A global bond sell-off deepened on Wednesday, driving the yield on the 30-year US Treasury to 5 per cent for the first time since July, as investors’ fears over rising debt piles and stubbornly high inflation dominated trading.
Longer-dated bonds bore the brunt of the selling, with the yield on the 30-year Treasury up 0.03 percentage points at 5 per cent and Japan’s 30-year bond yield hitting a record high of 3.29 per cent.
In the UK, long-term borrowing costs climbed further after reaching their highest level since 1998 on Tuesday. The 30-year gilt yield rose 0.06 percentage points to 5.75 per cent.
Here is more from the FT.
The post Read it and weep appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
I’m removing the paywall from the article below. I shared it with premium subscribers four weeks ago—and it’s been a very turbulent month due to the very reasons outlined in the article.
For a start, the stock market is down sharply—despite Fed chair Jerome Powell’s promise to cut interest rates. But the bubble companies highlighted in the article have been especially hard hit. Nvidia is down 15 points. Microsoft is down 20 points. Meta is down 30 points.
The shift in psychology is more marked. Even Open AI boss Sam Altman is now talking about an AI bubble. Of course, he knows better than anyone because he is seeing it up close—the disappointing release of ChatGPT-5 played a key role in setting off the current turmoil.
It’s now clear that recent events have made this analysis more timely than it was a month ago. So I’m making it available to all parties.
If you want to read these frank assessments in the future, consider taking out a premium subscription to The Honest Broker.
By Ted Gioia
How can you tell if a tech bubble is about to burst?
Consider this recent conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Chen, chief researcher at OpenAI—as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
Zuckerberg asked Chen if he would consider joining Meta—and what it would take to bring him aboard.
A couple hundred million dollars? A billion?
A billion dollars to hire one person? Is that even conceivable? Was Zuckerberg just joking?
Not at all—Mark Zuckerberg may be a bit clownish, but he’s no comedian. Consider this other news tidbit from the WSJ:
Zuckerberg settled on Alexandr Wang to lead the new lab. To get him, Meta paid $14 billion for a stake in Scale AI, the data-labeling startup founded by the 28-year-old entrepreneur.
You might respond that Zuckerberg got more than just one person for his $14 billion expenditure. He also gained an entire company. But—here’s the punchline: the company he bought for $14 billion is losing money.
According to Business Insider, Scale AI just laid of 14% of its workforce because it’s unprofitable.
But who’s counting? In this new environment, salaries and signing bonuses get tossed around like Monopoly money. The only difference is that $200 doesn’t cut it any more—you need to pay hundreds of millions to hire the top talent.
Meanwhile in the real world, McDonald’s CFO told Bloomberg that the company is struggling because many customers are now too poor to afford breakfast.
And this isn’t some isolated anecdote—it’s a data-driven report from the biggest restaurant chain in the world. Workers go to the job hungry because they don’t have money for a meal.
“Are we entering an AI-driven boom time like an out-of-control Monopoly game? Or will we be too broke to eat breakfast?”
There’s a mismatch here between two visions of the emerging economy.
So which one is real? Are we entering an AI-driven boom time like an out-of-control Monopoly game? Or will we be too broke to eat breakfast?
Let’s try to answer this question—because a lot is at stake in getting the answer right.
I see signs of economic turmoil everywhere in the real world:
Starbucks sales are down and they are closing 100 stores.
KFC and Pizza Hut sales are down in the US.
Dozens of other restaurant chains are closing locations.
Las Vegas tourism is down sharply and visitors describe it as a ghost town.
In fact, the entire hotel and hospitality industry is shrinking.
There are now a half million more homes for sale in the US than home buyers.
Credit card debt is rising—and is now back at its all-time high.
US unemployment is the highest it’s been since the pandemic.
The jobs data was so bad that the person compiling the numbers got fired!
Companies are getting desperate, and they can’t hide it. A friend reports that Pizza Hut sent him a promotion on Tuesday morning, offering a two dollar pizza. He wondered how they could possibly make money on this deal.
And then that same day he got a notice from competitor Papa John’s, also promising a two buck pizza.
Two bucks for a pizza? Really?
This is how businesses respond when customers totally disappear. They will do anything to bring them back. Otherwise they have to shut down.
And this is a reality untouched by promises of an AI boom time. It’s everywhere in the real world where flesh-and-blood people live and work.
I don’t give stock tips at The Honest Broker. I am not a financial adviser. But I will tell you what I see:
This is ominous. In previous market crashes this kind of narrowing has been a warning sign.
In times of genuine prosperity, many people benefit, and there’s plenty of good news to share. That’s not the case right now, not at all.
AI buildout is contributing more to measured economic growth than all of consumer spending.
I want you look long and hard at this chart, and consider the implications.
Consider that this is all driven by four CEOs, motivated perhaps by ego and rivalry. And despite all this spending on AI, these companies haven’t created any meaningful stand-alone businesses from the technology.
Meta and Google still make almost all of their money from selling ads. They will try to bundle AI into this activity, but the benefits are unclear. Ads made by AI are widely mocked at present.
Microsoft is also trying to bundle AI into healthy existing businesses—but irritating customers in the process.
I could argue that the spending in the recent quarter is unsustainable. But the situation is much worse than that—because many stock market investors are extrapolating from this trend, and anticipating future growth at the same rate.
This, my friends, is what a bubble top looks like.
What’s even worse is that these are business-to-business transactions, and must eventually be paid for (directly or indirectly) by actual consumers. Without actual demand from end users willing to cover the cost of data center buildout, these investments can’t be justified.
Fewer than 1% of ChatGPT users are paid business accounts. That total is no larger than the number of paid Substack subscribers (but what a difference in company valuation!).
In fact, most of ChatGPT’s traffic disappears when students go on summer vacation.
That tells you how wide the chasm is between reality and the crazy claims of AI fanboys—but many of them (I bet) are also reluctant to pay for AI. Even software developers, previously among the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for AI, now have grown skeptical—positive sentiment in this cohort has dropped 10% in just the last year.
The tech simply doesn’t live up to the hype. The more people deal with it, the less they like it. That’s why AI companies must give it away (or bundle it into an already successful product) in order to gain any reasonable usage.
So everywhere I go online, companies are touting free AI. That’s funny. It doesn’t fit the narrative of a transformative technology.
Simon Owens make a reasonable observation. If AI is so smart, why don’t the people who own the AI companies just use the super intelligence to enrich themselves. Giving it away is idiocy, and even selling it is highly questionable.
I hear horror stories about the opposite happening. CEOs who have tried AI and seen how poorly it performs are reluctant to speak about it in public—they look like dupes. But surveys show that 75% of the projects have failed to meet expectations.
According to new data from Morgan Stanley, the total buildout will cost almost $3 trillion over the next three years, and the AI companies will only have cash to cover half of this expenditure. Somebody else has to come up with another $1.5 trillion—and it’s not clear where that money will be found.
The energy grid can’t support this growth in AI data centers. There’s no industry on the planet with such an ugly environmental impact. Meta and Google will need to get into the nuclear power business just to keep the bots running.
All this looks like a bubble. It smells like a bubble. It quacks like a bubble.
I will remind you that Mark Zuckerberg’s last spending spree was focused on virtual reality. That turned into a total bust. And I predicted it here from the outset.
But before the VR market collapsed, Zuckerberg convinced Apple and Microsoft to throw money away at it. That’s not surprising—the tech world is built on imitation and group think. (Has everybody forgotten the dotcom bubble?)
The same thing is happening now. Four billionaires play their own version of high stakes Monopoly, while the rest of us try to bunker down on Baltic Avenue.
But even four billionaires can’t change reality. Yes, they are spending like drunken sailors, but that just makes the bubble bigger. It can’t stop it from bursting. The crazy level of investment only makes the eventual fallout all the worse.
How much longer can it last? Maybe a few weeks or a few months or a few quarters. Billionaires often throw good money after bad. But the whole economy is fragile—or beyond fragile—right now. And that’s the bigger reality.
By any reasonable measure, the current trend is unsustainable. And there’s one thing I know about unsustainable trends—there’s a day of reckoning, and it’s not a happy one for the people who caused it. But, even sadder, they take down a lot of others with them when the bubble bursts.
In today’s market, even companies with multiple approved drugs can trade below their cash balances. Given this, it is truly perplexing to see AI-biotechs raise mega-rounds at the preclinical stage – Xaira with a billion-dollar seed, Isomorphic with $600M, EvolutionaryScale with $142M, and InceptiveBio with $100M, to name a few. The scale and stage of these rounds reflect some investors’ belief that AI-biology pairing can bend the drug discovery economics I described before.
To me, the question of whether AI will be helpful in drug discovery is not as interesting as the question of whether AI can turn a 2-billion-dollar drug development into a 200-million-dollar drug development, or whether 10 years to approve a drug can become 5 years to approve a drug. AI will be used to assist drug discovery in the same way software has been used for decades, and, given enough time, we know it will change everything [4]. But is “enough time” 3 years or half a century?
One number that is worth appreciating is that 80% of all costs associated with bringing a drug to market come from clinical-stage work. That is, if we ever get to molecules designed and preclinically validated in under 1 year, we’ll be impacting only a small fraction of what makes drug discovery hard. This productivity gain cap is especially striking given that the majority of the data we can use to train models today is still preclinical, and, in most cases, even pre-animal. A perfect model predictive of in vitro tox saves you time on running in vitro tox (which is less than a few weeks anyway!), doesn’t bridge the in vitro to animal translation gap, and especially does not affect the dreaded animal-to-human jump. As such, perfecting predictive validity for preclinical work is the current best-case scenario for the industry. Though we don’t have a sufficient amount and types of data to solve even that.
Here is the full and very interesting essay, from the excellent Lada Nuzhna.
The post Where are the trillion dollar biotech companies? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
William Wu, NoVa, piano, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.
Olga Niekrasova, Kyiv, animated film.
Anhelina Leshak, Ukraine/GWU, general career support.
Myles Fritts, Florida, fish and genetics.
Luzia Bruckamp, LSE, education and fertility.
Maximilian Jager, Frankfurt, LLMs to outline the German regulatory code.
