[Today’s Iran war post yet again launched before complete. Please check back at 8:00 AM EDT or refresh your browser then for the finished product]
Things are deceptively quiet on the Iran front, but that is only in comparison to the hot phase. Despite regular, bogus reports for Axios that a deal is nigh, the talks not only look to be at an impasse but if anything are going into reverse gear, as Trump has escalated his demands. Israel is continuing its campaign in Southern Lebanon and Netanyahu just ordered fresh strikes on the Dahiyeh district of Beirut1 The US is continuing to attack and provoke Iran despite the pretense of a ceasefire and Iran has been retaliating quickly.
Trump’s conduct makes sense only as a manifestation of a mistaken belief that the US has leverage and can pressure Iran. And even though those in the reality-based community would regard that as nuts, Trump has more and more been acting in an insistently grandiose manner, that contradicting the lesson of King Canute, that he really can order the ocean about. And he’s gotten some reinforcement on that front with his great success in manipulating paper oil prices to be much lower than where real world prices are and set to go if the war remains at its present impasse.
Admittedly, as we’ll show below, Trump has chosen to live in a polluted information environment, having forced out anti-war experts, binge-watching Zionist-central Fox News, and spending way too much time with deluded hawks like Lindsey Graham and Laura Loomer.
But Trump also has a propensity to make wild punches as he stall for time in the hope that he can open up new options. But this conduct works against him. It only proves the Iranian hardliners right, that the only way they can reach a settlement with the US is if the US has to take concrete action before (or if possible, at the same time) as Iran take de-escalatory steps. But Trump has made that impossible with his continued ferocious demonization of Iran. It would already be politically extremely difficult for, say, the US to release $12 billion of frozen assets to Iran or remove its blockade as a condition of Iranian action. Trump’s very hard verbal line has lashed him to the mast of this war.
It may be that Trump still plans to renew the war for a brief but intense period even though, with summer heat widespread in the Gulf region, that would seem to rule out Special Forces operations. It’s hard to quick, surgical analogue to the Maduro kidnapping that would succeed as a mission, let alone do anything more than increase Iranian resolve. But contrary to that, even as of last week, the US was moving more refuelers into the theater. Recall that in Venezuela, commentators were almost frustrated with all the naval assets Trump kept parked nearby for so long. The US and Israel can still engage in another round of major bombing, not that that would change anything save risking Iran launching counterstrikes that would assure a global depression.
However, another set of bad outcomes is possible. Trump may refuse to either settle with Iran or exit. He could keep the blockade in place and launch occasional “See who is the man!” strikes.
Escalation expert Robert Pape has repeatedly described how in his classic escalation trap, the side that has gotten itself in a hole still has strong incentives to keep going up the escalation ladder. Taking a certain loss looks worse than gambling on a low-odds win. Pape further argues that either a settlement with Iran (with Iran unwilling to engage in any face-saving concessions) or walking away would cost Trump the backing of some of his base, which was deeply invested in his macho image….even before getting to what sort of revenge the Zionists might try to inflict.
But the only escalation step that Trump seems to have left is another bombing campaign in Iran (or perhaps more Israeli decapitation operations), which risks Iran obliterating the global economy by hitting Gulf State energy infrastructure. And that may be thwarted not just due to the cost to the US’ remaining weapons stockpiles but also at least some Gulf States denying the US use of their airspace.2
So what if he tries to stand pat, based on yet more bad advice from the boot-lickers around him, that the Iran economy is on the verge of collapse, and things are so bad that the public will soon rise up and overthrow the government? What if a standoff persists into July, when the US is predicted to go off the energy cliff and experience a big increase in gas and diesel prices, as well as start suffering shortages and/or big price hikes in petrochemical dependent products? And let us not forget that higher food prices are baked in, but the worst is not likely to set in until later 2026 and 2027? One can almost draft new Trump talking points as energy prices jump up in July, that the pain is worth it, that prices will plunge once the US prevails.
I still see too many signs of normalcy bias, of explicit assumptions that this staredown will have to end because most people refuse to consider not merely that a cataclysmic outcome is possible but would also engulf them.
We’ll turn briefly at the end to the AI bubble, since Trump trying to stand pat with Iran could accelerate its demise. AI spending already looks to be at risk due to users finding major shortfalls on performance v. promises, plus AI company attempts to impose pricing that would come close to reflecting service costs producing big cuts in use as the expenses are staggeringly high. That is before getting to how thes deteriorating fundamentals interact with higher capital costs and even scarcity. Most people forget that unlike every other big tech play in recent decades, AI is asset heavy. It requires ginormous capital outlays.
The Iran war will (at best!) produce stagflation. Fundraising for big projects becomes difficult.3 And in particular, the Gulf States had been major investors. Do you think AI will get anywhere near as much money from them when rebuilding their infrastructure is a competing, big ticket priority?
This tweet unintentionally reinforces our conclusion: that Trump will not settle or end the war, which means the Strait of Hormuz being throttled will continue even after the US goes over the energy cliff:
🚨 The Geopolitics of the Middle East: The Hidden Symbols of the “Deferred Battle”
Anyone following the developments in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will find that the situation has reached a complex stage; the picture currently appears foggy and unclear.
To clarify the picture… pic.twitter.com/BQiyIl8BTl— 🇸🇦Abdulsalam Saleh (@abdulslam2017) May 31, 2026
The key section is at the end:
Conclusion: Where is the situation heading?
The situation is heading toward a political settlement, but not one imposed by Trump, rather one crafted by the countries of the region: peace that is not traded for normalization, security that is not imported from Washington, and a future that is not written in American war rooms. The war in Tehran is over, but the real confrontation continues in the waterways. And water, as everyone knows, cannot be controlled by Washington alone.
If this assessment proves to be accurate, it means a resolution will be far away. Multilateral agreements are very hard to consummate and often fail.
Keep in mind that too many observers assume more rationality and capability in the White House when it does not exist:
Even before getting to Trump’s cognitive impairment, he is massively out of his depth and his ego prevents him from finding and relying on sound advisers:
Trump now finds himself in an entirely new situation with the War in Iran.
He doesn't hold the cards. He has no notable leverage. And he can't simply declare bankruptcy for the seventh time and move on.
And it shows.
Donald Trump is not a statesman. He is not a diplomat. And I…
— Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) May 31, 2026
And Trump’s lack of self control and tendency to surround himself war-mongering manipulators has only gotten worse:
Barnes: I’ll give an example that’s outside of this whole context. He gave a speech where he Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis talked about this. He gave a speech where he talked about meeting Mr. Toyota. And then he met Mr. Toyota and then Mr.
Toyota was going to make this huge investment in the US. Well, Mr. Toyota been dead for years.And that you know, there was a possibility of the Toyota company making investment, but they hadn’t even agreed to. But you can tell with the way he related he really believed it happened.
It’s that and that kind of thing happens daily in the White House. And they just try to keep limits on Trump doing it in front of everybody. The and so it’s not be it’s because it’s not cognitive, you don’t see it the way you saw it with Joe Biden…..
Barnes: Joe Kent of course left in protest cuz and the reason why he Kent left in protest was because he was being excluded. And this was on Trump. Trump would decide like every single night he told a friend of mine right at the at the White House over lunch That he he talks to Sean Hannity every single night. He talks to Laura Loomer quite frequently.
Nawfal: That is wild. He talks to Laura Loomer? He talks to Laura Loomer regularly.
Barnes: The There’s other rumors I won’t get into, but let’s just say if you want to be good friends with Melania, don’t hang out with Laura Loomer. The So, you know, the and he talks to Lindsey Graham on a regular basis. I mean, a guy he made fun of for years, for decades, especially on foreign policy.
Nawfal: But why why why is he talking to those people? That one I don’t understand. But does that have to do with behavioral… What is it? Not cognitive behavior, early stage behavioral dementia. That has nothing to do with dementia. Dementia, you don’t just pick the wrong people to speak to.
Barnes: They tell him what he wants to hear.
That’s the dynamic. So, in other words, it plays like think of like a 2-year-old’s ego. I have my 2-year-old grandson. I was watching him run around and realized how much he behaves kind of like Trump does currently. And And not only in the filter, but in sort of I want my ego satisfied right now. So, tell me how great I am. Tell me how smart this is. Tell me how brilliant this is. Tell me how genius this is. I mean, there was a week in the White House where he excluded Vance because he was mad that Vance was right about everything that was going wrong in Iran.
Now, since then, he’s brought Vance back in cuz he understands Vance is one of a few people that can get him out of this.
