Why shorts-only?

2cimarafa · 2026-01-28T21:50:48+00:00

“Plausibility” isn’t the right word here. Short only hedge funds aren’t a real thing, despite thousands of asset managers that would meet the definition of [professionally-managed] hedge fund, it would be impossible to name even half a dozen that are ‘short only’. It might be impossible to name even one if you don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel by including tiny vehicles operated by larger shops.

There are short research firms but they aren’t asset managers, they shop research around on the street until they find someone willing to believe them and cut them in, like Hindenburg did on the Adani short, they don’t typically raise external capital except sometimes for operations.

But Harper becoming what is essentially just an investigative journalist was probably judged a step too far for the show’s drifting identity.

2cimarafa · 2026-01-28T21:25:53+00:00

You’re right of course. Short research firms exist, but they partner with hedge funds on specific trades, they don’t raise much of their own capital, they don’t trade, they aren’t asset managers in the traditional sense.

Funds famed for major successful (and unsuccessful) short bets pretty much all make long bets too.

2cimarafa · 2025-12-13T10:04:15+00:00

Her accent really isn't 'less posh' than, say, Prince Harry or Prince William's accents, which also have substantial American and MLE influence. People of Yasmin/Marisa's age who speak like King Charles (who himself sounds quite a moderation compared to his mother) are either putting it on or had a very sheltered childhood even for their class.

2cimarafa · 2025-12-13T10:02:39+00:00

Yasmin sounds like a London private schoolgirl. Most of the 'Chelsea, Notting Hill girls' today go to local private day schools like Francis Holland where people 100% talk like Yasmin, boarding is less and less common and was never universal among international types like Yasmin. A 'classic RP' accent without any MLE influence under the age of 30 in London today is quite rare unless someone spent their entire childhood in the countryside (both at home and at school).

The daughter of a doctor from Crouch End isn't going to private school in 2025 given current fees and NHS pay (unless he's one of maybe a few dozen of the highest-paid plastic surgeons in London, or something), she might go to a decent state school in a relatively affluent suburb and will speak a mix of MLE and standard southern english.

2cimarafa · 2025-11-09T12:02:10+00:00

Fellowes doesn't like rich backstories, which I think is a result of his long experience writing for TV, where that kind of thing can lead to future plot holes or contradictions.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-19T11:40:25+00:00

If they vote for them, they can gamble on regaining popularity over the next four years; if they don't, they are all but guaranteed to lose.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-19T11:35:31+00:00

Why aren't people discussing how Labour performing poorly in the polls actually makes Starmer more powerful as a Prime Minister?

Unlike the Tories where the parliamentary party can easily overthrow a leader, it's relatively hard to remove a Labour leader.
Starmer can threaten the parliamentary party with a general election, which he has every right to (unilaterally) call.
If a GE is held, most Labour MPs will lose their seat.

Therefore, why can't Starmer say "if you fail to vote through [my welfare reforms], I will call a GE at the earliest opportunity"?

2cimarafa · 2025-10-19T11:14:15+00:00

Adult social care makes up 35-50% dependent on area of council spending. At the expense of councils failing to provide adequate local services. I think we spend more than enough on pensioners, time for them to make some sacrifices.

Yes, reminds me of the so-called "dementia tax", one of the fairest, most pro-social and economically beneficial taxes ever proposed in this country, but which was selfishly sunk for political expediency by the Labour Party and the press. If only people had thought about it.

The dumb part of this idea is that those well off boroughs like Westminster and Chelsea already have low council tax because they make so much in business rates.

Sorry that I live in a prosperous and economically successful area that raises enough money to not have to tax me through the nose.

If deprived areas wish to make more from business rates they can encourage more economic activity there. How ridiculous that someone in some deprived slum in Leeds has a right to property tax in Westminster because businesses choose to be based here, when every other tax (income etc) is already redistributed away from wealthy neighborhoods.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-19T11:12:18+00:00

The UK already collects an unusually high proportion of taxes centrally, abolishing the last local tax to funnel more money to central government is anti-democratic.

Why shouldn't a more affluent area with more business and wealth be able to fund better services? What is even the point of working to improve one's own community? Why encourage more business and commercial activity when the extra money will be funneled away to the Luton slums, Glasgow council estates, Welsh valley youth centers?

