✨ 「YBA&BEYOND: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection」 Tickets Now On Sale! 🎨 More than 90 works by 50+ iconic Young British Artists (YBAs) who challenged traditional norms and embraced bold, experimental practices in the 1990s. 📅 June 3 (Wed) – September 6 (Sun), 2026 📍 Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art - Higashiyama Cube 👉Click to meet YBA&BEYOND. Don’t miss this chance to experience the radical creativity that shaped 90s British art! ✨ 「テート美術館 ― YBA & BEYOND 世界を変えた90s英国アート」 チケット発売中！ 🎨 1990年代に伝統的な規範に挑戦し、大胆で実験的な手法を取り入れた、50名以上の著名なヤング・ブリティッシュ・アーティスト（YBA）による90点以上の作品を展示！ 📅 2026年6月3日（水）～9月6日（日） 📍 京都市京セラ美術館 新館 東山キューブ 👉 詳細はこちら： 90年代英国芸術を形作った革新的な創作を体験するチャンスをお見逃しなく！ #テート美術館展# #YBA展# #YBAandBEYOND展# #YBAandBEYOND#

Spain reported 301 Tesla sales and 0.3% market share in April. BEV penetration is 10.3% and Tesla has 2.7% of this segment. 🇪🇸 • 67% Model Y and 32% Model 3 • -47% vs. April last year and -34% compared to January the first month of the previous quarter • Last three months +15.9% vs. November - January • Year-to-date +29% over same period last year • Year-to-date is 30% or 3.6/12 of last year's total

🇺🇸US DATA RUNS HOT: INFLATION STICKY, DEMAND FIRM INFLATION • Headline PCE MoM: +0.2% vs +0.1% est.; prior -0.1% • Headline PCE YoY: +3.7% vs +3.6% est.; prior +3.7% • Core PCE MoM: +0.2% vs +0.2% est.; prior +0.1% • Core PCE YoY: +3.3% vs +3.3% est.; prior +3.3% GDP • Q2 GDP annualized: +1.5% vs +1.5% est.; prior +1.5% • Personal consumption: +3.4% vs +3.2% est.; prior +3.2% • GDP Price Index: +6.4% vs +6.2% est.; prior +6.2% • Core PCE QoQ: +3.6% vs +3.4% est.; prior +3.4% INCOME & SPENDING • Personal income MoM: +0.4% vs +0.2% est.; prior +0.2% • Personal spending MoM: +0.2% vs +0.1% est.; prior +0.3% • Real personal spending MoM: 0.0% vs 0.0% est.; prior +0.4% DURABLE GOODS • Durable goods orders MoM: +1.1% vs +0.5% est.; prior +0.5% • Durables ex-transportation: +0.4% vs +0.6% est.; prior +0.7% • Core capital goods orders: +0.2% vs +0.7% est.; prior revised to +1.7% • Core capital goods shipments: +1.4% vs +1.0% est.; prior revised to +2.4% BOTTOM LINE: Inflation remains sticky while consumer demand and headline durable goods beat expectations. GDP growth was in line, but stronger price pressures could keep the Fed cautious on rates.