But then he rug pulls Vance repeatedly….He gets mad if you share any information he doesn’t want to hear. And that’s why the second opinions he’s getting are exclusively promoting further entanglement in the war. They gave him fake intel. Now, Hegs=death is the I have to give Max Blumenthal credit for coming up with that nickname for him.
He’s the only He was feeding false information that was so bad. That’s why underlings of the Pentagon started leaking to the press….it got so bad that Trump wasn’t listening…
Nawfal: I’ve heard that many times before. The best way to get to the president is to come on the Fox News at the right time.
That’s the best way to get his ear.Barnes: Yep. Or get your story in the front page of the New York He obsessively reads the New York Times to this day. No matter how many He’ll get mad and he’ll get agitated, but every morning he starts his morning with the New York Times.
Now to the updates proper. This tweet illustrates the point Robert Pape has been making, of the importance to Trump’s base of continued attempts to defend his manhood:
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump is now making MORE AMERICA FIRST DEMANDS in the Iran deal, "holding the line" against the mullahs
The Fake News AGAIN lied that he's "caving"
47 is holding out strong!
"Trump is demanding several amendments to the proposed agreement during a… pic.twitter.com/4KLDmV4ZWq
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 31, 2026
Nevertheless:
Holy crap. There’s no deal if he’s saying this.Good grief. https://t.co/Y76OoeL9rQ
— Brandon Weichert (@WeTheBrandon) May 31, 2026
The opening section of this Janta Ka segment gives a good high level view of Team Trump misrepresentations about progress:
It is not hard to find other denials from Iran ceding ground to Trump, such as one from PressTV. Iran is sticking to its guns on sequencing, as in no discussion of nuclear issues in the first phase, making Trump bluster about enriched uranium moot. From Iran nuclear issue off table; talks with US focus on ending war: Lawmaker
An Iranian lawmaker says ongoing talks with the United States are focused on ending the war and preventing a renewed aggression, adding that Iran’s nuclear issue is no longer part of the negotiations.
Esmail Kowsari, a member of Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, told Russia Today that the nuclear issue has been removed from the agenda of discussions with the US.
He said discussions are currently focused on preventing the recurrence of a war, securing compensation, ensuring the withdrawal of American forces from the region, and lifting the US naval blockade on Iranian ports and ships.
He, however, expressed skepticism about the prospects for a final agreement, adding that negotiations are continuing between Tehran and Washington but have yet to produce tangible results….
“We must make sure the other side fulfills its commitments before moving to the next stage, because we do not trust the United States,” the Iranian lawmaker emphasized….
He cited the US-Israeli dictates as among the main reasons behind the failure to reach an agreement with Iran.
Kowsari also reiterated that Iran would maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz, adding that many countries have accepted Tehran’s authority over the strategic waterway.
Iran is also refusing to give ground to the US on its Gulf of Hormuz demands, creating another basic outtrade. From Bloomberg in US Says Deals With Iran for Safe Hormuz Transit Are Prohibited :
- The US said deals with Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz are not allowed, even if no payment is made.
- The US Treasury warned that US persons are prohibited from receiving services from the Government of Iran, including services related to a guarantee of safe passage.
- The US Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which Iran created to collect tolls, pursuant to counterterrorism authorities, and warned of sanctions risks for having dealings with it.
Not surprisingly, Iran is not impressed. From Aljazeera’s live feed:
Only Iran, Oman have right to ‘exercise sovereignty’ over Hormuz: Iran’s deputy foreign minister
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi says Iran and Oman are the only two countries that have a right to “exercise sovereignty” in the Strait of Hormuz.
In comments carried by Iran’s IRIB broadcaster, Gharibabadi said Iran has implemented a new process for “controlling traffic and navigation” in the waterway but arrangements are coordinated with Oman.
He said Iran has urged Oman to “not give in to” threats from the US after Trump threatened to “blow up” the country if it does not “behave just like everybody else” with respect to the strait.
And from the live feed in the last half hour:
IRGC claims 15 ships passed Hormuz with its permission in past 24 hours
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy has said that a total of 15 ships, including four oil tankers, have passed the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.
In a statement shared by Iran’s Fars news agency, the navy claimed the ships transited after receiving permission and coordinating with it.
The organisation warned that it would view any form of cooperation by vessels with “hostile forces” as an “immenent security threat” to be “dealt with accordingly”.
So how many, if any, will the US try to get return or seize?
On the kinetic front, the temperature if anything is increasing, even before getting to the Israel escalation in Lebanon.4 From AlJazeera’s live feed:
- The US military says it attacked Iranian radar and drone sites in the city of Goruk and the island of Qeshm over the weekend.
- Kuwait reports “hostile” missile and drone attacks, as Iran’s IRGC says it launched a retaliatory strike on a base it claims was used for an attack on its Sirik Island.
US and Iran now openly trading strikes mid-“ceasefire.” CENTCOM confirmed “self-defense strikes” on Iranian radar/drone command sites at Goruk and Qeshm over the weekend, plus a Sirik (Bandar Sirik) telecom tower; IRGC says it then hit the airbase the attack launched from….
Iran ballistic missile hits a US base in Kuwait. Reported direct hit near Ali Al Salem; Kuwait’s army confirms intercepting missiles and drones, flights diverted from Kuwait International. 4 US service members + 3 contractors injured.
Like NO1, Larry Johnson sees the “ceasefire” a more and more a fiction. From Iran and the US Teetering on the Edge of a Renewed Hot War:
The US continues to try to provoke Iran into breaking the ceasefire. On Sunday, the US Central Command said its forces shot down Iranian drones around the Strait of Hormuz and struck an area along Iran’s coast overnight. The strike targeted a site near Bandar Abbas Airport.
Iran strongly condemned the US attack on Bandar Abbas Airport, calling it a violation of international law and sovereignty. Iran’s response was swift and multi-pronged. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it responded to the US attack on Bandar Abbas by targeting “the American base from which that attack originated.” Kuwait intercepted drones that morning, indicating Iran’s retaliatory strike was directed at U.S. positions there….
Subsequently, the IRGC claimed responsibility for an attack against a US air base in Kuwait. Explosions were heard to the northwest of Kuwait City. Reports also indicated an Iranian ballistic missile was fired from Khuzestan province just before air raid sirens went off in Kuwait. The Revolutionary Guard also fired at an American commercial vessel attempting to transit the strait on that day and forced it to turn around. Iranian television, quoting a military official, stated that four ships had attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz without coordinating with Iranian security forces
Notwithstanding this activity, the US military’s command operations running various Crisis Action Teams reportedly took the weekend off and were on stand-by fore being recalled. What we have right now is a simmering crisis accompanied by credible missile retaliation by Iran that is likely to escalate dramatically If Israel continues its renewed offensive against the people of Lebanon. I remain highly skeptical that Trump will make the necessary concessions to reach a deal with Iran.
On the economic front, starting with some key AI tidbits. Ed Zitron is great but his posts are also dense because he goes to great lengths to document his claims. This recap is easier to digest and sets forth his key arguments, colorfully I might add:
It is also wild to see how big company after big company mandated widespread AI use based on blind faith. And they had no idea how ot measure results.
A must-watch. The Starbucks inventory fail is priceless:
See also:
🦔An unnamed company just got a $500 million Claude bill for a single month. Half a billion dollars in 30 days because nobody turned on the spending caps. Anthropic's enterprise console has usage limits, dashboards, per-user controls. The company just didn't configure any of them… pic.twitter.com/sJzT8GXB6u
— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) May 29, 2026
A person deleted 3 months of AI generated code because he could not understand it.
He could not explain why it was written that way. pic.twitter.com/SbDOIyyn6E
— Wise (@trikcode) May 31, 2026
The youngsters really distrust and disdain AI. Had dinner with a friend and their 19yo son. He's studying CS, wants to go into game dev. Absolutely hates AI and rejected any suggestion I use it for some simple things in his life. Reports that his friends generally feel the same…
— Ramez Naam (@ramez) May 31, 2026
A seminal article from TruthDig, $9 Trillion Collapse Machine, focuses on AI’s insatiable capital needs and the critical role the Gulf family monarchies played in feeding it:
AI companies are straining to expand beyond their capacities in three key areas: industrial supply chains, grid electricity capacity and global capital markets…If energy and mineral supplies cannot be guaranteed, if capital is no longer liquid and if long-term commitments cannot be met, then that world rapidly unravels….
Even as AI CEOs continue projecting otherworldly confidence in near-term “10x” growth, the cracks in their world-bending visions are beginning to show….; a failure of AI will be less like a burst than a systemic collapse….
The immediate impact of the Iran war is not simply in fossil energy, but also on a huge range of fossil fuel byproducts on which AI and many other industries depend…
Helium is only one threatened input…
Further up the supply chain, Indonesia, one of the world’s largest mineral exporters, is cutting back mining of copper, nickel and silver, all essential for AI microchips and infrastructure….
