Instagram were shoving our friends’ happiest moments in our faces — their smiling babies, their beautiful weddings, their exciting vacations — and instilling a sense of envy and inadequacy.

However, note that during the 2010s, consumer confidence was high. Even if people were comparing their babies and vacations and boyfriends, this was not yet causing them to seethe with dissatisfaction over their material lifestyles. But social media today is very different than social media in the 2010s. It’s a lot more like television — young people nowadays spend very little time viewing content posted by their friends. Instead, they’re watching an algorithmic feed of strangers.

There were rich people like that in 1920, or 1960, or 1990. But you almost never saw them. Maybe you could read about them in People magazine or watch a TV show about them. But most people simply didn’t have contact with the super-rich. Now, thanks to social media, they do.

But even more subtle might be the influencers who are merely upper class rather than spectacularly rich. These people aren’t living the lifestyle of a ultra-rich influencer, yet most of what you’re seeing in these photos and videos is economically out of reach for the average American.

These are not obviously rich people — they’re more like the 5% or the 1% than the 0.01%. Their lifestyles are out of reach for most, but not obviously out of reach. Looking at any of their videos, you might unconsciously wonder “Why don’t I live like that?”.

Americans were always shown examples of aspirational lifestyles on TV shows. Yet on some level, Americans might have realized that that was fiction; when you see a lifestyle influencer on TikTok or Instagram, you feel like you’re seeing simple, bare-bones reality.

The rise of social media influencers has scrambled our social reference points. Humans have always compared ourselves to others, but before social media, we compared ourselves to the people around us — our coworkers, friends, family, and neighbors.

Those classic reference points tended to be people who were roughly similar to us in income — maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, but usually not hugely different.

But perhaps even more importantly — we were able to explain the differences we saw. In 1995, if you knew a rich guy who owned a car dealership, you knew how he made his money. If you envied his big house and his nice car, you could tell yourself that he had those things because of hard work, natural ability, willingness to accept risk, and maybe luck. The “luck” part would rankle, but it was only one factor among many. And you knew that if you, too, opened a successful car dealership, you could have all of those same things.

But now consider looking at an upper-class social media influencer. It’s not immediately obvious what they do for work, or how they could afford all those nice things.

Not only can you not explain the wealth you’re seeing on social media, but you probably don’t even think about explaining it. It’s just floating there, delocalized, in front of you — something that other people have that you don’t. Perhaps you make it your reference point by default, unconsciously and automatically.

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Frontier markets represent the world’s least developed investable economies,
offering exposure to countries with young populations and high economic growth
potential, yet smaller, less liquid markets. Over time, the composition of the MSCI
Frontier Markets Index has shifted meaningfully, with Gulf countries like Kuwait and
Qatar having “graduated” to emerging status and Asian and European nations now
taking greater prominence. Frontier markets remain dominated by financial services,
with larger weights to real estate, energy, and materials, reflecting other structural
differences compared with emerging and developed markets.

The MSCI Frontier Markets index is one of the most widely used indices related to
frontier markets. It contains approximately 238 stocks spread across 28 countries.1
The top three countries in the benchmark were Vietnam, Morocco, and Romania,
which collectively accounted for just over 50% of the index.

To better understand how growth expectations within frontier markets compare
with growth across the world, it is helpful to compare their GDP growth rate
expectations to developed and emerging markets.

Despite their strong expected GDP growth rates, frontier markets have not translated
that economic momentum into equivalent corporate earnings performance. Earnings
per share growth has stagnated even as valuations have remained low relative to
developed and emerging markets. This combination presents both opportunities
and risks. Value-oriented investors may find attractive entry points, but persistent
structural inefficiencies and volatility underscore the need for careful analysis.

Frontier markets have historically traded at lower valuations compared to developed
markets and similar-to-lower valuations than emerging markets.

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We compiled a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 and 2016, covering up to 91 countries.

Our main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ex-post returns average more than 6 percent annually across two centuries, including default episodes, major wars, and global crises.

This represents an excess return of 3-4 percent above US or UK government bonds, which is comparable to stocks and outperforms corporate bonds. Central to this finding are the high average coupons offered on external sovereign bonds.

1815 – 2016:

1995 – 2016:

Ovarian Lottery, Money Nothingness & Sports Book Strategies

Money is a required pursuit for life, but a pointless pursuit upon death. If I were to illustrate what this tension looks like for your average person, it would look something like this:

That steep descent to zero is what I call The Nothingness of Money. It’s when the pointlessness of money is no longer theoretical; it’s truly understood. This delineation is important.

Everyone knows that your bank account doesn’t go with you upon death. But for most of life, that knowledge is theoretical, meaning that it’s not real enough to influence your day-to-day behavior. The mere awareness of your mortality isn’t enough to cease your pursuit of wealth.

It is only when the finiteness of life is glaringly obvious that things change. For most people, the Nothingness of Money strikes when the finish line is a few yards away. A terminal diagnosis is delivered. An appointment is made at a hospice center. A deathbed is prepared.

