The media’s favorite descriptor these days for the Middle East War—stalemate—doesn't apply to its economic fallout, which is advancing along the sequence I shared with you a few weeks ago What began as a narrow price shock (energy and borrowing costs) has been transitioning into a broader... 1 of 2

...inflationary phenomenon as signs of demand destruction (lower growth) are emerging. If the War persists in a stalemate or, worse, re-escalates, the next phase will likely also include a sharp rise in worries about financial instability. #economy #markets #middleeastwar #growth #inflation 2 of 2

If you think a big reason for global imbalances is some surplus countries spending too low a % of GDP on healthcare and/or defense, it may be worth considering that another reason for global imbalances may be one deficit country spending too high a % of GDP on healthcare and/or defense.

Could not resist.

I’m glad the food went to far more deserving people.

This is a deeply reported story about the state of Trumpist interference with state elections: www.reuters.com/investigatio... Essential heavy journalistic lifting from @reuters.com

Folks, impeachment shouldn't be a day 1 priority, because it's purely symbolic/rhetorical; Trump isn't getting convicted in a 51-49 senate and unless the Dems do take the Senate he isn't even getting tried. Accomplish things! Legislate! Investigate! Sue!

Bannon, Epstein, Farage—remarkably few people in the US know about the whole Trump-Epstein nexus to and funding of the Brexit movement...

We used to be a country - a proper country [ball room edition]

Employment Agency Pushes Discrimination Cases That Match Trump’s Agenda www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/u...

Concur and repeat and repost

"...a growing number of European capitals have begun to act on what would once have seemed an unthinkable premise: that they must learn to navigate a world in which American power can no longer be treated as the unquestioned centre of international order." engelsbergideas.com/essays/europ...

I don't really mind it personally when someone says they're uncomfortable with the "AIPAC obsession" (I disagree of course) but if one goes further and says it's ipso facto antisemitic, it should be remembered that AIPAC itself accused the most famous Jew in Congress of blood libel last year.

Meanwhile

wherever you look, there is state-driven intimidation of speech and opinion. i testified about this last september before the house judiciary committee and it's only gotten worse. www.congress.gov/119/meeting/...

This Democrat Is Offering Trump a Blueprint to Land an Iran Nuclear Deal www.notus.org/congress/bil...

This woman, who also represented three J6 defendants and well as Roy Moore in one of his defamation suits, is one of the people they hired to be an immigration judge; a person who will have to decide on gender-based violence cases.

📌Barack Obama was targeted 11 times in assassination attempts during this two terms. I bet you don't remember any of them because they were handled through proper channels, professionally, and he isn't a whiny bitch.

I know it's cliché at this point to bring up how repetitive and boring this all is, but they've been recycling these exact same talking points since at least June 2017

wild era developing

This is a position that should lead to expulsion in a Democratic majority

This is what she has for Biden, and for Trump she has “I will gladly attend a fancy ball in your honor.” If you tell me to watch this ghoul’s YouTube channel because she does good work, fuck you.

🔴 WH Press Sec. Leavitt: I would not say that the US is considering Iran's proposal.

The blonde lady says that, with my posts here, I am inspiring assassination attempts. Not my intent, but if someone wants to take something I posted the wrong way, I guess there is nothing I can do but offer my thoughts and prayers.

And per Wendy Sherman, the regime just isn't built for that, nor is that its history.

Thinking about the Warsh testimony more, noteworthy how he highlights trimmed mean inflation. It just happens to be the lowest, of course. But it's a terrible lesson to draw from the past 6 years. It got it wrong in both directions, misleading many. newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/cherry-pic...

Iranian Foreign Minister told Russia's Putin that the US's destructive habits, unreasonable demands, and frequent changes in positions are slowing diplomatic progress - Iran's Foreign Ministry on Telegram.

First Lady Melania Trump has issued a statement demanding that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel.

I particularly like how not only did Trump drag the country down but he managed to drag it under a country that wasn't even on the list before.

Given this argument, I assume it's too dangerous for the President to go golfing anymore, right?

I'm sorry, the US situation is still not remotely comparable to the Chinese one, as evidenced by the thousands of academics publishing criticism of the government online under their real names.

market is back to binary rotations. the higher oil has just amplified the moves. AI capex won’t be touched if oil is over $100 (but other stuff will), so semis back in control, everything else lags and the dispersion pins the indices which keeps vols calm(ish)

"all of Israeli Jewish politics, essentially, takes place within an ethno-nationalist framework, in which the very language of democracy itself is really, largely confined to the idea of democracy for Jews." open.substack.com/pub/peterbei...

one thing i've been struck by at the no kings protests i've attended is how they try to get some group singing going--and how flat it falls. this is because they are transplanting a *tactic* from the CRM without understanding the social context it emerged from. a corrective, from thomas ricks:

11/ "So who won? Here at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, there’s a company with 14 employees that manufactures railway track maintenance tools, spare parts, and so on. They import all of this from China [relabelled as Russian-made products].

Norah O'Donnell's "Oh, so you think he's referring to you?" to Donald Trump's "I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody" ranks with Dan Rather's "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?" to Richard Nixon's "Are you running for something?" as the best reporter's retort of all time.

Today in life under competitive authoritarianism

Some companies such as Nvidia are finding themselves spending more on AI tokens for engineers than their salaries. An open question for AI adoption is whether token prices keep increasing as AI companies drop subsidies or if new chips (e.g. Groq LPUs) will cause inference costs to get cheaper?

Someday I will achieve a level of maturity and consciousness under which I won't feel compelled to respond to everything former U.S. Trade Rep. Bob Lighthizer says on trade policy. But today is not that day, so here's my response to his latest piece.

From the pro-hurricane Party

Republished by @startribune.com, @samuelmoyn.bsky.social notes that primary electorates skew older than general electorates (in MN too). The problem is that we make important decisions via primary elections that have much lower participation hence unsurprisingly less representative in many regards.

There is a vast gap between "something happened, and there is a state-coordinated social media cabal that responds" and "the state is organizing fake assassination attempts."

"The idea that the president can use the military as he wishes without authority from Congress demolishes one of the fundamental principles of our democracy: that we have a right to a say in how our lives and treasure are spent."

Key takeaway: he ran very fast for a mile, and then kept doing it for another 25 miles.

The Chinese social media landscape can feel unfamiliar and harder to access for research—especially on a foreign device. On Thursday’s Stage Talk, Chu Yang joins us to explore how these platforms work and how to navigate them from the outside. Join us live: discord.gg/Qy4DGB6g?eve...

Why most automakers now consider the gasoline-powered automobile to be doomed. EVs already dominate markets around the world (the US being the outlier), but soon their dominance will be total. www.ft.com/content/31f8...

NEW: Peter Thiel calls Pope Leo XIV the “woke American pope.” He’s worried about Pope Leo working with a “woke American president like AOC” to create a Marxist “Caesar-Papist fusion.”

This is a good time to re-read the decision in Carroll v. Trump.

Yeah. Kind of grim in its own way that the suspect here seemed to just be a 99% normal person? That's a bit heavier to chew on than if he had been wasted out on some kind of ideological extremism.