Last wk, S&P/Nas/Mag7 were +1.2%/+1.7%/+4.0% despite oil +4% & bond ylds +7bps on Iran flare-up. 2 days remain during this seasonally favorable time from the last 3 trading days of June through first 9 days of July. Earning season starts w/ big banks on Tuesday. As I first posted about on June 28th and reiterated on July 5th, the seasonality is historically very favorable from the last three trading days of June through the first nine trading days of July during which the S&P/Nasdaq have advanced 1.6%/2.5% and been up 78% of the time since 1985. The S&P/Nasdaq is up 3.0%/3.6% during the first 10 trading days of this time period in 2026 already. But for the heart of the AI trade, the Semiconductor (SOX) Index is down 7.0% during these last 10 trading days on fears of a “speed bump” that I have been posting about since 6/28. For the AI trade going forward, two separate thoughts with two different implications are beginning to coalesce in my mind. The first thought is that AI revenue growth for the leading LLM models is likely to hit a “speed bump” and slow in the September quarter. Last week, $SPCX and $META released new LLM models that both closed much of the gap with the leading edge models from OpenAI and Anthropic. But Meta plans to price their model at roughly 1/4th the cost of the two leaders with SpaceX aggressive as well. This is particularly relevant as companies switched from token maxing in March to token minimization in June. As an example, the CEO of Coinbase posted on June 26th, “How to keep AI spend flat while token usage grows exponentially... Putting this into practice has cut our AI spend nearly in half, while our token usage continues to grow.” Sam Altman on Thursday: “we have heard enterprises on their concerns about AI costs, and 5.6 sol is a huge step forward for dollars-per-task, as are terra and luna”. But on a positive note, two more public cloud providers have been recently added to the four that already existed of $AMZN, $GOOGL, $MSFT and $ORCL. SpaceX in the past month raised over $100B in equity plus debt and plans to spend hundreds of billions to attack the $28.5 trillion TAM they talked about in their IPO prospectus. News surrounding Meta last week seems to imply that they are launching a cloud offering not because they have excess compute but so 1) they can double their compute spend from 7 MegaWatts in 2026 to 14 MegaWatts in 2027 and 2) have capacity to sell their Muse Spark LLM. So in summary, with this seasonally favorable period of time for the overall market coming soon to a close, I believe cutting back excess exposure is prudent. Reaction by investors on Tuesday to bank earnings which should be strong, may give us a good tell as to the risk vs reward at current levels over the shorter-term. As for the AI trade, I believe selectivity is key as we work our way through the “speed bump” and the positive implications of 4 aggressive public cloud vendors now becoming six versus the negatives of token maxing in March turning to token minimization in June. All the best in the week ahead.

Last wk, oil +9% & ylds +11-26 bps across 2/30 curve w/ S&P/Nas/R2K -0.3%/-0.7%/-2.4%. This wk, I am watching reaction to 1) oil/rates, 2) calls to slow down AI development & 3) Fed on 9/16. I remain on the cautious side till US mid-terms on 11/3. This weekend, the CEO of Anthropic called for a slowing of frontier model development over safety concerns. This follows comments along similar lines by the CEO of OpenAI to employees last week if other companies were willing to do the same thing. The fundamental issues I have with this is 1) foreign adversaries would welcome the US slowing down AI development, 2) I view this as an attempt to slow down open-weight model development which would help the market dominance of OpenAI and Anthropic which are currently in the lead and 3) I do not see other companies agreeing to anything that slows down progress catching up to these two market leaders. Having said that, I could see 3rd party evaluators to limit liability risk going forward and some sort of executive order from the White House. But I hope the longer-term result of these actions is broadly distributed personal AI capabilities for all individuals versus having it become concentrated in the hands of a few companies. Along this vein of AI competition, after releasing their paid API of Muse Spark 1.3 two weeks ago with open-weight versions coming later, $Meta launched their personal AI agent Muse last week with the stock gaining 5%. With 3.6 billion daily active users, a hit product could yield large results. Meta is increasingly showing other ways they can monetize their AI capex spend. This