In this moment, a pursuit that once seemed all-consuming fades into the background. All that matters are the memories you have, the people you love, and the memories you can still make with them. The use of your finite time to squeeze out an extra dollar is laughable, as no one with a sound mind would expect that of you.

And finally, in this brief section of life, something profound happens. The Nothingness of Money is truly understood.

Wisdom is the co-existence of contradictory truths, and money is the clearest example of this. We must internalize its importance while also recognizing its pointlessness. We must operate within the story of money while also understanding that it’s a fairy tale. The problem is that we often fail to see the illusory nature of this story, and treat it as gospel until it’s too late.

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Question To Warren Buffett: What would you do to live a happier life if you could live over again?

I have been extraordinarily lucky. I mean, I use this example and I will take a minute or
two because I think it is worth thinking about a little bit. Let’s just assume it was 24
hours before you were born and a genie came to you and he said, “Herb, you look very
promising and I have a big problem. I got to design the world in which you are going to
live in. I have decided it is too tough; you design it. So you have twenty-four hours, you
figure out what the social rules should be, the economic rules and the governmental rules
and you and your kids and their kids will live under those rules.

You say, “I can design anything? There must be a catch?” The genie says there is a
catch. You don’t know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or
female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take
one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the
ovarian lottery. And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because
that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are
born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. What type of
world are you going to design?

I think it is a good way to look at social questions, because not knowing which ball you
are going to get, you are going to want to design a system that is going to provide lots of
goods and services because you want people on balance to live well. And you want it to
produce more and more so your kids live better than you do and your grandchildren live
better than their parents. But you also want a system that does produce lots of goods and
services that does not leave behind a person who accidentally got the wrong ball and is
not well wired for this particular system. I am ideally wired for the system I fell into
here. I came out and got into something that enables me to allocate capital.

If all of us were stranded on a desert island somewhere and we
were never going to get off of it, the most valuable person there would be the one who
could raise the most rice over time. I can say, “I can allocate capital!” You wouldn’t be
very excited about that. So I have been born in the right place.

Bill Gates says that if I had been born three million years ago, I would have been some
animal’s lunch. He says, “You can’t run very fast, you can’t climb trees, you can’t do
anything.” You would just be chewed up the first day. You are lucky; you were born
today. And I am. The question getting back, here is this barrel with 6.5 billion balls,
everybody in the world, if you could put your ball back, and they took out at random a
100 balls and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in?

Now those 100 balls you are going to get out, roughly 5 of them will be American, 95/5.
So if you want to be in this country, you will only have 5 balls, half of them will be
women and half men–I will let you decide how you will vote on that one. Half of them
will be below average in intelligence and half above average in intelligence. Do you want to
put your ball in there? Most of you will not want to put your ball back to get 100. So
what you are saying is: I am in the luckiest one percent of the world right now sitting in
this room–the top one percent of the world. Well, that is the way I feel. I am lucky to be
born where I was because it was 50 to 1 in the United States when I was born. I have
been lucky with parents, lucky with all kinds of things and lucky to be wired in a way
that in a market economy, pays off like crazy for me. It doesn’t pay off as well for
someone who is absolutely as good a citizen as I am (by) leading Boy Scout troops,
teaching Sunday School or whatever, raising fine families, but just doesn’t happen to be
wired in the same way that I am. So I have been extremely lucky so I would like to be
lucky again.

Then the way to do it is to play out the game and do something you enjoy all your life
and be associated with people you like. I only work with people I like. If I could make
$100 million dollars with a guy who causes my stomach to churn, I would say no because
in way that is very much like marrying for money which is probably not a very good idea
in any circumstances, but if you are already rich, it is crazy. I am not going to marry for
money. I would really do almost exactly what I have done except I wouldn’t have bought
the US Air.

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Some highlights from The Economist’s article on sports betting:

Skilled players are “sharps” and given “stake restrictions” if they play too well (bets are capped). The rest of the players are called “squares.” As important as keeping out “sharps” is hooking “whales”, the deep-pocketed players that are willing to keep playing (and losing) large sums. Some “whales” are actually “sharps” in disguise, though. They’ll lose a bunch of bets to lull the sports book then put down a massive bet when they have an edge. While there is a risk of a “whale” being a “sharp”, the value of a real “whale” is so high that sports book will take the risk.

How sports books profile players:

Playing on Mobile is a good sign (where majority of people play)
Playing on PCs is a bad sign (it’s easier to compare odds and run models)
Women bettors are a red flag (most bettors are men and “sharps” often use women to place bets)
First wagers are a major tells (typical bettors go after top leagues — NFL, NBA, EPL — and do so near the start of the game).
Popular bets for “squares”: who will win, scoring margins and how star player will perform (also, they love multi-leg parlays).
“Sharps” go after less popular leagues and place bets as soon as odds are published, when they are most mispriced. They also go after less popular bets such as “pts in Q3” or stats from a random player (“Sharps” rarely do parlays and don’t withdrawal winnings often).
”Sportsbooks look at a player’s ‘closing-line value’ — a measure that compares the odds at which he bets with those available right before a match begins. If it is consistently ahead of the market over his first ten wagers, he is highly likely to beat the book in the long run.”
E-wallets are a red flag (sports books prefer debit direct deposit that can attach a player to a single account; an e-wallet is more anonymous and players can move cash between sports books more quickly to shop for the best odds)

E-wallet users, women and bets over $100 are flagged. These suspicious bettors are given 30% of maximum bet (and proven sharps only allowed 1%).

