If US wants to be considered a secure and trusted exporter of energy that allies can rely on then we can't arbitrarily change rules and disrupt flows bc of domestic politics. Long-term economic & geopolitical impacts are profound. Even public consideration undermines confidence.

Problem: high schools graduate students who lack basic reading and math skills Solution: require students to demonstrate basic proficiency before graduating or advancing Problem: parents, schools and politicians don't like resulting increase in students held back or not graduating Solution: state ends proficiency testing for graduation and promotion Problem: high schools graduate students who lack basic reading and math skills

The oil market is quietly inching up to levels we saw in the spring. But, unlike then, global oil stocks are bullish. Here's my 2 cents on the market this year, as told through time spreads. The difference between the price for a commodity today versus in a few months is a better signal of near-term fundamentals than outright prices. The oil market has gone through 5 stages in 2026, represented in this graph of the premium of month 1 vs month 3. Stage 1: Pre-war - Oversupplied market. Inventories are high and rising. No premium for physical barrels. Stage 2: Immediately after attack on Iran - Market put some risk premium for the uncertainty but expected a quick resolution. Stage 3: War drags on, increasing attacks on energy infrastructure - Market wildly swings between panic over Strait remaining closed and widening conflict vs predictions of near term peace deal. Stage 4: Inventory withdrawals and workarounds to export crude weigh on market - The large premium for near term crude incentivizes commercial inventory withdrawals from stocks that entered the war at elevated levels. Combined with releases from global strategic reserves, physical markets are surprisingly weak. Premium for near term barrels largely disappears. Stage 5: Reality sets in - After 4.5 months of major supply disruption, inventories surpluses are eliminated and continuing to draw. No visibility to opening Strait. Market slowly starts to build premium for physical barrels. Significant price premiums exist for diesel and gasoline. Recent skirmishes increase concern about how long market can remain subdued.

Market doesn't give notice before it revolts against the debt. But so far this month, as debt crossed $40 trillion, the 30-year bond yield hit a 19-year high, gold rose 13%, silver +18%, GSCI commodity index +5%, BTC +19% and the dollar weakened. Markets are saying something. 1/3

Gambling is appealing because humans evolved a capacity for risk-taking. A society in which no one ever took risks would not have thrived, and ultimately would have been outcompeted. Risk-taking is still enormously valuable in modern society. Innovation exists because someone accepted the possibility of failure in pursuit of a larger reward. Entrepreneurship, scientific discovery, exploration, and investment all depend on a willingness to tolerate uncertainty. Risk taking can benefit both society and the individual. Males were disproportionately engaged in roles in which variance was useful: resource acquisition, war, trade, exploration and leadership. Meanwhile, lower variance and greater reliability are evolutionarily valuable for raising children, where consistency of food, protection, and care matter. Thus humans, particularly men, are drawn to activities that have variable and potentially outsized payouts, like gambling. Archaeologists have found dice and other games of chance originating from 5000+ years ago. Companies have become highly sophisticated in using these principles to make money, even when the benefit to society is tenuous at best. Casinos, sports betting, financial trading, collectibles, fantasy sports, video games, and many retail promotions all utilize some lottery-like payoff structures because they work. The greater the potential upside, the more compelling the product. The faster the outcome is revealed, the more appealing. The more appealing to men, the more profitable. The result is an evolutionary pressure on the products: ever-larger jackpots, faster feedback, and larger jackpots, even as the vast majority of participants lose. Many people enjoy these products and the thrill of the uncertainty. A life without variability would be dull. We're wired to seek it out. The challenge is how to allow the entertainment value of variability while minimizing the harms. It's a fine line between providing entertainment and exploiting a deeply rooted human instinct.

America's cultural ideal has been the self-made entrepreneur while Europe's was rooted in aristocracy, with status inherited rather than earned. Europe's inheritance laws show this divide. Many European countries have "forced heirship" laws that require people to leave 50-75% of their estates to their children. Want to leave the majority of your wealth to charity? not allowed. Your kids are estranged from you, struggling with addiction, or irresponsible? still required to give them the money. Want your kids to avoid a life of entitlement? tough. Incredibly, these laws look back at transfers made during your lifetime. If you have 3 children in France, you're required to bequeath them a minimum of 75% of your estate. Because French law calculates this based on your assets at death plus all lifetime gifts, giving away more than 25% of your wealth while alive means your heirs can legally sue to force charities or foundations to return the funds. This has limited the development of the nonprofit sector on the continent. The cultural gap between an entrepreneurial society and one shaped by dynastic wealth is enormous. If you make it yourself, you tend to want your kids to do the same. If you inherit it, the primary goal is protecting the estate for the next gen. Countries like Spain, France, and Italy legally entrench family dynasties, while America has historically sought to limit them through estate taxes. The result is not only a weaker culture of philanthropy and civil society in Europe, but also less economic dynamism.

Curious how Jane Street made $40 billion last year with few negative days? Here’s one example: - Between 1990-2000, there was only one exchange-listed product to trade natural gas: the NYMEX (now CME) physically-settled futures contract - In 2000, ICE realized there was demand for a financially settled (swap) futures contract and introduced it - CME countered and listed their own swap future At this point, the products were primarily for institutional and sophisticated individuals with a commodities account. But as commodities boomed in the 2000s, exchanges created new contracts to increase access and appeal to retail traders. - the NYSE introduced an ETF (UNG) that followed natural gas prices in 2007 - More ETFs followed that offered ability to bet on a price decline and to get 2x or 3x leverage - CME introduced a mini contract that was 1/4th the size of the original The next evolution was to appeal to the pure speculator by expanding the market to less regulated exchanges, widening access globally, increasing leverage, and creating daily bets. - ICE introduced mini same day settlement contracts - CME introduced the micro contract that is 1/10th the size of the original - CME and ICE introduced contracts that expire each trading day - Hyperliquid and Binance offer unregulated, on-chain, high leverage, perpetual nat gas contracts for non-US uses - Kalshi offers same day binary contracts. Other prediction markets are moving forward as well. Now add other iterations on settlement days for the contracts and options on everything listed above. Note that all of these contracts settle (perps notwithstanding) against the original CME physical futures contract. But instead of one way to trade the product, there are dozens. This creates an opportunity to make markets across all of these surfaces and arbitrage among them. And that's what Jane Street and other similar HFT shops do (among many, many other things). Nat gas for delivery at Henry Hub, Louisiana is just one product. Take all the ways to trade equities, currencies, commodities, crypto, interest rates, etc across all the different exchanges in all the jurisdictions and the opportunity of making $50 here and $1000 there adds up to an enormous, low-risk money making machine. This opportunity originates from the large variety of ways people desire to trade random financial instruments and the various products designed for them. This creates a hugely profitable opportunity for the HFTs. They provide a valuable service of creating liquidity for those seeking to trade. Whether that trading is smart and profitable for the average punter on the other side is a different story.

Everyone deep in tech or finance is in full freakout mode over the pace of AI progress over past two months. Own index funds and you barely notice, but specific sectors are exploding (digital & power infrastructure), while anything related to a human behind a desk is plummetting.