This is what the novel Ministry of the Future got wrong, with its horrifying "wet-bulb" event in India, where the grid goes down and air conditioning becomes unavailable, letting heat kill a million people. Now in places with fragile grids, people are taking matters into their own hands with cheap distributed solar.
Democratizing technology leads to self-reliance.
MILESTONE | Renewables produced MORE THAN A THIRD of US electricity for the first time in March 2026, overtaking gas power ⚡📈
March and April typically show good renewables output and moderate demand, leading to higher shares.
Explore more data: https://t.co/ycGHe4ro98
And it wasn’t just heat…
Following another record warm and very dry month, the nationally averaged U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) fell to an incredible -7.84. That is the driest national value on record — drier than the Dust Bowl or any prior drought on record.
Unbelievable.
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
This is incredible:
The top 10 S&P 500 companies have seen their net income grow by ~180% since 2019.
At the same time, the remaining 493 firms' profit growth was just 45%, or 4 times less.
The top 10 companies' earnings growth began accelerating in 2023 and nearly DOUBLED since then.
The gap continues to widen this earnings season.
From the~70% of S&P 500 companies that have reported Q2 results, 52% have posted declining profit margins.
Meanwhile, Apple, $AAPL, Meta, $META, Microsoft, $MSFT, and Google, $GOOGL, all beat earnings expectations.
Big tech is getting bigger.
The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!
Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.
🚨🇺🇸 U.S. LEADS WORLD IN OIL PRODUCTION FOR 2024
The United States leads all countries in oil production for 2024.
Saudi Arabia and Russia follow, with Canada, China, Iran, Iraq, and Brazil rounding out the top producers.
The U.S. remains firmly at the top, highlighting its dominance in global energy output.
Source: Statista
Unrealized losses now account for ~33% of all bank equity capital in the US.
Currently, banks are sitting on nearly $700 billion of unrealized losses.
To put this in perspective, even at the worst point in 2008, unrealized losses only accounted for ~5% of equity capital.
Prior to the regional bank crisis, this percentage was improving, at ~22%.
However, since the crisis we have seen rapidly rising unrealized losses.
A trend worth watching.
BREAKING: Median monthly home payment in the US rises to an all-time high of $2,839/month.
According to Reventure Consulting, the median home payment has now gone from $1,035/month to $2,839/month in just 10 years.
Since the pandemic, the median home payment is up ~$1,300/month, an 87% increase.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates just hit their highest since 2000, at 7.93%.
Housing affordability is now officially at its lowest levels in US history.
How can this end well?
if you are interested in understanding what i’d call the middle of the road palestinian perspective (most in the west aren’t, to be sure), fareed’s interview today is critical.
As geopolitical tensions now spread across the Middle East, oil prices are likely to spike even further.
Meanwhile, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) have 17 days of supply remaining, their lowest in history.
This is roughly half the historical average of ~33 days dating back to 1990.
Furthermore, this week OPEC reaffirmed their commitment to over 1.5 million barrels per day of voluntary production cuts.
All while Russian exports of crude oil are being limited and the world's largest oil producers are at war.
There has never been a worse time to have a depleted SPR.
Maybe while people are trapped at Burning Man is a good time to share some of the disturbingly capitalist hellscape stuff I witness each year from the supposedly non-consumption-based event.
Short 🧵 from a Tahoe local/Reno shopper who has seen some things…
'Covering 10% of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with ‘floatovoltaics’ would install electrical capacity equivalent to that provided by all electricity-generating fossil-fuel plants in operation worldwide'
https://t.co/HFMWn0cxsw