Reyansh Sharma, London/Cambridge, open source math for the AIs.
Donnacha Fitzgerald, improve genome editing, London, from Ireland.
Sam Glover and Stella Tsantekidou, free speech in the UK.
Lyubov Guk, London/Ukraine, immigrant entrepreneurs.
Lily Geidelberg, London, AI and your calendar.
Ben Johnson, London, new policy and research developments for R&D.
Aden Nurie and Ian Cheshire, Tampa and Wallingford, “We’d like a grant to help us turn ChatARV into the best AI algorithm for finding comparable properties on the market.”
Jessie Chen, Singapore/Cambridge, privacy-preserving machine learning models that can work on encrypted data without exposing sensitive information.
Anton Leicht, Berlin, AI policy research.
Here is Nabeel’s semantic search for previous EV winners.
The post Emergent Ventures winners, 46th cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.All of the original US senators who created and sustained NASA's Space Launch System rocket over the last 15 years—Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Richard Shelby—have either retired or failed to win reelection. However, a new champion has emerged to continue the fight: Texas Republican Ted Cruz.
He seems an unlikely hero for NASA's large rocket, which costs the federal government more than $2 billion to launch. Cruz, after all, is a self-described pro-capitalist, fiscal conservative. SpaceX and Blue Origin, which are building large and significantly lower-cost alternatives to the SLS rocket, have large operations in Texas. In previous legislative sessions, Cruz has often carried legislation important to the commercial space industry, such as the American Space Commerce Act and the Space Frontier Act.
But now that he chairs the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Cruz has made a significant shift toward supporting the SLS rocket and its chief contractor, Boeing.
Up betimes and got myself ready alone, and so to my office, my mind much troubled for my key that I lost yesterday, and so to my workmen and put them in order, and so to my office, and we met all the morning, and then dined at Sir W. Batten’s with Sir W. Pen, and so to my office again all the afternoon, and in the evening wrote a letter to Mr. Cooke, in the country, in behalf of my brother Tom, to his mistress, it being the first of my appearing in it, and if she be as Tom sets her out, it may be very well for him. So home and eat a bit, and so to my lodging to bed.
NASA is moving ahead with plans to support development of a lunar nuclear power system with an emphasis on commercialization.
The post NASA advances lunar nuclear plan with commercial focus appeared first on SpaceNews.
SAN FRANCISCO — South Korea’s SI Imaging Services announced a contract Sept. 2 to lease the capacity of Earth-observation satellite SpaceEye-T to a European customer under a contract with a value of more than 10 million euros ($11.7 million). SpaceEye-T, an optical satellite offering native resolution of 25 centimeters per pixel, reached orbit in March […]
The post European customer leases SI Imaging Services’ SpaceEye-T appeared first on SpaceNews.
Turku, Finland — 29 August 2025 — ASRO – Aboa Space Research Oy and Ethereal Space, Inc. today announced a new strategic partnership to develop and deploy advanced space weather instruments designed to monitor energetic […]
The post ASRO and Ethereal Space Partner to Advance Space Weather Instrumentation with ESA Commercialisation Gateway Support appeared first on SpaceNews.
The headquarters of U.S. Space Command will be relocated from Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama
The post Trump directs U.S. Space Command move to Huntsville, reversing Biden decision appeared first on SpaceNews.
The recent passing of retired Navy Capt. Jim Lovell, an astronaut and one of our great American heroes, propelled many of us back to the iconic scenes from the superb retelling of the Apollo 13 movie in 1995. The three of us lived through that fateful mission in 1970, as the astronauts and mission control team […]
The post We led NASA’s human exploration program. Here’s what Artemis needs next. appeared first on SpaceNews.
Sarah Walter was most recently vice president of engineering at satellite manufacturer York Space Systems
The post True Anomaly hires former York Space executive as chief operating officer appeared first on SpaceNews.
Update Sept. 3, 1 a.m. EDT:
SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket launch from Florida’s Space Coast is set to depart less than an hour after sunrise on Wednesday.
The mission, dubbed Starlink 10-22, will be the company’s 110th Falcon 9 launch of the year. SpaceX is aiming for liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:56 a.m. EDT (1156 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.
On Tuesday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 70 percent chance for favorable weather, citing a potential concern for interference from cumulus clouds.
“Isolated showers over the gulf stream are expected in the morning hours during both primary and back up launch days,” the meteorologists added.
SpaceX will launch the missions using the first stage booster 1083, which will fly for a 14th time. Some of its previous missions included NASA’s Crew-8, Polaris Dawn and Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1083 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ If successful, this will be there 123rd landing on this vessel and the 499th booster landing to date.
The 28 Starlink V2 Mini satellites onboard the rocket will be deployed a little more than an hour after liftoff. This is scheduled to be SpaceX’s 79th mission this year supporting its satellite megaconstellation.
Update Sept. 1 a.m. EDT: SpaceX confirms deployment of its Starlink satellites.
SpaceX completed its first Falcon 9 launch of the month, which carried another batch of 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. The Tuesday night launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base featured the flight of a new Falcon 9 rocket booster.
The mission, dubbed Starlink 17-8, adde to the more than 1,900 of its satellites so far in 2025 with more than 1,600 supporting broadband internet and nearly 300 being direct-to-cell satellites.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 8:51 p.m. PDT (11:51 p.m. EDT / 0351 UTC). The rocket flew on a southerly trajectory to send the satellites on their way to a polar orbit.
SpaceX debuted its Falcon 9 rocket booster, likely B1097, on this mission. Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, it landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’
This was the 148th landing on OCISLY and the 498th booster landing to date.
SpaceX’s business model for both achieving a rapid launch cadence and being able to lower the cost for access to space hinges on the reusability of key rocket parts. It’s currently working towards certifying its first stage boosters and payload fairings for up to 40 flights for each.
While it has achieved 30 flights with a single booster as well as with its fairings, it does need to bring new entrants into the fold from time to time. So far in 2025, SpaceX added six new boosters to its lineup: B1091 – B1096.
Historically, SpaceX debuts a Falcon booster on a mission for a government customer, like NASA or the U.S. Space Force, but this year four of its new Falcon booster made their inaugural flight in support of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.
Keynote Spotlight: Kiko Dontchev
At last week’s Space Coast Symposium & Expo, we were honored to welcome Kiko Dontchev, Vice President of Launch at SpaceX, as a keynote speaker. pic.twitter.com/yT5HTV6Xdw
— Greater Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce (@palmbayccomm) August 26, 2025
During a recent appearance at the Greater Palm Bay Camber of Commerce’s 7th Space Coast Symposium and Expo, Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of Launch said that SpaceX is still on track to achieve 170 launches. He said that goal is only feasible because of their model of reusability.
“That is the step function and the game changer that has occurred that has allowed a company like SpaceX to achieve that launch rate,” Dontchev said.
“Reusability has fueled the growth for human spaceflight, for commercial launch and for government launch. And it’s also made a more reliable system,” Dontchev added. “Falcon 9, given this rate, has become the most reliable rocket in the history of the world.”
Tuesday night’s launch will be SpaceX’s 526th Falcon 9 launch to date and its 109th of the year. It’s expected to be followed Wednesday morning with another Falcon 9 flight, this time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
For your holiday listening enjoyment: Special guest Andru Edwards joins the show. Topics include Google’s Pixel 10 event and the Pixel 10 family of devices, AI’s effect on computational photography, foldable phones, and some speculation on Apple’s September 9 “Awe Dropping” event.
Sponsored by:
I’ve written a number of times about the central role of state sovereignty in resisting Trump’s growing tyranny and the critical fact that states control the administration of elections. With that in mind, I want to flag what I think is a key part of that equation. It’s not meant to be alarmist. It’s simply a matter of preparation.
As we’ve discussed, states control the administration of elections, subject to Congress setting standards for the administration of elections. This critical fact isn’t just a matter of law. It’s about the machinery of government. The states are there and the federal government isn’t. Trump can dash off a million executive orders but that doesn’t make them real or meaningful. More dangerous, he might try to use Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or federal troops to create a climate of intimidation at the ballot box. That threat is real. But because of the structure of our elections, the key danger point likely comes later. Let’s assume the 2026 election or more likely the 2028 election goes more or less unmolested. Now in January 2027 the new representatives and senators show up for the new Congress. Are they seated? Or do congressional Republicans somehow refuse to seat them, arguing that their elections were somehow illegitimate, that they didn’t follow one of Trump’s legally meaningless executive orders?
The mechanics are actually complex on a few levels. Let’s assume for the sake of example that Democrats win both chambers in 2026. I’m not predicting this. It’s just the scenario that is best for illustration. When new members of the House arrive in DC in January 2027 everyone is new. In other words, there’s no Republican majority who can say the newly elected Democrats can’t be seated. I believe the presentation of certificates of election and swearing in is in the hands of the Clerk of the House, normally an apolitical position. In the House it’s not clear how a non-seating strategy would work.
In the Senate, if I understand the rules correctly, it’s the Vice President, as president of the Senate, who reviews the certificates of election and swears in the new members. It’s basically a replay of the Mike Pence drama in 2021. The Vice President’s role is purely ministerial. He’s not permitted to make a substantive judgment about the legitimacy of the certificates of election. He’s just there to open the envelopes and see if they’re from the states in question and that’s it. But he could do some version of what Trump wanted Pence to do in 2021, simply say they’re not in order and not seat the new lawmakers. There’s zero legal basis for doing that. But what the recourse would be isn’t clear.
In my view, if the Democrats won control of Congress and Trump, through obedient members of Congress, somehow managed not to seat them, that would mean the federal government ceases to exist as a legitimate governmental power. All bets are off. I want to be clear that I don’t think they would be able to pull this off for all the reasons I’ve described. But it’s also clear they’ll try basically anything. And Trump clearly sees the loss of Congress as an existential threat. So I raise the scenario simply so that everyone relevant can prepare for it, game it out, do things now that cut off that route to retain power illegally.
This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one of the most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons. Twenty-something Brandon Lutnick, pictured above on the left in a 2016 photo, is the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald. (He must be hella talented!)
