Articles, Streams, and Books
Things catching our attention we think you might enjoy. Carry on!
7 Weekend Reads
What We’re Streaming
The Reading List
7 Weekend Reads
New Era of AI Deepfakes Complicates 2024 Elections
“The explosion of artificial-intelligence technology makes it easier than ever to deceive people on the internet, and is turning the 2024 U.S. presidential election into an unprecedented test on how to police deceptive content. An early salvo was fired last month in New Hampshire. Days before the state’s presidential primary, an estimated 5,000 to 25,000 calls went out telling recipients not to bother voting.“ Read more here
Why are ransomware gangs making so much money?
“According to new data from crypto forensics startup Chainalysis, known ransomware payments almost doubled in 2023 to surpass the $1 billion mark, calling the year a “major comeback for ransomware.” That’s the highest figure ever observed, and almost double the amount of known ransom payments tracked in 2022. But Chainalysis said the actual figure is likely far higher than the $1.1 billion in ransom payments it has witnessed so far.” Read more here
The Life and Death of the American Mall
“By their heyday in the late 1970s and 1980s, malls had established themselves as dominant retail hubs, and for developers, they seemed like a never-ending source of income. In communities that already had “their” malls, new ones were built to compete with them: bigger, more upscale, or just different. Even though the popularity of malls would continue well through the 1990s, this competition was the first factor that led to the cascade of closures that followed. There were too many, cannibalizing each other’s customers. Novelty meant that when one mall became dated or, sometimes, viewed as dangerous—often through white shoppers’ perception of nonwhite shoppers and the stores that served them—there was another one to go to instead. A single police incident could turn away scores of patrons for years.” Read more here
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
“From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own.” Read more here
Self-Driving Cars Might Just Transform the Way We Work
“If you didn’t believe the hype about autonomous vehicles over the past few years, you were in good company. But in spite of considerable problems with the technology, including some fatal accidents, the first generation of self-driving cars in the form of robot-taxis and shuttles has rolled out in some cities. Mercedes-Benz and BMW plan to begin introducing highly automated cars this year that allow limited hands-free driving.” Read more here
Scientists Are Putting ChatGPT Brains Inside Robot Bodies. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
“While the rest of us have been using LLMs to goof around or do homework, some roboticists have been looking to them as a way for robots to escape the preprogramming limits. The arrival of these human-sounding models has set off a “race across industry and academia to find the best ways to teach LLMs how to manipulate tools,” security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders wrote in an op-ed last summer.” Read more here
Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
“It’s very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying,” she says. “It kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don’t process the incoming information.” But when taking notes by hand, it’s often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it—prioritize it, consolidate it and try to relate it to things they’ve learned before. This conscious action of building onto existing knowledge can make it easier to stay engaged and grasp new concepts.” Read more here
What We’re Streaming
The Reading List
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts” and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’”
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
The strategies behind our Thematic Models:
Aging of the Population - Capturing the demographic wave of the aging population and the changing demands it brings with it.
Artificial Intelligence – Software, chips, and related companies that facilitate the collection and analysis of large data sets and autonomous generation of solutions given non-machine language prompts.
CHIPs Act – Capturing the reshoring of the US semiconductor industry and the $52.7 billion poised to be spent on semiconductor manufacturing.
Cloud Computing – Companies that provide hardware and services that enhance the cloud computing experience for users, such as co-location, security, and edge computing.
Consumer Inflation Fighters - Companies poised to benefit as consumers stretch the disposable spending dollars they do have.
Core Holdings – Companies that reflect economic activity and are large enough to not get pushed around by day-to-day market trends. Low-beta, large-cap names able to better withstand economic turmoil.
Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity -The buildout and upgrading of our Networks, Data Storage Facilities, and Equipment.
Data Privacy & Digital Identity - Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.
EPS Diplomats - Profitable large capitalization companies proven to produce above-average EPS growth and provide investors with the benefit of multiple expansions.
EV Transition - Capturing the transition to EVs and related infrastructure from combustion engine vehicles.
Guilty Pleasure – Companies that produce/provide food and drink products that consumers tend to enjoy regardless of the economic environment and potential long-term health hazards associated with excessive consumption.
Homebuilding & Materials – Ranging from homebuilders to key building product companies that serve the housing market, this model looks to capture the rising demand for housing, one that should benefit as the Fed returns monetary policy to more normalized levels.
Luxury Buying Boom - Tapping into aspirational buying and affluent buyers amid rising global wealth.
Market Hedge Model – This basket of daily reset swap-based broad market inverse ETFs protects in the face of market pullbacks, overbought market technicals, and other drivers of market volatility.
Nuclear Energy & Uranium – Companies that either build and maintain nuclear power plants or are involved in the production of uranium.
Precision Ag & Agri Science – Companies that look to address shrinking arable land by helping maximize crop yields utilizing technology, science, or both.
Rebuilding America - Turning the focused spending on rebuilding US infrastructure into revenue and profits.
Safety & Security – Targeted exposure to companies that provide goods and services primarily to the Defense and security sectors of the economy.
Space Economy – Companies that focus on the launch and operation of satellite networks.
The strategies behind our Dividend Income Models:
Monthly Dividend Model – Pretty much what the name says – this model invests in companies that pay monthly dividends to shareholders.
ETF Dividend Model – High-yielding ETFs that provide a range of exposures from domestic equities, international equities, emerging market equities, MLPS, and REITs.
ETF Enhanced Dividend Model – A group of high-yielding ETFs that utilize options to enhance yield through collecting option income.
Don’t be a stranger
Thanks for reading and if you have a suggestion for an article or book we should read, or a stream we should catch, email us at info@tematicaresearch.com. The same email works if you want to know more about our thematic and targeted exposure models listed below.