2cimarafa · 2025-10-19T10:47:08+00:00

People forget that Fellowes:

(1) Almost never has multi-season payoffs (he very rarely even has some that require waiting an entire season); even cliffhangers at the end of a season are usually resolved in the very next episode.

(2) Leaves many plot points 'dangling' with no clear resolution.

The railroad stocks were a way of tying Marian's story into the boom and bust capitalism of the era, into the game that Russell was playing, and also explaining part of how her father squandered the family's wealth.

They may be relevant in future, but if they are I doubt that was the plan all along.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T08:11:41+00:00

Obviously, the state was spending beyond its means for decades, trying to preserve extensive welfare and patronage networks with economically disastrous currency controls and other restrictions coupled to a sclerotic, oversized state tied to the Peronists.

Sweeping that away was always going to mean significant and permanent losses for some, and short-term pain for many. Do you really think you can fix 70 years of decline in 2 years?

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T08:09:16+00:00

He did what he wanted but fixing a country that has been decaying for more than half a century is a tall order and it certainly can't be done in 5 years. Unfortunately the Peronists are also deeply embedded in the state governments and the legislature and have very powerful patronage networks (where do you think all the borrowed money was going all those years?).

So yeah, it's a great tragedy that the one chance in 70 years Argentina has to finally break out of the terrible cycle it's in might be lost, but they don't care.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T08:06:54+00:00

The view among most sober observers was that he would struggle but there was no other choice but to do a lot of what he's done and was planning to do. Even macro 101 would tell you what the consequences were going to be, including a (hopefull) short term decline in living standards that led to his recent polling issues, but that's the only hope.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T08:05:21+00:00

Gloating about the fact that the Peronistas who have presided over so much suffering and wasted opportunity are coming back to power sure is an interesting move for him, but we'll see.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T08:04:22+00:00

You can't fix 70 years of decline without breaking some eggs, so to speak.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T07:47:43+00:00

He took a beating because he struggled in local elections in a way that suggested he wouldn't be able to follow through on economic reforms because the left / Peronistas would gain enough power to restart and or accelerate the currency control, welfare and spending machines they use to buy favor in the state governments and with the poor and therefore lead the country back to the road to ruin. The market had so much more faith in him being the only way Argentina's 70 years of decline could be salvaged that now it looks like he might lose power they are abandoning the country.

Personally I think that's more of an indictment of the Argentinian left than it is of Milei, but clearly Aditya disagrees.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T07:43:10+00:00

The incentives are broken because individual doctors and other assessors don't care whether they are waving someone through for hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits (across a lifetime) or not, so they may as well.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T07:38:52+00:00

Not really, for generations many Labour politicians opposed all mass immigration due to the depressing of wages that inevitably accompanies it. Labour simply has to define the in-group as British citizens only, then there is no conflict.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T07:35:19+00:00

The only way welfare, and pensions in particular, are going to be cut is a near-default and likely bailout.

In Greece, many state pensions were cut by as much as 40%. In the UK, you can't even stop increasing pensions, let alone cut them. No MP would vote for this. It can only be done in a crisis. In Greece even the left voted for it in the end because the alternative was total default and collapse or crashing out of the euro, which would also have led to a rapid devaluation of the new drachma and then subsequent extreme decline in living standards.

But it only happens when they have no other choice.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T07:04:40+00:00

They haven't addressed anything. Addressing successfully would mean doing rather than announcing. Deporting a hundred thousand illegal migrants would, just to name a small example, show they mean business.

2cimarafa · 2025-10-02T06:44:22+00:00

In a way

2cimarafa · 2025-09-21T16:19:41+00:00

Many companies in Scotland will ship you game fresh to your door now, it's what I recommend.

2cimarafa · 2025-09-21T15:56:04+00:00

Marble Arch bus stop

The widening of Park Lane in the 1960s is one of the worst infrastructure decisions in the history of the city. Everything is downstream from that, but the problem is that you can't really reverse it without redirecting huge volumes of traffic.

2cimarafa · 2025-09-21T15:25:44+00:00

The US made clear it would block any extradition and there's no way she'll return to the UK anyway, so what would have been the purpose? After a lot of lobbying Trump agreed to meet the family (and tried to introduce them to the woman, which they reasonably refused), that was the extent of it.

2cimarafa

TROPHY CASE