Damn, I thought: That’s a hot story, crooked as the day is long. But I’m not sure how I or we would track it down without better finance world sources. Still, it was worth some quick googling. It turns out this is happening and Cantor’s role has already been reported. Wired and others reported this more than a month ago.
In mid-July, according to Wired, Cantor was buying up the rights to your potential tariff refund at between 20 and 30 cents per dollar. Needless to say, I bet that price has gone up a lot since last Friday’s federal appellate court upheld the lower court ruling that almost all of Trump’s tariffs are illegal. So in paper terms Cantor has probably already made a ton of money on this.
Now, before going any further I want to make clear that in itself this transaction is fairly unremarkable. A huge amount of modern finance is about making bets on uncertain outcomes, bets which can be structured in various ways. It might be commodities futures. In this case, it’s the right to collect a refund that may never happen. The sale of debt — a ubiquitous feature of modern finance — is similar. Purchasing debt, whether it’s a government bond or your home mortgage, is fundamentally a bet on the likelihood of repayment. I don’t want to belabor the point, only to make clear that the transaction in concept is neither outlandish or suspect, at least no more than any other part of modern finance.
All that said, it’s hard to imagine anything more emblematic of the Trump Era than what is for all intents and purposes still the Commerce Secretary’s company (yes, yes, arms length hand off to his twenty-something sons) making bets on something Lutnick himself has significant influence over. Indeed, far more important than whatever influence Lutnick has over tariff policy is that significant visibility he has into the bet’s probable outcome.
Lutnick can’t be certain what’s in a judge’s mind any more than Trump can. But he’ll have lots of visibility into what the government’s lawyers think, how they rate their odds of success, what their arguments will be. On top of that, given the immense corruption of the current Supreme Court I would put say there’s at least a 50%-50% shot that Trump and thus Lutnick will gets signals from one or more of the justices about how the Court will rule. Any way you look at this it’s corrupt as hell. And on a more metaphoric level it typifies the heads I win tails you lose rules the billionaire class and their sub-billionaire toadies live by.
What’s not clear is how much of this stuff the Lutnick Boys have actually purchased. In July the US government brought in $29.6 billion in tariff revenue compared to $8.7 billion in July 2024. So that’s more than $20 billion in probably illegal tariffs before many of them had even kicked in. The current market for these refund rights is already in the tens of billions and could hit the hundreds of billions by years end. According to Wired, Cantor said in July that it had “the capacity to buy the rights to hundreds of millions of dollars” of tariff refunds. So the amounts we’re talking about, both at risk and in potential windfalls, is very, very big.
In mid-July Cantor was buying for about 25% of the face value of the refunds. Just looking at the logic of the situation, I’d be shocked if you couldn’t sell that today for 50% of the face value and quite possibly substantially more. The initial court decision and Friday’s appellate decision (tariff cases have their own set of courts) have both gone decisively against the White House and the legality of the tariffs. In any normal universe SCOTUS’s decision would be all but a fait accompli. The only thing weighing in the White House’s favor is SCOTUS’s propensity to give Trump almost everything he wants. But even in this degenerate timeline, the odds for these tariffs don’t look great. If Cantor was able to buy up a lot of tariff refund rights at 20 or 30 cents to the dollar the payoff could be vast.
It’s good to be the King, or even the King’s toady.
Late Update: I did a little more poking around on the details of Lutnick’s “divestment” from Cantor Fitzgerald. The Journal reported in May that on his confirmation as Commerce Secretary he turned over the leadership of Cantor Fitzgerald to his sons. Brandon became Chairman and Kyle became executive vice chairman. He turned over his equity interest in Cantor Fitzgerald over to a trust to benefit his adult children – that is, Brandon, Kyle and whatever other children he has. Meanwhile two businesses which are owned by Cantor will buy back from Lutnick the equity he personally owns in those businesses. The two purchases together will total just over $360 million. Under government ethics rules, since Lutnick has to do this sale as part of his government ethics agreement, he will pay no capital gains tax on this sale so long as he places the money in something like a mutual fund. I don’t think we know what counted as gains on those buy-backs. But that has to have been a massive tax savings. Meanwhile, Lutnick’s divestment from Cantor – his sons run it; his equity in the company is now in a trust for his sons – seems extremely nominal.
Bernie Sanders, in a NYT op-ed:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.
Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.
Powerful and to the point. Sanders, unlike the nine former CDC directors whose joint op-ed ran the next day, doesn’t pull punches. But there’s no point demanding Kennedy resign, because he won’t. Sanders, and the rest of us, should call on Trump to fire him. The buck stops with Trump. Trump fires his appointees all the time. Almost no one lasted long in the Trump 1.0 administration, and it’s unlikely anyone will last long in the Trump 2.0 administration. (Including, perhaps, Trump himself, who is clearly unwell.) Kennedy ought to be the first to go.
Trump smells it too, hence this “both sides” post on his blog this morning. Public opinion is strongly against this abject vaccine quackery.
William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen — all of them former directors of the CDC, under every president from Jimmy Carter to Trump — in a co-bylined op-ed for the NYT:
What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.
Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire. [...]
This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.
It’s good that they’re speaking up, but it’s too mealy-mouthed. What’s going on at HHS under Kennedy isn’t merely “unacceptable” and “alarming”. It’s outrageous and shocking.
Welcome to the first edition of The Responsible Engineer newsletter, where we share the latest additions to the knowledge library. Thank you for subscribing!
We’re in the early days of building this out, adding pieces as we go. We’re launching with a few foundational (yet actionable) long-form articles that capture the philosophy underlying everything we publish in the future. From there, we’ll steadily add templates, design guides, and other practical execution tools. For example, this week’s release includes our first template, the start of a growing set of resources that teams can put to work immediately.
Here’s what you can expect right out of the gate:
New content added frequently. We publish new pieces ~weekly, mixing long-form articles with templates and guides for real-world execution.
An early supporter rate. It reflects the current early stage of the Library, but will increase later to reflect its increased value. So now’s the time to lock it in!
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Thanks for being here with us on the ground floor. We appreciate your support, and look forward to growing this project with you.
Building Schedules that Work: Focus on the Critical Path (NEW Article + Template)
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Another concern is that stablecoins could displace bank deposits and undermine commercial banks. Many banks are taking steps to “tokenise” their deposits, allowing them to be used easily for blockchain-based transactions. And they are reducing their fat fees on cross-border payments. In other words, faced with new competition, they are cutting costs and increasing efficiency. This is as it should be.
Here is more from Eswar Prasad at the FT. Or can the banks simply not compete and will lose lots of deposits?
The post Stablecoins competing with banks? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Construction spending during July 2025 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,139.1 billion, 0.1 percent below the revised June estimate of $2,140.5 billion. The July figure is 2.8 percent below the July 2024 estimate of $2,200.7 billionPrivate spending decreased and public spending increased:
emphasis added
Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,623.3 billion, 0.2 percent below the revised June estimate of $1,626.3 billion. ...
In July, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $515.8 billion, 0.3 percent above the revised June estimate of $514.3 billion.
Click on graph for larger image.
The second graph shows the year-over-year change in construction spending.Economic activity in the manufacturing sector contracted in August for the sixth consecutive month, following a two-month expansion preceded by 26 straight months of contraction, say the nation's supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.This suggests manufacturing contracted in August. This was at the consensus forecast, although employment was weak and prices very strong.
The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.
“The Manufacturing PMI® registered 48.7 percent in August, a 0.7-percentage point increase compared to the 48 percent recorded in July. The overall economy continued in expansion for the 64th month after one month of contraction in April 2020. (A Manufacturing PMI® above 42.3 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index indicated growth in August following a six-month period of contraction; the figure of 51.4 percent is 4.3 percentage points higher than the 47.1 percent recorded in July. The August reading of the Production Index (47.8 percent) is 3.6 percentage points lower than July’s figure of 51.4 percent. The Prices Index remained in expansion (or ‘increasing’) territory, registering 63.7 percent, down 1.1 percentage points compared to the reading of 64.8 percent reported in July. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 44.7 percent, down 2.1 percentage points compared to the 46.8 percent recorded in July. The Employment Index registered 43.8 percent, up 0.4 percentage point from July’s figure of 43.4 percent.
emphasis added
I just sent out my August 2025 sponsors-only newsletter summarizing the past month in LLMs and my other work. Topics included GPT-5, gpt-oss, image editing models (Qwen-Image-Edit and Gemini Nano Banana), other significant model releases and the tools I'm using at the moment.
If you'd like a preview of the newsletter, here's the July 2025 edition I sent out a month ago.
New sponsors get access to the full archive. If you start sponsoring for $10/month or more right now you'll get instant access to the August edition in my simonw-private/monthly GitHub repository.
If you've already read all 85 posts I wrote in August the newsletter acts mainly as a recap, but I've had positive feedback from people who prefer to get the monthly edited highlights over reading the firehose that is my blog!
Here's the table of contents for the August newsletter:
- GPT-5
- OpenAl's open models: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b
- Other significant model releases in August
- Image editing: Qwen-Image-Edit and Gemini Nano Banana
- More prompt injection and more lethal trifecta
- Tools I'm using at the moment
- Bonus links
Tags: newsletter
gpt-realtime is OpenAI's new "most advanced speech-to-speech model". It looks like this is a replacement for the older gpt-4o-realtime-preview model that was released last October.
This is a slightly confusing release. The previous realtime model was clearly described as a variant of GPT-4o, sharing the same October 2023 training cut-off date as that model.
I had expected that gpt-realtime might be a GPT-5 relative, but its training date is still October 2023 whereas GPT-5 is September 2024.
gpt-realtime also shares the relatively low 32,000 context token and 4,096 maximum output token limits of gpt-4o-realtime-preview.
The only reference I found to GPT-5 in the documentation for the new model was a note saying "Ambiguity and conflicting instructions degrade performance, similar to GPT-5."
The usage tips for gpt-realtime have a few surprises:
Iterate relentlessly. Small wording changes can make or break behavior.
Example: Swapping “inaudible” → “unintelligible” improved noisy input handling. [...]
Convert non-text rules to text: The model responds better to clearly written text.
