Paleoncologist

This is a podcast from Holden Thorp, the editor in chief of Science and a former career university administrator, where the format begins with innocent sounding questions before predictably pivoting into political framing, all while being funded by taxpayers who do not trust these institutions. One telling part is when he asks the scientist whether she is worried about losing “her” grants because of actions by the administration, but nowhere does he mention that these grants are university property controlled by university administrators. He frames them as personal grants because he wants the audience to interpret this as a personal attack on science itself rather than scrutiny of how universities steward taxpayer money. To the scientist’s credit, she does not take the bait. Holden Thorp helped transform AAAS and Science from scientific institutions into political machines. Just read his editorials and the storylines he oversees and allows, or perhaps even directs, his reporters to run. The same ecosystem includes figures like Jeremy Berg, a former Science editor in chief, who spends substantial time on social media smearing and trolling me as well as other scientists and those with interest in reform. AAAS and Science embraced activism, selective outrage, endless cancel culture and reputational attack campaigns, sometimes running multiple hit pieces targeting specific individuals with the clear goal of damaging careers and intimidating dissenters into silence. All of this unfolded while public trust in scientific institutions collapsed around them. Meanwhile this organization extracted billions of dollars from taxpayers through the publishing and membership system while supporting administrators collecting salaries approaching seven figures. Now the same people who politicized science want to lecture the public about credibility and reform while ignoring the corruption, bureaucratic bloat, ideological capture, and other failures they themselves created. AAAS has little credibility left unless its administration and organizational structure are fundamentally overhauled. It is remarkable that taxpayers continue funding organizations that function as political operations against scientists and critics they dislike.

A colleague four years out of fellowship, highly trained, in demand — and ready to quit. Not because of the pay. Because of the autonomy he doesn't have.

WE WILL STOP COMMUNISM. 🇺🇸

Would you want to go on a date with someone who taped your date and then uploaded it to Claude afterward?

I wanted to give you a longer answer and explain my investing story. My journey began shortly after graduating med school. During residency, a "friend" (a very bright guy) quit his job as an engineer to become a financial advisor, and enlisted several of his doctor friends as first clients. He was playing the long game, and I credit him for it. But a few years in, some things he was saying stopped adding up. It culminated in the early 2000's with me reading Bogle's Common Sense on Mutual Funds, which I'd still recommend to anyone. I could not keep investing with him. This ignited a strong desire to teach myself personal finance, and as I tend to do, I dove in deep: The Intelligent Investor, all of William Bernstein’s books (also a doctor), like The Intelligent Asset Allocator and all Buffett's letters. I came away with two conclusions. One, it IS possible to beat the market with stock picking if you're smart enough and have the right temperament. Two, that's a fool's errand for the vast majority to try this, and most people are better off in index funds, minimizing cost and focusing on asset allocation. As someone smarter than average (I graduated medical school, after all) with a temperament suited to market volatility, I figured I had every right to be in group one, though I knew it wouldn't be easy and I could be wrong. You can't just be smart to win at investing. I read about more exotic investments and discovered options trading. I dabbled in short-dated options and did terrible. For me it was little more than gambling, and worse, when I lost, I lost it all. I'd say I was breakeven or worse for the more crazy options strategies most people use. I was ready to abandon options altogether when I learned about LEAPS, and that the Black-Scholes model doesn't really work for them the way it does for shorter-dated options. "Deep in the money" (DITM) call options, 25-40% or more below strike, behave in a very stock-like manner. This isn't a free lunch; you give up return for safety. But since the model broke down, there was a chance to "win". DITM calls 30-40% below par tend to do well 1.5 to 2.5 years out. And when a stock recovers 20%, a DITM call may return 40% or more, occasionally 2-4X. And because they're deep in the money, when the stock drops, they may lose less than 100%. I also know a bit of blackjack, mainly that doubling down evens the odds in the player's favor. You don't have to win more often than the dealer, as long as you can double your bet occasionally when you win. Being a bit scientific, I knew I needed to be objective about whether I was actually in group one, and I needed enough time to rule out luck masquerading as skill. I put what I'd learned together into a strategy I haven't quite seen articulated elsewhere, though I read so much I may have forgotten the source: buy ~2-year DITM LEAPS when the market or a specific high-quality stock drops for no good reason. Two years is long enough for most problems to sort themselves out. Even a typical bear market runs a year to 18 months. I stuck to blue chips with a penchant for tech, because when tech does well, it does REALLY well. Since I'm a buy-and-hold investor, I rarely cashed out the options. I exercised them instead, buying the stock at strike. When it worked well, I'd exercise half, sell half, and use the proceeds to buy another batch of options two years out. I set up a 10-year experiment: half my portfolio went to Vanguard for a "couch potato" 70/30 stock-bond mix, the other half to Fidelity for active trading, and I tracked overall performance across both. If the Fidelity account wasn't significantly ahead of Vanguard, enough to compensate for the extra risk, I'd abandon it all and become a full-on Boglehead. I played this out mostly with AAPL from about 2008 to 2018, amassing a large holding at a cost basis today of about 30, along with a few other positions. By 2018, my Fidelity account was well ahead of Vanguard, the S&P, and most other reasonable benchmarks suggesting I might have a skill at this particular trade. The strategy was mature just in time for Covid, when I applied one more lesson from Buffett: I was brave when others were fearful. I researched the virus thoroughly, and became a bit of an amateur epidemiologist, concluding it wasn't nearly as deadly as advertised and that the epidemic wouldn't last more than a couple of years. In mid-2020 I began buying many long calls on individual stocks I'd always wanted, a batch of dividend aristocrats, and, once I ran out of ideas, S&P and NASDAQ index ETFs. Almost all of them did very well, securing gains of 40% or more. Most were exercised, a few sold to finance stock purchases. A few did lose. In the end, I was totally wrong about why the market recovered. It wasn't organic, it was cheap money flooding in. But you can be right for the wrong reasons sometimes. I made most of my money post-Covid, though I also took a hit around 2022. My big loss was in cruise line stocks, which never really recovered. This was more speculative than my usual investment, but I took a chance. Had they even recovered to par, I would have 10-20X'd my money. Instead, every one of those LEAPS went to zero. Ripping that bandaid off hurt. I still dip a toe in when it makes sense. This summer I purchased 100 shares of Tesla for $100 each, thanks to a single option I bought in 2024 when it dipped to $174. The premium was $100 a share, but hey, now I've got 100 shares of TSLA at a $200 cost basis. You can see from the attached screenshot that my 10-yr cumulative return for my entire portfolio (the missing acct is closed) is actually 25%. And this includes a big chunk of my portfolio at work in some crummy mutual funds. So my “active” portion is doing better than it seems. Now if you don't think 18 years is "the very long term" ... I'll update this in a few years ... 😉