Given the MASSIVE focus on inflation and prices in recent years, I suppose it makes sense that minimum wage increases are no longer uber-popular, with referendums failing in CA, MA, and now OK. Reminds me of how abortion referendums started failing in red states post-Dobbs.

Pro-Israel groups deliberately turned Israel into a polarized issue and alienated almost the whole Democratic Party for the sake of a war that turned out to be as disastrous as Obama warned them and is going to end up with a deal that’s worse for them than JCPOA was.

Inflation excluding everything hot is now… still hot 😬

CNN: US intelligence agencies have recently assessed that Iran can effectively shut down access to the Strait of Hormuz at will from now on. “We have now handed Iran de facto control over the strait – a weapon more powerful than any nuke,” one of the sources familiar with the US intelligence assessments told CNN, emphasizing how the war has fundamentally altered Tehran’s thinking about leveraging similar tactics in the future. Iran has similarly learned it can leverage targeted strikes against the energy infrastructure of Gulf countries as an asymmetric capability after doing so to great effect during the war, another tool it can use to its advantage going forward, a second source familiar with the assessments said. One of the main reasons Iran believes it can continue to weaponize the strait is it still retains a significant portion of its weapons stockpile, including missiles, drones, missile launchers, and hundreds of small fast boats that continue to harass shippers attempting to transit the waterway and can be used to lay mines. Iran has also been rebuilding its military industrial base faster than the US anticipated and has already begun new drone production

Iran will continue controlling the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, enjoy enormous sanctions relief, receive reparations, and (likely) be subject to a less comprehensive control regime than existed under the JCPOA.

It is true that Iran used its power over the strait to assume leverage over the US and eventually compel a favorable settlement. But this obscures what may be the more significant achievement: that after 40 days of bombing, Iran never lost the ability to both keep the strait closed and threaten regional infrastructure. Its missile cities still stand, its launchers survived, its drone/missile arsenal were depleted but, thanks to careful management, remain potent. In the end, Iranian missiles and drones proved more effective at accomplishing their mission than US TLAMs, F-35s, and strategic bombers.

I would say they’re not even signaling that it’s a culture war issue, they’re signaling that it’s a “pay us money or else” shakedown issue.

It just seems really naive to see it as safety related at all instead of as a lever for the government to try to pick winners in the AI race that will pay them bribes and support Republicans. These strong anti-selection forces against integrity are unlikely to go away.

But I do think the NYC effects show that peer effects are massively overrated by parents, which has multi-trillion dollar implications on land use choices

"Under the old map lines, if Democrats won every district that was Trump 8 or more Democratic, they would have held a comfortable 237-198 majority. Under the new map lines, that same performance would produce only a 223-212 majority."

what if the whole data center issue just gets settled by "counties who want data centers will cut deals and get them and those that won't, won't" wsj.com/us-news/education/th…

Adobe is an important cautionary tale for three reasons: 1. You are likely underestimating how cheap things can get. Fundamentals. Will. Not. Save. You. 2. Reflexivity is real. Adobe has a permanent talent problem now. 3. You can’t fix a terminal value debate with buybacks

I’m not saying smart phones don’t affect birth rates in some way, but when your event study shows a peak in **2007**, there’s a pretty clear alternative hypothesis worth taking seriously.

Probably the single most important strategic takeaway from the war--and the biggest US miscalculation. Iran's missile capabilities have proven much more resilient than the US had guessed. It was thanks to this that Iran was able to fight the US to a draw--and facilitate the current agreement which is (by and large) quite favorable to Tehran. ft.com/content/94d9c8d4-c38d…

Atlanta Fed wage growth tracker down to 3.5%. Wage growth is looking exceedingly normal now. The current jump in inflation is clearly not coming from the labor market.

What Trump is saying: Iran will surrender, we're going to take Kharg Island, a deal is imminent, the strait is open. What Trump is doing: firing TLAMs at unmanned radar and air defense sites, forewarning Iran via Qatar, inviting brave tanker captains to switch off AIS and sneak through the strait at night 2-3 at a time.

The different responses to Covid seem like an underrated cause of transatlantic divergence. Almost every European country paid workers to stay in their existing jobs, at the same time as tens of millions of Americans – a third of all workers in 2022 – switched to new ones.

Pew seems to be fairly certain Dems got horrific differential turnout in 2024. In safer states, that dynamic did seem to repeatedly show up in results. pewresearch.org/politics/fea…

Recently, we purchased one of each Anthropic/OpenAI subscription plan and randomly ran long horizon coding tasks until we exhausted the weekly limit. It's widely believed that a $200/month plan maxes out at ~$2000/month worth of tokens (assuming API pricing). However, we found that the subscriptions are actually far more generous. (2/4)