Example: Instead of writing, "IF x > 3 THEN ESCALATE", write, "IF MORE THAN THREE FAILURES THEN ESCALATE."
There are a whole lot more prompting tips in the new Realtime Prompting Guide.
OpenAI list several key improvements to gpt-realtime including the ability to configure it with a list of MCP servers, "better instruction following" and the ability to send it images.
My biggest confusion came from the pricing page, which lists separate pricing for using the Realtime API with gpt-realtime and GPT-4o mini. This suggests to me that the old gpt-4o-mini-realtime-preview model is still available, despite it no longer being listed on the OpenAI models page.
gpt-4o-mini-realtime-preview is a lot cheaper:
| Model | Token Type | Input | Cached Input | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-realtime | Text | $4.00 | $0.40 | $16.00 |
| Audio | $32.00 | $0.40 | $64.00 | |
| Image | $5.00 | $0.50 | - | |
| gpt-4o-mini-realtime-preview | Text | $0.60 | $0.30 | $2.40 |
| Audio | $10.00 | $0.30 | $20.00 |
The mini model also has a much longer 128,000 token context window.
Update: Turns out that was a mistake in the documentation, that mini model has a 16,000 token context size.
Tags: audio, realtime, ai, openai, generative-ai, llms, llm-pricing, multi-modal-output, llm-release
I found this chart particularly interesting, showing which documented AI crawlers are most active collecting training data - lead by GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Meta-ExternalAgent:
Cloudflare's DNS data also hints at the popularity of different services. ChatGPT holds the first place, which is unsurprising - but second place is a hotly contested race between Claude and Perplexity and #4/#5/#6 is contested by GitHub Copilot, Perplexity, and Codeium/Windsurf.
Google Gemini comes in 7th, though since this is DNS based I imagine this is undercounting instances of Gemini on google.com as opposed to gemini.google.com.
Via Hacker News
Tags: crawling, dns, ai, cloudflare, generative-ai, llms
Busy day yesterday, so all I have this morning is a brief follow-up on last week’s post about the decision by an appeals court to uphold the Court of Trade’s ruling that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal — which they clearly are.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has argued that this ruling should not stand because it would embarrass the United States. (Actually, it would mainly embarrass Bessent and his boss.) As I noted, this is a novel legal principle: It’s OK to do illegal things when obeying the law would be embarrassing. What I failed to note is the sheer chutzpah of the argument.
Many of my readers probably know the concept — hey, “chutzpah” is in the Oxford English dictionary. In any case, the classic explanation of chutzpah is that it’s when you murder your parents, then plead for leniency because you’re an orphan. Here we have officials engaging in blatantly illegal actions, then saying that they should be let off the book because admitting that their actions were illegal would be humiliating.
Actually, the embarrassment would run deeper than many people realize. Who actually pays tariffs? Mostly American businesses, who have to pay a tax on goods they import. If those taxes were illegal, surely the government will have to refund the money. Sound implausible? Not to investors who have been buying up refund rights.
And who’s facilitating these bets that Trump’s whole tariff strategy will collapse? Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank run by the sons of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.
So yes, obeying the law would be very embarrassing for the Trump administration. But honestly, there are so many embarrassing things going on now that one more would hardly make a difference. Here, for example, is what the White House put out yesterday:
Raising $8 trillion in tariff revenue would be quite a trick, given that total U.S. imports last year were only $3.3 trillion.
And outside the realm of economics, the United States has just experienced a spectacular diplomatic disaster. America has spent decades trying to cultivate good relations with India, which could be a useful counterweight to China. Now we have a nearly complete rupture, with India actually cozying up to China.
And what was that about? Apparently Trump, in his bizarre pursuit of a Nobel peace prize, tried to bully Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, into giving him undeserved credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan. The two men haven’t talked since.
And there’s much more, like Trump’s claim that the European Union is giving him $600 billion, which is news to the Europeans.
You might say that the Trump administration is suffering from a richness of embarrassments.
Trump has, of course, surrounded himself with slavish sycophants. And he may imagine that the world admires him the way his hangers-on pretend to. The truth, however, is that the world sees him as a dangerous buffoon. Dangerous because he runs America, an economic and military superpower, and has a fanatically supportive domestic base. A buffoon because he’s almost surreally vain, insecure and ignorant.
Given that reality, we really shouldn’t worry that a legal setback on tariffs will embarrass the administration, causing it to lose the world’s respect. Trump already has no respect left to lose.
MUSICAL CODA
What Trump wants but won’t get
Here's the key trick - it renders Unicode ▄ (U+2584, "lower half block") characters after setting a foreground and background color for the two pixels it needs to display.
I got GPT-5 to vibe code up a show_image.py terminal command which resizes the provided image to fit the width and height of the current terminal and displays it using Rich Pixels. That script is here, you can run it with uv like this:
uv run http://tools.simonwillison.net/python/show_image.py \
image.jpg
Here's what I got when I ran it against my V&A East Storehouse photo from this post:
Tags: ascii-art, cli, python, ai, generative-ai, llms, uv, vibe-coding, gpt-5, rich
Choosing the right trainwreck kratom can feel overwhelming with so many options available, each claiming to stand out. Without clear guidance, it’s easy to get confused about what to look for and how to make the best choice for your needs. That’s why Professor Whyte’s guide comes in handy—offering practical tips to help you navigate the selection process with confidence. In this blog, we’ll break down the key factors to consider when choosing Trainwreck strain, making the decision more straightforward.
Professor Whyte’s guide emphasizes the importance of looking for clear labeling and product transparency when choosing Trainwreck Kratom. Clear labels make it easy to understand exactly what is in the package, including the type of blend and its quantity.
Transparency from the brand also reflects attention to detail and professionalism, giving you confidence that the product matches what’s advertised. By focusing on labeling and openness, you can make a more informed choice and avoid unnecessary confusion or guesswork when selecting the right Trainwreck strain.
Professor Whyte’s guide advises reviewing the consistency of color and texture when selecting Trainwreck Kratom. Paying attention to these details helps you gauge whether the product maintains uniform quality across batches.
Consistent color and texture indicate careful processing and handling, which can make the product’s experience more predictable. By observing these visual and tactile cues, you can feel more confident that the Trainwreck strain you choose meets a reliable standard.
Professor Whyte’s guide recommends checking for standardized production methods when selecting Trainwreck Kratom. Products made with consistent, standardized processes tend to offer a uniform experience, with attention paid to quality control at each stage.
Knowing that a brand adheres to established production practices ensures that the product is handled with care and precision. By considering standardized methods, you can make a more informed decision and choose Trainwreck strain that aligns with expectations for consistency and reliability.
Professor Whyte’s guide suggests observing the reputation of the specific product line when choosing Trainwreck Kratom. Even within a single brand, different product lines can vary significantly in terms of consistency, quality, and customer satisfaction.
Looking into how a particular line is regarded—through reviews, feedback, or general industry recognition—can provide insight into what to expect. By paying attention to the reputation of the specific Trainwreck Kratom line, you can make a more confident and informed choice.
Professor Whyte’s guide encourages comparing different blends under the Trainwreck name to ensure you select the one that best fits your preferences. Not all Trainwreck blends are identical—some may emphasize particular combinations or ratios, resulting in variations in experience and flavor.
By examining the options available, you can identify which blend aligns more closely with your needs and expectations. This comparison helps narrow down choices and ensures you pick the Trainwreck Kratom that feels right for you.
Professor Whyte’s guide highlights the importance of considering ease of measuring doses when selecting Trainwreck Kratom. Some products are packaged in a way that makes measuring simple and precise, while others may require additional tools or extra steps.
Choosing a format that allows for easy, consistent measurement can save time and reduce frustration during preparation. By focusing on this detail, you ensure that using Trainwreck Kratom fits smoothly into your routine without unnecessary hassle.
Professor Whyte’s guide advises examining the shelf life or freshness indicators when choosing Trainwreck Kratom. Checking for details such as expiration dates, sealed packaging, or other freshness markers helps ensure the product maintains its quality over time.
Being mindful of these indicators allows you to select a batch that is well-preserved and reliable, avoiding potential issues related to prolonged storage. By paying attention to shelf life and freshness, you can make a more confident and informed choice.
Professor Whyte’s guide recommends evaluating packaging design for spill prevention when selecting Trainwreck Kratom. Thoughtful packaging can make a significant difference in maintaining cleanliness and convenience, especially when storing or transporting the product.
Resealable bottles, airtight lids, or spill-resistant containers help prevent messes and protect the capsules or powder from accidental exposure. By considering how well the packaging minimizes spills, you ensure a smoother, more practical experience with Trainwreck Kratom.
Professor Whyte’s guide emphasizes assessing how the product fits into your preferred style when choosing Trainwreck Kratom. Everyone has different routines and preferences, whether it’s the convenience of capsules, the flexibility of powder, or the ritual of brewing a tea.
Considering how the product aligns with your daily habits and preparation style helps ensure it integrates smoothly into your lifestyle. By focusing on this aspect, you can select a Trainwreck Kratom option that feels practical, enjoyable, and tailored to your personal needs.
Trainwreck Kratom has become the best-selling product and most-appeared one in the searches for “What’s the best Kratom Strain for me?” at Professor Whyte’s due to its unique appeal.
Known for its distinctive blend and consistent quality, it stands out among other options on the shelves.
Customers appreciate the thoughtful packaging, clear labeling, and attention to detail in its production, which make it easy to use and reliable.
These factors, combined with the strong reputation of the brand, contribute to Trainwreck Kratom’s popularity and its status as a top choice among buyers.
Choosing the right Trainwreck Kratom becomes much simpler when following Professor Whyte’s guide. By paying attention to clear labeling, product consistency, blend variations, packaging, and how the product fits into your personal style, you can make a well-informed choice with confidence. Considering details like freshness indicators, ease of measuring doses, and spill-preventive packaging further ensures a smooth and practical experience. With these pointers in mind, selecting Trainwreck Kratom is no longer overwhelming—it becomes a straightforward process tailored to your preferences and needs.
Photo: Eva Bronzini via Pexels.
