USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen. I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify. In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather. "Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully. "Honey, that's what it looks like." The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it." I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it. I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South. It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent. "Well?" the waitress asked. "I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed." "Everybody does, hon." Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it. Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating. I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden. It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these." "They just come with the table, man." They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat. I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared. "Did we…?" "Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless." Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude." Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy. Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most. Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

Cushing hit ~20MM in January 2025 - no geopolitical backdrop, obviously - but cant this just mean an adjustment in front-month WTI and Cushing becoming more valuable relative to Midlands and Houston? Does it need to signal some leap in crude?

API whoa Crude -9.1MM Gasoline -1.2MM Distillates 1.3MM Cushing -1.1MM

TRUMP HINTS AT MARSHALL PLAN-STYLE IRAN RECONSTRUCTION, BUT SAYS THE US WOULD TAKE HALF OF IRAN'S OIL IN RETURN. - ABC NEWS

It's official. MicroStrategy, $MSTR, is now facing its biggest unrealized loss in history, at -$10.8 billion. In other words, after 6 years of buying Bitcoin, the company is now down -17% on its position. By comparison, the S&P 500 is up 116% over this same timeframe. Since MicroStrategy sold 32 Bitcoin at $77,135 per coin, their positions has lost -$11.8 billion in value. This puts MicroStrategy's stock, $MSTR, down -77% since its record high. Bear market is an understatement.

This masterpiece, "President Trump Sleeping with the Coal People," was painted by Raphael in 1518.

*TRUMP: NO REASON TO GET IRAN NUCLEAR DUST, IT'S ENTOMBED *TRUMP: NOT CONSIDERING COVERT OPERATION TO SEIZE IRAN URANIUM *TRUMP: WE HAVE POWERFUL CAMERAS WATCHING IRAN'S URANIUM