aws

Except for the soldier who did it with the prediction market. Prediction markets being the thing turning the whole world into a casino, which Trump doesn't like apparently, despite his company is also getting into the prediction market business. It's only ok if you make enough to donate millions to his PAC

Our new director of national intelligence, at his weird meme stock event in an airplane hanger with people getting slapped by dildos: https://keubiko.substack.com/p/bill-pppultes-ppp-ppproblem https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/18kqann/a_500_perticket_party_in_a_florida_airplane/

Berkshire Hathaway to Acquire Taylor Morrison Home Corporation for $8.5 Billion https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/berkshire-hathaway-acquire-taylor-morrison-203000204.html

We got through the Q&A without anyone making their kid read their question for them.

Sold some CROX and bought BRK.B with the proceeds

FWIW Centcom says zero ships passed in 24 hours

For whatever reason the knives came out for Swalwell at this time, at least there was sufficient pressure to push him out. Gonzales on the other hand still has his seat despite admitting guilt in the scandal over his affair with a staffer who set herself on fire. Hopefully they follow through on expelling him.

I like to think he just enjoys making his followers debase themselves. Like when that article came out that he gave everyone shoes that were two sizes too big, knowing they wouldn't dare not to wear them.

He posted it last night, got criticized, and deleted it this morning after saying he posted it because he thought it portrayed him as a doctor healing people.

Who needs the pope when you have Orange Jesus?

Orban just conceded defeat. Great news that there won't be any shenanigans to try to stay in power. Hopefully that allows the EU to deliver the support to Ukraine that Hungary had been blocking.

Was JD Vance the kiss of death for Orban in the Hungary election? With 29% of the votes in, the opposition party is projected to win 132 of 199 seats, almost a supermajority.

I don't think the US is going to blow up any tankers, but we might seize them. If they choose to run a blockade that's fair enough.

I think it's one of the best ideas he's had. The US has done nothing to disrupt any of the shipping through the strait throughout the war. They've let all the Iranian tankers and bulkers through, which effectively allowed Iran to cash in on high oil prices while they disrupt the rest of the world economy. Then the ceasefire was allowed to continue for days even though Iran failed to live up to the only precondition of opening the strait. The US now has credibility that the issue of the strait closure is Iran's fault even though the US might add to the pressure with a blockade. I think it's a long time coming. Iran has been able to feel very powerful by choking off the rest of the world without affecting themselves, so they felt no need to cede anything in the ceasefire demands. At least this would add some pressure to them, turning it from a cash cow to a pain point.

Probably because people figured out how to cheat on the tariffs. Foreign exporters setup shell companies in the US to take delivery of their goods, lied about the value of what they were importing, and sold the goods duty paid to the actual importers. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/tariffs-trade-import-fraud.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Z1A.Cdey.JtTKq6d0XDjj&smid=url-share

NTDOY, CNSWF, FICO, NAVI

The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, with only a handful of Iranian tankers being allowed through, plus a few dry bulk vessels paying the aya"toll"ah. Yesterday Trump told a reporter he was considering a US-Iranian joint venture to collect tolls, which thankfully he is now walking back tonight with truth social posts demanding no tolls. Hopefully it has more behind it than his "Vladimir, STOP!" posts. It's quite ridiculous to allow Iran to collect revenue from this. Not only is the shipping lane through the strait in Omanian waters, but imagine the precedent it would set. The vast majority of all international shipping has to pass through chokepoints in territorial waters of at least one country, like the Strait of Malacca or Strait of Gibraltar. Would the adjacent countries there start demanding tolls too?

It's pretty frustrating that we seemed to have learned very little from the war in Ukraine and just leave hundreds of millions of dollars of planes sitting out in the open on the tarmac for satellites to see. $20k drones taking out $50 million planes. Maybe Trump shouldn't have blown off Zelensky's offer of assistance.

I hope we get Thanksgiving letters for many years to come.

Wrote a bunch of weekly puts on CROX in various strikes from 71-75. Enough to more than double down if all assigned. In the end I may wish I just added shares outright, but I'm a sucker for collecting put premiums on shares being bought back heavily at 52 week lows.

Weirdly, I noticed the A share count is higher than it was on the last 10-Q. It went from 519,193 to 523,010. The total outstanding between A and B is exactly the same, so I guess they incorrectly recorded some conversions in the last report that they had to undo.

Bill Ackman realizing Trump is not the brilliant tactician he thought he was: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yR1QL7CJltQ

Mining profitability swings wildly with network difficulty and prices. The first Bitcoin miners I setup back in 2011 were paying back 1% a day in revenue, and then a few months later the rewards wouldn't even cover the cost of electricity. New entrants jump in when profitability is high, and switch off when variable costs exceed mining revenue.

Nicehash has operated under this type of model for ten years. Miners run their software, the buyers bid for your hashrate, and Nicehash takes a small cut of the revenue. The miners and Nicehash get paid no matter how many rewards are actually earned. I don't think it does much for long-term profitability. Mining revenue is a fixed pool no matter how many people are chasing it, with the exception of short-term spikes in transaction fees. It's not a good business and no amount of financial innovation will change that. You just need to be a very low cost producer that can respond quickly to changes in network difficulty and price.

I hear the people saying how we need to do this for the left behind in the US, but all the details of how exactly would work get hand waved away. We are going to help the working class by slapping huge tariffs on the things they need to buy. We are going to incentivise foreign manufacturers to invest billions of dollars and years of time to build factories in the US, when the reason for doing so could go away overnight if China sells Tiktok or if the Vietnamese government compliments Trump's golf swing. I do not have confidence that the administration who sets tariff policy by ChatGPT has a coherent strategy to rebuild the economy for the working class. They just hope they can act crazy and the other countries will freak out and give them whatever they want so they can declare victory. That may work some of the time, but I'm skeptical that you gain more in concessions than you lose. Countries that depend heavily on the US may cut short-term deals but seek to lessen their reliance on the US in the future, while other countries will gladly fill the vacuum for those that want trade deals less vulnerable to Trump's flights of fancy.