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The post Trainwreck Kratom—Professor Whyte’s Guide To Choosing The Right One appeared first on DCReport.org.
Players who frequent online casinos would be familiar with the verifications operators require before they can play any game. For many, this can be an annoying step that takes a while to finish. So, it’s not a surprise that no-verification casinos are starting to gain popularity in the USA.
In regular online casinos, players can’t immediately make their deposits and play the games they want. They must first go through the verification process, where the operator must check the player’s personal information. Players might be required to send some documents that can support the verification, mostly ID and proof of funds.
The process can take several days to finish. That means players can’t immediately play after signing up. They must be verified to fully access the casino site.
This is where no-verification casinos shine. These sites don’t require users to go through any verification to play. The rest of the USA no ID verification withdrawal casino real money aspect is generally the same as regular online casinos. No-verification casinos offer a varying gaming library and may hold a license from a regulatory body.
Another difference that you might notice from no-verification casinos is that most of them don’t accept fiat currencies. As most of them are still tied to the Anti-Money Laundering law, using the US dollars (for example) means the player still has to go through a verification process. To fully play without going through the verification process, players can use cryptocurrencies.
At a glance, there aren’t too many differences and advantages that a no-verification casino offers. Yet, there are a few appeals that make no-verification casinos attractive to most players.
Cryptocurrencies have impacted the casino industry immensely over the past few years. For a no-verification casino, cryptocurrency is the key to offering the perfect combination of speed and anonymity. With cryptocurrencies, players will no longer experience withdrawal delays. They can quickly receive their winnings, which is something that traditional payment methods still struggle with.
Besides speed, cryptocurrency also offers cheaper transaction fees. Some tokens don’t charge transactions, giving an additional advantage to players.
Cryptocurrencies are also known for their high security measures. Its decentralized nature aligns well with no-verification casinos, which don’t require ID verification for an audience looking for privacy and convenience.
Although players won’t have to go through a verification process, many no-verification casinos are still under the regulation of an authoritative body. Curacao and Malta are two of the most common licensors of these no-verification casinos.
Licensed online casinos are required to follow strict standards. They must be capable of providing a safe and fair gaming environment for players. So, the operator must implement several robust security measures that safeguard players’ money transactions and data.
Most online casino players seek privacy and anonymity when playing. This is one of the biggest reasons why no ID verification casinos are gaining popularity. It’s a demand that players express to operators, putting the importance of higher digital privacy forward. With no verification casinos, players gain privacy and security without sacrificing their playing experience.
Players would still enjoy the benefits that regular casinos often offer. These may include bonuses, loyalty programs, and regular promotions.
Like regular online casinos, not all no-verification casinos are legitimate. Players must still be cautious about choosing where they want to play. The things that a player must check before settling on one site include:
No-verification casinos aren’t illegal, but operators can’t run no-verification casinos inside the US. This is why most no-verification casinos accepting US players are licensed by other jurisdictions’ regulatory bodies. However, they legally allow US-based players to play and access no-KYC casinos.
Photo Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay.
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The post Fast, Private, and Profitable: Why USA No Verification Casinos Are Gaining Ground appeared first on DCReport.org.
1. What do extremists have in common?
2. Australia now has its own convict islands.
3. Henry Oliver on Tanenhaus on Buckley. Recommended.
4. UK immigration and public services.
5. Metaculus has a new competition for forecasters vs. AIs, with prizes.
The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Links for you. Science:
STEPS To It
The common cold is associated with protection from SARS-CoV-2 Infections
Kennedy’s case against mRNA vaccines collapses under his own evidence
‘A whole body of health-equity research is being disappeared’ — why I resigned from the NIH
Why these hairy caterpillars swarm every decade – then vanish without a trace
Harvard University lays off fly database team. The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.
Other:
Nonprofit Refuses $1.5M Science Grant Due To New Federal DEI Rules
Will Anyone Save DC’s Non-Citizen Voting Law?
In Search of Furious Liberals. If angry liberals don’t exist, they will be manufactured
Wholesale prices rose 0.9% in July, much more than expected
Meta appoints anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theorist Robby Starbuck as AI bias advisor
Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info
Current Smithsonian drama now stopping us from getting a Weird Al exhibit
Crimes I Have Witnessed as a Resident of Washington, DC
Pete Hegseth Reassures Conservative White Men It’s OK To Be Scared Of Washington DC
Whose music is MAGA stealing this time?
When Will Media Acknowledge Trump’s Obvious Mental Decline?
How the Anacostia Tunnel System is transforming water quality and river access in DC
As Guard deploys, Trump to seek ‘long-term’ federal control of DC police
What Stands in the Way of Abundance in Healthcare?
Sanders Bill Would Fight Trump Effort to ‘Dismantle Social Security’
The Future that Never Was
AI Job Loss Hype Could Serve as Smokescreen for Trump Recession
This Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene Feud Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t So Sad
Establishment Struggles to Maintain Control of California
Hackification: Arendt’s Law comes for economic data
Don’t be fooled: Trump’s D.C. takeover is about race
USDA Spent $16,400 on Banners to Honor Trump and Lincoln
Another Senate Dem Refuses to Participate in Budgeting to Protest Trump’s Power Grab
Do Moderates Do Better? Uncovering Bias in Split Ticket’s WAR Scores
NIH Director Spreads Vaccine Misinformation One Day After CDC Shooting
The Nation Interviews Zohran Mamdani
Staff Mutiny Forces Pub to Turn Away JD Vance
Trump isn’t the solution to the “crisis of manhood,” he’s the problem
Trump Has Shielded 165 Companies From Federal Enforcement Actions Since January
I’m writing something about Mayor Bowser and her philosophy on combating crime, but in the interim, I looked at the number of crimes from Aug. 11 to Aug. 31, and an equal period of time immediately before Aug. 11* (if you want to look at the data, the MPD has a very good GUI here). Some quick observations (in part to organize my own thoughts):
The last point is interesting because a disproportionate number of the chattering class spend their time in a place where crime hasn’t been that affected by the occupation. Maybe David Brooks needs to kill moe?
Anyway, if this is what a massive federal build up does to ‘fight crime’–no, I’m not stupid, and I realize crime reduction isn’t the goal for Trump–it’s very mixed, and it’s not entirely clear to what extent the occupation affects crime, especially homicides.
*One also could compare it to the same time last year or come up with more sophisticated estimates of the expected number of crimes, based on a combination of this year’s crime to date combined with ‘seasonal’ effects, but you get what you pay for.
Freddie Mac reported that its “National” Home Price Index (FMHPI) decreased -0.22% month-over-month (MoM) on a seasonally adjusted (SA) basis in July. On a year-over-year (YoY) basis, the National FMHPI was up 1.4% in July, down from up 1.8% YoY in June. The YoY increase peaked at 19.0% in July 2021, and for this cycle, bottomed at up 0.9% YoY in April 2023. ...There is much more in the article!
As of July, 31 states and D.C. were below their previous peaks, Seasonally Adjusted. The largest seasonally adjusted declines from the recent peaks are in D.C. (-5.2), California (-3.3%), North Carolina (-2.9%), Maryland (-2.7%), and Florida (-2.5%).
For cities (Core-based Statistical Areas, CBSA), 254 of the 384 CBSAs are below their previous peaks.
Here are the 30 cities with the largest declines from the peak, seasonally adjusted. Punta Gorda has passed Austin as the worst performing city. Note that 4 of the 5 cities with the largest price declines are in Florida. And 11 of the 30 cities are in Florida.
More cities (9) in California are now on the list.
Anyone who enjoys a round on the golf course knows that the right equipment can be essential for an enjoyable day. A stylish golf bag can make a massive difference to your look and the game. However, searching for a unique black golf bag can be frustrating. Navigating the ocean of options can be complicated, but this guide provides clear information on where to get the ideal one.
Before you launch into the pursuit, you must have some criteria in mind. Look for size, weight, and material-related features. Some players look for a lightweight bag that is easy to carry, while others may want something durable. Figuring out these likes and dislikes can help you choose from a sea of options, making the selection process easier. When you look for a stylish black golf bag online, rely only on reputable suppliers.
Many online retailers sell golf bags. They offer comprehensive descriptions, testimonials, and competitive prices to help shoppers make decisions. When shopping online, check out the best sporting goods websites. Reputable websites usually sort products feature-wise so users can search by their desired features.
Online specialty golf stores can be a great source of stylish golf bags. They typically stock exclusive brands and styles not available in mainstream sports shops. They offer customers quality and style, delivering quality merchandise that meets high standards. Also, their customer service teams know the products fairly well, which is beneficial.
Consumer reviews are priceless when purchasing right away from a source. They provide you with actual information about how the product performs and how good it is. Check whether the bag you choose offers durability, comfort, and style. Look for comments on any of these details. Look for comments on how the bag looks in different settings and matches various golfing clothing styles.
Customization may be your only solution if you want an original bag that no one has. Online vendors also offer customization options, like monogramming or choosing specific colors for details. These can turn an ordinary bag into a unique, eye-catching piece that would suffice to make an individual fashion statement.
Price is important, but it is not the only factor. Assess its worth based on the materials, brand, or other aspects of construction. A more expensive price tag may indicate higher quality and a longer usage life. But it is nice to know that some more affordable options are just as good in quality and style.
Security is essential when shopping online. Buy only from reputable websites with a secure payment process. Make sure you choose sites with a transparent return policy and customer service contact data. With exemplary customer service, you can rest assured that there is support should something go wrong.
Golf apparel, fashion, and accessories should align with what is trending. Similarly, the job of a stylish golf bag is to look good and help you carry golfing essentials. Black is a classic color choice, and the design and accents can change based on your taste. Choose bags updated with contemporary elements, such as streamlined silhouettes or simple accessories. Following fashion trends will ensure the bag will remain fashionable for years.
Different brands offer different features and styles. Try a few to find the one closest to your liking. While some brands emphasize innovation, others focus on timeless beauty. Knowing these differences helps you make an educated choice.
Social media can be an excellent source of sound recommendations. Influencers, golfing pros, and fashion enthusiasts often discuss the brands they love through posts and live sessions. Following golf accounts on social media can also help buyers find other products or solutions they may not have known existed.
