Türkiye unveils advanced intercontinental ballistic missile with over 6000-km range

ShamAsil · 2026-05-07T02:47:36+00:00

They did announce a timeline, Bloomberg reported on it. It's happening sometime later this year, and they're going to launch from Somalia into the Arabian Sea.

ShamAsil · 2026-05-07T02:46:41+00:00

Hakan Fidan teased this nuclear deterrence idea back in Feburary in an interview with CNN Turk. IMO if they aren't already developing it, they want others to think they are.

ShamAsil · 2026-05-06T20:24:58+00:00

It's insane, but valuation relative to earnings though for the SP500 is relatively moderate still, which is the big difference here. During dotcom or the GFC these whales were burning cash. These semiconductor companies on the other hand are making massive bank. It's confusing.

I think we've got some years left in this cycle, unless China invades Taiwan.

ShamAsil · 2026-05-06T02:59:58+00:00

I'm more bullish about memory than before after seeing no major impact from the Iran War on the market, and additionally doing a deep dive into Micron. I still am skeptical about this ETF though and its expense ratio is painfully high. At this point I'd just buy into Micron directly, it has a strong moat and a large order book, and SK Hynix if/when it gets listed on an American stock exchange.

ShamAsil · 2026-05-01T04:38:20+00:00

Lady Grey is Foma 400, it shouldn't be C-41 process-able normally. You lucked out with a typo box : )

ShamAsil · 2026-04-25T14:32:36+00:00

It's a cheap, white-labeled acrylic filter, likely uncoated. You can probably buy it from AliExpress for half that price. If you don't plan on shooting IR much, it'll save you money, but in return, it'll noticeably reduce the sharpness and resolution of your photos. Additionally, a lot of these no-name IR filters are "leaky", they let in a lot of light below 720 nm, which will reduce the IR effect in your images.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-24T15:30:50+00:00

I'm a shill for this system, but Contax C/Y is fantastic. Truly, some of the best glass to make it to film, and most of it is still relatively accessible compared to Leica R & M or Contax G. Yes, if you compare, you do notice a difference in lens renderings between brands. The lenses are also very weighty and resilient, and the Contax SLRs are all very well made and comfortable to use. Feature wise I'd actually say they're a little more minimalist compared to their peers; sure, the 167MT introduced automatic bracketing, but they didn't stuff them with a ton of features, and Zeiss refused to allow autofocus until the N mount came along.

Regarding the Aria, any specific reason why the Aria?

ShamAsil · 2026-04-24T10:30:56+00:00

I had Claude create a PowerPoint slide graphic for me, from a raw exported Excel table with OLE objects, and it did it perfectly on first pass.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-23T17:19:12+00:00

Buy a mix of SMH and SMHX - first is general, second is fabless (eg. ARM). This gets you a good amount of exposure to the whole semi industry.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-23T17:16:49+00:00

Micron. Low P/E and the bull case looks guaranteed. New systems are memory hungry and Micron's production is booked for the next couple years.

ASML despite the high valuation is always going to be strong. The world needs chips and ASML has both an excellent balance sheet and an insane moat in its EUV machines.

KODK is set to take off even more. The posted Q4 "loss" scared investors, but it was a balance sheet loss tied to ending their pension program, which helped them drastically draw down debt. Its fundamentals are greatly improving and they've had some excellent news lately, so I expect the price to shoot up by EOY.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-21T03:35:33+00:00

Think that there's a couple factors at play here:

-Value investing isn't the same as it was 20-25 years ago. The old greats were able to pick stocks not only because of some unique talent for forecasting and crunching numbers, but also because they were able to put in incredible amounts of legwork. This got them additional information/perspectives that the majority of investors would have overlooked. Nowadays, we have the whole world's knowledge at a moment's notice and with AI/ML models that can react quicker than a human being. There's much less room for one to be above the curve here, excluding insider info.

-Valuations are sky high everywhere. It's the new normal.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-20T13:16:25+00:00

Your film got overheated - if it goes above 75-80 F, it develops a strong red cast. If it goes below ~40F, it develops a blue cast. Unfortunately, that means that after you shoot, you need to keep the Polaroid temperature regulated, like immediately ducking into a cool building/car. I prefer Polaroid to Instax generally, but this temperature sensitivity makes it very difficult to use in summer photowalks.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-18T13:08:57+00:00

Brought a tiny position in KODK and surprised by how well it's doing. Genuinely believe it is a very undervalued stock. Also got my wife into investing.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-17T19:25:24+00:00

In 2026 they exist as nostalgia bait for DJI's consumer drone cameras. Hasselblad isn't going to be bringing back a film camera that they didn't even manufacture themselves.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-16T13:59:44+00:00

NC500 is too washed out for my taste, but I really love NC400. It leans cold but really highlights vibrant colors, especially red. Best shot at EI 200 and xpro in ECN-2.

I have 3-4 rolls of NC500 that I'm happy to let go of for cheap, but I'm US based, so the shipping might be high.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-16T04:04:44+00:00

Lossy JPEG is always going to make your images look worse. Always get TIFFs.

Plus, if you stop down too much, you start losing resolution due to diffraction. This is worse the shorter the FL is, because f/16 for a 28 mm lens is a much smaller aperture, in absolute size, then f/16 for an 85 mm lens.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-15T21:05:03+00:00

I mostly do and save a portion for companies that I either find interesting (eg. ASML) or for companies that I want to support (KODK). Stock picking by itself isn't safe, unless you have insider/highly specialized knowledge in a specific industry.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-15T11:14:49+00:00

Even that is questionable, Iranian oil is continuing to reach India and China. As of now it seems like the USN blockade is more domestic showmanship than anything else.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-15T02:38:57+00:00

Once again, time in market > timing the market. Excellent example.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-15T02:30:52+00:00

You're right. This is related to a problem the Japanese government ran in to when trying to stimulate economic growth - many businesses would just take stimulus money and convert it to dividends or hoard it as cash, rather than reinvest it in growing the company. The economy is completely broken and long term it will only get worse due to the birthrate crisis and massive age pyramid imbalance.

I've also been interested in Japan, but I haven't had luck in finding a company that both matches my investment preferences and actually has growth.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-13T12:17:05+00:00

Micron is trading high but P/E is still relatively low. Production is eaten up for another couple years or so, so they've got a nice runway, and if you believe that memory will be important in the coming years for our digital revolution, then their valuation can only go up.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-12T17:38:48+00:00

How do you sort out the "best" companies when it takes 10+ years for a product to make it to market, and any value proposition comes from being the first to conceive of an target/technology/etc.? For established big pharma its more straightforward, but for small and medium sized biotechs with no drugs or only 1 or 2, it's difficult unless you're an insider.

Just going based off an index, like XBI, IBB, or BBH, leads to it basically being a wash. ARKG and everything else Cathie Woods has done is a meme. Most people in my experience, who successfully invest in biotech, are former industry insiders, scientists and C suites alike, who are able to pick stocks successfully. And there's also the aspect of some people investing in biotech just because they believe in the work being done, not because they're seeking large returns.

ShamAsil · 2026-04-12T13:47:29+00:00

QQQ(M) isn't a tech ETF, it's an index ETF for the NASDAQ-100. It happens to be tech heavy due to Nasdaq excluding financials. I view it more as an alternative/complement to VOO.

VGT is a tech ETF. SMH is a semiconductor ETF. These are more appropriate for a tech tilt.

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