By the time a customer places his first bet, [sports books] are 80-90% certain they know the lifetime value of the account. Sports book mathematically monitor players and creates a new risk score every 6-8 hours (risk score = estimate of probability that customers will wind up unprofitable).

High-skilled players will often get a “beard” to bet on their behalf. Most sports books ban this practice but it is widespread. Safest “beards” are close friends and relatives because you can mostly rely on them to pay out any winnings. The “beards” try to look like degens (playing at 3:00 am, bet non-stop and doing ridiculous parlays) before placing a winning bet.

The most effective strategy for “sharps” is “whale-flipping”. Find a losing gambler, then ask to put a (likely) large winning bet among their pool of guaranteed losers. Once “sharps” max out the people they can use as “beards”, they tap professional networks called “movers”. These “movers” employ a bunch of “mules” who can put down bets on the behalf of the network. Low-end movers charge 10-20% while high-end movers charge 50% of winnings.

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Two kinds of government tax:

– percentage of your income

– percentage of your mental bandwidth spent thinking about what they’re doing
— Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) April 9, 2025

Loneliness, Purpose & Cash Flow Forecasts

With 23,000 responses to survey questions distributed over more than 4,500 respondents, we found there is a youth loneliness crisis, not just a male loneliness crisis like many believe. Younger people — both male and female — are increasingly paralyzed by anxiety and fear, and they are finding it harder and harder to socialize.

In fact, when you look at the data, the “antisocial crisis” is actually most pronounced among young women, who experience the highest rates of social isolation.

It’s true that young men are facing a loneliness crisis, but it’s part of a broader loneliness crisis that young people are facing in general, and the numbers suggest that young women might actually be hit even harder, even though that story hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention.

Looking at the results from our study on the questions concerning emotional distress the gender split is striking, but it is age, rather than gender, which marks the determining axis once again.

For instance, young men (18 to 29) are more distressed than almost every other demographic, including women 45 to 64 and women over 65. But young women are hit even harder, and they actually have the worst scores among any age-based gender cohort in our entire dataset.

In another axis of our study, social disengagement, young people once again emerged as the age group most likely to feel lonely, isolated, or conversationally stunted with people they don’t know, and there is a striking gap between the “internet generations” (people under 45) and everyone else.

While both young men and young women suffer from a loneliness and socialization crisis, young women actually seem to be hit significantly harder by it. In particular, they seem to find it much harder to make new friends or converse with strangers, especially when it comes to the opposite gender — and they’re much more likely to be introverted and alienated.

The results of this study lined up quite well with the existing research on this topic. A study conducted by Public Opinion Strategies found that young women are the cohort of Americans most likely to feel lonely and left out. And it doesn’t seem to be limited to just America — a study done by the United Kingdom’s Campaign to End Loneliness found that women and young people were two of the cohorts most affected by loneliness.

Young people are spending less and less time socializing with each other. The American Time Use Survey estimated a nearly 50% decline in face-to-face interactions among teenagers over the last two decades.

Time that used to be spent with friends is now spent online. When it comes to the “female loneliness crisis,” I’m not even convinced that most people know it exists. You can find column after column on the male loneliness epidemic. But when it comes to the female loneliness epidemic? Crickets.

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Growing up, I spent every French school holiday in the U.S. with my dad — the more career-driven of my parents (which tracks, since my mom is Belgian and my dad is a pure-bred American from Michigan). So I grew up with both models: French and American.

I don’t think most French people think about purpose the way Americans do. What’s your purpose? What are you building? What are you here for?

They’re good questions. But in France, they’re not humming in the background of every conversation. Most people I know don’t define themselves by what they do for a living. And if they work in a corporate setting, there’s often this quiet trust that things will evolve over time. No need to panic about your life path. Just do your job — and enjoy your life. Work is one part of the equation. So is your social life, your hobbies, your weekends away.

In the U.S., the idea of having purpose is everywhere: in books, on podcasts, in LinkedIn bios, even in casual brunch conversations. There’s this constant pressure to align your job with your passion, your calendar with your goals, your time with your values.

But what if your purpose is simply to build a good life? To raise kind children. To cook a little better each year. To read a few excellent books. To notice the seasons. To build meaningful relationships. Isn’t that what people will remember anyway?

In France, there’s no guilt in doing a job because it pays the bills. Or because it gives you your evenings. You can be excellent at what you do and still have no desire to talk about it over dinner — which is very much the case with my French husband, who bans work talk at the table. At first it felt strange. Now I love it. We talk about where we want to go next weekend. What we’re reading. What to cook.