Finding a stylish black golf bag online that stands out requires research and involves identifying personal choice. Users can confidently choose by considering their needs, checking different retailers, and reading online reviews. With the right information, you can select the ideal bag that suits your needs and makes every round pleasant.
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The post Where to Find a Stylish Black Golf Bag Online That Stands Out appeared first on DCReport.org.
The New Yorker has a story about Sotheby's, focusing on its new owner, but with some interesting descriptions of the auction business.
How a Billionaire Owner Brought Turmoil and Trouble to Sotheby’s
Patrick Drahi made a fortune through debt-fuelled telecommunications companies. Now he’s bringing his methods to the art market. By Sam Knight
"A major auction house has many parts. “Sotheby’s is really three businesses, which had been run as one business,” a former employee who joined under Tad Smith told me. Since the late eighties, Sotheby’s has offered loans and other financial products, secured against art (in fact, anything that the auction house will sell) as collateral. When Drahi acquired the company, Sotheby’s Financial Services was lending around eight hundred million dollars a year.
"Next, there is everything under a million dollars in value: the wine, the jewelry, the furniture, the sneakers, the watercolors, the Hermès handbags. These are the collectibles—a nice watch, a decent painting, a rare manuscript, the family silver—that have kept the auction houses ticking for the better part of three centuries. The average price of a Sotheby’s lot is still around fifty thousand dollars.
"And then there is the top end. And the top end is where everything goes to hell. According to the consulting firm Arts Economics, less than half a per cent of works sell for more than a million dollars, and yet these lots make up more than half the total revenue of fine-art auctions. An even smaller fragment—sales of more than ten million dollars—contributes around a quarter."
In the early 1960s, National Security Agency cryptanalyst and cryptanalysis instructor Lambros D. Callimahos coined the term “Stethoscope” to describe a diagnostic computer program used to unravel the internal structure of pre-computer ciphertexts. The term appears in the newly declassified September 1965 document Cryptanalytic Diagnosis with the Aid of a Computer, which compiled 147 listings from this tool for Callimahos’s course, CA-400: NSA Intensive Study Program in General Cryptanalysis.
The listings in the report are printouts from the Stethoscope program, run on the NSA’s Bogart computer, showing statistical and structural data extracted from encrypted messages, but the encrypted messages themselves are not included. They were used in NSA training programs to teach analysts how to interpret ciphertext behavior without seeing the original message.
The listings include elements such as frequency tables, index of coincidence, periodicity tests, bigram/trigram analysis, and columnar and transposition clues. The idea is to give the analyst some clues as to what language is being encoded, what type of cipher system is used, and potential ways to reconstruct plaintext within it.
Bogart was a special-purpose electronic computer tailored specifically for cryptanalytic tasks, such as statistical analysis of cipher texts, pattern recognition, and diagnostic testing, but not decryption per se.
Listings like these were revolutionary. Before computers, cryptanalysts did this type of work manually, painstakingly counting letters and testing hypotheses. Stethoscope automated the grunt work, allowing analysts to focus on interpretation, and cryptanalytical strategy.
These listings were part of the Intensive Study Program in General Cryptanalysis at NSA. Students were trained to interpret listings without seeing the original ciphertext, a method that sharpened their analytical intuitive skills.
Also mentioned in the report is Rob Roy, another NSA diagnostic tool focused on different cryptanalytic tasks, but also producing frequency counts, coincidence indices, and periodicity tests. NSA had a tradition of giving codebreaking tools colorful names—for example, DUENNA, SUPERSCRITCHER, MADAME X, HARVEST, and COPPERHEAD.
The Taiping Rebellion is arguably the most important event in modern history that even educated Westerners know very little about. It’s also known as the Taiping Civil War and it was one of the largest conflicts in human history (1850–1864), with death toll estimates ranging from 20 to 30 million, far exceeding deaths in the US civil war (~750,000) with which it overlapped. The civil war destabilized Qing China, weakening it against foreign powers and shaped the trajectory of 19th- and 20th-century Chinese politics. In China the Taiping Civil War is considered the defining event of the 19th-century.
The most surprising aspect of the civil war is that the rebels were Christian. The rebellion has its genesis in 1837 with the dramatic visions of Hong Xiuquan. In his visions, Hong and his elder brother traveled the world slaying demons, guided onwards by an old man who berated Confucius for failing to teach proper doctrines to the Chinese people. (I draw here on Steven Platt’s excellent Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom). It is perhaps not coincidental that Hong began experiencing his visions after failing the infamously stressful Chinese civil service exams for the third time. It wasn’t until 1843, however, after he failed the exams for the fourth time, that he had an epiphany. A Christian tract that he had never read before suddenly unlocked the meaning of his visions–the elder brother was Jesus Christ, making Hong the second son of the old man, God.
With his visions unlocked, Hong threw himself into learning and then teaching the Gospels. He quickly converted his cousin and a neighbor and they baptized themselves and began taking down icons of Confucianism at their local school. Confucianism, of course, underpinned the exam system that Hong had grown to hate (Recall, that a similar pattern is visible in India today, where mass exams generate large numbers of educated but frustrated youth).
The wild visions of a lowly scholar wouldn’t seem to have the makings of a revolutionary movement but this was the beginning of the century of humiliation when China was forced to confront the idea that far from being the center of civilization it was in fact a backward and weak power on the world stage. Moreover, China was governed by foreigners, the Manchus, who despite ruling for 200 years had never really integrated with the Chinese population. Hence, Hong’s calls to kill the demons merged with a nationalist fervor to massacre the Manchus. Hong proclaimed himself the Heavenly King and his movement quickly grew to more than a million zealous warriors who captured significant territory including establishing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with its capital at Nanjing.
The regime banned foot‑binding, prostitution and slavery, promoted the equality of men and women, distributed bibles, and instituted a 7-day week with strict observance of the sabbath. To be sure, this was a Sinicized, millenarian Christianity, more Old Testament than new but the Christianity was serious and real and the rebels appealed to British and Americans as their Christian brothers. One Taiping commander wrote to a British counterpart:
You and I are both sons of the Heavenly Father, God, and are both younger brothers of the Heavenly Elder Brother, Jesus. Our feelings towards each other are like those of brothers, and our friendship is as intimate as that of two brothers of the same parentage. (quoted in Platt p.40)
Now, as it happened, the Heavenly Kingdom fell to the Qing, but it was a close thing and could easily have gone the other way. Western powers—above all Britain, but also the United States—hedged their bets and at times fought both sides, yet for short-sighted reasons ultimately tilted toward the Qing, an intervention Ito Hirobumi later called “the most significant mistake the British ever made in China.” Internal purges fractured the movement, alliances went unmade, and crucial opportunities slipped away. Yet the moment was pregnant with possibility. Hong Rengan, Hong Xiuquan’s cousin and prime minister from 1859, pushed sweeping modernization: railroads, steamships, postal services, banks, and even democratic reforms. These initiatives would likely have brought what one might call Christianity with Chinese Characteristics into closer alignment with Western Christianity.
Indeed, it is entirely plausible that with only a few turns of history, China might now be the world’s most populous Christian nation. And if that seems hard to believe, consider what did happen. Sixty three years after the fall of Nanjing in 1864, China again erupted into civil war under Mao Zedong. This time the rebels triumphed, and instead of a Christian Heavenly Kingdom the world got a Communist People’s Republic. The parallels are striking: both Hong and Mao led vast zealous movements that promised equality, smashed tradition, and enthroned a single man as the embodiment of truth. Both drew on foreign creeds—Hong from Protestant Christianity, Mao from Marxism-Leninism. Both movement had excesses but of the counter-factual and the factual I have little doubt which promised more ruin. The Heavenly Kingdom pointed toward a biblical moral order aligned with the West, the People’s Republic toward a creed that delivered famine, purges, and economic stagnation. Such are the contingencies of history—an ill-timed purge in Nanjing, a foreign gunboat at Shanghai, a missed alliance with the Nian. Small events cascaded into vast consequences. For the want of a nail, the Heavenly Kingdom was lost, and with it perhaps an entirely different modern world.
The post Could China Have Gone Christian? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Thirty years ago, nanotech was about to change everything. Let’s not get tricked again by Silicon Valley’s magical thinking
- by Philip Ball
Its surface is the most densely cratered in the Solar System -- but what's inside?
More than half of Fourth District business contacts said that “uncertainty and the potential impact on demand” was the most important factor influencing their capital expenditure plans for the rest of 2025. Contacts most often reported that their inventory levels were the same as they were one year ago, though more firms reported lower inventory levels than higher ones. More than half of firms anticipated that they would work through their current inventories in one to three months. Most survey respondents said that one-fourth or less of their current inventory had been subject to additional duties in 2025 because of changes to trade policy.
Here is more from the Cleveland Fed.
The post Policy uncertainty matters right now appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Yet perhaps the biggest reason spending is high is that the constitution requires it. The charter mandates an extraordinary 90% of all federal spending. Notably it ties most public pensions to wage growth, and requires health and education spending to rise in line with revenue growth. If Brazil were to end most tax exemptions and undo these two policies, its debt-to-gdp ratio, which is already above 90%, would be almost 20 percentage points lower by 2034 than it would be without any reform, reckons the IMF. To deal with all this, what is really needed is to amend the constitution.
High spending and a tangle of subsidised credit schemes also reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy. That means the central bank must increase rates even higher to control inflation. Brazil’s real interest rate of 10% is among the highest in the world. Such rates cripple investment and drag down growth, while well-connected businessmen can get their hands on artificially cheap rates.
Among those who must pay the full rate is the government itself.
And:
Tax exemptions total 7% of gdp, up from 2% in 2003 (see chart 2). Dozens of sectors receive tax breaks or credit subsidies on the basis that they are national champions, or from “temporary” help that has never ended. Brazil’s courts cost 1.3% of gdp, making them the second-most expensive in the world, with much of that going on cushy pensions and perks. Some $15bn a year, or 78% of the military budget, is spent on pensions and salaries. The United States spends just one-quarter of the defence budget on personnel.
Here is more from The Economist.
