About the author

Hoi! I’m Astrid. I have a fascination with ideas and their history. I follow commodity and supply chain markets for fun and profit. When I’m not researching or writing here I’m probably coding shaders and explaining or exploring the maths and trickery behind colour and special effects in animation and video games. I’m active on Twitter but the best way to contact me is via e-mail.

Important stuff

• This blog and all contents contained are works within the public domain, please share, modify, or reproduce the content here in any way you see fit. No need to ask for permission (I do appreciate attribution though!)

• If you find a mistake in my research please let me know as soon as possible so I can correct it (I’ll give you credit too, unless you ask me not to).

• I currently accept donations in Bitcoin.

What to expect here

I post a lot of disparate stuff here. Some re-occurring series are:

A history of (classical) liberalisms

A series where I breakdown the history of the most influential ideas, thinkers, philosophies, and political forces that have coalesced to create the modern philosophies of (classical) liberalism. Liberal philosophies are characterized by a laissez-faire approach to economics, private property, anti-justificationism, contractarianism, methodological individualism, skepticism towards centralized power and knowledge, critiques of State and corporate power, and the centrality of both non-aggression and liberty to ethics. There are many philosophies today which share most of these fundamental characteristics and they often influence each other. I hope to bring some new attention and appreciation for the history of the most revolutionary philosophy the world has yet seen: liberalism.

Buy side equities research

I actively manage my personal investment portfolio and part of that entails regular equities research. Occasionally my research bears fruit. When I stumble into what I think are asymmetric risk/reward opportunities I share them here.

Past ideas:

$SLNH and $SLNHP January 16, 2022 @ $10.79 and $18.95

Documenting the Katastrophenhausse

In part of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises’ seminal work, Human Action, he talks about the Flucht in die Sachwerte (flight to real property/hard assets) during periods of real negative interest rates causing a Katastrophenhausse (catastrophic boom) in prices. Because I’m currently living through a period of worldwide sustained negative real interest rates, and am also witnessing a flight to hard assets, I intend to document the downstream effects and crises this worldwide sustained low interest rate and inflationary environment has created in real time.

A history of paramedicine in the United States

This series is about the forgotten history of a one of the most fundamental social infrastructures in the United States: Emergency Medical Services. Today we take it for granted that when you dial 9-1-1 from any city in the U.S. due to a medical emergency, trained medical professionals will quickly arrive in an automobile specifically outfitted to transport injured people to the hospital and treat them on the way. This was not always the case, and the reason this infrastructure exists is thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, the guy who invented CPR, Israel’s Mother Teresa, and 25 homeless black men from Pittsburgh in the 1960s.

Personal reflections/blog posts

These posts contain either ‘blog’ or ‘reflections’ in the subtitle. You can expect to hear about whatever I’ve spent time thinking about recently that seemed important enough for me to document.