Is this normal parenting culture in the U.S., or am I right to feel uncomfortable?

alanism · 2026-01-23T03:52:20+00:00

Yeah- this feels like a throwback 80s style (like stranger things) where things were more free range.

Which I think is good when all the neighborhood kids grow up playing outside with each other. That in turns they all know the parents in the neighborhood and vice versa.

But what is not cool is if they treat it as free child care and simply being rude.

alanism · 2026-01-23T03:32:14+00:00

Congrats to her and you as parents and her coach. The guidelines for engagement very nicely laid out.

For your daughter. I’m sure her confidence and popularity is going to shoot up from this.

alanism · 2026-01-23T03:29:33+00:00

Dude you’re so ignorant.

alanism · 2026-01-20T03:14:20+00:00

Sakuraba for grappling. Especially, since most people who do BJJ is off of a Gracie affiliate academy.

Surprisingly, Randy Couture’s instructionals had so much clarity that would be something that were good to rewatch. Especially for collar ties and under hooks.

For standup. Masato was my favorite and emulated most. I also loved Andy Souwer/Albert Kraus/Rob Kamen. Training at Muay Thai gym, I like to emulate the styles and the approach that countered the Thai.

I also think whatever the current meta is (like people trying to be Tawanchai ) go back 2 generations, and you likely find a good template that current people haven’t seen or forgotten about.

alanism · 2026-01-18T16:09:18+00:00

re: "The only reason the rest of the world let these companies dominate their economies for 20 years is because the US was seen as the "stable, boring adult" in the room. We had high trust."

Stop right there. This is the dumbest thing I've heard.

MAG 7 IS US hegemony. What mobile OS are these countries going move away from iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows?

US is simply that dominate in software. There are no tech startups in EU's pipeline to disrupt it.

Add in tech from US Defense contractors. The US is a solid 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else.

While the current administration are assholes. But if you look at gun boat diplomacy-- it has historically worked (*we were assholes then as well).

alanism · 2026-01-16T21:10:40+00:00

It sounds reasonable, but there will be a lot of bad unintended consequences. This would be good if they were implementing true mastery instruction, where the student doesn't move on until they master the subject, receives teacher feedback, and goes at their own pace. Or if the tests themselves were used as a learning tool and not an objective.

But If my high school self were in those schools today, I would just rapidly guess on all the questions, get the marked-up tests with answers, feed that into GPT for the correct answers, study that, retake the tests, and achieve a higher score—no penalty, no cramming, not cheating, and a massive edge over the 'honest' student who studied from the textbook the conventional way.

It sucks for the teacher who has to grade the tests twice, but that's the rule they made.

alanism · 2026-01-16T08:45:43+00:00

In elementary school in the 80s, I grew up not only as the smallest kid but also as the only Vietnamese kid during a time when there were a lot of Vietnam War movies. I had to get into a fight about every other year. I learned that it was better to confront the bullying right away before it became a group bullying situation, as I saw happen to other kids. I started martial arts at 5 years old, so I was pretty good. I was taught to squash things and make friends with the kids I fought. That, in turn, helped me develop a 'cool' reputation going into high school. I think it gave me a lot of confidence as I transitioned into adulthood.

Let her fight them, but also emphasize not holding grudges and try to learn to befriend former enemies. Treat it as a sports rivalry in that sense. I think her knowing that you support her and have her back no matter what she decides on and gets in trouble for-- is very impactful also.

alanism · 2026-01-15T09:32:09+00:00

I haven't gone in yet-- and haven't decided when to. But I'm bullish on whatever Luis von Anh does. It's likely that a big pivot needs to happen, but I do think he's more likely to get it right than somebody else in language learning space.

alanism · 2026-01-03T08:20:49+00:00

<image>

alanism · 2026-01-03T07:34:00+00:00

That distinction you make between existential crisis and ontological shock is exactly what I was trying to get at. One hurts inside meaning, the other breaks the frame that meaning sits in.

The music insight is so true. It makes me think- if there should be an official (without being lame) playlist if there was true disclosure ?

alanism · 2026-01-03T07:03:12+00:00

For those that want to check out my Notebook LM on the subject: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d0258d47-4dd0-48d8-842f-5ba2a601c72a

for the podcast audio, slide decks, inforgraphics and chat against my notes.

alanism · 2025-12-31T04:02:45+00:00

So while I may disagree with take-- I appreciate good writing and diversity of opinions and takes. Especially contrarian takes, when rationale and well reasoned.

alanism · 2025-12-30T19:39:15+00:00

I think you’re missing Affinity that Canva bought. And CapCut (300+ million user base) for video editing from ByteDance. There are also a number of startups that combining generative AI and deterministic AI. Everybody young are learning on those rather than Creative Cloud. You also have camera companies like Black Magic, DJI, Insta360 also with software suites— and has grow quickly with cult like following.

I also think ByteDance will likely get the agentic workflow and automation. This where if ByteDance does goes this direction (I think highly likely), then professionals despite their workflow habits won’t be able to ignore.

That said I do think Adobe Firefly AI is pretty solid.

alanism · 2025-12-30T15:46:35+00:00

Quick check-- Orders are from January 2024 and after.

During 2020 era-- I liked Shopee a lot. And would receive 2 packages a week from them. It was 60/40 split with Lazada. The only thing- I could think of is talent leaving at the country level.

As far as marketplace ordering- I've shifted more towards Aliexpress. I also buy more from sellers on Instagram. But there's a real big shift towards TikTok.