The post The polity that is Brazil appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Science fiction’s superpower isn’t thinking up new technologies – it’s thinking up new social arrangements for technology. What the gadget does is nowhere near as important as who the gadget does it for and who it does it to. Your car can use a cutting-edge computer vision system to alert you when you’re drifting out of your lane – or it can use that same system to narc you out ...Read More
Up betimes at my lodging and to my office and among my workmen, and then with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen by coach to St. James’s, this being the first day of our meeting there by the Duke’s order; but when we come, we found him going out by coach with his Duchess, and he told us he was to go abroad with the Queen to-day (to Durdans, it seems, to dine with my Lord Barkeley, where I have been very merry when I was a little boy); so we went and staid a little at Mr. Coventry’s chamber, and I to my Lord Sandwich’s, who is gone to wait upon the King and Queen today. And so Mr. Paget being there, Will Howe and I and he played over some things of Locke’s that we used to play at sea, that pleased us three well, it being the first music I have heard a great while, so much has my business of late taken me off from all my former delights.
By and by by water home, and there dined alone, and after dinner with my brother Tom’s two men I removed all my goods out of Sir W. Pen’s house into one room that I have with much ado got ready at my house, and so I am to be quit of any further obligation to him. So to my office, but missing my key, which I had in my hand just now, makes me very angry and out of order, it being a thing that I hate in others, and more in myself, to be careless of keys, I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their hole. One thing more vexes me: my wife writes me from the country that her boy plays the rogue there, and she is weary of him, and complains also of her maid Sarah, of which I am also very sorry.
Being thus out of temper, I could do little at my office, but went home and eat a bit, and so to my lodging to bed.
Click on graph for larger image.
The service is rolling out initiatives, including a series of “AI Challenges” — hackathon-style competitions
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President Trump should invite NATO allies to join the Golden Dome Initiative, transforming the proposed Golden Dome for America into a Golden Dome for NATO. Such a shift would better match today’s security realities and send the clear message to potential adversaries that we are united in deterring and defending against nuclear and conventional ballistic, […]
The post Golden Dome for NATO is better than one for America appeared first on SpaceNews.
SpaceNews interviewed Muon Space President Gregory Smirin as the company races to expand production capabilities following a $90 million funding boost.
The post Scaling smallsats: A conversation with Muon Space President Gregory Smirin appeared first on SpaceNews.
We examine the determinants of business school faculty pay, using detailed data on compensation, research, teaching, and administrative service. We estimate that a top-tier journal publication is worth $116,000, with significant variation across disciplines. Second-tier publications are worth one-third as much, and other publications have no impact. Further analysis of salaries and cross-discipline publication records suggests that researchers are compensated based on the journals they publish in rather than the departments they belong to. Conference presentations and teaching evaluations have significant but smaller effects than top-tier publications. Faculty administrators earn a premium, with department chairs receiving 11-35% and deans 58-94%. Post-Covid-19, real faculty pay has fallen more than in comparable fields and the sensitivity of pay to research performance has weakened.
That is from a new paper by Michelle Lowry, Daniel Bradley, April M. Knill, and Jared Williams. Via Arpit Gupta.
The post What determines business school faculty pay? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
In 1973, Tarkovsky was pondering an adaptation of Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, as his diaries report: "I am taking on an immense burden. Mann's Doctor Faustus is an elaborate amalgam of the author's past life, his shattered hopes, longing for his lost homeland, thoughts about suffering, about the torments of the artist, about his sinfulness. On the one hand he (the artist) is an ordinary person. On the other he cannot be ordinary, and consequently he pays for his talent with his soul. Talent is not given to man by God; rather man is doomed to carry the cross of talent. For the artist is a being who strives (but not in secret or in hiding, nor moving in circles, nor in the spaciousness of some kind of ecological niche) to master ultimate truth. The artist masters that truth every time he creates something perfect, something whole. But here one is assailed by a thousand other sounds, a thousand other questions. It is important to compare the man who is looking for the truth with the man who ignores it, or is simply not interested. Probably our Committee will simply not give me this work; so I shall have to fight for it."
If anyone could have filmed the unfilmable...
1. Are Turkish living standards converging upon Greek?
2. “A current Sotheby’s executive observed to me that the watch industry alone is now comfortably larger than the global art market.” (New Yorker)
3. The Contours.
4. The future of trash pick-up? (WSJ)
5. Brendan Nyhan GPT manuscript review assistant.
The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
This Substack newsletter of mine has gotten pretty popular over the years, but it didn’t start out that way. While writers like Matt Yglesias often made a big splash when they left their mainstream publications to become substackers, and got lots of subscriptions right away, I started out with very few — only 70 paid subscribers in the first week, compared to thousands for Matt.
I’ve often wondered why I didn’t make a big splash when I started my Substack. One big reason was probably that unlike Matt and most others, I didn’t quit my mainstream media job right away. I started this newsletter near the end of 2020, and I didn’t leave my corporate writing job at Bloomberg Opinion until almost a year later. Substack started out as a side gig for me, meaning that my regular audience could keep reading my stuff in the regular place.
Not immediately quitting Bloomberg also meant that the inception of my Substack didn’t become a news story in and of itself. When he left Vox, Matt talked a lot about how Vox had been suppressing his viewpoint. He even went on Rogan! That generated a lot of buzz and controversy about whether the mainstream media was censoring centrist views. In contrast, “Bloomberg writer moves his personal blog from Blogger to Substack” just doesn’t make a very compelling headline.
But in fact, I do have a story about why I eventually left Bloomberg to write for my Substack full time in late 2021, and it’s kind of an interesting one. I kept it under wraps for years, but now I finally feel comfortable sharing that story — at least, as I remember it now.
In fact, there were three reasons I left, two of which are rather mundane. The first was that in summer 2021 I developed chronic vestibular migraines, which made it hard to look at a computer screen for more than four hours a day; this forced me to choose between my hobby and my job, and I chose the former.1
The second reason was that Bloomberg Opinion, the division of Bloomberg I worked for, had some management changes that resulted in more layers of bureaucracy being added to the writing process; pitches had to go through more layers of approval, making it much harder to maintain my normal level of output. This made Bloomberg Opinion a less attractive place to work.
Neither of those reasons are very interesting or unusual. But there was a third reason, which is that in May of 2021, I became involved in an incident between Bloomberg and the Chinese Communist Party.
Robin, Jack and I spent most of the summer away from the big city, taking long walks in the countryside and mingling with the friendly locals (above.) But time to go back to the danger zone — crossing the street to buy bread, even (gasp) taking the subway.
And while the rustic break has been great, I’m looking forward to getting back.
No substance today. I have a feeling there will be things to write about later in the week.
MUSICAL CODA
As if the body count and illness from Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies won’t be bad enough, he’s also undermining food safety (boldface mine):
As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News.
Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems.
Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.
Food safety experts worry that the move, which hasn’t previously been made public, could make it harder for public health officials to understand how common foodborne illnesses are or notice whether cases are rising.
“Essentially, CDC is backing off on one of their best surveillance systems,” said Dr. J. Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. Morris, a former Agriculture Department official, was instrumental in helping create FoodNet in 1995.
FoodNet is a collaboration among the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and 10 state health departments. Its surveillance area covers roughly 54 million people, or 16% of the U.S. population. The network includes Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee and select counties in California and New York.
A list of talking points the CDC provided to the Connecticut Public Health Department, viewed by NBC News, cites a reason for the change: “Funding has not kept pace with the resources required to maintain the continuation of FoodNet surveillance for all eight pathogens.”
…But the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said it will need to scale back active surveillance activities for some pathogens if funding is decreased in 2026.
Listeria, while relatively rare, has a high mortality rate (single to double digits, depending on who gets infected). Pulling back on Listeria monitoring is especially bad.
When E. coli causes an outbreak, much of the time it’s pretty straightforward: people ate Aunt Edna’s potato salad, and then everybody barfs. These are relatively easy to track: people will sometimes say things like, “I thought it smelled bad, but I decided to eat it anyway.” It’s easy for investigators to ask what have you eaten in the last 48 hours, and determine what things in common people ate. Sometimes, people haven’t even thrown away the contaminated food.
But with Listeria, the length of time to disease onset, which can be up to three weeks, makes the epidemiology much harder: can you tell me every ingredient you had in your dinner from thirteen days ago? Obviously, contaminated food is less likely to be saved for 13 days too.
Listeria outbreaks also are typically longer-term–a food processing plant that has contamination which, every so often, results in contaminated food, over a period of months or years. Given these difficulties, one of the key ways to link Listeria infections back to a single source is through molecular methods, such as genome sequencing. A single case in one state might appear to be a random event and there would be no reason to link it to other cases in other states. But if we see multiple cases in multiple states that are genetically identical, now we know we have an outbreak scenario from a single source, rather than just a bunch of random ‘one off’ events in various states.
The interstate surveillance is absolutely critical for identifying outbreaks linked back to food processing, and as CDC scales back on this, leading to states dropping out (the article mentions at least one state has done so), we could lose critical data required to trace very difficult to track outbreaks.
The historical irony is that genomic surveillance of food borne infections by the U.S. government initially focused on Listeria as it was thought it would have a dramatic effect (and it did!).
Anyway, this is one more reason why Kennedy should either resign or be impeached.
Click on graph for larger image.
This second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.It’s a strange Labor Day all around.
Everyday living is costlier than a year ago or four years ago, with prospects for health, rent, and electricity costs worsening as tariffs and a whole lot of attention seems trained on investors and the needs of billionaires rather than those celebrated on this holiday.
For Donald Trump, acknowledging Labor Day might be awkward, since he is on track to dismiss 300,000 federal workers by the end of the year through cuts and erasures of federal agencies.
Just this week, Trump extended his attacks on collective bargaining agreements with a new executive order stripping union rights from workers at NASA, the International Trade Association, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the Bureau of Reclamation and others.
Even by Trump standards, it seems an odd way to commemorate a day set aside to recognize decades of worker progress on pay, benefits and rights. Someone might have whispered in his ear about the timing.