While AI superficially appears like another digital platform industry…it is really more like a heavy industry… With AI, there are no economies of scale….
But the costs of using AI continue to soar, despite AI companies spending $720 billion in 2026 alone. As a result, the AI data center build-out has slowed to a crawl. The research group Data Center Watch reports 48 data center projects were blocked in 2025. Another research group, Sightline Climate, estimates that of 16 gigawatts of data centers planned for 2026, only 5 gigawatts are actually under construction. Much of this gap is likely due to power bottlenecks.
As a result of the slowdown, AI companies don’t have enough capacity to serve their AI models….
Their losses are going up faster than revenues. Much faster. Open AI is hemorrhaging more money than any company in history. Early last year it forecast a “burn rate” of $35 billion until 2030. Since then, it’s adjusted that forecast twice, and now the burn rate is up to $228 billion. OpenAI will lose $85 billion in 2029 alone — the biggest ever corporate loss in a year — before (it predicts) miraculously turning a profit of $45 billion in 2030.
Despite raising billions in funding rounds, the financial doom loop appears intractable…..
…the sector has become by far the largest issuer of debt on global finance markets. The amounts are in the trillions…
The swirling mass of interconnected multibillion-dollar deals, often called AI’s “circular economy,” links all AI companies together in one inextricably entangled speculative frenzy….; if one goes down, they all go down…
The enormously wealthy sovereign wealth funds of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been huge investors in OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI…
But these countries — now with broken supply chains, severely damaged infrastructure and their image as tax-free havens of stability now in ruins — are facing their own existential challenges… Research group Epoch AI recently rated Gulf states’ withholding of capital investment a “high risk” for the AI boom….
The loss of Gulf states’ capital risk IPO plans by SpaceX, now merged with xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic. All these companies urgently need to go public, as it’s the only place they have left to raise the vast amounts of capital they need…
And if one of these company’s IPO fails, it will have a cascading impact through the tech sector. Considering the wider economy’s exposure to tech — whose seven biggest firms account for 30% of the stock market — this is unlikely to be shrugged off like the dot-com bubble.
On that cheery note, we will stop for today. See you tomorrow!
_____
1
בעקבות ההפרות החוזרות ונשנות של הפסקת האש בלבנון על ידי ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה והמתקפות נגד ערינו ואזרחינו, הוריתי לצה״ל יחד עם שר הביטחון ישראל כ"ץ לתקוף מטרות טרור ברובע הדאחייה בביירות
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 1, 2026
2 It is over my pay grade, but Larry Wilkerson has said that mere protests, which the Saudis and others have already lodged, might not be sufficient to stop the US from overflights during an Iran attack. He indicated much firmer threats needed to be made. Mind you, that has likely occurred with the Saudis given their vulnerability to having the Houthis interfere with shipments through the Bab el-Mandib strait. But this is an open question.
3 I saw this first hand at Goldman at the tail end of the 1970-early 1980s stagflation.
4 Not that Hezbollah is taking things lying down:
🚨 BREAKING:
A major missile barrage has reportedly struck multiple areas across “Israeli” settlements, with dozens of “Al-Asif Al-Ma’kool” rockets fired in response to the bombardment of Beirut. pic.twitter.com/VS3rWFwwmU
— IRGC NEWS (@IRGC_IRAN_News) June 1, 2026
Having sort of following Trump, as a New Torker, from the 80s forward, I did a lot of work with his initial CEO of the Trump airline, and have a close friend who was at Wilkie Farr when they were representing Trump in his legal entanglements in the late 80s / early 90s, I can say the following with confidence:
Donald Trump doesn’t have a strategic molecule anywhere in his body. So, commentators saying there is some grand plan or objectives completely miss the boat. There isn’t one. He only cares about himself, is uninformed, has no logic or framework for decision making, other than what strokes his ego in the moment. Therefore I take any of the commentary with huge grans of salt.
I also suggest that in negotiations it is more worthwhile to view him from the perspective of holding massive piles of distressed debt with a bank and bondholders on the other side. In this case, the threat of burning things to the ground is very real and can work — as it did for him and his casinos. Its a game of chicken, and he has learned to never blink.
But that is false. Trump has lost more than once:
He sold the Plaza in 1995 after insisting he never would. See Bloomberg in That Time Trump Sold the Plaza Hotel at an $83 Million Loss
Versus
So you are propagating a myth that Trump has tried to create.
Maybe I didn’t write clearly, and not looking to start a debate. I didn’t say he didn’t lose, he did regularly. What I was trying to say is he operates without a plan, other than appearing to show strength, success and bravado.
In the case of the airline, he didn’t know what he was buying, had no plan going in, other than interior redesign with Ivanka, nor an understanding of what operating an airline involved. He bought a bunch of aging out 727s that were in dire need of maintenance, and when the CEO he hired tried to explain this to him he would either yell at him (he yells at everyone) or point out how great they were doing as his name was on the planes. Yet, it lasted three years before it failed.
I agree with no plan 100%.
Then he bullies to try to make his bad ideas work.
I have read but cannot quickly track down that Trump would have done better financially if he had simply invested his inheritance in a standard 60/40 index mix than all his business machinations. Of course, that assume that the point of Trump is to make money as opposed to get lots of attention.
See also, from John Cassidy in the New Yorker:
https://archive.is/MOSBZ#selection-999.0-1065.588
I can vouch for Mikew0’s analysis that Trump goes into negotiations with no strategy whatsoever.. For 15 years I was chief investment strategist for a family of distress investment hedge funds. A few years before I arrived, the main fund bought a good deal of severely discounted debt in Trump’s Jersey casino. The head of the fund and a bunch of other heavyweight distress investors went to a meeting at Trump tower to discuss the future. The president of the Trump organization came in to the room and said something like, “If you don’t accept our terms, we’re going to declare bankruptcy!” The bankruptcy pros looked at each other and then said, “Great, then we own the company.” The president looked no-plussed and left the room. When he came back (clearly after conferring again with Trump) he said, “If you don’t accept our terms, we’re going to keep paying the coupon!” Again, the pros nearly laughed, and said, “Great, then our debt is money good — and by the way, we don’t accept your terms.”
ZOMG. This is way worse than I imagined, and I consider myself to be at least a bit imaginative.
Trump as the president of the US makes sense when you consider that the US is a fraud and a bully.
Late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah agrees and puts it best:
“We should thank Trump for revealing yet again the true face of U.S administration–a racist, criminal, murderous, bloodthirsty entity, that confiscates freedoms, plunders wealth, and conspires against oppressed peoples. We should thank him because from the beginning when he came, he exposed the true nature of the American administration for all the nations who may have started to wander, become mislead and confused about what it stands for.”
I’m not sure that’s fair. I prefer to think the US as like some young, innocent and self-deluded debutante who meant well but fell for the glamour of a mendacious, predatory con man, and is paying the price in a ruin of fleeced wealth and lost reputation.
Really? The US empire that began (at the very latest) with the Spanish American War is anything but young or innocent. I’ll grant you self-deluded, though.
In 1990 Trump was so negative in his real estate that banks did an extend and pretend loan package and put him on a monthly allowance.
https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2020/07/trump-files-donald-gets-allowance/
From a “shareholder value” perspective, one could suggest the banks should have foreclosed on Trump, grabbed the real estate for their portfolios rather than set up a deal where Trump gained the upside if the underlying real estate recovered.
The banks were still on the hook if Trump defaulted so they maintained downside risk by their deal.
But they avoided any embarrassing short term write downs in foreclosure via the extend and pretend.
Where are the “shareholder value” police when they are needed?
little over 2 months into conflict and the economic wreckage is piling up, but 2 1/2 years as detailed by Joe Kent vis-a-vie Dubowitz will devastate. Hard to believe the insanity, what will be destroyed? what will change beyond recognition? There’s gotta be a breaking point(s) where it de-escalates, all the face-saving aside. Will the July energy crunch, smash, wreck be a turning point, we gotta hope so, it’s stupid enough already. Cassandra having a heart attack about now.
The nation could be dotted with Trumpvilles but Trump himself will disregard such sights but will only pass laws to have them bulldozed – and just enough Democrats will cross the aisle to pass those laws. There is no way that the US, much less the world, can withstand this through to 2029 and something is gunna break
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville
Given how out of touch Der Donald and his sycophants are, my money is on them “breaking” the World first.
As long as Trump and his circle manage to live large, everything else is inconsequential to them.
Stay safe. Prep like your life depended on it.