should help the stock to re-rate from a 17x CY27 PE to a multiple closer to peers trading in the low 20s. Meta Connect on September 23–24 is another potential catalyst given their leading frontier model Watermelon should be coming at the latest by October. On the front of broadly distributed AI capabilities, $AAPL stock gained 4% last week on their new product launch. The foldable Duo will provide a personalized AI agent in your pocket with a 50% larger screen than a Pro Max. I continue to see a big upgrade cycle next year. The change from a 4” screen to 5.5” screen with the iPhone 6 drove revenue growth from 7% in FY14 to 28% in FY15. The Android ecosystem has had a foldable Samsung phone since 2019. As for the Fed on Wednesday, I believe Warsh will raise by 25 bps and echo his hawkish statements from Jackson Hole on August 28th that “Price stability is not self-executing… 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the Central Bank.” The ECB statement last week when they hiked might provide some hints: “For inflation excluding energy and food, the baseline foresees 2.5% in 2026, 2.6% in 2027 and 2.3% in 2028. Compared with June, the baseline projection for inflation in 2026 is unchanged, while it has been revised up for 2027 and 2028… The outlook remains highly uncertain, with risks to the upside for inflation and to the downside for economic growth.” In summary, my caution between now and the US mid-terms on 11/3 remains for reasons I have fleshed out in prior posts including: 1. Don’t fight the Fed: The market historically under-performs during a hiking cycle with the bond market discounting 2 raises by year-end and 3.5 raises by mid-June of 2027. 2. Seasonal headwinds: September is down -0.5% on average and up only 48% of the time since 1957. 3. Historical volatility: S&P drawdowns of 10% between 7/31 and 11/9 have occurred in the lead-up to mid-terms since 1990. 4. Regulatory friction: There is bipartisan pushback against datacenter expansion that could hurt the AI buildout in the near-term. 5. Geopolitical risk: Despite US efforts to de-escalate, I believe Iran drags out hostilities at least through the 11/3 US mid-terms, keeping oil prices elevated. 6. Macroeconomic pressure: Long-term government bond yields are hitting multi-decade highs for several countries, slowing down growth and providing a reasonable alternative to stocks. I believe in not fighting the Fed, the bond market or seasonality. I like the odds stacked in my favor which should improve at least seasonally following the mid-terms.

HERE IS HOW THE MARKET CLOSED TODAY Five of eleven sectors finished green. Technology was the worst at -1.1%, Basic Materials -1.8% and Real Estate -1.1% behind it. Chips led the selling: - Lam Research $LRCX -5.6% - Intel $INTC -5.6% - Micron $MU -4.7% - Advanced Micro Devices $AMD -3.4% - Nvidia $NVDA -2.4% Software and hardware went with them. Oracle $ORCL -5.2%, Dell $DELL -5.4%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise $HPE -6.2%, Palantir $PLTR -2.2%. Apple $AAPL +3.6% was the largest megacap gainer, the day after its iPhone event. Google $GOOGL +0.6% and Microsoft $MSFT +0.2% held up. Meta $META -1.4% and Tesla $TSLA -1.2% did not. Defensives caught the rotation. Philip Morris $PM +2.2%, AbbVie $ABBV +1.6%, Uber $UBER +2.1%, Intuitive Surgical $ISRG +2.0%. Consumer Defensive was the best sector at +0.3%.

Be honest, did this make you hungry? 🍲 Dropping the full AI video prompt below—what dish should I try next? prompt：Create a 30-second fast-paced, photorealistic live-action Japanese cooking film that fully demonstrates the preparation of authentic Japanese sukiyaki. The entire video should have the visual quality and realism of a premium Japanese food commercial. Overall Visual Style Photorealistic live-action cinematic food cinematography. Absolutely no anime, illustration, cartoon, CGI-rendered, or video-game visual style. Set inside a warm Japanese home kitchen during late afternoon. Amber sunlight passes through traditional wooden lattice windows and reflects naturally across a heavy black cast-iron sukiyaki pot. Show extremely realistic food textures throughout: intricate fine marbling and fat structure in premium wagyu beef, visible vegetable fibers, porous tofu surfaces, realistic egg viscosity, and glossy sukiyaki sauce. Follow physically believable cooking behavior at all times. Beef fat naturally melts when exposed to heat. Wagyu slices gradually change color as they cook and gently curl around the edges. The sauce produces fine simmering bubbles. Steam naturally rises and moves according to heat and airflow. Sauce slowly runs and drips along the surfaces of