sunset after 7PM and first batch of cucumber limeade of the year. hell yeah, we made it through the darkness

i generally agree with the concept of “spending credibility” (which the fed did in 2021 and early 2022). i dont think we see it in outflows though, i think it manifests in term premia and inflation compensation. so steeper in the back + higher break-evens in the front and flatter curve to L/T BEs

ping me later here or on the other place tomorrow any day this week for some more detail on this

🎶 it’s beginning to look a lot like springtime 🎶

i regularly scan LAPL collection for new academic monographs about wastewater. I absolutely live for this shit. Later this summer I’m taking my kid (5 by then) on her first tour of the Tillman reclamation plant and Japanese gardens in Van Nuys (Los Angeles) to show her what a miracle looks like.

so a couple of weeks ago we finished reading The Night Fairy (10/10 kids readaloud) featuring a hummingbird character. now, for a few days we’ve been seeing a hummingbird feeding on our big aloe (it flowers every year like clockwork) and then today i notice we can see the nest. z is going to freak!

oh and if your primary salt source is soy sauce either get one with a kelp extract (bonus umami!) or make sure you are eating seaweed or something made from it. IDK about the instant stuff but a single serving of homemade kombu dashi has about your daily minimum dose of iodine. it’s also delicious.

all to say, please make sure to eat your tamales and tortillas, buy the cheap iodized salt, and don’t be such a snob about enriched white bread. they are literally keeping you from having to learn where the word “cretin” comes from, and trust me that you do not want to learn that one the hard way.

and now the only things keeping us from backsliding 15 whole IQ points (yes, a whole stdev) are table salt in the pasta water and the fact that dairy is “contaminated” with iodine as a result of incomplete rinsing of iodine-based disinfectants in dairy production / equipment (i am not exaggerating)

100 years ago probably 80% of the US population was either iodine or niacin deficient. we know that primarily from the different rates of rejection from WW1 & WW2 enlistments. If you weren’t somewhere that had previously been mexico or with ready access to seafood, you would likely have one or both

food pseudoscience is generally infuriating because of the embedded classism in it, but every once in a while i remember that Americans as a whole have essentially abandoned iodized salt in favor of koshering salt because of a false notion of superiority borne from restaurant use and i lose my shit

yeah you had to see this

it’s unfair and its not optimal and it would be way better for everyone if we all did our part to use less of whatever is scarce, and maybe in Europe, China, and Japan it will work, but in the US there is simply not that level of civic-mindedness and that is an unfortunate truth we have to deal with

there will be minor economic hardship and lots of inconvenience for people in the United States (except farmers… they are probably kinda fucked unless Trump gives them money again) but in places where people cant pay more there will simply be a lot of people that have to go without. it really sucks

the unfortunate truth of the matter with oil and byproducts is that in the short run access will be rationed with price and in rich countries consumption wont really change and consumers will just eat the cost but in poor countries there will be demand destruction and possibly rationing.

this is not going to be a story of banks losing billions on what they thought were safe loans made against safe assets, its going to be a story of BDCs and funds taking losses and having to wind down and Private Equity insurers maybe needing capital infusions if they are too deep in these assets.

while private credit did a lot to move to riskier lending, the fact is the entire apparatus of post-2008 regulation all works to concentrate that credit risk in the BDCs or private credit funds that made the risky loans and borrowed money against them, and to insulate the entities financing them

i know its deeply unsatisfying, but you really can’t understand this stuff without looking at the terms in the CLOs or without more information on the terms of the loans. Right now, the entities who borrowed against the loans are in trouble not the ones that lent them money to buy more loans

i am so tired of discussions of risks of loans against private credit that neglect to mention the minimum and current levels of collateralization. in the case of CLOs there’s also the triggers (overcollateralization and interest coverage test) which can divert interest to extinguish senior tranches.

Starting a war with the people who control the trade lines that brings fertilizer right before spring is how you can tell no one in the WH knows what they're doing.

anyways. we’ll start knowing how bad it is in a couple of weeks and if the sources of those disruptions don’t get better by then, its going to get weird in all sorts of unexpected ways that take months to get back to normal. for the time being, its all bad news unfortunately. :(

essentially everything everywhere has some room for quantity variability and most things in most places have buffers for timing variability, but when buffers are exhausted and the disruptions move downstream effects start compounding and the slope of the economic effect starts getting way steeper

generally the rule with the global economy is that it can get through a really bad thing happening, many bad things happening in a lot of places, or a bad thing happening that lasts for a long time. its the combinations of those when the wheels really start coming undone

did you start DTF St Louis? its a lot better than you would expect it to be.

Deadly bird flu found in California elephant seals for the first time Researchers at UC Davis say news they've dreaded since 2023 has come to pass: California's elephant seals have been infected with H5N1 bird flu.

The H5N1 bird flu virus has been confirmed in northern elephant seals on the California coast. Just a few years ago, the virus decimated southern elephant seal populations in South America. @susrust.bsky.social www.latimes.com/science/stor...

the recent jerryrigged review was the first time that a car review video has made me lust after a car i have no business owning

2024 Volvo V60 Recharge First Test: A Civilized Sleeper Sledgehammer Powerful yet controlled, the V60 Recharge plug-in hybrid is a combination of personalities.

2024 volvo v60 recharge polestar PHEV for me www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024...

fwiw i actually think scrapping it all might be just as big of a mistake. hybrids and EVs will absolutely be winners and the loss of momentum was rate-driven. watch luxe auto (inc rivian) sales skyrocket as soon as cashout refi starts flowing again with the top half of mortgsge-borrower wage earners

none.. i’ve just been thinking about discworld and remembered the quote after seeing SOTU posts but i guess it works for all of those

no, frances ontiere, you failed to get the joke