June 13
Bitcoin is up 407 from 63,656 late Friday | 9:05am Saturday
In Case You Missed It ... Faster, Please
A selection of pro-progress and anti-progress news items from the past week.
The news in summer is so slow, even Kamala could follow it. | Surber
He lists many funny items with comments.
Artificial Intelligence and natural stupidity | Argentina
A bill still awaits Congress approval but President Javier Milei has proposed granting legal status to companies peopled (or “non-peopled”) by creations of Artificial Intelligence. Since these future robot companies will presumably be paying taxes, does this mean that any number of avatars could be given the right to vote?
What does artificial intelligence (AI) actually do when it is put in charge? | Zero
The systems they chose are the ones now already woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s GPT, xAI’s Grok, and Anthropic’s Claude. All models had the same rules and the same initial version of the same world, but the outcomes were all completely different.
The AI They Don't Want You to Have
Powerful technologies create risks. These capabilities are supposedly far too dangerous for independent scientists, small laboratories, entrepreneurs, citizen researchers, and the general public. Yet they are somehow safe in the hands of governments and the institutions governments choose to trust. What evidence supports that conclusion?
The Fear of the Signal: Why the State Urgently Wants to Bind Prediction Markets
To a central planner, nothing is more dangerous than an accurate, uncontrolled price signal. This fear is what is precipitating government attempts to either control or outright ban prediction markets. Prediction markets succeed because they bypass the echo chambers of institutional punditry and replace them with a brutal, real-time mechanism for truth.
Kalshi and Polymarket are now in link cluster above.
The Week In Pictures: California Nightmare Edition
Elon Musk is a Litmus Test
People's reactions to him are diagnostic.
Debt Rattle
• Toronto Globe And Mail: “How To Properly Hate” Elon Musk
* Leftists view Musk as a major threat because he can directly challenge the left’s progressive empire
* 40 biolabs in Ukraine alone?! The mind boggles…
* Will Canada ever be free again? Government controls information available to the country
* People died from the COVID shot because government lied to them. Legacy media refuses to report it.
Portfolio managers have tripled short positions on Brent Crude since late March | Peak Digest
The short positions suggest that investors expect oil prices to come down, yet several factors would suggest otherwise. Cushing inventories are weeks from minimum operational levels. The IEA reported roughly 13 million barrels per day of lost supply and a 250-million-barrel inventory drawdown in March and April. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth stated that shock absorbers are nearly exhausted.
The Crisis at the Fed That No One Talks About
The Fed has lost hundreds of billions of dollars due to its huge interest rate risk position. This costly risk was established under the then-chairman, Ben Bernanke, who assured Congress it would be temporary. It wasn’t. It was continued under the regimes of Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell and remains embedded in the Fed’s balance sheet today, almost 18 years after Mr. Bernanke’s original gamble.
Tulsi Declassifies the US-Funded Biolab Files They Said Didn’t Exist
Not only did they lie, they threatened those who attempted to expose the truth. Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Biden administration’s national security team “lied to the American people about the existence” of the labs.
SpaceX Is a Generational Opportunity.
SpaceX looks expensive because the market can't yet value the economy it's about to create. The market is going to spend the next few days asking whether SpaceX is worth $1.75 trillion today. That’s the wrong question. The right question is whether any other company on Earth is remotely positioned to own the transportation layer between this planet and the rest of an inhabited, productive, militarily contested Solar System.
SpaceX (SPCX) shares opened at $150 and closed up nearly 19% at around $161
SpaceX’s IPO created 4,400 millionaires, according to the New York Times. Critics like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren have created one each — themselves. | Insta
Musk chose to celebrate at the company's Starbase, Texas facility with around 5,000 supporters.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize spaceflight and make it more affordable, with its first rocket, the Falcon 1, launching in 2006 and achieving orbit in 2008. "It is certainly hard to believe that little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever," Musk said during an opening ceremony
S&P Oil FX Gold 10Y CLZ6
The single most important driver of the dollar is US interest rates | Marc
With the May employment and CPI in hand, attention would turn to the real sector this week with industrial output, retail sales, and housing starts on tap. However, the most important event is the FOMC meeting, which Warsh will chair for the first time and hold a press conference. There will be a new Summary of Economic Projections.
The Bernanke, Yellen, Powell era at the Fed is over. Warsh is from a different school of thought, and his appoint of a couple of advisers, including the author of the Agenda 2025 chapter on the Fed, underscores that observation. In addition to changes at the Federal Reserve itself, which may include communication and inflation targets, we suspect there is a reasonably good case for a new Treasury-Fed accord and the revaluation of gold, which is carried on the US books at $42.22 an ounce.
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