11 responses to “Saturday morning market.”

1. 

   alex said on September 13, 2025 at 2:25 pm

   How far we’ve fallen when a balls-out bigot like Charlie Kirk is acclaimed as a respectable mainstream conservative. And the legacy media still seem to be grappling with the fact that his enemies weren’t liberals but hardline neo-nazis who considered him a namby pamby and a sell-out.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Twh88BHD4

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2. 

   Sherri said on September 13, 2025 at 3:30 pm

   It is possible today to choose to live in a media bubble such that you only saw Charlie Kirk as a motivational Christian speaker and didn’t see his hateful rhetoric. It’s an active choice, but it’s possible with that choice to be unaware of the horrible things Kirk said about people who weren’t like them.

   That doesn’t explain pundits like Ezra Klein, who are well aware of his hateful rhetoric; I can only explain him by assuming he identified more with Kirk than with the people Kirk attacked. Or maybe he was jealous of Kirk’s success, and wished he’d thought of that path to riches.

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3. 

   Sherri said on September 13, 2025 at 3:59 pm

   Speaking of reality avoidance, AI is in full on reality avoidance mode. For a brief period this week, Larry Ellison passed Musk as the richest person in the world, because Oracle got a huge stock price bump when they announced a $300 billion deal with OpenAI.

   That is, they announced a deal where a company that has $10 billion in revenue and loses money would give them $300 billion they don’t have, for 4.5 gigawatts* of datacenters that don’t exist full of chips that Oracle doesn’t have and will have to borrow money to buy. This whole deal is based on wild assumptions about the growth of AI that show no signs of happening. There’s already been huge amounts of capital expenditures on AI for paltry revenues, everyone betting that it’s eventually going to turn into a perpetual money machine.

   OpenAI already needs to raise more capital just to get to where the Oracle deal begins, in 2027. If I didn’t believe that the market could stay irrational longer than I could stay solvent, I’d look for a way to short AI.

   *datacenters are measured in electricity required to power them.

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4. 

   David C said on September 13, 2025 at 4:03 pm

   If there’s an afterlife and those in it can control things on Earth, mom certainly arranged this for me. I had lunch at Arby’s and the old guy in front of me ordered a french dip. They sat it on his tray and he started to take it. The counter person said “Just a second, I have to get your au jus”. The old guy yelled “I’m not an old Jew, I’m a Christian”. The counter person said “No, no, au jus is the broth you dip your sandwich in”. The old guy settled right down and turned to me and said “That was stupid”. I could see he had hearing aids, so I pointed at mine and said I understood. I needed a good laugh so much.

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5. 

   Jeff Gill said on September 13, 2025 at 5:03 pm

   It was the poet & hymnodist William Cowper who said “God moves in a mysterious way” and not the Bible, but I’ll take that au jus blessing just as it is.

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6. 

   Mark P said on September 13, 2025 at 5:49 pm

   I just hope the AI/data center bubble lasts long enough that Microsoft shows some sign of starting grading or something for the data center that’s supposed to be constructed at the bottom of the mountain where we live. By early spring, maybe, some MS manager starts looking for a temporary house (ours is not big enough for MS managers) near the site, so we can sell and find something in Colorado. Otherwise, I’m going to be too old to do it. Someone did put in fiber optic cables near the site, which is pretty rural. I’m not sure whether that’s a sign or not.

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7. 

   Julie Robinson said on September 13, 2025 at 8:54 pm

   David C, I’m glad that your mom was able to give you a laugh from the other side. I hope it’s one of many.

   Mark P, I also hope you can move before you get older. We were only 65, but it really was a lot. Of course we were also moving mom and getting a construction project finished, and those I don’t advise. We’ll go into an apartment when we can’t manage the house anymore.

   I haven’t had time for news today, and maybe that’s just as well. We got Dennis off for his big trip and I was running laundry and picking up pieces all day. Oh, I did get into the pool for 30 laps, too. Water therapy is the best therapy.

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8. 

   Sherri said on September 14, 2025 at 3:21 am

   I’m planning a trip to NYC in November, to see some Broadway shows and museums. Anybody have any suggestions for good places to stay?

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9. 

   Jeff Gill said on September 14, 2025 at 10:55 am

   No ideas about lodgings, but a quick cheer for the J.P. Morgan Library, which has interesting rotating exhibits, and of course the core collection and story of the original librarian/curator, who is fascinating in her own right, Belle da Costa Greene.

   https://www.themorgan.org/belle-greene

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10. 

    alex said on September 14, 2025 at 11:57 am

    It’s been so long since I’ve been to NYC that I have no idea where’s a good place to stay, and when I used to go there I usually stayed with friends. The last time I went — I think it was the 1990s — I stayed in Fort Green, Brooklyn, in a house that I was told was formerly owned by Spike Lee.

    So the Governor of Utah is now claiming that Tyler Robinson was an avowed leftist and was in a romantic relationship with his roommate who was transitioning from male to female. To me this sounds far-fetched as hell and looks like an effort to counter the emerging evidence that Robinson was somewhere to the right of Kirk. I suspect the zone will be flooded with a whole lot more bullshit before this is all over.

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11. 

    alex said on September 14, 2025 at 12:14 pm

    Here’s a gift link. It looks like the NY Post broke the story and the Gov is running with it. And of course we can trust Kash Patel’s FBI to report honestly about any findings.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-ideology-partner.html?unlocked_article_code=1.l08.5TEi.CwgmS-K1Tr0b&smid=url-share

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