This market has (trying to remember the old saying here…) “More up and downs than a bordello on Saturday night.”
I mean, think about it. Dow was up Wednesday +305 points. Early futures this morning? -316.
That’s a whole lot of action, but we’re not seeing much traction, Jackson.
News Flows and Other Woes
Grab the Kleenex, sport. We roll!
Starting with the money side:
- Bitcoin is under $70,000 – again. No, we have never had a wallet. But, we do enjoy looking at BTC as lemming food. When the lemmings come in, general prices go up (food’s in short supply, you know?). Well, then the suckers tend to line up for paper products, too.
- Gold and Silver are down, too. This one’s a bit more perplexing: They should be up – especially on the Wednesday import prices dope. But, no. Gold is under $4,500 and silver is under $70. Not that it matters (air is still free) but since the world is slowly aging, the need to put on airs is evaporating.
- Another depends where you’re standing when you look: Brent crude was over $106 on the futures early. West Texas Intermediate was under $94. Maybe’s it’s like old Jumpin’ Jack Flash song, huh? (“…it’s a gas, gas, gas…“) – if you’re a child under fiddy. Just trying to be the geez to please.)
Speaking of oil: did someone slip Maduro some liberal Kool-Aid? Venezuela’s Maduro to ask US to drop charges, alleging his legal defense is being hindered. You have to love it when an anti-American drug-involved dictator (dick, if you prefer) is citing his Constitutional rights. Here. Um…VisGrips to the forearm, stat!
Peeled of Fortune
And what of that once great country America? You know, the one “Indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all”? Indivisible is toast, God’s in the penalty box. and liberty and justice have been jacked by SJW lib-naz’s. So sad. But here we go. Scroll ’em, Danno:
Papieren, bitte: ICE Agents at Some Airports Begin Checking IDs in Security Lines – The New York Times.
Mainstream media distractions are paying off: Iran War: Financial Markets Aren’t Prepared for Shocks – Bloomberg. The problems Bloomberg doesn’t address in the article, I’ve written two books about. First is the planned obsolescence business model is blowing up as outlined in my book The 100-Year Toaster. The second miss is that the mass over-consumption model is breaking, too. Which we walk through in Downsizing: Missing the Collapse of Empire. Though, as I mention, I am the most successful author of overlooked books in the world, presently.
Iran is “thinking about it.” Ticktock – our Monday Mayhem outlook is unchanged as Iran says it is reviewing US proposal to end war, If you believe it, I have this bridge you may be interested in…
Nikita’s shoe? OK, been a news guy too long maybe. You may not have watched back in 1960 was it? Nikita Khrushchev was banging his shoe at the UN. No disrespect to the President, but that goes through my head when I see headlines like ‘Trump Prepared to Unleash Hell’ if Iran Miscalculates ‘Again’, White House Says. Hand the man a shoe.
[Ure steps outside to clear his head for a second, as Country Joe and the Fish replays between his ears…]
The Missus T has Collaborators. Since another one of my books is on human-AI collaboration (Co-Telligence: Another Intelligence has Joined Humans) we track such things closely. Melania Trump envisions AI robots as personalized educators for US kids. Yes, that’s exactly the kind of future visible at my AI research site, in articles like Can AI “Jailbreak” the Carbons? – Hidden Guild. What’s harder to fathom is the hate-spew in White House graced by weird android devoid of human emotion—and a robot on The Daily...oh, they don’t matter. I know – it’s about clicks, not truth, right?
The Fall of England – that’s something media ought to roll out front and center – but it’s buried. But go look at Bail granted for 2 arrested in connection with London ambulance arson, police say. Oh, those poor darlings, right? If you haven’t noticed, the West lost the second Battle of Tours, England has fallen, and places like Denmark are barely holding on…
Oh, Denmark did he say? (Cue the Heckle Fish). Denmark’s ‘kingmaker’ could decide who will lead its next government after an inconclusive election. (We’ll give you voting rights and you give us Greenland, which you can’t afford, anyway…)
The S.T.R.M
(Stuff That Really Matters)
Unemployment filings – still stable, mostly:
But the Drought is Coming – just in time for Depression 2 – later this year or next – be patient, be planning:
Around here, the weather continues dry, the burn bans are on. And forest fires are starting up early: Forest Service announces temporary closure of portions of Blue Ridge Parkway due to fire. We’re so old, we can remember when March and April were what the wild land teams called “green up” – when it was almost impossible to burn anything in the woods. Once upon a time, huh?
At the Ranch: System Admin Blues
Know what I’d like to do today? The important stuff here in the woods.
- Transplant from hydroponics into the lean-to greenhouse.
- Put up the west side shade sail to keep cooling bills down this summer.
- Mow the yard that defies science by growing in drought.
But no. Not here. Not when you live in the woods.
You see CenturyLink sold off their Internet services in the deep piney woods to Brightspeed. And their service is horrible. I mean on a good day. For example, that backup network went down a weekly ago. So after telling support what the problem was – a recurring card failure in the equipment cabinet up the road – they insisted on sending me a new modem. Here’s how that worked out after refusing any speed measurement for 10 minutes:
This is a problem we have been fighting for years. We have gone from dial up 96– baud when we moved out here in 2004 to 2.1 mb at the peak of CenturyLink. But down it’s down to plain miserable. There are groups popping up all over the web telling the same tale: Move to the woods and the copper will go away over time.
Fortunately, Elon Musk’s Starlink is preventing collapse out here. Extremely reliable and yeah, we also have a backup “mini” now too.
I wouldn’t mind so much, but 2-factor security mania and AI replacing humans has led to a simple “fix it” call lasting an hour. At 77, I’ve gotten pretty zealous about my time. Never enough left.
But it’s not just being a network admin. Then there are readers who are so convoluted in their use of language that it tears into my time deciphering what they really mean.
Some are clear: “IsraHELL” lands one reader in the penalty box regularly. Other notes, like trying to figure out what “…sbbad was land that the better half’s family…” means (and whether it’s just scam-fishing) also eats up the day.
This weekend? Time to work on the Texas Sales Tax report for the quarter. It’s a push-button exercise – query database, copy numbers, multiply times the tax rate here (6.75% by the way), cut check, walk to mail box…but it’s all time on tasks that “Wasn’t automation going to remove overhead?”
That’s what they told us in Business School. Automation will fix everything. Here’s the reality:
- Tax Foundation annual estimates (drawing directly from IRS/OMB data): Tax compliance alone costs the economy $536–546 billion per year (2024–2025 figures), including ~7.1 billion hours of time plus out-of-pocket expenses (software, preparers, etc.). This is equivalent to the full-time work of ~3.4 million people. Business tax forms (corporate, quarterly estimates, depreciation, etc.) make up a large share. Costs have grown steadily over decades despite computerization; complexity has outpaced efficiency gains.
- CEI “Ten Thousand Commandments” annual report (2025 edition): Estimates total federal regulatory compliance costs at $2.155 trillion (a new record high, or ~7.3% of GDP). This includes labor, capital, and economic effects. The report also tracks raw regulatory output (3,248 new final rules in 2024; record Federal Register pages). Earlier editions showed similar growth.
I keep thinking about retirement – and if you’re in a small business, perhaps as an owner like many of our readers are – you have my deepest sympathies.
SSDD Thursday.
Write when you get rich,
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