Nectarine farmer in California is giving away his entire 125,000 lbs of ripe nectarines to the public for free
He says Big Agriculture in California has made it impossible for him to harvest and sell his nectarines
You can go pick for free from June 29–July 3, at 21500 E. Parlier, Reedley, California. 7am-10am
What’s happening is a handful of large marketers and packers dominate, they are squeezing independent growers
Direct-to-retail attempts often get countered aggressively. The big companies severely undercut farmers like this to drive them out of business
Tonight, June 29, the Strawberry Moon rises as the lowest-hanging full moon in nearly 20 years for Northern Hemisphere viewers.
It will not be matched until 2043.
June full moons follow a low path because they sit opposite the high summer sun near the solstice. This year the effect is stronger due to the low point in the 18.6-year lunar cycle. The moon rises far southeast, traces a shallow arc low in the southern sky, and sets far southwest.
Its low position near the horizon creates the moon illusion, making it appear larger and more dramatic. It may also look orange, red, or golden because its light passes through more atmosphere, scattering blue light and leaving warmer colors. The "Strawberry" name comes from the harvest season, not the color.
The best view is around local moonrise.
My card was skimmed in Bangkok. $2,000 gone.
My bank said "investigation takes 90 days, don't expect much."
Visa's global rules say I owe $0 from day one. The bank was using my money to fund their fraud investigation.
One email. Reversed in 48 hours.
Here is the sentence that ends the delay:
You have noticed it. ChatGPT feels dumber than it used to. Your prompts that worked six months ago produce worse results now. The writing sounds flatter. The ideas sound safer. The internet itself feels like it is shrinking. Every article reads the same. Every email sounds the same. Every answer sounds like it was written by the same voice.
You thought it was you. It is not you.
Researchers at Oxford and Cambridge published a paper in Nature proving what is happening. They call it Model Collapse.
Here is the mechanism in one sentence. AI trained on AI-generated data gets dumber every generation until it forgets what real human data looked like.
The internet is filling with AI-generated content. Blog posts. Articles. Reviews. Comments. Social media. AI companies scrape the internet to train the next generation of models. Which means the next generation of AI is being trained on the output of the current generation.
Each cycle loses information. Not randomly. It loses the rarest, most unusual, most creative parts first. The researchers call these the "tails of the distribution." The weird ideas. The unexpected perspectives. The things that made the internet feel human. Those disappear first.
What remains is the average. The safe. The expected. The bland.
Then the next generation trains on that. And loses more. And the next generation trains on that. And loses more. The researchers proved this is not a slow decline. Major degradation happens within just a few iterations. Even when some of the original human data is preserved.
They tested it on large language models. On image generators. On statistical models. The pattern was the same every time. The output converges toward a narrow, flattened version of reality that looks nothing like the original data.
The lead researcher put it plainly. "Large language models are like fire. A useful tool. But one that pollutes the environment."
The pollution is invisible. You cannot see which sentence on the internet was written by a human and which was written by AI. Neither can the AI that is about to train on it. And once the tails are gone, they do not come back. The damage is irreversible.
This is not a prediction anymore. It is a diagnosis.
The internet you grew up on was built by humans writing things no algorithm would have written. Strange, personal, imperfect, alive. That internet is being diluted. One generation of AI at a time. And the models trained on what remains are learning a smaller and smaller version of the world.
Model Collapse is not a technical problem. It is a cultural one. The thing that made the internet worth reading is the thing that disappears first.
@SacAppraiser I use both Constant Contact and MailChimp. From a usability perspective, CC is easier to master. That said, MailChimp offers more robust list tools.
Every photo you've taken since 2015 has 3 seconds of secret audio attached to it.
Apple calls it Live Photo. They turned it on by default.
Your iPhone also has 9 hidden camera settings that turn it into a $2,500 mirrorless camera. Most users have never opened them.
Here's how to take photos that look professional (and stop your iPhone from recording audio when you don't want it to):
Apple's free 5GB hasn't changed in 15 years. Your iPhone has.
15 years. Same 5GB.
Meanwhile your iPhone now shoots 4K video at 400MB per minute.
They want you to pay $2.99 a month forever to keep up.
You don't have to. There are 8 settings inside your iPhone that free 30+ GB without paying a cent.
Bookmark this. Send to anyone running out of storage.
I use Claude all day without hitting my usage limit.
Claude doesn’t count messages — it counts tokens. That means some chats burn through your limit 10× faster than others.
If you want to use Claude all day without running out, use these 9 smart tricks:
Nvidia just admitted that "AI efficiency" is a LIE.