When I moved back to Paris as an adult, I was struck by how much people here were just… living. They weren’t building personal brands. They weren’t trying to optimize themselves into more perfect versions. They worked, they took real holidays, they cooked, they went to the theater. They had long conversations about everything and nothing. And they rarely used the word productive.

What they value instead is curiosity. Culture. Taste. The art of paying attention. Of being present, not just purposeful. That doesn’t mean people are passive. But the energy is different. Life is more about living well or profiter de la vie.

It took me time to unlearn the habit of measuring everything by what it might lead to. What goal it served. What version of myself it might create. I still have ambition, but I no longer believe every moment needs to be part of some upward trajectory. Some days, it’s enough to spend the weekend with my family — visiting an exhibition, taking the kids to a play.

I don’t know that I’ll ever stop caring about meaning. But I’ve stopped needing to declare it. What I want now is to live with intention, even when there’s no obvious reward. To build a life that’s full, not optimized.

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There’s a strange comfort in believing someone out there knows what the market will do next. Don’t fall for it. People who make predictions on the financial markets for a living are about as accurate as a 50/50 coin toss.

By early spring 2025, when President Trump’s tariff wars started, over half of the forecasters were calling for the market to decline. The below graph shows the level of the S&P 500 at the beginning of the year (orange bar), the actual price level at year end (green bar) and the wide range of estimates published in April (blue bars). If you’d been reading all their research reports, you might have started selling.

Maybe you’re thinking “Fine. Experts may be clueless, but vibes are easy to read.” You know all about employment numbers, and inflation, and the usual talking points from CNBC.

Well, here’s a great chart from JP Morgan Asset Management that begs to differ. It looks at S&P 500 performance after peaks and troughs in the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey. Interestingly, the weakest moments in how people are feeling tend to precede strong equity returns while peaks in sentiment do not see as much upside. Turns out that getting out of the market when things feel bad can be a poor investment strategy.

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The defining feature of every bubble is the same: a growing inconsistency between the long-term returns that investors expect in their heads – based on extrapolation of the past, and the long-term returns that properly relate prices to likely future cash flows – based on valuations.

Each speculative episode encourages a certain stubbornness – because humans are adaptive creatures, we base our expectations for the future on the experience of the recent past. We respond far less to those things that are painful but distant in our memory than to those things that are rewarding in real-time.

This feature of investor behavior – what Galbraith called “the extreme brevity of the financial memory” – is complicated by the crowd psychology that accompanies speculation. Independence of thought requires one “to resist two compelling forces: one, the powerful personal interest that develops in the euphoric belief, and the other, the seemingly superior financial opinion that is brought to bear on behalf of such belief. As long as they are in, they have a strong pecuniary commitment to the belief in the unique personal intelligence that tells them there will be yet more. Speculation buys up, in a very practical way, the intelligence of those involved.”

A related, and I think equally challenging complication is that, in the short run, market prices will be whatever the consensus of the crowd chooses them to be. Nothing that we can measure affects market prices – whether earnings, GDP, employment, interest rates, monetary policy, or any other factor – except through the expectations and risk-preferences in the heads of investors at any moment in time. As the Buddha said, “With our thoughts we create our world.”

A financial “security” is nothing more than a claim on some stream of cash flows that investors expect to be delivered into their hands in the future. For any stream of future cash flows, and some long-term rate of expected return, we can always calculate the “present value” of the cash flows expected at each point in the future. Likewise, once we have a reasonable estimate of likely future cash flows, then the moment we know the market price, it’s just arithmetic to calculate the expected long-term rate of return on the investment.

Over the short-run, however, nothing prevents investors from imagining whatever long-term rate of return they like, and paying whatever price they wish, even if the two are mathematically incompatible with likely future cash flows. Even then, we can make everything compatible by imagining whatever future cash flows we like. Only time imposes any discipline on those choices, and sometimes time is unforgiving.

Over the short run, all that matters is the return in people’s heads. It’s only over time that the cash flows arrive and reliably teach investors that valuations matter. That’s why Ben Graham wrote “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

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Will LLM models run out of data to train on? In its 2025 AI Index Report, Stanford concluded that this is unlikely before 2030. Common Crawl, an open repository of web crawl data frequently used in AI training, is estimated to contain a median of 130 trillion tokens. The indexed web holds approximately 510 trillion tokens, while the entire web contains around 3,100 trillion. Additionally, the total stock of images is estimated at 300 trillion tokens, and video at 1,350 trillion tokens.

Assume that 5 billion people end up using AI by the 2030’s (compared to 6 billion current internet users). Each user consumes about 1.6 mm tokens per day for search, coding assistance, other agents, background
assistants and creative purposes. That would be a LOT of demand vs current levels and assumes a paradigm
shift in how AI is used in daily life. Across all users, that would be 8 quadrillion tokens per day

How much capacity would be needed to handle 8 quadrillion tokens per day? 23 – 92 Gigawatts of active
inference capacity. While there are 125 Gigawatts of data centers around the world, only about 20 Gigawatts are currently estimated to be capable of handling AI workloads.

