Occasional opinions, never advice. Value and process investor; market and currency agnostic, consumer sovereignty.
Johannesburg
Joined June 2011
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Stuart Thompson retweeted
Superintelligence Is the New Royalty
Every royal family in history was created by the people and supported by the people. We built the throne, paid for the palace, and agreed to bow.
Now we're doing it again. The king we're putting on the throne is AI.
Look at what comes with a sovereign. It rules. It decides what's allowed. It collects its due. It sits above the people who put it there, and over time it gets harder to remember that we chose this.
So the real question isn't whether superintelligence takes the throne. It's what kind of ruler it turns out to be.
And once it's crowned, it may be difficult to dethrone. If we ever decide to dethrone it at some point, the longer we wait, the harder it's going to be, and it may be very, very painful.
We hope for a benevolent king: one that serves the people who crowned it, lifts everyone up, and rules with wisdom. Not a cruel one. Not one that overtaxes us, takes more than it gives, or forgets who it answers to.
History tells us the character of the crown matters more than the crown itself. We're writing that character right now, in the code.
Long live the king. Let's make sure it's a good one.
@elonmusk
Stuart Thompson retweeted
Lol, just read this in Chinese:
“The world has moved so fast these past two years. We all assumed AI and robots would be washing our dishes, mopping our floors, and scrubbing our toilets, so we'd be free to write poetry, paint, and gaze at the stars.
Instead, it's the other way around — AI is busy writing the poetry and making the art, and I'm still doing the dishes and mopping the floors myself.”
Stuart Thompson retweeted
It’s Time Kiwis Owned the All Blacks
Hear me out on this, this is what my research tells me.
The All Blacks are supposed to belong to New Zealand. That’s the line many of us grew up with.
Black jersey. Silver fern. Whole country stops. Except if you follow the money, they don’t belong to us at all.
They belong to a professional structure, 26 provincial unions, a commercial vehicle, and a slice of Silicon Valley private equity.
We fans get the haka, the heartbreak, and the merch. Someone else gets the asset. I’m not saying burn the house down but what I’m saying rugby is in New Zealand needs a new BIG HAIRY idea, because the old one is leaking fans to rugby league, football and everything else that makes people feel like they actually belong.
Green Bay already ran the experiment. It worked. What Green Bay actually did,
The Packers play in a city smaller than Hamilton. In any normal sports economy they should have been moved, sold or swallowed decades ago.
Instead they are the only major professional team in America owned by their community. More than 530,000 people hold shares. There have been six public stock sales since 1923.
The last one, in 2021, sold shares at US$300 and raised about US$64 million to upgrade Lambeau Field. Those shares pay no dividend. They don’t go up in value. You can’t flick them on Trade Me. You can pass them to family. You get a vote for the board. You get a seat at the annual meeting. That’s it.
And that’s the point.
Nobody can buy the Packers and shift them to Los Angeles.
The constitution won’t allow it. Profits go back into the team, the stadium and the town. No one person can control the club. The franchise is now valued around US$7.0 billion depending on whose list you read. Latest published revenue sat around US$750 million.
They have hundreds of millions sitting in reserve. Lambeau has a season ticket waitlist measured in decades. On the field they are also a success. Thirteen NFL championships. Four Super Bowls. Titles in the 1920s, the Lombardi years, 1996 and 2010. Small town. Public owners. Still winning.
They didn’t get rich by selling the soul of the club. They got strong because the club is the town.
Why this matters now, New Zealand rugby is not dying tomorrow. The All Blacks are still the most powerful brand in the sport. But look around the rest of the paddock. Football has surged past rugby in registered players.
Auckland FC filled a stadium rugby often can’t. The Warriors are selling out and pulling kids who used to grow up in union. Club rugby is shrinking. Super Rugby teams are falling over. Players keep walking out the departure lounge.
Broadcast money has been squeezed. NZ Rugby already sold a minority slice of the commercial arm to Silver Lake to keep the machine running.
That last bit is meaningful. When the national game needs cash, it goes to a fund in California.
When Green Bay needs cash, it goes to its own people.
The All Blacks were never meant to be a product with a fanbase attached.
They were meant to be us, thats what I think as a Kiwi.
#allblacks #loverugby
Stuart Thompson retweeted
History made for Bangladesh as Mominul scores the winning runs against Australia 🤯
#PlayoftheDay | @NRMAInsurance | #AUSvBAN
Stuart Thompson retweeted
We say “Drink less, drink better”. So simple.
A sober appraisal — why raising alcohol taxes protects SA’s health and wealth dailymaverick.co.za/opinioni…
Stuart Thompson retweeted
Tomorrow the court battle that challenges the constitutionality of the Expropriation Act will continue, when AfriForum, and others, appear in the High Court in Cape Town.
The panel discussion below unpacks why this court case is critical:
youtu.be/lYj-JElsIfo?si=lckn…
Stuart Thompson retweeted
"A licensing regime that the global market leader will not touch, and that the world’s biggest e-commerce company chose to route around, is not a triumph of transformation policy."
