USTR takes moral high ground with tariffs supposedly about forced labour. Except for the exemption for textiles made from US cotton, where forced labour is fine and no tariffs apply 🤪

FTSE's U.S. Russell benchmark rebalance increases thecut-off for US small cap to $5.7bn market value. If applied to the UK would mean 15% of the FTSE 100 are small cap.

Gemini super-basic instruction to sort a list from a website into date order. Checked in detail. Caught hallucination in a list of 27 items, it apologizes then does it again with a different hallucination. Still at 15-year-old-work-experience kid level, not even intern.

A pair who helped launch the agentic-AI craze worry that their creations are pumping out bad—even dangerous—code, writes Christopher Mims. “Eventually it will catch up to us,” says one.

Podcasts generated from the empty PDF file revealed the underlying template NotebookLM uses to generate its podcasts. The deep voice starts the podcast: "All right, so topic redacted, awaiting remaining source material." There was nothing in the source material. dataverse.no/file.xhtml?p...

BofA Hartnett: The history of stock market bubble concentration add mega IPOs to AI big boys and market concentration easily surpasses (~48%) bubbles of roaring ‘20s, Nifty 50 ‘70s, Japan ‘80s, TMT ‘90s (Chart 2 - but not railroads in 1880s)

Real words from a strategist note on AI: "the most straightforward interpretation of quantum mechanics suggest you will only be conscious in those timelines where the world survives"

Strong 'Eat Out To Help Out' vibes here, w/o the virus risk BBC News - Cheaper theme park tickets and children's meals as VAT to be cut for some attractions this summer - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is an exceptional piece on one of the world’s greatest cities and how it recovered. And with a wonderful paragraph on how the council broke the logjam over development.

@johnauthers.bsky.social Question on your ERP chart: Is it trailing earnings yield or forward earnings yield? My chart using forward earnings yield still has +ve ERP, and much lower at start of last year. Trailing is -ve, again was much lower in Jan 2025. Wonder if Bbg diff to LSEG/Factset data?

Insurance, as in "nice ship you have there, shame if something happened to it"

Intel should launch a Hopium range of processors designed for AI, as successor to the Pentium

Love idea that Starmer is so unpopular that his best hope of staying PM is to personally camp out in Makerfield for the next couple of months and campaign really hard for Burnham

Every windows update: "new AI is amazing, look how it learns!" Also every windows update: "would you like to pin Facebook to your taskbar?" NO I WOULD NOT

BBC Today presenter just says she's never heard of the Thucydides Trap (tho pronounced it thucydes). How could a high profile politics specialist possibly have missed all the discussion? Bizarre.

1999 is calling.

Anyone not calling it a wesignation is a coward

Totally 21st century. "She brings the president stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval." www.wsj.com/politics/tru...

Nominative determinism that this person would work on precious stones or in spice industry - but chose the wrong precious stone. Amber Pepper, chief executive of the Natural Diamond Council

Anyway Starmer can’t resign as we’ve got too many podcasters already

Cue lots of candidate name changes... welcome to Andrew Aardvark (Lab) vs Angela Aardvark (Con) and Aaron Aardvark (Ref)

@timleunig.bsky.social big difference between UK and France/Italy issuing in euros that you don't mention is that ECB is v clear that it will print to rescue them if need be. It won't for UK

Good to see the LibDems gradually rebuilding the Kingdom of Wessex one shire at a time under King Ædward of Davey. Just Hamtunscīr, Wiltunscir and the Vale of Teste to conquer before the kingdom is reunited to fight back the Reforme hordes of Mercia and Essex

Dow Jones Industrial Average hits a record low vs the Nasdaq Composite @nacimroc_

Great Greg Ip column www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-i...

I am reminded of Elmer the elephant by the Birmingham political map of 2026 though the quite positive patchwork of harmony message of that storybook may be challenging to emulate in city local politics

As usual Zweig spot on. Classic bubble definition of course involves identifying it *after it bursts*, which is no use to investors www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

1st world problem solved for people with $5k to spare www.wsj.com/lifestyle/tr...

(1/4) I am pleased to announce that there will be a THREE DAY CEASEFIRE (May 9th, 10th, and 11th) in the War between Russia and Ukraine. The Celebration in Russia is for Victory Day but, likewise, in Ukraine, because they were also a big part and factor of World War II. This

If you weren't trading in 1999-2000, then you're in luck. This is what it was like. Now you can experience it.

Gone with the Windrush: Labour candidate Scarlett O'Hara (I kid you not) loses Brixton Windrush ward

Exeter St Loyes ward - Con 25.3% Ref 25.5% LDs win...with 25.6%. Pure chaos. FPP fruit machine

Evercore on the good side of 1999: "Even if/when Prince’s admonition that “Parties weren’t meant to last” is proven correct, we see scope for further Tech led upside to SPX 7,750 and as high as 9,000 should the Public’s “Animal Spirits” truly move into high gear. “Don’tcha wanna go? 1999"

Stagflation www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Milken conference is truly eclectic:

The point of Uno of course being that you win by having NO cards

Umm

Who's going to buy into the gigantic IPOs of companies with no profits and questionable paths to profitability, such as SpaceX and OpenAI? You will, through your employer's retirement plan, writes @jmackin2.bsky.social www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

Polanski's 10x exec pay cap means any company employing a cleaner on min wage can pay max of £312k to execs. So all low-paid workers should expect to be outsourced. And all FTSE 100 companies will move HQs out of Britain. Or more likely, there will be massive loopholes for bonuses, options etc

This Mesolithic amber figurine from Denmark is conclusive proof that The Wombles were around long before the 70s.

Mamdani calling for the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. But to whom? Whoever it is given to it would be a bit like giving NY back to Holland - the diamond was previously taken as plunder by owners, and Britain took it in a (wildly unfair) treaty. Empires all the way down.

Toto's toilets-to-AI pivot sounds like dotcom level silliness but in fact the Japanese company has a proper semis business that's been in demand thanks to AI. It isn't in Kansas tho

Far from the superyachts of Monaco, a cluster of rural towns has become the high-tech heart of Formula One. on.wsj.com/3RbZQsw

It's Marvel's superpower

The Trump family crypto company’s stablecoin, USD1, is deployed on the AB blockchain network, and a planned AB resort in East Timor had been led by two men sanctioned for alleged work with a U.S.-designated transnational crime organization. on.wsj.com/4mVOyVb

@stephenkb.bsky.social out of interest, which do you count as the third civil war? The Barons' war? (First or second?)