the ingredients. Use shallow depth of field, macro close-ups, soft natural light, delicate highlights, and restrained cinematic color grading. Maintain premium food-commercial image quality with realistic textures and subtle photographic imperfections. Camera movement should remain smooth, stable, and controlled. Editing should be fast-paced, energetic, and visually clear. Use natural match cuts based on chopstick movements, ingredient shapes, sauce flow, steam movement, and visual composition. Maintain strict continuity throughout the entire video: the exact same pair of realistic human hands, the same utensils, the same chopsticks, the same cast-iron sukiyaki pot, the same ceramic bowl, the same kitchen environment, and the same lighting direction. Timeline 0–3 seconds — Ingredient Preparation Rapid macro shots of thinly sliced marbled wagyu beef, green onions, shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, grilled tofu, shirataki noodles, napa cabbage, and shungiku arranged neatly. Realistic human hands hold a chef's knife and cut the green onions into evenly sized diagonal segments. The knife then creates a precise decorative flower-like pattern on the surface of the shiitake mushrooms. All ingredients should look fresh and naturally moist. Clearly show their cut surfaces, natural fibers, pores, moisture, and fine texture. Use rapid but controlled editorial cuts to establish the ingredients within the first three seconds. 3–6 seconds — Heating the Pot and Melting Beef Fat The heavy black cast-iron sukiyaki pot sits on the stove and gradually heats. Wooden chopsticks pick up a small piece of beef fat and place it directly into the hot pot. The beef fat slowly melts from a solid piece into transparent rendered fat. The chopsticks push the melting fat across the bottom of the pot, spreading it evenly across the cooking surface and creating a thin glossy layer of rendered fat. Subtle heat vapor naturally rises from the hot surface. Show realistic melting behavior, surface tension, heat distortion, and tiny sizzling sounds. 6–9 seconds — Searing Green Onion and Wagyu Diagonal green onion segments fall into the hot cast-iron pot. As they contact the hot surface, they produce a crisp, immediate sizzling reaction. The cut surfaces gradually develop a lightly browned, caramelized appearance. Thinly sliced marbled wagyu is then placed directly into the pot. The intricate fat marbling begins to melt under the heat. The edges of the thin meat slices gently curl and contract naturally. The beef gradually changes from fresh red to a tender light-brown cooked surface while retaining a moist, glossy texture. Capture extreme macro details of melting fat, searing meat, tiny bubbles, and the interaction between the beef and the hot cast-iron surface. 9–12 seconds — Preparing the Sukiyaki Sauce Fine crystalline sugar is evenly sprinkled over the partially cooked wagyu. The sugar begins melting immediately when it contacts the hot cooking surface and rendered beef fat. Soy sauce, mirin, and sake are poured sequentially around the edge of the pot. The liquids combine into a deep amber-brown sukiyaki sauce. The sauce rapidly bubbles as it contacts the hot pan and begins flowing around the wagyu and seared green onion. The sauce gradually coats the surface of the beef and vegetables, creating a rich transparent gloss. Show realistic liquid physics, bubbling, evaporation, surface tension, reflections, and sauce movement. 12–15 seconds — Adding the Ingredients Wooden chopsticks sequentially place grilled tofu, decorative shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, shirataki noodles, and napa cabbage into the pot. Arrange the ingredients naturally so their different shapes, textures, and colors create a visually balanced composition. The sauce flows naturally between the ingredients. The porous grilled tofu gradually absorbs the amber-brown sauce around its edges. Show realistic moisture absorption and sauce penetration without making the tofu appear artificial or overly saturated. 15–18 seconds — Simmering and Infusing Extreme close-up of the sukiyaki gently simmering. Fine bubbles continuously form around the edges of the tofu, shiitake mushrooms, napa cabbage, and other ingredients. The napa cabbage gradually softens and becomes partially translucent. The enoki mushrooms become coated with glossy sukiyaki sauce. Natural steam continuously rises from the pot. The warm amber sunlight catches the steam, creating a subtle atmospheric haze. The camera moves slowly sideways at extremely close range, following the surface of the simmering ingredients. Maintain shallow depth of field, with individual bubbles and ingredient textures sharply resolved while the background remains softly blurred. 