What is the constraint to grow toward the Gigawatts needed? Energy.

Q1 2026 Global Stock Market Valuations By Country

A higher price to earnings ratio (CAPE) means a country’s stock market is more expensive. A lower number is less expensive.

United States Stock Market: 38
Average of Foreign Developed Stock Markets: 22
Average of Foreign Emerging Stock Markets: 19

The rankings below show the price you are paying for the earnings, dividends, cash flow and book value for the companies within these countries.

*Abbreviations:

CAPE: Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings – a valuation measure that uses real earnings per share (EPS) over a 10-year period to smooth out fluctuations in corporate profits that occur over different periods of a business cycle.

CAPD: Cyclically Adjusted Price Dividends – a valuation measure that uses dividends over a 10-year period to smooth out fluctuations in corporate profits that occur over different periods of a business cycle.

CAPCF: Cyclically Adjusted Price Cash Flow – a valuation measure that uses cash flow over a 10-year period to smooth out fluctuations in corporate profits that occur over different periods of a business cycle.

CAPB: Cyclically Adjusted Price Book – a valuation measure that uses book value over a 10-year period to smooth out fluctuations in corporate profits that occur over different periods of a business cycle.

Source: The Idea Farm

FOMO, Silence, LLMs & Things Learned

A few of my favorites from an excellent best things learned in 2025 list:

All things being equal, the liquid inside a glass bottle contains more microplastics than the liquid inside a plastic bottle—up to 50X more! This is because plastic-coated metal caps found on glass bottles shed more particles than plastic caps found on plastic bottles.
If you have a son, the chances of your next child being a boy are not 50%, they are actually 57%.
Noise-canceling headphones are causing hearing problems in young people, not because they’re listening with the volume too high, but because blocking ambient noise prevents the brain from learning to filter and process everyday background sound in the real world.
In team sports, women are 13.69 times more likely to be attacked by a fellow teammate than men.
Until very recently, networks didn’t save live television footage because storage costs were too high. The only reason we have access to footage that aired between 1979 and 2012 is because a woman from Philadelphia recorded it and saved it on over 40,000 VHS tapes.
The screens of all laptops in Apple stores are set at an angle of exactly 76 degrees, which is just awkward enough to invite people to tilt them back a bit more, thereby taking the first step toward interacting with the product.
No NFL game has ever ended with a score of 36–23. Across the approximately 17,000 games that have been played in NFL history, this score should have happened 2.68 times by now.
Women are more likely to believe ghosts are real; men are more likely to believe aliens are real.
Coal-burning plants release 100 times as much radiation as nuclear plants per megawatt of power produced.
In 2024, the word “delve” appeared in journal abstracts 28X more frequently than in 2022 because ChatGPT likes the word delve.
The average West Virginian eats more than one hot dog per day.
In Mexico, extending the school day by 3.5 hours led to a 12.6% increase in divorce rates. The extra time made it more likely for women to participate in the labor market, thus increasing their economic independence.
Before 2000, it was common for 10% of Americans to have the same favorite athlete. The 10% threshold was last crossed in 2003, and since 2014, no more than 5% of Americans have had the same favorite athlete. This trend reflects a broader shift away from monocultural sports consumption, where everyone watches the same sports on a few channels, and a shift toward the fragmentation of sports media, where audiences are split across digital platforms and niche interests, preventing any single athlete from dominating the national consciousness.

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I conducted dozens of bot challenges based on real things people do with AI, including writing breakup texts and work emails, decoding legal contracts and scientific research, answering tricky research questions, and editing photos and making “art.” Human experts including best-selling authors, reference librarians, a renowned scientist and even a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer judged the results:

For writing and editing – use Claude
For research and quick answers – use Google’s AI Mode
For working with documents – use Claude
For images – use Google’s Gemini

If I could change one thing about today’s AI tools, I’d make them better at asking follow-up questions that could completely change the answer.

When I asked the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California to judge ChatGPT’s responses to real medical questions he said the difference between a bot with access to infinite knowledge and a good human doctor is that the doctor knows how to answer a question with more questions. That’s how you actually solve someone’s problem.

He suggested an AI strategy I now use regularly: Front-load your queries to a chatbot with as many details as you can think of, knowing that the AI might not stop to ask for some of them before trying to answer. Instead of “summarize this lease,” try “summarize this lease for a renter in D.C., flagging clauses about fees, renewal and early termination.”

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The bill on a steak dinner for four can easily climb to $500. But after accounting for the restaurant’s costs—from the steak to rent—profits from the meal amount to around $25.

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Warren Buffett always had lunch at the Stage Deli on Seventh Avenue. A friend pointed out there were many good eateries in New York — why not try someplace new? Buffett replied, “If I like the Stage, why eat somewhere else?” The fear of missing out — responsible for a high percentage of foolish speculations — was unknown to him. This character quirk flowed from a subtle insight: People get in trouble far more often from doing and changing too much rather than doing too little.