The thought has crossed my mind lately : Trump is applying The Discombobulator® to the world’s economy, and really to the world at large.
Maybe it was a legend in the case of Venezuela, it certainly isn’t in this case!
Both sides seem to think that stretching it out is to their advantage. Someone must be wrong. End point for the US for oil and product storage seems about mid September but people will be screaming before then. In Australia by the May 29th analysis at crudeoilpeak.info we need to reduce diesel usage by 10% under present conditions.
They wont be able to get Israel back out of Lebanon if they get established there this time like before because the US support for Israeli actions there is set in stone now looking at recent legislative actions. Iran is in a dilemma about this but the US has an even bigger dilemma about keeping a presence in the Gulf area at all.
No, your September estimate is totally wrong. Do not present inaccurate personal opinion when we have repeatedly provided expert input on this topic. You make false statements regularly and never provide links. I am tired of having to clean up your messes. I will not allow any comments like this through in the future. I do not have the time to waste on you, particularly since I have chewed you out before for precisely this sort of behavior.
Industry insiders, including the CEOs of Exxon and Chevron, are sounded red alarms for inventory levels within WEEKS. They allow for the need for minimum operating operating levels, such as fuel in pipelines. You cannot draw down beyond that level.
The experts estimate that the US hits that wall somewhere between July 4 and end of July. Gas and diesel prices will jump then (perhaps sooner if some try to stockpile diesel). The estimate is that the price of oil will rise to somewhere between $150 and $200 a barrel.
Now it could take longer if users cut their consumption…..but the lack of additional inventories is a hard limit.
I’m guessing that Trump and his coterie of confidence fairies would not impose fuel rationing before the 2026 midterm elections for pretty obvious political reasons. Perhaps price controls on fuel up till those elections with a hard reset in December? That of course assumes someone rational with the power to effect government policy in Washington. Not a good bet at present. I wonder if Polymarket has a betting line on that?
Stay safe in Farangville.
I remember gas rationing in 1973/1974 but then the station attendant pumped the gas.
How would that work today with all gas stations self-serve? Could they just program the pumps to only pump so much at a time? What would that take on the company end?
Just curious.
Programming the pumps for specific dollar amounts is common in that you can pay at the till for a dollar amount which is then set for you to pump. I wonder about the potential for abuse though as I would think bribing the minimum wage employee would be an option.
Observing my fellow Lemmings, I don’t ascribe to the demand destruction trope. My bet: folks eat less and adjust to ANYTHING but relenting on fuel for transpo. I am spitballing here, with no objective basis for my assertion.
We woke up to no power this AM. Headlamp, nat gas stove top lit by matches, no piezo power ignition. Hand ground our coffee beans.
We are so unprepared, precarious, and on the wax to f*cked.
I steadfastly remain,
Mr. Happy
I note that AAA shows gas prices down a dime from last week.
I need to stop coming by NC – y’all keep wrecking my carefully treasured false sense of complacency!!!!
It just doesn’t feel like things are going to fall-down-go-boom around some time in July. Emphasis on “feel,” obviously, because I believe firmly in the accuracy of the reporting and analysis here. But it is just so haaaaard, man, to resist the Confidence Fairy’s cute little smile as she whangs me upside the head with her wand!!!!
How does that saying go? “Things will continue until they can’t?”
Anyway, my appreciation, as always, for NC and the work Yves and her cohorts put in to make this place worth being my first stop of the day. Even if it does seriously harsh my mellow…
Did you see the crisis coming in August 2008?
You don’t see what is coming because Trump and his many allies in FinanceWorld and the media are working hard to keep the Confidence Fairy happy and the general public in a stupor.
A crude analogy from the crisis era to what is happening now:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/debunking-the-big-short-how-michael-lewis-turned-the-real-villains-of-the-crisis-into-heros.html
You don’t see what is coming because Trump and his many allies in FinanceWorld and the media are working hard to keep the Confidence Fairy happy and the general public in a stupor.
Yup! Which is why I make sure to swing by here to get better information from people who actually are good at looking behind the curtain! Folks who view Confidence Fairies as just another form of skeet. NC is a hotbed of Fairy Swatters and I enjoy immensely watching them drag reality kicking and screaming into the sunshine for me.
But I still miss the blinkered complacency now and again… ;-)
Thanks again to you and all the NC folks!
I did not see the 2008 crisis coming….
but I sure as shit knew what Obama was going to do about it the minute he was declared the winner in November.
Honestly, I think McCain would have been slightly better in his response.
The same thing they’re going to do for the AI crash, I ask innocently?
I don’t know why you would say that unless you didn’t live through the S&L crisis. McCain was a big pal of Charles Keating and was investigated for illegally interfering in the investigation. Part of the chums infamously known as the Keating 5.
All done! Please refresh this page and re-skim if you arrived before the time of this post.
The youngsters distrust of AI. Maybe there is hope for the tiktokers after all or should it be understood in pure class-terms? Those who have the means to use something else and those don‘t have a choice?
AI anecdata:
My son is SW engineer, long experience. Early on with AI he said “GPU “matching” is stochastic not deterministic” nowhere near the accuracy for needed business decision (much less targeting girl’s schools). Lately, he informed me he thinks AI is showing 15% error rate in inference. Unusable!
Recently, he used an AI for a SW project. He tried to correct it as it made errors, it refused his intervention, he had to shut it off and do the job the old way! He did not answer when I asked how can you ask AI what the “family blog sensitive term” it was thinking when someone reviews its code. He did not have an answer.
Son’s friend from grad school is managing chip production. Months ago he said data center projects are flailing and nowhere near the Giga Watt objectives being advertised! Zitron agrees.
Everything Huang, Altman, etc say about AI are “promises” that are not in a schedule anywhere.
There are no economies of scale in data centers, more compute more expensive, inefficient chips, and power sinked.
Add that to lack of performance/ effectiveness and you have a system that only the pentagon would buy!
What does a financial crisis flying formation with an energy crisis look like?
This calls for another episode of “Turbo Encabulator to the Rescue!”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag
Musk will use that to get the SpaceX (explaining the 1.8T valuation) IPO off the ground!
Thank you!!!
That’s quite old ambrit. Now is time for The AI powered SANS ICS HyperEncabulator. Hyperscalers love it.
Tx!
For years, I’ve worked with software which offered automated “procedural” solutions to tasks which we used to do only by hand. The manual (by hand) method was tedious, but could be done in a linear fashion from point A to point B and you’d be done with the task once and for all.
The procedural methods offered by the same software were “black boxes” where you input a handful of initial settings and kick off a long computer render to see if it could give the same result as the manual approach.
The procedural approach usually gave a barely-passable result which could sometimes be band-aided into service. If the client changed any little thing upstream, the whole task would need to go through again since the band-aids wouldn’t work anymore. Sometimes it gave laughably bad initial results & very, very occasionally gave a perfect result. Those times where you got a perfect result were so rare that we’d remark upon them to co-workers and show them off as extraordinary. (The joke around the office being that you’d owe the office a round of drinks as if you hit a hole-in-one in a golf round).
Nonetheless, some workers were known for expending hours and hours, sometimes days using the procedural method to get a result barely up to the level of a manual result which could be done in, say, three hours. The short-term benefit to them being that since the computer was doing these long renders, the worker had no further input except to wait: get coffee, run an errand or chat in the kitchen. We all took bets on how long their ruse would hold up under time-card vs results scrutiny from mgmnt.
AI seems to be this very same thing.
Foreseen years ago!
Meanwhile, our hero Elon is planning the biggest equity offering of all time packaging the genius xAI with his rocket ships and other assorted mediocrities. Could be the biggest blivit* in history.
BLIVIT def.: you and your friends deposit dog doop in a paper bag, put it on the porch of a particularly hated neighbor, light the bag on fire, ring the guys doorbell and run like hell.
Makes me wonder whether friend Trump is a bit like some kind of AI. Lacking much if any capacity for original thought, makes a random (but worse than 15% successful) grab at some idea that’s out there and no-one can work out what’s going on (see comments about human illegible code later). Sucks in other people’s money.
I think it has become received conventional wisdom (RCW) that AI doesn’t mean efficient leveraging of my skills and experience. It means “I don’t care enough to try (and maybe fail) at this task”.
I always kind of expected this to eventually become a large problem for the marketers. Selling something that is even barely successful as an AI solution would probably have to be kept a closely guarded secret by the client. So much for customer testimonials. And that’s for something you deemed “successful”. The list of failed attempts to make money with this stuff just keeps getting longer.
AI as a brand is associated with the schlocky and inept, not elegance and sophistication. There is no accounting for taste. And you probably can’t pay off Billion dollar loans with your simulation of it. Maybe.