18–21 seconds — Adding Fresh Wagyu and Shungiku A new layer of thinly sliced marbled wagyu is gently placed over the simmering vegetables. The meat is slowly cooked by the surrounding heat and hot sauce. The beef naturally changes color as it cooks, transitioning into a tender pinkish-brown cooked state while retaining visible marbling, moisture, and soft texture. Fresh bright-green shungiku is placed along the edge of the pot. The fresh green leaves create a strong but natural contrast against the darker ingredients and deep amber-brown sauce. Maintain realistic ingredient scale, natural placement, and believable cooking behavior. 21–24 seconds — Preparing the Dipping Egg A fresh chicken egg is gently cracked against the rim of a small white ceramic bowl. The shell breaks naturally. The yolk and egg white fall completely into the bowl. Wooden chopsticks rapidly whisk the egg. The yolk and white combine into a smooth golden mixture with realistic viscosity. The chopsticks create a visible swirling vortex in the egg. Steam from the sukiyaki naturally passes through the background. Perform a smooth rack focus from the beaten egg in the foreground to the continuously bubbling sukiyaki behind it. 24–27 seconds — Picking Up and Dipping the Wagyu Wooden chopsticks reach into the sukiyaki and pick up a tender slice of wagyu. The meat hangs naturally from the chopsticks under its own weight. A small amount of green onion and several thin strands of enoki mushrooms remain attached to the meat. Glossy amber-brown sauce clings naturally to the surface of the beef. Several realistic droplets slowly gather along the lower edge of the meat before falling back into the pot. The wagyu is then gently lowered into the golden beaten egg. The egg smoothly coats the surface of the beef with realistic viscosity and adhesion. Capture the interaction between the glossy sauce, tender meat, and flowing egg mixture in an extreme macro close-up. 27–30 seconds — Final Hero Shot The completed sukiyaki pot sits in the center of a warm solid-wood dining table. The pot contains marbled wagyu, seared green onion, decorative shiitake mushrooms, grilled tofu, napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, shirataki noodles, and fresh green shungiku, all naturally distributed throughout the simmering pot. The deep amber-brown sauce continues gently bubbling around the ingredients. The sauce catches delicate realistic highlights across the surface. Steam continuously rises from the finished dish and drifts naturally through the warm atmosphere. The camera moves slowly around the edge of the cast-iron pot in a controlled cinematic arc. The camera gradually settles on the chopsticks holding a tender slice of wagyu above the beaten egg in the foreground. The wagyu remains soft and naturally folded, with visible marbling and glossy sauce coating. The sauce and egg mixture form small natural droplets that slowly fall from the beef. The background gradually becomes softer and more defocused. End on a luxurious, warm, appetizing, premium Japanese food-commercial hero shot. Cinematography Premium Japanese food advertising photography. Photorealistic live-action cinematography. Natural macro food photography. Shallow depth of field. Selective focus. Smooth controlled camera movement. Macro close-ups mixed with medium food shots. Natural rack focus. Controlled lateral camera movement. Slow cinematic orbit around the final dish. Fast editorial pacing during ingredient preparation. Rapid match cuts synchronized with hand movements, chopstick movements, ingredient placement, sauce movement, and steam. Realistic lens characteristics. Natural optical depth. Subtle photographic imperfections. High micro-detail. Realistic surface reflections. Natural motion blur. No artificial camera shake. No excessive slow motion. No hyper-stylized VFX. Lighting and Color Warm Japanese domestic atmosphere. Late-afternoon sunlight entering through traditional wooden lattice windows. Soft directional sunlight. Natural amber illumination. Warm highlights across the cast-iron pot and ingredients. Soft shadows with realistic falloff. Subtle reflections on rendered beef fat and sukiyaki sauce. Deep blacks on the cast-iron cookware. Natural skin tones. Rich food colors. Deep amber-brown sukiyaki sauce. Fresh green shungiku. Natural red and pink tones in the wagyu before and during cooking. Golden-yellow egg yolk. Warm wooden tones from the dining table and kitchen. Restrained cinematic color grading. Premium Japanese food-commercial color palette. Avoid excessive saturation, artificial