Across the nation, there are more than a thousand rallies scheduled for today to denounce Trump, the effects of his government on workers and work in general, on the growing gap he is promoting between rich and poor — basically everything Labor Day has come to represent.
Protest rallies are being organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.
Specific union-labeled targets include policies that rescind collective bargaining right from 1 million federal workers, cutting minimum wage requirements for federal contractors, a proposal to eliminate federal minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million childcare and home care workers and rescission of minimum wage requirement for disabled workers.
More generally, the combination of making permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations while cutting access to health care and Medicaid will be the subject of much organized protests. Protestors will be chanting against Trump ridicule and debasement for diversity and inclusion, destruction of climate and environmental rules, erasure of agencies, and the cruel excesses of Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Unionized or not, the workplace and workers have become a central focus for dissent for an overbearing presidency that seems to recognize no limits for dictatorial propaganda about pay, costs, tariffs and supply lines, and government stakes in some businesses over others.
Recent unprecedented Trump moves to demand — and be given — ownership stakes in Intel computer chip manufacture or Nippon’s takeover of U.S. Steel (without worker pay guarantees) smack of hypocrisy as Trump jumps on “communist” Zohran Mamdani as a candidate for New York City mayor.
Indeed, the policies of this Trump administration and a neutered Republican-majority Congress make it easy to argue that Trump is promoting the interests of businesses and investors over the fate of workers and families. The cost of living is rising faster than pay again, boosted now by the effects of tariffs just starting to kick in. Prices at the supermarket show immediate effects, but there are broad ripples affecting every business large and small that depends on foreign-produced parts and goods.
For his part, Trump is going out of his way to rewrite the standards of accountability, challenging any jobs report, for example, that seems less than golden, and even firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for issuing it. It was amusing this week to hear the White House rely on crime statistics in Washington, D.C. for showing a drop in crime with deployed National Guardsmen after having trashed the same figures as “rigged” the week before.
Immigration arrests have focused on day labor sites outside Home Depot or on farms and workplaces where migrant workers dominate. Of course, it is only workers who are arrested and quickly deported, not business owners.
The Trump insistence on manufacturing as a measure of U.S. economic success is overlooking what happens to teachers, health workers, creatives, and others. The Trump insistence on promises of investment is proving empty when it never arrives and plants close because of tariffs and cost rises. Trump insistence that he is America’s savior as he divides the country by race, identity and income while saying diversity doesn’t matter is speaking for itself.
Labor Day also has been a traditional kickoff for politics in states with off-cycle elections.
We’re seeing that in states like New Jersey and Virginia, where there are races for governor, pro- and anti-Trump sentiment is demonstrably part of the campaigns. Even in New York’s mayoral race, Trump is acting as if he is on the ballot, and, to an extent, voters say they are responding that a vote for Mamdani is somehow a vote to reject Trump policies.
Though the mid-term congressional elections are a year away — and presidential voting three years away — there is active concern now about Trump and Republican manipulation of elections through redistricting in Texas and under consideration in Indiana to change the rules. Trump himself is calling for elimination of mail-in ballots, though he has neither the authority nor the power to do that.
We’ve seen Democratic Governors Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Kathy Hochul of New York, and Wes Moore of Maryland offer retaliatory rhetoric about redistricting to eliminate Republican districts, and television pundits warn that Trump’s goal is to devise emergency conditions to delay or eliminate voting altogether.
The election map says it will be difficult for Democrats to win majorities in both houses of Congress, though several recent elections, including one significant Iowa State Senate contest this week flipped from Republican to Democratic wins by sizeable margins.
Trump policies have made workplaces and the politics of solution much more difficult.
Happy Labor Day.
“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.
The post A Strange Labor Day appeared first on DCReport.org.
Economics in action.
The Guardian has the story:
"Much has changed since Kim Cotton became the UK’s first surrogate 40 years ago, when she was forced to flee hospital on the floor of a car under a blanket, such was the level of media frenzy around her story.
...
"She has spent decades running the surrogacy agency Cots (Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy), facilitating more than 1,000 pregnancies. But in September she is closing its doors as soaring demand and a lack of surrogates is making the job more stressful than ever before.
...
"There are now about 400 children a year born through surrogacy to UK parents, up from about 50 a year before 2008, and more than half are now born through international surrogacy arrangements.
"Pro-surrogacy campaigners have blamed the stringent laws in the UK for pushing more people to seek surrogacy arrangements abroad, sometimes in countries with lax or nonexistent regulations. Waiting lists at many British surrogacy agencies are now years long.
“As soon as same-sex parents could go for a parental order, demand doubled, but supplies remained the same,” Cotton says. “There’s also just more infertility around.
...
"The UK’s surrogacy laws have changed little since they were first introduced in 1985, when they were rushed through parliament as a direct response to Cotton’s pregnancy.
"In 2023 the Law Commission published a report with suggested changes, including the creation of a national surrogacy register, and ensuring intended parents in domestic surrogacy arrangements can become parents from the child’s birth.
"Under current laws, intended parents have to apply for a parental order after birth, which can take months and create issues over who makes decisions about the baby’s healthcare in the first weeks of life.
...
“The laws are so antiquated, they’ve not changed since 1985 when I was a surrogate, but it was a kneejerk law that was passed. It’s fossilised. It’s a dinosaur. And it’s just on the back burner now. It’s a damn shame.”
"Campaigners were hopeful the Law Commission report would lead to reform, but the change of government in 2024 has pushed surrogacy to the bottom of the agenda.
"There is also strong opposition from those who are concerned that relaxing the laws could lead to people being coerced into surrogacy by financial need, or wealthy people outsourcing pregnancy because they have the resources to do so.
...
"As well as parental rights from birth, Cotton said she would like to see reform of the expenses system for surrogates. As commercial surrogacy is banned in Britain, advertising for surrogates is not permitted and only “reasonable expenses” are allowed to be paid.
Cotton says this seems to have been accepted as about £15,000-£20,000, although there is no official guidance around what is permitted.
“If the surrogate baby has been living with a couple since the baby was born, how are they going to say, well, no, actually I can’t give you a parental order because you paid a bit too much to the surrogate?” Cotton says. “So we need more clarity.”
Although she is closing down Cots, Cotton is reluctant to leave the world of surrogacy behind completely, and says she will continue to offer advice to people through a surrogacy advice line."
As Zhuangzi saw, there is no immutably true self. Instead our identity is as dynamic and alive as a butterfly in flight
- by Alexander Douglas
He is a young and very smart British photographer. He sent me this:
Links to the episode:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/4nMg0Qg7KRI
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2wDyCaXhGN5ruN1SNkcaBt?si=3c054eb0396f4787
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/watson-howland/id1813625992?i=1000724051310
Jacob’s episode summary is at the first link.
The post I podcast with Jacob Watson-Howland appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
That is the topic of my latest piece for The Free Press, as after all stock valuations are high. Excerpt:
First, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed earlier this year, slashed corporate taxes. Before Trump’s first term, the corporate tax rate was 35 percent; in his first term Trump cut it to 21 percent, and this year he and the Republican Congress extended aspects of that first-term tax bill. Factors such as 100 percent bonus depreciation and expanded interest deductions give many companies the ability to lower their tax bill further, though not in a way that can be expressed readily by any single number.
With these lower tax burdens, companies should be worth much more. At the same time, the American taxpayer now owes more than $37 trillion in debt. So someone has to pay higher taxes over time, to satisfy those obligations. That someone probably is you, so you might want to take that into account in your overall assessment. But you should feel good about the companies, and somewhat less good about yourself and your children, given the tax hikes in the offing, sooner or later. You are paying for some of those higher stock market values.
Plus the ten or so percent decline in the value of the dollar can be seen as a loss of confidence in the United States, for a bunch of the obvious reasons. But will the country fall apart? Probably not:
That said, some of the worries are exaggerated. I’ve seen lots of posts on X lately saying that Trump is destroying the independence of the Federal Reserve system, and that this change will bring much higher rates of price inflation. Maybe. But that is not what the markets are saying. There are different measures of expected inflation, and most stand between 2 and 3 percent, with some of the more important market measures clustered near 2.5 percent. You might think that is higher than it should be, but it is hardly a sign of pending hyperinflation. It’s also not different from how things were toward the close of Joe Biden’s term.
And this:
Finally, are you worried about fascism coming to America? The collapse of democracy? Did you read about the Trump critics Jason Stanley, Timothy Snyder, and Marci Shore moving from America to Canada?
Well, head on over to the prediction markets—for instance, Kalshi. Currently the Democrats are favored at 53 percent to win the next presidential election. In other words, it costs 53 cents to buy a security that pays off a dollar if the Democrats win. In turn, that means the market thinks the Democrats have a very slight advantage in 2028. Does that sound like the collapse of democracy to you?
I return here to the same logic: If you think the market is being naive and foolish, why aren’t you placing your bets in the opposite direction? At the very least you could be wealthier under the forthcoming fascism you predict, and you might even be able to donate your winnings to antifascist causes.
Comments that fail to understand the distinction between optimal ex ante prediction and ex post outcomes should be shamed!
The post What are the markets telling us? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Today’s Picture of the Week features the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), seemingly pointing to a diffused bluish band. But what is it actually?
The cool-toned light we see, known as the zodiacal light, is caused by sunlight scattered off the dust grains that remain from the collisions between asteroids and the tails of comets. Since blue light is scattered more easily than red light ––that’s why the sky is blue–– the zodiacal light appears as a bluish band. Zodiacal light gets its name from the path it traces along the line of the zodiac constellations, which is also along the ecliptic (the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun). It's known as a false dawn or dusk, as it is not caused by our atmosphere, and appears just before sunrise and after sunset.
Zodiacal light is easiest to see from a place on Earth where the ecliptic appears high in the sky. In the Southern Hemisphere, this is around late evening from January to April, and early in the morning from September to November (and vice versa for the Northern Hemisphere). Unfortunately, due to light pollution, there are fewer places in the world where you can see zodiacal light clearly. Chile’s Atacama Desert preserves its heritage of having some of the darkest and most pristine skies in the world, showcasing dazzling spectacles like this every night.
How soon do jets form when a supernova gives birth to a neutron star?
Market Design