Absolute and Total Writer's Block

After a week in which little made sense, I am still processing

I had high hopes for this week’s note. Several drafts are sitting in the “Draft” section of my Substack and I’m happy with none of them. The US Naval Academy had its swim championships this past weekend and I was distracted:

So as I head out on the road for yet another new location (this time the renowned Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region of the United States before heading up to Canada), I am going to have to apologize and allow my thoughts to ruminate.

I will offer a few teasers:

Is this DotCom? A series of comments caught my eye in response to Nvidia’s truly stunning earnings report.

This is a misunderstanding of “DotCom.” It was not about “websites” in the individual sense. The scale of capex on telecommunications networks, cable networks, fiber to the home, etc was large enough that non-financial capex as a percent of GDP hit heights we hadn’t seen since the 1970s — and remarkably sustained there for nearly four years:

At least so far, we’ve seen nothing on that scale. Further, job growth in high paying telecommunications exploded… I’m sorry, but the growth in data center employment (total 500K) pales in comparison:

So the Tweeter (X’er?) is right… it’s not DotCom. At least so far, it’s much, much smaller in real world impact. Now let me get back to my Geocities website…