neon colors, generic blue cinematic grading, or exaggerated HDR. Audio Bright, warm 1980s Japanese city-pop instrumental music. Tempo approximately 110–120 BPM. Delicate electric piano. Soft bass. Crisp drum-machine rhythm. Subtle bell percussion. The music should remain energetic enough to support the fast editing while never overpowering the cooking sounds. Synchronize detailed, close-recorded ASMR cooking sounds with the visuals: Chef's knife cutting vegetables Knife contacting the cutting board Beef fat touching the hot cast-iron pot Beef fat sizzling and melting Green onion sizzling Wagyu fat rendering Meat gently searing Sugar falling onto the beef Sugar melting Soy sauce being poured Mirin being poured Sake being poured Sukiyaki sauce rapidly bubbling Wooden chopsticks touching the cast-iron pot Chopsticks touching the ceramic bowl Egg cracking Egg falling into the bowl Egg being whisked Natural simmering sounds Steam and subtle cooking sounds During the final hero shot, the music naturally becomes quieter and resolves with a single delicate Japanese wind-chime sound. Negative Requirements Absolutely no Japanese anime, 2D animation, cartoon, illustration, manga, clay animation, 3D animation, or obvious CGI-rendered appearance. No plastic-looking food. No artificial food textures. No excessive skin smoothing. No fake glossy food surfaces. No excessive or physically impossible highlights. No physically impossible liquid behavior. No unnatural steam. No reverse-flowing liquids. No floating ingredients. No food clipping or intersections. No unnatural deformation. No storyboard panels. No reference images visible in the final video. No sketches. No borders. No numbers. No arrows. No annotations. No subtitles. No captions. No interface elements. No logos. No watermarks. No text overlays of any kind. Do not show tonkatsu. Do not show rice bowls or donburi. Do not show seafood. Do not show Western ingredients. Do not show unrelated Japanese dishes. Only show authentic Japanese sukiyaki and its traditional accompanying ingredients. The final wagyu must not appear completely raw. The final wagyu must not be excessively cooked, dry, tough, burnt, or charred. Avoid completely raw-looking beef in the final presentation. Avoid overcooked gray meat. Avoid malformed hands. Avoid extra fingers. Avoid missing fingers. Avoid distorted wrists. Avoid unnatural hand anatomy. Avoid twisted or deformed chopsticks. Avoid duplicated utensils. Avoid duplicated ingredients. Avoid food clipping. Avoid inconsistent ingredient shapes. Avoid inconsistent pot geometry. Avoid liquid flowing backward. Avoid physically impossible steam movement. Maintain exact continuity of the same human hands, same utensils, same wooden chopsticks, same cast-iron sukiyaki pot, same ceramic bowl, same kitchen, same dining table, same ingredient set, same lighting direction, and same spatial environment throughout the entire video. The entire 30-second sequence must feel like one continuous premium Japanese food commercial filmed in a real kitchen, with physically accurate cooking, realistic human interaction, consistent food appearance, natural camera movement, and authentic live-action photography.

Gemini 3.7 Flash — the CHEAP model — tripled its agent score (Terminal-bench 3.0: 5.4% → 14.9%) in THREE WEEKS not a new generation. a point release. 21 days. flash went 3.5 → 3.6 → 3.7 in ~3 months while the price got cut in half

East & Southeast Asia 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇻🇳 ➤ Cartesia's Sonic 3.6 leads Japanese and Vietnamese, while Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #1# in Mandarin. ➤ StepFun's StepAudio 2.5 TTS ranks #3# in Mandarin at 1,130 Elo, just 16 points behind Sonic 3.6. ➤ In Japanese, Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #2# at 1,123 Elo, ahead of ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational and Sonic 3.5. Japanese: Cartesia's Sonic 3.6 ranks #1# at 1,153 Elo, followed by Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 at 1,123 and ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational at 1,095. Sonic 3.5 and Eleven v3 round out the top 5 at 1,093 and 1,085. Mandarin: Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #1# at 1,185 Elo, followed by Sonic 3.6 at 1,146 and StepFun's StepAudio 2.5 TTS at 1,130. Alibaba's Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus and MiniMax's Speech 2.8 Turbo round out the top 5. Vietnamese: Sonic 3.6 ranks #1# at 1,721 Elo, followed by ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational at 1,677 and Eleven v3 at 1,676. Sonic 3.5 ranks #4# at 1,650, followed by Realtime TTS-2 at 1,600.