Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
This is an exclusive subscriber-only preview of the first six chapters of Rusty Guinn’s upcoming book Outsourcing Consciousness: How Social Networks are Making Us Lose Our Minds. The book explores how evolution, polarization, and technology are slowly transforming humanity into a hive mind - and what we can and can't do about it.
The Long Now is everything we pull into the present from our future selves and our children. We are told that the economic stimulus and the political fear of the Long Now are costless, when in fact they cost us … everything.
Tick-tock.
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a Narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Men of God in the City of Man
Amid the Widening Gyre of politics and the black hole of financial markets, the only anchor is us, together, walking with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. Experience Ben's original 4-part series.
Outsourcing Consciousness
The Long Now
Men of God in a City of Man
Things Fall Apart
Recent Notes
The Church of the Long Now
I know, I know … it’s me being mean to Neel Kashkari again.
Sorry, not sorry. Belittlement and scorn is the only weapon we have against the creeping ensorcellment of the Long Now.
That Which We Call a Law School
More from the world of universities-as-guilds and the weird war between the merely rich and ultra-rich.
Shot, Chaser
So I downloaded and compiled every SEC Form 4 filing that former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has ever made, to answer one simple question:
How much money did Dennis Muilenburg suck out of Boeing over the last ten years?
Alpha/Beta Amnesiacs
We are emerging from the year end, so the language shared across financial media articles is performance language. How did stocks, markets, benchmarks, funds and strategies perform in 2019?
Frequent readers will recognize Gell-Mann Amnesia as a favorite topic here at Epsilon Theory.
An Experiment
There is a chart I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I want to tell you about it. Before I do, I also wanted…
Normalize This
I feel like the Billy Crystal character in Analyze This all the time. There’s always some mob boss politician or central banker or CEO or asset manager pinching my cheek and telling me that it’s all gonna be okay, that I’ve just gotta understand how things are.
My god, I am so tired of having my cheek pinched. I am so tired of being nudged in such an artless, heavy-handed way. I am so tired of being told that 2 + 2 = 5.
A Perfect Meme
Every day we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours of financial media to generate a list of the most linguistically-connected and narrative-central…
The Long Now, Pt. 4 – Snip!
The Long Now has severed the tether between taxation and spending – the most important macroeconomic policy relationship in our social lives as both investors and citizens.
Here’s what that means.
And here’s what we’re going to do about it.
Office Hours – 12.19.2019
Join us at 2PM ET on December 19th for the last 2019 edition of Office Hours for a lively – and live – discussion of the narrative intersection of politics and financial markets.
An End to War!
The Long Now wouldn’t be complete without the Long War. And as with every other component of the Long Now, its supporting memes are intensely cynical.
It’s Not So Much …
If you don’t see that there is one set of rules for the very rich and another set of rules for everyone else … if you don’t see that there is an unaccountable political power that accrues to the very rich in both big social ways and in small personal ways … well, you’re just not paying attention.
Epsilon Theory: A 2019 Retrospective
It is our second time now to turn the lens we apply to other news sources to our own creative output. Here is a Very Epsilon Theory retrospective on 2019.
One Narrative Keeps on Trucking
Trucking is dying and truckers are suffering along with it. The fact that the latter is the framing being chosen for the issue should pique your interest.
Mailbag: By Our Own Petard
We’ve gotten a lot of responses and thoughts on By Our Own Petard, so we thought we would talk about some of them in another Mailbag feature.
Presented Without Comment
Regardless of your personal views pro or con, if you don’t see that a powerful narrative backlash is forming against corporate management enrichment, you’re just not paying attention.
Our Dumb World
Sometimes you really have to wonder how on earth an article makes its way into the Zeitgeist. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
The Rent Is Too Damn Low
It’s so weird that everyone who would throw an unholy temper tantrum at – gasp! – rent-controlled apartments is just fine with rent-controlled money.
“Yay, crumbs!”
By Our Own Petard
Fiduciary standards, prudent man rules and client sensibilities compel us toward fervent pursuit of “alignment.” There’s just one little problem: we can never be aligned with our agents.
Office Hours – 11.19.2019
It’s the November 19th, 2019 edition of Office Hours! Be sure to join Ben and Rusty for a discussion of all things narrative in the world of politics and markets.
Sneak Preview
A sneak preview of the FT Markets piece to be published later this week, with my original language and the math on Microsoft’s 10-K.
We’re never going to eliminate the agency problem, and the dealer deserves a proper rake. But we better start making this casino fairer to shareholders and less of a wealth transfer engine to the managerial 1%. Or someone is going to burn the casino down.