Author: insomniacresurrected

Ukraine’s Demographic Collapse

Like I have said many times, Ukraine will turn into a reserve for wild boars and feral hogs…

This I said in times of peace, when I couldn’t imagine the current horror of war. I sensed something is wrong but I expected reason to triumph over ignorance. I thought Ukraine would be slowly receding into oblivion through low birthrates and emigration. The war really tipped the scales. ⚖️

From Reuters:

Ukraine’s population has declined by 10 million, or around a quarter, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion as a result of refugees leaving, collapsing fertility and war deaths, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

This winter might drive more people out as they will be unable to heat their homes, or keep the lights on…

“The birth rate plummeted and is currently at around one child per woman, which is one of the lowest in the world,” she (Florence Bauer) said. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a stable population.

North Korea 🇰🇵 has a birthrate of 2.1. Capitalism kills birthrates…

Bauer said that a precise accounting for the impact of the war on Ukraine’s population would have to wait until after the conflict ended when a full census could finally be carried out.

It remains to be seen how many will return after the war is over. Some would not be able to return for political reasons, and others might find better life outside. 

I have recently suggested that the areas Russia takes might be settled by Westerners fleeing woke dystopia. I saw Charles Bausman (Part 1 and Part 2) making a similar statement. It remains to be seen whether Russia manages to attract a sizable contingent of Westerners.

If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?

Vladimir Kornilov, a journalist from Donetsk, Natalia Poklonskaya, former prosecutor from Crimea, and member of the Duma, Pavel Durov, founder of VK and Telegram, Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever the fuck he is, Irene Cecchini, an Italian student that suggested to Putin to give Western refugees from wokeness an asylum in Russia.

Based Russian Court Charges Google Gorillion Dollar Fine

Google is accused of suppressing Russian content on YouTube…

A Russian court has fined Google two undecillion roubles – a two followed by 36 zeroes – for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube.

In dollar terms that means the tech giant has been told to pay $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Source

Google suppresses a lot of information, for instance, YouTube never offered me the Trump-Joe Rogan interview and I had to search for it myself. Remember, they don’t want another Trump situation at Google.

If you search Google for anything these days, the first page of the results will be sponsored links. Anyway, I believe YouTube and Google are on their way to get banned in Russia. You don’t need YouTube, ban that shit and develop your own platforms! Russian YouTube is not monetized, that means Russian budget gets fuck all from the time Russian people spend on it.

Weighing Assets

This is not a financial advice but let me share my experience with different investment assets…

Rental property: Most of my income comes from various living spaces. Two long term rentals, and a short term airBNB. The two long term rentals are in a metropolitan area, where many come to study and work, whereas short term airBNB is in a rural area. Property is a good investment but all depends on the location and type.

The government is very concerned about housing. And this can be good and bad. On one hand, you are viewed as an evil exploitative landlord, and the government will punish you with taxes and rent controls, but the government also supports tenants that struggle to pay the rent. This means that you will get money even in the darkest times like the Covid lockdown.

The Covid lockdowns have put a lot of people on home office, and many companies realized this is more profitable than maintaining an office in the downtown. Also home office workers take fewer sick days. They don’t care about that sneeze or cough, and will do some work. Naturally office space is struggling, commercial real estate is not experiencing its best days with all the online sales.

Real estate’s profitability is dependent on market forces. My airBNB is very seasonal, summer months bring the most revenue and winter months are rather poor. People come here for cycling and sightseeing. I opened the thing after Covid, Covid would have been shit. Governments are not keen on these short term rentals, I have to have a business licence and pay the municipality. Big cities might have even more regulations. But you can collect many times more money than from long term rentals.

I have mostly experience with residential. There are also things like agricultural land. Not all land is created equal, and the yields might vary. Real estate is a pretty stable form of income but it is prone to third party risk and cannot be moved to another jurisdiction. Population collapse, the die off of boomers, AI driven construction could cheapen properties, and this makes it an unstable storer of value. Inheritance tax is another thing that makes it impossible to build wealth over generations with property. Finally, selling a property might take months, it is highly illiquid.

Stocks: I was trying many jobs and for a time I was a financial advisor, that is a haughty title for a financial instrument peddler. I did not succeed but at least I learned about index funds, and later I learned on my own about ETFs, and I invest in both. I don’t know where this will take me. I want to have several millions of CZK worth of stocks. Stocks are very dependent on markets, they are prone to booms and busts. So when times are good, your portfolio grows, and when they suck, it falls.

Bonds: I keep very little money in bonds. In fact I have this index fund linked to this financial instrument that “invests spare change”. The fund is formed of mostly CZK denominated bonds and the yield is 6-8%. People consider government bonds to be a safe investment, after all the government prints the money. But safe does not mean profitable, the riskier the shit the greater the dividend usually. The dodgier the government, the higher the interest rate.

BTC: Around 2019, I watched this Czech YouTuber that explained Bitcoin. And I invested £100 into it. I am a messy person and lost my hardware wallet. But few years later I found it, and my investment of £100 was now £500. I decided this year to invest regularly into BTC. BTC has a fixed supply, and seems like a good storer of value. Some people say it is going to the moon. Some are afraid that it is prone to hacking with the help of AI. I don’t have the knowledge to judge any of these claims. I put money that I do not immediately need into it and let the fate work its way.