AI could be good for hobbyists to create fake art, catchy tunes, do minor programming tasks, write summaries of simple data sets, etc. Much like PCs in the late ’70s and early ’80s were a cute hobbyist thing to play around with and provide one with pseudo-tech credentials. The difference is cost. PCs were a hobby that you could afford as an individual if you weren’t poor. AI we can’t afford as a nation, especially when it’s being promoted as something it’s not, solely to maintain a stock market Ponzi scheme. AI will be carefully adopted for the things it might be good at by countries like China, where the state is in control and its use will be limited to practical concerns that might benefit the people overall. In the US it will only be used to bankrupt the people and let the initial investors sell out for big money just before everything collapses.
It will be used in the US for observation, tracking, control and targeting of the masses.
We will all be Palestinians.
Someone’s 3rd eye is WIDE open!
It could very easily be that the Iran war will bring about the implosion of the AI bubble due to the induced shortages of materials like helium, sulpher, copper, etc. used in the manufacture of equipment. And good riddance I say. Having said that, I think that a consequence of this happening is that AI spruikers like Sam Altman will claim that the implosion of AI was not their fault but was solely due to outside influences. But that next time, things will be different!
So, how would this disqualify them from an AIG back-door bailout?
Trump doesn’t know whether to shit or get off the pot, which explains why he is wearing diapers.
My metaphor, based on the remarks that DJT is in a completely unfamiliar situation (no cards, adversaries inflexible, etc) with no palatable options is that rather than playing multidimensional chess, or even checkers, he’s “playing” zero-dimensional “square peg in round hole.” All he can think of doing is continuing to pound on the peg.
He multi-tasks! Just lookit his stage/ podium two-step double-hand-job dance!
A figurative promise to his Epstein-class handlers?
Saying Trump is playing “Pocket Pool” would be more accurate.
Hormuz as prologue, Anslem Research, as if this is a version of new normal, good gawd! “Look at the map through this lens and the watchlist arranges itself. The Bab al-Mandeb is already live. The Turkish Straits run under a convention that already makes a transit regime lawful and codified, the precise precedent a future administrator would reach for to dress itself in legitimacy. The Malacca Strait, through which the energy of the world’s second-largest economy must pass, where that economy has every reason to study both the vulnerability and the tool. The Panama Canal under shifting commercial influence. The Arctic routes a warming world is opening, which a confident power increasingly treats as its own water. And beneath all of them the subsea cable corridors through which the world’s data does not metaphorically but physically flow. Every one is a chokepoint. Every one has a clearing stack. Every one is now, after this spring, a place where a state has been shown how to convert geographic control into data, revenue, and leverage without firing the shot the old order was built to deter. We abolished the last great toll on a strait more than a century and a half ago and spent the years since assuming the age of paying a sovereign for passage was safely behind us. The specific Hormuz toll may still be negotiated away. The template is not reversible by any single actor, and the watchlist is longer than the consensus has allowed itself to believe.
The arithmetic of the old order was simple, and it is now incomplete. One navy, one guarantee, freedom of navigation as a public good underwritten by the strongest fleet afloat. The arithmetic of the new order is merciless in a colder way. Many gates, many sovereigns, no single key, and a clearing process that grinds at the speed of its most reluctant layer while the cargo the whole world runs on waits at anchor. Washington set an ocean of money against that arithmetic, and the arithmetic did not yield, because you cannot buy a yes from a stack that demands a dozen of them and holds at least two that money will never reach.
The market prices the signature. Ships clear through the slowest gate. Learn to price that lag, learn to name the binding gate, and learn the word for the regime that produced it, because you will need all three again, at the next chokepoint, sooner than the consensus has allowed itself to believe.”
See “Road Tolls” in Wikipedia for example. We are returning to medieval times.
Do you mean like the Pennsylvania Turnpike? Which – last time I was there a few years back – still was not set up to take plastic.
Not like Pennsylvania: Iran is wa-ayyy more modern and civilized.
Now is the era of the Walder Freys …
Not only is AI asset heavy, those assets depreciate rapidly (2-3 years, realistically) and the buildings are single purpose , designed around a particular chip.
Repurposing them is not feasible except as stables for white elephants.
Territorial waters used to be 3 miles. Then cannons were improved and it was changed to 12 miles. Now, in the age of missiles (and demonstrated by the middling power of Iran), shore based assets dominate out to hundreds of kilometres. Given this new reality, does it make sense to transform EEZ’s into territorial waters?
‘🇸🇦Abdulsalam Saleh
@abdulslam2017
🚨 The Geopolitics of the Middle East: The Hidden Symbols of the “Deferred Battle”’
Where he says that one of the three main aims was ‘imposing normalization with Israel as a condition for peace’ I think that I may have to disagree. In the past three months there has been little talk of the Abraham Accords which is surprising since Trump is a bit of a motor-mouth. When he sprung that idea on the Gulf State countries, it was met with silence to the point that Trump asked them if they were still there on that call. And that meant that they were not expecting this idea at all. Trump was trying to force this on the Gulf States as if he was the winner in the Iran war and not the loser. I think that this was a new idea – suggested by Bibi – and not one dating back months or we would have learnt about it from a very leaky White House.
Look at it in a different way. Since the attacks, from the very beginning, required the participation of US bases in those monarchies/emirates… countries, it is possible to say that de facto normalization was an objective from the very beginning, and all these states participating in such a way was a first step in such normalization. On this I think I agree with Saleh. It doesn’t matter if the Abraham Accords have been explicitly mentioned some time later.
Heckuva ceasefire, Brownie department:
Iran launched a new attack on Kuwait overnight:
https://x.com/RudawEnglish/status/2061332540368048248
(Source is somewhat sketchy, but it’s been picked up by the blog that thou shalt not speak of)
Then the US retaliated for the downing of another drone by bombing radar sites. This is all illegal under the War Powers Act, of course. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a.k.a. “Milk Carton” Mike, may have a problem, though, as the Dems forced a vote on the War Powers act right before recess, and now the House has to come back into session.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/congress-barrels-toward-deadline-pile-up-as-gop-divisions-threaten-trump-agenda/ar-AA24yhuT
I don’t want to go into details but to explain what happens in the world today you need psychologist first most.
I was born in the 80’s and all I know is liberalism, neoliberalism, and the focus on the individual. Everything was about “I”, your personal success, not the collective. This has lead us to nihilism and narcissism. Narcist have many needed qualities to rise to the top. What you describe as acting like a 2 year old or banning Vance is typical narcistic behavior. We also see this in the EU with Ursula, or the UK with Starmer. Just ask the people in parliament, Ursula also build walls around her, she attacks everyone who doesn’t agree or point out to REALITY. The attack on free internet is a spur of it so you censor reality.
Narcists rather destroy the world before admitting being wrong, we’re heading that direction with Ukraine and now Iran. The west is no longer a democracy, the separation of powers was to prevent narcists destroying everything. Maybe I suffer from paranoia, no need to panic, everything is normal, it are truly decent people acting in the best interests of us all. I can’t possible be right and everyone else wrong not seeing the danger. Free Hat! Someone give that man a baby.
Ramon, I recommend four essays on the subject penned by Gaius Balter, beginning with:
EMPATHY AND THE FALSIFICATION OF NARCISSISM
And ending with:
THE NARCISSISTIC WESTERN ELITES: AN OPERATIONS MANUAL
After reading these, you will find that you are in good company, and that many of us here grew up seeing the same devastation that unchecked narcissism has wrought– current global predicaments notwithstanding.
Psychology can provide a useful lens to help understand behaviors and the motivations behind these, but it’s not an end-all in itself.
The USA is holding a 9 high busted straight flush and is attempting to bluff because the amount of money in the pot is so immense, but this isn’t a poker game.
Worse than that, we spent the first few rounds of betting thinking we HAD the straight-flush. Now, here we are on the last round, the opponent has pushed all most chips in, and we realize that our hand is busted, and all the stalling we’re doing shows everyone else at the table that we know we’ve lost. But, it doesn’t change the bad options we’ve got.
We can raise or fold…instead, we keep looking for more cards that aren’t coming!!!
Perhaps those who know better than I can weigh in. What is the possibility Iran is the side show, the distraction, and the conquest and/or complete destruction of Lebanon by Israel is the main thrust?
Let’s set aside that the US admin are incapable, ignore Trump and crew for a moment. This always had to be a planning possibility that Iran would not roll over and play dead, might prevail, and that this impasse would be arrived at – indeed it appears to have been deliberately arrived at. What then is the plan, and what possibilities make this impasse amenable to the plan? Now we’re at a place where Iran is not raining destruction pending agreement which precisely allows Israel to move on Lebanon sans agreement.
