Hearing Starmer bask in Robbins taking the rap, I scream

cc: @rajakorman.bsky.social (am I doing this right?)

The mandatory flu vaccine was the shot heard around the world?

It’s hard to Payless for your puts these days, unless you are Thrifty with your Dollar

“I’m short Avis.”
“Ouch. I bet that Hertz!”

Disclosure: I am not involved in any way.

Also, (and seriously) bsky.app/profile/raja...

Very proud of this marriage of word and image.

Democrats lost men because they stopped believing in the virtues of The Golden Age Of The Discoballus.

All international orders depend on systematic ignorance production. That’s what I argue in my fresh-out-of-the-oven @iajournal.bsky.social article.

I thought Red Lobster went under after a Thai entity set off the Crustacean Financial Crisis?

Does that happen often?
Or is it a Rara Avis?

Probably?????

You all may as well know this, if you don’t already.

The minions decide to hedge their bets by backing Big Putsch Industrialization.

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Truly, he is Vasco da Gamma.

Really extraordinary how insufficient consumption outside the US forced Washington into extraordinary fiscal expansion via a war of choice to force a balancing of global C, I & S.

So here it is again!

He’s clearly annoying both the Papeacy and the Papacy. One thinks he’s a bad Bombardier and the other thinks he’s a terrible Pilate.

I’ve already RT’d this one in an angry QT but this time (still angry) want to note (again) that Homo Faber is running into FOMO Haber.

The $ is significantly underperforming the relative ToT shocks to US vs. other DM and at least some EM.

@rajakorman.bsky.social If Genscher was a boat...

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

Also relates to my uneducated sense re:AI that the Planned Capex/Desired Result ratio looks better for places thinking of AI as a physics problem than it does for places thinking of AI as a metaphysics problem.

What’s striking is these tech guys ricocheting across “seek the glory of a purpose above mere consumption,” “humans will be replaced by a superior purely rational being,” & “actually introspection was invented in Vienna around 1890.”

I’m so old I remember when the American right would probably have complained this was the dread “Continental Philosophy.”

The Forces of Scarcity Hitting Asia May Soon Spread Across the World

#GiftLink 1 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/w...

The coming global food crisis Hunger and even famine are foreseeable consequences of the war on Iran. Now the world must act to shield the poorest from effects that will continue long after the fighting stops

#GiftLink 2: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... The coming global food crisis

I should write a piece like the FT op-ed on why US & EU should put aside their differences to save the world except about China, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, India & Australia doing the same to save the world economy from serial waves of DC malice/incompetence in the Middle East.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/w.... Plus www.ft.com/content/3634... is a good paired set on the where the consequences will be felt.

The US and Europe are still stronger together Despite Trump and the war with Iran, Brussels’ interests remain deeply entwined with Washington’s

For fans of The Gilded Age, this feels like Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Fish trying to keep the Bertha Russell-backed Metropolitan Opera overtake The Academy of Music.

www.ft.com/content/e4c9...

Straits and Straits The Hormuz crisis has ancient precedents. They are not reassuring.

Dusted off the PhD for a Sunday essay. Ancient Athens depended on the Hellespont for grain the way the world now depends on Hormuz for oil. Athens never found an alternative. Nor, yet, have we.

(Shoutout to @brokenbanker.bsky.social who is presently in Athens.)

open.substack.com/pub/unstable...