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Podcasts have devastated my relationship to music, but that is not to say I’ve embraced silence. Whereas I used to listen to music all the time, now I fill every available moment with the sound of people talking.

My change in listening habits comes from a compulsion that many people in my life share: to make every minute of the day as “productive” as possible. By that blinkered calculus, an informative podcast will always trump music. But listening incessantly to podcasts has actually narrowed my interests and shown me just how limiting too much information can be.

I’ve found that trying to make every listening minute count inevitably becomes counterproductive. The internal pressure to optimize free time and always multitask is ultimately exhausting, not enlightening.

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There were incredible 2025 medicine breakthroughs in:

Metabolic Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Transplant Medicine Firsts
Gene Therapies
Neurological Diseases
Cell Therapies
Cancer Vaccines and Treatments

The Longevity Hack, Exceptional Adults & DNA

My father didn’t meditate, didn’t track his steps or explicitly “exercise,” and never once uttered the word “mindfulness.” Yet he lived to 92, dying at home after a very short bout with brain cancer, having been visited by his children and 11 grandchildren in the 10 days between diagnosis and death. And my mom is still going strong at 92. She still has her sense of humor and her political engagement but no “diseases that will kill her,” as she puts it.

I have spent my professional life studying what makes people live healthier and longer. I have analyzed data sets on longevity the world over and reviewed hundreds of clinical studies. I have heard numerous new claims about supplements, diets and tech devices that are supposed to extend life. But nothing I have read in the scientific literature explains longevity better than the lives of my incorrigibly social parents, Benjamin and Marsha Emanuel.

My father was a pediatrician who spoke five languages and was comfortable talking to anyone and everyone. He routinely talked to strangers, offering suggestions based on his well-honed diagnostic skills.

Whenever we stopped in a restaurant he would start chatting with the people at the next table within five minutes—asking about their jobs, their families, where they were from and what they liked about the place they lived. If no one was at a nearby table, he would strike up a conversation with the waitress.

To a modern eye, this might seem overzealous. But people responded to him. They felt seen, not interrogated. There was no agenda—just my father’s insatiable curiosity about people. One time, a casual chat with another father in a park ended with an invitation for our whole family to dinner at their home.

My mom was also incurably social. Our house was constantly filled with the people she collected. She was great at making our teenage friends feel understood, with warmth and empathy. When her kids went off to college, she finished her training as a therapist and went into practice.

For years, I did not fully appreciate what I was witnessing. To me as a kid, my father’s endless chatter was an embarrassing quirk of his personality. And my mother’s welcoming of strangers into our home just seemed, well, normal. Only after decades as a physician and policymaker did I understand that my father and mother had unintentionally but eagerly adopted one of the most powerful health interventions ever discovered: human connection.

Study after study now confirms what my father and mother intuited long before science caught up. Social relationships, both the deep ones and the fleeting exchanges, reduce stress hormones, lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, strengthen immune function and make you happier. They may even slow cellular aging.

An analysis by the Health and Retirement Study, which enrolled over 20,000 Americans older than 50, found that over the next eight years, people with the most close friends (an average of 7.8) had a 17% lower risk of depression and a 24% lower risk of dying compared with people who had fewer close friends (an average of 1.6).

Similarly, Harvard University’s Study of Adult Development, which followed people for over 80 years, found that “the people who were happiest, stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people.” By contrast, social isolation is as dangerous to longevity and cognitive decline as being obese. My father didn’t need PubMed to know that being interested in people kept him not just alive but vibrant and energetic.

Years later, I came to see that impulse—to notice, to care, to connect and help—as the very definition of wellness. My father’s memorial service overflowed with friends, former patients and neighbors, each one with a story about how he’d helped them, laughed with them or simply made them feel less alone. Every Thursday, meanwhile, my mom still has lunch at the deli with “the boys”—friends she has collected over the years.

It has taken me many years to grasp that wellness is inherent in the community we inhabit. My father’s conversations with strangers weren’t just good for him but for the people he engaged with. My mother’s weekly lunch is both good for her and for all her friends. Sharing time with others is beneficial for all involved.

If there is a “longevity hack,” that is it. Forget the cold plunges, red lights and fad-driven supplements. Call a friend. Chat with your neighbor. Ask the Uber driver or grocery checkout clerk how their day is going or how their holidays were. When I think of my father and mother now, I realize that health isn’t something you achieve in isolation. It is something we all create together.

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From athletes like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps to scientists like Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, identifying exceptional talent is essential in the science of innovation. But how does talent originate? Did the most talented athletes, scientists, and musicians reach peak performance relatively early or late in their career? Did they forgo mastering multiple sports, academic subjects, and musical instruments to reach world-class performance in only one?