Possible?
Certainly possible. Is the Smart Israeli money hedging and staring to gain a toe-hold in the western Hemisphere, as in– say… argentina. I mean, Peter Thiel cannot be wrong?
Herzl does mention Argentina as the alternative to Palestine in “The Jewish State”. Maybe today’s Zionists want both.
The “comrades” as they called themselves paved the way down there on the Rat Line in the late ’40s, the ’50s and even into the sixties. Cancer on the hoof, but well dressed.
I had been thinking about the stalled talks having provided Israel with the opportunity they are seizing in Lebanon. Seems strange that Bibi, having convinced Trump that Iran would be a pushover, is now diverting major resources to the north. He accomplishes two major objectives: freezing the Iran negotiations, and expanding the greater Lebensraum (aka pre-emptive strike) campaign.
OTOH, Iran was not merely a distraction. That chess game has too many dimensions for Trump and his band of merry sycophants to contemplate. Bibi is happy to let the US hold the fort (and the bag), with Trump dithering and a hot cease fire, while he pursues other objectives. And we pay for it.
Democrats who paved the way for this stupidity with unconditional support for Israel and specifically for genocide in Gaza may be waking up. Way too late.
But Trump sez: “I can’t quit you, Bibi.”
I keep thinking so many comments are like the blind men and the elephant. I think the elephant is like a hose and you think it is like a tree. There are so many moving parts to the global situation it makes the events of WW1 look like a town hall zoning meeting. The interconnectedness and complexity are enormous. I would hazard to guess based on the best news available that no one has a complete picture, much less any real viability on the future. Trump is a major player from our perspective but no one is actually calling the shots. A lot of it is just flailing about.
Not to talk to myself here but its not all about war in the middle east. China, Russia and India are all players. All the chess pieces are in motion everywhere right now and it is all related. Everything is a factor in the calculus. Everyone is partly or completely wrong. In the last few weeks almost everyone on this site has predicted the certainty of a renewed hot war. Now we are considering a protracted stalemate. The strategy is to win and that is not a strategy. It is all just parries and thrusts to find an opening. I am a player because I am stockpiling what I think I will need and wondering how much my money will be worth in a year or two.
Very perceptive.
It seems quite likely that the Revisionist Zionists manipulated the American leader into undertaking his phantasmagorical “decapitation strike” on the Islamic Republic in order to neutralize Iranian material support of resistance to the expansion of the Gaza genocide toward the Zionist entity’s north and east. The U.S.-Iran stalemate continues to work in the Kahanists’ favor since the Iranian leadership must hoard their weaponry for their own defense.
The Revisionist Zionists will continue to hoodwink their tool in the White House into escalating his demands whenever it appears that an agreement might be possible. Trump’s out-of-left-field demand that all West Asian governments join the so-called “Abraham Accords” is evidence of who is calling the shots. It helps that Trump’s evident white-matter disease causes him to believe that he’s living in the world of 1979.
Under this scenario the stalemate will likely last for years. Trump’s silver-spoon upbringing makes him impervious to the suffering of others in the recession or depression that will likely result. He’ll just keep livin’ large.
Any Trumpian “deal” just seems impossible, because Israel will never stop its aggressions, even when claiming a ceasefire is in effect. And the Euro-American media will consistently cover up for Israel. And there appears to be no numerically significant voting bloc in Israel in favor of reining in the constant killing and destruction inflicted by Israel on other countries and on its own Islamic and Christian minorities. What Trump wants or how his ego can be satisfied is irrelevant. He is not Reagan and will no way threaten to cut off Israel’s aid if they don’t stop their violence. So either Israel wins and gets to conquer its neighbors with US military help, or it gets permanently defanged. Those are the only two outcomes that are possible in the current environment. Getting to either will be very painful for the world.
Iran stops negotiations with U.S., vows to ‘completely’ block Strait of Hormuz: State media
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/iran-us-negotiations-strait-of-hormuz.html
Iran says contradictory US positions and continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon delaying diplomacy
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-contradictory-us-positions-israeli-attacks-lebanon-delaying-diplomacy-2026-06-01/
Kremlin outraged by detention of Russian shadow fleet tanker, calls it “piracy”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/01/8037284/
France seizes another sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/europe/france-russian-tanker-intl
Japan deploys personnel to NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine
https://www.nato.int/en/news-and-events/articles/news/2026/05/29/japan-deploys-personnel-to-nato-security-assistance-and-training-for-ukraine
From the link “France seizes another sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil” https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/01/europe/france-russian-tanker-intl
Here, what Macron is saying requires proof which is not provided in the article or in any of Macron’s phrases (in bold). The Law of Sea says that ships navigating in international waters are under the law and orders from the country these are registered in and flagged. In this case Madagascar. Not France, not the US, not the UK, have the authority to seize the ship so it is quite likely an unlawful action, piracy if you wish, as we are being accustomed to. If Macron had said in his tweet that they first asked the authorities of Madagascar for permission to seize it and such permission was granted in a way that can be documented then we might be talking about something done in “strict compliance with the law of sea”. But then we go to the second phrase in bold where Macron’s says “it is unacceptable for ships to circunvent “international sanctions”? That is stupid and there is no provision in UNCLOS mentioning such “international sanctions” less so “Western sanctions”. This phrase, providing a purported reason (excuse?) for the seizure strongly suggests that this wasn’t done in strict compliance of UNCLOS.
This article discusses a similar incident in December 2025 in which the Pirates of the Caribbean,… err…, the US Navy, seized in international waters a Venezuelan ship flagged in Guyana. Nor the US in that case, neither France in the current case can apply their own regulations in international waters. This is better written in the article linked above:
This will have bad consequences. I despise this idiot Macron.
So it appears that if France and the UK cannot obtain oil from their former gulf sources, they will just steal Russia’s to fill their own storage tanks? Good work if you can survive it. It’s time for Russia to escort some tankers with trailing submarines. Sinking a few French and/or British warships might deter further aggression.
‘Wise
@trikcode
A person deleted 3 months of AI generated code because he could not understand it.
He could not explain why it was written that way.’
Sounds like the guy built his own personal black box. And having built it, realized that he did not know what happened inside of it. The guy also said that it was a side project. But if it was one where he had to turn it over to his boss, then he would be on the hook if anything went wrong with it and would be saddled with the responsibility of fixing it but no clue as to how or where to start. Not a good place to be.
LinkedBook is as far as I’ll delve into (anti)social media, and I maintain a profile there so clients/prospective clients get an idea who they are working with. Yeah, I often deal with industrial computers known as PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) and I’ve noted a fair amount of gushing with regards to the time-saving benefits of AI generated code, but if one cannot understand the code that is written, then how can this code be useful when troubleshooting malfunctioning equipment? The ability to use a PLC for diagnostics is one of the main reasons these have all but replaced relay-logic or relay-based control systems.
Sure, one may (possibly) save some programming costs up front, but when things go wrong you may be looking at some very extended and expensive unplanned down-time while high-cost humans attempt to hash through unfamiliar code that was written exclusively for operation, not for examination, let alone human reasoning or comprehension. More than once I’ve come across ladder-logic (main PLC language in USA, and (in theory) easily understood by anyone who can read an electrical schematic) that is burn-it-down bad– illegible, overly-complex, poorly-documented, etc.– and it becomes a trade-off between trying to make that shit-code somehow work or starting from scratch and rewriting the stuff.
Of course, there are managers out there who will insist…
I think Zitron’s pieces are great if you have the time, well worth reading.
On X, I also follow an account named Dr_Gingerballs, a mechanical engineering professor at an undisclosed major university. Fact based skepticism about oversold capabilities for statistical inference, and bad cost/benefit tradeoff.
Thanks! Will add him to my list.
When considering DJT mental capacity and potential mitigation, I’m reminded of the well documented story about his father Fred Trump becoming so agitated with his own dementia they finally custom built him a duplicate “office” inside his house so he could continue to pretend he was a real estate magnate without actually causing any additional problems for the family business.
Maybe at some point when he is in FL Rubio Vance and Wiles just decide his plane is broken, he will have to continue his “duties’ from his club.
Or the pathetic boot-lickers will continue to pretend everything is great and enable the dysfunction as has been going on for awhile. Just when we thought we had reached peak kakistocracy with a senile Biden regime (Blinken-Sullivan regime), we have a mentally ill, likely drug-addled emperor who falls asleep during the day, and apparently stays up all night posting gibberish. We can’t forget that he fancies himself a god, Jesus, the Savior of America, etc. building a Nero-like statue of himself, naming everything after himself. The new Domus Aurea is being built to round out the picture.