I am a BTC maximalist, all other cryptocurrencies are shit coins, so if you want to invest in whatever, only BTC. BTC does not have a known founder, nobody has ever seen Satoshi Nakamoto; everybody has seen Vitalik Buterin. The BTC protocol is fixed, nobody can temper with it. The supply is fixed, unlike with ETH or whatever other cryptocurrency. Besides, there is no need for another cryptocurrency.

Another thing is liquidity. This is the most liquid asset out there in my opinion. It is traded all the time. Stocks depend on the exchanges they are traded at, gold also needs to be sold to buyers in person. You can cash in your BTC in an instant. Also BTC can be used as payment method, and it can be used as collateral for fiat loans. There are also credit cards that facilitate payments using BTC, and other cryptocurrencies.

Gold: In my opinion gold is the only precious metal worth investing into. Gold is scarce, and it does not rust. Silver depreciates under the elements, and is much more abundant. Unlike silver, the government does not tax gold purchases here in Czechia. Gold has an inflation rate of 2% annually (in 1941 it was 4%, wonder why). And I am fearing that at one point, somebody might find an asteroid full of gold and knock the price down. Maybe at that point I would buy some gold bars. But I missed my chance and now gold is at all time high.

Because gold is tangible some think it is better than BTC. But its tangibility is a liability. My house got broken into once, and while I have a safe box downstairs deep in the basement to store things like that, I am still not very satisfied. The liquidity of gold is dependent on a service of gold vendors that would send a van and pick up your bars, otherwise you have to drive yourself to a vendor or exchange. If you are an institution, with facilities to store your treasure, go ahead but I am a small time retail investor. You can also keep your gold with a third party custodian, much like I do with stocks. Again, this is about a service, and what suits you. But they take a commission. 

Ultimately, I invest in whatever I imagine is good at the moment, and I invest whatever money I imagine I can invest. I walk through this life and create different streams of income because my ass is Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in the second. And my opinion on them shifts all the time as my knowledge increases…

Hybrid Biodiesel Cars

We cannot have nice things…

I drove a Toyota hybrid around Jordan and it was a great experience. It was really fuel efficient. And an idea has occurred to me. We consume a lot of vegetable oil and seed oil, and that shit makes the food crispier and tastier but it is not very good for you. Fast food restaurants generate a lot of frying oil sludge, which too can be made into fuel.

The oils could be further refined into cleaner and more efficient combustibles, cars could be fitted with filters, and this way you can reduce pollutants. You could also reduce traffic in cities, I have nothing against this idea. Humans need to walk.

Why do governments aggressively push EVs? EVs suck ass. This is a proof that our politicians know jack shit about how stuff works. They represent lobbyists. They claim they wanna control the weather, stop global warming. Now, if they wanna reduce dependence on oil, there might be more efficient ways.

UPD:

Source: Reflex

Mercedes is the only car manufacturer of plug-in hybrids with diesel engines.

Evil USSR Stole Subcarpathia

So I read in the Czech periodical, Reflex how USSR took the eastern province of Subcarpahian Rus from them…

Czechs crying over the loss of Subcarpahian Rus, now that Transcarpathian region of Ukraine is actually cute. The purpose of the article is to show the USSR as bad. But sadly for any Czech claims, Subcarpathian Rus became part of Czechia by accident. The local Rusyn population could not join the West Ukrainian People’s Republic because the latter was destroyed by the newly recreated Rzeczpospolita, and the Western Allies did not want to give this territory to Hungary.

During the interwar period, Ukrainian nationalism took root among the locals and in 1939, they declared the Carpathian Ukraine. The territory was promptly occupied by Hungary, and in 1944, the Soviets annexed the territory to Soviet Ukraine. And now tell me, who has more right to the territory? Hungary because of a sizable Hungarian minority? Ukraine because the Slavic population, which. Is the majority identifies with Ukraine? The territory has never been historically part of any Czech state. Even in Habsburg or Jagelon monarchies that included the Czech lands, this was a territory of Hungary.

So did the Soviets make a mistake by incorporating this area into Ukraine? If that is so, perhaps we should right historical wrongs.

Watch and Weep, Eurocucks!

A friend of mine that lives in Illinois sent me this. According to my calculations that makes less than $1 USD for a liter of gas. Gasoline in Czechia costs 35 CZK, this is 1,5 USD.

Muricans form the majority of readership on this blog. Next time you complain about prices at the pump, know that we in Europe have it much harder. By the way, the salaries in Czechia are somewhere around $1,000 per month. Besides, in Britain having a car tends to get expensive with exuberant insurance and road tax.

Russia to Build Crypto mining and AI Infrastructure in BRICS Nations

Not so long ago, Russia was dismissive of cryptocurrencies but has since been orange pilled and came full circle…

From Forbes:

Russia’s largest data center operator BitRiver has partnered with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to build mining and AI computing facilities across BRICS nations.

***

“We will focus on creating a mining-based infrastructure – building data centers and connecting them to necessary power sources to enable AI project deployment and development across the country,” said BitRiver CEO Igor Runets according to the announcement.

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The companies cite a global shortage of energy-intensive data center capacity as a key driver for expansion. The initiative aligns with Russia’s push to strengthen its position as the world’s second-largest crypto mining market after the United States.