An analytical review looked at published research in science, music, chess, and sports and found two patterns: Exceptional young performers reached their peak quickly but narrowly mastered only one interest (e.g., one sport). By contrast, exceptional adults reached peak performance gradually with broader, multidisciplinary practice.

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Nearly two decades of studies from multiple independent labs suggest that a father’s gametes shuttle more than DNA: Within a sperm’s minuscule head are stowaway molecules, which enter the egg and convey information about the father’s fitness, such as diet, exercise habits and stress levels, to his offspring. These non-DNA transfers may influence genomic activity that boots up during and after fertilization, exerting some control over the embryo’s development and influencing the adult they will become.

The findings could end up changing the way we think about heredity. They suggest that what we do in this life affects the next generation. What a father eats, drinks, inhales, is stressed by or otherwise experiences in the weeks and months before he conceives a child might be encoded in molecules, packaged into his sperm cells and transmitted to his future kid.

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The average team valuation by league (in billions):

The top 10 most valuable pro sports teams in the U.S.:

North American sports assets (RASFI) returns vs. other asset classes, and why private credit wants to get more involved in the industry.

The Zodiac’s Cipher, China’s Strength & Social Media

There’s a new theory from an amateur code-breaker, Alex Barber, that links two of America’s most infamous unsolved cases: the 1947 mutilation murder of Elizabeth Short (known as the Black Dahlia) and the late-1960s killings by the Zodiac Killer.

Baber, a 50-year-old self-taught investigator from West Virginia with autism and no formal education beyond high school, claims both crimes were committed by the same person: Marvin Margolis (who later used the alias Marvin Merrill until his death in 1993). Baber says he cracked the Zodiac’s unsolved 13-symbol cipher (Z13) using AI-assisted methods, revealing the name “Marvin Merrill.” He connects this to the Black Dahlia case through circumstantial links, including:

Margolis’s brief living arrangement with Short shortly before her murder.
His Navy medical training explaining the surgical precision in her dismemberment.
A 1992 sketch by Margolis titled “Elizabeth” depicting a mutilated woman with the word “ZODIAC” hidden in the shading.
The possible murder site near a Compton motel called the Zodiac Motel, which Baber suggests inspired the killer’s later moniker.

Retired LAPD detectives (Rick Jackson and Mitzi Roberts) and former NSA codebreakers (Ed Giorgio and Patrick Henry) praise Baber’s work as compelling and “overwhelming” circumstantial evidence, with low probability of coincidence.

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The 2018 US semiconductor embargo against China changed the world. The age of cooperation and globalization was over.

With the 2018 embargo, the US essentially punched China on the nose. At the time, China had little choice but to take the punch. Take the punch and prepare its own economy for a future in which it would be less vulnerable to further US embargoes.

For seven long years China went on a diet, and went to the CrossFit gym. And as all of China’s savings were captured—through tighter capital controls, the suspension of IPOs, and the concentration of bank lending—and redirected towards China’s industrial supply chains, returns for investors were dreadful.

When Donald Trump came back to power in 2025, China, which had spent the past seven years getting toned, showed up and essentially said: “Gloves off. If you want a fight, let’s go. You tariff me, then I will tariff you. You embargo me, then I will embargo you.

China’s response was to de-Westernize its supply chain, at great cost to its investor base, to economic growth, to domestic consumption and even to its birth rate.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the US did absolutely nothing to de-Sinify its own supply chain. While China hit the gym, the US partied. And partied hard: US budget deficits expanded, but pretty much just funded expansions in social benefits—social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Between 2018 and 2025, US government debt increased from $21 trillion to $38 trillion. However, none of the US $17 trillion in debt went into building new Hoover dams, new Tennessee Valley Authorities, new interstate highways or new railroads.

China’s push to de-Westernize its supply chains came at great cost to the Chinese economy and Chinese society. Would US policymakers countenance such judicial repression?

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Readers used to outnumber non-readers 2 to 1. Now non-readers outnumber readers 3 to 1.

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One third of 8th grade girls spend 7+ hours per day on social media. Meaning: that’s pretty much all they do.

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The frustrating truth is that we don’t really know for sure what the digital empire of short-form video is doing to our minds. But a systematic review of 71 studies with 98,000 participants published in 2025 reached an alarming finding. Across the dozens of studies, heavy short-form video users showed moderate deficits in attention, inhibitory control, and memory.

Several studies in the meta-analysis reported structural and functional differences in the prefrontal cortex and reward circuits among high-frequency users, while others found cognitive flexibility reductions and altered dopaminergic reward responses. None of this proves causation. But taken together, they suggest a plausible mechanism: a daily diet of hyper-rewarding, rapid-fire stimuli may gradually reshape attention and regulatory systems in ways that weaken our attentional control.

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The probability of men getting married increases with their income.

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The share of people between 20 and 24 who are not in a job, or seeking work, or in school, or raising a child has nearly doubled in the last quarter-century in both the UK and the U.S.