And the Sycophant-Stenographer Media Cartel mostly act like this is normal. It’s been the Twilight Zone for years now. Incompetence, mental illness, lawlessness, corruption and kleptocracy have become normalized.
I shudder to think what will come after the insane clown is gone. Judging by past trends, the politicians only get more incompetent, corrupt, more sadistic, more reckless.
Well, like Mr. Bond said, “One time is happenstance, two times is coincidence, but three times is enemy action”
Hopefully it will end the same way The Boys did, and soon.
I would not object if the boy shipped me a small bundle of his handsome, colorful, distinguished and launderable $250 bills. I’m just salivating at the prospect of jamming $2.5M in the suitcase that currently can hold only $1M and disappearing it into my no-beneficial owner corporation (thanks Donnie!).
Good round up today!!!
Trump at his heart and core is a con artist. His logic: One can expect him to wheedle, weasel, squirm, snake, slip, slide, evade, twist, contort, convolute, & manipulate in whatever way he can to avoid getting pinned down. This can mean that Bibi will be driven around in circles. The irony is that these actions without focus, except for self serving purpose, will benefit Iran. Meanwhile, the people of the US pay and will pay more tribute to Israel at the pump while Congress and the Executive Branch continue to cede control of US security to Israel. A hell of a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Republic.
Israel and the Lobby are a symptom of deep institutional corruption and rot. Folk done forgot that political bribery has been formalized, they don’t want to see the larger corruption, lack of meaningful democratic choice, etc.
The Oligarchy call the shots: and we should notice that all the top oligarchs, Jews, non-Jews, Zionists, non-Zionists alike ALL support US foreign policy. So it aint just the Israel Lobby. BigOil, TechBros, MICIMATT and all the rest of the “epistemic communities” (factions of oligarchy) agree. Forget the politicians, they are paid puppets. Sure Israeli dual-citizens like the Adelsons can openly bribe the president (as well as Gulf dictators) and Congress, but plenty of non-Zio money is paid in bribes (aka so-called campaign contributions and donations). Just look at the so-called evangelical Christian (anti-Christ) lobby.
If Israel policy is not seen as profitable to the oligarchy in general, why don’t we see any resistance from them?
US “security” is viewed as US global “primacy”. No primacy, no security. Iran, Russia, China are countries that have the power to resist US primacy. Israel or no Israel, the US is bent on maintaining global primacy, hegemony. Some appear to genuinely believe that the pipe dream of Full Spectrum Dominance can be achieved
I can’t help think allowing the Republic’s security – and the rights and liberties proclaimed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – to be determined by an unstable, genocidal theocracy, a handful of Zionist billionaires, an unhinged President, and a bought and paid for Congress, is less a matter of deep institutional corruption and rot than, putting it at its simplest, high treason by a once free citizenry.
But what do I know? It’s hard for me to complain. I’m just an aging Brit living under the dead hand of Keir Starmer and a Labour party that long ceased to represent labour, preferring the cash in hand offered by the Zionist state and its ideological kin.
Mario Nawfal | IRAN STOPS ALL NEGOTIATIONS, WILL FREEZE RED SEA TOO- w/ Fmr. U.S. Navy Malcom Nance
Here.
According to this livestream, which ended a little over an hour ago, the Iranians have halted talks and have threatened to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait if Israel does not cease actions in Lebanon.
Malcolm Nance says the announcement appears to be timed to counter President Trump’s Monday morning “happy talk” post about a deal being “close” and notes that, in the time he (Nance) was contacted to speak on the steam and being on the steam, oil has gone up $7.36 a barrel.
All that might go along with what is discussed in this chat. Iran has via Pakistan parties warned America that it will demonstrate a nuclear weapon:
Larry Johnson : Trump Negotiating Against Himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesKA3_ryqE
Larry Johnson states he should be able to confirm this news later today.
Plus, if this really is a Pakistan nuke, it would indicate a major shake up of GCC alliances.
If Israel is in charge of the Trump Iran policy then it makes sense what is going on.
Iran hasn’t responded to the destruction of Gaza and Lebanon, why I don’t know.
Israel is winning. They are increasing their advance in all areas. They don’t care about the world situation. I would expect for this to continue until they take full control over Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon. No one is doing anything to stop it.
Hezbollah? (and Hamas has still not been destroyed). I have no hard evidence, but I would bet a lot of money that Iran continues to supply and aid Hezbollah. Despite censorship lockdown in Israel, we have seen significant damage inflicted by Iran, and Hezbollah. It is not as one-sided as you might think.
Remember what happened the last time Israel invaded south Lebanon?
Latest Moon
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/06/war-on-iran-after-israel-threatened-beirut-iran-announced-to-further-reduce-global-oil-supplies.html
Is the tit for tat about to move to Tel Aviv?
I think there’s a lot of Truth to the assertion that the people running Iran have been quite good at their jobs for the last 50 years or whatever. I’ve been paying attention sporadically to what Iranian leaders have been doing recently and also farther in the past and they seem to have been playing their cards quite well.
At the same time, are they really world class politicians, leaders, and negotiators? I ask this question sincerely. Or do they just seem like they are to Americans and others who have become used to their own execrable leadership class invariably made up of buffoons and idiots?
Then of course there is Trump himself who somehow parlayed his “ignorance is strength” message into a major qualification for US president. The US is probably the only country in the world where complete and total inexperience in political office is somehow a quality that would make you superior to the other candidates. I think we have seen how well that idea worked out.
In any case, Erickson is correct that Trump now finds himself completely outclassed by his Iranian counterparts. But it’s probably says a lot more about Trump than it does that Iranian leadership.
The US is probably the only country in the world where complete and total inexperience in political office is somehow a quality that would make you superior to the other candidates
Look across the pond, begin with Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, then work your way through the individual European statelets… you will see that we are far from being the solely afflicted.
Macron, a total unknown, was hired by François Holland as a staffer, quickly moving up and getting the entire Economic Ministry and then somehow pushing through a disastrous change to tax law and labor law, and then resigning to run for president. A Rothschild banker, out of nowhere, 2 term president, Cinderella Story. A complete disaster for the French. And now a pirate sailing the seven seas.
As an exhibit, there’s the slow progress on launching their tolling process for the strait. And there are a great many ships still very much trapped in the gulf. But the Iranians are still a masterclass relative to whatever Washington emits these days.
Refreshingly candid headline at Market Watch: Explicitly says that markets need to price higher oil prices and expect more prolonged conflict
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-rise-after-fresh-wave-of-attacks-between-u-s-and-iran-fbcdd5ed
This is one of the headlines on Drudge under the title “Oil Surges”
The lying liar who lies, lies, lies ™ is back!
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5902930-live-updates-donald-trump-iran/
A “rapid pace!” I’m sure that we’ll all be singing Kumbaya by tomorrow, after all, it’s Taco Tuesday.
A rapid pace is Trump picking up a 12- foot gimmie off the green, and scooting over to the next tee box….
Dangote becomes world’s top jet fuel exporter
https://businessday.ng/energy/article/dangote-refinery-becomes-worlds-top-jet-fuel-exporter-as-middle-east-crisis-lingers/
Trump says no Israeli troops will go to Beirut after call with Netanyahu
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-no-israeli-troops-will-go-beirut-after-call-with-netanyahu-2026-06-01/
Iran relentlessly targets Kurdish opposition in northern Iraq despite regional ceasefires
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-897987
Ceasefire very likely to end if Israeli attacks on Lebanon persist, Iranian TV says
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-says-it-struck-iranian-military-sites-tehran-responds-with-air-base-attack-2026-06-01/
Greek shipping magnate George Procopiou warns Iran that Greeks have a long history of “breaking blockades.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-strait-of-hormuz-dynacom-tankers-management-george-prokopiou/
Trump Admits ‘We Shouldn’t Have Been in Iran’
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-iran-war-fox-news
The tension between JD Vance and Trump is growing
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/the-tension-between-jd-vance-and-trump-is-growing-4449625
Trump tells CNBC: ‘I don’t care’ if Iran negotiations are over
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/trump-iran-war-negotiations-oil-israel-interview.html
‘They’d rather die than see me fix it’: Trump gives up on Kennedy Center
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/theyd-rather-die-than-see-me-fix-it-trump-gives-up-on-kennedy-center-ht6rgv9mn
Trump Rages as Already Horrible Concert Turns Into Disaster
https://newrepublic.com/post/211180/trump-rages-already-horrible-concert-turns-disaster-vanilla-ice-great-american-state-fair
New York Times Publisher Warns That AI Companies Are Making Choices That ‘Violate Settled Law’ and Could Cause a ‘Great Deal of Unnecessary Harm’
https://variety.com/2026/biz/news/new-york-times-ai-companies-choices-unnecessary-harm-1236763934/
The impending Republican collapse
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4587763/the-impending-republican-collapse/
Trump Says ‘Rigged’ Court System Could Sink His Birthright Citizenship Order
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-rigged-court-system-sink-birthright-citizenship-order-12015671
Trump Epstein Leaks Worsen as MAGA Cracks Up: “He Lame-Ducked Himself” | As Trump’s scandals cause MAGA to fracture and GOP defenses to crumble, a historian of the right explains how all the turmoil reflects growing awareness that Trump is passing from the scene.