Every major tech company is doing the same thing right now:
Firing humans and replacing them with AI to "cut costs." 92,000 tech workers laid off in 2026 so far.
Every single earnings call sounds the same: "AI is driving efficiency."
But the VP of Applied Deep Learning at Nvidia, the company that literally SELLS the AI infrastructure, just told Axios:
"For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees."
The man whose entire job is making AI work admitted that AI costs his company MORE than the humans it's supposed to replace. And he doesn't work at some struggling startup. We're talking about the most valuable company on Earth.
An MIT study backs this up too:
Researchers analyzed whether AI could actually replace human workers at a competitive cost and found that AI automation only makes financial sense in 23% of jobs. In the other 77%, humans are still cheaper.
So companies are firing cheap labor and replacing it with expensive labor, then telling shareholders it's "innovation."
But it gets even WORSE...
Uber just revealed that they burned through their ENTIRE 2026 AI budget in 4 months.
Their CTO said: "I'm back to the drawing board because the budget I thought I would need is blown away already."
What happened is that Uber gave their engineers access to AI coding tools and encouraged them to use them as much as possible. They even built internal leaderboards ranking engineers by how many AI tokens they consumed, basically gamifying their own budget crisis without realizing it.
By March, 95% of Uber's engineers were using AI tools monthly. 70% of all committed code was coming from AI. Monthly API costs per engineer hit $500 to $2,000.
One software engineer in Stockholm told the New York Times: "I probably spend more than my salary on Claude."
A human being now costs LESS than the AI tool they use to do their job.
And Uber isn't some edge case. Big Tech has announced $740 billion in AI capital expenditures this year alone, up 69% from 2025, according to Morgan Stanley.
Meanwhile the Yale Budget Lab says there is NO widespread data showing AI is actually displacing jobs or improving productivity at scale.
So follow the money:
Companies fire humans
↓
Stock goes up because "AI efficiency"
↓
Those same companies spend MORE on AI than they saved on salaries
↓
That money flows to Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft
↓
Those companies use the revenue to justify their own insane valuations
↓
Everyone books growth
↓
But nobody's actually saving money
McKinsey projects total AI spending will hit $5.2 TRILLION by 2030.
The biggest wealth transfer in modern history is happening right now, and it's not from workers to companies. It's from companies to AI infrastructure providers.
Every dollar "saved" on layoffs is being spent twice over on compute, tokens, and data centers.
Nvidia posted $31.9 billion in profit last quarter. And somebody is paying that bill - the same companies telling their employees that AI made them "redundant."
The entire narrative is a shell game:
CEOs get to announce layoffs, Wall Street rewards them with a stock bump, and then the real cost shows up three months later when the AI budget explodes and nobody connects the two events.
What's your take on this?
This is the most OUTRAGEOUS deal I've seen in my 45 years on Wall Street.
SpaceX just disclosed Musk's new compensation package:
He gets up to 200 million super-voting shares if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion valuation, establishes a permanent human settlement of at least ONE MILLION people on Mars, and deploys roughly 100 terawatts of space-based computing power.
Let me put the 100 terawatts in perspective:
The entire electricity generation capacity of the United States is around 1.2 terawatts. The comp plan asks Musk to build more than 80x America's entire power grid... in orbit.
This is a science fiction screenplay that somehow landed in front of the SEC.
But here's why it actually matters for your portfolio...
The S-1 reportedly claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with over 90 percent attributed to AI. CapeFearAdvisors flagged this one cleanly: when Palantir went public, it disclosed a $119 billion TAM and the SEC reviewed and accepted it.
SpaceX is claiming a market roughly 240x BIGGER.
Now let's talk about what is actually being sold here:
Reported 2025 revenue is approximately $15.5 billion. Starlink delivers around $11 billion of that with healthy margins, and the launch business is genuinely dominant. The problem is xAI - the AI piece doing all the heavy lifting in the trillion-dollar valuation pitch.
xAI generated just $210 million of revenue in the first 3 quarters of 2025 while burning through $9.5 billion in cash.
Ben Brey and Rupert Mitchell - a former Fidelity portfolio manager and a former head of equity capital markets at Goldman and Citi between them - ran a serious discounted cash flow on the actual operating businesses and arrived at roughly $400 billion. Lawrence Fossi covered their work recently and the math holds up.
The IPO is being marketed at $1.75 TRILLION.
The gap between what these businesses support and what Musk is asking the public to pay is roughly $1.35 trillion of pure narrative.
Then layer on what we just learned last week...
The New York Times investigation revealed Musk personally borrowed $500 million from SpaceX between 2018 and 2020 at rates as low as 1%, while bank prime rates sat around 5%. The same SpaceX has been used to bail out SolarCity, prop up Tesla during cash crunches, and absorb xAI when the AI losses became unmanageable.