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A list of small things you can do, that compound positively over time, from Kevin Dahlstrom (founder of Bolt.health) who just turned 55 and said he feels much healthier now than he did 10+ years ago:

Walk 15+ miles a week, even if you do other exercise.
Eat real food. Not too much.
Stop drinking alcohol, even in moderation.
Explore minimalism (it’s not what you think it is).
Get 8 hours of quality sleep each night.
Invest in experiences, not things.
Stay lean. Men in particular are obsessed with muscle mass these days, but bulk doesn’t age well. The goal is to be strong but lean. The fittest guys in their 50s and beyond aren’t meatheads, they’re lean guys who are serious about a sport.
Stop drinking sodas and sugary energy drinks.
Show up on time, every time. Poor time management limits success more than most people realize.
Find a hobby and pursue mastery. You can’t have a happy life without a passionate pursuit that isn’t your vocation. Your work—even if you enjoy it—isn’t enough.
Try psychedelics. It’s one of those things everyone should do at least once, and it might be the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.
Be a lifelong learner. Your brain is just like a muscle—if you don’t feed and flex it regularly, it will atrophy.
Find your purpose. People with a strong sense of purpose are happier and live longer. Lack of purpose sucks energy and magnifies depression.
Only take advice from people who embody the traits you want to have. Talk is cheap—emulate those who have done it.
The goal is not to retire and do nothing, it’s to build a great day-to-day life that you don’t need to escape. A life of leisure is a slow death.
Have fun! Do frivolous and silly things that make you smile.
Accumulate assets—things that grow in value over time. It’s the #1 habit of rich people, and it can be done in tiny chunks. It becomes addictive (in a good way).
Make your own decisions. We live in an era where most of what society tells us is wrong. Don’t be afraid to break from societal norms.
Go all in on family. Get married, stay married, have kids. Burn the boats. In the end, family is all that matters.
Be ruthless with your time. Money comes and goes. Time only goes. Audit your calendar ruthlessly—cut the trivial, double down on the meaningful, and spend your hours like your life depends on it.

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Stocks are still the most expensive in the United States, by far, but the rest of the world also became more expensive this year after an enormous rise in global stock prices almost everywhere.

Crypto Casinos & Memecoins

Many young people that are chronically online have been enticed by crypto casinos, an expanding realm of online gambling where longstanding guardrails are often ignored.

The sites have spread across social media, taking advantage of the borderless nature of the internet. They offer hundreds of games, including blackjack, sports betting and flashy online slot machines. They operate with fewer restrictions for gamblers by obtaining licenses in small island nations.

And, although they are not legal in many countries including the United States, the casinos have become gambling havens where teenagers and problem gamblers play and even earn income by promoting the sites.

This flourishing industry has been built by operators willing to deploy an exploitative marketing system. Their strategies encourage reckless wagers, turn social media influencers into casino recruiters and lure in young people, one of the demographics most vulnerable to addiction.

The finances of crypto casinos, private companies licensed outside the United States, are not public. Stake told Forbes it earned $4.7 billion in gaming revenue in 2024, more than MGM reported earning from casino games at all of its Las Vegas properties.

In the United States, Stake started Stake.us, which it says legally operates in most states. It circumvents the need to obtain a gambling license by calling itself a “social casino” where players use virtual currency instead of real money. However, lawsuits argue that Stake.us still functions as a casino by allowing players to purchase the virtual currency and withdraw it as cryptocurrency.

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Memecoins exist in a complex world of schemes and double crosses, baffling to outsiders. At the center is an obvious conflict. To lure traders, the coin creators generally promise they’ll sell a fixed number of tokens at a low price. But as soon as the price rises, they have an incentive to dump as many as they can. Common, if not necessarily ethical, tricks for getting people in the door include engineering fake trades to create the appearance of activity, or quietly paying influencers for what looks like organic social media hype. The dumping can also happen surreptitiously, if creators conceal that they’re the people selling. Regardless of how it all plays out, the only consistent winners are insiders who get in early.

No one involved seems particularly squeamish about whether memecoins are legal. A month after Trump’s inauguration, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced it won’t regulate them. Agency staff noted that other fraud laws may still apply—a scam is a scam, whatever the method—but so far other regulators and prosecutors haven’t waded in.

The shadiness of the memecoin market isn’t a big secret. All but the most gullible traders know the deal. But they still think they can profit by getting out before a coin’s inevitable crash. It’s like consensual scamming. The slimy salesmen depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street had to dial all day to trick retirees into buying their penny stocks. Now the suckers are actually seeking out pump-and-dump schemes.

The plans for Trump’s memecoin were hatched only weeks before its debut. His team was rushing to get it out before Inauguration Day. The assumption was that Trump would face stricter scrutiny after that.

The weekend the Trump coin went on the market was the busiest ever for memecoin trading. Its price soared from near zero to as high as $74. When Melania unveiled her coin two days later, it spiked, too, hitting $13. By the next day, though, both coins were crashing. Neither has recovered. As of Dec. 10, Trump’s coin was down 92% since its peak, to $5.90, and Melania’s was down 99%, to 11¢—almost a complete wipeout.