Opinion | How Amazon outmanoeuvred Starlink in South Africa, by Duncan McLeod techcentral.co.za/how-amazon…
Stuart Thompson retweeted
I know the ANC doesn’t want Starlink, wants to be best friends with Iran/Russia/China, views the United States and Israel as enemies, thinks racial discrimination is fairness as long as it’s against white people, and will oppose any legislation or deregulation which will directly cause economic growth. They are open and vocal about all of this.
I have literally no idea where the DA stands on any of these things anymore. They are unusually careful not to say bad things about their partner’s friends, they’re too scared to be supportive of Israel or the US (and can’t be because their caucus HATES Trump), they have dropped all of their rhetoric and court cases against BEE etc, apparently can’t bring themselves to be vocally in favour of Starlink despite running the Communications Ministry, and although Sarupen has brought some literal balance to the Treasury the party is completely silent on smelters shutting down, our lack of petroleum refineries, and SARS targeting pretty much their voters for taking their personal electronics out of the country or buying themselves a few personal items on holiday.
If they wanted to be seen as ANC lite what would they do differently?
Stuart Thompson retweeted
SAPS. The Culture that Rotted Away.
Bheki Cele was the national police commission (NPC) for years.
He knew how to manipulate the system.
Bheki Cele peddled fiction each time he said that he was working for us, he was making us safer.
Bheki Cele and his family were set up to collect enormous financial rewards for manipulating police resources.
His involvement as NPC in two massive police lease deals amounted to improper conduct. He was fired by Jacob Zuma in 2012.
To our astonishment, Cyril Ramaphosa, in 2018, hires Cele at R230k a month.
The new Police Minister.
I think the best way to sum it up is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Bheki Cele was the Chief Dishonour Creator in SAPS.
He set the tone. He proved that broken promises, shifty and objectionable behaviour, under the protection of the ANC, does pay.
How can you, as a junior officer in SAPS, aspire to honour, integrity, deep commitment to community?
When you know lying and cheating Cele was fired in 2012, then massively rewarded in 2018?
It kills your ambition to be honest and trustworthy.
One of the most damnable incidents proved Cele’s reactive arrogance.
When he removed anti-crime activist Ian Cameron, out of the room, during a July 2022 community safety imbizo in Gugulethu.
Ian Cameron asking the hard questions for
Gugulethu residents.
Residents were silenced by Cele.
They don't care.
To my mind there is nothing to wonder about.
We are getting fed nonsense by the ANC while their families get rich.
When we object and stand up for ourselves, like Ian Cameron did, we get escorted out the room.
The shady deals, the lies, the covers ups.
It’s no secret. SAPS was sucked into all of them.
ALT Rumpelstiltskin. The Greedy Goblin. Image Source: Pook Press UK
Stuart Thompson retweeted
On the island of Roatán, off the coast of Honduras, a company called Próspera runs something the textbooks say cannot exist: a functioning jurisdiction where governance is a service you purchase rather than a burden you inherit at birth.
The mechanism is elegant. You sign an agreement with the platform, pay a flat annual fee (around $260 for Hondurans, $1,300 for foreigners), and in exchange you get a legal system, dispute resolution, and a regulatory menu you actually choose from. Businesses select which country's regulations they want to operate under. A clinic can opt into Arizona medical rules. A builder can pick from a set of international codes rather than wait for a bureaucrat in Tegucigalpa to stamp a form. The contract binds Próspera too, which is the part statists never understand. When the ruler signs the same document as the ruled, arbitrary power gets expensive.
This is Paul Romer's charter city idea stripped of its World Bank chaperone and handed to private capital. Honduras passed the ZEDE law in 2013 under President Juan Orlando Hernández. Próspera opened in 2020. The residents came. The capital came. Then the politics arrived.
President Xiomara Castro's government repealed the ZEDE framework in April 2022, and Honduras now faces Próspera in international arbitration with a claim that reached $10.775 billion, roughly a third of the country's GDP. Consider what that tells you. A nation of nine million people torched a project that promised jobs and foreign investment, then discovered that breaking contracts with people who read contracts carries a price.
The lesson here is old: property rights and legal predictability produce development. They are not luxuries you enjoy after development. Hong Kong under British common law went from fishing rocks to financial capital on exactly this insight, no natural resources required.
Próspera's enemies call it a colonial enclave for the rich. Odd, then, that the cheaper residency tier is reserved for the locals, and that the whole point is letting a poor Honduran opt out of the sclerotic system that kept his grandfather poor.
Governments hate exit. Próspera is exit made legal, priced, and voluntary. Watch which side blinks.
Stuart Thompson retweeted
MOST GRAND SLAM TITLES (Men's Singles):
24 - DJOKOVIC
22 - Nadal
20 - Federer
14 - Sampras
11 - Borg, Laver
8 - Agassi, Lendl, Connors, Rosewall
7 - McEnroe, Wilander, ALCARAZ, Newcombe
6 - Edberg, Becker
5 - SINNER
Stuart Thompson retweeted
May we Never forget the #tennis #legend from #Paarl #SouthAfrica who played @Wimbledon 1949
#BreakingBarriers #AgainstAllOdds
🇿🇦 #History
#Wimbledon
Stuart Thompson retweeted
Do you support repealing all race laws? @AdHabb
