16 September 2026 Giga Texas Snapshots! Beautiful day to fly and to see the very active End-of-Line (EOL and outbound lots today. Many @cybertruck , Cybercabs, Model Y/YLs and test track activity with a long single group of Cybercabs racing around the large oval while Model Y”L’s test out on the inner oval with the various road surfaces, possibly for NVH tests. On the W side near Tesla Road, the large clearing has more Geotextile membranes installed and addition prep work ahead of construction start. Nearby, in the new staging lot, transformers were being set up for something … what, I am not sure. At the N Campus Optimus Factory construction site, the steel assembly continues to progress rapidly, now with the structure only about 5 column griddle lines from the N perimeter beam while final footing construction continues on the S end. In-between, more concrete work on the upper 3 floors is underway and an interesting stairwell with roof access is emerging on the W side of the structure. The Advanced Tech Chip Fab is getting a large section of the ground slap poured with concrete today and the new tall crane has been set up and is operational helping with the slab work. The last of the reinforced footings on the S end are under construction today too. Cortex 2 is getting work on the N extension while the W side Megapack installation seems to be paused at the moment. Ont eh E side, cooling plant 2 continues to get more of it’s cooling pipes and related systems assembled and installed, while the water reclamation plant trenches and pipe installation is nearing completion along with the two water tank concrete base mounts. At the Batter Cathode plant, the cooling plant is getting what appears to be upgraded pipes and additional systems … this is the first time I’ve observed construction work on this plant in quite some time. At the Cybercab production line exit, we see some RIIM rear quarter panels in racks on the apron near where the vehicles exit, and a Model Y BIW on a truck, likely for recycling. On the E side of the factory, we see exterior signs of progress with multiple permits for new work, the 7th RIM machine installation and cooling units, and what appears to be a vertical reciprocating conveyor (VRC) system being installed, likely to more efficiently move Castings in to the building and reducing the amount of ground handling these currently require. A lot more to see today!

I said last night in response to this post that everything was technically a prediction market bc Arrow-Debreu contingent claims span the returns space. I want to correct myself. Everything is trivially a string of predictions but you couldn’t decompose a bond into a sequence of prediction contracts. Now, in reality, very few long-lived assets are prediction markets in any meaningful sense. I appreciate where Joe’s quip might come from. There’s a pedantic sense in which his statement is right. But ultimately he’s wrong in an interesting way that lies at the heart of financial/asset pricing theory. Joe famously likes to say that he doesn’t believe in the concept of bond “term (risk) permia” and instead believes that the returns of a bond, even a long maturity one, is simply the outcomes of a sequence of Fed short rate decisions. Viewed this way it’s tempting to think how any Treasury bond may be simply a sequence of properly lined-up FOMC decision prediction contracts. Except this is simply not true for exactly the reason why Joe doesn’t believe in the concept of “term permia”. There’s a name in economics for what Joe believes and it’s called the “expectations hypothesis”. Under the “strong version” of EH, a n-year bond yield is literally the market’s forecast of the average short rate over the next n years. There should be no term permia and long term bonds should earn no excess returns over short term bills. The expectations hypothesis has been repeatedly and resoundingly rejected in many different studies: Fama-Bliss, Shiller, Campbell-Shiller, Cochrane-Piazzesi etc. Whether it’s market-implied or survey-based, short rate expectations cannot explain long bond yields/returns. Bond prices move way too much to be explained by plausible changes in the expectations of future short rates. Bond yields are not simply forecasts of short rates. Bond term permia exist even if they aren’t measured well! You cannot line up a daisy-chain of prediction contracts on FOMC meetings to synthetically recreate the payoffs of a bond. Love you Joe but sorry bro.

Eh? It’s just so one note. Frantic / determined Pattinson is compelling, but also more taxing than intriguing by the end. None of the side quests add any depth of character. Would’ve been a better big budget suspenseful blockbuster, imo, but we’d have probably lost all the incredible lighting work. Trailer hooked me, movie didn’t deliver.