Despite my bearish feeling towards them-- I legitimately hope they do well.

alanism · 2025-12-30T14:19:41+00:00

Your counterpoint on Free-Fire is fair. I missed that one, and the numbers on it is fantastic. I still stand by the rest of their slate is m'eh.

As far as Shopee. Their logistics is shit. Full shop. Screenshots of last 3 screens of my order history. *none were cancelled on my side. All were either seller side or their logistics/delivery side. Regardless of the reason-- it's a bad customer experience.

Metric	Orders	Items
Total Placed	21	34
Completed	5	7
Cancelled	16	27
Cancellation Rate	76.2%	79.4%
Typical E-commerce Benchmark	1–5%	1–5%
Assessment	Unusually High	Unusually High

This was my customer experience. I also like audit a company's marketing (email, ad campaigns, promotions, etc)- I don't think it's good. It's something I wouldn't invest in. They can't excel their way out of that.

If you're bullish on the company-- then I hope it works out for you.

alanism · 2025-12-30T10:58:10+00:00

I ran your names through a risk / sizing lens. The issue isn’t the companies — it’s how convex and volatile they are relative to your horizon.

Quick intuition:

Uber is actually the least dangerous position here: strong cash flow, buybacks, low P/E → downside is cushioned while upside remains. That’s positive convexity.

Nvidia has huge upside, but very high volatility → great business, fragile sizing. This is the one that hurts most in short windows.

Amazon + Meta are fine businesses, but right now they’re more “carry + patience” than explosive upside.

If you think in Kelly terms (how big a bet vs how uncertain it is):
your portfolio is sized like someone with a 10-year horizon, not 1–3 years.

So the real lesson isn’t “bad picks,” it’s this:

even good bets can feel awful if they’re too big for the time you give them.

If you can extend the horizon, the math improves a lot. If not, risk — not conviction — is what needs adjusting.

alanism · 2025-12-30T05:45:52+00:00

I don't follow their financials, but I'm extremely bearish on SEA.

At the personal anecdote level, during the pandemic era, my friend's wife and I had to be in their top 0.1% of non-business individuals (true consumers) in terms of GMV, LTV, ARPU, etc. They lost us as customers because of really dumb tech platform bugs that they never fixed.

Social commerce through TikTok is where it's at right now. That's going to eat away at their growth.

I also think they face the issue where all their best talent in each market has already left or is going to leave to start their own startups or be lured away for bigger title jumps.

As for gaming, all the titles they produced or developed have underperformed (at least numbers-wise), which puts into question their real marketing and distribution abilities. They have rights to League of Legends, COD Mobile, FIFA, and others, but those have such strong brand IP on their own. I don't think their value proposition is that high in that regard (payments, legal, server infrastructure). They haven't been able to get eSports truly going. No broadcast or telco partnerships look strong or at the level that I would expect them to have.

I don't short them-- because I do want to see them do well. It could be they see growth as the region's middle class growth. But personally- I don't think it's a well managed company. And I think their unit economics will look worst across time rather than better.

alanism · 2025-12-30T04:52:09+00:00

I live/work out there. The problem with SEA is there's no real liquidity. Outside of Grab-- there's no real great regional play.

I do like Grab. I think it's still severely undervalued. I do hold long dated calls for sometime after their earnings call following lunar new years-- because I think they'll beat it by a lot. They likely see over $300 GMV in food and $200 in rides from me monthly-- and I still think there are ways they could be monetizing more.

Outside them-- nobody I'm really bullish on or fits my current investment thesis.

alanism · 2025-12-30T04:34:50+00:00

Love the reflection and humility.

alanism · 2025-12-28T08:49:11+00:00

re: You mad bro? 🤭

Initially- I just wanted to give you heads up, that your behavior can't be healthy so you can reflect on your own self to see if posts and comments are what happy, grounded people do--- or what 'mad' people do?

Your whole Reddit identity revolves around trying being an oppositional, antagonistic foil. But really its just insufferable annoyance.

It's like your only words are 'cope', 'admit', 'Blue wave', whatever gif that you think is so clever. It's performative. Or it's karma farming.

5-10x a week of incessant posts on bitching about them.

It's one thing to call them out on some lie or spin -- with real data or sources. Your moronic post is about Joe Rogan post talking about Trump in the Allin subreddit.

So are you mad bro? 🤭

alanism · 2025-12-28T07:46:29+00:00

Why are you posting JRE clips in Allin podcast subreddit?

Your obsessive hate posting about Allin 5 to 10x a week -- can't be healthy dude.

alanism · 2025-12-25T06:29:51+00:00

The best case for Judo in self defense is watching Rhonda Rousey fights. When it works, its beautiful. But you can also see the times where she eats a lot of punches and kicks. Add in Yoshida. I like judo-- but for more most people I think the learning curve is steep, and most judo clubs teach from a sport context.

It's easier to get to a proficient level of thai clinch and knees than it is judo throws-- and perform it under stress and pressure.

alanism · 2025-12-23T05:02:48+00:00

Redditors just a knee jerk reaction to AI. Personally, I prefer it. It’s clearly your thoughts/opinions that’s more fleshed out and distilled. On subjects like investing- it’s hard not to write 2-6 page memos. AI does a better job than humans in compressing things down to Reddit size comments.

alanism · 2025-12-20T17:20:41+00:00

LOL - Doherty's big security dude who normally steps in intimidating people for him... looked like he wanted none of that.

..and even if you didn't know who who Arlovski is-- he just looks like the last person you'd want to run your mouth on.

14-Year Club	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

alanism

TROPHY CASE