LA deserves to be a world capital. To help us get there, we need better ideas. We need to take bigger swings. An independent policy research and advocacy think tank could lay the groundwork for this city to truly achieve greatness - a Los Angeles clock behind every hotel reception desk in the world.

Another good read from YJ Lim. I don't agree with all of it, but it's an excellent framing that I think needs air time.

Why do I always look like the youngest person in my grocery store? Does everyone younger than me just live off Doordash and Amazon Fresh?

Dispersion at work

Iran ran the Monday pump headline instead of Trump today. Forced Trump to deny it and make stocks dump. Maybe their way to stop the US insiders from profiting on crude pump and dumps. IDK

Simply put semis deserve a higher discount rate. Cash flows often approximate the turkey at Thanksgiving chart.

Wheat reacting to Middle East news more so than structural tightness around harvest season both stateside and in Eurasia. Let's see how the tug of war turns out

#$ORCL y u behaving like #$AMD three years ago

Her: So you're French? Me: Bien sur. Her: Oh, I love French culture. Me: Perhaps you have heard of my favorite group of French novelists, Les G'ma? Her: No, Les G'ma? Tell me more. Me: But of course, Les G'ma Balzac.

A good read on the booing of Eric Schmidt. Has nothing to do with technophobia (College kids are using AI all the time, sometimes even to their detriment) But more about who people like Schmidt represent.

A guy I know is on LinkedIn slop-posting about the Meta layoffs and using it as an opportunity to tell folks to start their own company and to promote his D-tier VC fund. The sheer inability to pick up on social cues knows no bounds on that hellhole of a site.

San Diego fell from 5th to 12th most expensive rental market by building more multifamily housing per capita than any other California city. This is what happens when you actually build. The lesson isn't complicated. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/05/13/s...

cracks continue to be the best indicator for the state of things

Me, a billionaire: If I offer you a seat in my white van and all the candy you can eat, you hop on board, no questions asked.

I love this substack, and here’s a quote that caught my 👀 on Itai’s latest: "Gold is zigging; Beware the Fed and real rates. The last simple risk hedge has faltered.” I recently took on some longer dated Gold delta after some neutrality, but real rates are giving me pause, esp late in the year.

Trump got called a declining nation to his face by a foreign autocrat he flew 20 hours to grovel before, and his response was to post a Biden blame thread. Staggering levels of humiliated delusion on full public display.

Did you know you can warsh and dry MyPillow?

There’s some really good debate going on in this thread, highly recommend. If you remember how term structure usually shifts, majority is a shift across the curve, so 2s and 10s moving largely in tandem. Where it gets interesting is medium term commodities vols have been pricing weakness for a bit.

Getting ready for my Arkansas trip. Going to get acclimated by taking a brick and hitting myself in the head with it until I forget algebra.

There's a reason no other country on Earth does this and the reason is because it is a dumb idea. If Morocco and Uzbekistan can have a functional high-speed rail system, California can unaddict itself to loserdom and follow suit.

Solid metaphor. Social media, at its most fundamental level, is an entertainment product, not a news product or the "digital town square". People use it because they find it fun. Bluesky is still fun enough for enough people of a certain sensibility that it will endure as its own little curio.

Periodic reminder: bubbles are about financing and valuations, not inherently technology. Even short sellers like Burry and Chanos are picking at a basket of equity valuations now vs. some time in the future. They are not betting on something like economic ruin, and nor should they.

*Taps sign*

Yet another example of how Michael Burry seems completely unable to go long on anything like a normie

It's always a good proposition to be long-term bullish on gold to an extent with a reasonable % of your portfolio invested in it. Just understand that long term it's low beta, and if you're expecting short term returns a la semis, you're gonna be disappointed.

An underappreciated part of our gerontocracy is that no one can spot signs of cognitive decline in their peers because everyone is experiencing cognitive decline.

Returning to the topic of wheat, May WASDE reiterating tightness. 2026 production looking to be on course with the worst year since 1972.

A good PM can make all the difference. They know what to build, understand how long it will take and don't get distracted by shiny objects. The bad ones exude confidence, avoid actual decisions and just want you to use Claude to make everything go faster.

Like all things that evoke strong reactions on Bsky, I'm decidedly neutral on this. Never underestimate pricing as a forcing factor. Also never underestimate how long that can take. I'd probably take this bet. Maybe not for Jun 1, but heck anything can happen here.

Here's my take on the California gubernatorial candidates' housing agendas, based on the Ezra Klein-hosted forum from last week. publiccomment.blog/p/the-candid...

Copper may be hitting a high today, but keep an eye out on near to medium term upside IV.

If you think gas is expensive, wait till you try to fill your tank with DRAM.

Ok. That’s enough #$AMD for a bit. I’m out of Jun calls. If it keeps going up that’s fine, but now was a good time to recover margin and look into other ideas.

Your quarterly reminder that democrats are big fucking pussies.

Bullish gold.

Make no mistakes, bro!

The CA gubernatorial election just shows how deeply unserious we are as a state.

Claude Mythos is so dangerous it made blood come out of my ass

Happy Mother's Day

The funniest constant in American culture is that when oligarchs buy up a prestige outlet and fill it with right-wing chuds, it loses all the prestige it built over decades in like a weekend. It's like what chavs did to Burberry or 2000's rappers did to Cristal, but moving at the speed of light.

Load up on short dated semi calls, degens.

With semis ripping the way they are today I get the sense there’s a good chance Donnie will bomb something in Iran over the weekend. Everytime you degens run them up, you give him a little leash

Even I think the vol crush across the chain on #$NET is a tad excessive.

Spoiler: it will not.

Wheat is selling off with crude and I want to say that everything I’m seeing about it medium term indicates a neutral perhaps slightly bullish outlook. #$WEAT

VIX testing the waters a little bit. I don’t know why. Semis gonna semi for now. Could be pricing in oil supply + summer?

Project Smell My Own Farts