This is the same playbook he's run for two decades.
Use a privately controlled entity as a personal piggy bank, and when the bills come due, find new investors to absorb the losses.
The IPO is structured to keep that game going FOREVER.
The Texas reincorporation strips away Delaware's fiduciary protections. Controlled-company status on the Nasdaq eliminates independent board requirements. And retail is being offered up to 30% of the offering (3x the normal allocation) because the institutions who actually do the math are quietly stepping away.
Here is the part that finishes the case for me:
Roughly $40 billion of the IPO proceeds are already spoken for before a single dollar reaches operations. About $23 billion retires SpaceX debt. Another $17 billion retires the high-interest debt sitting on xAI and X.
This raise is not funding the future. It's just plugging existing holes that retail investors will now own.
In my 45 years I've never seen a deal where the comp hurdle is colonizing another planet.
I've never seen a disclosed TAM that exceeds verified comparables by two orders of magnitude.
I've never seen a company asking the public to fund the retirement of debt incurred by separate private entities controlled by the same individual.
Every red flag I've watched precede a major bust over four decades is sitting in this prospectus, in plain sight.
The Tesla mispricing is being repeated on a far larger scale.
And this time the bag is being handed directly to retail.
Don't be the one holding it.
Your AirPods Pro are an FDA-approved hearing aid.
You paid $250 and never turned it on.
That's 1 of 12 features Apple buried in Settings.
Here's all 12 (bookmark this):
Amazon just got caught running a secret price manipulation operation with Levi's, Home Depot, Walmart, and many more.
Every time you "comparison shopped" online, you were looking at prices that were already rigged.
Here's what happened:
Amazon would monitor prices on Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, and Chewy in real time. The second a competitor listed a product cheaper than Amazon, they'd contact the brand directly and tell them to "fix it."
And the exact emails are now PUBLIC.
Amazon sent Levi's links to two Walmart listings with the subject line "styles of concern." They basically said the prices on Walmart are too low and we have a problem.
The next day, Levi's responded: "I talked to Walmart and they have partnered with us to take Easy Khaki Classic fit back up to ladder SPP price, $29.99 immediately."
Levi's literally called Walmart and told them to raise the price. Because Amazon told Levi's to make the call.
Walmart complied. Then Amazon matched the HIGHER price.
Both retailers ended up charging more. The customer paid extra. Nobody competed.
Same playbook with Hanes:
Amazon sent them links showing Target and Walmart prices were lower. Hanes confirmed they "reached out to Target and Walmart to have the prices increased."
Target increased the prices. Walmart increased the prices. Amazon kept their margins.
But it gets even worse...
Amazon told Allergan (the company that makes eye drops) that their product was "suppressed" on Amazon because it was cheaper on another site.
Allergan responded: "Walmart got their price back up to $16.99." Amazon then unsuppressed the listing.
They did this with pet treats on Chewy. Furniture on Home Depot. Products across dozens of categories spanning YEARS.
The mechanism is simple but terrifying:
If you're a brand and you sell cheaper on Walmart than on Amazon, Amazon suppresses your product, removes you from the Buy Box, buries you in search results, and effectively makes you invisible to 300 million customers.
Brands can't afford that. So they call Walmart and Target and say "raise your prices or we'll lose our Amazon listings."
Walmart and Target comply because they need the brand's products.
Amazon captures 40 cents of every dollar spent online in America. That gives them the leverage to set prices across THE ENTIRE internet. Not just their own platform.
So turns out, you were never comparison shopping.
You were looking at a coordinated price floor set by Amazon through backroom phone calls between brands and their competitors.
"Amazon is working to make your life more unaffordable."
3 separate antitrust trials are now scheduled for 2027. The FTC has its own case. 18 states plus the DOJ are piling on.
This is literally happening during the WORST affordability crisis in a generation. Groceries up 25% since 2020. Housing unaffordable. Wages flat.
And the largest ecommerce company on Earth has been secretly coordinating with brands to make sure you can't find a cheaper price ANYWHERE.
"Competition" in retail is just a fantasy.
Why haven’t home prices crashed? Some thoughts and perspective on my blog today. I think many people expect 2007 results with 2026 stats, but it’s a much different supply story today. Enjoy my weekly post if you wish.
https://t.co/i3BLmGTvo4
I agree. This event has been meteorologically astonishing, and its impacts will be felt long after it ends in terms of record low snowpack, sharply increased wildfire risk, and extreme low watershed runoff/streamflow into summer and beyond.