https://newrepublic.com/article/211155/trump-epstein-leaks-worsen-maga-cracks-up-he-lame-ducked-himself
Republican Officials Reek With The Stench Of Trump’s Corruption
https://thehill.com/homenews/5902995-republican-corruption-trump-slush/
Why Democrats can’t sell America on “democracy”
https://www.vox.com/america-actually/490073/biden-harris-save-democracy-affordability-voters-redistricting
Pentagon policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, appeals court panel rules
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-military-ban-trump-02c27819995ebfbea6aa45d2633028d3
Experts sound alarm over Elon Musk’s ‘coup’ that’s ‘about to rob your 401k’
https://www.rawstory.com/elon-musk-2676979515/
Iran warns northern Israelis to leave if Beirut attacked
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/zv64c8az5
South Korea’s Hanwha to use Algoma Steel material to build military vehicles in Canada
https://www.ctvnews.ca/northern-ontario/article/south-koreas-hanwha-to-use-algoma-steel-material-to-build-military-vehicles-in-canada/
Gas prices here are down $0.10-0.20. We’re going to hit a wall at 200 kph so hard.
This timeline is lit.
To add insult, that’s the “bounce” from tapping our strategic reserve.
Here in Georgia, a state gas tax holiday passed by the legislature back in March and extended for another 30 days by the governor expires tomorrow. That is, unless we get a last-minute can-kickeroo.
It should be good for a nice 33-cent spike on Wednesday. Kaboom!
Oh, is that so?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/01/world/iran-war-us-trump-israel-lebanon/bd83845f-f7ae-5cdc-99d1-02fc1d3f9243?smid=url-share
Who knows anymore what’s even going on. Seems doubtful Israel is going to stop its occupation of southern Lebanon and withdraw, though. And seems doubtful Hezbollah is going to stop attacks as long as Israel is occupying Lebanon and continues to attack Hezbollah. This is after all Israel’s time to shine. There’s never going to be a better opportunity than right now.
Exactly what I was thinking. As if we can believe any of the BS or that the Israelis “agreed to”. Yeah right, sure, you betcha. More manipulative BS? Bloomberg repeats the line and voila! The “market” is back up, like magic!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-31/oil-climbs-as-us-iran-ceasefire-remains-elusive-markets-wrap
When I hear stuff like “the president posted on social media” all I hear is
blah blah blah, blah blah, blah….. blah blah!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl3VSTcQaRs
There’s this little tidbit…
https://www.southfront.press/israel-backs-down-from-bombing-beirut-after-threat-from-iran/
Iran seems to have “cleared it’s throat”.
Who are “the mullahs”?
Why is this cartoonish depiction of Iran still viable?
I thought the internet and tech were a thing
Trump announced overnight that the sky will be changed from blue to GOLD starting next Tuesday, adding “I’m very fond of gold as some of you already know”. He added that “Iran will be paying for the color upgrade, they originally said no, but we negotiated a GREAT DEAL which they couldn’t refuse!”
I’m pretty sure the people who are mandating AI wouldn’t know a “result” if it came up and bit them on the ass. I think they just have a vague hope that somehow AI is going to vastly increase profits in their software operation, and they don’t want to be the last ones to the party. Believe me when I tell you that millions of extremely smart software engineers have spent the last 60 or 70 years working hard to increase software productivity, and make software faster to write, easier to maintain, and more reliable to run. I wouldn’t say nothing has been achieved here, but the pace has been pretty glacial and the results pretty equivocal.
One of the major problems, which you allude to, is that there is no good way to measure the productivity of software creation. Certainly you can come up with various numbers (keystrokes per minute, lines of code per day, version control check-in rate, cups of coffee consumed, hours worked, or whatever) but no one can show a stable correlation between these kinds of things and some worthwhile outcome. Engineering products like software are intellectual creations. Mostly, they are developed by people sitting and staring into space while they think about how to solve some small problem. Or by browsing the internet and trying to find a case where someone has solved a similar problem in the hope that this will give them an idea. Humans don’t give off obvious signs of thinking, and urging them to “think faster” does not work. Some people do seem to be better at this than others, but what is that really mean?
And of course these kinds of numbers can easily be gamed by determined people who are good with numbers. (A colleague of mine worked at a place that tried to improve quality through paying people per bug fixed. You can imagine the result: people would deliberately introduce bugs and then “fix” them later.)
Scott Adams nailed this years ago. https://devhumor.com/media/dilbert-s-team-writes-a-minivan
Melania Named in Bombshell New Epstein Claims
https://www.thedailybeast.com/melania-named-in-bombshell-new-epstein-claims/
Trump Abandons $1.8B Political Slush Fund
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/06/01/trumps-18b-anti-weaponization-fund-dead-reportedly-after-gop-threats/
Trump says ‘I don’t care’ if Iran talks over: ‘They started to get very boring’ “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly. I really don’t care,” Trump told CNBC’s Eamon Javers. “I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not… I think [Iran] took too much time.”
“Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring,” he added, referring to the talks. “They were giving us what we needed, but I think… they handled the negotiations poorly. It took too long. I thought they were tapping us along, that’s all.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-says-i-dont-care-if-iran-talks-over-they-started-to-get-very-boring/ar-AA24AAWY
Re: the msn.com item on the Javers/Trump interview and the remark that the deal with Iran will be good for US, the thought occurs that DJT can spin capitulation to Iran as a “win” for US (and for himself, public-spirited servant of the people that he is) if things have gotten really bad in US due to the Hormuz Strait closure. “Look! I fixed the problems we have been experiencing!”
Perhaps that is part of the present temporizing. Things aren’t bad enough yet for capitulation to be credibly spun as a “win”.
Israel says France has banned Israeli government officials from participating in a major weapons show in the country
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israels-defence-ministry-says-france-bans-israeli-officials-defence-show-2026-06-01/
New Video of Israel dropping white phosphorus bombs on civilian areas in Lebanon
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY99d1Lszrc/?igsh=c3Z3YnlwNm9mMWVn
https://youtube.com/shorts/W1IEr7JT1NU?si=LQL4yJl_XyaRxFkS
Federal appeals court blocks Trump’s trans military ban, says it appears based on hatred toward transgender people
https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/trans-military-ban-ruling?1
Former ICC prosecutor says Mossad chief pressured her to stop investigating Israel war crimes
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/former-icc-prosecutor-says-mossad-chief-pressured-her-over-israel-war-crimes-probe
Postal Service moving forward with Trump’s attack on mail voting
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/postal-service-trump-attack-mail-voting-proposed-rule/
Is Donald Trump Jr.’s wife Bettina Anderson the daughter of Epstein’s former banker?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bettina-anderson-father-epstein/
‘To call it a ceasefire is a joke’: Israeli soldiers share rare accounts from Gaza with AP
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-war-yellow-line-israeli-soldiers-8a6cb8e91ba454ddc80a6335e7466451
How Ivanka Trump is destroying a protected habitat in Albania to build a 4bln resort
https://balkaninsight.com/2026/02/04/as-trumps-family-eyes-pristine-albanian-coast-villagers-cry-foul/bi/
Trump Administration Bans Disease Experts from Speaking to WHO About Growing Ebola Outbreak
https://people.com/trump-bans-disease-experts-from-speaking-who-ebola-11984027
“He only needed us for the votes”: Coal miners say Donald Trump promised to save their communities, won their support, then ignored them once the election was over
https://nebraskamail.cv/he-only-needed-us-for-the-votes-coal-miners-say-donald-trump-promised-to-save-their-communities-won-their-support-then-ignored-them-once-the-election-was-over/
Canada considers cancelling part of 88 U.S. F-35 order to buy 60 Swedish Gripen fighters.
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2026/canada-f35-saab-gripen-fighter-jet-order
Donald Trump yells, swears at Benjamin Netanyahu on tense call on Lebanon
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-898050
One Nation wants to roll back abortion rights in Australia – and is emboldening activists seeking US-style laws
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/01/one-nation-rise-anti-abortion-groups-australia-ntwnfb
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System | The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html